People’s Choice. Movies Reviewed: The Imitation Game, Honeymoon
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.
TIFF – the Toronto Interntional Film Festival – is over for the year. The klieg lights are dimmed, the red carpets rolled up. It’s like a carnival sideshow leaving town, with celebrities and their droves of fans replacing the bearded ladies and tattooed men of yore. And the hundreds of members of the media, myself included, are forced to look elsewhere for the Next Big Movie.
On the last day of the festival, this past Sunday, they announced the winning films in 
competition. Unlike most major film festivals which use panels of critics and filmmakers as judges, TIFF relies on moviegoers to vote for the most important prize, the People’s Choice award. They say Torontonians are a good barometer of what kind of movies appeal to the public these days. The proof is in the pudding; People’s Choice winners, more often than not, become next year’s Oscar winners: the wonderful Slumdog Millionaire, the moving Twelve Years a Slave, the pandering King’s Speech, and the so-so Silver Linings Playbook.
So this week, I’m going to tell you about the TIFF Grolsch People’s Choice award winner, and a low-budget horror movie opening in Toronto.
The Imitation Game
Dir: Morten Tyldum
It’s the dawn of WWII. The British have captured Enigma, one of Nazi Germany’s secret devices. All their military messages use that encryption machine. Cracking it could mean an early end to the war and countless millions saved. Alan Turing — a shy, super-intelligent mathematician and Cambridge – is asked to visit the Bletchley Radio works – actually a branch of MI6. They need him to join the team and solve the puzzle.
Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) probably got an “F” as a child in the “plays well with others” category. Instead of working with the other recruits, notably his supervisor Hugh Alexander (Matthew Goode) he decides that cracking codes, one by one, is a waste of time. Instead he sets about creating one of the world’s first computers. He names the giant wall of wires and 
spinning discs “Christopher”, after his first gay crush.
He quickly alienates Commander Denniston (Charles Dance), his boss, who decides to get rid of him. Will he succeed? In a compromise, Turing decides to recruit ordinary people with extraordinary minds to work on his project, using a hard-to-solve cryptic newspaper crossword puzzle to locate his geniuses. Smartest of all is a woman, Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley). Together they try to crack the code and win the war. But will they succeed? Will Joan and Alan fall in love? And what will happen after the war?
The story jumps back and forth from his time as a wistful schoolboy, to the thrill and excitement of wartime, to the dark period afterwards, where he is persecuted by the police as a gay man. The Imitation Game tells a fantastic, true story of unrequited love, action and adventure, and the dark politics of postwar Britain. While it’s skimpy on the sex – as in, none at all – it is still a wonderful story, miles above most biopics. Benedict Cumberbatch plays another irritating and emotionally-stunted Sherlock, but he does it so well, conveying his thoughts through a twitch of an eye. Many critics deride Keira Knightley as a one-dimensional movie star, but I found her great in this one. In fact all the cast, including supporting characters, are wonderful. Though patently Oscar-bait (wartime, British costume drama, no yuck factor) it’s wonderful Oscar-bait. I strongly recommend this movie.
Honeymoon
Dir: Leigh Janiak
Paul and Bea are up in cottage country to celebrate their marriage. Bea (Rose Leslie: Game of Thones) is big-boned and robust with a winning smile. Paul (Harry Treadaway: Fishtank, Cockneys vs Zombies) is naïve, boyish and fragile. Rose’s childhood summer home is filled with wooden ducks and a giant bearskin covering one wall. They intend to skinny dip in the lake, make pancakes at noon, and spend the rest of the day in bed, screwing like rabbits.
All goes well, until they encounter Will – Bea’s ex – and his disturbed wife Annie. Something is wrong with those two. And they seem to have affected Bea. Is she cheating on him? Paul finds her sleepwalking in the woods at night. Light beams shine through the window. Strange 
marks appear on her thighs – just mosquito bites, she tells him. And strangest of all, he catches her memorizing basic phrases like “My name is Bea… my husband is Paul… we’re married”. Is she really Bea? Or an eerie imposter? Or has she gone completely mad?
Honeymoon – a horror movie with a female director: quite rare! – has great acting and an interesting premise. It starts out like a dull love story, but starts to pick up after the first 20 minutes. It has me going for a while, but eventually falls prey to some awful, endlessly repeated lines that take the zing away. Honeymoon is a good try, but doesn’t quite do it for me.
The Imitation Game is coming this fall, and Honeymoon starts 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
Dark Humour at TIFF14. Films reviewed: A Pigeon Sat on a Branch…, The Editor, Wild Tales, Magical Girl
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.
It’s the final weekend at TIFF, with the hits rolling out… There are amazing biopics, like The 
Imitation Game starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing; period romantic drama’s like Christian Petzold’s stunning Phoenix, starring Nina Hoss, and the dramatic drama from Ukraine called The Tribe — told entirely in sign-language, no subtitles! — about a boy at a school for the deaf who is pulled into a criminal gang. All fantastic films.
But these are all opening this fall, so I’d like to talk about the kind of festival movie that’s harder to categorize, harder to grasp. This week I’m going to look at the some unusual films from Sweden, Argentina, Canada and Spain. What do they have in common? Dark humour, whether used ironically, absurdly or for its camp.
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, maybe retro, maybe present day. the movie’s like a series of New Yorker cartoons brought to life. It’s shot in sepia tones, and the actors all look like they’ve come back from the dead, with pale, powdered fleshy faces and beige clothing. The title “A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence” suggests the thoughts Roy Andersson imagined while viewing a diorama of a bird behind glass in a museum. It’s depressing, it’s funny, it’s uncategorizable – and it’s a comment on life, existence and man’s inhumanity to man. Seriously. You’ve got to see it – great movie, and it just won the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival
The Editor
Dir: Adam Brooks and Matthew Kennedy
It’s a dangerous time at a 1970s Italian movie studio. They’re shooting a sexy horror film, but someone keeps stabbing the stars. Luckily, Ciso, the one-handed, master film editor, is there to rework the scenes and save the footage. But Detective Porfiry thinks Ciso is the killer – and he’s gonna take him down once he finds the evidence. But he has to navigate round a suddenly blinded wife, devious movie stars, and a razor in a black-gloved hand. Oh yeah, and there’s the catholic priest warning him not to deal in the black arts or he might open the door to hell itself.
OK, that’s the barebones plot. But what The Editor really is, is a combination parody and homage to 70s-era Giallo movies – the sexy, bloody genre made by directors like Dario Argento. That means spooky music, gushing blood, dark shadows, screaming starlets, and blurry, soft-
core sex scenes. Throw in insanity, lust and suspicion, and you’re all set.
This parody goes out of its way to be authentic – things like characters who say lines, even though their lips aren’t moving.
This one had me laughing very loudly through much of the film, partly because it’s perfectly ridiculous. To say it’s full of gratuitous nudity and gore is like saying a musical is full of music. Of course there’s a lot of it, and in a normal movie it might be excessive, but in a movie like this, it’s not gratuitous, it’s essential to the genre. The movie stars the two directors in lead roles, blond Conor Sweeney as a sexually confused actor, and the marvellous Pas de la Huerta rounding off the cast. Made for drive-ins and Midnight madness. And to think they made it all in Winnipeg.
Wild Tales
Dir: Damian Szifron
A demolitions expert is furious when his car is towed from a valid parking spot. A waitress in a small town diner discovers the man she’s serving is the gangster who drove her father to suicide. A bride at a Jewish wedding suspects her new husband is already having an affair. A macho douche in a Lamborghini locks horns with a redneck thug in a junk heap on a rural highway. What do these short dramas all share?
They’re all ripping stories — almost urban legends — about ordinary people vowing revenge and retribution. Each of the six, separate segments in Wild Tales functions as its own short film. It starts with a small incident or conversation, but gradually escalates into something huge and potentially disastrous. Some of the characters are sympathetic, you can understand why they’re acting this way, even if you wouldn’t yourself. But it’s not just a random grouping of short films, shot like hollywood features. No. In Wild Tales the whole is more than just the sum of its parts. The tension grows as the movie rolls on to a series of amazing climaxes. Wild Tales is a compilation of funny, absurd looks at extreme consequences caused by small actions.
Magical Girl
Dir: Carlos Vermut
Luis, an out of work professor, is trying to take care of his young daughter. Alicia is into ramen, manga and anime. She says she and her friends go by Japanese names. But the girl is also dying of cancer. Luis will do anything for her. So in an effort to grant what he believes is her last wish, Luis decide to get her the dress the Magical Girl wears in her series. In desperation he decides to commit burglary, but is stopped by a strange coincidence that introduces her to Barbara (Barbara Lennie.)
Barbara is a beautiful woman married to a rich but domineering psychologist, who decides 
what she can do, who she can talk to and what meds to take. Luis ends up sleeping with her, but then turns to blackmail to get the money for his daughter’s dress. Now Barbara must decide whether or not to return to a previous secret life. But will that lead to unpredictable consequences both for her and Luis?
This is a combination comedy, tragedy and drama. It feels like an O Henry short story brought to the screen.The audience poured out of the theatre in droves as soon as it was over, because they all found it disturbing — it is disturbing. But in a disturbingly good way.
A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, The Editor, Wild Tales, and Magical Girl are all playing at TIFF through this weekend. Go to tiff.net 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 Albert Shin and Igor Drljaca about their new film In Her Place at TIFF14
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Three women come together in a run-down farm in rural South Korea: A beleaguered single mother struggling financially; a troubled daughter with an unwanted pregnancy; and a rich woman from Seoul. She’s moving in with them for awhile. And what brings them together? The unborn foetus. The mother wants it to go away. The daughter is struggling with internal conflicts. And the rich woman wants to take the future baby In Her Place.
IN HER PLACE is also the name of a new dramatic feature about family, names, order and 
chaos, gain and loss. It’s made by Toronto writer/director Albert Shin and producer and collaborator Igor Drljaca. Their films have played internationally and garnered awards and critical praise. This movie is having its world premier at the Toronto International Film Festival. I spoke with Albert and Igor, in studio, to find out more.
Le déclin de l’empire français. Films Reviewed: Run, Corbo, The Gate, Far From Men at TIFF14
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.
France was once an imperial power, with colonies in Africa, the Americas and Asia. But much of it ended with terror, revolution, rival conquest, or all-out war. A chequered history at best, but one that makes for amazing movies. So this week I’m looking at four gripping historical dramas, all about men facing revolutions, of a sort, in former French colonies. One is set in Algeria in the 1950s, just before the Algerian War, another in Montréal in the turbulent 1960s, a third in Cambodia amidst the bombing and revolution of the 1970s, and a fourth in Côte d’Ivoire, West Africa, during the crises and war of the 2,000s.
Run
Dir: Philippe Lacôte
A crazed, homeless man dressed in a burlap sack walks into a cathedral in Abidjan. He pulls out a gun and shoots the Prime Minister, pointblank. Who is he? And why did he do it? The film immediately starts on a patchwork of events in the man’s life, forward to the present, back to the past and further still to his childhood.
Run (Abdoul Karim Konaté) is an orphan who wants to apprentice himself to a 
master. He quietly observes an old man: a master of the stars, of medicine, of rainmaking and the supernatural. Later Run becomes an assistant to a Liberian woman he meets named “Super Gladys”. She is a glamorous performer with red-tipped hair and elaborate clothes, and she’s a big woman. She’s also a professional eater, a “mangeuse”. With Run as her MC, she performs on a stage, shoveling – with both hands! — massive amounts of rice 
and dripping chicken into her pie-hole. Viewers applaud and pay her for the privilege. (“Ivoirians don’t know the meaning of money” she remarks in her mixture of French and English.)
An ultra-nationalistic movement sweeps the country but Run survives again. He joins a paramilitary gang of thugs who attack foreigners. The gang becomes almost an organized crime faction, but one with great political pull. And still later he meets, Assa, a revolutionary (Isaach De Bankolé), and has to decide where his loyalties really lie.
This is a great look at contemporary Ivoirian history, its ups and its down, as seen through the eyes of an everyman; a man called Run.
Corbo
Dir: Mathieu Denis
It’s 1966 in Montreal. Jean Corbo (Anthony Therrien) is a third-generation Canadian, a francophone, and the grandson of Italian immigrants who were imprisoned by the RCMP as enemy aliens in WWII. His dad’s a successful Italian-Canadian lawyer (Tony Nardi), a stalwart Liberal Party supporter, his mother Quebecoise. His family is rich – they live in Town of Mount Royal – and he’s sent to a Catholic private school, but he keeps getting kicked out for his political views. He likes jazz (jungle music, his family calls it) and doesn’t 
feel connected to the Italian community.
Then he has a chance encounter with two “ruffians” leaving pamphlets in the school. He likes what they say… and especially the young woman, Julie, who works as a waitress in a diner.
Who are they? What do they want? It’s the FLQ (Quebec Liberation Front)! They want to overthrow their “colonial” rulers, seize the means of production, and scare away the Anglo oligarchs. They attempt to do this, first with anonymous posters and graffiti, later escalating to actual 
explosions. It spurred the first flight of nervous Anglos from Quebec. Jean is allowed into the cel, despite his class, and agrees to hide copies of their secret mimeographed publication, La Cognee, under his bed at home. (He’s only sixteen.)
But violence grows and people are killed. Jean, Julie and others wonder, is it worth dying for? Or killing for? Corbo is an fascinating look at the genesis of the FLQ by a first time director, retelling the true events of the summer of ‘66. Anthony Therrien portrays a passionate but confused 16-year-old, in deeper than he knows. He’s excellent, and so is this movie.
The Gate (Le temps des aveux)
Dir: Régis Wargnier
François Bizot (Raphaël Personnaz: Quai d’Orsay) is a French ethnologist living in the former colony of Cambodia. He is 
married to a Cambodian woman, has a daughter and speaks fluent Khmer. He collects material from Buddhist monasteries for safekeeping as the US war in Vietnam starts spreading to Cambodia and Laos. He embarks on a trip to a “dangerous area” beyond Angkor Wat, with his assistant and a young artist who asks to ride with them.
But they are captured by Khmer Rouge rebels led by Duch (Phoeung Kompheak). He is put in irons, nailed to the ground by child soldiers. He must confess to being a spy for the Americans. But he is French, he protests, not American. I am neutral, he insists. Spies must confess their crimes (after which they are executed) but how can he confess to a crime he didn’t commit. So Bizot and Duch enter a prolongued period of discussion. Both appear rational.
Ironically, Bizot turns to Buddhist scriptures for inspiration, while Duch quotes French political philosophers like Vigny. Bizot os Jesus-like, bearded and dressed in austere black cotton. Will he and his friends ever escape the torture-filled prison camp?
The film continues until the apocalyptic mayhem of the fall of Phnom Penh, and the closure of the French Embassy. Unspoken is the mass murder, the Killing Fields, that would follow. Though selective in its historical blame (the film doesn’t deal with things like the US bombing of Cambodia or earlier French crimes in Indochina) It’s still an exciting and breathtaking (though darkly beautiful) look at the last days of Europeans in Cambodia.
Far From Men (Loin des homme)
Dir: David Oelhoffen (Based on a story by Albert Camus)
It’s 1954. Daru (Viggo Mortensen) is a school teacher in an isolated village. The map on the wall says France, but this is Algeria and the students are all Algerian. (Algeria was a French colony from the early 19th century, and fully annexed by France in 1948. It regained independence in 1962, after a harsh, protracted war with France.) He is ordered to take the prisoner Mohammed (Reda Kateb) — an accused murderer — to appear before a French judge in a distant city. He refuses at first, but realizes he’s the only one stopping the 
lynch mobs, both pied noir and Algerian, from killing him. He urges him to escape and is angered when he insists on facing French justice. Why would any man willingly give up his freedom? Daru wonders. (Though he was born and raised in Algeria, Daru feels apart from both the French and the Arabs.)
So he agrees to accompany the accused on his journey on foot. they set off on a two-day journey. And on the way they both reveal truths about themselves, their desires and regrets. This movie is a classic study in existentialism set at the dawn of the Algerian War. But it’s also a classic Western. Their trip is filled with posses, soldiers — both French and rebel — horsemen, rifles, cliffs, ridges, deserts, and saloons. Even the background music is by Nick Cave (with Warren Ellis) the Sergio Leone of modern-day oaters. Camus meets the old west? An odd combination. But it works.
Run, Corbo, The Gate, and Far From Men are all playing at TIFF. Go to tiff.net 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 with Alanis Obomsawin about her new NFB documentary Trick or Treaty? premiering at TIFF14
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
In 1905, Treaty No. 9 was signed by representatives of the Canadian government and Cree and Ojibway first nations. Newly elected chiefs draped the Union Jack over their shoulders in a gesture of acceptance. The treaty
said, on paper, that the people there would cede the land around James Bay, in perpetuity, to the crown in exchange for their protection and well-being. It’s there on paper… but is this what both sides actually agreed to? A new documentary from the National Film Board of Canada says No.
The film is called TRICK OR TREATY? It examines, in depth, the issue of treaty rights, whether the 
Canadian government lives up to its end of the bargain, and whether the treaties themselves were legal documents. It brings the story up-to- date with footage and interviews with the IDLE NO MORE movement, the status of first nations’ women, and other current issues. It’s filmmaker, Alanis Obomsawin is the doyenne of documentaries at the NFB who for 40 years has recorded the issues and past and current history of the indigenous peoples in Canada. Trick or Treaty premiers at TIFF14, the Toronto International Film Festival and I reached Alanis Obomsawin by telephone, at NFB headquarters in Montreal. Producer, writer, director and narrator, Alanis talks about treaty rights, Crazy Horse, David Kawapit, Bill C-45, Idle No More, Tina Fontaine, Chief Theresa Spence, and more!
Stars as Commodities. Film Reviewed: The Congress PLUS TIFF14 Whiplash, Mommy, Heartbeat
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.
Are movies and movie stars and their images commodities? Things that can be bought sold and traded, just like stocks and bond, like bitcoins and pork belly futures? In some ways, they are. International film festivals — like TIFF, which opens in Toronto in less than a week — are partly there to put films on the market. This week I’m going to talk about an unusual new film about movie stars as commodities, and, first, three must-see films coming to TIFF.
One movie that jumped out at me and slapped me in the face is
Whiplash
Dir: Damien Chazelle
Andrew (Miles Teller) is a 19-year-old drummer just starting at a prestigious music conservatory who is spotted by Fletcher a music teacher (JK Simmonds). He’s allowed to audition for their award- winning jazz band, and feels everything is turning out great. But he soon discovers that Fletcher is a cruel and twisted perfectionist, who brings his players up to the top, and then has them crash down into the dirt again. He treats them worse than the toughest marine sergeant in Full Metal Jacket. The acting, the passion and the relentless tension in this movie is just incredible… you gotta see it. Don’t want to say Oscar bells are already ringing, but… Whiplash definitely deserves one.
Mommy
(Dir) Xavier Dolan
Another great movie is Quebecois director Xavier Dolan’s latest, Mommy. It’s a reworking of his first film J’ai Tue Ma Mere, but takes it to a new level. Steve-o (Antoine Olivier-Pilon) is a working-class, foul-mouthed teenager with ADHD. He’s kicked out of boarding school and sent home to his single mom Diane (Anne Dorval) who is as gutter-friendly, violent and sexually charged as her boy. It’s up to Kyla, the psychologically-damaged ex-school teacher next door, to try to fix things and keep Steve from being locked up. Dynamic, shocking and hilarious performances from all three actors, Mommy is not to be missed.
Also catch a gentle, quirky, musical story called
Heartbeat
Dir: Andrea Dorfman
Justine (Tanya Davis) is a creative soul trapped in a boring cubicle job in Halifax. Her best friend is in babyland, her artist-boyfriend-with-benefits Ben has dumped her, and she dresses in her late grandma’s wardrobe. But when she starts jamming with Ruby (Stephanie Clattenburg) she met in a music store window, things begin tot look up. Justine starts to Esty-fy her wardrobe and arts-and-crafts her love life. Heartbeat starts slowly but toasts like a marshmallow on a stick, ending strangely shaped, but crispy, gooey, warm and delicious.
Look out for Heartbeat, Whiplash and Mommy at TIFF.
The Congress
Dir: Ari Forman
Robin Wright (Robin Wright) is an over-the-hill movie star who just ekes out a living. She lives beside desert airport with her jaded hollywood daughter Sarah and her innocent but ill son Aaron (Kodi Smit-McFee). She needs money to keep him safe. One day her agent (Harveyt Keitel) makes her an offer she can’t refuse.
A studio wants to buy her name, face, image, voice… basically everything, to turn her back into a superstar. And theyre giving her a huge contract and a starring role in countless big budget action movies. The catch? She’s not allowed to act or appear in public ever again. Huh?
You see, they want to scan her to make a CGI image that will take her place in all 
future roles. A star who never ages, never gets into scandals, and never has tantrums on-set. It’s all digital.
Will she do it? 20 years in the future, they up the ante.
They invite her to give a speech at a mysterious Congress, where she — like everyone else — exists only as an animated image of herself. Sort of a Second Life only more so. With the help of Dylan (Jon Hamm), a handsome cartoon character 
who created her image himself, she tries to escape from this strange psychedelic cartoon version of her world, and maybe save her now-adult son.
This is a super-bizarre movie, filled with glorious animation modeled on Max Fleischer-type characters from the 1920s and 30s mixed with 1960s psychedelia. At parts I’m totally into it, but other parts have dismally awful lines. Its flawed, not perfect, but worth seeing if your into mind-stretching and super-weird fantasy epics.
The Congress opens today, check your local listings, and Heartbeat, Mommy, and Whiplash are all playing at TIFF which starts up next Thursday. Details at tiff.net.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Real / Not Real. Movies Reviewed: Frank, The Trip to Italy PLUS The Dog
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.
Ever heard of “native advertising”? Well, you should. It’s when newspapers or websites – like the Globe and Mail and the New York Times – plant advertisements disguised as journalism right alongside real news articles. So it’s getting harder and harder to distinguish between what’s real and what’s made up. Well, this week, I’m looking at movies that cross the line between fiction and reality. There’s a comedy from the UK about actors on a trip who play themselves, a comedy from Ireland about a musician who hides his face, and a documentary about a bank robber who inspired a movie.
Frank
Dir: Leonard Abrahamson (based on an article by Jon Ronson)
Jon (Domhnall Gleeson) is a ginger-haired nerd in his twenties who still lives with his parents. He lives in a seaside English town and works at a boring desk job. But he imagines himself as a successful singer-songwriter and keyboardist. He spends his free time recording feeble, unfinished verses on his computer… He’s of the Twitter generation and can’t think longer than 140 characters. But one day he witnesses an attempted suicide on a beach by an actual deranged musician – a keyboardist. And just because Jon is in the wrong place at the right time he is asked, spontaneously, to take his 
place at a gig.
The show is a disaster. He’s terrible, the band can’t play, and the performance generates an on-stage fight. But Jon is mesmerized by the lead singer, Frank (Michael Fassbender). Frank is a charismatic man, with huge blue eyes, neat black hair and enigmatic features. He has a friendly, enthusiastic style that everyone likes. He’s everything Jon would want to be.
The thing is, his features are enigmatic because they never change. His big blue eyes are entrancing because they are enormous. In fact, Frank wears a gigantic, painted papier-mache globe over his real head. What does his face look like? Nobody knows. He never takes it off and eats his food through a straw.
John invited to join them in a cabin in the woods to record an album. But he soon discovers this group is a strange bunch. Clara (Maggie Gyllenhaal) plays the Theramin ad looks like a smouldering heroin addict, with her pale skin and art-school hair. She’s outright hostile to John. She thinks he’s the Yoko Ono, tearing the group apart. The rest of them include a sneering Frenchman, a burnt-out American, and others, who come and go. Days turns to weeks, then months. They’re broke. Will they ever finish it? But without telling the others, John posts clips on youtube and reports their progress on Twitter. Soon they have a solid fanbase without ever performing beyond the cabin. Newfound success draws them to SXSW in Texas. Will they have a hit? Will the people adore them? And will Frank ever take off his fake head?
Frank is a great movie, strange quirky and funny. It’s a new look at sex and fame and rock and roll. As Frank, Fassbender is a combination Jim Morrison and Mr Dressup, with his music morphing from prog rock to silly electric piano pop. Maggie Gyllenhall is terrific as the brooding musician and love interest and Gleeson is a new Michael Cera. This is a good movie to watch.
The Trip to Italy
Dir: Michael Winterbottom
Steve Coogan is an English movie actor, at a slow point in his career. So he sets out with his travel companion, Welsh comedian Rob Brydon, for a drive down the coast of Italy. You see, they’ve been hired to relax at exclusive resorts, putter around on yachts, and enjoy meals at 3-star restaurants. All they have to do is comment on the experience. And along the way they retrace the steps places visited centuries earlier by British poets (and early tourists) Keats, Shelley and Byron. Steve is divorced with a teenaged son and considers himself a bit of a womanizer, while Rob is happily married with two small children, who he talks to by phone each day. But who will pick up the most beautiful women for casual sex? This is a sequel to an almost identical movie set in England a few years back.
This sounds awful and boring as hell, right? No! it’s absolutely hilarious. Basically, the two 
actors play exaggerated, fictional version of themselves, while, the rest of the cast – the photographer, tour guide, family members – are all other actors cast in the roles. Aside from views of gorgeous scenery and delicious looking cooking scenes for foodies, what this movie is really about is two guys in a car, singing along to songs from the 90s by Alanis Morisette. And they re-enact entire scenes from The Godfather, Part II (another sequel), reciting every line in the voices of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. Arguing about who was the best James Bond. Commenting about people at the next table at a restaurant in Rome or amongst the ruins of Pompeii. Not every joke hits the mark – I’m at a loss when it comes to comments about, say, European sportscasters – but there’s a cumulative effect, with all the jokes, comments, plays on words, competitive punning and imitations of Michael Caine, each building on the one before, until it’s just wipe-the-tears-from-your-eyes hilarious. It’s a particular style of improvized, spoken humour. There’s no pratfalls, no racial jokes, no gross-outs, no silly comments on “those crazy foreigners”, no stand-up comedy humour that depends on a punchline… It’s just two guys engaging in caustically funny conversations. It’s just great.
And finally, I want to recommend The Dog, a great documentary by Allison Berg and Frank Keraudren. It’s the true story of folk hero / criminal John Wojtowicz. A self-described pervert, John is the guy who robbed a bank and took hostages in Manhattan in the early 1970s to pay for his girlfriend’s sex change. They were soon surrounded by cops but he entranced the crowd – and the news media — by talking to them, to his mom, and to his wife Carmen. It’s one of the earliest TV as-it-happens news stories, with a twist. It inspired Dog Day Afternoon, but his story is even wilder, encompassing his bisexuality and his early role in queer politics. This funny-looking guy is an amazing, absurd character, filled with Brooklyn bravado. And his story is amazing and well-worth seeing.
Frank, The Trip To Italy and The Dog all open today in Toronto: check your local listings for details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Acts of God. Movies reviewed: Into the Storm, Calvary PLUS TIFF Canadian Films
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.
The names of the Canadian films opening this fall at the Toronto International Film Festival were announced this week, and they look really good. Haven’t seen any yet, but a few caught my eye. From Quebec, there’s a drama about a young man in Montreal who joins the nascent FLQ in the 1960s. It’s called Corbo, directed by 
Matthieu Denis. Xavier Dolan’s movies are always worth seeing. His fifth one, called, simply, Mommy, revisits the themes of his first film (J’ai tue ma mere) about a mother/son relationship and all its perils. With Anne Dorval back as the mom. And Master filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin is bringing another NFB 
doc on First Nations issues. This one, Trick or Treaty, covers the battle for treaty rights. There are many other too, including a new one from Cronenberg, a remastered film by Atom Egoyan, and movies from Jean Marc Valee, and Phillipe Felardeau, both starring Reese Witherspoon for some reason. Go to tiff.net for more info.
This week, I’m looking at two movies about 
brave people facing “acts of God”. One’s an American disaster-adventure about the danger brought to a family by unstoppable winds; the other’s an Irish drama about the dangers brought to a priest by an emotional loose cannon.
Into the Storm
Dir: Steven Quale
On graduation day in Silverton, a single dad (Richard Armitage) and his two sons, Donnie and Trey (Max Deacon, Nathan Kress), are making a time capsule on video. 25 years from now they’ll look back in wonder — or so they think. Instead, a series of unusually powerful, super – tornadoes strike their town during the graduation ceremony, wreaking havoc in its path. Donnie is trapped with a classmate in an abandoned paper mill on the outskirts of town. (He skipped graduation to help a girl he has a crush on get some footage for her 
environmental film.)
Dad and Trey set out to find them but encounter another group on the way. It’s a team of storm chasers — people who make their living by pursuing tornadoes and capturing it all on video. Allison (Sarah Wayne Callies) is a scientist, while Pete (Matt Walsh) is her boss. It’s Pete’s dream to pass through the eye of a tornado and live to tell the tale — and this is the biggest twister he’s ever seen. With the help of his tank-like car (called Titus) he treats the storm as his great white whale.
But when Dad rescues Allison from blowing away – literally! A manly man relying on the brute strength of his handgrip to overcome the tornado and save her from blowing away like a leaf — she decides to help him. They drive off to save his son; she chooses people’s lives over fame and fortune.
But can anyone beat this Grandmother of a superstorm? While there are some nice shots of huge objects bring blown away, and some wicked “flame-nadoes”, it wasn’t enough. Where are the sharks?
Terrific special effects don’t excuse the mediocre plot and script, and ho-hum acting. And it’s dripping with Tea Party subtexts: The school principal is an Obama surrogate. A good speech-maker but it’s the Paul Ryan-type Dad who can save the day. It’s also a movie about irregular weather systems that never talks about climate change. But the biggest problem is you can’t have a disaster movie that’s also an adventure flick; the two types are diametrically opposed. Disaster movies are all about sadness and braveness in the face of terrible disaster. Adventure movies are all about fun and excitement. This movie doesn’t know which way to turn. Into The Storm, while diverting, will disappear as fast as a tornado.
Calvary
Wri/Dir: John Michael McDonagh
Father James (Brendan Gleeson) is a priest in a small, isolated village in Ireland. A husky bearded man in his 60s, he still wears the traditional black cassock. He’s attended by a novice priest and a Machievellian altar boy who steals bottles of sacramental wine. The movie begins in confession where a disembodied man’s voice says he was savagely raped as a child – repeatedly, over many years – by a priest. That priest is now dead, but the man declares he will kill this good priest, Father James, in his stead. And he tells him he has one week to make peace with the world, and to show up next Sunday on the beach outside town to die. Quelle Calvaire!
From there the movie follows Father James as he visits his parishioners to make amends, offer forgiveness, and maybe discover who plans to kill him. But the people’s problems are not what might be expected in small-town Ireland. There’s a woman who cheats on her husband (Chris O’Dowd) with a Senegalese mechanic. The local policeman is gay, the priest’s novice is a toady, a local lad says he wants to join the army so he can murder people, and the arrogant local millionaire tosses his money around like toilet paper.
Father James also has a beautiful grown daughter. (Not what you think – he joined the priesthood after his wife died.) They were estranged can they get along again? Everyone knows he’s a good man, but not many of them still carries the faith like he does. He’s a combination social worker, therapist, enforcer and drinking buddy, and, well, priest. Surrounded by such unrelenting cynicism, he’s beginning to question it all, too. Does he have the strength to face his upcoming Calvary?
This is a very good movie from Ireland. It has a large cast, but each character, each part seems perfectly played. Visually, it’s fantastic, with huge, aerial shots of mammoth, grass-covered rocky plateaus and beaches. And jarring images, like a discussion inside the grocer’s freezer played against an oddly beautiful background of cow carcasses. Father James is a tough, Jesus-y character facing a troubling fate even as he tries to do good and forgive the worst sins of others. Calvary challenges our perceptions of traditional Irish life and the role of the Catholic Church there — warts and all.
Into the Storm and Calvary 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 Thorben Wieditz about Toronto’s movie industry, employment, and use of city space
Toronto is a movie-loving city with over 80 film festivals each year. But it’s also a movie making hub, a creative centre with the motion picture industry as a major player in the urban creative economy. But what role does it play? How does it affect the design and development of a city like Toronto? Can it survive gentrification? And what is its effect on the city’s workforce?
A series of articles, to be published later this year, looks at these and other questions. It’s called Labour in the New Urban Economy and studies the cities of Toronto and New York and how they interact with their respective movie industries.
One of the studies’ authors is Thorben Wieditz, a PhD candidate in Environmental Studies at York University. His piece is titled Toronto’s Film Unions Struggle over Space: From Toronto Film Studios to Revival 629. Thorben is a graduate of the University of Dortmund, and is a teacher, writer and researcher in Toronto, who focusses on the local politics of re-negotiating the use of urban employment lands in this post-industrial city.
Here, Thorben talks about the movie industry, the 629 Eastern Ave Studio and how they affect our neighbourhoods, urban space, workers, and our economy. (Go to yorku.ca/city for more information.)
Tricksters. Movies Reviewed: Let’s Be Cops, Magic in the Moonlight
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.
Is a simple change of clothes enough to convince a casual observer you are someone you’re not? Can a thump on a table at a seance make people think you can talk with the dead?
This week I’m looking at two movies about fraudsters, tricksters, and those who want to expose them.
There’s an action/comedy about two ordinary guys in LA who disguise themselves as cops; and a comedy about a magician in the Cote d’Azur who wants to unveil a false psychic.
Let’s Be Cops
Dir: Luke Greenfield
Damon Wayans, Jr. and Jake Johnson (from New Girl with Zooey Deschanel) play best buds and roommates living in LA. They like karaoke and nightclubs but they get snubbed by women, disrespected by tough gangster types, and made to stand in long line-ups. They went to the same college, joined the same frat, and left Ohio with big ambitions. But O’Malley’s (Johnson) pro football career tanked before it started. Now he’s a kids’ football coach.
Damon’s character is doing a bit better – he’s following his passion: video game design. He puts together an elaborate pitch to his work team about his latest project, a police-action-type game. But they trash it before they even play with it. “You need zombies” they tell him. He goes home with his tail between his legs, 
carrying the pair of police uniforms he had planned to use in his pitch.
But he finds a good use for them after all. The two of them wear the uniforms to a costume party that night. And, to their amazement, on their way home, they are mistaken for the real thing. This being LA, immediately a parade of beautiful women ogle them and then smother them with hugs and kisses, because, well, they’re cops.
They also get the respect they miss in their real lives. Strangers listen to them and do what they say. They can walk to the front of the line of any nightclub. And, at the diner they frequent, the cute waitress (Nina Dobrev) suddenly says she likes “Chang” (that’s the name on Damon’s police uniform, and the one he goes by for most of the movie). Their scam starts to escalate. Damon wants to call it quits – it’s totally against the law to impersonate a cop. But O’Malley doesn’t see it that way – he takes it all very seriously. He gets hold of a police car, and starts studying official codes and techniques on-line. Soon enough, they’re behaving like real cops.
They go doubly undercover – now they’re civilians disguised as police disguised as civilians. They become in involved with real police work, alongside local police (Rob Riggle) who take their outfits at face value. Will their plans fall apart when they face real danger, and organized crime? And will Chang’s budding love affair fall apart if his girlfriend ever finds out he’s not a cop?
I thought this movie was a lot of fun. It started as a one-joke comedy – Let’s be Cops, but it gets carried through quite nicely, turning into a good action flick along the way. Jake Johnson and Damon Wayans, Jr. are really funny (except for the offensive Chinese accent) keeping their characters believable without overly mugging to the camera. I liked this movie.
Magic in the Moonlight
Wri/Dir: Woody Allen
It’s the late 1920’s (before the Great Depression). Stanley (Colin Firth) is a professional magician, touring continental Europe. He performs in a riot of chinoiserie under the stage name Wei-ling Soo. He makes elephants disappear and saws women in half. He’s also a rude and snobby egotist. So sure is he of his expertise, that he will gladly debunk any mystic he encounters. So he gladly takes up on a friend’s offer of a vacation in the south of France. Once there, he promises to expose a young psychic operating out of a villa owned by millionaire American industrialists.
But he is surprised to meet the adorable Sophie (Emma Stone), a plain-spoken and pretty young woman from Wisconsin. She doesn’t seem like a charlatan; just a simple girl who falls into momentary fogs… and comes back with uncanny visions. Even Stanley is surprised by how much she knows about him.
He still vows to expose her. But during a séance he is shocked to see what appears to be 
real magic: a floating candle with no strings attached. How does she do it? he wonders. His beliefs are further called into question when they visit his maiden aunt Vanessa (Eileen Atkins) at her villa in Provence.
Meanwhile, Sophie is being wooed, relentlessly, by the heir to a fortune. Brice (Hamish Linklater) plays the ukulele and croons off key to Sophie, telling her if she marries him she’ll live in luxury. He is young, handsome and loaded. The much older Stanley is already engaged to a upper-class, educated Englishwoman. And yet, despite their adversarial stance – of a psychic and a magician sworn to expose her tricks — there seems to be an attraction growing between Stanley and Sophie. And when they are caught in a rainstorm on a country road, they share an intimate 
conversation by moonlight. But can it last? And will it stand up to scrutiny?
Magic in Moonlight is just delightful. It’s the first of a long stream of annoying movies Woody Allen made in Europe that actually works. Well-written, perfectly executed, great acting, beautiful scenery and period costumes, nice music… And Colin Firth and Emma Stone have great chemistry. It’s not a deep movie with any subtle subtext, but it is a very cute romantic comedy, in the best sense of the word.
Magic in the Moonlight starts today, and Let’s Be Cops opens in Toronto on August 13th. Check your local listings. Also look out for An Honest Liar, a wonderful documentary about another magician who exposes fake psychics. It’s playing at the HotDocs theatre in a week. And Toronto’s Palestinian Film Festival has an outdoor screening and party in Christie Pits on August 8th. Go to TPFF.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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