Daniel Garber interviews director JIM BRUCE about his new film Money for Nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
The world’s economy was brought to a standstill after the crash of 2008 – we’re still recovering. What 
happened? A new movie posits that it was the policies of the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan that were largely responsible for the meltdown.
This in-depth documentary explains the history of this powerful but opaque agency and how it works. It’s called Money for Nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve, (opening today in Toronto at Hot Docs). Director JIM BRUCE (editor: King of Kong) tells us more.
Movie Movies. Films Reviewed: Pompeii, 3 Days to Kill PLUS AKP Job 27
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.
Do you ever get tired of movies with deep meanings and avant-garde styles? Do you ever just want to see a “movie” movie? Well this week I’m looking at some movie movies, each with a bit of a twist. There’s a sword- and-sandal romance that’s also a disaster movie, an action-thriller that’s a family comedy, and a Yakuza movie… that has no lines!
Pompeii (in 3D)
Dir: Paul W.S. Anderson
The Roman empire is reaching its apex, planting the golden eagle on Brittainia. A particularly cruel general named Corvus battles the Celts. When it’s over he says to his henchman: Kill them all! But one little boy survives.
Milo (Kit Harrington, Game of Thrones) grows up to be a champion fighter, with stringy hair, a wispy beard and killer abs. He’s sent to Rome to compete as a fighter-slave. But on the way he comes to the aid of a beautiful, upper-class woman with porcelain features named Cassia (Emily Browning) Her horse has an accident, and Milo has a way with horses. He was “born on horseback”, he says. But will they ever meet again? You can count on it.
Now, Milo is sent to Pompeii (a holiday spot outside of Rome) to fight to the death in the arena there (Cassia’s dad controls Pompeii’s stadium). The ultimate fight will be between Milo and his rival Atticus (Adewale Akinnuoye-
Agbaje) an African gladiator about to win his freedom.
Who comes to town, but a suitor, a senator from Rome. He says he’ll approve the new stadium, if — and only if — Cassia marries him. But she hates him (they had an earlier run-in in Rome) and she has a thing for Milo. And who is this 
senator? Why it’s Corvus (Keiffer Sutherland) who, along with his henchman Proculus (Sasha Roiz) massacred Milo’s family as a child!
So all of these plots are going on right at the base of Mt Vesuvius. And as we all know now, the volcano is about to blow, pouring lava and volcanic ash over 
everyone, rich and poor, who doesn’t get out of there soon.
This movie has three things going on. There’s the frequent action scenes – lots of fights, great gladiator matches, chase scenes; then there are the romantic parts: Cassia and Milo are constantly risking their own lives to rescue each other from death and danger; and there’s the inevitable disaster part: ground rumbling, buildings crumbling, spectacular collapses… The movie uses way, way, way too many CGIs. It makes everything look dark. You long for some blue skies. Nevertheless, I totally enjoyed this movie. Excitement, interesting plot, fights, romance, tears… it’s got everything.
And believe it or not, this movie about ancient Rome was shot in Toronto’s west end, all in enormous soundstages and backlots.
Three Days to Kill
Dir: McG (The O.C.)
Ethan Renner (Kevin Costner) is just a regular guy who wears Dockers and roots for the Pittsburg steelers. He’s been away from his wife and daughter for five years. Why? Because he’s also a CIA assassin. He is in Belgrade to kill a sadistic criminal named the Albino (played by Icelandic actor Tómas Lemarquis as a James Bond-type super-villain). He’s known for chopping off the heads of his enemies. A young CIA agent named Vivi (Amber Heard) is there at the same time to kill another criminal known only as the Wolf. But something goes wrong.
Ethan collapses to the ground just when he should have shot the Albino.
Turns out he has inoperable brain cancer. He decides to spend his last days with his estranged wife and resentful teenaged daughter Zooey (Haillee Steinfeld, True Grit) in Paris. This is where the action is supposed to turn to laughs.
Back in Paris, his apartment has squatters: an extended family from Mali. (He’s white, they’re black… Get it?) And his teenaged daughter Zooey is angry because he neglected her. (She’s young, he’s old… Get it?) Well, somehow, he convinces his wife he can be trusted to take care of their daughter for three days while she’s away on a business trip. But then Vivi reappears to say: I’ll cure your cancer with some secret drugs if you murder the Wolf (Ethan’s the only one who saw his face in Belgrade.) So now he has to juggle bonding with Zooey, with dying of cancer, and torturing suspects and killing alleged criminals.
This is such a craptastically messed-up movie. Believe it or not, the script was originally co-written by Luc Besson, the notorious French action movie director. So it does have some good chase scenes and shootouts.
But the humour? So lame, it’s absolutely devoid of laughs. Costner is a terrible comic actor, and Amber Heard is embarrassingly bad as the multi-wigged Vivi. The script feels like it was written in French, rewritten in Serbo-Croation with the English version courtesy of Google Translate, alpha edition. Just dreadful.
AKP Job 27
Dir: Michael Suan
And in a tribute to the old Luc Besson comes a silent gangster pic from Toronto. A Yakuza hit man travels to on assignment in Canada and falls for a beautiful woman in the sex trade… who reminds him of a long lost love. This is a purely visual movie with a smorgasbord of images: gunshots in a field of air 
turbines, sex scenes in red and blue. There is too much slo-mo and choppy jump cuts for my taste — at times it feels like an extended 1980s music video. But it’s commendable as a first film, with Suan re-imagining a noir-ish Toronto as a city full of dark allies, rainy streets, neon lights, and strip bars.
Pompeii, Three Days to Kill and AKP Job 27 all open today in Toronto; check your local listings. The glorious Chilean film Gloria continues, and also opening this week is Tim’s Vermeer.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Rom not Com. Films Reviewed: Gloria, Tim’s Vermeer, For No Eyes Only
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 Valentine’s Day. For some reason, romance in movies has been inexorably tied to comedy. You’re in love? It must be a joke. Well, today I’m forsaking the romcoms and the soppy romances. I want to talk about some unusual movies about love, sex, and obsession. A Chilean movie about a divorced woman’s search for love, an American doc about a man’s search for proof, and German flick about a kid’s search for secrets.
Gloria
Dir: Sebastien Lelio
Gloria (Paulina Garcia) is an average, middle-aged divorcee in downtown Santiago. Her life is stale, worn-out. She lives alone in an apartment, with just a noisy neighbour and a hideous, hairless cat intruding on her privacy. Her home life is depressing, her office job is stultifying. And her kids are adults now. But she’s not willing to give up. She’s still full of energy – she wants to enjoy life, sing songs, fall in love, be in a one-on-one relationship. And, well, she wants to get laid.
So she starts hanging out in discos that play seventies music. (The people there all look like they went to this club back when those songs were new.) She goes there to pick up men – much older men. Ideally, she wants a man who is honest, who respects and desires her.
After some misfires, she falls for Rodolfo, a very conservative, rich, elderly 
man. He takes her for a drive to show her his wealth, his power. At first their relationship seems solid… but can she trust him? He interrupts their lunches with extended calls on his cel. And he’ll drop everything to run home whenever his daughters say they need him (He’s divorced – he says — but he’s still responsible for his girls.)
She wants him to meet her family and friends. Will he commit? And will he fit in with her lifestyle? (Gloria’s a free-thinking Chilean, Rodolfo’s roots are with Pinochet’s right-wing military.)
Although this movie is told in an everyday manner, this is a fantastic, bittersweet look at one woman’s life. The actress, Paulina Garcia, completely embodies and embraces Gloria – flaws and all. She convey’s what she’s thinking; not through words, but in her eyes. The whole movie is told from her point of view, and she exposes everything – body and soul — for the camera. This is a fantastic movie, and Garcia’s performance is flawless and unforgettable.
Tim’s Vermeer
A Penn and Teller film; directed by Teller, narrated by Penn.
Tim Jenison is a tremendously successful Texan inventor of devices gadgets and software. Somehow, he became fascinated by the paintings of Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. How could they be so perfectly 
lit, so realistically focused, so uncannily lifelike? He embarks on a mission – an obsession really – to discover the mechanical basis behind Vermeer’s art. He is convinced that Vermeer used a camera obscura – a dark room that projects inverted light images against a wall – long before photography and electric light was discovered. To his theory he adds the element of dentist’s mirrors, little discs on sticks.
Next he sets out to prove it – by rebuilding an exact replica of all the things portrayed in one of Vermeer’s paintings! Why? He recreates the furniture, the windows, the musical 
instruments, everything… then sets up his camera obscura and dentist mirrors and begins to paint. Can he do it? Told by the team of magic debunkers Penn and Teller, this is a strange but fascinating story of a rich man who has the time and money to pursue his obsession. The strangest thing about his painting is the complete and total absence of any artistic feeling or aesthetic sense.
For No Eyes Only
Wri/Dir: Tali Barde
This is a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. In that movie, Jimmy Stewart is stuck in a wheelchair with a broken leg but – through his apartment’s rear window he can see into the windows of the apartment behind him. And he thinks he witnesses a crime.
In this movie, Sam (Benedict Sieverding) is a high school student in Germany.
He’s the star field hockey player but has a broken leg. He was mowed down by the new kid, a tall and intense guy named Aaron (directorTali Barde). Sam is sure Aaron is up to no good. With too much time at home, Sam discovers a hacking system that allows him access to his classmates’ computer cameras – his personal rear window. This gives him an inside view of all his friends’ bedrooms – everything they don’t want anyone else to see. Including Livia (Luisa Gross), his secret crush.
Luisa is mature confident and sophisticated, while Sam loses all his bravado and stumbles when talking to her. She takes the lead and invites herself to his home for some “computer lessons”. She’s figured out Sam’s been watching.
At first she’s angry, but, soon she’s joining in on his intramural spy-project. That’s when they notice something strange is going on with Aaron. Where’s his dad? Why does he hide a kitchen knife in his bedroom? What’s he carrying to the basement? Is 
there really a crime? Or is it just their overactive imaginations?
It’s a fun movie but with an after-school-special feel to it – it’s a little too cute for a thriller. But if you consider it was made for just a fistful of Euros (less than 4000) by a recent college grad… Incredible! Though made in 2012, with Snowden’s recent revelations about NSA spying on ordinary people, this film is even more relevant today.
Gloria opens today in Toronto and Tim’s Vermeer opens next week: check your local listings. For No Eyes Only is playing this weekend at the TIFF Next Wave festival. Go to tiff.net/. Also opening today is the fun Paraguayan thriller 7 Boxes, and the amazing courtroom documentary Pussy Riot: a Punk Prayer about the Moscow trial of Russian activists/musicians Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich.
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 Adam and Andrew Gray about their new documentary FLY COLT FLY
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
was revealed that he escaped in borrowed prop planes that he’d taught himself to fly, his reputation soared. He was chased across the continent until he was finally caught in the Bahamas.
Daniel Garber talks with writer/director Jeremy Lalonde about his new comedy Sex After Kids
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
What do these people have in common? A lesbian couple, a single british woman, a newly married couple with a baby, an agent married to an ex-model, and a pair of grandparents? They all have kids and they all wonder what happened to their sex lives.
A funny new comedy, shot in Toronto and opening today, asks the age-old question: What happens to Sex after Kids? Writer/ director Jeremy Lalonde tells us all about it.
Kids above and beyond. Movies Reviewed: 7 Boxes, Igor and the Cranes’ Journey PLUS Tiff NEXT Wave Film Fest
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.
Sometimes kids feel they have to be something above normal. Girls are princesses, boys superheroes. It’s reinforced in movies, TV shows, comic books, birthday parties… What’s less common is stories about ordinary kids put into bad situations who behave extraordinarily.
This week I’m looking at two movies, both about kids going above and beyond. One’s a Russian-Israeli film about a kid who follows birds online; the other’s a Paraguayan film about a kid mesmerized by video images.
7 Boxes
Dir: Juan Carlos, Maneglia, Tana Schembori
Victor (Celso Franco) is a kid who lives in the hustle and bustle of an outdoor market in Asuncion. He hangs out with a friend, Liz who wanders through the aisles. He pushes a giant wheelbarrow around to make a few dollars moving boxes from here to there. Victor knows every corner and alleyway, and all the merchants, the shoppers, the homeless and the cops who work there. His favourite spot is the closed-circuit TV shop, where he can see his own face on the video screens. (His sister works in the kitchen of a Korean restaurant, and likes the son of the owner.)
And when she shows up one day weilding a super-deluxe cel phone that can
make videos, Victor knows he has to buy it.
Things are looking good. That same day, he gets hired by a shady character in a butcher’s shop for a very important job. He has to transport seven flat wooden crates. But to where? He won’t say. And what’s in them? He won’t say. The butcher gives him half a US 100 dollar bill. He gets the other half once the goods – all seven boxes – are delivered.
There’s something strange about this whole job, but he doesn’t know what it is. Soon enough, a rival wheelbarrow pusher sees the money and decides he should have the money. He hires a gang to hunt Victor down and steal 
the boxes. Bumbling police inspectors are also looking for the boxes, and are quick to arrest criminals and victims – anyone near the scene of a crime.
And the shady characters behind the unnamed crime run into trouble of their own.
Can Victor keep the boxes safe – without looking to see what’s inside? Will the criminals get their just deserts? And will Victor live to see his reward?
7 Boxes is a great action/thriller, about everyday life for working class kids in a Paraguay market. Most of the movie is not in Spanish but in Guarani, a language spoken only in Paraguay and countries bordering it. (Because of the gun violence this movie is not meant for small kids) I like this movie.
Igor and the Cranes’ Journey
Dir: Evgeny Ruman
Igor’s dad Peter (Tomasz Sobczak) is an ornithologist who studies migration. He’s especially interested in the flight patterns of cranes. They fly from Russia down to the Black Sea, and onward to the Middle East and Africa. His young son, Igor (Itai Shcherback) visits him each year at a nature reserve in Russia.
This year Igor witnesses a baby crane’s birth – he names him Karl. He sets up a website so he and his dad – and any viewers — can watch him grow up and migrate (Karl is tagged with a sensor).
His Polish dad’s projects are sponsored by a rich Russian oligarch who’s mainly out for profit. He treats biology like a circus act: We need bears! Lots of bears! If we follow birds they must be happy and healthy – no birds die on my projects!
The rest of the year Igor lives with his divorced mom in a big city where 
she’s a music teacher. Mom (Ola Schur Selektar) wants to emigrate to Israel so she can head up a genuine choir. (She later learns it’s not exactly what she expects).
Igor has no desire to move there — it doesn’t even have a great football team like Barcelona. And he’d lose all his best friends. So he asks his dad if he can go live with him and help him follow the cranes. But he’s rejected. So he moves with his mom to a small town in Israel.
Igor has no friends, can’t speak the language and the other kids tease and laugh at him. He spends all day drawing flipbook animation drawings of the cranes in his math book. Only Vered (Clil Arbel) — the girl he sits with and the daughter of the school principal — is nice to him. She likes his pictures and is drawn to Karl’s (the young crane) plight.
So, even while Igor refuses to speak to his dad by telephone or read the letters he sends him, he and Vered still follow Karl’s plight — and listen to his father’s personal messages — on the website.
How can Igor help Karl survive? He comes up with a plan: create a crane sanctuary in a dirty pond near his school. Will the other kids help? Will he ever see his father again? Will he find Karl? … and will he and Vered share their first kiss?
The film varies from straight drama to B&W flip-book style animation, based on Igor’s drawings. Igor and the Cranes’ Journey is a sweet, gentle family drama about a young Russian boy coping with big changes.
7 Boxes opens next Friday in Toronto — check your listings, and Igor and the Cranes’ 
Journey is playing for one show on Sunday in Vaughan: go to tjff.com for details. And next weekend, the TIFF Next Wave Film Festival, (February 14 – 16) shows films for young adults, partly selected by a group of 12 teens from the Toronto area. Details: tiff.net/nextwave . And The 24-Hour Film Challenge has 20 teams of high school students making a short film in 24 hours including a specific line of dialogue and a prop: a red beret. Winners will be announce next Sunday.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Flesh + Blood. The Dutch films of Paul Verhoeven: Turkish Delight, Soldier of Orange, Spetters, The Fourth Man
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.
Paul Verhoeven. You’ve probably seen some of his Hollywood movies — Robocop, Basic Instinct, Starship Troopers, Showgirls. He’s known for his shocking nudity, brutal sex and stylized violence. Popular movies, but unpopular with most critics. They saw him as a misogynist, a schlockmeister and a fascist. None of this is true. He’s actually a great director.
The critical tide seems to be turning. His films are now being revisited in a TIFF 
retrospective. This week, I’m looking at the less-well-known, but fantastic films he made in the Netherlands in the 1970’s and 80s before going to Hollywood.
In some ways Verhoeven’s early films were totally Hollywood. His men (Rutger Hauer, Jeroen Krabbe) are lantern-jawed and lusty; his women (Renee Soutendijk, Monique Van den Ven) are petite beauties… and as independent and blatantly sexual as the men. His movies are filled with full frontal nudity (both male and female) explicit sex, and brutal violence, often with a queer twist. And a constant undercurrent of anti-authoritarianism.
They explore the postwar world of the baby boom and its sexual revolution in the glory days between the pill and AIDS.
Turkish Delight (1973)
Erik (Rutger Hauer) is a sculptor in a small city. He has long blond hair and aviator sunglasses. He’s the kind of guy who takes whatever he wants – an old lady’s fur coat, a stranger’s ice cream cone. This applies to women as well – he’s a champion pick-up artist.
But he bristles at the old guard – the uptight shopkeepers and burgermeisters– and despises their hypocrisy. Erik’s sculpture of Lazarus (the biblical character who comes back to life), gets him in trouble – the town fathers don’t like the worms and maggots eating Lazarus’s flesh. But Erik revels in them.
Verhoeven also piles on the shocks. The decay and rot of old ideas are 
everywhere: clean, orderly Netherlands is shown as a country full of worms, feces, garbage and vomit. Old people have cancer and dementia; their sex is furtive and hidden. Erik wants sex to be free, open and everywhere.
So he heads off to Amsterdam, but is picked up by a beautiful young woman, Olga (Monique Van de Ven) on the way. Olga is voluptuous and impetuous; they leap into bed in bloodsoaked sexual abandon. But is their marriage a flash in the pan or everlasting love? Olga is the woman of Eric’s dreams… but she’s still young. She grows bored with him and the constant sex. Can he ever get her back?
Turkish Delight is a delightful sex comedy.
Soldier of Orange (1977)
Leiden University in 1938. War is looming, but the upper-class frat boys are more concerned with hazing, songs, tennis and drinking. They’re apolitical toffs who swear loyalty for life. Erik and Guus (Rutger Hauer and Jeroen Krabbe) become fast friends. But then, the Germans invade, Queen Willhemina flees to Britain, and the Netherlands is under Nazi occupation. Suddenly everything changes. Friends fight friends.
Some – like one student whose mother is German — drift toward Nazi collaboration; others join the Resistance. They send out furtive messages to London by wireless, but the Germans – riding on bicycles with detectors around their necks – uncover the operation. They arrest most of the conspirators and use them to unwittingly spread false rumours. Some remain loyal till death, other’s crack under torture and switch sides. A few dozen men escape, including Erik and Guus. They climb onto a Swiss ship and make it to London. There, in the name of the Queen, they operate air raids and launch undercover missions. Based on a true story, this epic is a fantastic, wartime look at the few and the brave.
Spetters (1980)
Three best friends in their twenties, one redhead, one dark and one blond. Rien, Eef and Hans (Hans van Tongeren, Toon Agterberg, Marten Spanjer) work together at a mechanic shop: Rien drives a dirt bike and Eef can take one apart and put it back together… blindfolded! They love to race and ride at local events and they all idolize the the champ — their hero Gerrit (Rutger Hauer).
They all end up crushing on the same carney Fientje (Renee Soutendijk) who runs a fry and croquette truck with her brother. Fientje is older and tougher than the boys. She has curly blonde hair but is no pushover – she’s ambitious. She’s quick with her pot of boiling oil against any guy trying to steal from the chip wagon. The 
three guys decide the best endowed will get to date her – but she has other ideas; she chooses the redhead Rien – the only one with a girlfriend. She gets him a sponsor and an expensive bike; she hopes her star will rise with his. (But will he make it as a champion?)
Next comes the dark-haired Eef, a farmers son with a homophobic streak: he bashes gays and steals their money. He uses the cash to buy one-way tickets to Canada for Fientje and himself so he can escape his abusive home… but is he sexually compatible with her?
The blond, Hans, is the third in line, with nothing to recommend him. He too wants to be the next champ but faces a cynical, exploitative world… can he win her heart?
Spetters is a great coming-of-age story about where fate takes one woman… and the three young men who want her.
The Fourth Man (1983)
A Psychological Thriller.
Gerard (Jeroen Krabbe) is a novelist in Amsterdam with a vivid imagination. He likes to “lie the truth”. He sees signs, symbols and omens everywhere: the number four, the virgin Mary, a detached eyeball. He’s Catholic – but more into the spooky gothic icons than the sinning and repenting. He’s also a red-blooded gay man. So when he spots a young guy at a newsstand near the train station he is in love. (Well, in lust). He chases him but misses the train.
Soon, he finds himself in a small town doing a book reading. Christine (Renee Soutendijk), a stunning blonde widow in a red dress, 1940s-style is filming him in super-8. They end up in bed, but he 
awakens from a bizarre castration nightmare involving Christine and a pair of scissors. (She owns a beauty salon called Sphinx.)
Going through her letters when she’s out of the room, Gerard discovers a photo of her boyfriend Herman (Thom Hoffman). It’s the same man he saw at the train station! So he fakes a psychic vision and convinces her to invite her macho and jealous lover to come stay with her. He aims to seduce Herman. But he discovers that 
Christine has a secret history of her own. Will this sexual triangle end in love… or death?
I recommend all four of these films. Turkish Delight, Soldier of Orange, Spetters and The Fourth Man are all part of Flesh + Blood, the Paul Verhoeven Retrospective at the TIFF Bell Lightbox now through April. 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
Low Budget. Movies reviewed: Mourning Has Broken, 12 0’Clock Boys. PLUS the Great Digital and Super 8 Film Fests
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.
You may have noticed: not everyone’s rich. A recent report estimated the world’s richest 85 people have more money than the poorest 3.5 billion people. That’s not even the 1%; just 85 people own as much as half the people in the world. After news like that, it doesn’t seem right to promote some $300 million Hollywood blockbuster. This week I’m looking at low-budget movies, cheap places to see them, and films about the have-nots.
Despite all the Cassandra-like predictions, Toronto still has rep cinemas. Places like the Royal, the Revue, the Fox, Bloor Hotdocs, and Big Picture Cinema let you see an always-changing selection of art films, indies, retro, second-run and cult movies, at a reasonable price.
But there are other screens too. At one end, there’s the Great Digital Film 
Fest showing at Cineplex beginning next week. No rom-coms, but superheroes like Batman from the 80s, rare science fiction pics like Logan’s Run and Japanese anime like Akira.
Just 6 bucks a pop.
At the other end of the spectrum, there’s the Super 8 festival this weekend showing the best of Toronto’s art and indie cinema. Go to the8fest.com for details.
This week, I’m looking at a Canadian comedy/drama about a misanthrope doing errands; and a US documentary about a kid who wants to join a particular type of gang.
Mourning has Broken
Dir: Brett and Jason Butler
A neurotic, troubled man (Robert Nolan) leads a normal life in a Toronto suburb. He lives with his wife and his cat, Mignon. On this special day he has a list of errands to run: wash his car, return his wife’s dress, buy a red velvet cake – simple things like that. He has to do them all that day… or else. So he kisses his wife lying motionless in bed (she’s either asleep, ill, or dead) and sets off. But easier said than done.
He can’t stand small talk and is deeply irritated by almost everyone he sees. And in this movie, he meets an unusual selection of bottom-feeders, douches, nosy neighbours, nasty women, eye-rolling cashiers, know-it-all mechanics, and pushy salesmen. And like Peter Finch in Network, Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver or Michael Douglas in Falling Down, here’s another middle aged, middleclass guy on the brink.
We get to hear his internal stream-of-conscious, his muttered rants, and his 
occasional outbursts. Respect the big screen! he shouts in a movie theatre where people are talking and texting during a film. He stampedes a dad bullying his chubby son. And he goes to a sporting goods store to buy a bat. Uh-oh… looks like Ford Nation is out for revenge.
What’s so special about this day? Who’s the bat for? And what’s he bringing home to his wife?
Mourning Has Broken is very much a one-man show, and character actor Nolan generally carries it off, with the help of dozens of funny (or not-so-funny) side characters. The pace is a bit odd, with him going crazy one scene then back to muttering again the next. (He ends up losing it all and recovering more than once.)
What’s remarkable about this simple story? This feature dramady was made last year for 1000 bucks as part of Ingrid Veninger’s 1K Wave Feature Film initiative. That, friends, is very impressive.
12 0’Clock Boys
Dir: Lotfy Nathan
This is a documentary about three years in the life of an African-American kid named Pug. Pug goes to church in Sunday, has pet turtles and wears his hair in braids. His mom, Coco, is a former exotic dancer. Pugnacious Pug says he likes his life in Baltimore — it’s a city without earthquakes, hurricanes or collapsing buildings. He lives with Coco and his sibs in West Baltimore.
This is a neighbourhood where you learn “the right way to do the wrong things.” And in Baltimore, the thing to learn is dirt biking.
Dirt bikes, dune buggies, fat-tired cars and ATV are the bomb. They zoom down city streets, popping wheelies, revving engines and generally showing off and having fun. It’s a Baltimore tradition. And Pug really, really wants to join this gang.
The problem? It’s the popo, the turtles, 40, peaches… you know, the police. You get fifty or 100 young black men in one place and the cops see trouble, crime, danger. The guys in the group see freedom, fun, and flash. It’s unclear what is, exactly, the crime they’re committing (aside from potentially reckless driving), but the police don’t like it. And the TV news paints it as an epidemic, a horror, an out-of-control crime-fest leading to countless deaths.
So the cops chase down the dirt bikers using police cars and helicopters. Legally, the city has a no-chase policy, but chase accidents still happen. One of which really disturbs Pug’s life.
As his voice changes so does his vocabulary – he uses four-letter words, acts tough, Pug wants to earn his bonafides. But will he ever be allowed to join this group?
12 0’Clock Boys is a terrific slice-of-life doc, seen through a kid’s eyes. It’s filled with sublime, slow-motion dirtbike rallies paired with excellent beats. And rounded off with news clips, outdoor interviews and just people mouthing off. Worth seeing.
Mourning has Broken opens today, 12 O’Clock Boys starts next week in Toronto. Also opening today is the multifaceted French family drama The Past, as well the8fest.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 AHARON KESHALES about his new movie BIG BAD WOLVES
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
supposedly being used for good causes. The film is Big Bad Wolves — Quentin Tarantino calls it his favourite film of 2013. It follows Israeli co-directors Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado’s previous horror film RABIES.Big Bad Wolves is opening today in Toronto and across Canada. I speak with the film’s co-director AHARON KESHALES (by telephone) about comedy, revenge, torture, fear, the military, police corruption, fairytales… and more.
Sex vs Love. Movies Reviewed: The Past, Stranger by the Lake, C*cksucker Blues
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Can there be love without sex… and sex without love? These movies say yes. This week I’m looking at a French drama about love tempered by divorce; another French drama about lust tinged with death; and a rarely-seen American doc about sex and drugs and rock and roll.
The Past (Le Passe)
Dir: Asghar Farhadi
Ahmad (Ali Mossafa) is an extremely gentle, middle-aged guy – a French-speaking Iranian. He has an intellectual beard and wears a jaunty scarf around his neck. Ahmad is met at the airport in Paris by his beautiful French wife, Marie (Bérénice Bejo). She’s in a foul mood. She asked him back to Paris to finalize their divorce. They’ve been living in two different countries since Ahmad moved back to Iran years ago.
Their relationship is finished… or is it? For some reason, she wants him to stay in her home, despite his request for a hotel room. He’s glad to see 
their two girls again. But then she makes him sleep in a kid’s bunk bed along with a bratty boy he’s never seen before. Hmmm…
That’s when the little boy’s father enters the picture. Samir (Tahar Rahim) is a smaller, less mature version of Ahmed. He’s a successful, bearded, small-businessman who owns a dry cleaner. His wife recently died and it looks like Marie and Samir now want to get married. But Marie’s older daughter is going through a crisis, Samir’s son is upset about something else, and there’s big trouble at work. And Ahmad and Samir have to work together with Marie holding all the cards.
This movie tells its story in a fascinating way. At first you think it’s about Ahmad – but it’s not. The point of view shifts from scene to scene, character to character, as the past is gradually revealed. Whose kids are whose? Why did Samir’s wife die? And what are all these unspoken secrets?
The Past is a fantastically subtle movie. It’s low-key, yet powerful (if that makes sense). It doesn’t shove the big revelations in your face; it lets them out slowly, gradually, over the course of a conversation. The three stars are all great – you may have seen Bejo in the French silent movie The Artist, and Rahim in the prison drama A Prophet (both of which won Best Foreign Film Oscars). I’m less familiar with Mossafa, but he’s also outstanding. (And director Farhadi also won for A Separation). The Past is a family drama well worth seeing.
Stranger by the Lake
Dir: Alain Guiraudie
Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps) is a young guy who hangs out at a gay nude beach. It’s a rocky lake surrounded by trees where men go for sex breaks. He makes friends with a shy, potato-faced man named Henri. Henri is confused about the whole place. He’s sure all the men there are cheating on their wives. He’s never heard of the concept of “full-time gays”. They chat about the sea monsters in the water and the guys on the beach. Henri (Patrick d’Assumçao) can tell Franck is attracted to a particular fit man with a Marlboro mustache – the stranger by the lake. And maybe that attraction is mutual. 
But Franck knows Marlboro Man is taken – he has a beach buddy.
But one night Franck sees the two of them frolicking out in the lake. The beach buddy goes down under water… and doesn’t come back up again. Is he dead? Did Marlboro man kill him?
Franck starts hanging with Marlboro Man – who he discovered is named Michel (Christof Paou). They tan together, have sex together… but only by the lake. At night Michel drives to somewhere mysterious – and he won’t say where.
When a body is found, a police inspector (Jérôme Chappatte) starts snooping around the beach. (He looks like Lt Colombo dying of cancer.) Franck is caught between lust and fear: is his mysterious lover also a serial killer?
This is a weird, eerie, almost surreal movie about casual sex, death and (in what might be an unspoken reference to HIV) the connection between the two. It’s sexually explicit but not always erotic. Stranger by the Lake is an excellent French art film.
Cocksucker Blues (1972)
Dir: Robert Frank
Robert Frank is a documentary photographer who was commissioned by the Rolling Stones to do a behind the scenes real-life documentary of their tour in 1972. He came up with this – a record of everything that happened – using small, hand-held cameras. You get to travel on board their private plane where everyone’s having sex, rolling around in the aisles. You get to see the hippy soundman giving Frank the hairy-eyeball every time he turns the camera toward him. Later you see the same guy shooting heroin.
You follow the entire entourage it takes to put on a show. Mick and Keith hunt for authenticity in the South. Groupies, hangers-on, bouncers, the make-up guy, the hair guy, the costume guy holding a single red rose. And the baby boomer fans are in clover and everywhere. The band bounces around the stage singing duets with Stevie Wonder. This is early behind-the-scenes celebrity culture, before it even had a name. Mick Jagger squeezing into his performance pantsuits. Andy Warhol and Truman Capote partying. Tina Turner showing off her voice. The unbelievably beautiful Bianca Jagger throwing shade at the camera…
In the end, the film was banned — the Stones thought the raw sex and drugs interfered with their rock star image – but it’s playing in Toronto, just once, as part of a Robert Frank retrospective called Hold Still.
Stranger by the Lake opens today, Cocksucker Blues has a free screening on the Free Screen tonight (but you have to pick up a ticket: go to tiff.net for details) and The Past opens next Friday (Jan 24).
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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