Northwest. Movies reviewed: Amy, Rear Window, Testament of Youth PLUS NXNE
North. Movies reviewed- Amy, Rear Window, Testament to Youth
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s summertime here in the great white north, so I thought I’d talk about Northern films playing in Toronto. This week, there’s a Memoir of WWI set in North Western Europe, a classic voyeuristic suspense-thriller by the director of North By Northwest; and a documentary playing at NXNE.
Amy
Dir: Asif Kapadia
Amy Winehouse was a soulful jazz singer with an incredible voice. She was born in North London and dead by the age of 27. A new documentary fills in the missing years with grainy camera footage, voicemail messages, TV appearances, studio sessions and private snapshots. It follows her precipitously quick rise to stardom and all that goes with it. And London’s voracious, cannibalistic journo-papparazi who dog her every step. This is an excellent documentary of an artist killed by fame.
(Capsule review.)
Rear Window
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
It’s 1954. LB “Jeff” Jeffries (Jimmy Stewart) is a news photographer for Life Magazine. He lives out of a suitcase in exotic locales in search of the ultimate cover story. But now, with a broken leg, he’s holed up in his inaccessible apartment that’s not friendly to wheelchairs. He’s visited in the daytime by Stella (Thelma Ritter) a plain talking nurse, and in the evening by his high-society girlfriend Lisa (Grace Kelly). Between visits he stares longingly out his back window at the array of apartments visible just across a courtyard. There’s a newlywed couple, a frustrated musician, a miss lonelyhearts looking for love, a busty single woman, and a travelling salesman with his bed-ridden wife. He’s the ultimate voyeur, witnessing the drama of countless lives displayed just out of his reach. But when he thinks he sees a crime, he feels impotent that there’s nothing he can do to help. And after his old pal the cop refuses to get involved in local squabbles, he enlists Stella and Lisa to launch potentially dangerous investigations that he watches through his rear window. Is it real, or just a man’s overactive imagination.
Rear Window is a fantastic classic Hitchcock movie that captures the frenetic overpopulated American city life in the 50s. It’s filmed with an unusual point of view. We see everything the way Jeff does, through his window looking at the rooms across the street. With so much of our time now spent staring at windows (meaning screens) Rear Window predates our voyeuristic digital lives by half a century.
Testament of Youth
Dir: James Kent
It’s 100 years ago in rural England. Teenaged Vera (Alicia Vikander) lives with her brother Edward (Taron EDGErton) and her mum and dad who made a small fortune in paper mills.
She’s smart, educated, creative and multilingual. She writes poetry. Vera is a twentieth century woman with a mind of her own, ready to explore the world. But the world isn’t ready for her – they treat women as silly and frivolous who shouldn’t waste their time studying at university. Just find a husband, her parents tell her, that’s what women are there for.
And she’s not at a loss for suitors. Young Victor (Colin Morgan) likes her a lot, but she thinks of him as just
a sweet boy. She thinks Roland (Kit Harrington) is a persistent pest (though they do fall in love eventually) Her musically inclined brother Edward and his best friend complete the quartet of young men in her life, and she spends time with all of them keeping up her end of discussions.
Vera is stubborn and driven woman and after a great struggle she lands a place at Oxford, a huge accomplishment at the time when women couldn’t even vote. But no sooner does she start to study when WWI breaks out and all four of the young men in her life rush to join the army for King and country. She wants to do her part too and signs up as a nurse, one of the few professions open to women. But war is not quick and it’s not easy. She ends up at makeshift medical camps in France where she sees death, disease and despair everywhere, on both sides. Who will survive this war, who will die and what will they learn from it all?
There’s some great acting in this movie, including Vikander – she played a sexy robot in Ex Machina, and the two parts couldn’t be more different. But Testament of Youth is based on the classic memoir which gives a rare female Point of View of WWI. So it doesn’t have a movie’s traditional compact story line. It’s plodding and episodic. It felt like a miniseries – a good one maybe with notable actors and high production values – but not one that’s very exciting or gripping or heartbreaking. I didn’t dislike it but it didn’t blow me away, either.
Testament of Youth opens today in Toronto; check your local listings. Hitchcock’s Rear Window is screening in July as part of the series Technicolor Dreams. Go to tiff.net for the schedule. And Amy, along with films like Diamond Tongues and short films from Austin texas curated by Jonathan Demme, are all playing at NXNE films now through Sunday night: go to nxne.com for details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks to artist Daniel Young about Young & Giroux’s new installation Berlin 2012/1983 opening at the TIFF Bell Lightbox
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
At any given moment, we’re surrounded by evidence of past eras along with present. Architectural design and urban planning change slowly despite tumultuous changes in history, politics and government. But over the course of 
a generation change is evident.
How to document and convey this change? Well, a new art installation combining 35 mm film and architectural 
photography does just that. Filmed footage of structures built in 1983 are projected alongside images of buildings from 2012. The film snakes it’s way through the former East and West Berlin, through strip malls, warehouses, Stalinist blocs and private homes. This is a movie but it’s 
not like any film you’ve seen before. It’s a spectacle of the ordinary.
It’s called Berlin 2012/1983, and is opening today at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto.
Created by celebrated Sobey award-winning artists Daniel Young and Christian Giroux, the “film” is two hours long. It slowly projects 9 frames per image, one second each, with each discrete image separated by the flickering of a shutter, and the two projectors synchronized to show each pair of images simultaneously.
I spoke with Daniel Young in Toronto to find out more about Berlin 2012/1983.
Novelty. Movies reviewed: Live from New York, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Part of what makes a movie enjoyable is its unpredictability. It has to deliver lots of shocks, laughs and new images to keep the audience watching. So this week I’m looking at three films with increasing degrees of novelty. There’s a documentary about a once-novel TV comedy show; a quirky, high school dramedy based on a novel; and a truly bizarre Scandinavian fantasy about novelty salesmen.
Live From New York
Dir: Bao Nguyen
Saturday Night Live was created 40 years ago by Canadian producer Lorne Michaels as a late-night music and comedy show appealing to the baby boomers. Michaels chose the variety show format, a dying television genre. But unlike most variety shows, the show had a different host each week, supported by a cast of unknown comics called the Not Ready For Prime Time Players, presumably for their adult themes and because the show aired live around midnight each Saturday night.
So far, the show has lasted 40 years, coining countless catch phrases, 
spawning movie stars and way too many terrible films. But is Saturday Night Live actually funny? Not really. (Is it sacrilege to say this?) Its laugh-to-groan ratio is low. And it’s infamous for stretching a single joke over a long drawn-out scene. And if it gets enough laughs, they repeat variations of the same joke, week after week.
This film is a less of a documentary than a hagiographic tribute to the show. It conveniently leaves out the uncomfortable deaths and ODs that have plagued some of the show’s stars. Does that mean the movie is boring? No, just the opposite. In fact, it’s the best way to appreciate SNL — as an anthology of its funniest lines… with all the bad parts cut out.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
Dir: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (based on the novel by Jesse Andrews)
Greg (Thomas Mann) is a shy high school senior in Pittsburg, PA. He doesn’t like school but has learned to navigate the halls without disrupting anything. His dad is a foodie- hippy, prone to lounging around at home in embroidered burlap caftans. Each day he sends Greg to school carrying iron cauldrons of Romanian organ-meat stews stashed in paper bags. Luckily, he can eat them with his best friend, Earl, in Mr McCarthy (a beat poet English teacher)’s 
office. He’s known Earl (R.J. Cyler) since kindergarten. Greg us middle-class white; Earl is black and lives in a rundown part of town. Together they regularly plunder Greg’s Dad’s collection of criterion DVDs as raw material for the film parodies they create (Goddard, Herzog and Bergman).
So Greg’s life is offbeat but normal until his mom throws a wrench into it. A neighbor, Rachel (Olivia Cook) has leukemia and greg is drafted to keep her company. So begins their initially awkward but increasingly deep relationship. Soon Greg and Earl are enlisted to direct their filmmaking skills toward a tribute to Rachel. But when Greg realizes 
that what he does for fun could have real-life consequences… he panics.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is a self-consciously off-beat movie. The adults – like the kids — are all given quirks: Beat Poet Teacher (Jon Bernthal), Hippy Dad (Nick Offerman), Rachel’s alcoholic single mom (Molly Shannon). But it’s the kids who carry the show, especially Thomas Mann as the everynerd. Though the film seems overly mannered, it’s still very funny. I fell for its humour, its plot and characters. It’s definitely a YA story but it appeals to all ages.
A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
Dir: Roy Andersson
A pair of morose salesmen ply the streets of Gothenberg, Sweden. demonstrating their wares. They sell entertaining novelties. A rubber mask, vampire teeth, Bag o’ Laffs. One is always angry, the other one depressed. Needless to say, they don’t sell many novelties. They rent sterile, windowless rooms in a boarding house, and frequent Limp-Leg Lotta’s — once a boisterous bar, but now filled with sad, old men sitting alone. At some
point, they wander off-map into a sort of a time warp, where an 18th Century gay Swedish king – followed by dozens and dozens of soldiers in three-cornered hats – marches through a modern-day bar on horseback. (Sweden is preparing for battle with Russia.)
Simultaneously, a large flamenco teacher keeps groping her male student, and a school for kids with Down’s Syndrome is putting in a show.
These are just a few of the story lines and gags that fill this strange but hilariously sad movie. It’s set in a timeless era, like a series of New Yorker cartoons brought to life. It’s shot in sepia tones, in a Teutonic, 1920s realist style. The actors all look like they’ve come back from the dead, with pale, powdered fleshy faces and beige clothing. But what does the title “A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence” mean? You (the viewer) are a pigeon observing humanity, with all its violence and sadness, but unable to do anything about it. It’s depressing, it’s funny, it’s uncategorizable. You’ve got to see it – it’s a great movie… and one with high marks on the novelty scale!
Live from New York played last night at Cineplex, and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl And A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Contemplating Humanity both open today in Toronto; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks with Pavan Moondi and Nick Flanagan about their new film Diamond Tongues debuting at NXNE 2015
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Edith is a young Toronto actor waiting for her big break. She even dumps her boyfriend so she can devote herself to her career. But ambition and moxie don’t translate into lead roles in hit movies. Despite her relentless auditions, she’s 
swimming upstream but never moving forward. Forced to deal with crowds of frenemies, mounting letdowns, awkward situations and countless humiliations, Edith is losing touch with her inner goodness.
Still in her early twenties, she’s turning bitter, friendless and alone. Only her bickering best friend Nick keeps her grounded. Is Edith’s heart in danger of turning to stone, with a tongue as sharp as diamonds?
Diamond Tongues is the name of a new film premiering at NXNE on June 21st. Co-
director/writer Pavan Moondi and star Nick Flanagan have created a quintessential Toronto indie film, a tightly-scripted comedy/drama about life as an actor on the hard city streets. I spoke with Nick and Pavan in studio at CIUT about artistic pursuit, acting, co-directing, “making money”, the Coen brothers, improvisation, montage, shooting during a blackout, Toronto, micro-budget films, music, authenticity, July Talk, “blood sausage”… and more!
Disses. Movies reviewed: (Dis)honesty: The Truth About Lies, Hungry Hearts, Love & Mercy
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
We’re all tired of being dissed, but there are a lot of disses that just can’t be avoided. This week I’m looking at three “dis” movies. A biopic about a renowned musician diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, an Italian drama about a dysfunctional couple, and a documentary about dishonesty. 
(Dis)honesty: The Truth About Lies
Dir: Yael Melamede
We are all liars. And we all lie about the same things in the same way. Or so says a new documentary about lying. It focuses on the work of Dan Ariely, a professor of behavioural economics and psychology at Duke University and MIT. In an experiment repeated thousands of times all around the world, Ariely tested students in groups asked to self-mark their tests, drop them into a shredder and report to
an official. And they were paid $1 for each correct answer. What they didn’t know was that the tests weren’t actually shredded.
Afterwards, Ariely compared the actual answers on the pages with the fake scores the people had told them. And he found that most people do lie, to the same extent, about the same things all around the world. The movie says a lot more, and also interviews real people, like politicians who cheat on their wives or insider traders on Wall Street, to look at their rationales for dishonesty. This is a very slick, fascinating and easy-to-understand documentary. Excellent film! 
Hungry Hearts
Dir: Saverio Costanzo
Jude (Adam Driver) is an engineer, a tall, well-dressed young man in New York City. Mina (Alba Rohrwacher) is a beautiful, petite Italian woman with pale skin and fiery red hair who works at the Embassy. Somehow the two strangers find themselves locked inside a tiny, grungy basement toilet in Chinatown. Jude is to blame for the horrible stench, and Mina for the constant complaining. The two of them are trapped in a claustrophobic and unhealthy situation.
So what do they do next? They have sex, fall in love, get married and have a baby. If 
only they had followed their first impressions and never met. They soon discovered they are different in every way. Jude likes science, doctors and hospitals. Mina is into fortune tellers, vegetarianism, naturopathy, and instincts. Not a big problem until the baby (known only as “Baby”) comes into the picture. Jude, (the big American) prone to anger and violence, thinks the kid is sick and starving and is not growing big enough or fast enough. Frequently depressed Mina (the cultivated European) thinks the problems are all on Jude’s side. Add Jude’s mother Anne, a real buttinsky, to the picture (played by the venerable Roberta Maxwell) and things quickly escalate. Will they survive the stink, decay and claustrophobia of their dysfunctional life?
While Hungry Hearts has its good points, this is a real drudge of a movie filled with endless bickering, crying, hitting and altogether awfulness. The honeymoon lasts about 90 seconds and the rest of the movie is less torrid sex, more horrid fights. 
Love & Mercy
Dir: Bill Pohlad
It’s the mid 1960s. The Beach Boys is a cheesy pop band known for its catchy tunes, tight harmonies, and its formulaic California sound: all about 
girls, surfing, and roadsters. Most of the members are brothers or cousins, and they’re getting ready for their triumphal tour of Japan, when something happens. Brian Wilson (Paul Dano) has a panic attack on a plane and decides to stay home in L.A. 
While they’re touring, he’s composing, arranging and producing an incredible album.
LA’s famous studio musicians known as the Wrecking Crew provide the music and Brian goes wild. He tosses paper clips onto piano strings to make a plinkier sound. He brings dogs into the studio to bark. He even has them play in two separate keys… at the same time. The result is Pet Sounds, one of the most highly-praised pop albums ever recorded – and rightly so. It even inspired the Beatles’ “Sgt Pepper” album.
This is Brian Wilson in the sixties. The movie’s also about 
Brian Wilson in the 80s (John Cusack). We see him enter a Cadillac showroom where he meets the saleswoman Melinda (Elizabeth Banks), a blue-eyed blonde. It’s the 80s so she has big hair and enormous aquamarine shoulder pads. Brian talks to her slowly and hesitantly, as if he’s never seen a woman before and isn’t used to speaking out loud. They gradually become close, but face a formidable obstacle in the form a man.
Dr. Gene (Paul Giamatti) is a psychiatric Svengali who has taken complete control over 
Brian’s life. What he eats, where he goes, even whom he’s allowed to talk to. He diagnosed Brian as paranoid schizophrenic and has him pumped full of toxic amounts of meds. (That’s why he walks around with his mouth half-open staring off into space.) Can the 1960s Brian bring all his musical dreams to fruition? And can the 1980s Brian ever re-emerge from his medically induced haze?
Love & Mercy is long, detailed and sometimes slow. Its two parts are told chronologically, but the story jumps back and forth between the 60s and the 80s, so you follow both the of them throughout the film. I was left only half-satisfied by the story, but the music…! The music seduced me into listening to Beach Boys music – which I had never taken seriously before — obsessively for about a week afterwards. See it for the music.
Hungry Hearts and Love & Mercy, and (Dis)honesty (at the Bloor Cinema) all open today in Toronto, check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Ordinary People. Movies Reviewed: Survivor, Big Muddy, Fourth Man Out
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Where is cinema going? I went to the Parkdale Film Festival — it features short documentaries, dramas and animation. So what’s special about it? The films were all made by high school students. This means independent, ordinary people — with access to the technology — can make real movies.
This week, I’m looking at ordinary people and where they’re going. There’s a small town mechanic coming out, a single mom in Saskatchewan hiding out, and a passport clerk in London heading out… to catch the bad guys.
Survivor
Dir: James McTeigue
The smart and beautiful Kate Abbot (Milla Jovovich) likes her job at the US embassy in London where she handles passport and visas. She a rising star who speaks a half dozen languages and has extensive training in intelligence. So when her boss Sam (Dylan McDermott) says they should be on the lookout for potential terrorists, she takes it very seriously. She and her coworkers start scrutinizing passports, and she flags a suspicious-looking Romanian scientist. Maybe he has access to Weapons of Mass Destruction! Good work says the Ambassador (Angela Bassett). But Kate is dressed down by a high-ranked UK agent Paul (James D’Arcy). He tells her to stop all her meddling – the man she flagged is associated with higher-ups. Those snooty Englishmen – why are they always stopping freedom-loving Americans from doing what they have to do?
Kate is sure there’s a secret cabal of terrorists dying to set foot in America so they can kill everybody. Only she – and her coworkers — can stop them from getting those coveted visas.
But when disaster strikes London, she’s left alone. Worse than that, she’s caught holding a smoking gun beside a dying man! Now everyone thinks she’s the terrorist not the hero. Says the ambassador, shoot her now before more people die. Only a few people still believe in her. And when she sees an expert hitman known only as The Watchmaker (Pierce Brosnan) setting off a bomb, he makes it his personal goal to see her dead, since she’s the only one who knows what he looks like. But can she stop the terrorists before they blow up America?
Survivor is a fun, fast-moving action/thriller with a great star. It’s also ridiculous, ludicrous, unbelievable and politically out to lunch view of terrorism. It’s full of plot holes: when she’s caught on celphones at the scene of a crime by a dozen onlookers, her image goes viral. But when the real killer shows up mere seconds later and steals an ID from the victim – the cameras have all been turned off, and his identity is kept secret. And when Kate is on the run, she doesn’t even bother wearing dark glasses or a baseball cap, she just forges on ahead, . One part of my brain says Nooo… I can’t take any more of this deeply stupid movie! But the other part says duh… I like stupid movies.
Big Muddy
Wri/Dir: Jefferson Moneo
Martha (Nadia Litz) is a single mother in modern-day, rural Saskatchewan. She’s had a few men in her past and, boy, she sure knows how to pick ’em. One’s a very sketchy horse trader Buford (James Le
Gros) who’s made it big, the other a sweetheart (David La Haye) who ran afoul with the law. Now she’s going three for the win, a real lowlife named Tommy (Rossif Sutherland). The two of them make a living as a hold-up team. Her innocent teenaged son Andy (Justin Kelly) 
is the only good things she’s managed to hold on to.
Then some things happen. A man escapes from a Qu’Appelle Valley prison, and shoots a cop. Then Buford shows up at the racetrack, Andy gets hold of a gun, and Boom! everything falls apart. Mom and boy hightail it out to Big Muddy in the 
badlands, the desolate home she thought she was finally through with. But outsiders and former locals are all converging on the same spot. Can Martha survive this mess and will Andy discover his unknown past and who is his real father?
This movie has a good cast and an interesting plot. My only problem is with the pacing. Is it a crime drama or a family story? Whenever the tension is building, the danger spiraling, the movie is heading for a big showdown… it weirdly segues back into a slow-moving family drama, destroying the excitement. Even so, Big Muddy is a rare thing: a genuine Canadian western, complete with outlaws, horses, sheriffs, blackhats, shootouts and hideaways.
Fourth Man Out
Dir: Andrew Nackman
Adam (Evan Todd) is a small-town auto mechanic in his twenties. He likes beer, steak and sports, and can take an engine apart (and put it back together again) with his own two hands. He’s a man’s man. After work he spends time with his three best buds, handsome Chris, goofy Ortu and hipster-ish Nick (Parker Young, Jon Gabrus, Chord Overstreet). They usually sit in a basement watching TV, smoking pot or going out for a drink. But when they go to pick-up bars, why is it that Adam always ends up the wingman for Chris’s attempts to meet women? The answer is simple but unexpected. He’s gay and his life-long best friends don’t know it.
So he decides enough is enough, it’s time to spill the beans. They can’t believe him at first (…but he 
eats steak!), but then a strange tone creeps into their friendship. It’s up to the four of them to smooth out the tension and restore the feeling they used to have. Can the four friends find a suitable boyfriend for the inexperienced Adam? Easier said than done. And can they help Chris get together with Tracy (Jennifer Damiano) a real girlfriend, instead of the casual pickups he usually ends with? And will they get it all done in time for the annual 4th of July barbecue?
Fourth Man Out is a cute, gentle buddy-comedy / male rom-com. Nothing too challenging or shocking in this mainstream movie, no gross-outs, no “weird” stuff, just likeable, white, working class guys adjusting to one of them coming out.
Survivor and Muddy Bottom open today, check your local listings; Fourth Man Out premiered at Inside-Out LGBT film fest. The festival continues through Sunday. Go to insideout.ca for times.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Daniel Garber talks with filmmaker Ross Sutherland about his new documentary Stand By for Tape Back-Up at Hot Docs
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Alladin had his magic lamp, King Arthur his Excalibur. What do we have to define ourselves? What talismans can protect us against outside forces? Or can our lives be summed up as a list of “likes” on 
Facebook?
Well one man in the UK discovered his lost history and the meaning of life in a most unusual place: a dusty, plastic VHS tape at his grandfather’s house. It was viewed, reviewed and pondered. It contained the fears, memories and nightmares of his childhood, as seen on broadcast TV.
Stand By for Tape Back-Up is the title of a new autobiographical documentary having its world premier at Hot Docs, Toronto’s international documentary film festival. But it’s not like any conventional documentary you’ve ever seen.
It consists entirely of VHS footage of movies and 
tv shows — from Michael Jackson music videos to clips from Ghostbusters and Fresh Prince of Belair — played again and again with the unseen filmmaker’s voiceover. Rewinds, pauses and fast forwards guide the viewers to new heights of psychedelic rapture and to the depths of abject confusion. It’s hilarious, haunting, terrifying, profound, poetic… and extremely whack.
I spoke to Ross Sutherland in Toronto on location at the Hot Docs Media Lounge.
Photos © Jeff Harris for Cultural Mining.
LGBT Movies. Films Reviewed: Grandma, The New Girlfriend, Saint Laurent PLUS Inside-Out
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Inside Out is Toronto’s LGBT international film festival, and it’s on now, for the next ten days, with comedies, dramas, experimental films and documentaries. Major stars and directors will be appearing at their films and there are even free screenings. This week I’m looking at LGBT dramas from the US and France. There’s a biopic about a man who draws dresses, a comedy about a man who is drawn to dresses, and a grandmother who fought hard for the right to wear pants.
Grandma
Wri/Dir: Paul Weitz
Elle (Lily Tomlin) is a radical lesbian feminist poet in California. She’s retired from her position as writer-in-residence at a UC campus, and hasn’t written a word since Vi, her partner of 36 years, died. Once a celebrated activist and public intellectual, another Adrienne Rich, now she’s just a bitter old cuss. But just as she is unceremoniously giving her current lover the boot, there’s a knock on the door. It’s her granddaughter asking for help. Sage (Julia Garner) is a pretty, young high school student with a problem: an unwanted pregnancy. She needs 600 bucks for an abortion. But that’s easier said than done. Grandma’s broke! So the two of them climb into her ancient jalopy and drive off to find the cash.
They are generations apart:
Grandma: Oh for the days of Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique.
Granddaughter: Mystique? Like, the blue-skinned villain in X-Men?
Can they ever see eye to eye? Can Sage get her abortion? And will Elle come to terms with the ghosts from her past? Grandma is a delightful, road-trip comedy. It has a great script, cute story with a social conscience, and the acting is good all around. A lot of fun.
The New Girlfriend (Une Nouvelle Amie)
Dir: François Ozon (based on the novel by the late Ruth Rendell)
Rich Laura and middle-class Claire take a blood oath when they’re just girls: they swear to be fast friends forever. Young and beautiful, they stay close. Claire Claire (Anaïs Demoustier) marries clean-cut Gilles (Raphaël Personnaz: Quai d’Orsay), while Laura chooses the more sensitive David (Romain Duris). But after the birth of her first child, Laura breaks the pact… by dying! Claire is crushed. How can she live without her best friend? She begins to see her everywhere; across the street, just around a corner. David meanwhile has fallen into a deep funk. She goes 
to visit him, but is shocked when she sees a woman at his home taking care of the baby. Is it Laura? No… It’s David, in a dress. I miss Claire, he explains, and it helps comfort the baby. Just don’t tell anyone, especially not his mother-in-law.
Initially shocked, Claire gradually adjusts to David’s cross-dressing. But to allay potential suspicions, she tells her husband she has found a new girlfriend – “Virginia”. Their bonds begin to grow… as do the suspicions of her husband and his mother in law. But are they ready to meet Virginia?
This is an always-surprising social comedy about changes in identity, friendship and family, sexuality and gender.
Saint Laurent
Dir: Bertrand Bonello
Yves St Laurent (Gaspard Ulliel) is a successful fashion designer in Paris. He’s slim and impeccably dressed known for his trademark black-framed glasses. He launched the celebrated Mondrian dress in 1965, and turns out new haut couture collections twice a year. The operation is divided into three parts. He’s the creative side. He personally draws every garment design by hand. Behind the scenes, a dedicated army in white lab coats rush to cut the cloth, drape it, stitch it, and get it onto the backs of runway models’ in time. And in the 
boardroom, his lover Pierre Bergé (Jérémie Renier) handles all the business deals. YSL, the fashion house, is a profitable, well-oiled machine.
While the streets of Paris are seething with revolution, Yves is ensconced, oblivious, in his presentation rooms, dressing privileged women. 
Then there’s his personal life. He and Pierre collect priceless tchotchkes from around the world to display in their home. Yves also collects people; he has an entourage of models, and muses like Loulou de la Falaise (Léa Seydoux). He spends his time at Parisian discotheques, or at his retreat in Marrakesh.
But in the early ‘seventies, things start to collapse. He falls under the sway of an aristocratic socialite. Jacques (Louis Garrel) is handsome, rich and decadent, and never seems to work. His days are spent posing on modern furniture. His nights are filled with acid trips and gin-soaked gay orgies. Yves
is infatuated with him, but the constant pill-popping is dragging him down. Can Pierre rescue Yves and turn him back into a profitable name? Or will he succumb to Jacques’ lotus-eating lifestyle? And will Yves’s audacious new collection be the talk of Paris or booed off the stage?
Saint Laurent is a captivating, challenging, movie. It’s way too long – 2 ½ hours long! – and, at first glance, seems superficial and pointless. But it’s not. 
It’s visually stunning. Every scene is perfectly composed like turning a page of Vogue magazine. The director tries some surprising techniques, some of which work, some don’t. A long business meeting is conducted in French and English with simultaneous interpreting. Is that necessary? But a Mondrian-like split screen with 9 separate panels, and an amazing sequence with a dozen miniature black-and-white dogs scampering down the hallway for a pet audition, more than make up for the jarring parts. And the acting — especially Ulliel as the fragile, opaque and zen-like Yves Saint Laurent — is fantastically perverse.
Grandma and The New Girlfriend are both playing at Inside Out LGBT film
fest this week: go to insideout.ca for details. And Saint Laurent opens commercially today in Toronto; check your local listings. I liked all three of these movies. But if violent, post-apocalyptic road movies are more to your taste, I strongly recommend Mad Max: Fury Road., now playing. Don’t miss it!
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks with filmmaker Adam Kossoff about his documentary The Anarchist Rabbi at TJFF
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
When we talk about protests against the police, we think Baltimore, Maryland or Ferguson, Missouri.
But how about London, England a hundred years ago? Probably not. We don’t realize London, and particularly it’s impoverished East End was a seething cauldron of protest, unrest, and even revolution. Much of it
centred on Jewish immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe who fought internal battles, as religion and politics competed for dominance.
A new film documents this history with an impressionistic examination of London, then and now. Period photos and recordings share the screen with contemporary, sepia-toned shots of London’s East End. It’s having its
Canadian debut today at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival.
Its called The Anarchist Rabbi, and is narrated by actor/writer Stephen Berkoff, and written and directed by Adam Kossoff. Adam is a writer, artist and filmmaker who explores historically separate but site-specific videos.
I reached Adam by telephone in London. He talks about anarcho-syndicalism, Rudolph Rocker (1873-1958), London’s East End, strikes, revolution, Russian immigrants, his grandfather, Arbeter Fraynd, history, politics, the use of colour in film, memorials, Kropotkin, Emma Goldmann… and more!
Now and Then. Films reviewed: Going Clear, Bulgarian Rhapsody, Phoenix
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
How often do you see movies? Frequently? Or just now and then? If your answer is “now and then” I have some good movies for you. This week: two dramas from “then”, and a documentary from “now”. A coming-of-age set in wartime Bulgaria; a dark melodrama set in postwar Berlin; and a documentary set in present-day L.A.
Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief
Dir: Alex Gibney
L Ron Hubbard was an extremely prolific writer who churned out over a thousand fantasy and sci-fi stories for pulp fiction magazines. He spent time in the US Navy. But he’s best known now as the creator of a system of pseudo-scientific psychological analyses known as “Dianetics”.
Followers undergo “auditing” – a process where they confess their darkest experiences and most
painful feelings so their bodies can get rid of them. As they speak, they hold onto metal tubes which detect changes in their system – sort of an elaborate lie detector. They speak their confessions, one-on-one, to an “Auditor” – sort of an analyst – who records what they say and files it away. Followers then pass through a complex, multileveled system – including paid courses required at each level. Their goal? Someday freeing their mind and bodies from from anxiety and pain in an eternal, space-age nirvana. This process forms the basis of Scientology, a self-described religion with thousands of followers.
This documentary speaks to former members, advocates and high-level administrators of Scientology, and what they say is not pretty. Members are said to undergo brutal training sessions, deprived of food and sleep and kept separate from their friends; celebrity members – like Tom Cruise and John Travolta – are blackmailed or bribed to keep them within the group; and ex-members are stalked and attacked. 
Apparently, Scientology attained its tax-free status in the US by targeting hundreds of individual IRS agents and harassing them until the government just gave up.
But the strangest part of this movie is the bizarre, flashy Vegas style conventions they have. Members dress in fake Navy uniforms, complete with medals and ranks. And this is all led by its current leader, the handsome but diminutive David Miscavige, a member of the group since he was a child. He is portrayed as a paranoid, egotistical megalomaniac aiming for absolute power and wealth.
This is an amazing movie, alternating razzle-dazzle footage with shocking revelations. In a nutshell, it says Scientology is a for-profit corporation disguised as a religion based on science fiction… that’s run by nuts.
Bulgarian Rhapsody
Dir: Ivan Nichev
It’s the 1940s in Sofia, Bulgaria. WWII is in full swing but daily life continues, almost as if nothing is happening. Moni and Giogio are teenaged boys, best friends and neighbours. They both come from motherless homes, raised by their widowed fathers. Moni (Kristiyan Makarov) is thoughtful and introspective. He loves music, literature and drawing political cartoons. Giogio (Stefan Popov) is full of bravado and popular with the girls. He vows to find a pretty girlfriend for Moni. The problem? Bulgaria is an ally of Nazi Germany, and follows its harsh Nuremberg laws, placing severe restrictions on Jews. Moni is Jewish, while Giogio’s dad is a driver for the government department set up specifically to persecute the Jews. Can friendship prevail?
On a family trip to Kavala, a picturesque seaside town in Macedonian 
Greece (granted to Bulgaria by Germany), he meets the beautiful and charming Shelli (Anjela Nedyalkova). He has life-changing experiences on the beach, falls in love and confesses it all to Giogio back in Sofia. But when the three of them get together at Moni’s sister’s wedding, Shelli becomes the object of both of their affections. Will this drive a wedge between the two friends? Is it all true love or just a summer beach fantasy?
Bulgarian Rhapsody is a tender, coming of age drama played out beneath the looming shadow of the Holocaust. And it was Bulgaria’s entry for Best Foreign Language Oscar.
Phoenix
Dir: Christian Petzold
Nelly (Nina Hoss) is a German-Jewish woman who survives WWII in a Nazi concentration camp, but is left with a horribly disfigured face. With the help of her best friend Lene (Nina Kuntzendorf), she has plastic surgery. Now she looks similar to, but not exactly like she used to. Her only wish is to reconnect with her husband Johnnie (Ronald Zehrfeld) and let him know she’s still alive. She frequents the Berlin cabarets where they used to perform – he’s a piano player, and she
August .2013
Dreharbeiten zum CHRISTIAN PETOLD Film PHÖNIX
mit Nina Hoss , Ronald Zehrfeld und Nina Kunzendorf
Verwendung der Fotos nur in Zusammenhang mit dem Film PHÖNIX von Christian Petzold
( Model release No ) © Christian Schulz
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used to sing with him.
But when they do meet – at a bar called Phoenix – it’s not like she expected. He approaches her, because he says, she looks a lot like a woman he knows: his wife who died in the war. If she helps him get his dead wife’s war reparations from the government, he says he’ll give her half. He has no idea who she really is. But he promises to train her until she can convincingly impersonate his late wife. Basically, she has to learn to imitate herself! Talk about “meta”…
She agrees to act in this bizarre charade, only because she wants to know whether Johnnie ever loved her, or if it was always just a ruse. And if so, was he was the one who turned her in to the Nazis?
This is the latest episode of star Nina Hoss and director Christian Petzold’s look at Germany, and it’s the best by far. I saw Phoenix at TIFF last fall and it was one of my absolute favourites last year. The plot sounds silly, melodramatic, simplistic, and it is all these things, but it’s so much more. It teeters on the tightrope between German Expressionistic absurd comedy and real, heartbreaking passion, but never trips or falls off that rope. And the final scene is so perfect, it had me tearing up, almost weeping 10 minutes after it was over.
Amazing movie.
Going Clear and Phoenix both open today in Toronto; check your local listings. Bulgarian Rhapsody had its Canadian premier at Toronto’s Jewish Film Festival. The Festival continues showing fascinating movies through the weekend, in both downtown and North Toronto locations. Go to tjff.ca for details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
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