Pleasant danger. Films reviewed: How to Train a Dragon, The Life of Chuck PLUS TJFF!
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
As the days get longer and the skies get warmer, people want to go out and have fun, looking for an enjoyable night out. So this week, I’m looking at two new entertaining, feel-good movies, that at first glance seem to be just the opposite. One’s about horrible monsters terrorizing a small island, the other’s about the end of the world.
But before that, let me tell you about a few movies playing at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival showing movies from around the world through this weekend, and digitally until June 18th.
TJFF, 2025
The festival opened with Once Upon My Mother, (Ma Mere, Dieu et Sylvie Vartan), bilingual-Canadian director Ken Scott’s (review: Starbuck) humorous look at the memoir of Roland Perez, a renowned Parisian attorney and writer. He’s the 6th child in a crowded family of Moroccan immigrants born with a clubfoot in 1963, but whose driven mother, Esther (wonderfully played by Leïla Bekhti), refuses to accept it. She — and will power alone — will make him walk, no, dance!, as if there were no physical problems standing in his way. These efforts are all done to the tunes of pop singer Sylvie Vartan on his sisters’ record player, as he struggles to learn to read.
This is a charming and quirky family comedy.
In The Other, documentarian Joy Sela attempts the impossible: to film people from two sides of an intractable conflict — that of Israel and Palestine — talking frankly with each other. Ordinary Israelis, and Palestinians from the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza and those from Israel proper, voluntarily getting together. People on both sides of this polarizing conflict, whose families or friends have been killed, kidnapped, jailed or persecuted, attempt to share personal photos and stories, and actually get to know “The Other”. While most of the film was shot before the enormities of the current Gaza war took place, it’s still important in that it holds out the hope of peace and understanding, and the end of this brutal war and the events and conditions that led up to it.
Never Alone (by Finnish director Klaus Härö) is a true story set in Helsinki in 1942, where an outspoken, prominent businessman, Abraham Stiller (Ville Virtanen), comes to the rescue of a group of Jewish refugees who arrive by ship from Austria. And soon after, Stiller has a noisy run-in in his store with a random man who loudly opposes the presence of refugees. What he doesn’t realize is he has picked a fight with Arno Anthoni, a Nazi collaborator and the head of the Finnish State Police. The movie has a noir-ish feel, full of secret papers, clandestine backroom deals, and shadowy prison cells. Never Alone is a tense, historical drama that looks at Finland’s somewhat spotty record in the first half of WWII.
How to Train Your Dragon
Co-Wri/Dir: Dean DeBlois
It’s the middle ages on a remote, mountainous island populated by a multicultural Viking consortium. They speak with Scottish brogues and wear pointy horns on their helmets. Their biggest problem? Dragons — of every shape and form — who steal their sheep and wreak havoc. Stoic, the island’s ridiculously bearded chieftain (Gerard Butler) leads them repeatedly into dangerous battles with these fire-breathing monsters, in the hope of someday discovering their lair, and killing them all. But young Hiccup (Mason Thames), an inventive, non-conformist, doesn’t want to kill dragons. He’s a lover, not a fighter, and has a major crush on the young swordswoman Astrid (Nico Parker). When he discovers a disabled Night Fury dragon that he names Toothless, Hiccup fashions a prosthesis so he can fly again. He trains Toothless to fill a space somewhere between rival, best friend and pet. And by closely observing his strengths and foibles Hiccup learns all the dragons’s secrets. But his dad — the Chieftain — enrols him in a gladiator-like training camp, full of ambitious viking wannabes — like Snotlout, Fishlegs, Ruffnut and Tuffnut,— to teach him to kill the beasts, including his secret best friend. Are dragons the dreaded enemies of the Vikings, or are they just big misunderstood puppy dogs?
If “How to Train Your Dragon” sounds familiar, it’s because it’s a live action remake of the hit 2010 3-D animated kids’ movie by the same name. (And in the same vein, this review is largely the same as the one I wrote 15 years ago. If they can do it, so can I) But I was a bit trepidacious about what they might do to the cartoon version which I really liked. Well no need to worry. It’s similar but not identical. The animated version is funnier and goofier. I like the new costumes, especially the furry mukluks they all wear. Part of the cast — like Gerard Butler — are back again, and the newbies, especially Mason Thames, with his cartoon-like features, fit their parts fine. But as I watched this one on the big screen, I was blown away by the spectacular mid air flying scenes, where Hiccup rides through the skies on Toothless’s back. I don’t remember that from the first one. When I looked at my old review, there it was. The “…effects were great…with a lot of breathtaking scenes and battles, and a good amount of suspense. At times it felt like being part of a good video game – weaving between rock formations, through the clouds, under the northern lights – and I mean that as a compliment.”
This may be a kids’ movie, but I totally enjoyed watching How to Train Your Dragon all over again.
The Life of Chuck
Co-Wri/Dir: Mike Flanagan
Marty (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a school teacher in a bucolic small town… who feels a bit strange. Things aren’t functioning like they used do. Everyday people and buildings disappear, even as the stars in the sky fizzle out, one by one. The one thing that is working are posters, billboards, skywriters and flashy ads everywhere celebrating an unknown man named Chuck. Who is this Chuck? What’s going on? Is this the end of the world? Yes, it is… well, sort of.
But then comes act two.
A well dressed man in a business suit hears a busker playing the drums in a city square in Boston. He begins to dance, first alone, and then with a ginger-haired woman, who, caught up in the excitement, joins him. Here is the ‘Chuck’ Krantz (Tom Hiddleston) we’ve been hearing so much about. Act three fills in the blanks: where Chuck came from (played here as a young man by Jacob Tremblay), why he is so central to this story, 
and what he represents for this world, and how magic plays a small part.
While The Life of Chuck is ostensibly a film about the end of the world as seen through horror-meister Stephen King’s eyes — the man who brought us The Shining, and Carrie and Misery and Cujo and Pet Semetary — it’s actually a sweet and gentle revelatory movie that owes more to the poems of Walt Whitman than to any ghosts or vampires.
I have to admit, I’m no fan of Tom Hiddleston I didn’t like him in the Hank Williams biopic, or as Loki in the Thor Movies. But he is perfect in this movie about Chuck. So if you’re in the mood for a really nice, inspiring, easy-to-watch movie with lots of semi-profundities, you should see the uncategorizable and always surprising Life of Chuck.
I really liked this one.
How TO Train Your Dragon and The Life of Chuck open this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings. Never Alone, The Other and Ma Mere, Dieu et Sylvie Vartan. Are among many films playing at TJFF in person and digitally.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Films reviewed: Orlando: My Political Biography, Fallen Leaves
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Toronto’s Fall film festival season continues in December with the Jayu Human Rights film festival showing insightful documentaries on pertinent issues, along with a slam poetry competition at the Ace Hotel.
But this week, I’m looking at two new European movies that played at TIFF this year and are now in cinemas. There are trans shape-shifters in France and lonely job-seekers in Finland.
Orlando: My Political Biography
Wri/Dir: Paul B. Preciado
It’s 17th century, Elizabethan England. Orlando is a teenaged boy, a handsome courtier in the Queen’s castle. He’s also an aspiring writer, waxing lyrical on oak trees and winter frosts. He falls in love with Sasha, a blonde, Russian aristocrat. But at the age of 30, he wakes from a deep sleep transformed into a woman. Orlando’s life takes her (and him) through various guises over hundreds of years, to capitals as far away as Constantinople, until finally returning by ship to 20th century London, where they finally complete and publish their book. Such is the “biography” of Orlando in Virginia Woolf’s famous novel. So what’s different about this film?
For one thing, the entire cast is trans or non-binary, as is Preciado, the director. And the cast is huge. Each version of Orlando is played by another actor, their sex, gender and sexuality presented in a myriad of ways. Orlando is plural in this incarnation. Not just that, Orlando’s race, colour and language also shifts, with the actors ages ranging from small children to the elderly. Some characters wear chainmail like Joan of Arc, while others recline, luxuriantly, in an Ottoman seraglio. The one common factor is their Elizabethan white 
neck ruffs, the fashion of the day.
Orlando, My Political Biography is not the first film version of the novel — far from it. It seems to attract the most experimental and avant garde filmmakers out there. German director Ulrike Ottinger made Freak Orlando in 1981 which entirely rejects the conventions of both narrative and art movies. English director Sally Potter (see: The Roads Not Taken, The Party, Ginger and Rosa)’s Orlando of 1992 starred Tilda Swinton as the various Orlandos and featured Jimmy Sommerville singing up in a tree.
But this French political biography adopts Bertolt Brecht’s (and Jean-Luc Godard’s) method of deliberately alienating the audience to promote a political stand. Each Orlando introduces their scene by announcing directly to the camera their real /adopted name and personal history, followed by their Orlando passage, often reading directly from a copy of Woolf’s book. But it remains engaging because of the beauty of the photography and costumes and the sincerity of the players in the film. Settings vary from deliberately artificial backdrops to an exquisite forest and a grotesque Parisian catacomb.
The political stance is complex, and involves a rejection of the accepted binary. Some take issue with psychiatrists, surgeons and pharmacists having control of their identities and bodies. 
Says one young Orlando: you must hate your genitals if you want the doctor to give you hormones… but I don’t hate my genitals. Says another: I adopted a ridiculous caricature of masculinity for a year after transitioning before realizing I shouldn’t erase my personal history just because I’m trans.
Orlando, My Political Biography is equal parts intellectual lecture, political diatribe, performance art, and cinematic experiment, and, most surprisingly… it works.
Fallen Leaves
Wri/Dir: Aki Kaurismaki
It’s typical day in Helsinki, Finland.
Ansa (Alma Pöysti), a single woman in her thirties, works at a low-paying job in a supermarket. She lives in a small apartment and subsists on frozen microwave dinners. She likes listening to relaxing music, but her bakelite radio only plays bad news from the Ukrainian war these days. She does go out occasionally to a local karaoke bar, with her best friend Liisa (Nuppu Koivu). There she encounters — but doesn’t actually meet — Holappa (Jussi Vatanen). Holappa is a depressed guy who works as a welder at a small factory. He lives in the company dorm, along with acquaintances and his best friend and confident Huotari (Janne Hyytiäinen). He handles his depression with constant drinking, which only gets him more depressed. After a few near misses they finally meet face to face. Their first date? A zombie movie at a local rep cinema. Sparks fly and they vow to meet again soon. But various unfortunate coincidences seem destined to keep these soulmates far apart. Can they ever find happiness together? Or is this a relationship that can never happen?
Fallen Leaves is a tragicomic proletarian love story par 
excellence. Its also a deadpan comedy, which despite it’s nearly tragic atmosphere, will have you laughing and crying all the way through. If you’ve ever seen an Aki Kaurismaki movie before you’ll instantly recognize his style: seedy bars, bearded bikers, dark rock n roll, and a noir-ish, retro feel. Similar to Jim Jarmusch, but much funnier. It also deals with real-life issues like alcoholism and poverty. Ansa loses her job for taking home an expired cookie instead of throwing it away, while Holappa is driven close to self- destruction by his constant boozing. If you haven’t seen his movies before, Fallen Leaves is a great one to start.
Everything in this film is retro. Finland is the high-tech home of Nokia and Supercell, but in Kaurismaki’s world the characters use avocado coloured landlines, with cel phones or video games 
nowhere to be seen. Computers seem relegated to internet cafes. Phone numbers are written on slips of paper, blown away with the wind. Movie theatres only play classics, and every bar is on skid row.
At the same time, there’s always a niceness and sweetness burbling just below the surface of the humdrum futility of everyday life. Fallen Leaves is a wonderfully depressing movie with a feel-good atmosphere. I love this movie.
Fallen Leaves and Orlando My Political Biography are both playing now at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, and at other theatres across Canada — 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.
Mishmashed genres. Films reviewed: Sisu, Polite Society, Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Spring Film Festival Season continues in Toronto, with Hot Docs on now — offering 200 great documentaries from around the world, with free daytime tickets for students and seniors! — and ReelAbilities Film Festival starts on May 11th, showing great films by, for and about the deaf and disability communities — and it’s fully accessible!
But this week I’m talking about three new movies — from Finland, the UK and the US — opening this weekend. There’s a WWII action-thriller that feels like a spaghetti western; an Indo-English action-comedy with a dash of Kung Fu, and a coming-of-age drama about puberty in the 1970s.
Sisu
Wri/Dir: Jalmari Helander
It’s 1944 in Lapland, Finland, and a grizzled old prospector (Jorma Tommila) is panning for gold. He knows there’s a war going on, but he just wants to be alone with his dog, his horse and his pickaxe. But then he hits a golden lode! Not just a few tiny nuggets, but huge glowing rocks. Now it’s time to pack up his bags and head off toward Helsinki to cash them in. What he doesn’t know, though, is that the Nazis are carrying out a scorched-earth policy, burning and killing everyone in Lapland. And a troop of SS soldiers, tanks and all, are heading his way. How can a feeble old prospector resist the Third Reich?
But this is no ordinary codger. When Finland was allied to the 
Nazis he singlehandedly fought hundreds of Soviet soldiers – his back is riddled with bullet holes and scars, but he is virtually indestructible. He is a living legend and the Russians know to steer clear of him. And now Finland has switched sides, from the Axis to the Allies. But the SS Obersturmführer (Norwegian actor Aksel Hennie: Max Manus) and his henchman Wolf (Jack Doolan) don’t have a clue who they’re dealing with. And when they spot his gold, they make it the mission of their squad to kill the old man and grab the booty. But which side will triumph in the end?
Sisu (the title is an untranslatable Finnish word that means something like a knuckle- breaking determination, and bravery, never to give in despite the odds) is an extremely violent action-thriller, told in a light, almost humorous way, about one man’s fight to the bitter end. It traces their battle on land, through minefields, underwater and high in the sky. The music and camerawork look like a 1960s spaghetti western, and the film has an almost cartoonish or fairytale feel. I’ve seen Tommila in a number of super-weird Finnish movies (Big Game, Rare Exports) directed by Helander, always about a not-so-nice hero in Lapland, with his actual son Onni Tommila always playing a role (this time he’s a German soldier). A unique genre, but one you should explore. If you’re into suspense and action with lots of violence, blood and gore, you’ll love Sisu.
Polite Society
Wri/Dir: Nida Manzoor
Ria and Lena are two sisters who live in London. When they’re not wrestling or trying to gouge each other’s eyes out, they are fantasizing about their future careers: Ria (Priya Kansara) as a stuntwoman, and Lena (Ritu Arya) as an artist. Ria relentlessly practices her killer kung-fu kick (to no avail) while Lena cultivates her brooding goth persona.
This doesn’t sit well with their Pakistani parents, who want their daughters to find respectable professions. That’s why they pay for Ria’s posh private school — so she’ll become a doctor.
But things turn bad when Lena drops out of art school and falls 
into a deep depression. Things get worse when she agrees to attend a party at a huge mansion, thrown by Salim (Akshay Khan) the most eligible bachelor in town, and the son of a millionairess (Nimra Bucha). But when he proposes to Ria, Lena knows something is not right. Why did this rich guy want to marry an art school drop out? What are his real motives? With the help of her best friends Clara and Alba she decides to delve into Salim’s past and expose his wrongdoings to stop the impending wedding. But is she barking up the wrong tree? And is it all just her childish imagination?
Polite Society is an English action-comedy, and though set within the South Asian community, aside from one song it’s a far cry from Bollywood. The humour is British and the fights are strictly Hong Kong. Throw in a bit of science fiction and some high school dynamics, and you’ll find an unexpectedly enjoyable mishmash of genres, in the style of Everything, Everwhere, All at Once… but entirely different. I liked this one a lot.
Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret
Wri/Dir: Kelly Fremon Craig (Based on the book by Judy Blume)
It’s the 1970s in Manhattan. Margaret Simon (Abby Ryder Fortson) is an 11-year-old girl who lives in an apartment with her parents. She loves school, her friends, her Grandma Sylvia (Kathy Bates) who lives nearby, and the city that’s all around her. So when her parents tell her they’re leaving The City and moving to suburban New Jersey, Margaret is devastated. And despite their assurances — it’s just across the river, Dad (Benny Safdie: Uncut Gems) got a promotion and Mom (Rachel McAdams: Morning Glory, A Most Wanted Man, Everything Will Be Fine, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness) won’t have to work anymore — to Margaret it’s another universe. That’s why she starts talking directly to God, since she has no one else to tell her secrets to. She was brought up with no religion — her dad’s Jewish and her mom’s Christian — but she still needs the God thing.
She soon makes friends her age, when their neighbour marches through their front door. Nancy (Elle Graham) quickly informs her
she’s richer, prettier and more popular than Margaret but she can join her clique anyway as long as she follows the rules: They must wear a bra, tell the group when they have a period, and share the name of the boy they’re crushing on. Problem is Margaret has no breasts, no period and Moose, the guy she likes, isn’t the right one. With friends like these, who needs enemies?
Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret is a retelling of the classic, pre-teen novel, and it’s fantastic. It’s funny and realistic, dealing with the problems and insecurities girls had to deal with before the internet. (And none of these worries have gone away). It’s set in the 1970s, complete with the classrooms, clothes and music of the period, but also the attitudes and zeitgeist. It deals with everything from spin the bottle to bullying. And if you have a heart I’m sure you’ll shed a tear at least once. Generations grew up on Judy Blume’s books, and the movie is faithful to the original but totally accessible to kids today (and their parents.) This is a great girls’ movie about the perils of puberty.
Polite Society, Sisu and Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret all open across Canada 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 Sherwan Haji about The Other Side of Hope
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Photos 1,3 by Jeff Harris
Khaled is a mechanic in Aleppo when the bombs start to fall, killing most of his family. He flees Syria and makes his way through Europe until he 
finds sanctuary in Helsinki, Finland. But when he applies for refugee status he is turned down, and threatened with deportation. He ends up living on the streets… until he is given a job in an unusual restaurant, recently bought by an eccentric, older man looking for a career change. Khaled is searching for his lost sister even as he runs from police, government agents and 
neo-Nazis. Can his new job show him the Other Side of Hope?
The Other Side of Hope is filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki’s latest film. It shows the plight of refugees in Finland as well as the endearing — if oddball — characters, live musicians and an ineffable aesthetic unique to Kaurismäki’s films. It stars Sherwan Haji as Khaled. Sherwan himself is originally from Syria, where he acted on TV. He now continues his accomplished career of acting and filmmaking in Europe.
I spoke to Sherwan on site at Films We Like in Toronto in September 2017, during TIFF.
The Other Side of Hope opens today in Toronto.
Finished. Movies Reviewed: Amy, Self/Less, Big Game
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
People talk about closure as if finishing is always a good thing. But is it? This week I’m looking three movies. There’s a documentary about a young singer whose life came to an untimely finish; an action/thriller about a rich man who wants to delay his ultimate finish; and an action/adventure about a President in trouble who seeks help from a boy… who is Finnish.
Amy
Dir: Asif Kapadia
Amy Winehouse was a soulful jazz singer with an incredible voice. She was
born in North London and dead by the age of 27. This was just four years ago. A new documentary fills in the missing years of her heartbreaking story. It concentrates on her music, her family, her friends and her lovers.
Amy was the daughter of a cabby and a pharmacist who divorced when she was still young. Extremely talented, she was sent to a prestigious music academy but was kicked out by age 16. She recorded her first album by age 20. Her voice was a throwback to some of the great American Jazz singers. Her look was also retro – dramatic and sensuous, with big hair, heavy black eyeliner. And she had an outspoken manner and working class accent, which set her apart from the carefully groomed and managed commercial bands.
According to the film, she behaved sexually “like a man” – had lots of lovers and did it for the pleasure of it. She experimented with drugs while hanging in Camden nightclubs. At one of these clubs – prophetically called “Trash” — she first met Blake. He became her on-again, off-again lover and future husband, and many blame him for her growing dependence on drugs. . And while all this was going on her career was taking off. Her albums went multi-platinum in the UK and around the world.
Her instant stardom brought the bad side, too. The London press is notorious for its voracious appetite; it chews up the newly famous, and spits out their husks. The paparazzi follow their every move pasting lurid and intensely personal pics on the front pages of tabloids. She was in and out of 
rehab clinics, after collapsing onstage. And eventually it all proved too much and her body just gave out. (Doctors blame bulimia with excessive alcohol.)
This is a great, heartbreaking and extremely intimate documentary, shot with cel phones, voice mail recordings and tons of archival grainy photos and footage. And it features her music, along with the lyrics projected on the screen. It’s accessible both to die-hard fans and the merely curious. But is this film as exploitative as the tabloids it documents? No. Even though it shows Amy’s good and bad sides, it is sympathetic not accusatory..
Self/Less
Dir: Tarsem Singh
Damian (Ben Kingsley) is a self-made real estate kingpin in New York City. He thinks money can buy anything, and he lives a life of luxury: a penthouse suite with elaborate, gold-inlaid doors and massive wooden furniture. When there’s a difficult situation, he just pulls out a wad of cash. But he has a problem that money can’t solve: he’s dying. And then he discovers a secret corporation where a 
scientist, Dr Albright (Matthew Goode: “Finn” from The Good Wife) promises him immortality, in exchange for Big Bucks. The only catch? He has to pretend to die, leaving his old life behind. In exchange, they’ll give him a brand new – and much younger – body, freshly-made in a laboratory tank.
He agrees, and before you know it, Ben Kingskey’s soul passes into Ryan Reynolds’ body. And his past self — his heavy New York accent, his mannerisms, his personality — all disappear. Now he has a new home in
New Orleans, flashy clothes, a new best friend, and more beautiful women than he can shake a stick at. But there’s a problem. Turns out, his body wasn’t made in a laboratory at all, it’s a real person! And the body’s memories keep coming back to life. So Damian investigates, and meets up with his body’s wife Marguerite (Natalie Martinez) and a daughter.
But as soon as the lab folks find out he knows their secret — despite the millions Damian paid them — they all have to die. Luckily his body still remembers its special ops fight skills — it’s up to him to fight for strangers 
who knew the body he’s living in. Who will win the ultimate showdown – Damian? Or the laboratory?
This movie makes no sense at all. It starts out good, but soon loses its point, and reports to shootouts and showdowns to keep you interested.
I love the “body swap” genre – films like Freaky Friday, All of Me and Face/Off. Even The Change Up, (Reynolds’ comedy from last year) wasn’t bad. Alas, in this one, Reynolds is bland, generic and unadventurous. He doesn’t even pretend to show the enormous gaps between Ben Kingsley’s Damian and himself.
He may be nice-looking and likeable, but he’s just a meat puppet.
Big Game
Dir: Jalmari Helander
Oskari (Onni Tommila) is a 13-year-old in Northern Finland. As part of the Sami coming-of-age ritual (the Sami are an indigenous people living in Europe’s Far North) he has 24 hours to prove his manhood as a hunter and bring back a reindeer. He’s a brave kid but he’s unskilled with his bow and arrow and doubts his own self-worth.
But in the woods after an explosion he comes across a metal space pod. And inside is the US president (Samuel L Jackson)! An evil billionaire terrorist, with the help of some White House insiders, has shot down Air Force 1. He did it as a lark, not for any ideological reason. And now he’s 
out hunting “big game” — the President himself. So young Oskari has to prove his mettle by guiding him to safety and fending off all the bad guys in the process.
Believe it or not, this kids’ movie is really good. It’s quirky, surprising and funny. I had zero expectations coming in, but something clicked when I realized this is another film by Finnish Director Helander (Rare Exports about Santa 
Clause as a primeval demon), which also starred Tommila). It’s not disneyish at all. Big Game has blood and guts, a gritty feel and a twisted sensibility, all of which make it delightful.
Self/Less, Big Game and Amy all open today in Toronto; check your local listings. Also opening tonight is Tangerine with a special screening with Trans Pride activist Christin Milloy and sex work activist Catherine Brockhurst to lead a discussion. Also on now is the Buster Keaton festival, with a live piano player. Go to robertbrucemusic.com for more information.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Queer parents, straight kids. Movies Reviewed: 52 Tuesdays, My Straight Son, Open Up To Me PLUS Inside Out LGBT Film Festival
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.
Inside Out, Toronto’s LGBT film festival — known for its innovative programming and great movies – starts today. One traditional sub-genre is the Coming Out movie: a young man or woman finds freedom and love but also faces bullying and depression, when he comes out publicly as gay, bi or lesbian. Usually there are cruel homophobic parents who don’t understand what they’re going through. This always makes for a good movie, but it’s been done a lot. So here’s a reversal: how about movies where the LGBT character is the parent, not the kid? This week I’m looking at three such movies (with an emphasis on trans characters) – from Australia, Venezuela and Finland — all serious dramas, but with good comic relief mixed in.
52 Tuesdays
Dir: Sophie Hyde
Billie is a well-adjusted teenager with a great relationship with her parents. She lives with her mom, but regularly sees her motorcycle-riding dad. But one day, she comes home to a big surprise. Her mom has cut her hair, bound her breasts, and is changing her name to James. Starting today, her mom is becoming her dad! James will be undergoing testosterone treatments in a gender transformation. It’s a big change that will take a year. And during that year, James will need his 
space – Billie has to live with her dad (her other dad). Billie is gobsmacked, but doesn’t want to lose contact with her parent. So they agree: she’ll visit after school, each Tuesday, until 10 pm. Over the course of the year, Billie records these weekly visits with her video camera. She also begins to explore gender identity, sexuality… and sex.
At school, she falls in with a passionate couple – Josh and Jasmine (Sam Althuizen and Imogen Archer) – when she spies them making out. They’re in a school production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (where Viola dresses as a man). And, courtesy of Billie’s 
uncle, the three of them get their own private time in his empty apartment: Tuesdays from 10 to midnight, when both of Billie’s dads think she’s with the other. And Billie also records these meetings – including their sexual explorations – on her video camera.
So 52 Tuesdays is just as it sounds: 52 short scenes, from Billie’s point of view, tracing the changes – and setbacks – of James’s transformation and her own coming of age. It has a few too many divergent plotlines – school censorship, medical problems, accidents, family rivalries, hidden relationships — extraneous to the main story. But that doesn’t detract from the movie’s elegant structure. Tilda Cobham-Hervey as Billie is a joy to watch – she’s the next Carey Mulligan – and Del Herbert-Jane gives a fascinating and realistic portrayal of James’ transformation.
My Straight Son (Azul y no Tan Rosa)
Dir: Miguel Ferrari
Diego (Guillermo García) is a professional photographer in Caracas in his thirties. Life is great. He has a successful career, and a boyfriend, Fabrizio, who is a doctor. Fabrizio pops the question one night at dinner in a fancy restaurant. Do you want to live together? Diego’s surprised but inwardly happy. He says he’ll tell him his decision the next day. He plans to say yes, but two big things happen. Diego’s teenaged son Armando (Ignacio Montes) — who he hasn’t seen for five years since he moved to Europe with his mother — arrives at his 
doorstep. Armando feels neglected by his dad and baffled by his lifestyle. He retreats to online relationships. He’s good-looking but insecure. He uses a celebrity photo his dad took to create a new, online personality and along-distance relationship with Laura, a small town tango enthusiast.
The second thing that happens is Fabrizio is brutally attacked outside a gay bar by three young men who beat him 
senseless. And now he lies in a coma in his hospital bed. Diego identified the gay-bashers, but gets no help from the police – so he buys a gun.
Diego loves his son but doesn’t know what to do. He turns for help from his working class family, and his bar friends – a comic entourage with soap opera names like Dolores Del Rio and Perla Marina. Can Armando connect with his dad? And will he reveal his real face to his online girlfriend? Will Fabrizio come out of his coma? And will the attacking teens ever be brought to justice?
My Straight Son is a very enjoyable melodrama that mixes telenovela plots with pop culture tropes, all with a gay twist.
Open Up To Me
Dir: Simo Halinen
Maarit (Leea Klemola) lives in Helsinki, where she works as a cleaning woman in an office building. She used to work as a guidance counselor in a small town, but left her spouse and teenaged daughter following sex-reassignment surgery. While cleaning an office one day, a psychologist tells Maarit to lock up when she’s done — she’s going to Spain for a few weeks. Two weeks! Hmm… So she tries on her make up and perfume and lounges about the office. Into the psychologist’s office walks Sami (Peter Franzén), a gym teacher and soccer coach. Sami has an appointment to talk about sex problems with his wife, also a school teacher. He 
mistakes Maarit for a therapist. After a moment’s pause she slips easily into the role – and they both notice a spark between them. They arrange to meet again.
Soon, Maarit comes clean: she’s a cleaner not as a counseler. She reveals that they met, 20 years ago. Maarit, as a man, was on a professional soccer team (as was Sami) and he bested Sami at the national championships. Sami is taken aback, but 
intrigued. Is this a budding relationship?
Maarit goes back to her home town where vicious rumours are spreading about her, and her daughter is being picked on in school. Can she rebuild trust with her daughter and restore her reputation? Back in Helsinki, she faces daily abuse and cruelties, ranging from shouted slurs, job discrimination – even propositions from men who assume she’s a prostitute. Through it all, Maarit learns to be a woman who can stand up for herself. Part love story, part family drama, Open Up to Me is an excellent movie, with Leea Klemola and Peter Frantzén — the two leads — giving strong but subtle performances.
All of these films – and more – are playing now through June 1st at Inside Out, Toronto’s LGBT Film Festival. For more info, go to insideout.ca.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Phantasmagorical! Movies Reviewed: Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale; The Tourist; The Tempest; plus Movie phone-in Contest!
This time of year, when the nights grow longer and the days grow darker, when the icy winds whistle through bare branches of the trees, when Christmas is coming, and New Year’s not far behind, thoughts turn to things fantastical, impossible and even supernatural. So today I’m going to talk about three, very different movies, but all of them far outside of the grip of what people call realism. Also, keep listening, because I’m having a real ticket giveaway at the end of my reviews
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale
Dir: Jalmari Helander
In the extreme north of Finland, where the Sami people hunt reindeer, something’s wrong. A big multinational mining company has come in to the area, and they’re digging something up, under an ancient mountain – or is it a burial ground? But the reindeer are disappearing, and so is the main source of income. Children are also disappearing, with creepy, sewn cloth dolls left in their beds. And so are the burlap sacks in a potato warehouse. What’s going on?
Then they discover a mass slaughter. All the local reindeer herdsman, bearded and wearing toques, think it must be the Russians‘ fault, just over the fence, across the border. Or maybe it’s the wolves? Or that multi national headed by the weird Englishman who keeps warning them “Shhh.. don’t say bad words… don’t do anything naughty…!”
And a great horned beast has been dug up by the miners what is it? What does it all mean?
But little Pietari has done some reading. All those old fairytales? They’re true! It’s Coca-cola
that played the con-job in the 19th century and painted a new picture. You know that jolly laughing bearded man in red? Ho, ho, ho… Pietari has discovered the truth about Santa:
He sees you when you’re sleeping,
he knows when you’re awake,
he knows if you’ve been bad or good,
so be good for goodness sake!
Santa’s actually… the boogie man! He grabs little kids and spanks them to death…
It’s up to little Pietari to save all the kids, get rid of the sinister creature, and restore the ruined local economy. Will he do it? Can he do it?
This fast-paced film from Finland is one of the strangest Christmas movies I’ve ever seen. It’s cute, and surreal, and spooky, all at once, like a lot of Finnish movies. Although there are some scary scenes and a little bit of gore, I think most kids (and adults) who are struggling with their own parents’ Santa myths might find this just the thing to clear away the saccharine, commercial images we get bombarded with every year, right about now…
The Tourist
Dir: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
(Starring Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp)
Elise is a mysterious glamorous woman, who sits in open-air cafes and reads cryptic notes delivered to her on the sly. She’s trying to find her boy-friend who robbed a gangster of billions of dollars and then disappeared. And she’s being tracked by countless European men from Italy, France, Germany, and the UK who whisper into hidden microphones and observe her every step. She’s told to meet someone and pretend he’s her boyfriend. She gets on a train, and chooses a man at random, a hapless math teacher from Wisconson – Frank (played by Johnny Depp). He is soon trapped in her machinations as she tries to escape all these men pursuing her as they chase her (and him!) through the canals of Venice. Can he help her escape? And will she ever find her real boyfriend? Will he show up at the ball? (Yes she goes to a ball). And what about all the money he stole?
This movie was a total disappointment. Athough it sounds like fun, it barely makes sense, and as the plot turns, it makes even less sense. And does Angelina Jolie hate other women? It’s like the thought of another woman competing with her for screen space is so anathema to her that she’s banned any and all potential rivals from her films. The cast of 40 has 39 men, including Johnny Depp, Paul Bettany, and Timothy Dalton, Steven Berkoff (as the villain) – along with a legion of Euro-spies and gangsters with carefully groomed, three-day cheek-stubble, designer suits, and Zoolander poses.
What’s with her? I liked Wanted, (even though it was dumb), thought Salt, last summer was even dumber, and now there’s this one. It’s starting to grate. Johnny Depp was totally wasted as a a puffy-faced, ineffectual milquetoast.
Angelina’s accent was atrocious, and the two of them looked ridiculous posturing in evening wear in the admittedly beautiful European scenery. It looked like a Hollywood movie from the early sixties, but without real glamour – it felt out of synch. The whole movie was embarrassing, and the story, though it started out good, had so many twists it no longer made any sense.
It’s especially disappointing because the director was the one who made that really great movie the Lives of Others, about the Stasi spy in East Germany. This spy fantasy is only his second film, and it’s a real clunker.
The Tempest
Dir: Julie Taymor
Many of you already know the story, it’s about Prospero, the Duke of Milan, and his daughter Miranda who are exiled to an island, inhabited only by the local creature Caliban, he uses his magic powers (and that of his spirit Ariel) to cause a shipwreck, wand strand his enemies and allies on the island, cast a spells to bring back justice and regain his power in Northern Italy. It’s also Miranda’s first time seeing other humans, so she falls in love with a handsome prince, the good King’s son. Meanwhile the bad guys try out their plots along with Caliban.
So this version, directed by the very talented and original stage director Julie Taymor, tries a few changes, but keeps largely to Shakespeare’s original story. She keeps it in the period – doesn’t modernize it, but she fools around a bit with sex and gender. She casts Helen Mirren as Prospero (Prospera), Miranda’s mother now, and a witch not a sorcerer. That works fine. And she has the sprite Ariel (expertly played by Ben Whishall) do some shape-shifting, turning from man to woman and back again.
The cast is quite amazing – with Alfred Molina, Tom Conti, Chris Cooper, Allan Cumming – and others, who can handle Shakespeare without trouble. It’s shot in Hawai’i so you get these fantastical moonscapes, and volcanic cliffs and weird jungles for characters to wander around in.
It just didn’t seem movie-like to me, there was a disconnect. It was more of a play captured on film, so it was harder to connect with the characters, to really feel their emotions. It felt like a virtual proscenium arch between you and the screen, so it was doubly removed (or distanced) from the viewer. So there were stage sets in the movie – that say: look at the beautiful sets! And stage costumes that shout out look at these fancy costumes. And some of the acting, like Russel Brand (as Trinculo) was saying, Looooook! I’m a comeeeeedian! (yeah, you’re really funny).
So it’s an interesting movie, with some neat effects. And things like Ariel doing butoh dance poses, chalked in white, were quite arresting (but why?). I found the background sound and music was terrible, and too overpowering at times, it smothered a lot of the lines, and dragged the pace. Made it lethargic. Shakespeare didn’t write throw-away dialogue – it’s kind of important to be able to hear exactly what they’re saying. So it didn’t all hold together for me, but hey, Shakespeare on the big screen? Another movie Tempest? I say, keep ‘em coming!
Finally, here’s a contest: I’m giving away length of run movie tickets to the first five correct who can answer this question:
Which one of these four Scandinavian directors is from Finland?:
Lars Von Trier
Aki Kaurismaki
Lasse Halstrom
Joachim Rønning
The first 5 correct emails will win a length of engagement ticket for two persons for:
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale.
(CONTEST NOW CLOSED)
culturalmining.com 
leave a comment