Daniel Garber talks with Valerie Kontakos and David Bourla about Queen of the Deuce
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
New York City in the 1970s is a gritty city with a chip on its shoulder. Crime is rampant, and its government faces bankruptcy. But it’s also exploding with creativity and freedom of expression, in film, theatre, music and art, while the sexual revolution, the women’s movement and gay rights are in full swing. The city’s centre is 42nd street, and the strip running from Times Square to the Port Authority and north on 8th ave is filled with porn theatres and peep shows. And on top of it all sits a Jewish Greek-American woman, Chelly Wilson, ruling over her porn empire.
Queen of the Deuce is a fantastic new documentary about Chelly’s 
life, her work, her family and the world she built. Born in Thessaloniki, she hid her children, escaped the Nazi invasion, and gradually made her way to the top of the NY porn movie industry. The doc includes personal photos and letters, period footage, animation and talking heads to give a first-hand look at a previously unknown hero.
The film was directed by Valerie Kontakos, a well-known documentarian, founder of the NY Greek Film festival and on the Board of Directors of the Greek Cinematheque. The film features members of Chelly’s family, including her grandson, David Bourla, a screenwriter in his own right, known for action films like Push.
I spoke with Valerie in Athens and David in New York City from Toronto, via Zoom.
Queen of the Deuce is playing in Toronto at the Hot Docs Cinema as part of TJFF on June 3rd, 2023.
Feelings. Films reviewed: Almamula, About My Father, You Hurt My Feelings
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Inside-Out film festival is on now, playing a broad spectrum of movies, docs and shorts reflecting the world’s 2SLGBTQ+ communities. It avoids stereotypical LGBT films, choosing instead thoughtful and even experimental new films. For example, there’s a great new doc on the Indigo Girls called It’s Only Life After All and many, many more, now through June 4th, in person and online.
This week, I’m looking at three movies; an Argentinian drama from Inside Out, plus two new US comedies. We’ve got a rom-com, a social comedy, and a coming-of-age thriller.
Almamula
Wri/Dir: Juan Sebastián Torales
Nino (Nicolás Díaz) is a teenaged schoolboy with dark hair and glasses in Northern Argentina. He lives in a suburban neighbourhood with his Mom and Dad (Maria Soldi, Cali Coronel) and his older sister Natalia. But when word gets out that he’s gay, he is punched, kicked and spat upon by a group of boys from his school, who leave his bruised, unconscious body in a rusty car. And the attackers parents blame Nino for “corrupting” their sons’ minds. So the family packs up their car and moves to their dad’s second home, a huge wooden house, far away, in a remote rural area. He runs a business chopping up trees and bulldozing forests, but the workers are worried because another boy, also Nino’s age, recently disappeared into the woods and never came back. They blame it on Almamula, a mythical monster who lures boys and men into her clutches. She preys, they say, on carnal sin.
Nino is enrolled in confirmation classes learning prayers, morality and sin, along with lessons about puberty. But poor Nino has a one-track 
mind: sex. He finds himself turned on even by statues of a half-naked Jesus writhing on a cross. And he is drawn to the woods, hoping to see Almamula there. Only Maria (Luisa Lucia Paz) understand the old ways of the woods and helps Nino in his journey.
The verdant forest is filled with twisted vines, and mouldering swamps, simultaneously erotic and terrifying, like his own sexual thoughts. His dreams drift in and out of reality as he ogles workmen in his house, his sister’s boyfriend, and above all, a handyman named Malevo (Beto Frágola). A handsome indigenous fisherman, Malevo sleeps in a tent on the riverbank beyond the forest. He represents absolute freedom to Nino. Malevo rejects religion and follows other traditions — respect the forest or it will get revenge. Nino is torn between heaven and hell, carnal sin and carnal sex. Even when stigmata appear on his palms and thorns scratch his forehead, he can’t decide whether to worship Jesus or succumb the red-eyed monster. Surrounded by the obvious lies and lusts of the locals and his own family, which way will Nino turn?
Almamula is an unusual coming-of-age story about a teenager’s sexual awakening. It incorporates fairytales, mythology, and religion as seen through Nino’s confused and sexually-obsessed mind. Although not a horror movie, per se, it’s told in that style, with sounds of dragging chains, scary monsters, and highly sexualized nightmares. The old wooden house they move into creaks and groans, its ceiling fans rarely turning. And nature is always close by, both alluring and brutal in its grandeur. Great acting and beautifully shot in the wilds of rural Argentina, Almamula is a strange and fascinating story.
About My Father
Dir: Laura Terruso
Sebastian Maniscalco (Sebastian Maniscalco) is a hotel manager in Chicago in his 40s. He’s in a long-term relationship with his girlfriend Ellie (Leslie Bibb) a painter who just had her first one-woman show. After much hemming and hawing, Sebastian nervously agrees to meet her parents, and if all goes well, to smooth the way toward marriage. But there’s a fly in the ointment: his dad. Salvo Maniscalco (Robert De Niro) is a Sicilian immigrant and Sebastian’s only family, and he insists on coming along, too. A widower, Salvo was a successful hairstylist in his prime, known for his brash opinions, old-world ways and his generous use of men’s cologne. Sebastian is afraid he’ll embarrass him in front of his potential in-laws.
They get their first glimpse of Ellie’s family at an airport near DC when her preppy brother Lucky tells them to ditch their rentacar and fly with him in his private helicopter. Ellie’s family is not just rich, they’re filthy rich and Plymouth Rock powerful. Old money. His dad 
owns a chain of luxury hotels, and his mom Tigger (Kim Cattrall) is a Senator. Their summer home is a mansion inside a country club. Will they accept Sebastian into their rarified world? Does he want to be a part of it? And what about his dad?
About My Father is a broad comedy about class and ethnicity, and it’s kind of funny. I laughed more than once, and some of the side characters — like Tigger and the two brothers, Lucky and Doug, a new-ager — keep the plot moving. De Niro plays his dead-pan dad to perfection, reversing the role he played in the Meet the Fokkers series. The big question is who the hell is Sebastian Maniscalco, who write and stars in a movie, about himself (starting with a cute family history). In real life he’s a stand-up comic with some acting roles, not a hotel manager. The problem is the character Sebastian (a hotel manager) is prone to suddenly shift into the real Sebastian’s stand-up comedy schtick. I guess his die-hard fans will find it funny to see a comedian duck walk across a room flapping his arms, but to me it was just embarrassing. That said, though neither uproariously hilarious nor terribly original, About My Father is watchable, funny and even heartwarming.
You Hurt My Feelings
Wri/Dir: Nicole Holofcener
Beth and Don (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tobias Menzies) are married professionals living a comfortable life in New York City. They are also deeply in love, so close that they share ice cream cones. Beth is a published author who also leads writers’ workshops; she’s trying to get her first novel published. Don is a well-established therapist who mainly counsels bickering couples and neurotic individuals. Sarah (Michaela Watkins), Beth’s sister and best friend, lives nearby with her partner Mark (Arian Moayed). She’s an interior decorator, he’s an actor.
Everything’s going great until Beth and Sarah overhear Don and Mark talking about her latest unpublished novel… and her always loving, always supportive husband says her book sucks. Beth is devastated. Is their marriage a lie? Is nothing true? She’s not the only one going through a bad time. Some of Don’s patients are insufferable, and he finds himself forgetting who is who. Is he fit to be a psychiatrist? Sarah begins to think her thankless job is a joke, spending weeks 
tracking down a particular light fixture. And Mark wonders, at his age, why is he still a struggling actor? Even Beth and Don’s only son Elliot (Owen Teague) is working in a pot dispensary and refuses to show her the manuscript he’s writing. What can be done to fix all their lives?
You Hurt My Feelings is a very funny, satirical social comedy. It gently mocks everyone involved, but especially Gen-X educated, white, urban professionals. Like any comedy, it goes for the laughs but what sets this apart is that the characters are flawed, realistic and believable — rather than over-the-top exaggerations. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is as good as ever, and in a very different role from the wise-cracking ones in Seinfeld and Veep. This is a very sweet and funny movie.
About my Father and You Hurt My Feelings both open this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings. Almamula is playing tonight, Saturday May 27, 9:30 pm, at the TIFF Bell Lightbox as part of the Inside Out Film Festival.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Friends and Lovers. Films reviewed: The Starling Girl, The Eight Mountains
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Spring Film Festival Season continues in Toronto, with Inside-Out opening next week, followed by TJFF in June.
But this week, I’m looking at two new dramas; one from the US, the other from Italy. There’s a fundamentalist young woman in Kentucky looking for love, and two men in the Italian alps looking for the fundamentals of friendship.
The Starling Girl
Wri/Dir: Laurel Parmet
Jem Starling (Eliza Scanlen) is a 17-year-old girl in Kentucky, creative, pretty and burgeoning with sexual urges. She lives in the Holy Grace Christian community under the strict guidance of her parents and Pastor Taylor. She directs her energy into dance, moving her body to express her true feelings. But the dance troupe is supervised every step of the way and the slightest transgression — be it a visible bra strap or a hint of leg — is labeled selfish or sinful. Too many sins and you get shipped off to the dreaded King’s Valley — and they’ve all seen what happens to people sent there.
Pastor Taylor and her parents believe it’s time for “courtship” — 
that is Jen spending time with the boy they choose. They set it up but it does not go well. Ben Taylor is immature, gawky and socially inept. His idea of a good time is joking about chicken droppings. In any case, Jen has her eyes on the prize: Owen (Lewis Pullman). He’s charismatic and tanned, just back from Puerto Rico. He’s into meditation more than scripture. The only problem is he’s a Taylor, too, the preacher’s eldest son and he’s already married.
They decide to meet on the sly. There first few times are chaste and pure but the two of them are ready to explode. She’s the only real person he’s ever met, the only girl he feels comfortable with, he says. And Jen is infatuated with him. They start sending text messages or passing little notes to set up secret rendezvous. But there are no secrets in a community this small. Everything leaks out 
eventually. Is Jen being manipulated by an older, married man? Can Owen be trusted? And are they really in love?
The Starling Girl is a young woman’s coming-of-age drama about sexual frustration and awakening within a restrictive environment. This is filmmaker Laurel Parmet’s first feature and it’s a doozy. Filled with passion, deceit, secrets and lies, it’s a powerful look through a young woman’s eyes. I’ve never seen Eliza Scanlen before, and just assumed she was discovered in a Kentucky diner — but no, she’s yet another Australian actor bursting onto the American scene (and she’s totally convincing.)
I recommend this one.
The Eight Mountains
Wri/Dir: Felix van Groeningen, Charlotte Vandermeersch
(Based on the novel Le otto montagne by
Paolo Cognetti)
It’s the 1980s in Piedmont Italy. Pietro is an 11 year old boy who goes to school in Turin, but spends his summers with his parents in a tiny mountain village. There he meets Bruno, also 11, who herds long-horned goats and milks cows in the village. They become instant best friends, playing, fighting and swimming in the crystal clear waters of an isolated alpine lake. Bruno even gives Pietro a new name: Biero, which is Pietro, or stone, in the local dialect.
Though their moms are around, both of their fathers are rarely there: Bruno’s dad does construction work in Switzerland, while Pietro’s dad is a chemist at a huge plant in Turin. But he visits when he can — he loves the isolation and grandeur of the mountains, and wants to impart his love of them on his son. He takes him on hikes up the local peaks, recording each visit in a diary. Bruno soon joins their climbs (when he’s not apprenticing to make cheese) and their bonds strengthen each summer. But high school brings big changes — school is in the cities not the villages. And it costs money. Pietro’s parents offer to pay for Bruno to study in Turin. Pietro is offended by them taking his best friend away from the mountains — you’ll ruin him! he says. In any case, Bruno’s father won’t allow it. He puts him to work full-time laying bricks at the age of 13.
Pietro drifts apart from his best friend, and breaks all ties with his family to discover himself. 15 years later, he returns to the village and rekindles his friendship with Bruno. But have they drifted too far apart?
The Eight Mountains is a wonderful novelistic drama about friendship and life in the mountains. The story takes place over two decades, with each role played by three actors, child, adolescent and adult, though mostly as the third. Luca Marinelli (Martin Eden in Martin Eden) is excellent as an almost fragile writer who travels the world looking for his true home, and the eight mountains of the title. (He also narrates the story). Alessandro Borghi plays the 
adult Bruno — burly, bearded and gruff — but filled with self-doubt and conflicting emotions.
I don’t speak Italian, but I love the way the film plays with language and dialect, and communicates literary concepts and foreshadowing but without losing its deep, emotional pull. The film is by the Belgian team of Felix van Groeningen (The Broken Circle Breakdown) and Charlotte Vandermeersch, and it fits perfectly with their past work: it’s quite long (2 1/2 hours) with vivid natural scenery, a moving plot and American-style music. If you’re looking for a good, juicy drama about adult friendships, this is the one to see.
Great movie.
The Eight Mountains and The Starling Girl both open 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 Shazad Latif about What’s Love Got to do with it?
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Zoe is a young woman in London, whose love life is at a standstill: she meets lots of bad boys on dating sites, but, so far, no keepers. Her career — as a documentary filmmaker — is also dragging; she’s running short of ideas. So she decides to combine the two: make a doc about turning to arranged marriages instead of love. Her subject? Kaz, her childhood best friend and next-door neighbour, whose Pakistani parents want to match him up with a suitable bride. Kaz lets Zoe follow him everywhere with her video camera as he navigates the world of arranged marriages. This takes them both to Lahore for a potential wedding between Kaz and his prospective bride Maymouna. But can two strangers make for a happy marriage?
What’s Love Got to do with it? is a charmingly nuanced 
romantic comedy about love and marriage across cultures. Shot in London and Lahore, it looks at differing viewpoints on relationships, without falling for cheap laughs and cultural cliches. It’s directed by the great Shekhar Kapur, written by Jemima Khan and stars Shazad Latif as Kaz and Lily James as Zoe. Shazad is a British actor known for his television work on MI-5 and Star Trek Discovery, and in films like The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.
I spoke with Shazad Latif via Zoom in London.
What’s Love Got to do with it? opens this weekend in Toronto.
Daniel Garber talks with Kelly Reichardt about Showing Up
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s present-day Portland Oregon. Lizzie is an instructor at the College of Arts and Crafts and is preparing her upcoming solo show at a local gallery. She is creating a series of small, clay, glazed sculptures of women in motion. But she also has to deal with the vagaries of daily life: a dysfunctional family, a pigeon wounded by her aggressive cat, a broken water heater, and most of all Jo. Jo is her friend, neighbour, fellow-artist, and absentee landlady. Lizzie holds a long-standing grudge against Jo’s relative success and is carrying on a passive 
aggressive war against her frenemy. But time is running out. Will she finish her art in time, keep her family alive, and finally take a hot shower? And most important, is anyone showing up for her opening?
Showing Up is a new dramatic comedy that takes an inside look at Portland’s art scene. It’s a subtly satirical examination of real life. Showing Up is the latest work of filmmaker Kelly Reichardt, known for her rethinking of traditional genres, from westerns to thrillers to dramas, from Meeks Cutoff to Night Moves to Certain Women.
I spoke with Kelly Reichardt in person at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto, where Showing Up is now playing.
Current cinema. Films reviewed: Babysitter, A Thousand and One, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This week, I’m looking at three new movies, a drama, an adventure-comedy and a sex-comedy. There’s a gang of thieves in the Middle Ages, a middle-aged couple in Québec with a seductive nanny, and a mom in Harlem with an undocumented son.
Babysitter
Wri/Dir: Monia Chokri
Cédric (Patrick Hivon) is a middle-class guy in a Montreal suburb, with an obsession with women’s breasts. He’s happily married with a newborn daughter but his sex life has completely dried up. Maybe that’s why, in a drunken stupor at a UFC fight, he throws himself at a sportscaster on live TV and kisses her. His immortal words Je t’aime Chantal! went viral, and made Cédric famous, but not in a good way. Now he’s on extended leave as the company investigates his sexual harassment. But with a colicky baby, neither he nor his wife on maternity leave Nadine (Monia Chokri) are getting any sleep: the baby never stops crying. So they hire a nanny named Amy (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) to take over some of the pressures of parenthood. And she has a magic touch with the baby, calming her down in an instant.
Amy is 22 years old with beautiful blonde hair and scarlet lips. She is 
both innocent and seductive. And soon enough she has Nadine and Cédric under her thumb, with Jean-Michel, Cedric’s brother (Steve Laplante) close behind. But when she shows up the next day in a semi-pornographic “French maid” costume — compete with short skirt, white stockings and high heels — the three of them don’t whether to faint or explode. Will Amy save their marriage by releasing tension, or has she gone too far? Will Cédric ever learn from his misogynistic behaviour? Will Jean-Michel ever get a hold of himself? And why does Amy act like she does?
Babysitter is a funny and campy Québecois sex comedy. It’s done in the classic manner of French and Italian movies from the 60s where the arrival of an unexpected visitor disrupts a whole family, but updated for the “#MeToo” generation. It’s highly stylized done in a retro manner, 
with bright red colours popping up in every frame, from lipstick to poppies in the garden. And the main characters’ sexual fantasies are played out in soft focus in their heads, like David Hamilton’s softcore porn of the 1970s. There’s even a gratuitous scene with a group of teenaged girls in hot pants and roller skates gliding down a suburban street, a new generation thumbing its collective nose at uptight middle age. And while the movie seems to be shown through the male gaze, filmmaker Monia Chokri adds a satirical feminist subtext, keeping it entirely tongue in cheek.
A Thousand and One
Wri/Dir: A.V. Rockwell
It’s New York City in the early 1990s. Inez (Teyana Taylor) is a young hairdresser, just released from Riker’s. But when she goes back to her old neighbourhood, no one wants to talk to her and she can’t get her old job back. Worst of all, she is heartbroken to see her six-year-old son Terry maltreated by his foster parents. So one day she simply takes him away with her. And after a few weeks of couch surfing, they find a home in an old Harlem tenement, apartment number 1001. To keep them both safe from the law, she gets Terry a new social security number and a new name. He’s shy and rarely speaks but proves to be an excellent student, so much so his teacher helps him transfer to a highly competitive tech school for bright kids. Inez, meanwhile, gets back together with her boyfriend Lucky (William Catlett). Though he makes it clear he is not Terry’s father, eventually they marry and form a loving family. But life is not easy. They have to deal with an unscrupulous landlord, suspicious teachers and 
aggressive cops. And always hanging over their heads is the fact they’re living under fake names and could be caught at any minute.
A Thousand and One is a powerful, realistic and moving drama about the life of a family in Harlem in the 1990s and early 2000s. It’s both heartbreaking and inspiring. It traces their lives through changes of government, from Giuliani’s “Broken Windows” policy through Bloomberg’s “Stop and Frisk”, and how it affects Terry as a young Black man. It’s also a coming of age story, with three actors playing Terry at 6, 13 and 17 — Aaron Kingsley Adetola, Aven Courtney, and Josiah Cross — as he struggles through his best friend, his first crush, and his fractious relationship with his mother as they face the world. I love the period costumes, hair, locations and music. And Teyana Taylor is just amazing as Inez.
A Thousand and One is not a light movie, but it’s a good one.
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
Co-Wri/Dir: John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein
It’s sometime, somewhere far away in a mythical, mystical, medieval kingdom. Edgin and Holga (Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez) are former thieves locked up in a remote panopticon prison. They were caught trying to steal a magic totem but were double crossed by one of their gang. But they manage to escape. Now they want to form a new gang to pull off the ultimate heist: a charm that can bring Edgin’s wife back to life and restore his family including his daughter, Kira. Edgin is the brains, while Holga is the brawn, but they need more. They enlist Simon (Justice Smith) an insecure sorcerer with questionable powers (he earns his living picking pockets at a carnival side show.) Doric (Sophia Lilis) is a ginger-haired druid who can change, in a flash, into any animal she wants, from tiny worm to giant monster. And Xenk 
(played by Bridgerton heartthrob Regé-Jean Page) — an honest and noble member of an evil clan — agrees to join the heist but only if its for good reasons, not for profit.
But they must face their former ally Forge a con man (Hugh Grant). Up to now, he has taken care of Edgin’s little girl, but has since crowned himself King in alliance with a nefarious, all-powerful sorceress. To find his daughter, liberate the riches, and defeat the sorceress, the gang must first accomplish a series of nearly-impossible tasks, worthy of Theseus. Can this ragtag gang of miscreants pull it together? Or are they all headed back to prison?
Dungeons and Dragons: Honor among Thieves is a surprisingly entertaining adventure/comedy, based on the role-play board game of the same name. Players will delight in the more obscure references — from Gelatinous Cubes to Owlbears — but ordinary audiences can fully enjoy it without any background. It also incorporates the story-telling 
aspects of the game, giving the whole film a rich, mythical feel. I went into this movie expecting nothing — previous Dungeons & Dragons incarnations have been dreadful. I shouldn’t have worried about this nerd paradise, seeing its co-written and directed by none other than John Francis Daley, from the TV cult classic Freaks and Geeks (he was a geek, of course). If you like Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings, but with more laughs and less excessive gore and ponderous speeches, then you’ll love this one.
Dungeons & Dragons: Honour among Thieves and A Thousand and One both open this weekend; check your local listings. Babysitter is playing at the Canadian Film Fest, on now.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Canadians coming of age. Films reviewed: Riceboy Sleeps, Golden Delicious, Brother
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Spring Film Festival season is revving up in Toronto, with Cinefranco, Human Rights Watch, The Canadian Film Fest and Tiff’s Next Wave rounding out March into April.
This week, I’m looking at three new Canadian coming-of-age dramas about sons or grandsons of immigrants. There’s a young man in Scarborough who worships his big brother, one in Vancouver who only has eyes for his new neighbour, and another kid in Vancouver who wonders why he doesn’t have a father.
Rice Boy Sleeps
Wri/Dir: Anthony Shim
It’s the early 1990s in British Columbia. So-young (Choi Seung-yoon) is a recent immigrant from Korea who packs and seals cardboard boxes in a factory. Her son, Dong-hyun (Dohyun Noel Hwang) is shy, nervous and wears thick glasses. She taught him to read and write Korean but he’s starting public school for the first time. The other kids — all white — are merciless, say his kimbap smells like farts, and mock everything from his face to his name. His teacher calls her in to change her boy’s name to something more “Canadian” — she gives her a list of approved choices. He asks his mother, why don’t I have a father? Ask me later, she says. But the next time anyone bullies you, say you know taekwando and punch them, hard. He follows her directions and gets suspended for violence.
10 years later, he’s a teenager (Ethan Hwang) who wears contact lenses and dyes his hair blond. His teacher tells all the kids to draw a family tree, but Dong-hyun has no one to include but his mother… and she was an orphan. Again, he asks his mom who 
his father was. She brushes his question off. While his mother is at work, he tries soft drugs alcohol and porn with a friend (Hunter Dillon — who also plays a best friend in Golden Delicious). But he still feels listless and unmoored. Meanwhile So-young has met a boyfriend (played by the director) and is considering marriage, until some shocking news makes her rethink her entire life… and Dong-hyun’s, too
Riceboy Sleeps is a lovely and poetic tale of a boy and his mother trying to fit in, while grasping at whatever’s left of their history. It’s a story of immigrants living in a blatantly racist society but one that also looks at the patriarchal cruelty of the place they came from. It’s minimalist and concise, showing only what is absolutely necessary for maximal emotional impact. That — with good acting, beautiful cinematography, and scenic opening and closing shots — makes Riceboy Sleeps seem almost like a work of art.
Winner of the TIFF 2022 Platform Prize.
Golden Delicious
Dir: Jason Karman
It’s present-day Vancouver. Jake — nicknamed J-Pop (Cardi Wong) is starting his last year of high school. He likes taking photographs and watching basketball. His sister Janet (Claudia Kai) is going to culinary school, while his Mom and Dad (Leeah Wong, Ryan Mah) work 12-hour-days at their upscale Chinese restaurant, passed down from the grandparents.
Jake’s looking forward to spending time with his best buds Sam and Gary, and his childhood sweetheart Vee (Parmiss Sehat). She wants sex and lots of it, while Jake thinks they should wait till marriage before doing the big one. And he’s under lots of pressure to make the basketball team. I was MVP when I was in high school, and I’d be a pro if it weren’t for my knee injury, says dad. But everything changes when a new neighbour Aleks (Chris Carson) appears on the scene. He’s a terrific player and is outspokenly gay. He’s a ringer who moved to the school from 
down east specifically to play on this team. And Jake can’t stop staring at him and snapping pics through his bedroom window. Once they meet, Aleks is willing to help improve Jake’s skills… both on and off the court. Jake is torn between family pressure and personal identity, long-term love vs short term lust. Will Jake make the team? Will Aleks make Jake? And what will his girlfriend, family, and friends do if they ever find out?
Golden Delicious is a coming-of-age and coming-out drama set within a Chinese-Canadian Vancouver family. It deals with current issues like bullying, the lack of privacy (due to social networks), and how parental expectations interfere with their kids’ own wants and needs. I found the high school rom-com aspects cliched, everything from two people bumping into each other and dropping their books in their first meetings, to confrontations in the locker room, to who will ask whom to the 
prom. Much more interesting are the family plot turns, from Janet reverse engineering her grandmother’s recipes, to Jake’s own subtle subterfuge to get out of playing basketball, as well as the very real grinding pressures of running a restaurant (the restaurant is called Golden Delicious). That’s what makes this film worth watching.
Brother
Wri/Dir: Clement Virgo
It’s the 1990s in a working class neighbourhood in Scarborough (Toronto). Michael (Lamar Johnson) is a high school student who lives in an apartment tower with his hard-working mother (Marsha Stephanie Blake). He idolizes his big-brother Frances (Aaron Pierre) who serves as a father figure in his life. Frances is bigger, tougher and better connected than Michael. The gangs know enough to stay away from him, and not to harass Michael, either. Michael hopes he can tap some of Frances’s aura to meet a girl who he really likes. Aisha (Kiana Madeira) is the smartest girl in school and he wants to really meet her. Michael and his friends hope to take hiphop to a new level. There’s a place to hang, a barber shop, where DJs — like Frances’ best bud — spins tracks after closing. But their big break, an audition with high-profile record producers 
downtown, doesn’t pan out. And tensions rise when the twin forces of gangsters on one side and the police force on the other are encroaching on their safe space and tearing their lives apart. Can the sons of Jamaican immigrants survive in the mean streets of Scarborough?
Brother is a fully-imagined, coming-of-age story by two brothers in the 90s. It deals with masculinity, violence sexuality, and black identity. It deftly contrasts between the claustrophobic highrise housing where they live and the nearby idyllic Rouge 
River where they seek refuge. Based on the book by Toronto writer David Chariandy, Brother has a novelistic feel to it, and its use of widescreen cinematic scenes, as in a showdown in the courtyard outside their apartment, gives it an epic sweep. Brother is a powerful and moving drama.
Nominated for 12 Canadian Screen Awards, including Best Picture.
Brother and Riceboy Sleeps open in Toronto this weekend, and at the TIFF Bell Lightbox this and next week; check you local listings. Golden Delicious is premiering at the Canadian Film Festival, which runs from March 28th through April 1. Go to canfilmfest.ca for details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
From India to Iceland. Films reviewed: To Kill a Tiger, Godland
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This week, I’m looking at two new movies now playing in Toronto: a documentary and an historical drama. There’s an underdog in India standing up to her oppressors; and a Dane in Iceland cowering in fright.
To Kill a Tiger
Wri/Dir: Nisha Pahuja
(I interviewed Nisha here, in 2012)
Ranjit is a poor farmer in a rural village in the Bero district of Jharkhand, in Eastern India. Together with his wife, they are raising his beloved children, whom they hope will advance to a better life through education. But everything changed late one night, after a wedding party. Their oldest, a 13-year-old girl. is attacked and brutally gang raped by men from the village. When their parents found out what happened, they rushed her to the police and eventually the men are arrested. But the authorities decided the proper response to this is for a 13-year-old girl — their beloved daughter! — to marry one of her rapists. It’s a hellish proposition, and the entire family rejected it. And with the help of an NGO, they 
decide to press charges and put the men on trial. She has the full support of her father, and agrees to testify in court. This is almost unheard of in India, and the trial became a cause celebre, with people across the country awaiting its verdict.
But the process is far from favourable. The family receives death threats, while local officials blame the victim for her attackers’ crimes. They are shunned in their home village, and strongly pressured to drop it. Can they go through with the trial? Will the girl testify? And do they have any chance of winning?
To Kill A Tiger is an NFB documentary about a young girl and her supportive family who question authority from within a strictly hierarchical society. Although the film estimates a woman is raped in India every 20 minutes, few cases are reported and fewer still are vindicated in trial. The documentary covers the family in their home, along with their many supporters — lawyers, NGOs, civil rights activists — and their detractors, including her unrepentant alleged attackers. The entire film was shot in India in the days leading up to around the trial, in the places where it was happening.
This strong documentary stands behind underdogs in their fight against the system, and provides a sliver of hope amidst very grave circumstances.
Godland
Wri/Dir: Hlynur Pálmason
It’s the late 19th Century in Denmark. Lucas (Elliott Crosset Hove) is an earnest young priest with a seemingly simple mission: to travel to a Danish colony in southeastern Iceland, build a church there before winter comes, and then start preaching. But beware, warns his supercilious superior, Iceland is not what you expect it to be. They may look sort of like us, but they speak a different language, they believe in different things, and they are primitive in their ways, not civilized like us Europeans. And the landscape though 
beautiful is dangerous and treacherous, full of erupting volcanoes, flooding rivers and steep rocks. Not to be trifled with.
Ignoring him, Lucas sets out on his carefree journey, carrying his camera equipment, books and a giant cross. There’s also a large entourage of Icelandic workers. He takes an instant dislike toward Ragnar (Ingvar Sigurðsson) an older man who speaks no Danish. But he soon makes friends and bonds with his translator (Hilmar Guðjónsson), the only person he can talk with. But when things start to go wrong and the translator is killed, Lucas sinks into a deep melancholy. His depression grows deeper even as his anger, directed mainly at Ragnar, starts to swell. Can he survive until they reach the town and build the church? And will he be a suitable leader of the congregation?
Godland is an impressionistic historical drama about a clash of cultures. It follows a Danish priest’s journey into his own private heart of darkness. The film is full of love, romance, rivalry and revenge, as experienced by a group of strange and quirky characters. There is so much to love about this movie: they ride small horses with beautiful manes straight out of My Little Pony. Poetry, sagas, story-telling and Iceland’s oral history are still living things, part of everyday use, not something hidden away in dusty books. And around any twist in the trail. they might run into a breathtaking waterfall, a crackling glacier or an erupting volcano. Lucas photographs the people he’s travelling with, posing them before ethereal land- and seascapes. 
The pace is slow, but still dramatic: it takes the time to show the priest applying egg whites and silver to a pane of glass to take one of his wet plate photos. In real life a lost cache of these pictures was found there a century later — and that’s what inspired this film. The entire movie is shot to look like those photos, in an almost square shape with softly rounded corners.
And like any good Nordic film, Godland combines a dark storyline with a stunning aesthetic.
I recommend this movie.
To Kill a Tiger is now playing in Toronto at the Ted Rogers Hot Docs Cinema, and Godland at the TIFF Bell Lightbox; 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.
Religious horror. Films reviewed: Knock at the Cabin, Attachment
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
While some people find solace in religion, others avoid it like the plague. But what happens when religion intrudes on non-believers’ lives? This week, I’m looking at two such horror movies. There’s a dybbuk in Denmark, and an apocalypse in Pennsylvania.
Knock at the Cabin
Co-Wri/Dir: M. Night Shyamalan
Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge) are a happily-married couple on vacation in rural Pennsylvania with their beloved adopted daughter Wen (Kristen Cui). They are renting a luxury cabin in the woods to spend some quality time away from their big-city careers. Wen quickly finds her place there, climbing in a treehouse, and catching grasshoppers to put in her terrarium. But her peaceful day is disturbed by an enormous man who approaches her, uninvited. Stranger danger! So when he tells her that he and some friends have some important news to tell them, Wen rushes back to the cabin to warn her dads. But soon there’s a Knock Knock Knock-ing at the cabin door, by a formidable foursome.
The huge man Wen met is Leonard (Dave Bautista), a school teacher; Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird) is a registered nurse; 
Ardiane (Abby Quinn) is a short-order cook; and Redmond (Rupert Grint) is a bartender. Though dressed like normal people, they carry frightening weapons made of pitchforks, axe heads and scythes, all welded to long poles. And they’ll break door the door if they don’t let them in. Though the two dads fight back, they’re outnumbered, and soon they’re tied to chairs so they can’t escape.
The Four tell them they must choose one member of their family — Eric, Andrew, or Wen — to die. Why? To avoid an apocalypse. They say God will destroy all creation if this random family doesn’t obey an unexplained order. And they know this is true because of visions of the future they all received. Who are these crazies and why are they here on this day? Why was this family chosen? What does it mean? And should they be believed?
Knock at the Cabin is a high-concept thriller-horror with a pseudo-religious theme. It’s also a simplistic and pointless exercise in absolute stupidity. It’s both laboriously sentimental, and predictable, without M Night Shyamalan’s usual surprises and twists. The movie is ridden with plot holes which I’m going to try to mention a few without spoiling the story. Why should the fate of the entire world be decided by seven Americans in a cabin in Pennsylvania? Why would God make their visions identical to one channel’s TV footage rather than actual events? Shyamalan has made one great movie — The Sixth Sense — a few good ones, and a whole lot of clunkers. I’d place this one near the bottom of the pile.
Attachment
Wri/Dir: Gabriel Bier Gislason
Leah (Ellie Kendrick) is a PhD candidate from North London. She’s on a short visit to Copenhagen to do some research. That’s where she runs into one of Santa’s elves, all dressed in red. Well not really an elf; Maja (Josephine Park) is actually a former actress in costume for a book reading for little kids. But sparks fly, they wind up in bed together, and realize they were meant for each other. And when Leah breaks her leg (after an unexpected epileptic seizure) Maja helps her travel back to London. But Leah’s flat is not what she expected.
She lives directly above her mother, Channa (Sofie Gråbøl), a doting woman with superstitious beliefs. (Though born into a non-religious Jewish family in Denmark, Channa’s husband is ultra-orthodox, and kept her acquired beliefs even after he left the family years ago.) But what is disturbing to Maja are all the weird talismans scattered around the apartment: candles that light up mysteriously late at night; bowls with fertility goddess paintings placed face-down beneath furniture; and strange creaking noises that interrupt Maja and Leah’s love-making. And Channa is less than welcoming to her daughter’s 
new lover.
So in an effort to fit in, she ventures around the chassidic neighbourhood looking for advice. She stumbles on a bookstore run by a man named
Lev (David Dencik), an expert in Jewish mysticism. He tells her about the Kabbalah, and supernatural entities like golems and dybbuks, and how the dark arts can summon them. Turns out he has a closer connection than she thought: Lev is Maja’s uncle, and not on good terms with his sister-in-law Channa. Soon there’s a three-way struggle for Leah’s love, even while unexplained supernatural events start happening with increasing frequency. Maja decides it’s time to do something drastic to rescue Leah from this hell-hole… but who can she trust? Channa or Lev? And what is happening to her lover?
is a haunting look at a same-sex romance ensorcelled by folk religion, mysticism and black magic. Using relatively few special effects it manages to maintain a good level of tension. Dialogue shifts among English, Danish and Yiddish, depending on who is speaking and whom they wish to exclude. The characters are fascinating, especially Sofie Gråbøl’s Channa, a secretive, neurotic alcoholic trying in vain to influence her daughter’s future. Josephine Park is fun as the innocent fish out of water, and Ellie Kendrick — who from certain angles bears an uncanny resemblance to Anne Frank! — deftly handles her transition from normal young woman to something very different. By blending various genres, Attachment manages to add an unexpected twist to the conventional horror movie.
I like this movie.
Knock at the Cabin opens theatrically this weekend, and Attachment begins streaming later this week on Shudder; 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 Robert Osborne and Brooke Mullins about Malcom is Missing
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Brooke Mullins is a woman raising her two daughters in Port Hope, Ontario. She grew close to her divorced Dad as an adult. A few years ago, Malcom moved to Mexico to spend his retirement winters relaxing amid the lush palm trees and sparkling beaches of Puerto Vallarta. He remained in close contact with Brooke, until suddenly… all contact disappeared. And when she tried to reach him, she received little help from his live-in girlfriend, Marcela. The authorities were indifferent and the police were no help at all. So, taking things in her own
hands, she flew down to Mexico to try to find her dad or at least find out what was happening to him. And what she found was shocking.
Malcom is Missing is a personal documentary that traces Brooke’s search for her father and some sense of justice, amidst the crime and corruption lurking just beneath the surface. It follows her investigation including interactions with journalists, lawyers, the police and prosecutors, along with Malcom’s friends and colleagues. The film is directed by Robert and Jari Osborne, and features Brooke Mullins as its 
principal subject. Robert is an award-wining journalist and documentary filmmaker with over 30 years experience at The Nature of Things, CBC POV and CBC Docs, along with CTV’s W5, Global’s National News and National Geographic, among many others.
I spoke with Robert Osborne and Brooke Mullins via Zoom from Toronto.
Malcom is Missing is having a special screening followed by a Q&A at Hot Docs Cinema in Toronto on January 29, 2023, and will be broadcast on CBC’s Documentary Channel in March.
culturalmining.com 
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