Separated. Films reviewed: I Used to be Funny, Longing, Robot Dreams
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Not all love is sexual, and not all relationships lead to marriage. This week, I’m looking at three bittersweet dramas about people separated, against their will, from those they love. There’s a teenaged girl separated from her nanny (who is also a standup comic); a man separated from his biological son (who is also dead); and a dog separated from his best friend (who is also a robot).
I Used To Be Funny
Wri/Dir: Ally Pankiw
Sam (Rachel Sennott: Shiva Baby) is a standup comic in downtown Toronto. She shares an apartment with friends and fellow comics Paige and Philip (Sabrina Jalee, Caleb Hearon). But Sam can’t do her act anymore. She rarely showers, changes her clothes, or eats. She dumped her longtime boyfriend Noah (Ennis Esmer), and she quit the day job that used to pay her rent. Now she just sits around all day, staring at the wall. Why? Well, obviously she’s severely depressed. She’s also recovering from a traumatic violent event.
Things used to be better. She had a job in the suburbs as a nanny for a troubled 12-year-old named Brooke (Olga Petsa). Brooke’s mother was dying in hospital, her aunt had little free time and her dad was always busy — he’s a cop. But now Brooke has disappeared and her aunt doesn’t even know where to look for her. And when Brooke throws a rock through her window, Sam decides maybe she should join the effort to find the runaway and bring her home. But where is she hiding, why is she angry at Sam, and what will happen if she finds her?
I Used to Be Funny is a bittersweet comedy about a wise-
But it’s also Sam dealing with a not-at-all funny event — no spoilers here. It costars many Canadian comic actors, including Hoodo Hersi, Dan Beirne (The Twentieth Century, Great, Great, Great) and Jason Jones in a rare serious role. Rachel Sennott is excellent as Sam.
I Used to be Funny is a humorous look at depression and assault.
Longing
Wri/Dir: Savi Gabizon
Daniel Bloch (Richard Gere) is a successful businessman, and committed bachelor. He enjoys sex, not commitment or kids. He owns a factory and lives in a luxurious penthouse suite looking down on Manhattan. But when a when a surprise visitor arrives at his door, he is floored by her message. Rachel (Suzanne Clément) is a Canadian woman he had a fling with 20 years earlier. She reveals she was pregnant when she returned to Canada, later married and raised Allen — his biological son — with another man she married. But Allen died in an accident two weeks earlier. Daniel is floored. She hasn’t come for money or legal action, just to tell him the news. So he travels north to Hamilton, to attend a memorial and find out more about the son he never knew. And what he found was both frightening and endearing.
He talks to the people who played a key role in his son’s life, and discovers some surprising facts. He was a piano virtuoso. His best friend (Wayne Burns) says Allen was involved in a drug deal. A much younger girl (Jessica Clement) was in love with him, but says the feelings were not reciprocal. And his school teacher Alice (Diane Kruger) says he was obsessed with her and painted romantic poems about her on the school walls. What was Daniel’s son really like? And what can he do to remember someone he never knew?
Longing is a quirky, disjointed drama about kinship and death as a father desperately tries to become a belated part of his late son’s life. Richard Gere underplays his role, almost to the point of absurdity, but it somehow makes sense within the nature of his character. It’s also about the boy’s parents, not just Daniel and Rachel, but his other de facto parents And it all takes place in a very posh and elegant version of Hamilton, unlike any Hamilton I’ve ever seen. This is a strange movie that sets up lots of tension-filled revelations, but then attempts to resolve them all using an absurd ceremony.
Longing never blew me away, but it stayed interesting enough to watch.
Robot Dreams
Co-Wri/Dir: Pablo Berger
It’s the early 1980s in the East Village of NY City. There are tons of people, but they’re not people, they’re animals. Literally. Bulls and ducks, racoons and gorillas. Dog — a dog with floppy ears and a pot belly — lives there, alone in an apartment, gazing longingly out the window at happy couples cavorting in the summer sun. Dog plays pong by himself, or eats TV dinners while watching TV. He’s bored and lonely, with no one to play Pong with or just hang out. Until he orders a robot — as advertised on TV, some assembly required — and waits eagerly for it to arrive. He’s a delight with tubular arms, a mailbox shaped trunk, an elongated German helmet as a head, with round eyes and a happy smile. They are instant friends, maybe soulmates. They go rollerskating in central park, take pictures in a photo booth. Feelings grow. Another day they head out for the beach. They sunbathe and swim together — a perfect day. Until the robot finds himself rusted solid just as the beach is closing for the night. And despite Dog’s efforts, he is too heavy to drag home, so he comes back one next day to get him. But the beach is closed for the season, locked up behind a metal fence. And despite repeated tries, Dog can’t 
seem to rescue Robot from his sandy prison. Can Robot survive for a year, unmoving, in the great outdoors? And will that spark between Robot and Dog still remain in the spring?
Robot Dreams is an amazing animated film about friendship and loss. It’s called Robot Dreams because much of the film takes place inside the robot’s imagination as he lay on the beach, It’s set in the grittiness of 1980s New York, with graffiti-filled subways, punks in East Village, break dancing teens and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Remember Zootopia, that animated movie where everyone is an animal? Robot Dreams is the flip side of 
that, darker, cooler, adult, more Fritz the Cat than Disney or Pixar. There’s also no dialogue, but it’s anything but silent, with constant music and grunts and quick-changing gags and cultural references. But it’s also very moving — you can feel the pathos between Dog and Robot. I saw this movie cold (without reading any descriptions) and it wasn’t till afterwards that I realized it’s by Pablo Berger, the Spanish director who, more than a decade ago, made the equally amazing Blancanieves, a silent, B&W version of Snow White as a toreador. The man’s a genius.
I totally love Robot Dreams.
I Used To Be Funny, Longing and Robot Dreams all open theatrically this weekend in Toronto; 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 Kore-eda Hirokazu about Monster at #TIFF23
Edited version (8m 27s)
Unedited version (17m 51s) 日本語付き
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Photograph by Jeff Harris
Minato is a school kid in a small town whose mother works in a dry cleaner. But when he comes home one day bleeding, in pain and deeply troubled wants to know who hurt him. When she finds his teacher, Mr Hori is to blame, she tries to get him punished but faces indifference or polite, meaningless words from the teachers and principal. But as the story unfolds, we discover his teacher may not be the monster she suspected.
Monster is also an intriguing new feature film by Kore-eda Hirokazu that looks at children, makeshift families, and positions of power, and examines who suffers from bullying and violent crimes, who is blamed for them, and who actually does them and gets away with it. He also ponders bigger concepts like disasters, reincarnation and life after death.
It features an intricate story, great acting, and a lovely soundtrack by the late Sakamoto Ryuichi. Kore-eda is an award-winning director, writer and producer, whom I’ve previously talks with about Like Father, Like Son, Our Little Sister, After the Storm, and The Third Murder.
I spoke with Kore-eda in person, on-site at #TIFF23.
Monster opens in Toronto on December 1, 2023 at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.
Friends and Lovers. Films reviewed: The Starling Girl, The Eight Mountains
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Spring Film Festival Season continues in Toronto, with Inside-Out opening next week, followed by TJFF in June.
But this week, I’m looking at two new dramas; one from the US, the other from Italy. There’s a fundamentalist young woman in Kentucky looking for love, and two men in the Italian alps looking for the fundamentals of friendship.
The Starling Girl
Wri/Dir: Laurel Parmet
Jem Starling (Eliza Scanlen) is a 17-year-old girl in Kentucky, creative, pretty and burgeoning with sexual urges. She lives in the Holy Grace Christian community under the strict guidance of her parents and Pastor Taylor. She directs her energy into dance, moving her body to express her true feelings. But the dance troupe is supervised every step of the way and the slightest transgression — be it a visible bra strap or a hint of leg — is labeled selfish or sinful. Too many sins and you get shipped off to the dreaded King’s Valley — and they’ve all seen what happens to people sent there.
Pastor Taylor and her parents believe it’s time for “courtship” — 
that is Jen spending time with the boy they choose. They set it up but it does not go well. Ben Taylor is immature, gawky and socially inept. His idea of a good time is joking about chicken droppings. In any case, Jen has her eyes on the prize: Owen (Lewis Pullman). He’s charismatic and tanned, just back from Puerto Rico. He’s into meditation more than scripture. The only problem is he’s a Taylor, too, the preacher’s eldest son and he’s already married.
They decide to meet on the sly. There first few times are chaste and pure but the two of them are ready to explode. She’s the only real person he’s ever met, the only girl he feels comfortable with, he says. And Jen is infatuated with him. They start sending text messages or passing little notes to set up secret rendezvous. But there are no secrets in a community this small. Everything leaks out 
eventually. Is Jen being manipulated by an older, married man? Can Owen be trusted? And are they really in love?
The Starling Girl is a young woman’s coming-of-age drama about sexual frustration and awakening within a restrictive environment. This is filmmaker Laurel Parmet’s first feature and it’s a doozy. Filled with passion, deceit, secrets and lies, it’s a powerful look through a young woman’s eyes. I’ve never seen Eliza Scanlen before, and just assumed she was discovered in a Kentucky diner — but no, she’s yet another Australian actor bursting onto the American scene (and she’s totally convincing.)
I recommend this one.
The Eight Mountains
Wri/Dir: Felix van Groeningen, Charlotte Vandermeersch
(Based on the novel Le otto montagne by
Paolo Cognetti)
It’s the 1980s in Piedmont Italy. Pietro is an 11 year old boy who goes to school in Turin, but spends his summers with his parents in a tiny mountain village. There he meets Bruno, also 11, who herds long-horned goats and milks cows in the village. They become instant best friends, playing, fighting and swimming in the crystal clear waters of an isolated alpine lake. Bruno even gives Pietro a new name: Biero, which is Pietro, or stone, in the local dialect.
Though their moms are around, both of their fathers are rarely there: Bruno’s dad does construction work in Switzerland, while Pietro’s dad is a chemist at a huge plant in Turin. But he visits when he can — he loves the isolation and grandeur of the mountains, and wants to impart his love of them on his son. He takes him on hikes up the local peaks, recording each visit in a diary. Bruno soon joins their climbs (when he’s not apprenticing to make cheese) and their bonds strengthen each summer. But high school brings big changes — school is in the cities not the villages. And it costs money. Pietro’s parents offer to pay for Bruno to study in Turin. Pietro is offended by them taking his best friend away from the mountains — you’ll ruin him! he says. In any case, Bruno’s father won’t allow it. He puts him to work full-time laying bricks at the age of 13.
Pietro drifts apart from his best friend, and breaks all ties with his family to discover himself. 15 years later, he returns to the village and rekindles his friendship with Bruno. But have they drifted too far apart?
The Eight Mountains is a wonderful novelistic drama about friendship and life in the mountains. The story takes place over two decades, with each role played by three actors, child, adolescent and adult, though mostly as the third. Luca Marinelli (Martin Eden in Martin Eden) is excellent as an almost fragile writer who travels the world looking for his true home, and the eight mountains of the title. (He also narrates the story). Alessandro Borghi plays the 
adult Bruno — burly, bearded and gruff — but filled with self-doubt and conflicting emotions.
I don’t speak Italian, but I love the way the film plays with language and dialect, and communicates literary concepts and foreshadowing but without losing its deep, emotional pull. The film is by the Belgian team of Felix van Groeningen (The Broken Circle Breakdown) and Charlotte Vandermeersch, and it fits perfectly with their past work: it’s quite long (2 1/2 hours) with vivid natural scenery, a moving plot and American-style music. If you’re looking for a good, juicy drama about adult friendships, this is the one to see.
Great movie.
The Eight Mountains and The Starling Girl both open this weekend; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Friends. Films reviewed: Blackberry, Book Club: the Next Chapter, The Maiden
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Toronto Spring film Festival season continues with Reelabilities on right now, with pay what you can admission to these fully accessible films, by, for and about disabled and deaf people. And on the horizon look out for Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ film fest starting on May 25.
This week I’m looking at three new movies opening this weekend — two comedies and a drama — from the US and Canada. There are longboarders in Calgary, wedding planners in Tuscany, and entrepreneurs and engineers playing with their Blackberries.
Blackberry
Co-Wri/Dir: Matt Johnson
It’s 1996 in Waterloo, Ontario. Research in Motion is a motley crew of programmers and engineers developing products in a strip mall. They hold onto their college-boy culture (it’s mainly guys), playing music, eating junk food, joking around and watching movies when they’re not writing code. But they work their asses off, too. They want to launch a cel phone like nothing the world has ever seen before. RIM was founded by Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel) and Doug Fregin (Matt Johnson). Blackberry would let you send fully encrypted texts wherever you are using only your thumbs and a built-in keyboard. It’s the first “smart phone”.
They are brilliant at inventing things and getting them to work, but less skilled on the financial side. In fact, they are deeply in debt, having been double-crossed by a silicon valley corporation. In walks financial wizard Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton). He doesn’t know anything about the tech side, but he was impressed by their pitch. So impressed he promises to bail them out, inject cash, and get the cel phone off the ground. In return he declares himself co-CEO (to their objections). And within a few years, Blackberry has captured half the cel phone market. But can they survive the advent of the iPhone.
Blackberry is a hilarious and brilliant look at the rise and fall
of a Canadian device that once dominated the global market. It’s full of geeks nerds and douchey pricks, tremendous discoveries and idiotic errors that, in hindsight, could have been avoided. It’s shot in that 20 oughts retro mode, and Baruchel and Howerton will amaze you. As will many of the smaller parts — like Sungwon Cho and Michael Ironside. I’ve been watching Matt Johnson (co-writer, director and costar) since his first film The Dirties appeared at the Toronto After Dark Festival a decade ago. His talent is unique, weird, and quirky; what could have been a dull corporate biopic gets the full Matt Johnson treatment and ends up as a perfect period piece.
Blackberry is a great tech-geek flick.
Book Club: The Next Chapter
Co-Wri/Dir: Bill Holderman
Viv, Carol, Diane and Sharon have known each other for more than 50 years but live in various cities across the US. Viv (Jane Fonda) is a bon vivant and advocate of free sex, Carol (Mary Steenbergen) is a chef, Sharon (Candice Bergen) is a judge, now retired, and Diane (Diane Keaton) is just herself, a flibertigibbet-y worrywart. But as they adjust to retirement in their seventies+ (up to 85), they feel the need for something new. Viv, after a lifetime denouncing the patriarchy and heteronormative institution of marriage, suddenly decides to exchange rings with her longtime lover. Seeing this her three friends decide they must go to Italy to celebrate her engagement. And after lots of hemming and hawing, they are off to Rome, Venice and Tuscany, celebrating the culture, scenery, fashion, shopping and food Italy offers them. But can they overcome all the obstacles they encounter on the way?
Book Club: the Next Chapter is a comedy road movie about 
sexually-active elderly women having a romp together in Europe. It’s also an unoriginal, cliche-ridden touristic guide to Italy: from riding gondolas in Venice to ogling marble statues in Rome. But even as I was cringing at the truly awful jokes (like Chef Gianni wants to show me his Cucina… what should I do? I bet chef Gianni’s cucina is really big!) I was smiling through the whole dreadful movie. Why? Because to see Fonda, Keaton, Bergen and Steenburgen — plus the great Italian actor Giancarlo Giannini — in a movie together is fun, even a godawful movie like this one… and they looked like they were having a really good time.
The Maiden
Wri/Dir: Graham Foy
Kyle and Colton are best buds at a high school in suburban Calgary. They’re on their longboards, skating across their neighbourhood till it turns into vacant lots, open fields, and forest, a river and railway tracks. Kyle (Jackson Sluiter) is a rebel, he likes hardcore music and carries spray cans to put his tag Maiden on every bridge and surface they pass. Colton (Marcel T. Jiménez) is the taller one but more hesitant and introspective. He lets Kyle take the lead but gleefully joins in smashing up a TV or giving a ritual burial to a dead cat they find in a half-built house. But then something terrible happens and Colton is left all alone to deal with his devastating loss. The second part of the film retells many of the events this time using the point of view of a shy young woman named Whitney (Hailey Ness). But time, reality, and death are all fluid in this film, and not what you think.
The Maiden is an amazing — and constantly surprising — first film by a new director, originally from Calgary, about 
friendship and loss, bullying and cruelty but also about finding the joy of life. All the main players are first-time actors who play their parts perfectly, while the photography is beautifully shot on grainy 16mm film.
This movie has so many jarring images — like Colton in a red hoodie in the school hall, drowning in a sea of cowboy hats during the Calgary Stampede — images that stick with you long after the film is over. People singing to songs only they can hear. It presents life shattering events but without ramming it down your throat. So much is left unsaid — and that’s what gives The Maiden its unexpected power.
Really good movie.
Blackberry, Book Club: The Next Chapter and The Maiden all open this weekend in Toronto; 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 filmmaker Bretten Hannam about Wildhood premiering at #TIFF21!
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Photos of Bretten Hannam by Jeff Harris.
Link and Travis are half-brothers who live with their physically abusive dad in a trailer park down east. Link hates it there, but it’s the only life he’s known since his mother died when he was three. But when he finds a birthday card his dad has hidden from him, he realizes his mother might still be alive. So the two 
brothers run away. On the road they meet Pasmay, a Mi’kmaq who was kicked out of his home because of his sexuality. Together the three embark on a journey down a twisted path where mi’kmaw and two spirited cultures meet. For Link, it’s an education and an initiation into a world he finds both frightening and alluring. Can this 
mismatched threesome become a makeshift family? And will they ever find out what happened to Link’s mother?
Wildhood is a wonderful new film that’s a romantic drama, a coming-of-age story, and a picaresque adventure all in one. It encompasses brotherhood, family and identity — all told from an indigenous and queer point of view. It’s written and directed by Bretten Hannam and it’s their first feature film.
I spoke with Bretten Hannam from Toronto via Zoom.
Wildhood had its world premiere at TIFF21.
Japanese women. Films reviewed: Wife of a Spy, Mio’s Cookbook, The Brightest Roof in the Universe
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Toronto’s spring Film festival season continues. Toronto Jewish Film Festival finishes this weekend, with two great French films, Summer of 85 a gay mystery romance set in the 80s and directed by Francois Ozon; and The Specials, a crowd pleaser by Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano, best known for the hugely popular Intouchable. It’s about a makeshift social services centre in Paris for hard-to-handle kids with autism.
But this week, I’m talking about another TJFF, the Toronto Japanese Film Festival. This one is also digital, but each film plays for the duration of the festival, until June 27th. And as always, it’s deftly programmed, with movies ranging from samurai to Yakuza to family dramas, romance, comedies, action, anime, and even some movies adapted from manga.
This week, I’m looking at three new Japanese features told from a female point of view. There’s a cook trying to capture the flavours of her childhood, a high school girl who seeks answers on top of a roof, and a wife who can’t decide whether her husband is an adulterer… or a spy.
Wife of a Spy
Dir: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
It’s the 1940s in Kobe Japan where Satoku and and Yusaku are a happily married couple. Satoku (Aoi Yu) is a movie actress and Yusaku (Takahashi Issey) a rich businessman who owns an import-export corporation. Japan is at war, but they continue live a western-style life of peaceful luxury. But everything changes when Yusaku and their nephew Fumio return from a business trip in. Manchuria. a Japanese puppet state in Northeastern China. There they witnessed unspeakable atrocities and war crimes committed by the notorious Kwantung Army (aka Kantogun), an elite branch of the Japanese military. And they brought a young Japanese woman back with them.
Satoku sees only the young woman and knows nothing of the war crimes — is her husband cheating on her?. Meanwhile, a childhood friend named Taiji relocates to Kobe. She remembers him as a kind young man. But now he’s a member of the dreaded Kempeitai, the Japanese Gestapo. He criticizes her for wearing dresses instead of kimonos and for drinking foreign whiskey not Japanese. He’s also secretly in love with her. And he suspects Fumio 
and possibly even Yusaku, are traitors spreading Japanese war secrets to the enemy. Or is he just trying to break up their marriage?
But when she discovers the truth about the horrors of war, she confronts her husband — does he have proof? Eventually she has to decide whether to become a spy herself or turn in her husband to the police.
Wife of a Spy is great WWII thriller, full of jealousy, intrigue and numerous unexpected plot twists. Japan is not like Germany where filmmakers have produced hundreds or thousands of movies about their dark past. Rarely do you see Japanese films like this one. This movie is made for TV so everything is on a smaller scale with a more compact feel than a theatrical film, but under the direction of Kurosawa Kiyoshi and with its really good acting and script, (along with costumes, sets and music), it keeps the suspense building till the very end.
Great movie.
Mio’s Cookbook
Dir: Haruki Kadokawa
It’s 1801. Mio and Noe are two 12 year-old girls in Osaka. They vow to be best friends forever. One day they encounter a fortune teller who says Noe is destined for great success, while Mio will have to pass through dark clouds before she reaches blue skies. The same night a huge flood sweeps away both their houses. Mio is an orphan adopted by a woman, and Noe completely disappears. Fast forward ten years.
Now Mio (Matsumoto Honoka) lives in Edo (Tokyo) and works as a cook in a small restaurant. But her love of the sweeter, subtler flavours of Osaka that she’s used to are not popular in her customers in Edo who prefer stronger, saltier tastes. So after much experimentation and hard work she comes up with a perfect blending of the two cuisines. She creates the perfect chawan-mushi egg custard, and her fickle customers love it. Soon, there are lineups around the block. Word reaches Yoshiwara, the red light district, where a mysterious courtesan who never shows her face in public and is known only as Asahi (played by Nao), sends an emissary to bring one back for her to taste. Meanwhile two men are also interested in her cooking: an aristocrat (Kubozuka Yusuke) and a doctor who frequents both the restaurant and the Yoshiwara district. But evil forces — in the form of competing restaurant owners — are working against her. They steal her recipes, send bullies to scare away customers and even set fire to her workplace. Can a woman become a famous chef in Edo? Will Mio ever find her childhood 
friend? And will she find love in the confines of her restaurant?
Mio’s Cookbook is a lovely drama about friendship, cooking, class, religion, sex work, and the floating world of the pleasure district. It’s full of fascinating details about Japanese cuisine — each new dish she creates is displayed and labeled for you to see — and tons of period touches about life 200 years ago. It’s directed by Kadokawa Haruki, the notorious former movie producer, once heir to the Kadokawa publishing empire but who fell from grace in a cocaine scandal in the 1990s. A Japanese Spielberg, he knows how to craft a complex plot with many characters by pressing all the right buttons to keep the crowd wanting more. This is an enjoyable film that left me feeling… well, very hungry afterwards.
The Brightest Roof in the Universe
Dir: Fujii Michihito
Tsubame (Kiyohara Kaya) is a high school girl in a town somewhere in Japan. She has a crush on her next door neighbour Toru (Ito Kentaro) a banjo-playing dude who thinks of her more as a younger sister. She recently split up with her boyfriend after he posted cruel anonymous texts about her on everybody’s cel. And at home, her parents (her dad and step-mom) are preparing for a new baby. But will it take her place in the family? Tsubame has lots to worry about, which she does on the roof of a building where she takes Japanese calligraphy classes. Until one day she realizes she’s not alone up on that roof. There’s a tough-as-nails old lady up there, too, who rides around on a kids’ scooter.
This strange granny is outspoken and opinionated and makes Tsubame feel uncomfortable. There’s something about her she just doesn’t get. But eventually they become friend and confidants. Turns out Hoshi-ba (Momoi Kaori) — meaning granny from the stars — has special powers. She says she can fly and can solve almost any problem. In exchange for Hoshi-ba’s favours, Tsubame starts doing things for her — like finding her long-lost 
grandson who lives somewhere amidst all the rooftops in the town. Is Hoshi-ba real or imaginary? And can she fulfil Hoshi-ba’s wish?
The Brightest Roof in the Universe is a sweet and absorbing coming of age story that touches on family, friendship and love. It also deals with more obscure topics like ink brush painting, jellyfish and astronomy It’s slow paced but not boring, and told in a series of revelatory chapters, some of which are total surprises.
It’s also a sentimental tear-jerker, but in a nice way. I like this movie, too.
Wife of a Spy, The Brightest Roof in the Universe, and Mio’s Cookbook are all playing, now through June 27th at the Toronto Japanese Film Festival.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Family Crises. Films reviewed: Our Friend, Phobic, Falling
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It may be cold, but February is offering some film festivals to enjoy in your own warm homes. TBFF Toronto Black Film Festival is coming mid-month, showing unique and dynamic black voices in Canada. JFF Plus is showing Japanese features shorts and anime, all free beginning in a week. And Hot Docs is running its annual Podcast Festival right now. But this week I’m looking at three new movies that explore family troubles. There’s a police detective chasing a serial killer; a journalist taking care of his dying wife; and an airline pilot dealing with his father’s dementia.
Our Friend
Dir: Gabriela Cowperthwaite
(Based on an article in Esquire by Matthew Teague)
It’s the early 2000s. Matt (Casey Affleck) is a print journalist at the New Orleans Times-Picayune. He’s married to Nicole (Dakota Johnson) a stage actress starring in musicals. They have two young kids. Matt’s career is taking off, and while he’s a foreign correspondent covering wars in Pakistan and the middle east, Nicole has stayed home to care of the kids. But both their lives are disrupted by shocking news: she has cancer. They soon find the two of them can’t handle the triple threat of job, kids and cancer, never mind their own relationship. So they call for help from a good friend. Dane (Jason Segal) is an actor and a comic who has known them with for ages. His relationship is shaky and so is his job status. So he agrees to bunk at their home and help ease the burden. He soon becomes a part of the family, a second mom and dad to the kids, and a comfort to Matt and Nicole dealing with the pains of illness and the threat of death.
Our Friend is a dramatization of Matthew Teague’s personal memoir of a 
decade living with his wife’s cancer with the help of their friend. It’s told in flashbacks explicitly dated by the number of years before or after Nicole Teague’s diagnosis. As such, it holds very few surprises. Even when she’s healthy we all know that in a year a two she’s going to get sick and eventually die. Almost preordained. So there’s a melancholy inevitability to the story, as we’re walked through anger, denial, and stages of diagnosis, chemo, remission, metastasis, psychosis, palliative care and finally death. This is a sentimental and sad movie told in a clean, palatable way. It’s all about family relationships and friendships. Surprisingly though it’s not a tearjerker so it didn’t give me the deep emotional purge I was expecting. Apparently, the magazine article it was based on was amazingly popular, and the acting is good enough, but this movie didn’t move me.
Phobic
Wri/Dir: Bryce Clark
Riley Sanders (Jacque Gray) is a police detective in Utah. She has blonde hair a svelte body and a stern expression on her face. She’s rejoining the force after recovering from a violent incident. Her new partner is Paul (Devin Liljenquist) has a lantern jaw and soap opera looks. Is there a spark between them? They’ve never met but their fathers worked together in the past; they’re both second-generation cops. Their first case? A serial killer with a strange M.O. The victims are all found chained to a chair in a locked room. One is in a place painted red. Another with snakes writhing around his feet. What do they have in common? They were scared to death.
Turns out the victims are all patients of the same psychiatrist, a certain Dr Holden (Tiffani DiGregorio) who uses new techniques to cure “phobics” of their darkest fears. First she diagnoses them using Rorschach inkblot tests, then, through therapy and the use of a strobe light, unlocks her patients’ inner strength to conquer their irrational phobias. But she’s highly protective of her files and won’t let the detectives see them. Meanwhile, Riley has a phobia of her own, a fear of the dark. What is Dr Holden’s role in these grisly deaths? What is her connection to Riley? Are Riley and Paul a thing? And can they catch the elusive killer before the killer kills them?
Phobic is ostensibly a psychological thriller about a serial killer that preys on the victims’ worst fears. An interesting concept. The problem is, it’s not thrilling. It’s about as scary as an old episode of CSI. It’s too slow, clumsily directed, and badly edited. Even the props seem to be done on the cheap. The story looks promising at first but goes totally off-kilter toward the end. Sorry to say, this movie is a mess.
Falling
Wri/Dir: Viggo Mortensen
It’s the early 1960s. Willis (Sverrir Gudnason) is young man from Boonville, NY, who lives on a farm with his wife Gwen (Martha Gross). He likes hunting, horses and fishing, but not much else. On the day his son Johnny is born he says he’s sorry he brought the little stinker into this world. Fifty years later, John (Viggo Mortensen) is an airline pilot happily married to his husband Eric (Terry Chen) with their inquisitive daughter. He lives in sunny California, not far from his younger sister Sarah (Laura Linney). Willis is old now (Lance Henricksen), and Gwen is long gone, so his adult children are trying to find him a place near them to live out his final years. The problem is he’s still the same rude, angry and violent sonofabitch they remember from their childhood. If not worse. He’s a smoker and a drinker. He’s xenophobioc, paranoid, racist, misogynistic and homophobic. He’s rude and lecherous, ogling women and swearing at men. He
says all women are whores, and calls his adult son, an airforce vet, a fairy. On top of that, he’s losing it — prone to wandering away, forgetting where he is or why he’s there. How long can John keep calm and put up with his father? And will Willis ever make peace with the world… and himself?
Falling is a drama about a father and son, set in the past and the present. It jumps back and forth through memories shared by John and Willis, as their stories, and how they ended up how they are, are gradually revealed. This is a great movie, directed and written by actor Viggo Mortensen who plays John, but it’s really about Willis. It’s a fascinating and realistic character study about this hateable, but totally watchable, man and his cringeworthy but funny behaviour and motives. It’s a character study but not a caricature. Gudnason is great as the young Willis, but Henricksen as the old Willis fighting dementia is stupendous. It’s beautifully shot among nature at a wintry, snow covered farm, and beneath the hot pacific sun. Falling is harshly funny, cruel, constantly surprising and quite touching. This is an excellent movie.
Our Friend and Phobic are now playing, and Falling opens next Friday.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Wood, Bricks and Rocks. Films reviewed: Black Bear, 18 to Party, Rocks
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This week I’m looking at three new indie movies. We’ve got alienated teens in the 1980s standing by a wall of bricks, a homeless high school girl in London named Rocks, and a fractious ménage a trois in a cabin made of wood.
Black Bear
Wri/Dir: Lawrence Michael Levine
It’s summertime in upstate New York. Allison (Aubrey Plaza) is an actress, a director and a writer. She’s staying in a beautiful wooden house, completely off the grid as she tries to write a new screenplay. But she’s easily distracted from her work: there’s a ramp running down from the house into a wide wooden doc on a placid lake. Then there’s the attractive couple who own the house and live there: Blair (Sarah Gadon), a feminist and former dancer, pregnant with their first child; and Gabe (Christopher Abbott) her bearded husband who holds antediluvian views. But freindy banter over wine and dinner turns to bitter bickering, with Allison caught between the two. Blair is convinced that Gabe is cheating on her with Allison. Tension builds until it explodes… leading to a dangerous outcome.
But wait! It’s not over.
We now watch the same scene again, but this time Allison 
and Gabe are married and own the cabin and Blair is the visiting actress. And they’re no longer alone: they’re actually shooting a movie, which Gabe is directing, surrounded costumes, makeup, camera, script, continuity, ADs and everyone else. And Allison (the actress playing the role) thinks Gabe – the director not the character “Gabe” (played by a bearded lookalike) – is fooling around with Blair, both in the script they’re shooting and off-set. So Allison is guzzling Jack Daniels straight from the bottle, the crew is all 
stoned on cannabis, and a big black bear is lurking outside. Can they finish making the movie? Which part is real, the first act or the second act? Or is it all just a meta illusion?
Black Bear is a fascinating study of brain-twisting double-think, as well as a slapstick comedy and living room drama. But does it work? I think it does, and that’s because of the great acting by the three. Aubrey Plaza is the queen of indies, always great, and in this film playing a slinky and sly independent woman almost losing it. Abbott and Gadon are equally good, each playing two very different versions of the same role, almost like an exercise in acting school.
Black Bear is a marvelous intellectual exercise that’s also fun to watch.
18 to Party
Wri/Dir: Jeff Roda
It’s September in the mid-1980s in a small town in New York. A group of 14-year-old friends are gathering outside a club where a big party is supposed to happen that night. But the doorman says no entry until the older teens are there. So they meet around the corner in a vacant lot, to catch up after summer vacation. They don’t have to worry about being out late; all the grownups in town are at a meeting about UFOs. There are two computer nerds, two former best friends, Kira and Missy (Ivy Miller, Taylor Richardson), an introverted artist, and best buddies Shel and Brad. But these friendships are built on strict hierarchies. Shel (Tanner Flood) is self-conscious kid who idolizes Brad (Oliver Gifford) a star soccer player. But a girl has a crush on Shel not Brad. Will they make out? Kira and Missy both hold festering grudges. And one friend is missing from 
the picture: Lanky (James Freedson-Jackson). Something major happened over the summer, and rumours abound. Is he in prison? Reform school? Or is everything just like it used to be? And hanging over them all is a suicide epidemic, with half a dozen kids at their school dead. There’s bullying, sexual insecurities, internalized anger and alienation. And a gun someone brought that night. Can these fragile friendships last through the evening? And will they actually get into the party?
18 to Party is a social drama that draws on movies from the 80s, sort of a combination of The Breakfast Club (but not as commercial and retrogressive) and River’s Edge (but not as creepy). It’s dressed up with the hairstyles, clothes and music from that era, but the story is all it’s own. It’s shot in a very small area, like a play, where people exit and enter and cross the stage, but the camera seldom leaves the brick-wall area. The characters work, because while some of them fit classic stereotypes, they’re all multi layered. And the film deals with prejudices and themes unique to that era. I haven’t seen any of the actors before but they play their parts very well, especially Ivy Miller as the rebel, Tanner Flood as the main character and James Freedson-Jackson as the loose cannon.
This film’s worth seeing.
Rocks
Dir: Sarah Gavron
Rocks (Bukky Bakray) is a young woman who goes to an all-girl London highschool. She’s warm, funny, clever and buoyant, with a close circle of friends. Her bestie Sumaya (Kosar Ali) helps her with her first tampon – they’re that close. She lives with her little brother Emmanuel (D’angelou Osei Kissiedu) and their mom, originally from Lagos, Nigeria. (Their dad died years earlier.) But one day, her mom doesn’t come home from the bakery where she works. Turns out she was fired two weeks earlier. Then Emmanuel notices the food in the fridge has gone bad – the power was cut off. And when, coming home from school, she notices some officials at their door, she realizes it’s time to get out of there.
So she heads out, exploring London while asking her school friends for sleepovers. She brings her brother everywhere, who, in turn, carries a little frog in a terrarium that he got from school. She takes care of Emmanuel he protects his friog. But as her money runs out and stress grows, she’s increasingly alienated from her friends. Will the social workers track her down? Will her mother ever come back? And what 
about Emmanuel?
Rocks – which debuted at TIFF last year – is an excellent high school drama told in that super-realistic European style. It’s a different sort of coming-of-age drama, with kids facing much harsher conditions than you usually see in movies. But it’s not depressing. While there are some heavy tear-jerk scenes, its mainly funny, surprising and upbeat. It explores underground contemporary London, like sketchy hoods, makeup artists, pompous school teachers, and a fascinating portrayal of a Somali family. And Bukky Bakray is really, really good as Rocks.
I liked this movie.
Rocks, 18 to Party, and Black Bear are all playing theatrically in select theatres today – check your local listings, or are available digitally or Video on Demand.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Serious and sexual. Films reviewed: Seberg, The Jesus Rolls, Beanpole
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Want to watch some grown up movies? This week I’m looking at three unusual films dealing with serious topics — crime, war and surveilance — in a sexualized context. There are best friends in post-war Leningrad, movie stars and activists in 1960s Hollywood, and sex-starved ex-cons in present day New York.
Seberg
Dir: Benedict Andrews
It’s Paris the 1960s, a time of antiwar demonstrations and sexual revolution. Jean Seberg (Kristen Stewart), is a movie star of the French New Wave. She is beautiful a striking face framed with short blonde hair. She lives in Paris with her husband, the writer Romain Gary (Yvan Attal) and their young son. And now she’s making her triumphant return to Hollywood. But in the first class airplane cabin, she noticed a kerfuffle . A young man named Hakim Jamal (Anthony Mackie), a member of the Black Panther Party, objects loudly to the fact that well-known civil rights activist Betty Shabbaz (Malcolm X’s widow) is sequestered in economy class. Jean offers to exchange seats, calming the waters. They meet up again in LA and sparks fly, leading to a secret affair. But what neither of them 
realizes is the FBI is photographing and recording everything they do. J. Edgar Hoover’s Cointelpro program considers activists on the left – and particularly Black activists – as enemies of the state.
Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed agent Jack (Jack O’Connell) and his conservative partner Carl (Vince Vaughan) follow the two from inside a painted van, listening in on their most intimate conversations. Soon the FBI’s focus shifts from Hakim to Jean, as the leak salacious details to 
Hakim’s wife and Hollywood gossip columnists, in an attempt to ruin his status and her career. As Jean becomes increasingly paranoid (and for good reason – she’s being gaslighted by the FBI!) she grows more and more frantic, all observed by agent Jack. His consience is pricked. But will he do something to stop this persecution of Jean Seberg?
Seberg is a fascinating drama, based on a true story, about the FBI spying on its own citizens regardless of the consequences and moral cost suffered by their victims. It also gives a good look at Hollywood in the 1960s and the interplay among black activists and their white sympathizers. Seberg is part fashion and glamour, part intrigue and espionage. It feels a bit like The Lives of Others (2006, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck), where you get to know both the spies and those spied on. While the dialogue and acting seems wooden and clugey at the beginning, it gets better as it moves along, as you get to know and feel for the characters.
I liked this movie.
The Jesus Rolls
Wri/Dir: John Turturro
Jesus Quintano (John Tuturro) is a Puerto Rican American known for his skill at bowling, his sexual prowess and his penchant for pointy purple shoes. He’s on his prison bowling team, and when the Jesus bowls, Jesus rolls. But his term has finished and he’s being released. His old pal Petey (Bobby Cannavale) is at the gate to help him adjust to life outside. But Jesus doesn’t want to adjust; he wants to live his life to the fullest. He immediately steals a vintage, orange muscle car and starts cruising the streets of his small town. He visits his mom, 
a sex worker, and then hooks up with his ex-girlfriend Marie, a French hairdresser (Audrey Tautou: Emélie). Petey is with him all the way. The three of them embark on a spree of petty crime across the state. They steal and ditch vintage cars, run away from diners without paying, and hold up doctor’s offices. At night they experiment in bed… but there is one factor missing. Marie enjoys frequent sex but has never had an orgasm. Can Jesus and Petey bring Marie to satisfaction before they are all thrown in jail?
The Jesus Rolls is one unusual picture. It’s a sex comedy, a 
bittersweet crime drama, and a buddy movie/road movie. Judging by the fashions, hair styles and vintage cars, it seems to take place in the late ’80s, but suddenly an iPhone or smart car will appear dragging it back to the present. It takes a character from one film – Jesus in the Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski – and transplants him into the plot line of another one: Les Valseuse (1974, Betrand Blier). Many of the characters are half-naked, half the time, the Jesus character is always over the top, while others are more subtle.
Does it work? Kinda. Depending on the scene and your mood, it’s moving, it’s over-acted, it’s strange, it’s awful, it’s bizarre, and it’s funny. And there are great cameos by the likes of Susan Sarandon, Pete Davidson, Jon Hamm, Christopher Walken, and Sônia Braga.
Beanpole (Dylda)
Co-Wri/Dir: Kantemir Balagov
It’s Leningrad in Autumn, 1945. The war is over, and soldiers are returning home from the front into a bombed out shell of a city. Iya (Viktoria Miroshnichenko), nicknamed “Beanpole”, is a young woman discharged from the army after a head injury. She is extremely tall and gangly, with pale skin and white-blonde hair. And she is prone to absence seizures, frozen in place, incommunicado, until they pass. 
She lives in a crowded, decrepit apartment with a young boy named Pashka (Timofey Glazkov) whose she treats like her son. She sometimes brings him to her workplace, a hospital for injured soldiers. They play animal charades with the kid who has probably never seen a live animal (food is very scarce.) And everyone is on 
their best behaviour whenever a glamorous Communist party official named Lyubov (Kseniya Kutepova) drops by the hospital to congratulate soldiers and offer gifts.
But things change for Iya when her best friend and fellow soldier comes back from the front. Masha (Vasilisa Perelygina) is as outgoing as Iya is shy, sexually promiscuous (Iya shies away from contact with men), and short with auburn hair, not tall and blonde like Beanpole. And when Masha discovers Pashka is missing she gets an unshakeable need to to have a new baby, 
immediately if possible. They meet a couple of young men in a fancy car – the sons of Communist Party apparatchiks. Masha pair up with Sasha (Igor Shirokov) with hope of a future marriage and a normal family. But Iya feels left out. Will Masha and Sasha become a couple? Can Beanpole survive on her own? What is her real relationship with her best friend? And what really happened at the front?
Beanpole is a fantastic story of two young women getting by in Stalinist Leningrad just after WWII. Loaded with pathos but devoid of kitschy sentimentality it exposes the harsh realities people faced. It also shows the unsurmountable class divisions in the Soviet Union, extreme poverty, and the horrors of war. The acting is superb, and the candlelit warmth of the images helps to modify the movie’s dark tone. Beanpole is a wonderful movie you can’t forget. I recommend this one.
Seberg, The Jesus Rolls and Beanpole 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.
Make up and dance. Films Reviewed: Like a Boss, Cunningham
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Sometimes I wonder if I should be talking about movies when the planet is on fire as we head toward environmental catastrophe, even as an erratic leader — like a James Bond villain — is carrying out drone assassinations willy-nilly and pushing us all to the brink of war and back again, depending on his mood.
Are we fiddling while Rome burns?
Luckilly, the United States is still full of innovative and creative people. So this week I’m looking at two new American movies, a comedy and a performance/doc. There are two women entrepreneurs who challenge contemporary makeup; and a man who challenged the makeup of contemporary dance.
Like a Boss
Dir: Miguel Arteta
Mia and Mel (Tiffany Haddish, Rose Byrne) are single girlfriends who live in Atlanta Georgia. They have been besties since junior high. They go to bars together to pick up younger guys (I don’t care if they can’t read, butthey better still have their teeth, says Mia). They live in the same house – Mia’s mom left it to the two of them in her will. And they even work together. They founded a cosmetics company that they jointly run – Mia is the creative side while Mel handles the finances.
They specialize in innovative goods, like their best selling One Night Stand packs for a woman on the go. And tell all types of women to 
use makeup to embrace their own good looks rather than trying to change or hide them. And they work closely with their two employees: a flamboyant gay man in the workshop (Billy Porter) and a quirky woman handling the front (Jennifer Coolidge). Everything seems to be going well, but behind the scenes they are facing serious financial trouble. Luckilly, a stranger arrives with an offer they can’t refuse. His boss, he says, wants to buy their business.
The offer comes from Claire Luna (Salma Hayek) a ruthless business mogul. Claire has dramatic orange hair, platform shoes and impossibly white teeth. Her office looks like the Guggenheim but with small killer drones flying around everywhere. She is the head of a huge cosmetics empire and she covets their niche market. Mel and Mia are intimidated by her, but stand firm – they want to keep majority interest – 51% -in their own company. Claire Luna agrees… but with a catch. If either of them leaves the company, she takes over 
the company. Can Mel and Mia stay best friends with a new boss in the picture? Or will they fight and lose their friendship, their home and their company?
Like a Boss is an extremely simple — I would even say simplistic — movie about female best friends. It spoonfeeds you all the expected plot turns as it moves to its totally predictable conclusion. I love Haddish and Byrne, and their sidekicks Porter and Coolidge are even funnier. Hayek is a cartoon villain — she’d be twirling her moustache if she had one. I like the female-centred story, and the sexually- and racially-diverse cast. It’s also short… under 90 minutes, so it’s never boring.
The problem is the script: it’s mediocre at best, forcing talented comic actors to make do with crappy material. A real shame. The funny parts are used up in the first half, as the movie dwells on the babyish plot through the second half.
Like a Boss is not awful, it just isn’t as good as it should be.
Cunningham (in 3D)
Dir: Alla Kovgan
Merce Cunningham is born in 1919 in Washington state and begins dancing at a young age. He joins Martha Graham’s dance company as a principal dancer in the 1940s, originating many roles before turning to choreography. He leaves Graham to set up a studio in a New York tenament, with a room at the back to live in. Working with composer John Cage (the two are lovers) he pioneers a new form of experimental dance. It combines how ballet uses feet with how modern dance handles the torso. Instead of playing music with dancers moving in synch with the notes and rhythms, Cunningham 
decides dancers should move independent of the sound, the two art forms coexisting. He rejects the autocratic culture of traditional dance — a dictator ordering around his puppet-like dancers, while they claw their way to the top as Prima Ballerina — to a more democractic and cooperative company. He likes to call himself a dancer not a choreographer, though that is what he does. The dancers move as individual units coexiting in the same space, but often without interacting in traditional ways.
He combines music and dance to create works of art. He works with visual artists, like Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol to design the costumes and sets, incorporating things like pointillism backdrops and mylar balloons with designed the complimentary costumes and backdrops so a dancer could almost disappear into the set, as in Robert Rauschenberg’s pointillist designs. The dance company drives across a country not quite ready to accept their advances in dance. A European tour leads to terrible reviews until he 
starts to build appreciative audiences in the UK.
I have to admit, before seeing this film I was only vaguely aware of Merce Cunningham’s work, as opposed to his more famous collaborators – Rauschenberg, Cage, and Andy Warhol. But having watched it, I can say I get him now. It’s like a “best of” version, showcasing segments of some of his most famous works. And it’s done in 3D. You might ask, who needs 3D for dance? Well, the use of innovative filming and staging techniques gives you – in the theatre – a chance to see aspects and angles of his work previously unexplored. For example, one excerpt is shot on the roof of a skyscraper lit by searchlights projected from a nearby building… and it’s filmed using drone cameras cruising up the side of the roof 
and hovering overhead looking down as the dancers across the elevated stage. Just spectacular!
So if you’re one of those people who’s heard about opera, dance or Shakespearean plays, but are squeamish about actually watching a live performance (because you’re afraid you might fall asleep or squirm in your seat) this movie makes modern dance accessible. Sequences are short, varied, and beautifully done, while staying true to Cunningham’s aesthetic ideals. The movie also uses classic photos, scripts and footage of his early work to make it part documentary and part performance.
Cunningham is a beautiful movie, a tribute to an underapppreciated artist and a joy to watch.
Cunningham and Like a Boss both open today in Toronto.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
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