Daniel Garber talks with Kevin Hegge about TRAMPS!
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Photo by Jeff Harris.
It’s the late 1970s in a Covent Garden, London nightclub with an exclusive policy. To get in you have to look amazing in some way. An older man in blue jeans gets turned away at the door. The man is Mick Jagger, the place is Bowie Night at the Blitz Club 
and the doorman and organizer is Steve Strange. And so a new movement, born out of the ashes of punk, is dubbed the New Romantics by the mainstream press. But who were these tramps, really?
Tramps! Is a new documentary that looks in depth at East London in the early 1980s, along with the art, fashion, film, 
music, hats, makeup, hair, magazines, sexualities, aesthetics and lifestyles that grew out of it. It’s a stunningly beautiful kaleidoscope of colour, a collection of period photos and footage combined with new interviews with the main players. And it talks about the celebrities who emerged from it, like Boy George, Leigh Bowery, Derek Jarman, Phillip Sallon, Judy Blame, and many others.
Tramps is the work of award-winning Toronto filmmaker Kevin Hegge, whom I last interviewed on this show back in 2012 about his documentary She Said Boom: The Story of Fifth Column.
I spoke with Kevin Hegge in Toronto, via Zoom.
Tramps! is premiering in Toronto at the Inside Out film festival on May 31st, 7 pm, at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.
Potential explosions. Films reviewed: House of Gucci, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, Drive My Car
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
With all the stress in people’s lives these days, movies are a good place to purge personal tensions by watching other people’s explosive disasters. This week I’m looking at three new movies about potential explosions.
There’s a zombie-infested city about to be bombed to oblivion, a Hiroshima theatre festival facing an explosive personal conflict; and a bombshell in Italy who threatens a powerful family.
House of Gucci
Wri/Dir: Ridley Scott
It’s the 1970s in northern Italy. Gucci is a major luxury brand specializing in leather goods. Founded 50 years earlier, it is now in the hands of the second generation. Rodolfo Gucci (Jeremy Irons), an ailing but piss-elegant man who surrounds himself with priceless art, works behind the scenes, He is grooming his smart but nerdish son Maurizio (Adam Driver) to take over. But the law school student shows little interest in the company or the family. The other half is headed by Aldo (Al Pacino) a hands-on guy who heads the company’s American branch, and wants to expand into the Asian market. But he considers his hapless son Paolo (Jared Leto) an idiot. Enter Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga). She’s an accountant at her dad’s trucking business, but has greater ambitions. She meets Maurizio at a party, when she 
mistakes him for the bartender, but when she hears the name Gucci, her ears perk up. She wants in. After a few dates it’s true love, but Rodolfo doesn’t want his family name besmirched by a trucker’s daughter (forgetting that his own father who founded the company was not a rich man.) So Maurizzio marries into her family gives up his inheritance, and starts hosing down trucks — the best job he’s ever had, he says. But not for long. Following her TV psychic’s instructions Patricia manipulates and manoeuvres Maurizzio’s family to bring him back into the fold (with her at his side) to claw his way back to the top. And she’ll stop at nothing to get what she wants. But can they survive the troubles yet to come?
House of Gucci is a true crime/corporate family drama about the rise and fall of a rich family… which isn’t that interesting on its own. And I can’t stand an entire movie of American actors putting on vaguely foreign euro accents — we’re supposed to imagine them speaking their native Italian — why the awful accents? 
But that’s not why the movie is so much fun. What makes this movie work are two things. One is the amazing fashion and design of the whole movie. Everyone is constantly dressing up— more dresses and purses and tuxes and jewelry than you can shake a stick at.. Even more than this are all the campy, over-the-top characters, chewing the scenery as each one tries to out-do the others. Effete Jeremy Irons, a dazed Salma Hayek, a wonderful Al Pacino, and best of all, Jared Leto, as the hilarious Paolo. Lady Gaga is OK, but can’t compare to the masterful performers all around her. And Adam Driver is the dull straight man who steps back and lets the others shine. House of Gucci is a very enjoyable feast of high-fashion schlock.
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City
Wri/Dir: Johannes Roberts
It’s the 1990s, somewhere in the US. Chris and Claire Redfield are an estranged brother and sister. They grew up in the Racoon City Orphanage, a creepy place filled with weird dolls and strange creatures that appear late at night. It is run by the Umbrella corporation the worlds largest pharmaceutical company. But Claire (Kaya Scodelario) runs away when she sees something terrible, while Chris (Robbie Amell) joins the local police force. But now she’s back… to warn Chris that something terrible is about to happen. A leak at the lab has let loose a horrible epidemic infecting nearly everyone in the town. But rather than getting sick, this virus 
makes your eyes bleed, your hair fall out and you turn into a flesh eating zombie. Or worse (no spoilers). They have until 6 am to fight off these monsters and escape from this hell-hole, or else they, and the rest of the town will be wiped off the face of the earth. They split up; Chris, and fellow cops Wesker and Valentine (Tom Hopper, Hannah John-
Kamen) investigate the Spencer mansion, while Claire, the Police Chief, and Leon, a newby on his first day of work (Avan Jogia) set out from the police station. Will they ever get together? Who will live and who will die? And what secrets do these labs hold?
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is a movie based on a video game, plain and simple. There are some good laughs, and a threadbare plot line, but it’s mainly reenacting the game, from the long dark hallways where zombies run towards you, to the dark and scary Spencer mansion. Even some of the camera angles and pans duplicate the game itself. But it’s very cool to see on the big screen scary pitch-black scenes lit only by a lighter and the flash of gunfire revealing zombie faces. That said, it’s more eerie than scary, more action than horror. Not bad, but not much to it.
Drive My Car
Dir: Hamaguchi Ryusuke
Kafuku and Oto are a happily married couple in Tokyo. Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) is an actor and director in theatres, while Oto (Reika Kirishima) is a famous scriptwriter for TV and film. Oto’s ideas come to her at an unexpected time — while they’re having sex. Her bizarre stories are generated in the throws of orgasmic bliss, recited aloud to her husband, so it’s up to him to listen and remind her the next morning of what she said. But everything changes one day when he comes back early from a cancelled flight to Vladivostok. He catches sight of her making love to another, much younger, man in their bedroom. He sneaks
away instead of barging in, but before they have a chance to talk about it, she dies of an unexpected cerebral hemorrhage.
Years later he’s invited to direct a play — Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya — for a festival in Hiroshima. Kafuku’s trademark method is to cast his plays with actors who speak other languages and can’t understand each other. In this one the actors speak Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and even signs language. So they practice under his exacting direction, forced to keep each line perfectly timed. But there’s a twist: the most famous actor in the play is Takatsuki (Masaki Okada) a handsome and arrogant star who says he idolizes Kafuku and his late wife Oto. And he’s the one Kafuku thinks he saw having sex with his wife before she died. 
Meanwhile, in line with the theatre company’s rules, all directors must be driven to and from the theatre each day. So Kafuku gets to know the introverted Misaki (Tôko Miura), a young female driver from Hokkaido with a strange story. But as the production nears its premier date something terrible happens, forcing all the main players to reevaluate their priorities.
Drive My Car is a beautiful drama about love, loss, jealousy, and guilt. The movie builds slowly in an exacting manner, as the director and the various actors get to know one another. And the excerpts from Uncle Vanya we see as they rehearse exactly mirror the feelings and thoughts of the characters in the movie. That’s not the only story. There’s also Oto’s own stories she told her husband, and the personal confessions from the driver herself about her dark past. The acting is superb, and the panoramic views, ranging from drives on causeways and through tunnels to footage of a vast municipal incinerator, are breathtaking. The film is based on a Murakami story, with all the weird quirky fantasy combined with mundane realism you’d expect from him. Drive My Car is a long movie but one that is deeply, emotionally satisfying.
House of Gucci and Resident Evil: Welcome to Racoon City are now playing theatrically in Toronto; check your local listings; and Drive My Car has just opened at the Tiff Bell Lightbox.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
It’s Halloween! Films reviewed: Last Night In Soho, Antlers, Locke & Key
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Awooooooo…!
It’s Hallowe’en again — the perfect time to watch some spooky and scary movies!
This week, I’m looking at a fashion student in London who travels back in time from her attic apartment; a family in Massachusetts who find keys that open locked doors; and a school boy in the Pacific Northwest who always keeps his father’s door locked… from the outside.
Last Night In Soho
Co-Wri/Dir: Edgar Wright (Scott Pilgrim vs the World)
Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) is an idealistic young student at a fashion college in North London. Though raised in remote Cornwall, she already sews her own dresses and wants to follow in her grandmother and mom’s footsteps as a designer. She’s also obsessed by the early 1960s — the fashions, the people and the music — and she constantly listens to her grandma’s old discs on a portable record player. But she can’t stand the condescending attitude of her roommate Jocasta and most of the other students. So she rents an attic bed-sit flat in Soho, and gets a job at a local pub to pay for it. But everything changes on her first night in her new home. She awakens to 
find herself in Soho, circa 1964!, experiencing life through the eyes of young woman named Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy: Queen’s Gambit)! Where Ellie is shy with mousy brown hair, Sandie is blonde, brash and self-confident. She marches into the Cafe de Paris and declares she’ll be the next singer on that famous stage. When Ellie wakes up in the morning, things are back to normal, but she feels. different. She starts sewing a 60’s style dress based on what she wore the night before in Soho. And she starts mimicking Sandie’s look and lifestyle — dying her hair, wearing makeup and sticking up for herself. But gradually she realizes 60s Soho wasn’t the fun place she imagined — it was actually full of exploitation, violence and organized 
crime. And the separation between the two worlds starts to blur… with the ghosts of Sandie’s far-off dangers appearing in her real life in modern London. Is Eloise losing her mind? And can she ever escape from this dual existence?
Last Night in Soho is a cool, fun and sometimes scary coming-of-age story loosely wrapped in a time-travel theme. Throw in life in London, 60s girl groups, fashion, Soho burlesque and seedy organized crime, and you have a fascinating and unique world to explore. Thomasin McKenzie (Leave No Trace) gives a terrific performance as a young woman trying to hang on to her sanity, while Anya Taylor-Joy (you might recognize her from the TV series The Queen’s Gambit) is a dynamo as her alter ego. Throw in some real ’60s stars — Terrence Stamp as a sleazy barfly, and an almost unrecognizable Diana Rigg as a curmudgeonly landlady — and you’re left with a lot to watch.
Great movie.
Antlers
Co-WriDir: Scott Cooper (Hostiles)
Julia (Keri Russell) is a school teacher in a mining town in the Pacific northwest. She lives with her brother Paul (Jesse Plemons), the local sheriff. She fled to California 20 years earlier to escape her abusive father. But now that he’s dead, she feels safe to move back again. Little does she know there are other dangers in this small town. In any case, she’s having trouble fitting in. None of the 12 year olds in her class participate, or even seem interested, in what she’s teaching. And one kid in particular, Lucas (Jeremy T Thomas) looks malnourished, bullied and fearful. And he draws terrifying pictures at his desk. She reaches out to help him, but though needy, he rejects her. You see, his dad ran a meth lab in an abandoned mine where something terrible happened.
Now his dad and his seven-year-old brother are ill with a strange disease — the can only eat raw flesh. Lucas keeps them locked up in the attic, 
bringing them small animals he traps and any roadkill he can find. But it’s not enough. So here we have a do-gooder teacher who wants to save what she sees as an abused and neglected child, while he’s trying desperately to keep his family alive. But when Lucas’s dad tries some human flesh, he really starts to change, both physically and mentally. Can a little boy keep a monster at bay? Or will it take a schoolteacher to stop this cannibal killer?
Antlers is a bloody and gory — though not all that scary — horror movie 
set among the gorgeous lakes and mountains of Western Canada. Strangely, the monster in the story — modelled on the Windigo, a rapacious half-human, half-animal creature — is part of the Anishinaabe culture in the east, not the Pacific Northwest. And aside from Graham Greene (as a walk-on indigenous explainer), everyone else is white. That said, I like the acting, and the fact the characters are not all strictly good or bad, more nuanced than in your typical scary movie. Antlers is a chilling — though slow-paced — horror-thriller with enough blood and guts to keep you satisfied on Hallowe’en.
Locke & Key
Developed by Meredith Averill, Aron Eli Coleite and Carlton Cuse, based on the graphic novel by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez
It’s the present day in small-town Mathesen, Massachusetts. The Locke family — eldest son Tyler (Connor Jessup: Blackbird, Closet Monster ), Middle sister Kinsey (Emilia Jones) and the youngest Bode (Jackson Robert Scott) — and their mom (Darby Stanchfield) have just relocated from Seattle. Their dad died in a terrible incident so maybe a new environment will help them get over it. They move into the stately family home, a huge, but crumbling, mansion known as the Key House. It’s been in the family for generations. While the Lockes know next-to-nothing about their history, everyone in this town knows exactly who they are. The two eldest enroll in the local prep school — Tyler joins the hockey team while Kinsey falls in with a crowd of 
amateur filmmakers — while Bode is left to explore the mansion. And what he discovers is magical — a series of keys, each with its own properties. One lets you walk through a door and emerge wherever you want to be. Another lets you enter someones mind and explore their memories. Soon Tyler and Kinsey join in, but their mother and their uncle Duncan (Aaron Ashmore) can’t comprehend anything magical, even when they experience it themselves. Only kids can remember it. But all is not just fun and games, There’s an evil shape-shifting demon, a beautiful woman known as 
Dodge, who covets these keys for her own nefarious purposes. Who will triumph in the end?
Locke & Key is a wonderful TV series that’s part adventure, part horror, part psychological thriller and part family drama. I’m purposely revealing very little because I don’t spoil the plot, but it’s well acted — with a mainly Canadian cast — and lots of unexpected plot turns and cool special effects. And the series was shot right here, just outside CIUT’s broadcast studios in the gothic hallways of Hart House (pre-Covid, of course.) So if you’re looking for something Hallowe’en-y to binge on, you have to check out Locke & Key.
Locke & Key seasons 1 and 2 are streaming now on Netflix; Antlers and Last Night in Soho 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.
The Aussie connection. Reviewed: Stateless, Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Toronto used to be movie city, a place with countless films in production at any one time, competing for access to location shots and studio space. Dozens of screens showing the latest releases and over a hundred film festivals showcasing upcoming hits… but that was pre-Pandemic. Now the city is so dead you can almost hear a pin drop.
But don’t panic, movies are still being shown. The Lavazza Drive-in Film Fest continues at Ontario Place, showing everything from Bollywood comedies to Italian dramas to crowd pleasers from Brazil, the US and China. Go to ICFF.ca for tickets. And if you want to stay home this weekend, don’t miss the Toronto Arab Film Festival, premiering features and short films online from Canada and around the world, today through Sunday. Films are all free or PWYC. For more information, go to arabfilm.ca.
This week I’m looking at two new productions, a glamorous documentary and a human TV drama, both with an Australian connection. There’s an Australian who wants to be deported to Germany, and a German fashion photographer who finds refuge in Australia.
Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful
Dir: Gero von Boehm
Are the high-fashion photographs you see in Vogue magazine revolutionary and sexually subversive looks at our culture? Or are they violent, misogynistic views of women? A new documentary asks these questions about the pictures of renowned photographer Helmut Newton and the story of his life. He isborn in 1920 in Weimar Berlin. His father owns a factory that makes buttons and buckles. By the time he’s a teenager the Nazis are in power. He’s both repelled by and attracted to the fascist imagery of photographers like Leni Riefenstahl – he’s German-
Jewish, immersed in the culture all around him but also highly restricted and persecuted by government laws.
He works as an apprentice for a woman named Yva, one of the first to use photographs within the fashion industry. In 1938 he boards a ship with a ticket to Shanghai, but disembarks in Singapore, and from there to Australia, where he spends two years in an internment camp, joins the army, and eventually 
becomes a fashion photographer. And he marries his life and work partner, June, AKA Alice Springs.
His photos become a smash hit in Europe, where they change the whole look of fashion photgraphy. By the 1960s he’s the first to use nude models in fashion spreads. His images are filled with fear, embarssment and the threat of violence. They often include statuesque women with domineering expressions, chiseled features, athletic bodies and large breasts. Many verge on soft core porn, with images of women dominating men. There are also photos of women as victims of violence, swallowed whole by aligators, missing limbs or brandishing knives.
And, surprisingly, a series of photos showing the erotic violence of roast chickens.
Newton settled into the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood where he died in a car accident, aged 83.
This film takes an unusual tactic. Rather than the narrator intruding into the film, we hear instead from all the women, the actors and models, he worked with: Grace Jones, Isabella Rosselini, Catherine Deneuve, Hannah Schygulla, Claudia Schiffer, Marianne Faithfull, Anna Wintour and many more. They talk about whether they felt liberated or exploited by posing in the nude; what it was like to work with him, and how the final images are often very different from 
the shooting itself. Many mention how he treated models like puppets, dolls or manequins that convey Newton’s ideas not the models – that’s undeniable. But most say they loved working with him and also liked the shocking and subversive images they played a part in. This film mirrors Newton’s gaze of women and turns it around by reversing the POV to that of those women examining Newton and his work. Very clever.
If you like the aesthetic of glamorous images, high fashion, and stark, nude women’s bodies — that also gives a subjective voice to the women Newton used as objects — you will love this doc.
Stateless
Created by Tony Ayres, Cate Blanchett, Elise McCredie
It’s the 2000s in a remote detention centre somewhere in Australia. High fences stop inmates from escaping, while visitors must line up to pass through security inspections. It’s just another day in the life prisoners in the carceral system. The problem is this isn’t a prison at all and the inmates have committed no crimes. They’re actually asylum seekers, refugees from around the world, who arrive there by boat.
One such inmate is Ameer (Fayssal Bazzi) who is 
separated from his wife and kids. The family fled the Taiban in Afghanistan only to find themselves at the mercy of unscrupulous refugee brokers who steal their savings and set them adrift in leaky boats. Ameer manages to reach Australia on his own, but now he’s locked up in the detention centre and can’t find his beloved family.
Another inmate is Eva (Yvonne Strahovski). Unlike most of the detainees, she’s not a refugee from the developing world; she’s European and just wants to leave Australia for Germany. But she has no papers to prove who she is. That’s because she’s actually an Australian flight attendant on the run from a creepy personality cult.
The inmates are guarded by people like Cam (Jai Courtney) a likeable newlywed from a nearby town. With the decent salary he can afford a new house with a swimming pool. But after a few months of working in the toxic prison-like atmosphere he finds himself 
morphing from ordinary guy to sadistic torturer.
Then there’s Claire (Asher Keddie) an ambitious federal civil servant. She’s sent there to clean the place up, keep journalists at bay and restore the centre’s reputation. But she arrives to find news helicopters filming despondent Sri Lankan Tamil refugees camped out on rooftop, with others driven to suicide by the horrible and hopeless conditions there. What will happen to the refugees? Will Ameer ever find his family? Why is a mentally ill Australian woman locked up in a concentration camp? And for that matter why are asylum seekers there at all?
Stateless is a six-part drama, based on a true story about actually refugees imprisoned in Australian detention camps, as well as the case of an Australian woman who ended up in one of the camps. It’s a heart-wrenching TV series with powerful acting and compelling characters played out against an extremely bleak setting. I found it really interesting – I wanted to find it what happens and binged-watched it in two sittings. It’s a bit strange though that – except for Ameer – the asylum seekers are all peripheral characters while the three Australian characters all have backstories, histories, neuroses and sex lives. I guess that’s the point – it’s not about asylum seekers, per se, it’s about how poorly the Australian government treats them, and how passionately other Australians fight for their rights.
Stateless is streaming on Netflix, Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful is playing now on VOD.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Mums and their sons. Films reviewed: Code 8, Brotherhood, In Fabric
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This week I’m looking at three movies about mums and their sons. There’s a historical drama about fatherless boys facing disaster at summer camp; a sci-fi action/thriller about a guy with secret powers and a dying mom; and a retro horror movie about a divorced mom and her sinister red dress.
Code 8
Dir: Jeff Chan
It’s the future, a dystopian America patrolled by drones that terrorize ordinary people in the war on drugs. Conner (Robbie Amell) is a young guy livng with his mom in a big city. He’s a day labourer who does pickup construction work for cash, while she stocks shelves at a corner grocery store. They’re in debt and can’t pay their bills. Worse than that, his mom (Kari Matchett) needs medical care… badly. She 
has a science-fictiony disease that has you bleed fluorescent blue gunk, but they can’t afford the treatment. What can they do?
Opportunity knocks when a criminal named Garrett (Stephen Amell) hires him to help with a job. He needs someone with high level electrical skills… and he doesn’t mean wiring. Conner is a guy with special powers – he can shortcircuit a generator with his bare hands. But in this world, mutants are kept down by the cops and forced to take menial jobs. So it’s poverty or a life of crime. His mother raised him to be honest and hide his powers, but he needs to cure her illness. If he can help the criminals secure the scarce narcotic 
Psyke – made from human spinal fluid – maybe they’ll give him the cure his mom so desperately needs.
Code 8 is a fast-moving action-thriller about a future world where power is shared by corrupt cops and organized criminals. It was shot in Toronto, with recognizable locations – Regent Park! – in many scenes. Good special effects and music, and recognizable actors – Stephen Amell is TVs The Arrow, and Robbie Amell his real-life cousin. (Sung Kang co-stars as a good cop). I enjoyed this movie, but I gotta say: Code 8 feels more like the pilot for an upcoming TV series than a one-off movie.
Brotherhood
Wri/Dir: Richard Bell
It’s the summer of ’26 in Ontario’s cottage country. Arthur Lambdon (Brendan Fletcher) is a WWI vet who lost his wife and kid to the Spanish Flu. He’s a counsellor alongside Mr Butcher (Brendan Fehr) who walks with a cane. He busted up his leg in the war. They’re at a summer camp for fatherless teens on placid Lake Balsam in the Kawarthas to provide leadership role models. And the kids there are really into it. There’s a whole crew of eager kids: Waller (Jack Manley) the quick-to-anger alpha dog; brothers Jack and Will who are always fighting, one kid with a runny nose – I’m allergic to trees! – , and another who likes to sing dirty camp songs. They are all very excited by an 
upcoming trip across the lake in a long, war canoe that can fit them all.
But once they reach the middle of the lake disaster strikes in the form of a freak summer storm. Heavy winds roil the waters and capsize the boat. Someare lost and the rest forced to spend the night, in the dark, in the cold water, taking turns hanging onto the upsidedown canoe. Who will survive the night? And who will make it back to shore?
Brotherhood is a well-made look at a real-life tragedy from the distant past. It has all the right period costumes, authentic language and historical details, beautifully photographed panoramas of scenic lakes… The problem is I just couldn’t connect with any of the characters. There was nothing surprising or intriguing about the story – you know from the start that they will drown. In fact, most of the movie is a self-imposed spoiler, a series of flashbacks leading up to the inevitable accident, as seen through the opaque eyes of uninteresting Arthur. It’s based on a true story (in real life the victims were as young as 6, not all teenagers like they are in the movie), but, perhaps because of its suspense-free method of storytelling, this tragic movie didn’t pluck a single heart string.
In Fabric
Wri/Dir: Peter Strickland
It’s London, in the 1970s. Sheila (Marianne Jean-Baptiste: Secrets & Lies) is a middle-aged divorced woman, who lives with her adult son, a student. She works full time but wants more out of life. So she’s preparing for a blind date with a gentleman she met through the Lonelyhearts column in the newspaper classifieds. She wants it to be a night to remember so she stops by an exclusive women’s store to buy a dress. There she’s greeted by Miss Luckmoore (Fatma Mohamed) an enigmatic saleswoman with pointy red nails, dramatic black hair and an uncanny way if speaking. She insists Sheila buy only the best, a blood-red satin dress with a plunging neckline. It’s a one of a kind, Miss Luckmoore says, and despite being the wrong 
size (“size 36”), it fits Sheila like a glove. Her date is less than elegant – a chips-and-kebab house – but the dress takes on an increasing importance. It leaves strange marks on her body, inspires horrible nightmares, and leads to increasingly awful incidents – like the dress had a mind if it’s own. Is it just her imagination or is it trying to kill her?
In Fabric is a bizarre, haunting horror film, with loads of dark comedy, stylized violence and perverse sex. Sheila’s story intertwines 
with that of Reg Speaks (Leo Bill) a newly-married washing machine repairman (and other side plots) all centred on that insidious, satanic red dress and the witch-like saleswoman who controls it. With its intentionally stilted dialogue, amazing production design, jarring editing, brilliantly spooky music, and perfect deadpan acting, In Fabric is like nothing you’ve ever seen before (unless you’ve seen Peter Strictland’s other movies.) It’s disturbing, and you may wonder what the hell is going on, but if you like art, sound, design and fashion; if you like horror/comedy without too much gore, this avant garde film is a must-see.
In Fabric (at the TIFF Bell Lightbox), Code 8, and Brotherhood all open today in Toronto; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks with Sofia Bohdanowicz about Maison du Bonheur
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Juliane is a retired astrologer in her 70s who lives in a Paris apartment in the 18th arrondissement, in Montmartre. She believes her personal presentation – hair, makeup, clothes, and shoes – must always be impeccable. Her life should be full of delicious food,
lovely colours and fast friends. And her apartment, part of Haussmanns original design, should be a veritable “house of happiness”.
Maison du Bonheur is a wonderful new documentary that follows Juliane over the course of a month by a 
Canadian filmmaker who comes to stay with her. It records the mundane, yet fascinating, details of the everyday life of a classic parisienne, even as it subtly reveals her — and the filmmaker’s — unspoken secret histories. The film was directed, shot and edited on a microbudget by Toronto-based Sofia Bohdanowicz. Winner of the Jay Scott Prize, the Emerging Canadian Directors award (at VIFF) and many more, this is Sofia’s second film.
Maison du Bonheur opens tonight at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto.
I spoke with Sofia at CIUT 89.5 FM.
Family relations. Films reviewed: The Second Time Around, Wilson, Personal Shopper
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Family ties can span generations. This week I’m looking at movies about family relationships. There’s a grandmother looking for love, a middle-aged misanthrope looking for his daughter, and a young woman in Paris looking for her twin brother… even though she knows he’s dead.
The Second Time Around
Dir: Leon Marr
Katherine (Linda Thorson) is an elegant, silver-haired widow who loves the opera. She dreams of someday seeing a performance at La Scala. She lives with Helen, her grouchy daughter (Laura de Carteret), Helen’s husband, and her granddaughter Sarah, an art student (Alexis Harrison). But when she breaks her hip, she is placed in a retirement home for rehab and recovery. It’s a huge 
change. Up to now, she has always lived in a family home: with her parents, then her husband and finally her daughter. Not to worry, her temporary home is full of new friends.
There she meets Isaac (Stuart Margolin), a gruff and grumpy old man who complains about everything. A former tailor, he smokes cigars, plays poker with his buddies, and is never far from a mickey of rye. But when she catches him unobserved, mending clothes for a friend while softly singing a yiddish tune, 
she discovers Isaac is actually a pretty nice guy. Sparks fly and their relationship develops… perhaps to something bigger?
The Second Time Around is a gentle, low-key drama with the feel of a high school movie of the week. Retirement homes apparently 
have clubs, cliques, lunchroom gossip, even a senior prom — in a place where everyone’s a senior. It also deals with a slew of real life issues, including death, disabilities, depression… as well as passionate sex. And it features Canadian TV stars from the past half century: Louis Del Grande, Paul Soles, Jayne Eastwood and the late Don Francks in his last movie role. I just felt it hard to connect with what was, essentially, The Retirees of Degrassi Street.
Wilson
Dir: Craig Johnson (Based on the graphic novel by Daniel Clowes)
Wilson (Woody Harrelson) is a middle-aged man who lives in a tiny house, with a small dog, in an unremarkable city. He has two personality traits that don’t go together. He 
loves social contact and will talk to strangers; but he also hates people and thinks the world is going to hell. He’s an opinionated, overbearing misanthrope who swears like a sailor. When his old man dies and he realizes he’s all alone in this world, he climbs into his wood-panelled station 
wagon and sets out to find his ex-wife Pippi (Laura Dern). She was a pregnant, drug-addicted sex worker when she left him 17 years earlier. Last thing he heard she got an abortion and moved far, far away. But Wilson doesn’t use computers, smartphones or social networks. So he doesn’t realize she lives in the next county over, and that all those years ago, she put their baby up 
for adoption. Now they team up to find the 17- year-old. But can a misbegotten family hold together based only on rude behaviour patterns and DNA?
Wilson is a very funny, dark comedy about a man looking for his place in a world he doesn’t like. It’s based on the graphic novel by the amazing cartoonist Daniel Clowes, who brought us works like Ghost World, and Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron. It’s not your typical slapstick comedy. Rather, it’s a hilariously sad look at the fate of unlikeable outcasts and what they can learn.
Personal Shopper
Wri/Dir: Olivier Assayas
Maureen (Kristin Stewart) is a personal shopper for a super celebrity named Kyra. Her boyfriend lives in Oman, and her twin brother is dead. She roams the aisles of haut couture houses choosing sequinned gowns, leather harnesses and priceless baubles for her boss. She carries blank cheques to pay for it all but earns little money herself. She puts up with Kyra’s tyrannical 
behaviour because she needs to stay in Paris until she receives a sign from her twin brother. Lewis had the same heart defect she suffers from and they both vowed who ever died first would communicate with the other.
She spends the night in the spooky, empty house where Lewis used to live, to see if he would talk to her. Instead she sees a troubled spirit that scratches crosses into the 
furniture. Later she starts receiving anonymous texts on her phone, by someone who seems to know her every thought. It pays for hotel rooms and sends her cryptic paper notes. Is the mysterious stalker a man or a woman, living or dead? And should she be excited… or terrified?
Personal Shopper is a great new drama – in English, but set in Paris – from French director Olivier Assayas, who recently brought
us Clouds of Sils Maria. This one’s even better. It neatly combines theosophy and spiritualism with high fashion and celebrity culture. Maureen bridges the two sides. I like Kristin Stewart – my main problem with her is she’s not a great speaker. She tends to mumble and always speaks the same way. Luckily in this movie she relies less on her voice, and more on her body, her face, her movement. She broods and she panics. She poses with her naked torso at a fashion house, or curls up into a ball in a haunted mansion. Stewart is the movie, and she does a good job of it. I really liked this movie.
Personal Shopper, Wilson and The Second Time Around all start today in Toronto; check your local listings. The Canadian Film Fest is on now, and Sundance Now — a curated indie, doc and art house channel — starts streaming in Canada today.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Revolution vs Devolution. Movies Reviewed: Zoolander 2, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
February is Toronto’s Black History Month, because Canada has a history all its own, both good and bad. There’s the black Empire Loyalists and the Underground Railroad. But there was also slavery in Canada, and the demolition of Africville in Halifax, and the rioting at Sir George Williams University in Montreal. So this weekend is a good time to catch up on some of this history at the Black Film Festival in Toronto.
This week, I’m looking at a documentary about 50 years of revolution by an African American party, and a comedy about 15 years of devolution by male models at parties.
Zoolander 2
Dir: Ben Stiller
Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) is a vapid former supermodel who lives in a log cabin in the Alps of northern New Jersey. His wife is dead and his son, Derek Jr, has been taken away by social services. Zoolander has been a hermit (or “hermit crab” as he says) since 2001. His former best friend and supermodel Hansel (Owen Wilson) lives in a tent in the middle of a vast desert near Palm Springs. He has non-stop orgies – involving sumo wrestlers, babushkas and goats — relieved only by intermittent yoga sessions. The two men hate each other’s guts. But they find themselves together 
again in Rome relaunching their respective careers.
Together with former swimsuit model Valentina (Penelope Cruz), now part of Interpol’s fashion police, they join forces to fight an evil cabal of supervillains who have infiltrated the fashion industry. Why? Because the bad guys, including Mugatu (Will Farrell), want to get their hands on the fountain of youth guarded by the Chosen One. He is a direct 
descendent of an unbroken line of vapid male supermodels dating back to the Garden of Eden. (Apparently there was an Adam and Steve). But who is the Chosen One and how can they save him?
I like comedies, they just have to be funny. This one’s not. it has a few very hilarious moments, but a stand-up comic with only one laugh for every 20 jokes would be booed off the stage. It’s also weirdly outdated. I can accept that Zoolander and Hansel have hidden away for 15 years, but why is the rest of the movie in a time warp, too? It’s filled with Calvin Klein perfume ads from the 1990s, titans of the fashion avant garde like Tommy Hilfiger, “hipsters” wearing dreadlocks, and Al Qaeda as the most dangerous terrorists. Even the plot is a take-off of a Dan Brown novel. Everything in the movie just seems so old. There’s no satire, and very little humour. The funniest moments come from the tickle of recognition that accompanies the countless celebrities — Bieber, Kardashian, Sarandon, Sutherland — who make cameo appearances. But it’s not enough to rescue this dud.
The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution
Dir: Stanley Nelson
It’s 1966. The US is fighting in Vietnam and anti-war protests are springing up around the world. The civil rights movement is in full swing in the southern states. But in northern cities, in places like Oakland California, the police are still arresting, frisking and beating black men with impunity. So two young leaders, Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, found a black nationalist movement there to counter police brutality and 
racial oppression and to express black pride and solidarity. And if attacked by the police, they vowed to fight back by any means necessary (in the words of Malcolm X). They named it the Black Panther Party. Members cut a mean profile: natural hairstyles, shades, black leather jackets, and military-style black berets. And, most shocking of all, they carried long guns — in the name of the Second Amendment and the Right to Bear Arms — 
with leather straps of bullets across their chests. They were later joined by Eldridge Cleaver whose book Soul on Ice, written in prison, captured the nation’s mood.
Lyndon B Johnson, the president, and FBI chief J Edgar Hoover were shocked. They considered a black nationalist movement the biggest danger of them all — bigger than communism. They swung into action using the notorious COINTELPRO — counter-intelligence program — to infiltrate and spy on the group. They sent letters and ohone calls to women saying their husbands were cheating on them. The police were called into action to break up meetings and arrest its 
members. Dozens were arrested on trumped-up charges, and many killed in raids across the country. Some are still in prison to this day. At an infamous Chicago trial, the judge actually had Bobby Seale chained to a chair, bound and gagged, in the courtroom, making him the perfect symbol of state oppression. Eldridge Cleaver fled to Algeria. Later many of the top members changed their beliefs, leaving the party divided among warring factions.
This is a fascinating history of the movement, with tons of still photos, archival footage, and new interviews with members that tell you lots you’ve probably never heard of. Did you know they started a successful school breakfast program? And published a newspaper that was their main source of income? Their standard image is of armed black men, but the majority of rank-and
-file members were actually women, fighting for women’s rights within the party. The film doesn’t go deeply into the more controversial aspects of The Black Panthers. Some thought it undermined the non-violent civil rights movement. Or that it was big on image, weak on politics. But whatever your point of view, the Panthers made a huge mark on American history beginning 50 years ago, and this film explains it all.
Zoolander 2 opens today in Toronto; check your local listings. The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution is playing on Saturday at 11:00 AM at the Carlton Cinema as part of Toronto’s Black Film Festival. Go to torontoblackfilm.com for more info. And the Next Wave Film Festival is on all weekend long for 14-18 year-olds who love movies. Check out tiff.net for details — especially its great closing film Sing Street.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
LGBT Movies. Films Reviewed: Grandma, The New Girlfriend, Saint Laurent PLUS Inside-Out
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Inside Out is Toronto’s LGBT international film festival, and it’s on now, for the next ten days, with comedies, dramas, experimental films and documentaries. Major stars and directors will be appearing at their films and there are even free screenings. This week I’m looking at LGBT dramas from the US and France. There’s a biopic about a man who draws dresses, a comedy about a man who is drawn to dresses, and a grandmother who fought hard for the right to wear pants.
Grandma
Wri/Dir: Paul Weitz
Elle (Lily Tomlin) is a radical lesbian feminist poet in California. She’s retired from her position as writer-in-residence at a UC campus, and hasn’t written a word since Vi, her partner of 36 years, died. Once a celebrated activist and public intellectual, another Adrienne Rich, now she’s just a bitter old cuss. But just as she is unceremoniously giving her current lover the boot, there’s a knock on the door. It’s her granddaughter asking for help. Sage (Julia Garner) is a pretty, young high school student with a problem: an unwanted pregnancy. She needs 600 bucks for an abortion. But that’s easier said than done. Grandma’s broke! So the two of them climb into her ancient jalopy and drive off to find the cash.
They are generations apart:
Grandma: Oh for the days of Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique.
Granddaughter: Mystique? Like, the blue-skinned villain in X-Men?
Can they ever see eye to eye? Can Sage get her abortion? And will Elle come to terms with the ghosts from her past? Grandma is a delightful, road-trip comedy. It has a great script, cute story with a social conscience, and the acting is good all around. A lot of fun.
The New Girlfriend (Une Nouvelle Amie)
Dir: François Ozon (based on the novel by the late Ruth Rendell)
Rich Laura and middle-class Claire take a blood oath when they’re just girls: they swear to be fast friends forever. Young and beautiful, they stay close. Claire Claire (Anaïs Demoustier) marries clean-cut Gilles (Raphaël Personnaz: Quai d’Orsay), while Laura chooses the more sensitive David (Romain Duris). But after the birth of her first child, Laura breaks the pact… by dying! Claire is crushed. How can she live without her best friend? She begins to see her everywhere; across the street, just around a corner. David meanwhile has fallen into a deep funk. She goes 
to visit him, but is shocked when she sees a woman at his home taking care of the baby. Is it Laura? No… It’s David, in a dress. I miss Claire, he explains, and it helps comfort the baby. Just don’t tell anyone, especially not his mother-in-law.
Initially shocked, Claire gradually adjusts to David’s cross-dressing. But to allay potential suspicions, she tells her husband she has found a new girlfriend – “Virginia”. Their bonds begin to grow… as do the suspicions of her husband and his mother in law. But are they ready to meet Virginia?
This is an always-surprising social comedy about changes in identity, friendship and family, sexuality and gender.
Saint Laurent
Dir: Bertrand Bonello
Yves St Laurent (Gaspard Ulliel) is a successful fashion designer in Paris. He’s slim and impeccably dressed known for his trademark black-framed glasses. He launched the celebrated Mondrian dress in 1965, and turns out new haut couture collections twice a year. The operation is divided into three parts. He’s the creative side. He personally draws every garment design by hand. Behind the scenes, a dedicated army in white lab coats rush to cut the cloth, drape it, stitch it, and get it onto the backs of runway models’ in time. And in the 
boardroom, his lover Pierre Bergé (Jérémie Renier) handles all the business deals. YSL, the fashion house, is a profitable, well-oiled machine.
While the streets of Paris are seething with revolution, Yves is ensconced, oblivious, in his presentation rooms, dressing privileged women. 
Then there’s his personal life. He and Pierre collect priceless tchotchkes from around the world to display in their home. Yves also collects people; he has an entourage of models, and muses like Loulou de la Falaise (Léa Seydoux). He spends his time at Parisian discotheques, or at his retreat in Marrakesh.
But in the early ‘seventies, things start to collapse. He falls under the sway of an aristocratic socialite. Jacques (Louis Garrel) is handsome, rich and decadent, and never seems to work. His days are spent posing on modern furniture. His nights are filled with acid trips and gin-soaked gay orgies. Yves
is infatuated with him, but the constant pill-popping is dragging him down. Can Pierre rescue Yves and turn him back into a profitable name? Or will he succumb to Jacques’ lotus-eating lifestyle? And will Yves’s audacious new collection be the talk of Paris or booed off the stage?
Saint Laurent is a captivating, challenging, movie. It’s way too long – 2 ½ hours long! – and, at first glance, seems superficial and pointless. But it’s not. 
It’s visually stunning. Every scene is perfectly composed like turning a page of Vogue magazine. The director tries some surprising techniques, some of which work, some don’t. A long business meeting is conducted in French and English with simultaneous interpreting. Is that necessary? But a Mondrian-like split screen with 9 separate panels, and an amazing sequence with a dozen miniature black-and-white dogs scampering down the hallway for a pet audition, more than make up for the jarring parts. And the acting — especially Ulliel as the fragile, opaque and zen-like Yves Saint Laurent — is fantastically perverse.
Grandma and The New Girlfriend are both playing at Inside Out LGBT film
fest this week: go to insideout.ca for details. And Saint Laurent opens commercially today in Toronto; check your local listings. I liked all three of these movies. But if violent, post-apocalyptic road movies are more to your taste, I strongly recommend Mad Max: Fury Road., now playing. Don’t miss it!
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Not Forgotten. Movies Reviewed: The Face of Love, Advanced Style, The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz PLUS Hot Docs
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.
Things change, people die, time passes… But some things – and some people – are not easily forgotten. This week I’m looking at three movies about people who should be remembered.
There’s a romantic drama about a widow who can’t forget her husband; and I’m looking at two films coming to Hot Docs – Toronto‘s International Documentary Film Festival. One’s about a young man, a hero of the internet; the other’s about some stylish, elderly women becoming famous on-line.
The Face of Love
Wri/Dir: Arie Posen
Nikki (Annette Bening) and her husband (Ed Harris) are still deeply in love after decades of marriage. They live in LA, and go to a beach resort in Mexico every year. But one day his dead body washes up on the beach, and Nikki is devastated. Can she go on without him?
Five years later, things seem normal. Nikki’s working again. She dresses houses for real estate dealers to make them look lived-in, even though they are empty and lifeless. Sort of like Nikki. But she goes through her daily routine: talking with her neighbour Roger (Robin Williams) and skyping with her adult daughter. Roger used to be her husband’s best friend, but now he has feelings for Nikki (she’s not interested).
But one day, at an art museum she used to visit, she catches a glimpse of a man. He
looks exactly like her late husband. He could be an identical twin.
Tom (Ed Harris) is an artist and teacher. And after some clever stalking and faked coincidental meetings, Nikki manages to meet Tom, and date him. She is madly in love with her late husband, and finds what she’s missing in Tom. He sees her adoring eyes and takes it as the sort of passion he never got from his ex-wife. She sees Tom as her actual husband, returned 
to her.
For Nikki it’s like a dream, and she’ll do anything to stop from “waking up”. She hides Tom from her daughter and from Roger next door. And she hides from Tom the fact he’s her late husband’s doppelgänger. And Tom has a deadly secret of his own that he’s not telling her. Is Nikki crazy? Is Tom deluding himself? Is this love or just an illusion? And can it last?
I kind of liked this mysterious romance: it feels like a soft-core Alfred Hitchcock movie: mystery without murder, conspiracy without crime. Ed Harris and Annette Bening make a good couple, simultaneously low-key but also passionate. It’s not an exciting movie, though. Don’t expect a thriller from a movie about relationships.
Advanced Style
Dir: Lina Plioplyte
Ari Cohen is a young man who lives in New York City. He’s a photographer and a blogger. Because of his great respect for his own grandmother he decides to celebrate the many older women he sees decorate that city’s sidewalks. He 
approaches women over 60 and asks if he can take their picture for his blog (also called Advanced Style). But he’s not looking for just any old lady. They have to have charm, style, and panache. He looks for women who use their clothes, makeup and hats to construct a work of art: themselves.
And these women all have their own stories. One worked as a dancer in Harlem’s famed Apollo Theatre in the Depression. Another was a magazine editor. One is a renowned party hostess, another teaches art. And they each have their own style 
trade marks, from a woman who constructs elaborately stylized bright orange false eyelashes; to another who owns a vintage clothing shop, to a punk-rocker in her 60s.
It’s not like their lives are perfect. Says one woman, “everything I have two of, one hurts.”But they’re finding a second (or third) wind with their looks on display on posters, on TV, in fashion magazines and now in this great movie. Advanced Style is a hilarious, heart-warming and surprising crowd-pleaser.
The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz
Dir: Brian Knappenberger
Aaron Swartz might not be a famous name, but it should be. He grew up with the internet, and was lecturing computer scientists and lawyers as a teen. He helped launch crucial features of the Internet, including RSS, Creative Commons. He played an essential role in the social network and news comment site Reddit, and was a millionaire many times over while still a kid. But instead of retiring to an easy life in silicon valley, he decided to devote himself to internet freedom through activism and hacktivism.
You may have heard of SOPA. It was an attempt to give US government control over web content. Basically, if a site was seen by the film and music industries as violating their copyright, the government could just close a site down. It was thought of as an easy, anti-piracy law, and it easily passed in Congress. But thanks to Aaron’s efforts, 115,000 websites – eventually including huge ones like Wikipedia, Google and Facebook – turned opinion around and defeated the very restrictive bill. This film is a biography of all the things Aaron Swartz did, and how he was dragged
down and eventually driven to suicide (not a spoiler) after being relentlessly pursued by the FBI and government prosecutors. The filmmaker directed the excellent We Are Legion a few years ago, and this extremely moving and informative film is even better. I think everyone should see this movie.
The Face of Love opens today in Toronto, check your local listings; And The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz has its international premier on Hot Doc’s opening Night next Thursday, with Advanced style having its world premier the following Tuesday. Go to hotdocs.ca for more information.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
culturalmining.com 
leave a comment