Daniel Garber talks with Caleb Behn about Fractured Land premiering at Hot Docs
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Centuries of treaties — legal documents all — between First Nations and the Crown set aside land in perpetuity along with promises to protect and provide for its peoples. But what about the minerals, and the oil, gas and shale just beneath the surface? What about the forests that grow on their land, the rivers that run 
through them, and the fish and animals that live there and that they eat? Can the government and corporations be trusted to look out for the best interests of indigenous groups? Or are they better off with one of their own making sure their rights aren’t abrogated, their water despoiled and their land sequestered? Pipelines, fracking, clear cutting, 
export terminals, climate change… is there still time to stop their water, land and people from being torn apart?
Fractured Land is the title of a new documentary, by first-time directors Fiona Rayher and Damien Gillis, that premiered at Hot Docs, Toronto’s international documentary film festival. It tells the story of a young, native man from Northern BC, who can throw a hatchet and skin a bear, but is 
also lawyer bound to uphold her majesty’s laws. His name is Caleb Behn from the Fort Nelson and West Moberley First Nations, lawyer, activist, and spokesman.
He told me about learning from his family, being an advocate for his people, the future impact of fracking, environmental and aboriginal law, protests, long-term strategies, his mother and father, post-colonial perspectives, language and ceremony; residential schools and the truth and reconciliation commission; respectful hunting; how fracking affects aquifers… and more!
For more information, go to keepersofthewater.ca.
Love without Marriage. Movies reviewed: Auf das Leben! To Life!, Sailing a Sinking Sea, Far From the Madding Crowd
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM. Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage … right? This week I’m looking at three movies about love and affection that may not lead to marriage. There’s a romance set in Victorian England about a strong-willed woman who doesn’t want to jump into marriage; a documentary – at Hot Docs — about a seafaring people in Southeast Asia who believe in mermaids, not wedding ceremonies; and a German drama – playing at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival – about an older woman who has lost her will to live. 
Auf das Leben! To Life! Dir: Uwe Janson
Ruth Weintraub (Hannelore Elsner) is a retired cabaret singer in Germany who now repairs musical instruments. Once a popular Yiddish singer in the 70s, something terrible happened, and now she’s a lonely woman with no friends or family. She reaches rock bottom when she’s forcibly relocated from her apartment of 30 years. So she’s shocked to see the young labourer packing up her stuff is a doppelganger for a lost love from her distant past. Johan (Max Riemelt) lives out of an old VW bus, picking up odd jobs. His only release is a daily run through the park. Clearly, he’s running away from something, but won’t say what. When he saves her from suicide and loses his bus in the process they are forced together. While Ruth 
is locked up in a mental ward, Johan is watching old film reels he finds in her apartment, which gradually reveal her past. This is a nice, low-key German portrayal of an unusual pair of friends. While there’s a sweet, younger/older bond, don’t expect a new Harold and Maude. It’s simple, not quirky, and the characters are endearing, not complex. But I enjoyed it as a good TV drama, including the bouncy, passionate singing by Sharon Brauner as the young Ruth. 
Sailing a Sinking Sea Dir: Olivia Wyatt
When the tsunami struck the Indian Ocean in 2004, over 200,000 people in Southeast Asia were swept away in a just a few minutes. But one group, the Moken people, who live on the Andaman sea between Thailand and Burma managed to survive almost unharmed. The Moken say they have no last names, don’t keep track of age and don’t use numbers. They are born on boats, have sex with mermaids, and can sing to the fish. Ghosts don’t scare them but monkeys do. They won’t kill Sea Cows, because they are too close to humans, but aren’t past making them cry to collect their tears for love potions. Marriage means a woman can grow breasts and a man 
builds a boat; no wedding or special ceremony, they just move in together. This is an amazing, delightful documentary, its stories and songs told entirely in their language. Filled with gorgeous, Nemo-like underwater scenes of men hunting with spears deep in the water with women overhead on the boats. 
Far From the Madding Crowd Dir: Thomas Vinterberg (based on Thomas Hardy’s novel)
Bathsheba Everdene (Carey Mulligan) is a free spirit. She rides horses lying on her back. She’s well-educated but penniless since her parents died and lives in a little farmhouse in 19th century Dorset, England. Her nearest neighbour, farmer Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts), is plain-spoken but honest and loyal. He’s a young man with a flock of sheep and is heading for a prosperous future. Will you marry me? he asks her. She cannot. Soon after, there’s a reversal of fortune. He loses his farm while she inherits a manor and the huge country estate that surrounds it. She decides to manage it herself – unheard of for a woman. She meets resistance selling her crop – the men at the exchange won’t even acknowledge her. But the way she handles herself catches the eye of Mr Boldwood (Michael Sheen), a very rich and 
eligible bachelor. He has turned all the other women away, but this one intrigues him. Many years her senior, he can still carry a tune with the best of them. Their two farms put together would make a fine plot of land. And passing through town is the dashing, mustachioed Francis Troy (Tom Sturridge), a sergeant in Queen Victoria’s army. Brash and impulsive, he dresses like a Mountie, complete with redcoat, sword and riding crop. He was left waiting at the altar by the love of his life, so he’s on the lookout for someone new. And stalwart 
Gabriel Oak, her erstwhile suitor, is now her employee. He’d still marry her in a minute. What to do? What to do? This is a wonderful, classic romance about a woman controlling her own fate. The cast is amazing – especially Flemish actor Christian Schoenaerts (Rust and Bone) and Carey Mulligan (An Education) as Bathsheba. Danish director Vinterberg (The Hunt) presents it all as a straightforward record of life in the lush English countryside (far from the city’s madding crowd.) It takes a leisurely pace, and is heavy on the cultural details… but is never boring. And now that Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters have been done to death (complete with zombies and sea monsters) are we looking at a Thomas Hardy boom?
Far from the Madding Crowd opens today in Toronto; check your local listings. You can find Sailing a Sinking Sea at hotdocs.ca; and Auf Das Leben! To Life! is at tjff.com.
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 director Alex Winter about his new documentary Deep Web at Hot Docs
Hi, This is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM. Most of us solve our online privacy worries by looking for an unbreakable password or a new encryption technique to protect our email and financial transactions. We don’t realize that a completely anonymous, hidden world coexists alongside the internet. It’s a vast area handling the digital code transmissions that keep our systems functioning. It holds dark networks 
that allow communication without exposing IP addresses. What exactly goes on in the Deep Web? A new documentary brings it all to the surface. It’s called Deep Web and it’s having its international premier at Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival in Toronto. It delves into dark nets including the Silk Road, and the man accused of running it all, Ross Ulbricht. 
It’s written, directed and produced by Alex Winter. Alex is an actor and pop culture icon known for his excellent adventures who now is also an accomplished director and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the history of the right now — the changes we’re all witnessing on and off line, more or less as they’re happening. I speak to Alex Winter by telephone in Los Angeles. He covers the deep web, privacy, anonymity, crime, human rights, dissidents, controversies, BBS, Napster, online communities, technology, regulations, search and seizure, JP Barlow, openness… and more!
Terror! Films reviewed: Warriors from the North, Help us Find Sunil Tripathi, (T)error, A War of Lies, PLUS Ex Machina
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, documentary, genre and mainstream films, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.
Some people are terrified of terrorists — and for good reason. In Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan or Iraq, lots of people are dying. Other people are terrified of being mistaken for a terrorist by the very people – police or intelligence officers – that should be protecting them. So this week I’m looking at documentaries about the War on Terror and how it affects us. These films are all playing at Hot Docs – Toronto’s international documentary film festival – starting today. And on a lighter note, I’m reviewing a science fiction movie… about sexy robots.
Warriors from the North
Dir: Søren Steen Jespersen, Nasib Farah
Al-Shabab is a Somalia-based fundamentalist militant group, that sprung up in reaction to Ethiopia’s invasion of that country. Now its members claim responsibility for notorious events like the 148 people gunned down at Garissa University College a few weeks ago, and the massacre at Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall, both in Kenya. This movie is about the young ethnic Somalis from Nordic countries – Denmark, Finland, Norway – who join the group to act as suicide bombers. Why do they do it? In a series of interviews, a young
Somali-Danish man explains. He says members come to recruit despondent young men who feel they have no future and don’t fit in. The local mosques are strongly opposed to Al-Shabab — killing is condemned, but the recruiters deride them as weak. The movie opens with a shocking scene: Somalis at their graduation in Djibouti – young doctors all – blown up by a Danish suicide bomber. The movie follows an older man, who works at the Tivoli in Copenhagen, whose son has disappeared with Al-Shabab and gone to Somalia. The father is desperate to find his son, talk to him by phone, and convince him to give it all and just come home again. But as becomes clear in recordings of Al-Shabab members, you couldn’t leave even if you want to. Very touching story.
Help us Find Sunil Tripathi
Dir: Neal Broffman
Sunil is a straight A student, a saxophone player and an all around nice guy. But after a few years at Brown University, things start going bad. He’s depressed. And one day, he just walks away from it all and disappears. His family is devastated, so, along with sympathetic volunteers, they start a huge search for him on foot in Providence Rhode Island, and online using facebook. They post his face, and a plea to him – come home, Sunil, we love you. Soon after, a horrific attack stuns the world – the bombing of the Boston Marathon. The city is locked down for a massive manhunt. And somehow, on Reddit and Twitter, someone mistakenly decides that the blurry images of a man in a white hat… is Sunil. Sunil is a terrorist! It goes viral, and the family and friends searching for their wonderful lost brother are subject to what can only be described as an on-line lynching of the missing boy. The film chronicles this harrowing period when they’re flooded by venomous online attacks and, as always, a voracious mass news media desperately trying to catch up with social networks.
(T)error
Dir: David Felix Sutcliffe
About 50% of the arrests the FBI makes in its War on Terror are actually targeted sting operations using paid informants. And some are more dubious than others. This doc looks at both sides of such an operation, the asset and the target.
Saeed, aka Shariff, is a bit of a character. He’s an older African American Muslim man, a former black panther, who is an informant for the FBI. And – without telling the Feds – he allows a filmmaker, Cabral Lyric, to follow him around. His job? To attract and entrap 
potential POIs – persons of interest – within urban, Muslim communities who might be ripe for terrorism in the eyes of the FBI. The target? Khalifa, a white convert to Islam in Pittsburgh 
who sports a long beard and a turban. The FBI says Khalifa sympathizes with Al-Shabab. How do they know? He writes his outspoken views publicly, on facebook. Cameras follow both Shariff and Khalifa, who tells the filmmakers he suspects an FBI informant is trying to entrap him! He doxes the informants and plans a press conference. This real-life dramatic thriller is part absurd comedy, part tragedy, as it goes behind the scenes to show the FBI excesses in their War on Terror.
The previous cases are all small scale stories. The next one is as big as they come.
A War of Lies
Dir: Matthias Bittner
Rafid al-Janabi was a prospective refugee in the late 1990s. He fled Iraq to escape Saddam Hussein’s ruthless government, but in Germany he was singled out as a Person Of Interest by their secret service. Despite the fact he had nothing much to tell them, he decided to play along – maybe it would speed up his refugee status. He told them he’s a chemical engineer who worked 
at the MIC – the military industrial complex. And that he had access to a secret unit in the desert at Al Hakam that makes biological weapons. The problem is the UN had already closed that unit down. But Rafid concocted an explanation that couldn’t be disproven. Saddam, he said, 
drove his weapons around in three trucks. (He remembered there was a truck depot not too far from Al Hakam, so satellites would see trucks driving around the area.) And, after brushing up on chemical engineering, he drew pictures to support his story. Who can it hurt? And if it overthrows a dictator like Saddam, all the better.
Known by the codename Curveball, Rafid didn’t realize that his little WMD story would reach Washington and — after 9/11 — would be used to justify the entire US invasion of Iraq, and the war, death, destruction and terror that followed. The film shows Farid himself, the trickster and storyteller, in a dark, echoey room recounting/confessing his side of the story, illustrated by spooky reenactments and period footage. This is a great, chilling doc.
Ex Machina
Dir: Alex Garland
Caleb (Domnhall Gleeson) is a skinny, wimpish blond guy who works as a programmer. He wins a lottery to spend a week with Nathan, the secretive CEO of his company, a google-like search engine. Nathan (Aaron Isaac) is a burly guy with a buzzed scalp and a bushy black beard. He’s obnoxious, aggressive and lives in an isolated villa somewhere in a lush rainforest valley. He’s also a genius. He brought Caleb there to conduct a Turing Test. A Turing Test determines whether an Artificial Intelligence program – AI – can pass as a human.
Here’s the twist. This AI is Ava a beautiful, female robot (Alicia Vikander) who Caleb
speaks to through a glass wall. They form a sort of relationship – is it love? – as she begins to feel more and more real to him. Aaron tells Caleb she’s anatomically correct. Each day, the electric generator in the place shuts down and the cameras turn off. And that’s when she confides in him – Aaron is evil and not to be trusted. Who 
will Caleb side with: Aaron or Ava? Is she really alive… or just a robot? And what about Aaron? And Caleb…? Is anything real?
This is a cool, interesting science fiction movie. You have to admit though, it’s a total guy fantasy, where the woman are all machines created by men for their pleasure. And that’s basically what the movie is… but the acting is great, and there are enough twists, turns and tension to keep it very interesting. I like this movie a lot.
Ex Machina opens today in Toronto, and this week you can find (T)error, Warriors from the North, a War of Lies, and Help us find Sunil Tripathi all playing, starting right now, at hot docs. Go to hotdocs.ca for showtimes.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Creative Help. Movies Reviewed: Desert Dancer, True Story, Masters of Suspense
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Do you have a story to tell but need help getting it down on paper? Or maybe you just want to express yourself, but you can’t do it alone – you need other people to work with. This week I’m looking at three movies. An accused murderer looking for a journalist to tell his story; an Iranian student seeking friends to dance with; and a successful Quebec novelist hiring a ghostwriter to write his book for him.
Desert Dancer
Dir: Richard Raymond
Afshin is a little boy in southern Iran who loves to dance. His teacher recognizes his creative nature but knew school wasn’t the place for it. o He signs him up for classes at the Saba Arts Academy. There he learns that in Iran there are two worlds: the outside world where you have to toe the line, and the inside world where you can do what you want… as long as nobody finds out.
Flash forward and Afshin (Reece Ritchie) goes to University in the big city – Teheran. A place where he can go wild, he thinks. But there, too, he learns he 
needs to be careful. The Basaji – the morality police – keep their eyes out for anything too western or licentious. And thugs who work for President Ahmadinejad’s party – it’s an election year – are even worse, violently suppressing dissent and protest. He must be careful. He meets a circle of friends on campus and they decide to do something creative. With the help of Elaheh (Freida Pinto) the daughter of a modern dancer, they create a dance club on campus. So what? You may be thinking. What’s the big deal? The big deal is that the country is like that small town in Footloose – dancing is forbidden.
So they continue dancing secretly, behind closed doors. But for Afshin that’s not enough. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there… So they plan a public performance far away from intruding eyes. They will dance in the desert, among the rocks and sand dunes. But, he doesn’t realize that one member of the club has an older brother who wants him to report on his friends, find out what their up to, and catch them in the act.. Can Afshin and his friends perform their dance? Or will they end up in prison… or worse?
Based on a true story, Desert Dancer is good look at life in present-day Iran. The two stars, Reece Ritchie and Freida Pinto are neither Persian nor dancers, but they are both good actors, so that’s not so important. The movie itself is the problem. It’s too earnest and plodding, and not moving enough. It’s hard to make the personal struggle of one amateur dancer… into a Gandhi.
True Story
Dir: Rupert Goold
Mike (Jonah Hill) is a celebrated reporter who jets around the world writing feature stories for the NY Times Magazine. But when they catch him fudging facts in an article, They fire him. Deeply embarrassed, he goes back home to Wyoming to be with his wife Jill (Felicity Jones). Then something strange happens: a story falls into his lap. An American is arrested in Mexico for fleeing after murdering his wife and three kids. And the name he gives is Michael Finkel – that’s Mike’s name. He’s intrigued so he visits the man in a high security prison. Christian Longo (James Franco) says he used Mike’s name when he was on the lam 
because he had read all his articles and respected him. So he gives Mike all his handwritten papers that he says show the real story of what happened to his wife and three children. It’s a chilling and scary story, told in scribbles and drawings. They make a deal – the disgraced reporter gets a potential bestseller and a reputation, while Chris gets a professional reporter to tell his 
side of the story. But it can’t be released until after the trial. Who’s fooling who? Are Chris’s stories true? Or are they made from whole cloth?
True Story is not a great movie, but it’s not a bad one, either. Hill and Franco have already made two movies together – both silly pothead comedies. This one is serious. So are they believable as accused killer and reporter? Yeah… I guess. It’s the director’s first feature, and you can tell. There are some painfully bad scenes, slow and awkward, especially Jonah Hill’s scenes at the start of the movie. And the film as a whole is a bit of a letdown. Luckily there’s enough meat in the middle to keep you watching and interested.
Masters of Suspense
Dir: Stéphane Lapointe
Hubert Wolfe (Michel Cote) is a rare thing — a rich, successful pulp novelist – out of Quebec. Books and movies about detective Scarlett Noe, has brought him fame and fortune. He might even get to date the actress who plays Scarlett (Maria de Medeiros). But nobody knows — except one man — that he doesn’t actually write the books. Dany Cabana (Robin Aubert) has been his ghostwriter for a dozen years, churning out the novels but getting none of the glory or respect.
Dany is married with a kid, and ready to ready to start on the latest book: “Paradise Zombie”. But his wife leaves him because she considers him a failure — she doesn’t realize he’s a successful ghostwriter – he has a non-disclosure contract). Dany stops writing and drowns his sorrows at the bar. Allyssa the bartender (Anne Hopkins) is a Louisiana expat who in the past kept him up-to-date with story ideas from the swamps back home. But now the ghostwriter has to hire a ghostwriter. He subcontracts to Quentin (Antoine Betrand) a daycare worker who also writes kids books. Quentin is a good storyteller but, 
virginal and shy around grownups, he still lives with his mom. All three face an imminent deadline: the book must be finished immediately. Somehow they all end up in New Orleans, where the novel takes place. But, in a Romancing the Stone-type reversal, they land up in real trouble, involving criminals, voodoo zombies and redneck cops. They’re all in way over their heads. Will they ever finish the book and escape to the safety of Montreal?
This is a fun, cute, mainstream story out of Quebec. Like a lot of Quebec comedy, it goes for dubious ethnic stereotypes, like scenes involving African Americans as fanatical, half-naked voodoo worshippers. But they’re equal opportunity insulters – everyone in the film is seedy, rude and dubious. I enjoyed it. See it just for the fun of it.
Desert Dancer and True Story both open today in Toronto: check your local listings. Masters of Suspense plays tonight – its English Canada debut – as part of the Cinefranco film festival: go to cinefranco.com for details. And be sure to check out the imagesfestival, which continues through the weekend.
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 filmmaker Lena Macdonald and her mother Harriet Durham about her new documentary Mom and Me.
Hi, This is Daniel Garber at the movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Harriet lived a busy life in Nova Scotia and Ontario, raising her family and shooting documentaries. But something happened, and life became unbearable. She drifted away from her husband and kids.
Her daughter Lena had vague, fuzzy memories of happier days. So she set out to find her mother, and document it on film. But the happy days were long gone. She found her mom in and out
of prison, addicted to drugs, detached, drifting, homeless, and living on the harsh streets of Toronto.
What happened? Lena wondered. What did the future hold for Mom and Me?
Mom and Me is also the name of a tough, tender and highly personal documentary that’s having its world premier at Toronto’s Hot Docs Documentary Film Festival. It 
was directed by Lena Macdonald and is all about her mother, Harriet Durham. Mom and Me is Lena’s first feature, ten years in the making. Harriet and Lena talk about life on the street, addiction, rehab, recovery, family roles, forgiveness, and what to include in a film and what to leave out. I spoke to Lena and Harriet at CIUT.
Middle. Movies Reviewed: Salt of the Earth, Last Knights, While We’re Young
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
While exciting things might happen at the fringe, people tend to aim for the centre. This week I’m looking at three movies about the middle. There’s a comedy about a middle-aged couple who try to regain their youth; an action drama set in the Middle Ages; and a documentary about a news photographer who always places himself in the middle.
Salt of the Earth
Dir: Wim Wenders, Julian Ribeiro Salgado
Sebastiao Salgado is a photojournalist from Brazil. Trained as an economist he moved to Paris in the 1960s with his young wife. He soon realized he was in the wrong profession and became a news photographer, taking pictures of people in dramatic or disastrous circumstances. The Ethiopian Famine; the Rwandan 
genocide; the subsequent refugee crisis in Goma, Congo; and the Balkan wars. The movie opens with his masterpieces: unbelievable shots of pit miners swarming like ants up and down vast dirt walls in a Brazilian gold rush.
His images are breathtaking, moving, informative and historically relevant, and they’re mimicked in the film’s cinematography. This guy is a great photographer. The movie gives you the photos, alongside the cameraman himself commenting on when he took them. It’s like looking through the world’s best photo album with the guy who took the snaps sitting beside you. Salt of the Earth is a documentary made by his son and Wim Wenders. With the stunning visuals, he comes across as earnest if a bit dry.
Last Knights
Dir: Kazuaki Kiriya
It’s the middle-ages. Raiden (Clive Owen) is the Commander of the 7th rank, widely known throughout the land for his fighting skills and discipline. He and the other knights are sworn to loyalty to their master. They’re well trained with the bow and arrow, and can cut down four enemies with a single sword. Their clan is headed by Milord, ruler of the Bartok lands (Morgan Freeman). Each year, the lords are summoned to the capital to pay tribute – as in bribe – to the emperor. But the gifts actually go 
directly to a corrupt minister named Geeza Mott (Aksel Hennie: Max Manus). He’s effete, whiny, cruel and evil. You can tell because he spends more time with his black and white lapdog than with his wife. He pulls all the strings – the Emperor is just a figurehead.
Bartok has had enough. He challenges Geeza but is executed for his insolence, his lands stolen and all his knights cut loose. Will Rainer and his men siege Geeza’s palace and avenge Bartok’s deat? Or will they all just give up?
This is an odd sort of movie. It has an amazingly diverse cast : African-American, British, Norwegian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Persian… you name it. Problem is a lot of the cast doesn’t speak English… they’re basically unintelligible. Not that the lines they’re stumbling through are that important anyway. What’s interesting is that this is a Japanese Samurai movie, reset in a multi-ethnic Europe of the middle ages. Geeza Mott is the Shogun, Bartok the Daimyo, Rainer and his crew are Samurai. (Think 47 Ronin in tights and tunics.) Even the sword fights are Japanese, not European style. The fights and battle scenes – though loaded with CGI – are very well done. See it for the action, not for the dialogue.
While We’re Young
Dir: Noah Baumbach
Cornelia and Josh (Naomi Watts, Ben Stiller) are a childless — and decidedly unhip — couple in their 40s living in New York City in . They once had great hopes of artistic achievement, but it didn’t quite work out. Ben has been making a documentary for more than 8 years with no sign of progress. He’s a purist who wrangles daily over the essence of his subject, when he should just be finishing it. And even though Cornelia is the daughter of a famous documentary filmmaker herself, Josh is much too proud to accept advice from his father in law.
Then something changes: he meets a young couple of aspiring filmmakers seemingly by chance – they crash one of his university lectures just to talk to him. They tell him he’s their hero. Jamie and Darby (Adam Driver, Amanda Seiyfried) are just what Josh needs to regain his confidence, rejuvenate his ailing career and recesitate his marriage. He can get back in touch with his creative side. Cornelia is
suspicious at first, but soon is just as entranced as Josh is. They volunteer to help him with his documentary. They’re so casual, they’re not out for fame or fortune, they do it just for the art. Josh is in love.
Soon enough, they’re listening to the same 80s vinyl songs they used to laugh at. They’re attending weird native purges that involve puking. They’re hanging in crowded nightclubs with obscure bands. It’s like they were told the secret hipster handshake and given the keys to the city… of Bushwick. They adjust their wardrobes and lifestyles accordingly.
But all is not what it seems. Does the younger couple have ulterior motives?
While We’re Young is a good, light social comedy and not much more. It portrays Cornelia and Josh — a couple living in New York and working in a creative industry — as if they’d just arrived from a farm and never seen a hipster in their lives. Noah Baumbach is a very good filmmaker who happens to be dating a much younger woman (Greta Gerwig); perhaps this movie is a self-deprecating apology. He’s trying to make Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors but ends up with Meet the Fokkers. This is a formulaic, generation gap comedy.
Last Knights and While We’re Young both open today in Toronto, while Salt of the Earth opens next week. 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
Skool Daze. Movies reviewed: Boychoir, It Follows, The Riot Club
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Are school days the best days of our lives? Or a journey through the nine stages of hell? This week I’m looking at three movies: a drama about a choir school for boys, a horror movie about high school students, and a dark tale set at Oxford University.
Boychoir
Dir: Francois Girard (The Red Violin)
Stet (Garret Wareing) is a dirt-poor kid in Odessa, Texas. His mom’s an addict and the boy runs rampant at school, picking fights and acting out his frustrations. Mom ODs, Stet’s an orphan, so he’s taken under the wing of his school principal (Debra Winger). She recognizes his musical talent and angelic voice, and convinces his biological father to send him to American Boy Choir an elite music school on the east coast.
He may be talented, but he has no training – he’s musically 
illiterate. Other kids bully him, and he retreats farther and farther into himself. The teachers at the school react differently. Drake (Eddie Izzard) is a priggish snot – he thinks Stet’s challenging his own protégé, the prize soloist Devon, so he offers no help; Master Carvelle (Dustin Hoffman) is a egotistical tyrant, but he sees himself in young Stet. He gets more sympathy from Wooly, a young teacher (Kevin McHale) and the pragmatic schoolmistress (Kathy Bates). Stet’s father (Josh Lucas) supports him financially, but keeps his existence a secret – is he ashamed of his own son?
It’s up to Stet himself to study and practice if he ever wants to sing solo in the travelling choir and reveal his amazing talent. He can reach and hold a high “D” – the holy grail for young singers. But time is ticking. He’s twelve years old, and his voice may change at any moment.
Boychoir is heavy-duty weeper, but I liked it. My eyes teared up at least 5 times over the course of the movie. I realize it’s intentionally pulling all the sentimental strings but it still works. Aside from a few acting missteps and bungled scenes, Stet and the rest of the kids play their roles naturally and sing very well. Boychoir shows how young kids can be both innocent and cruel.
It Follows
Dir: David Robert Mitchell
Jay (Maika Monroe) is a teenager who lives a quiet and dull suburban life with her sister and her friends. She’s dating Hugh (Jake Weary) an older guy. He’s pretty nice, if a bit weird. One night they drive out to a deserted area and have sweet sex in the back seat of his car.
Next thing you know she’s tied to a chair in an abandoned 
parking lot! It gets worse: Hugh says he infected her with an incurable STI. And not just that: this “infection” means someone or something will always be following her, and if it catches her she’s dead. And only she can see it but it’s real, and can change its appearance at will. An old lady in a hospital gown. A naked, middle-aged guy on a roof. A feral kid. You can outrun it, but it never stops coming.
Your only cure is to pass it on to the next person by having sex. As long as they’re still alive, you’re safe. When they’re gone, you’re next in line again.
So Jay and her friends (basically there are no adults in this movie) – her sister, a shy boy with a crush, a smart girl, the dude across the street – together they try to keep her, and themselves, safe from this thing.
This movie is oddly calm, but terrifying. It’s filled with white suburban fear and angst… and lots of casual sex. This is not your regular Hollywood teen horror movie; it feels more like an indie pic with its unconventional characters and normcore aesthetic. But it’s the plainness, the ordinariness of the creature that will scare your pants off.
The Riot Club
Dir: Lone Scherfig
When Miles (Max Irons) starts at Oxford, he’s a hellofa nice guy. He’s smart, personable and good-looking. He’s also filthy rich, complete with stately mansion and Westminster education. He’s paired up with Alistair (Sam Claflin) for their two-person tutorials, and it’s a study in contrasts. Alistair is an insufferable snob, a stuck-up, disagreeable prick. The two of them are chosen to join a secret fraternal organization of ten young men; notably no women, since this club thinks of females as comodities, not 
people. It’s known as the Riot Club. More than two centuries old, it’s devoted to the best eating, drinking and debauchery money can buy. Its members are all handsome, witty, self-confident and well connected. The ten of them will go on to rule the finances and government of the UK and the world.
While not a rebel, Miles doesn’t think much about class and status and is dating a pretty girl, Lauren (Holliday Grainger), from a decidedly non-posh background. But things take a sinister 
turn at a dinner initiation. Anything is permitted at the country pub, and any damages are paid off in cash. The ten of them arrive in white ties and tails, but their behavior is anything but formal. In this movie, the upper class is less Downton Abbey, more Clockwork Orange (with ordinary people as their victims). Will both Miles and Alistair take part these excesses? Or will Miles stay true to his girlfriend Lauren?
I can’t say I loved this movie – it’s quite disturbing. It’s the opposite of a feel-good movie. It’s a feel bad movie. Sadly, the story is modelled on an actual group, the Bullingdon Club. They say its cynical, aristocratic members still rule Britannia, including London’s Mayor Boris Johnson, the Chancellor of the 
Exchequer and even UK Prime Minister David Cameron.
Excellent acting, great script (based on the play POSH) The Riot Club is a well-made, powerful film… but not a nice one.
Boychoir, It Follows and The Riot Club 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
Daniel Garber talks with filmmaker Saul Pincus and actor Knickoy Robinson about their film Nocturne
Hi, This is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Cindy is a shy woman on meds who works at a cubical job at her aunt’s company. Her parents had high hopes for her when she published a kids’ book at age 8, but now she’s fallen on hard times and can barely take care of herself. At work she encounters Armen, a much younger man, with a strange condition. When he falls into a deep sleep he can walk, eat, use the bathroom — perhaps even drive a car. All with no memory of anything he does. Armen may be just the sort of boyfriend Cindy needs. Talk about a dysfunctional 
relationship; he doesn’t even know who she is. And neither of them realizes theres a criminal conspiracy going on all around them. Will they ever meet for real? Or will they forever be separated by a nocturnal divide? 
Nocturne is the name of an unusual, new Canadian movie showing in Toronto as part of the Canadian Film Fest. It was co-written and directed by Saul Pincus and stars Mary Krohnert as Cindy and Knickoy Robinson as the sleepwalking Armen. I spoke to Saul and Knickoy in Toronto. They talked about Australia, introversion vs extroversion, film editing, acting, consciousness, souvlaki, sleepwalking, “blindness”, animation, dreaming, Niagara Falls, Toronto, co-writer Mitch Magonet, international appeal… and more! Nocturne premiers at the Canadian Film Fest on Saturday, March 28th at 6 pm.
Film noir. Ball of Fire: The Films of Barbara Stanwyck. Films Reviewed: Double Indemnity, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers PLUS Tracers
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Film Noir. Those dark, mysterious B&W thrillers from the 1940s, full of intrigue, lies, murder, and adultery. They abound with low-lifes, power-hungry toughs, private eyes and femmes fatales. And one of the key players was Barbara Stanwyck. Strong, sexy and smart, she ruled the Hollywood screen. A retrospective, Ball of Fire: The Films of Barbara Stanwyck is now playing at TIFF. I’ll admit I’d heard her name but hadn’t seen her films until now. Wow! I get her now: She played powerful women in an era when that meant you’re either evil, immoral, or psychotic.
So this week I’m going to look at two of her film noir movies from the 1940s: there’s a seedy seductress testing the waters of insurance fraud, and a female industrialist with a secret past who might have an affair; and a new release, a noir-ish crime thriller about a young bike courier who jumps, feet first, into organized crime.
Double Indemnity
Dir: Billy Wilder, Wri: Raymond Chandler
Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) is an insurance agent in L.A. He’s a bachelor, devoted to his job. The one man he looks up to is the firm’s investigator Barton Keyes (Edward G Robinson). Keyes is the one who uncovers the crooked scammers trying to push through dubious claims on their accounts. He says “the little man inside” him can always detect when something’s fishy.
One day, when Neff visits an oil man to renew his insurance policy, he instead encounters the man’s wife. Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) is a vivacious blonde in a bathrobe who isn’t shy about her good looks. She flirts openly with him, but he smells a scam brewing so he brushes her off. But soon enough they’re together again, making love and plotting an insurance scheme. It would pay her “double indemnity” — a huge amount of money — if the husband dies accidentally in a particular way. He goes for it like a dumb dog, blinded by lust. But after the deed is done, he finds himself in a double bind as the result of his actions. Keyes is suspicious, so Neff can’t see the woman he wants to be with. And Neff begins to suspect there is more to Phyllis than meets the eye.
This is a fantastic, dark story told by a dying man.
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers
Dir: Lewis Milestone
Martha Ivers is a teenaged orphan in Iverstown, a city that bears her family name. She lives with her rich and powerful aunt and an ineffectual boy named Walter, her tutor’s obedient son. Her only friend is a blustering ruffian itching for a fight. Sam is from the wrong side of town but Martha’s attraction transcends class. She tries to run away with him but is brought back by her cruel aunt. But on the very night that they plan to escape Iverstown forever, something happens. In a fit of anger Martha strikes and kills her aunt. Walter sees it happen, but helps her cover up the crime. And in return for his silence she later marries him.
Flash forward 20 years. Sam (Van Heflin) comes back to Iverstown, almost by accident. He discovers his old love Martha (Barbara Stanwyck) now rules the place. She’s a powerful woman who turned her aunt’s small fortune into a huge legacy. Her husband, Walter (Kirk Douglas – his first film), is the District Attorney. Walter is a depressed alcoholic, still madly in love with Martha, who merely puts up with him. They live in separate wings of her mansion. Sam, meanwhile, meets a pretty ex-con on parole named Toni (Lizabeth Scott) and vows to help her out. He asks Walter for a hand, for old times sake.
But when Martha and Sam meet again, an old love is rekindled. Walter attempts to nip it in the bud by having Sam roughed up and driven out of town. But nobody kicks Sam around without paying the consequences. This menage a quatre, involving the highest of the high and the lowest of the low, is played out in a rough urban setting. This is an amazing film, largely forgotten, from an era where the poor and downtrodden were more sympathetic than the rich and powerful. Barbara Stanwyck is amazing, as this self-made powerful woman… and potential psychopath.
Tracers
Dir: Daniel Benmayor
Cam (Taylor Lautner, the wolf-boy in the Twilight series) is an orphan in New York City who works as a bike courier. One day on a ride, he notices some ninja-types bouncing on top of the buildings he zooms past. But when one of them, a woman named Nikki (Marie Avgeropoulos) jumps down from a rooftop, he ends up in an accident. He flies through the air,
landing right on top of her. It totals his bike, which puts his sole income in jeopardy: he holds a debt to a loan shark. He needs money … and he really likes Nikki.
After passing a complex test he ends up joining her secretive gang. Turns out they work freelance, pulling off carefully-planned jewel heists and drug deals. Their secret weapon? They’re all skilled in parkour, the French sport of running, climbing and jumping of buildings, which renders them unbeatable. 
But they all have to answer to Miller (Adam Rayner), the self-proclaimed “alpha dog” of this pack. And he doesn’t want anybody messing with his plans… or his girlfriend Nikki. Can Cam pay off his debt, escape this criminal life, and get together with his new true love?
Tracers is a feeble action-thriller, with plot holes so big you could drive a convoy of trucks through them. Teen idol Taylor Lautner is as one-dimensional as always, though Rayner and Avgeropoulos (and some of the actors in smaller roles) are better. A silly movie for sure but I really liked the jumping, climbing and the rest of the parkour chase scenes, They’re great! And I hear Lautner did his own stunts. Is Tracers worth seeing? If you like parkour, definitely. If not, don’t bother.
Ball of Fire: The Films of Barbara Stanwyck is playing at TIFF through the month. And Tracers opens today in Toronto and on Pay on Demand. Check your local listings. Also opening today is the Water Docs Festival at Jackman Hall at the AGO – a documentary series… about water!
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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