Parents and their children. Films reviewed: Tuesday, Kidnapped
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Sunday is Fathers Day, so this week I’m looking at two movies about parents and children. There’s a mother whose daughter is threatened by a big ugly bird, and parents whose son is kidnapped by the Pope.
Tuesday
Wri/Dir: Daina Oniunas-Pusic
Tuesday (Lola Petticrew) is a teenaged girl in London who is dying of an incurable disease. She likes comics and drawing. She spends most of her time in her bedroom with her Nurse Billie (Leah Harvey) or else in the walled garden outside her home, because she is too weak to get around anymore. She only sees her mother at night when she comes home from work. Until a stranger shows up in her life. It’s a huge bird, like a giant parrot, covered in filthy, black feathers. He is death incarnate, and he’s come to take her away by placing his wing over her body. But instead, she asks to talk to him. She helps him clean up, revealing colourful plumage, and she tells him a joke — the first time he’s laughed in centuries. So he lets her live, for now, but she can’t tell anyone about him. Meanwhile Tuesday’s mom Zora (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), has a secret of her own. She quit work a long time ago, to take care of her dying daughter. But she can’t face it; instead she spends all day sitting alone in a nearby park, doing nothing. And she’s been selling off all their possessions to help pay for the nurse. But everything changes when Tuesday tells her about her imaginary friend… and Zora is shocked to find she’s telling the truth. But she refuses to accept her daughter’s death, and takes an extraordinarily drastic step to stop the inevitable from happening. But what will these new changes bring to the family and the world and can Zora ever accept the inevitable loss waiting to happen.
Tuesday is an unusual but strangely moving fantasy about a 
mother and daughter confronting death. It starts out a bit odd, and gradually turns into a very strange movie indeed. But while it deals with some horrific ideas, it’s not a horror movie. It has supernatural elements, but it’s not meant to be scary. And despite its religious concepts of life and death, it’s not a faith-based movie. What it is is a very moving, mother/daughter drama about death. Julie Louis Dreyfuss, best known for her deadpan comedy in Seinfeld and Veep, plays it straight in this one, and really bares her soul in a deeply moving performance. And Lola Petticrew is equally sympathetic as Tuesday. This is nothing like most movies you see, but very effective nonetheless; come prepared both to laugh and cry.
I really liked this movie.
Kidnapped
Co-Wri/Dir: Marco Bellocchio
It’s the 1850s in a middle-class neighbourhood in Bologna. Salomone Mortara (Fausto Russo Alesi) lives with his wife Marianna Padovani Mortara (Barbara Ronchi) and their children. One night there is a banging on their front door: it’s the police demanding an inspection. They want to see Edgardo Mortara, an angelic little boy, number six of eight kids. Local officials are apologetic, but they must hand him over, under the orders of Father Feletti (Fabrizio Gifuni), the local inquisitor. But surely there’s some mistake, they say, what could this little boy have done? He was secretly baptized as a baby by his maid, they say, and no Christian child can be brought up in a Jewish family. Bologna — and much of Italy — was then part of the Papal States, where the government, the police, and the judiciary were all under the direct rule of the Vatican’s representatives and ultimately Pope Pius IX. And despite their vehement objections and petitions, they whisk the crying child off to Rome.
He is brought to the House of Catachumens, a special school for converts to be taught the Latin Mass. Little Edgardo (Enea Sala) misses his family terribly but a friend he meets says if you want to go home soon, just cooperate and learn the prayers, you don’t have to believe them. His flabbergasted father and devastated mother are desperately trying to get him out of there, but to no avail. But the story has caught the eye of the international press, making 
banner headlines in Paris, London and New York. And this makes Pope Pius IX even more steadfast in his beliefs. Will the family all convert to Catholicism to get back their son? Will Pope Pius relent and let him go home again? And who will the little boy choose as his guardians: his Mama and Papa or Il Papa, the Pope himself?
Kidnapped: The Abduction of Edgardo Mortara is an overwhelming drama based on true historic events. Though little-known today, it had a huge affect on world politics, history and, ultimately, the unification of Italy. It takes place in their homes of Bologna, The Roman Ghetto, in courtrooms, on canals, and within the Vatican itself. Its powerful music, lush photography and opulent sets and costumes support the passionate almost melodramatic acting. Barbara Ronchi is fantastic as Mrs Mortara, while Paolo Pierobon as Pope Pius comes across as a creepily salacious Mafia don, cuddling up to his favourite little boy and letting him hide beneath his robes (as he had huddled in his mother’s skirts when first abducted.) It also veers into fantasy within the dreams of various characters, from little Edgardo who dreams of de-crucifying Jesus so he can go home, and the Pope who has nightmares of being forcibly circumcised by a gang of rabbis. Kidnapped is an amazingly powerful historical drama set within the changing tides of 19th century Europe.
On a personal note, my childhood next door neighbour, Mrs Sharon Stahl, ended up writing her doctoral theological dissertation on this case, so I had head about it many years ago and it’s amazing to finally see it dramatized on the big screen.
Fantastic movie.
Tuesday is now playing at the TIFF Lightbox, and Kidnapped also opened this weekend; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks with Liz Whitmere about her new film Cold
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Jane is a 40 year old, middle-class, married woman, who is suffering from an unidentified illness. She’s feeling cold and uncomfortable. her skin is palid, her nails are brittle and food just doesn’t taste right anymore. Even simple things are hard to do. When she stretches for yoga her bones seem to crack. But when she asks her friends, her husband or her doctor, about what’s going on…they all seem to think it’s that change in life that all women go through. But what no one realizes is, it’s not her feelings, it’s not a change in life, it’s her lack of life… she’s dead! Literally. Maybe that’s why she feels so cold.
Cold is a dark and eerie look at one woman’s body told through the lens of of a comic horror movie. It’s also about the diminution of women’s health concerns, and the 
gaslighting of legitimate problems. It’s funny, spooky and very weird. It’s the work of multi-award-winning Toronto-based producer/writer/director Liz Whitmere, whose work has been seen on CBC, CBC Gem and at the Whistler Film Festival. Multi-talented, she’s also known for her acting and standup comedy.
Cold is having its world premiere on November 25th at Isabel Bader theatre in Toronto as part of the Mournful Mediums program at Blood in the Snow (a.k.a. BITS) the Canadian Horror film festival.
I spoke with Liz Whitmere in Toronto via Zoom.
Daniel Garber talks with Agam Darshi about her new film Donkeyhead
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Mona is a youngish woman in Regina, Saskatchewan who is living the life of Reilly. She lives rent free in a big old house, received a whopping advance on her first novel, she’s dating a successful lawyer, and she sees her dad regularly. So why is she such a mess? Because she still lives in her crumbling, childhood home, her lover is married with kids, she has perpetual writer’s block and never wrote the book, she spends all her time taking care of her bed-ridden, cancerous father downstairs, and they seem to hate each other’s guts. But when his health takes a turn for the worse she realizes she has to call her siblings to come see him before he dies. But a happy 
reunion it ain’t.
Donkeyhead is the name of a great new tragicomic movie about a dysfunctional Sikh-Canadian family reunited around their dying father’s bed. It’s funny, it’s moving and always surprising. It’s written, directed and produced by Agam Darshi who also performs in the lead role of Mona. Agam is a successful actress and also the co-founder of the Vancouver South Asian Film Festival, but as a director Donkeyhead is her first feature. It deals with family issues, childhood grudges, assimilation vs tradition, and impending death, all set within Regina’s Punjabi Sikh community.
Donkeyhead opened theatrically this weekend in Regina, Saskatoon and Toronto.
I spoke with Agam Darshi from Toronto via ZOOM.
Daniel Garber talks with Tickled director David Farrier at #HotDocs
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
David Farrier is a New Zealand TV journalist who specializes in odd and off-beat stories. So when he sees an ad online looking for athletic young men, aged 18-23, for Competitive Endurance Tickling, he sees a potential story. But when he contacts the company, run by a secretive woman named Jane O’Brien, he gets a surprising reaction: a series of abusive and 
threatening email.
Followed by three men flown all the way to New Zealand from LA, threatening a lawsuit if he doesn’t drop the story. Just for investigating some guys being tickled.
Tickled is also the name of a fascinating and disturbing new documentary about hidden identities, vast conspiracies, and cyber bullying. All surrounding a phenomenon – professional tickling — largely unknown to the general public. It’s co-directed by actor, journalist and crypto-zoologist David Farrier who’s also the film’s narrator and subject.
I spoke to David at Dublin Calling in Toronto at Hot Docs earlier this spring. Tickled opens today in Toronto.
Photos by Jeff Harris
European movies without subtitles. Films Reviewed: Every Thing Will Be Fine, The Danish Girl, Youth
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
If you want to see a European movie, but can’t stand reading subtitles, have I got some movies for you! This week I’m reviewing three movies by famous European directors with multinational casts but only using English dialogue. There’s a Quebec writer trying to forget a terrible accident, a Danish painter who moves to Paris trying to escape her gender, and some artists at a Swiss spa who just want to while away the hours.
Every Thing Will be Fine
Dir: Wim Wenders
Tomas (James Franco) is a novelist in Quebec. He’s gone ice fishing to clear his mind, but it doesn’t seem to be doing much good. He has writers’ block, severe depression and marital problems. And his elderly father (Patrick Bauchau) is even worse. Tomas’s partner Sara (Rachel McAdams) really wants to help him, 
but he doesn’t seem to want to be helped. And then disaster strikes: driving home in a blizzard he doesn’t see two kids tobogganing down a hill right in front of him. After the accident he brings the older boy, Christopher, home to his mom Kate’s home (Charlotte Gainsbourg). It wasn’t Tomas’s fault but it messed up his life, Sara’s, Kate’s and even little Christopher’s. He hits rock bottom and tries to kill himself. It doesn’t work. But things do get better. Gradually.
His sorrows provide new material for his next book, and at 
a meeting at his publisher he encounters Ann (Marie-Josée Croze) a woman with a young daughter. And over the next dozen or so years, things really do become fine for Tomas. But what has become of the other people affected by the accident?
This is a movie about relationships, guilt and memory. It’s also about writing and the ownership of 
events and ideas. Who controls the way a story is told? The writer or the subjects? And it’s shot in beautiful Quebec locations. But is it a good movie? For the first half hour at least, Wim Wenders’ film is almost unbearably slow. Slow as molasses on a cold winter’s day. Slow as sap dripping out of a maple tree. Pauses between each line so long you could step outside for a break and not miss a thing. That kind of depressing slowness. But everything becomes much better as the movie goes on until, by the end, it’s actually a very interesting movie.
The second half redeems the first.
The Danish Girl
Dir: Tom Hooper
Einer Wegener (Eddie Redmayne) is a young, successful landscape artist 100 years ago, in turn-of-the-century Copenhagen. He’s married to another artist a portrait painter named Gerda (Alicia Vikander: Ex Machina). Gerda is a feminist and an artist, but can’t reach the fame of her husband. Probably because she’s a woman. One day Gerda has him pose with his legs together, wearing stockings and high heels, as a stand-in when her female model can’t 
come. Something clicks on deep inside him, and the “Danish girl” of the title is born. She names herself Lili Elbe. Gerda is a bit surprised but takes it in stride. But for Lili this means big changes. She ventures out-of-doors and encounters a man named Henrik (Ben Whishaw). But Lili is distressed to discover he’s gay and desires her as a man, not as a woman.
Later Lili takes a break as Einer moves with Gerda to Paris. He consults doctors and psychiatrists there; he’s worried he may be going crazy. Lili comes back into their lives. Suddenly Gerda becomes the talk of the town with her unusual paintings and their enigmatic subject. Who is that woman in her portraits? Lili of course. Einer is more and more sublimated as Lili comes to the surface. His childhood friend Hans (Matthias Schoenaerts) appears in their lives again. He is very sympathetic to Lili’s plight but at the same time helps Gerda with their marital difficulties. Which one is he closest 
to now? Lili suffers attacks on the street by thugs and even more terrible treatment by cruel doctors and psychiatrists. Will she ever meet a doctor who believes her? One that can transform her body to match her gender?
The Danish Girl is a visually beautiful, highly emotional historical drama, based on Lili Elbe’s memoirs as one the first famous, transgendered women. But it doesn’t work as a movie. It’s overwrought, melodramatic, even operatic in parts. It feels dated and stiff.
Redmayne’s performance is totally believable both as Einer and as Lili. And I understand that movies like this are made with potential Oscars and ticket sales in mind. But with the flood of big-budget movies and TV shows — Transparent, Dallas Buyers Club, The Danish Girl — aren’t they ever going to cast a trans actor in the lead role?
Youth
Dir: Paolo Sorentino
Fred and Mick (Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel) are two old friends spending some time at a luxury spa in Switzerland. They’ve known each other for 60-odd years and are so close that Fred’s daughter Lena (Rachel Weiss) is married Mick’s son. They’re family now.
Fred is an English composer and conductor who, though retired, still has melodies bouncing around his brain. He sounds them out using a candy wrapper between two fingers. He’s being pursued by a representative of the Queen, who wants him to conduct, in her presence, his most famous composition known simply as a Simple Song. He refuses.
Mick is a famous Hollywood director. He’s at the spa with his writers and 
actors, hammering out his latest, and perhaps last, film script. He’s waiting to hear from Brenda, an over-the-hill Hollywood diva (Jane Fonda) about appearing in this movie.
But they are far from alone at this exclusive resort. There’s also a young actor (Paul Dano) rehearsing a part in a German movie; an overweight soccer star, a mountain climber, a beautiful Italian model, and a Tibetan lama.
This is a great movie. The film is a series of vignettes, ostensibly about two old guys assessing their whole lives,
discussing what they should have done, and what to do next.
But more than that, it’s also an incredibly beautiful movie to watch and listen to. It’s funny, surprising, a bit bombastic, and occasionally predictable. But above all it’s subtle. It’s not a high-concept movie, just a beautiful montage.
The director, Paolo Sorentino, is famous for his last film, A Great Beauty. But I like this one much better, because it’s not as plotty as that one, heading toward some supposedly profound ending.
This one just is.
Youth, The Danish Girl, and Every Thing Will be Fine all open today in Toronto; check your local listings. And if subtitles don’t bother you, be sure to catch the a free screening at Innis Town Hall of the classic Kurosawa movie Ikiru, playing for free (Dec 15, at 6:30), courtesy of the Japan Foundation.
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 Zhang Yimou about his new film Coming Home at #TIFF14
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s China’s cultural revolution. A jailed intellectual escapes from prison to see his wife, but they are prevented from meeting by a political bargain set up by someone he should trust. And in the scuffle his wife suffers a brain injury. Years later, after the cultural revolution, he returns home… only to find his wife doesn’t 
recognize him, and his daughter, a ballet student, has been kicked out of their home. So a family has been split in three as a result of his coming home.
COMING HOME is also the name of a film that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. It stars 
Gong Li as the mother. It was directed by Chinese master filmmaker Zhang Yimou, known, over the past three decades, for movies like Red Sorghum, Raise the Red Lantern, House of Flying Daggers, and Hero. As a Chinese director he is rare indeed as one who is commercially successful, critically acclaimed and acceptable to the government. I spoke to him at TIFF in September, 2014. Coming Home opens today in Toronto.
Photos by Jeff Harris.
Daniel Garber interviews Kore-eda Hirokazu about his new film Like Father, Like Son (そして父になる)
Hi, This is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM
What would you do if your discovered you’re not the father of your child? Not adopted father, not step-father, not foster-father… What if you discovered the actual child your wife gave birth to isn’t the one you’re raising?
A new movie called Like Father, Like Son (そして父になる) looks at a married couple in Tokyo who discover their six-year-old son, Keita, was switched at birth in a rural hospital with another 
baby named Ryusei.
Noted director and festival favourite Kore-eda Hirokazu has won countless awards for his poignant, realistic social dramas. His subtle new drama deals with issues of blood, patrimony, family, children, class, names and identity. Like Father, Like Son opens today in Toronto.
I spoke with him at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, 2013.
Daniel Garber talks to director Kazik Radwanski and producer Dan Montgomery about their new film TOWER
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies forculturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
A few years ago a new voice appeared on the indie movie scene. A series of short, sharp realistic films showing ordinary, if socially awkward, people. People who run up against harsh authority figures, the holders of power, whom they try, unsuccessfully, to avoid: a little kid facing a domineering teacher, an older woman who may be losing her memory sent to a condescending psychiatrist, a teenager accused of assaulting a cop, an unsuccessful real estate agent with a pushy wife…
The films created quite the buzz on the festival scene, bouncing from Edinburgh to Berlin, 
Melbourne to Toronto, picking up lots of prizes on the way. And now the first feature, TOWER, which played at TIFF last fall and is opening in Toronto on February 22, 2013. It tells the story of a rudderless, socially inept man named Derek (Derek Bogart), a guy without ambition or aims, who’s just coasting along through life. This fascinatingly dark comedy is designed to make audiences squirm along with the characters on the screen.
Writer/Director Kazik Radwanski, and his long time collaborator producer Daniel Montgomery talk to me about the film’s characters and where they came from, its themes, its look, whether it’s a comedy, a drama, or a documentary; some of their earlier films, where their production company got its name, and more…
May 17, 2012 Inside Out and Upside Down. Movies Reviewed: The Dictator, The Mystery of Mazo de la Roche, Bullhead PLUS CFC Short 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, genre and mainstream movies, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.
The Festivals continue in Toronto, and coming on June 5th is the CFC Short Film Festival, which proves once and for all, it’s not the size (of movies) it’s the motion. Or something like that… You know all those Oscars for sort films , but never get a chance to see them? Well these are the ones that might be nominated for next year’s awards. There are movies featuring celebs like Michael Fassbender, David Duchovny, Charlotte Rampling and Anna Paquin. In short films! And they’re all grouped in categories like “Homeland Security”, “Indie Comedy Showcase”, and “The Night Shift” – which will be showing at late hours, soft of a Midnight Madness Mini-me… It all sponsored by the Canadian Film Centre, and it starts on June 5th
And NXNE, where music conquers all – and that includes their movies – is coming on June 11th. But right now, starting last night, it’s time for the friendly and fascinating LGBT Film Festival, Toronto’s own Inside Out. And if you think its all rainbow ring necklaces and coming-out stories, well, you’re wrong. It’s a very diverse, multi-genre collection of movies, some of which push the limits of the conventional. There are movies from Canada, and around the world: Scandinavia, the US, even Vietnam. Comedies, dramas, romance, documentaries, and lots of sex, of course. Something to satisfy every sexuality and interest. I’m talking about a couple movies today, a Belgian one about cows, and a Canadian one about white oak trees…! But first, a new comedy, you may have heard about.
The Dictator
Dir: Larry Charles
Aladeen (Sacha Baron Cohen) is the military dictator of a North African kingdom. He’s cruel and unpredictable, quietly sentencing to death anyone who disagrees with him. Like Saddam Hussein he has a series of identical doubles to take the bullets from any assassin out to get him, and a Gaddafi- style band of beautiful women soldiers to protect him. He’s a world pariah, and like Kim Jong-il is set to test-launch a nuclear WMD. But what he doesn’t know is that his trusted Tamir (Ben Kingsley) is the one trying to depose him and make his homeland a pseudo-democracy controlled by big oil.
So, on a trip to NYC to speak before the UN, he is kidnapped by a racist American torturer, until he manages to escape… but without his trademark beard and clothing he is just another man. So in a bid to seize back his country at a UN meeting, he falls in with a hippy named Zoey (Anna Faris) who works in an organic food co-op.
OK, this is a new type of movie for Sacha Baron Cohen – different from Borat and Bruno. Instead of getting its laughs in fake documentaries by forcing unsuspecting ordinary people into embarrassing encounters with an invented character, this one has a script by a four-person writing team, music, other actors, old-school film plots and special effects. Presumably it’s because too many people recognize him to trick anyone. So he’s abandoned his revolutionary style of youtube filmmaking for an ordinary comedy. But does it work? I have to admit, at times, flashbacks of those 
awful, fish-out-of-water comedies with Eddie Murphy and Adam Sandler at their worst popped into my mind… but it was better than those, because he’s a good actor, and funnier, wittier, and, even now, more subversive with his parodies of both the rabid right and the flaky left. He stays with the simultaneously self-centred — but somehow self-deprecating — nature of his over-the-top characters. Comic actress Anna Faris was great as his “straight-man” foil.
And, except for a few painfully awful sequences, I thought it was funny. It kept me laughing – or at least smiling — for most of the movie.
The Mystery of Mazo de la Roche
Dir: Maya Gallus
Jalna, a book about a rich family won the Atlantic prize for best novel in the 20s, propelling its unknown author to international fame and fortune and dozens of bestsellers about this patrician, horsey collection of matriarchs and patriarchs, grandmothers, lovers and cruel siblings, a sort of an on-going saga at the Whiteoaks mansion. But what’s interesting about it is the hidden life of the Canadian author Mazo de la Roche.
Mazo de la Roche (born, in Newmarket as the decidedly unglamorous Masie Roach) created a persona for herself woven with false stories and mythical status. And even more interesting was her “Boston Marriage” to a woman, Caroline Clement, her adopted sister. Together they adopted two children and ran a novelistic empire. In an era when homosexuality was both illegal, and taboo, her lesbian readers saw her disguised subtexts of relationships and exalted in her hidden codes.
Her story is told half as a conventional documentary with talking heads, and half as a theatrical, dramatic reading of Mazo and Caroline’s life, played by two actors.
The movie brings in her descendents, old photos, and great Canadian novelists like 
Marie-Claire Blais and Susan Swan to comment on the influence these largely forgotten novels had on her readers.
This is a good, entertaining NFB documentary, and it’s made by a great director, Maya Gallus, who does amazing documentaries about women that always grab you – like last year’s Dish: Women, Waitressing & the Art of Service.
Bullhead (Rundskop)
Dir: Michael R. Roskam
Jackie (Mattias Schoenaerts) is a Flemish cattle farmer in Belgium. He’s big and built, partly from heavy work, and partly from his steroid injections. He’s generally brooding but gentle, but on occasion loses it, in a rush of roid-rage. Like cows, like people. To speed up the growth rate of his cattle, he gets involved in the illegal purchase of growth hormones.
Flashback to two decades earlier, we watch him and his best friend Diederik, spotting a pretty girl on a French-speaking Walloon farm. Jackie keeps wanting to go back so he can talk to her again, and Diederik tags along. But on one of those visits he’s caught by a crazed bully, her big brother, who brutally attacks little Jackie… smashing his balls with a huge rock. I kid you not. Diderik doesn’t come to his defense and then is prevented from testifying against the bully who permanently injured his best friend.
Now, back in the present, Jackie is still taking the testosterone that let him 
grow to manhood, and he and Diederik are working together again, buying steroids. And Jackie is trying to talk one more time to the girl from that fatal day, who now works in a perfume shop in the French part of Belgium. And Diederik, meanwhile, has a bro-crush on his ball-less boyhood buddy, even as the police are looking for people to blame for a shooting, perhaps tied to the hormone trafficking.
This is a great movie, if a long one. It’s one of those slow-build dramas, where for the frst half you barely know what’s going on, but by the second hour it becomes gripping, filled with tension – sexual courtship, criminals vs cops, gay and straight, Male Female, French and Dutch, all in a hugely 
complicated but moving drama. Bullhead was the Belgian entry for Academy award for Best Foreign Language Picture, and it’s having its Toronto debut at Inside Out.
The Dictator just opened, check your local listings, and Bullhead, The Mystery of Mazo de la Roche, She Said Boom and many more great movies are playing at the Inside Out Festival: go to insideout.ca for more info.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM, and on my web site CulturalMining.com.
December 30, 2011, More Xmas Movies. Movies Reviewed: The Artist, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close PLUS My Choice of 2011 Best Eleven Movies
Hi, this 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, genre and mainstream movies, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.
Well, here it is, a day away from New Year’s eve, so I guess I’d better tell you my choice for the best movies of 2011.
But first, let me tell you about two more Christmas-y movies that opened this week, one about a kid with a key after the fall of the World Trade Centre, the other about an actor and an actress after the fall of the silent movie.
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
Dir: Stephen Daldry
Oskar (Thomas Horn) is a little kid in Manhattan who’s a bit neurotic, a bit bratty, pretty smart, a little autistic-y, and prone to temper tantrums. Not that different from a lot of kids. Then his dad (Tom Hanks) just happens to be visiting the twin towers on September 11th. So… the kid is left without his dad, and Oskar becomes more and more sketchy. He communicates with his grandmother by walkie-talkie (she’s in the apartment across the courtyard), and ignores his mom. All that’s left of his dad are the voicemail messages he recorded on an answering machine before the towers collapsed. Oskar sets up 
a secret shrine to his dead father, and, when going through his father’s things, he discovers a key in an envelope with the name “Black” written on it.
Oskar divides the whole city into small quadrants on a paper map and decides to knock on the door of every family named Black in the city to see if they have the lock that his father’s key will open. One day he meets his grandmother’s reclusive tenant (Max von Sydow) for the first time, even though he’s shared her apartment since after WWII. The tenant is an old German man who will not (or cannot) speak, but communicates by writing little notes in his moleskine with a sharpie and tearing out the pages. Oskar sets out with him on a search for his father’s hidden secrets. With the old man‘s help, maybe he can face his worst fears and reach closure with his dad’s death.
Unfortunately, this is a dreadful movie. It rests on the shoulders of a first-time child actor, who is just not very good. (Apparently, they cast him after he enchanted audiences on Kids’ Jeopardy). We’re supposed to find his Asberger-like behaviour fascinating – it’s not – and his precociousness awe-inspiring – also not. Then there’s Sandra Bullock’s awfulness as the weepy, suffering mother. (Go away, Sandra Bullock — I don’t want to watch your movies anymore.) Only the always-dependable Max von Sydow, and Viola Davis (in a small part as one of the hundereds of people named “Black”) partly redeem the scenes they’re in. Other than that, it’s a non-stop yuck-fest of forced-sentimental pseudo-patriotism with the aim of bestowing sainthood on an entire city because of 9-11. Give it a rest… I would avoid this movie at all costs.
The Artist
Dir: Michel Hazanavicius
George Valentin, (Jean Dujardin) is a movie star of the Silent Screen, the darling of his fans, rich, successful. He can do anything, even question the decisions of the Sam Goldwyn–type movie moghul at Kinograph Studios (John Goodman). It’s just him, his stodgy wife, and his cute little doggy. One night at a reception he runs into a pretty young flapper who catches his eye, and gets her face on the cover of Variety: Who’s That Girl? it asks. Why, it’s an unknown, new starlet, Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo)! And just like that, a star is born… but as she rises, he falls. And when talkies are introduced, he soon finds himself poor, jobless, homeless, and single again. Will Peppy Miller make it big? Will Valentin ever have his comeback? And will his cute and faithful dog (Uggie) and his chauffeur (James Cromwell) stay by his side?
What’s the twist? Well, the whole movie is filmed in the style of a silent movie, 
with no spoken dialogue. So what? you may be thinking. And my answer would be: indeed.
Doing a silent movie that’s also about silent movies shows an incredible lack of imagination. There’s nothing especially new or interesting in this film. I mean, it’s visually pleasing, a fun re-enactment of old movies, a nice diversion… but nothing more. The score – which is so important in silent films — was underwhelming; and the story held almost no surprises, except an especially lame ending. The costumes and the camera work, though, were both incredible; and I thought the acting was great – for what it’s worth (it seemed more like a pantomime to me.)
I mean, people like Charlie Chaplin and Jacques Tati made great silent movies long after talkies were well established, but they were good because they were original, funny and surprising. This one isn’t – there’s not an original moment in the entire film, just the re-hashing of things that were once original moments in silent movies. (There are a few hahaha parts, but no real gut busters.) They seem to forget that silent movies were actual movies. This one is more concerned with replicating the surface of silent movies – or how people today look back at them — than making a good movie, period. The Artist is a film for movie collectors not for moviegoers.
Here’s my top eleven movies of 2011. I only included movies that played commercially during that year, so I had to leave out terrific ones that only played in festivals – like Hysteria and Himizu at TIFF, and The Evening Dress at Inside-out. And I don’t include the many amazing documentaries, like Resurrect Dead: the Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles that played at HotDocs; or Page One: Inside the New York Times. I also try to include both mainstream and independent or avant-garde movies. And I haven’t seen every movie from this past year, so I may have missed some gems. OK, here goes, in alphabetical order:
Quadraplegic amputee “war god” returns to his Japanese village:
Caterpillar
Lesbian romance in Tehran:
Circumstance
Danish L.A. film noir thriller:
Drive
Bizarre Polish art film about CIA black sites in Europe:
Essential Killing
Poor, black maids and rich white housewives in 1960’s Mississippi:
The Help
Women leading a wagon train through Oregon
Meek’s Cutoff
The apes are revolting:
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Kids shooting a super 8 film uncover a dangerous mystery:
Super 8
A mentally ill husband dreams of coming disaster:
Take Shelter
Cold War thriller about a possible mole within the high-ranks of MI6:
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
A horse seeks his boy in the trenches of WWI:
War Horse
Runners-up:
Names of Love (le Nom des gens)
Submarine
Incendie
Attack the Block
The Artist and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close are now playing in Toronto (check your local listings). War Horse, Tinker Tailor…, Take Shelter and Drive are also playing in some theatres.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies for CIUT 89.5 FM, and on my web site, Cultural Mining . com.
culturalmining.com 
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