Off. Films reviewed: Save Yourselves!, Max Cloud, Another Round
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This week I’m looking at three indie comedies about characters who find themselves in odd situations. There’s middle aged school teachers going off the wagon, a Brooklyn couple going off-grid, and a teenage girl going off this planet.
Save Yourselves!
Wri/Dir: Alex Huston Fischer, Eleanor Wilson
Su and Jack (Sunita Mani, John Reynolds) are a Brooklyn couple in their early 30s. They love each other but something seems to be missing. It could be because they spend their lives glued to smart phones for texting, social networks and search engines. They can’t answer a simple question without googling it first. So when a friend at a wedding party offers them the use of his grandparents’ cottage in the woods, they decide it’s now or never. They cut the cords and take a week off-grid. That means no schedule, no email, no listicles, and no phone. Their lives will be authentic and spontaneous. So they pack their bags – along with ample arugula and kale – and drive up north, At the cottage they notice new things. Meteors falling from the sky. And have frank conversations. Jack tries to become more manly by chopping wood while Su resists pulling out her phone. It’s difficult but they can manage. Until things start to get strange. Loud bangs n the background. And an auburn pouffe — sort of a fluffy Ottoman – they find in the cottage. Why does it keep moving… by itself. Are they crazy? Or is 
something going on.
Turns out these adorable tribbles are actually dangerous aliens taking over the world. They devour all ethanol, and send out smelly waves disabling their enemies. Su and Jack don’t know any of this because they’re offline. But they also unknowingly fled chaos in the cities just in time. Can they survive this alien invasion? Or will they just be its latest casualty?
Save Yourselves is a cute, satirical comedy about ineffectual millennials trying to make it in a post-apocalyptic world. It’s funny, goofy and silly. Reynolds does Jack as an insecure dude in a moustache while Mani is an alienated Su who misses her mom. They’re a good comedy duo who play off each other well.
I like this low-budget comedy.
Max Cloud
Dir: Martin Owen
It’s Brooklyn in 1990.
Sara is a teenaged girl who loves video games – she’s glued to her TV set 24/7. And it looks like she’s about to reach the top level of her space exploring game where Max Cloud and his sidekicks fight off the bad guys invading his spaceship. But her dad Tony is worried about her — she’s not doing her homework. So he grounds her and takes away the joy stick. But that’s not fair! Sara wishes she could play this game all the time… Little does she know, her wish is someone else’s command, and she is magically transferred into the game itself. Only they’re real people now, not 16-bit 
game avatars.
There’s the hero, the devilishly-handsome chowderhead Max Cloud (Scott Adkins), the cynical Rexy (Sally Colett) and Jake, the wise-cracking young cook (Elliot James Langridge). And wouldn’t you know it, Sara takes the form of Jake not Max. They’ve crash-landed on the prison planet Heinous, and have to escape before the evil villains, Shee and Revengor, take over. Now it’s real life, not a game. How can Sara escape? Luckily her best friend, Cowboy (Franz Drameh) is in her bedroom holding the controls. If he can win the game, she can get back to the real world. But if not she’s trapped theer forever.
Ok, when I started watching Max Cloud, it felt weird. The game characters spoke larger than life, the sets looked tacky and cheap, and the whole concept felt too over-the-top to be taken seriously. Why are they talking so strangely? Then it hit me.
They’re all British actors, playing cartoonish Americans, using a high camp sensibility. Like a low-budget episode of Peewee’s Playhouse invaded by characters from Mystery Science Theatre 3000. When looked at that way, it’s actually quite cute and funny. The plot is basically non-existant, but the characters are enjoyable, and I really loved the 16-bit style computer animation, especially when used on live human actors in a jerky, 90’s-style Street-fighter battle scene. Very cool.
If you’re into mullets and vintage games you’ll love Max Cloud.
Another Round
Dir: Thomas Vinterberg
Martin (Mads Miklelsen) is a history teacher at a Copenhagen highschool who feels like something is missing from his life. He used to be funny, handsome and vibrant – he was a ballet dancer doing a PhD for God’s sake! But now, his home life is dull, his job even worse. His wife works nights – he rarely sees her. Somewhere along the way, his get up and go got up and went. Even his students are revolting over his unimpressive classes. What can he do?
One night at a birthday dinner with his three best friends – Tommy the gym coach (Thomas Bo Larsen), Nikolaj the psychology teacher (Magnus Millang) and
Peter who heads the school choir (Lars Ranthe) – propose a scientific experiment to change their lives. 
Based on the writings of Norwegian psycholgist Finn Skårderud who says humans work best at an alcohol level of 0.05, they decide to maintain that level of drunkenness every day, except for nights and weekends. They carry personal breathalyzers to reach the exact level, and take careful notes of its effect. The initial results? Life is more fun, people laugh more, work seems easier, and their self-confidence is growing. It’s like wearing beer-goggles all the time. On the negative side there’s slurred speech, clumsiness and bad judgement. And when they raise the level to 0.1 things get really interesting. But other people are starting to notice with potentially terrible consequences. Have they taken their experiment too far?
DRUK
Another Round is a very clever comedy about the good and bad points of alcohol. It’s all done tongue-in-cheek of course – Danish director Thomas Vinterberg loves poking at the bourgeoisie. Obviously, I’m not shouting three cheers for alcoholism, but after decades of Calvinistic Hollywood movies about the evils of hooch, reefer madness, and various other addictions, it’s refreshing to see something from the other side, taking the point of view of the guy with the lampshade on his head, rather than the finger-waving Mrs Grundys. Mads Mikkelsen is superb as a man whose life is reawakened by drinking, including an amazing dance sequence toward the end. This isn’t a light, easy movie – parts will definitely make you squirm – but Another Round is definitely something different, and something that you should see.
You can watch Save Yourselves beginning on Tuesday, while Another Round, and Max Cloud both open today digitally and VOD; 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.
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.
Life changes. Films reviewed: Dating Amber, No Hard Feelings, Keyboard Fantasies: the Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story at #InsideOut30
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Fall festival season continues with Toronto’s Inside Out LGBT festival playing now both digitally and at drive-ins through the weekend. So this week I’m looking at three movies playing at Inside Out. There’s love amongst refugees in present-day Germany, an odd-ball relationship in Ireland in the 90s, and a Canadian musician whose fantasies finally come true in his seventies.
Keyboard Fantasies: The Beverly Glenn Copeland Story
Dir: Posey Dixon
Beverly is a musician who grows up in a comfortable middle class home in post-war Philadelphia. Her father is a classical pianist and her mother sings spirituals at church. They send her to McGill in the early 1960s, where she is one of the first black students in her discipline, and where she comes out as a lesbian, virtually unheard of at the time, when homosexuality was still illegal in Canada. Later, she moves to Toronto where the Yorkville scene is nurturing folk musicians like Joni Mitchell. She cuts an eponymous record album with famous players on backup, in a unique style, combining jazz with blues and classical music. Unfortunately it disappears without a trace. She finds work as a musician and on TV – she is a regular on Mr 
Dressup! – but eventually moves into an isolated house in Muskoka with her lover.
In the 1980s she discovers computer-generated electronic music and self-produces a cassette of beautiful passionate songs. It sells maybe a few dozen copies. But in the 2000s, two big things happen: First Beverly realizes he’s trans, and begins transitioning female-to-male; and in the 2010s his album Keyboard Fantasies from the mid-80s is rediscovered in a tiny record shop in Japan. The owner requests more copies – all of which sell out in a day or two. The record is remastered and re-released and goes viral, and Beverly in his mid-seventies, is sudden’y a star with a devoited following. He embarks on a European tour backed up by a band of millennial hipsters and adoring young fans.
Keyboard Fantasies is a fascinating documentary about Beverley Glenn Copeland’s life, music and career. It’s filled with unusual psychedelic imagery, and upside-down and negative-coloured camera work reflecting the sudden reversals of Beverly’s own gender and career. His music is captivating, his voice sublime, and his life story like none other. This tale of rebirth in old age is a beautiful history not to be missed.
No Hard Feelings (Futur Drei)
Dir: Faraz Shariat
Parvis (Benny Radjaipour) is a young, gay German with dyed blond hair who lives in his family home in Hannover. He’s into sex, dancing and Sailor Moon. His Iranian parents sought asylum there 40 years earlier, to give their kids a better life, but he feels unmotivated, cut-off and trapped in limbo between two worlds. Raised within German pop-culture he knows nothing about Iranian dance or music. At home he speaks Farsi with a German accent, but the men he meets in gay bars constantly ask “where are you from?” (He’s from there!) But his life changes when, after being caught shoplifting, he is sentenced to community 
service as a translator at a refugee centre.
There he meets an adult sister and brother, a pair that seem almost joined at the hip, who eventually become his friends. They live together almost like lovers. Banafshe (Banafshe Hourmazdi) is outgoing and savvy, fluent in German, but facing deportation back to Iran. Her brother Amon (Eidin Jalali) is a nice guy but a bit stand-offish. He tells the flamboyant Parvis not to be seen with him at the refugee centre; his friends told him gayness is contagious. But the situation changes when the brother and sister spend the night at Parvis’s home. Parvis and Amon become lovers but are forced to keep it on the down low, constantly searching for secret places they 
can meet undetected. Will their love last? Can Amon and Bana gain refugee status in Germany or will she be deported? And can Parvis find his identity both within his family and in the larger German gay community?
No Hard Feelings is a touching and realistic drama about cultural and sexual alienation set within the vast and lethargic bureaucracy of the country’s immigration machine. It’s a distinctly German story, but one told mainly in Farsi and from that point of view. Good acting with some beautiful cinematography as well as occasional experimental, stylized footage. This is a great story about a subculture rarely represented on film. And it won the Inside Out prize for Best First Feature.
Dating Amber
Wri/Dir: David Freyne
It’s Ireland in 1995. Homosexuality was decriminalized just two years earlier, divorce is still against the law, and sex education is taught by nuns. Eddie (Fionn O’Shea: Handsome Devil) is a student at a rural high school outside of Dublin near an army base. He’s wants to become a cadet to please his dad but he’s not the right type; he’s frail, naïve and skittish. And he has a crush on his (male) math teacher. Amber (Lola Petticrew) is a plain-talking girl with blue streaks in her hair, who walks like she’s wearing army boots. She lives in a trailer with her mom since her father died. She’s saving up enough money to move to London after graduation to open an anarchist bookstore. She likes punk rock, but hates penises – they make her “vom” she says. Like Eddie, she’s bullied on a daily basis. Why? Because they’re both gay (though 
Eddie won’t admit it). So Amber comes up with a plan. Let’s pretend to be a couple until we graduate, so they’ll leave us alone. Will it work? Will it last? And what will it lead to?
Dating Amber is a terrific coming-of-age comedy about an unusual relationship in rural Ireland. It draws on a wry nostalgia for the 90s – fashion, hairstyles, pop music and attitudes — to construct some very real, funny characters. It’s romantic, hilarious, and deeply touching. This is a great movie.
Dating Amber, No Hard Feelings, and Keyboard Fantasies: the Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story are all playing at the Inside Out Festival which continues through the weekend. Go to insideout.ca for details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks with filmmaker Sophie Deraspe about Antigone
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Photos by Jeff Harris.
Antigone is a straight-A high school student in Montreal. She lives with two brothers and a sister, raised by ther grandmother. They immigrated from North Africa when she was still a child. She’s heading for university and is dating Hémon, the son of a prominent politician. But her normal life is shattered when the 
police kill one brother and jail the other. She comes up with a scheme to take her brothers place in prison. But what will become of Antigone?
Antigone is the title of a fantastic new film from Québec, about a strong young woman willing to confront the government and risk everything for the love of her brother. The film transplants the classic Greek play into 
modern day Montréal, incorporating contemporary cinema, drama, literature, and music. The film is written and directed by Sophie Deraspe who also served as cinematographer and editor. Antigone is her first feature and has won countless prizes, including best Canadian Film at TIFF and is Canada’s choice for Best Foreign Film Oscar.
I spoke with Sophie at CIUT 89.5 FM.
Antigone opens today in Toronto.
Exploding. Films reviewed: Atlantics, The Mystery of Henri Pick, Waves
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Toronto Fall film festivals this weekend include Blood in the Snow, featuring Canadian horror and genre films, with the festival’s first short film from Newfoundland called New Woman. And CineFranco features French-language films from Ontario and around the world.
This week I’m looking at three new movies about metaphoric explosions. There’s a literary explosion in France, spontaneous combustion of a marital bed in Senegal, and a highschool wr3stle4 in Florida who feels ready to explode.
Atlantics
Wri/Dir Mati Diop
It’s Dakar, Senegal.
Ada (Mame Bineta Sane) is a pretty young woman set to marry a guy named Omar. He drives a swank car, lives in an expensive apartment and comes from a rich family. So why isn’t she happy? Because she’s in love with Suleiman (Traore) a handsome construction worker, building a monstrous tower in the city. She made out with him in the sand just yesterday – they’re a committed couple. Ada wants to hang with her friends Fanta and Dior at a beachside bar, not cooped up in a kitchen as a good pious wife.
But what she doesn’t realize is Suleiman has disappeared. None of the construction workers ever got paid, so they all hopped aboard a sailboat for a chance at better work in Europe. This means the kiss on the beach may have been their last one. So she goes ahead with the wedding, until… weird things start to happen. Their marital bed burst into flames. Strange-looking people appear inside high-security condos demanding retribution. And a 
diligent police inspector thinks Ada and Suleiman are behind it all. Will Ada marry her true love or the arranged marriage? And what is the cause of these supernatural events in downtown Dakar?
Atlantics is a fascinating study of life in urban west Africa seen through the eyes of a young woman. It combines contemporary problems – wealth distribution, the spread of viruses, and migrant workers – with a dose of magic realism. It’s shot around the Atlantic beaches of Dakar giving it all a glowing and haunting feel, an entirely new image unseen in west African films.
Atlantics is Senegal’s choice for best foreign film Oscar.
The Mystery of Henri Pick
Wri/Dir: Rémi Bezançon
Daphné and Fred are a young couple in Brittany with a literary bent. Daphné works for a major publisher and Fred is promoting his first novel. They have high hopes. So when Jean Michel Rouche (Fabrice Luchini) – the hugely popular TV literary critic – skips the promised review of his book (sorry, we’re out of time) they are both deeply disappointed. To pull herself out of the dumps, she visits a unique bookstore only for the “refusée”. That is, manuscripts that have been rejected by publishers.
And after looking at shelf after shelf of terrible writing she finds a masterpiece, a passionate love story about the dying days of Russian poet Alexander Pushkin! It’s erotic 
and sublime, a literary gem. She rushes it to her publisher, an instant bestseller. What’s especially intriguing is it was written by a certain Henri Pick, a pizza maker who died two years earlier. To promote the book, Daphné brings Henri’s widow and his adult daughter Joséphine (Camille Cottin) to Paris for an interview with the book critic, live on TV.
But things go awry when Rouche says he doesn’t believe a pizza maker – who owns no books and has never written a word in his life – could have penned such a 
masterpiece. In the mayhem that ensues he’s fired from the TV show and his wife leaves him. But he won’t let it drop. Soon he’s travelling across the country to find out who really wrote the novel. Was it Henri Pick? And will Jean Michel’s obsession lead to his ruin?
They Mystery of Henri Pick is a light comedy with a literary twist. It’s cute, somewhat funny, and well acted, with lots of cameos by greats like Hanna Schygulla. And it gives you a peek into the complex and arcane world of the French literary obsession.
Entertaining movie.
Waves
Wri/Dir: Trey Edward Shults
Tyler (Kelvin Harrison Jr) is a Florida high school senior headed for glory. He’s a champion wrestler, a top student and in love with his girlfriend Alexis. He lives in a beautiful upper middle class home with his father (Sterling K Brown) his mom (Renée Elise Goldsberry) and his sister Emily (Taylor Russell). Hhis doctor tells him to take it easy – he’s straining his body to the point of permanent injury, and the pain is getting worse. But his dad is pressuring him to win! win! win! for ultimate success. And the opiates he’s popping 
to stop the pain are messing up his mind. Until…he can’t take it anymore and it all explodes in a terrible event.
But wait… the movie is only half over!
Waves is basically two short films played back to back. The second film takes place later on, this one focussing on Tyler’s sister Emily. Emily is still at a school where her brother’s name is a pariah. She’s pursued by the sympathetic Luke (Lucas Hedges), one of Tyler’s wrestling teammates. What does he want from her?
Meanwhile her father finally opens up to his neglected daughter: was everything his fault for pushing his son too hard?
Waves is an unusual family drama, told in two related stories. Does its two-part structure work? Ultimately yes, though at first it left me feeling confused and puzzled. Beautifully shot with nice music, Waves also has a uniformly good cast, but Kelvin Harrison Jr in particular is terrific. Following his great performances in It Comes at Night and Luce, Harrison is once again playing a teenaged boy with a dark side, each time creating an entirely different (and almost unrecognizable) new character.
Shults with Harrison is a force to be reckoned with.
Waves opens today in Toronto; check your local lostings; Atlantics starts at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, and The Mystery of Henri Pick is playing at the Hotdocs Cinema as part of Cinefranco.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Rivals. Films reviewed: Hobbs & Shaw, Luce PLUS Canadian films at #TIFF19
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
The Toronto International Film Festival has just announced its upcoming Canadian film programme, so I’m going to talk about that. I’m also looking at two new movies: an action thriller and a psychological drama. There’s a rivalry between a respected teacher and a prize pupil that threatens their futures; and a futuristic rivalry between two secret agents fighting a threat to world destruction.
Canada at #TIFF19
If you’re looking for some brand new, home-grown movies, docs and short films, there’s lots to see at TIFF this September. I haven’t seen anything yet, but I’ve been looking around and there are a few that caught my attention. The program features many indigenous directors who have made great movies so, chances are, these will be great too. In Jordan River Anderson, The Messenger, Alanis Obomsawin continues to document – started in We Can’t Make the Same Mistake Twice – the struggle of First Nation kids on reserves to get the same 
medical treatment as in the rest of Canada. Zachariah Kunuk (Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner) brings us One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk, a drama set in the 1960s when the government was forcing nomadic Inuit hunters to assimilate and give up their way of life. And, in a totality different take, Jeff Barnaby’s Blood Quantum pits a Mi’gmaq nation against a new zombie-like plague… that only infects white people.
Sometimes it’s just the title that attracts, so listen to some of these Canadian movies coming to TIFF: The Last Porno Show (Kire Paputts) This is Not a Movie (Yung Chang); Tammy’s Always Dying (Amy Jo Johnson); And The Birds Rained 
Down (Il pleuvait des oiseaux); and The Body Remembers when the World Broke Open.
Conversely, there are some short films whose titles are very long. Like I am in the World as Free and Slender as a Deer on a Plain; or how about Speak Continuously and Describe your Experiences as They Come to You. I bet you’ll remember those.
And finally you can look at some of the big names of Canadian cinema, with new 
work by Alan Zweig, who has a documentary about the police called Coppers; Atom Egoyan’s Guest of Honour, starring David Thewlis as a food inspector; Albert Shin’s Clifton Hill, a psychological thriller set in Niagara Falls; and a new doc co-directed by Ellen Page, about environmental racism in Nova Scotia called There’s Something in the Water.
I just flooded you with more names than anyone can absorb, but maybe some of it will stick. Tickets are on sale now, including the cheaper packages, so check them out.
Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
Dir: David Leitch
Hobbs (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) is a hugely muscled single dad in LA formerly with the CIA. Shaw (Jason Statham) is a well dressed wiry assassin from a family of London criminals, headed by his mother. But when Hattie (Vanessa Kirby) an MI6 agent goes rogue, the two men are ordered to work together to bring her in.
The problem is Hobbs and Shaw loathe each other, and would rather die than be in the same room. But there’s a bigger issue at stake: Hattie absconded with a 
terrible man-made virus which, if activated, could wipe out every human in a week.. and she carries it imbedded in her body. Even worse, they have to beat Brixton (Idris Elba), Shaw’s former partner, who is now an unkillable cyborg who works for a criminal organization that controls the world’s media. Can the two agents overcome their differences, capture Hattie, recover the virus, defeat Brixton, and save the world?
Hobbs and Shaw is a silly, comic-book-like action movie in the style of the Fast and Furious series, and though ridiculous, it’s a lot of fun to watch. It doesn’t take itself very seriously, instead just provides endless 
chase scenes – we’re talking cars, motorcycles and helicopters here — extended fistfights against nameless enemies, and epic battles with guns, missiles and spears (but without any visible death or blood).
As I said, it’s ridiculous, concerned purely with the images. There’s a chase scene at a Chernobyl-like nuclear reactor, but the characters blast at each other not caring about meltdoen. The 
towers are just there for decoration. The story takes you from an amazing vertical chase scene involving ropes and an elevator on the side of a glass and steel skyscraper in London… to an eventual battle royal in Samoa!
The banter between Johnson and Statham is silly, almost to the point of boredom, but there is some humour and, most important, the movie is loaded with superior special effects. Take it for what it is – a simple action movie – and you’ll probably love it. I gave up on the Fast and Furious series after Number 3 or 4, but I would probably watch another Hobbs & Shaw. With Idris Elba, and cameo roles by a sinister Helen Mirren and a campy Ryan Reynolds… what more can you ask for for 14 bucks?
Luce
Dir: Julius Onah
Based on the play by J.C. Lee
It’s an middleclass suburb in the Midwest. Luce (Kelvin Harrison Jr) is the school’s golden boy. He’s a star athlete, manager of the track team, head of the debating club. He’s handsome, popular, athletic and very bright. So much so, he’s invited to give inspirational, Obama-style speeches to the school. His white parents (Naomi Watts and Tim Roth) couldn’t be happier. They adopted him as a refugee from war-torn Eritrea, 
and moulded him into their idea of the perfect all-American son, with a new name, history, and identity. His friends may have troubles, but not Luce. Everyone, even his ex, Cynthia (Andrea Bang: Kim’s Convenience) loves Luce. Everyone except his teacher Ms Wilson (Octavia Spencer).
She is suspicious of his motives. She is disturbed enough by an essay he wrote (about Marxist anti-colonial writer Frantz Fanon) to search his school locker, where she finds an unmarked bag of 
firecrackers. She calls his mother in to talk, leaving Luce out of the equation for now. But it plants a seed of doubt in his parents’ minds. Luce isn’t stupid; he knows something is going on. And so begins a hidden game of cat and mouse between pupil and teacher. Is he just a normal, nice guy… or a psychopath? And is Ms Wilson honestly concerned? Or is she just jealous and wants to bring him down?
Luce is a complex, multifaceted and ultimately ambiguous drama about identity, history and blackness. (Interestingly, another work by Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, was surely lurking at the back of Luce’s mind). It’s also about 
parents digging too deeply into their kid’s private lives, without realizing they’ll expose facts they didn’t want to know about. It brings in other issues, too – mental health, sexual consent, and drug use. Tim Roth and Naomi Watts are appropriately annoying as the well-meaning but namby-pamby parents. Octavia Spencer just gets better and better, and Kelvin Johnson Jr (though he doesn’t look even vaguely Eritrean!) 
is great as Luce. He also a very different son in another movie, It Comes at Night, which, in retrospect, adds even more dimensions to this role. Can’t wait to see what he does next…
Luce, though not perfect, is a very well-done indie movie that leaves you with a lot to think about.
Fast and Furious Presents Hobbs and Shaw opens today in Toronto; check your local listings. Luce opens next week (August 9th). And for more information on TIFF go to tiff.net.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Bustin loose. Films reviewed: Ma, Rocketman PLUS ReelAbilities Film Festival
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Spring festival season continues in Toronto with Inside Out and Reelabilities playing through Sunday. ReelAbilities is a film festival showing shorts and features (along with panel discussions) dealing with disabilities. They are made by actors and filmmakers with disabilities, and the characters or topics of the films touch on issues relevant to people with a wide range of abilities. This includes 
physical disabilities, deafness, and many others areas, ranging from Tourette’s to one of the most segregated and discriminated groups: people with intellectual disabilities. And the festival itself is designed and planned to make the movies accessible to all viewers, with subtitles on the screen and locations fully accessible to people who use wheelchairs.
This week I’m looking at two new movies, a musical and a thriller/horror. There’s a man who turns to music to overcome his stodgy and repressive upbringing; and some teenagers who turn to a surrogate mom to escape their restrictive parents.
Ma
Dir: Tate Taylor
It’s winter in small town America. Maggie (Diana Silvers) is a 16-year- old girl from San Diego starting at a new school. She just moved there so her single mom Erica (Juliette Lewis) could start a job as a cocktail waitress in a nearby casino. Luckily she quickly makes friends with the popular kids at school, a clique that includes the take-charge girl Haley (McKaley Miller), and their designated driver Andy (Corey Fogelmanis). A typical Saturday night consists of convincing a random 
adult to buy them alcohol, and then getting drunk at an abandoned rock pile on the outskirts of town. (Lots of fun.)
But things take a turn for the better when they meet Sue Ann (Octavia Spencer), a middle-aged assistant at a veterinary hospital. She says they can use her basement as their party headquarters, a place to listen to music, dance and get drunk. Word spreads quickly until every kid in town knows that’s the place where they can par-tay without grownup supervision — except Sue Ann, of course, whom they all call “Ma”. It’s a kids’ paradise. Or is it?
Maggie feels something is not quite right.
What they don’t realize is that all of their parents, even Maggie’s mom, went to high school together back in the 80s. Sue Ann went there too, something bad happened, and she wants payback. Is Sue Ann just lonely and enjoys reliving her teenaged years with local kids? Or is there something more sinister going on? And will the sins of the parents fall on their children?
Ma is a pretty good psychological thriller / teen horror movie. The 
casting is good, not just the main roles but even the small parts, like Allison Janney as the foul-mouthed animal doctor, Dominic Burgess as a flamboyant casino manager, and Luke Evans as Ben, a dickish security exec. But the story is a bit muddy, with the point of view shifting from Sue Ann, to Maggie to Erica. It’s not a spoiler to say this is a thriller/horror, so you know something bad is going to happen, but most of the movie is suspense leading up to the violence rather than the violence itself. Is it scary? More creepy than scary. Is it gory? A little, toward the end. And the story seems a bit lopsided, almost as unbalanced as Sue Ann herself.
While Ma is not perfect, I did enjoy watching it.
Rocketman
Dir: Dexter Fletcher
It’s England in the 1950s. Little Reggie Dwight (Matthew Illesley) lives with his standoffish RAF dad, his self-centred mum and his kindly grandmother. He’s an ordinary kid until the day his fingers touch the keys of a piano, and suddenly everything changes. He discovers he can play perfectly, by ear, any song he hears on the radio. He enrolls in the Royal Academy of Music and starts on the path 
to be a professional musician.
Later, in his twenties, he works as a backup musician for a touring American soul band. He learns about rock and roll and gets his first kiss… from a guy! And he learns to reinvent himself. Reginald Dwight becomes Elton John (Taron Egerton), and the pudgy, shy boy gradually becomes the flamboyant pop star. Together with his writing partner and platonic best friend Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell) they head to London and then on to Los Angeles.
There he meets the handsome manager John Reid (Richard Madden), who takes Elton under his wing, promising incredible fame, fortune and success. But is it true love? Soon Elton John rises to the top, becoming the world’s biggest pop star playing to stadium-sized audiences… even as his personal life spirals into a decadent morass of depraved sex, drugs, alcoholism. Will Elton ever find peace with his parents, overcome his self doubt, come out publicly as gay, and find 
true love?
Rocketman is a biopic about Elton John from his life a a child until a low point midway through his career at a drug rehab centre. It’s also a musical. By musical, I mean an actual, old-school musical, one where the characters at any moment might burst into song accompanied by elaborately choreographed dance numbers. The dance scenes include everything, from 50s rock’n’roll dance routines, to abstract modern dance in a swimming pool, to writhing bodies at a 70s sex orgy.
The songs they sing tell Elton’s life by singing his (and Bernie Taupin’s) actual hit songs, rearranged chronologically to fit the storyline. I’m not a fan, to say the least, of most music biopics, and had very low expectations for Rocketman, but I actually really liked it. It’s a beautifully produced, seamlessly directed and highly stylized movie that moves without pause from start to finish. It has outrageous costumes, and great music – with the actors doing their own singing. And they’re really good at it, especially Taron Egerton.
If you like Elton John’s music – and even if you don’t – you won’t be disappointed by Rocketman.
Rocketman (which opened Inside Out) and Ma both start today in Toronto; check your local listings. ReelAbilities and Inside Out are both on through Sunday.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Does isolation mean alienation? Films reviewed: Une Colonie, The Grizzlies, High Life
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Does isolation mean alienation? Or can it be its cure? This week I’m looking at three movies about people who choose to live their lives in isolated areas. There’s an astronaut with a baby in outerspace, a girl in a village in rural Québec, and a lacrosse team in a remote town in Nunavut.
Une Colonie (A Colony)
Dir: Geneviève Dulude-De Celles
It’s the first day of high school and Mylia (Emilie Bierre) is overwhelmed. She’s a 14-year-old girl from rural Quebec. She’s used to seeing her mom and dad, her four-year-old sister Camille (Irlande Côté) and some chickens and cows. When she wants to get away she hides in secret shelters she builds in the woods. But she doesn’t know how to handle the noise and stress of her new school and the hundreds of people there. And she doesn’t quite understand her 
new classes in history and citizenship. What does that mean, anyway?
Luckily she makes two friends with different paths to choose from. Jacinthe (Cassandra Gosselin-Pelletier) is sophisticated, sexually active and popular. She offers the pretty but naïve Mylia an exciting life full of “lipstick parties”, online challenges and social networking. She sets her up on alcohol-infused dates with strange boys she has nothing in common with. But she also whispers behind her back, spreading rumours that her mother is a stripper.
The second path is offered by Jimmy (Jacob Whiteduck-Lavoie) a 
neighbour from the Ibanaki Nation. He has strange powers – like taming wild animals – as well as a trampoline he lets Camille bounce on. But he is forced to sit through a history class that describe his people as “simple savages” engaged in depraved orgies. He is bullied for not speaking “proper” Québec French. And he hates seeing Mylia act like the rest of them, people who always colour within the lines. Can Mylia hold onto her idyllic, rural life even as she learns to conform and mature?
Une Colonie is a wonderfully thoughtful coming-of-age story seen through the eyes of a young woman. It deals with Québec both as colony and colonizer and the blurred lines separating the two. It doesn’t fully explain everything you see — it lets you make sense of it as the story is revealed. Une Colonie won best picture and Emilie Bierre best actress at the Canadian Screen Awards, and rightly so. This is a terrific movie, espcially for a first film.
The Grizzlies
Dir: Miranda de Pencier
It’s 2004 in Kugluktuk, a small village in Nunuavut. Russ (Ben Schnetzer) is an idealistic but inexperienced high school teacher newly arrived from the south. He starts by meeting his students. There’s Kyle (Booboo Stewart) who runs away from home each night. Zach (Paul Nutarariaq) punches him in the face when he tells him to speak English. Spring 
(Anna Lambe) is deeply in love with her boyfriend. Miranda (Emerald MacDonald) is silent but observes everything.
Russ may speak no Inuktitut but he can still see a problem… an epidemic of death by suicide. He decides to do something about it: start a lacrosse team! He manages to pull a team together, and even gets them a place on the national championships in Toronto. But can the Grizzlies raise the money, convince the local council to support them, and 
overcome the many social problems they face? Or is Russ just another fly-by-night white saviour from the south, quick to make promises he can’t keep?
The Grizzlies, based on a true story, is a typical sports movie, about an unlikely team that tries to overcome its obvious obstacles using heart, grit and comradery. What’s different is it’s shot in Nunavut, in English and Inuktitut, with a mainly Inuit and indigenous cast. And it interweaves realistic scenes of actual culture — you get to see people sharing and eating raw seal meat — with the dark side of history, including issues like the residential schools. It’s not earth-shattering, but The Grizzlies works as a meaningful movie that’s also fun to watch.
High Life
Wri/Dir: Claire Denis
It’s the future.
Monte (Robert Pattinson) is a single dad raising an infant girl at work and at home. They live on a space ship hurtling towards a distant blackhole. How did they get there and where did the baby come from? Through a series of flashbacks we see what life was like back on earth and later on board the spacecraft. It used to be peopled by healthy young astronauts working together both as 
scientists and as scientific subjects, experimenting and being experimented on.
The ship has everything they need: regular video reports sent from earth, a garden growing succulent fruit and vegetables in a misty arboretum; areas for exercise; and spacesuits for outdoor repairs. There’s also an orgasmic chamber that spins, throbs and penetrates anyone needing sexual release.
They are ruled by a doctor in a white lab coat (Juliette Binoche). She dispenses pills in exchange for sperm samples from the men, and use of the women’s wombs. She calls herself a shaman who wants to create 
life in outer space. Only Monte, nicknamed the Monk, refuses to participate. But far from placid and cooperative, an atmosphere of violence and sexuality hangs heavily over the voyage. It turns out these astronauts were chosen for their good genes inside prisons back on Earth, where they were serving life sentences for violent crimes. What will happen to them?
High Life is an unusual and fascinating space fantasy like few movies 
you’ve ever seen. Instead of flashing lights, laser beams or robotic mechanicals, this movie stresses bodily fluids – with semen, breast milk, drool, and unexplained pools of milky white discharge spilling onto the metal floors. It shifts from sex and violence to warm scenes of family bonding. The cast is uniformly amazing from the stoic Pattinson to the witchlike Binoche.
I’ve seen High Life twice now, and I liked it even more the second time. Claire Denis is a genius.
The Grizzlies and High Life both open today in Toronto; check your local listings. Une Colonie is showing as part of Cinefranco’s Tournée du Quebec.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Fighting Oppressors. Films reviewed: Puzzle, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, BlacKkKlansman
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This week I’m looking at three American movies about individuals dealing with oppressive forces. There’s a man in the 1970s fighting the K.K.K.; a girl in the ’90s fighting to remain gay, gay, gay; and a woman trapped in small-town New York fighting the urge to stay, stay, stay.
Puzzle
Dir: Marc Turtletaub
Agnes (Kelly Macdonald) is a committed wife and mother in a sleepy, workingclass town in New York. She wears frumpy clothes and has an unobtrusive manner What With home, family and church she’s always busy, but no one seems to appreciate her – herself included. She cooks, cleans, does the accounting – she’s a whiz at math — and takes care of everybody else. Her husband Louis (David Denman) and son Ziggy (Bubba 
Weiler) work at Louis garage. Her other son Gabe (Aaron Austin) is the golden boy, headed for University. Louis says he loves her, but does he ever include her in important decisions? Not a chance. it’s like she isn’t even there. Until a birthday present from her aunt changes everything. It’s a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle, and she puts it together almost automatically. 
Something in her brain is awakened and she wants more. She takes the train into NY City to find more puzzles and in a serious of coincidences, ends up meeting Robert (Irrfan Khan: Lunchbox, Slumdog Millionaire)
A millionaire inventor and dilettante, Robert lounges around his townhouse in silk robes. He is as impressed by her naïveté as he is by her genius at 
puzzles. And she’s overwhelmed by everything about him. He invites her to be his partner at a two-player puzzle competition. If they win, they’ll fly off to Brussels for the Iinternational Championships.
Soon Agnes is splitting her life between her home and Robert’s glamourous mansion. 
And she keeps it all a secret from her family and friends. Are her clandestine meetings just a temporary diversion? Or do they signal a change in her life?
Puzzle is a fun, feel-good movie about the awakening of a middle aged woman. Scottish actress KellyMcDonald is perfect as Agnes and actor Irrfan Khan is great as the diffident Robert.
The Miseducation of Cameron Post
Dir: Desiree Akhavan
It’s the1990s. Cameron (Chloë Grace Moretz) is a teenaged girl raised by evangelical grandparents. (Her own parents died in a car accident.) Cam is smart, popular, and has a steady boyfriend. But her whole life falls apart on prom night when she’s caught having sex in the back seat of the car – not with her boyfriend, but with a girl she likes.
Next thing you know she’s being shipped off to a camp in the woods called God’s Promise. It’s run by Reverend Rick – he looks and acts like Ned Flanders – who plays the guitar and is always upbeat. And behind the scenes, the boss of it all, is his sister, Doctor Lydia Marsh in her shoulder-pad Atlas Shrugged power blouses. Pretty soon, Cam figures out why she’s there: to be “cured” of her same sex attraction. Because – they say — there’s no such thing as 
homosexuality, just sinning. The gay conversion therapy goes like this: Each kid is given a cartoon drawing of an iceberg. The students had to fill in all their sins – and the underlying trauma that gave them their “disorder”– before they can be free of their gayness.
In practce this means they’e subject to tough love: watched 24/7, woken up in the middle of the night by guards with flashlights – to make sure they’re not being “sinful” (doesn’t work) – and forced to go to group therapy sessions to bare their souls – only to be humiliated by the other members.
Luckily, Cam discovers two rebels she can hang with: Jane (Sasha Lane), a cynical girl with dreads who loves polaroid cameras; and 2-spirited Adam whose politician dad sent him there (Forrest Goodluck – he played Saul in Indian Horse). Can Cameron resist the brainwashing? Can she leave this place? And will she ever see her girlfriend again?
The Miseducation of Cameron Post is an eye-opening look at a repellent practice that’s now banned in most of Canada. And while this role was hardly a stretch, I’ll see anything with Chloë Grace Moretz in it. On the other hand some of the period dialogue feels anachronistic, and the story, though realistic, is tamer than I might have liked.
Still, it’s a good indie pic.
BlacKkKlansman
Dir: Spike Lee
It’s the early 1970s and Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) is the first – and only – black policeman in Colorado Springs. Hi first job as an undercover detective? To infiltrate black activists at a speech by civil rights leader Kwame Ture (whom the white cops still call Stokely Carmichael.) There Ron meets Patrice (Laura Harrier) the leader of a student group that invited Ture to speak. They begin to date, without Ron ever admitting he’s a plainclothes cop.
But things take a big turn when Ron discovers the 
notorious white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan has a branch in this city. Ron calls them up – using s real name, and lets loose with a racist tirade, including frequent use of the N word. So the KKK – composed of powerful locals and sketchy rednecks — invite him to come by their shack in the woods. problem is… he’s black (they don’t know that) and the KKK was founded to terrorize African Americans. What to do?
He gets Flip (Adam Driver), a white cop from his team — to play him in front 
of the KKK. It just happens that Flip is Jewish, and the Klan – headed by notorious racist David Duke – doesn’t like them much, either.
But soon, they are deeply involved in an undercover operation to stop the Klan. Can the two of them fool the KKK at its own game, and possibly uncover domestic terrorist cels? And will Ron come clean with Patrice?
Blackkklansman is Spike Lee’s latest and his 
best in a longtime. It’s very entertaining, funny, exciting, even a bit of a thriller. And it’s full of film references, chronicling Holywood’s anti-black attitudes, from Birth of a Nation to Gone with the Wind to blaxploitation. The photography is sumptuous, including a montage of faces during Ture’s “Black is Beautiful” speech. This is a great movie.
The Miseducation of Cameron Post, BlackKklansman, and Puzzle 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.
Big Changes, Big Trouble. Films reviewed: Every Day, The Party, Annihilation
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Everybody knows change is good, but big changes can lead to big trouble. This week I’m looking at three good movies about women facing big changes. There’s a British politician with a once-in-a-lifetime career change; a biologist investigating changes that are scientifically impossible; and a high school student whose boyfriend changes bodies once a day.
Every Day
Dir: Michael Sucsy
Rhiannon (Angourie Rice) is a highschool student in Maryland. Her mom’s a careerist, while her dad, since his breakdown, stays at home painting pictures. Her boyfriend Justin (Justice Smith) is a popular athlete… and a bit of a jerk. So she is surprised when he agrees to play hooky and spend the day just with her. It’s the perfect date: They explore downtown Baltimore, he pays attention to her, stops smoking, they share intimate personal stories, find their special song, and for the first time, they
actually have fun together. Is this true love? But the next day he’s acting like a douche again, with only vague memories of the day before. It’s like he’s a different person. What’s going on?
What’s going on is he was a different person that day, someone named “A”. “A” is a bodyless being who inhabits a different person each day and — like Cinderella — departs that body at exactly midnight. 
“A” has no choice of who they’ll wake up as, except that it will be someone their age who lives nearby. “A” could be a boy that day, or a girl, could be black, white or asian, could be straight, gay or trans. Could be ugly or attractive. Rhiannon and “A” have to find each other each day to carry on their relationship. Hint: “A” knowing Rhiannon’s phone number helps a lot. Can their love overcome “A”’s ever-shifting identity?
Every Day is a cool, young adult fantasy/romance that works. It’s set in Maryland, but was shot in Toronto, and it has a Degrassi feel to it, where the multiracial, multigender nature of the cast is omnipresent but not central to the plot. Instead it deals with questions of identity, look-ism, and mental illness.
I liked this movie.
The Party
Wri/Dir: Sally Potter
Janet (Kristin Scott Thomas) is a politician in the UK celebrating her promotion, the pinnacle of her career. Starting tomorrow, she’ll be the Shadow Minister of Health for the opposition Labour Party. So she’s throwing a party for her nearest and dearest. They 
arrive two- by two . There’s Martha (Cherry Jones) – a lesbian feminist university prof with her earnest partner Jinny. Cynical April comes with her flaky boyfriend Gottfried (Patricia Clarkson and Bruno Ganz), a self-professed healer. And Tom — a nervous and brittle financier (Cillian Murphy) — comes without his wife Marianne, Janet’s closest friend and 
workmate. Janet’s husband the grey-bearded Bill (Timothy Spall) sits alone in the parlour spinning vinyl as she bakes her vol-au-vents, to show that a woman can feel at home both in Westminster and in her kitchen. Problem is, her hors d’oeuvres are burning even as her party is collapsing like a house of cards, as each guest reveals a big secret. There’s cocaine, champagne, a 
fire, broken glass, face slaps… even a handgun.
The Party is a drawing room comedy that pokes fun at the social conceits of a generation of middle-class, leftist baby boomers. It’s the work of Sally Potter, director of Orlando and Ginger and Rosa. Shot in black and white with a wicked musical soundtrack that shifts the mood from scene to scene, it clocks in at just over 70 minutes, as a short-but-sweet English comedy.
Annihilation
Dir: Alex Garland
Lena (Natalie Portman) is a biology prof at Johns Hopkins who specializes in mutating cancer cells. Her husband Kane (Oscar Isaac) – a soldier she met when she was in the army – is missing and presumed dead. But when he shows up at her bedroom door, seemingly with no memory of what happened and how he got there, she decides to investigate. She’s valuable to the military, a woman as comfortable with a petri dish as she is with a submachine gun. She joins a crack team of scientists, all women, headed by the laconic psychologist Dr Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Their goal is to explore unknown territory within a swampy National Park.
It’s encased in something called “the Shimmer”, a phenomenon eminating from a lighthouse on the coastline. No one who goes into the Shimmer comes out alive (except for her husband 
Kane) and it’s getting bigger and bigger each day. From the outside it looks like a giant rainbow-coloured, plastic shower curtain that’s melting upwards. On the inside it’s even stranger, a world where distinctions like “animal/vegetable/mineral” cease to exist. It’s both beautiful and grotesque, filled with Chihuly crystals, human topiary and brightly-coloured tree fungi. Unrelated species are combining and mutating at a rapid rate, into a cancerous growth — just like the cells Lena studies, only prettier. And they’re affecting the five women too, both their minds and their bodies. Video messages they 
find (left by previous soldiers) only make things worse. Can Lena survive the hideous creatures and her deranged and suspicious teammates before she faces the scariest entity of all?
Annihilation is a terrifying exercise in horror sci-fi psychedelia. It references everything from Arrival, to The Wizard of Oz to Apocalypse Now, as the team paddles their way though a Heart of Darkness in their search for emerald city. Natalie Portman is great as the elegant soldier-scientist, and director Alex Garland brings us a different take on post-apocalyptic images. Annihilation is the kind of psychedelic fantasy that keeps you guessing.
This movie is scary-pretty… and pretty scary.
The Party comes to Toronto next week (check your local listings); Every Day and Annihilation open today. 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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