Latin America? Films reviewed: Autumn and the Black Jaguar, Satanic Hispanics PLUS #Hotdocs24!
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Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Spring is here, and so is Toronto’s Spring film festival season. And its crowning glory is Hot Docs the world’s biggest International Documentary Film Festival. It’s a month away — it runs from April 25 to May 5 — but now’s a good time to start booking tickets. As usual there are over 100 docs from more than 60 countries, with many international premieres. And, as always, students and seniors (over 60) can go to daytime screenings for free.
They just released the whole festival slate, so here are a few docs that I haven’t seen yet, but look interesting to me. Black Box Diaries is about a young Japanese journalist who was raped, and is taking her case to court in a demand for justice. Grand Theft Hamlet shows some UK actors attempting to mount a production of Shakespeare entirely within the notorious game Grand Theft Auto. Norwegian Democrazy is about extreme street level politics in that country, and Stray Bodies takes a similar look at how people handle bodily restrictions within their own countries can be resisted by crossing national borders within the EU. Pelikan Blue is an animated film about what young Hungarians did to leave the country when the Iron Curtain fell. There are also video diaries: The Here Now Project about how climate change effects people around the world; and XiXi, an intimate look at the innermost thoughts and beliefs of a Chinese improvisation artist living in Europe. Curl Power is a funny and tender examination of five teenage girls over three years on a curling team. And for those interested in musical celebs, there are features about Toronto’s own Peaches, called Teaches of Peaches, and Disco’s Revenge about the legendary musical producer Nile Rogers.
Like I said, Hotdocs is a full month away, but now’s the time to start thinking about it.
This week, though, I’m looking at two movies, one for children and one for definitely for grownups. There’s a girl looking for a wild beast in the jungle, and a man in an El Paso jail trying to explain why he’s the only one to survive a mass killing.
Autumn and the Black Jaguar
Dir: Gilles de Maistre
Autumn Edison (Lumi Pollack) is a young girl in middle school in New York City. She grew up in a rainforest somewhere in Latin America with her environmentalist parents. Her Dad is from the North, her Mom a member of the local indigenous nation. So Autumn treats the jungle as her backyard. As a small child she befriended a baby black jaguar who was left parentless when poachers shot the mother jaguar. So they grew up together. Developers and animal traffickers, led by the evil Poacher, Doria Dargan (Kelly Hope Taylor) wanted to evict her people from their land. They also hunted rare species to sell on the black market. But when Autumn’s mother is killed, her Dad takes her back to North America, where it’s safe. Seven years later, she’s almost a teen, but still hates it up there. No one seems to care about our animal friends or the environment. Especially her biology teacher Anja (Emily Bett Rickards). She wants the class to dissect frogs — can you believe it? — and Autumn refuses to participate in such cruelty. She stages a one-person protest. So she’s suspended from school, and not the first time. Stuck at home, she finds a letter from her uncle in the rain forest, a veritable cry for help. Our lives are teetering on the brink, he writes. They want to build a dam, flooding where we have lived for millennia. And they’re after Hope, the beloved black jaguar!
Autumn takes this as a beacon, calling her back to her ancestral home.
She lies to her father that everything’s fine, and secretly rushes off to the airport. What she doesn’t realize is her teacher — notable for her fear of germs, insecurity and agoraphobia — is somehow following her; she’s afraid Autumn is in danger, and wants to bring her back home. She’s risking her worst phobias to rescue the little girl. But they both end up in the rainforest, alone, with Autumn the one who is confident and at home. Will she find Hope the Jaguar? Will Hope still recognize her? And can they somehow stop the destruction of her culture, and the kidnapping of the last black jaguar?
Autumn and the Black Jaguar is a heart-warming kids’ movie. By kids, I mean little kids. As a grown-up, I found the dialogue klunky at best and cringy at worst, as if written by Chat GBT and edited by Google Translate. The teacher talks like a cartoon character. comically overreacting to everything she sees (as in most kids’ TV shows). But there are also some very cool adventures, like when they climb a tall tree and walk around on top of the forest’s canopy. I think little kids will really like this.
Watching the movie, I was impressed by the CGI version of a Jaguar playing with Autumn — it looked real. Could it be a CGI head superimposed on a friendly dog’s body? But after I did a bit of research, I found out the actress, Lumi Pollack, spent 10 months learning to bond with two actual jaguars. That wild cat is real! Impressive. Which moved it up quite a few notches on my mental score card.
Satanic Hispanics
Dir: Alejandro Brugués, Mike Mendez, Gigi Saul Guerrero, Eduardo Sánchez, Demián Rugna
It’s El Paso, Texas, just across the border from Juarez, Chihuahua. The police discover dozens of dead bodies in an old, abandoned building, with only one man still alive, unarmed, and handcuffed to a metal table. So they arrest him. He calls himself the Traveler (Efren Ramirez) and says he was born here — meaning in the US — and speaks at least 5 languages. But he’s undocumented, with no papers to prove his existence. Still, he pleads for the police to let him go. If they don’t, in 90 minutes they’ll all end up dead, just like the others they found. You see, he says he’s being followed by the Saint of Death, a terrifying, mystical being who wants to kill him. That’s why he’s the traveller: he always has to keep a step ahead of the Saint, to avoid massive bloodshed like this one.
But the cops don’t believe him — they accuse him of drug trafficking. They bring out his cache of strange paraphernalia and ask for an explanation. So, like Scheherazade, he embarks on a series of stories that tell where each item comes from. One of his strangest stories is called Tambien Lo Vi. It’s about a mathematical genius named Gustavo (Demián Salomón) a Rubik’s cube champ who somehow transfers his mental algorithms into light patterns projected on a wall using the light from his cel phone. He flaps his arms wildly flashing… that seems to bridge the gap between the living and the dead.
Other stories deal with a voracious vampire having a night on the town on Halloween — the only time of year when he can dress as a blood sucker in public — and a very bizarre take of a man fighting off a demon using a prodigious weapon known as the Hammer of 
Zanzibar that I cannot describe on daytime radio. But back to the main plot: can The Traveller finish his stories before the evil entity arrives to kill us all?
Satanic Hispanics is a compilation horror movie told by 5 directors and countless writers, producers, cast and crew. Each story is told as discrete, complete short film, within the whole movie, but with all sharing a similar look. The directors themselves are originally from Argentina, the US, Mexico and Cuba, with dialogue shifting from English to Spanish to pre-Columbian languages. Being a horror movie, there’s lots of gratuitous violence, blood and guts, some shocks and chills, and some horrible-looking evil entities.
Does it work? Oh yes! Not every segment is perfect, but altogether they tell us some very original and scary stories.
Autumn and the Black Jaguar opens this weekend in Toronto: check your local listings; Satanic Hispanics is currently streaming on Shudder.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Three Women. Films reviewed: Immaculate, Exhuma, The Queen of my Dreams
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This week, I’m looking at three new movies about three distinct women from three different religions. There’s a nun fighting for her life in Italy, a shaman fighting demons in Korea, and a Canadian woman fighting with her Mom in Karachi.
Immaculate
Dir: Michael Mohan
Sister Cecilia (Sydney Sweeney) is a novice at a convent in Italy. It’s an ancient edifice dating back hundreds of years, with an airy courtyard surrounded by lovely white pillars, and situated amongst Italy’s rolling hills. She has just arrived from Michigan, but is already taking her vows of chastity, poverty and obedience. She was invited to join the convent by Father Sal Tedeschi (Álvaro Morte) a former scientist who, like Cecilia, had a calling. Her job? To tend to the sick and dying, mainly older nuns who have lived their entire lives within their stone walls. There is little privacy there, especially for novices. Anyone can wander into their rooms, day or night.
But something strange is going on. When she touches a relic of the true cross, she faints. She wakes up days later with few memories of what happened. She goes to confession but her priest seems to fade away inside the booth. And one morning she throws up in the shared baths. Could that be morning sickness? Could she be pregnant? Bishops and doctors examine her closely: she is still a virgin. Which makes this an immaculate conception! It’s a miracle! It’s the second coming! Soon people are gazing at her in awe, reaching out to touch
her face. But this is not why Cecilia took her vows. She doesn’t trust the convent’s doctor — who just happens to be an obstetrician in a convent full of nuns. And then there are the frightening sisters who cover their faces in masques of red gauze to carry out enforcement. When her only friend, Sister Gwen (Benedetta Porcaroli) disappears, Cecilia realizes she has get out of this place — or this nun will be done. But how can she escape?
Immaculate is a thriller/horror about an innocent young woman trapped in an Italian house of by some religious fanatics. But for a movie about a nunnery there sure are a lot of breasts on display… draped in damp white diaphanous gowns in the baths or partly exposed late at night. That’s half of this exploitation movie: soft-core porn. The other half, though, is extreme, bloody violence and sadistic torture — what I call “gorno”: Disgusting, extended violence you’re forced to watch for its titillating effect. This leaves the movie both ridiculous and over the top, and more gross than scary, in the manner of an Italian Giallo movie from the 70s… but without any camp.
That said, I actually liked Sydney Sweeney as the innocent woman who fights back. And while this is clearly a B movie, it does end on a suitably shocking note.
Exhuma
Wri/Dir: Jang Jae-hyun
Hwarim (Kim Go-eun) is a young Korean woman on a Japanese flight to LA. She’s going there to investigate a client from a filthy-rich Korean family that suffers from strange dreams and illnesses. Not just the man himself, but his new born baby, and other relatives. She’s a shaman, travelling with her coworker Bong-Gil a heavily-tattooed, former baseball player (Lee Do-hyun) who can see visions and dreams. They determine evil forces are at work here, and call for an exhumation of a distant ancestor’s grave to rectify some unknown problem. The family agrees and pays them a hefty salary to make it work. Back in Korea, they turn to Kim a geomancer (Choi Min-sik) and his assistant. He knows about how Yin and Yang, Feng Shui and the Five Elements all must be correctly aligned to make for a peaceful grave. But the grave they find is anything but peaceful. The coffin is buried beneath an unmarked tombstone, on a distant hilltop near North Korea, reachable only through a chain-locked road where no one ever goes. It’s home to a skulk of foxes and a pit of snakes. And despite their lengthy shamanic 
rituals, somehow an ancient evil spirit escapes from the grave wreaking havoc on everyone nearby. It’s not just a ghost that says “boo”; it takes on a physical form, looking for humans as his slaves, to feed him sweet melons and mincemeat. And woe be to him or her who disobeys. Human livers taste just as good. Can these four brave souls defeat a dark evil from a rich family’s hidden past?
Exhuma is a supernatural horror/thriller about a fight against the deep, dark mysteries from Korea’s history (including references to their brutal occupation under Imperial Japan). The film is done in an interesting way, incorporating actual shamanic rituals into the story. In one scene, to the sound of pounding drums, Hwarim does an extended ecstatic dance around the bodies of four hogs impaled on skewers. Not the sort of thing you usually see in a horror movie.
Exhuma was a huge hit in Korea when it was released there a month ago, and I’m not at all surprised.
I like this one.
The Queen of My Dreams
Wri/Dir: Fawzia Mirza
It’s 1999 in Toronto. Azra (Amrit Kaur) is an aspiring actress with a steady girlfriend. She has been on bad terms with her mother Mariam (Nimra Bucha: Polite Society) since she was caught playing spin the bottle with a girl at her teenage birthday party. But she still communicates with her friendly Dad (Hamza Haq: Transplant) a doctor. The one thing Azra has in common with her mother is their obsession with an old Bollywood movie starring Sharmila Tagore. But when her Dad suddenly dies on a visit to Karachi, Pakistan, Azra and her brother must fly there for the funeral. This sets off a series of revealing memories both from Azra and Mariam. Suddenly we’re 
transported back to 1969, when Mariam is a totally different person and Karachi a swinging city, filled with bars, discos, VW bugs and Beatlemania.
Mariam is a rebel who rejects her parents’ arranged marriages when she falls for her future husband. Then we’re in Sydney, Nova Scotia, in 1989. Young Azra (wonderfully played by Ayana Manji) joins her mom’s work as a Tupperware lady. These scenes are a coming of age replete with a moustache on her upper lip, her first dance with a boy, and being excused from class during Christian prayers. But can the 1999 mother and daughter reconcile with their pasts in 1989 Nova Scotia and 1969 Karachi and learn to love each other again?
The Queen of my Dreams is a wonderful family drama that deftly weaves three eras and three generations across two continents. It deals with religion and sexuality, rules that are made to be broken and others that are upheld. I don’t know if this film is autobiographical or not, but it really rings true. Amrit Kaur plays both the adult Azra and a younger version of Mariam, while Hamza Haq plays the Dad both in youth and middle age. Not just that: Nimra Bucha (Mariam) and Kaur in their daydreams are both transformed into the main character in their favourite Bollywood film. Sounds really complicated, right? It’s not! It’s totally accessible and understandable with wonderful realistic characters, funny lines and deeply moving dialogue. The production design deserves a special mention. The ’60s scenes use traditional film to perfectly capture the look of Kodacolor movies from the period, through costumes, hair, locations, cars — and especially its cinematography. And on top of everything else, this is Fawzia Mirza first feature film.
I’ve seen The Queen of my Dreams twice now and I still love it.
Exhuma opens at the TIFF Lightnox; Immaculate, and The Queen of My Dreams also playing 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.
Life, death. Films reviewed: Lisa Frankenstein, Perfect Days
Audio: Coming soon!
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This weekend is Lunar New Year, a time to push out the old year and bring in the new one, and to think about long-gone ancestors. This week, I’m looking at two new movies both opening this weekend about life and death. There’s an older man who lives his life to the fullest, and a young woman who exults in death and misery.
Lisa Frankenstein
Dir: Zelda Williams
It’s the 1980s. Lisa Swallows (Kathryn Newton) is a unhappy teenager in Wisconsin. She is socially awkward with frizzy hair who loves reading sad poems and listening to The Cure. She works part-time mending garments at a dry cleaner. She moved there with her hapless father who recently remarried after her mom died. Her new stepmother (Carla Gugino), a Nurse Ratchet manqué, treats her like trash. But her stepsister, Taffy, a popular and chirpy cheerleader, (Liza Soberano) goes out of her way to cheer Lisa up. She lets her use her makeup and wear her clothes, to no avail. Lisa prefers to hangout in cemeteries mooning over long-dead young men. The one living guy she’s crushing on is Micheal (Henry Eikenberry), the editor of the school paper. But he already has a girlfriend, a goth rocker who is bigger and meaner than Lisa.
After an awkward incident at a pool party, she gets sloshed on Absinthe and ends up in Bachelor’s Grove, her secret 
graveyard hangout. And, unknowingly, in a pique of drunken wishful thinking, she conjures back to life a young man buried there more than a century earlier. And soon she hears a knocking at her door. It’s a moaning monster (Cole Sprouse) covered in dirt with worms crawling out of his ears, and missing a number of body parts. She screams and runs away, but, gradually she figures out who he is and what he means to her. And after washing him, dressing him up, and putting him in the tanning bed, she decides he isn’t half bad. Lisa changes too, gaining new self-confidence. And she puts her seamstress skills to work by sewing new organs he gives her onto his body. The thing is, these body parts come from people he murders. Will Lisa become a Bonny to his Clyde? And can a human find love with a reanimated corpse?
Lisa Frankenstein is a mildly humorous, high school horror rom-com about a self-styled Dr Frankenstein and the dead man she resurrects. It’s done in a brightly-coloured campy aesthetic, with lots of goth-punk tunes playing in the background. The problem is, it’s not as funny as it thinks it is. It has a slapdash feel to it, and comes across as clunky and misguided. And it seems to side with the conventional, popular kids, portraying the oddballs and introverts as the psycho-killer bad guys. It borrows liberally from horror-comedies like Edward Scissorhands and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but without any pathos for the main characters. There are some good parts: a gross-funny sex scene, and some lovely paper silhouettes that tell the monster’s back story. But most of the movie is as painfully awkward and misbegotten as the monster himself.
I found Lisa Frankenstein disappointing.
Perfect Days
Co-Wri/Dir: Wim Wenders
It’s present-day Tokyo. Hirayama (Koji Yakusho) is a single man in his sixties. He lives a simple life.in a spotless, but threadbare, apartment in a rundown part of town. He likes reading novels, listening to music in his little white minivan he drives and eating lunch outdoors on a park bench. He is thoroughly dedicated to his profession, performing each task with scrupulous care and attention. He’s never late and never breaks the rules, checking off each task as he completes it. What’s surprising, though, is the nature of his job. He cleans the toilets in public parks. And he does so with a smile on his face and a kind word to passersby.
But his daily routine is disrupted by a young assistant, Takashi (Emoto Tokio). Takashi is filled with troubles — he’s undependable, always broke, and perpetual problems with his girlfriend. He needs special attention and special favours. And he’s trying Hirayama’s patience. And when an unexpected visitor shows up at his door in a very expensive car delivering unexpected news, he has to rethink his life. How did Hirayama end up where he is today? What is he running away from? And who will take his place when he retires?
Perfect Days is a wonderful study of a few days in the life of a 
kind, generous and warmhearted man. It’s a joy to watch. Dialogue is sparse to non-existent evoking Jaques Tati and Charlie Chaplin in its perfect simplicity. But it’s not silent. Music plays a big role, mainly singers from the 60s and 70s — Patti Smith, Velvet Underground, Van Morrison — on the cassette tapes he listens to as he drives around. The movie is filled with details, and tiny, continuous storylines, like the anonymous notes he finds in a crack in a wall in a ladies room. Even the toilets themselves are amazing! Things like opaque, tinted glass that magically becomes transparent when you leave the booth, and rest stops disguised as rustic log cabins. And thankfully, no potty mouth or toilet humour anywhere. Though directed by German filmmaker Wim Wenders, this is a quintessentially Japanese movie; it’s even their Oscar nominee this year.
Perfect Days is a perfect film.
Lisa Frankenstein and Perfect Days both 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.
Current cinema. Films reviewed: Destroy All Neighbours, Freud’s Last Session, T.I.M.
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s “award season” when prizes are handed out to the best — or most widely publicized — movies. But not every film is prestigious or a blockbuster. So this week, I’m looking at three new movies — one each from the US, Ireland and England — that might otherwise fall through the cracks. There’s a robot with human traits, a music producer turned serial killer, and a psychoanalyst talking about God.
Destroy All Neighbours
Wri/Dir: Jonah Ray Rodrigues
William (Jonah Ray Rodrigues) lives in a rundown apartment with his girlfriend Emily (Kiran Deol) a lawyer. He’s tall, skinny, and wears unfashionable clothes and nerd glasses. He works in a studio at the soundboard, helping bands record their music. But sometimes he feels like he’s just a knob- turner, going through the motions. His real passion is recording the ultimate prog-rock album, and is constantly coming up with new ideas, but never finishing it. Emily encourages him to give up and move on, but he feels he has to do it. But he’s getting more and more tired and frustrated by the people around him. At work, his boss is constantly ragging him for being late. And the latest client, Caleb Bang Jansen is insufferable. Even the panhandler where he parks his car is getting on his nerves. At home, Eleanor, the elderly pothead superintendent (Randee Heller) is constantly calling him for help with the fuses. Another neighbour, Phillip, lets his pet pig roam the halls. But worst of all is the new tenant next door. Vlad (Alex Winter) is hideously ugly, aggressive and incredibly loud, playing non-stop euro disco all night long. Vlad lifts weights using buckets of cement attached to his barbell. He’s a scary guy, William is passive aggressive and terrified of face to face confrontations.
When he finally visits Vlad to ask him to turn down the music, they get in a fight and somehow Vlad ends up impaled on a stake, and — accidentally — decapitated! 
William doesn’t know what to do, but finally realizes he has to dispose of the body. But things have changed since Vlad — new bodies keep piling up — always killed unintentionally by him, by strange coincidences. He becomes a serial killer by default, or a serial manslaughterer, as he likes to say.
But when the all the people he killed come back to life, he realizes something really strange is going on. Can William keep his boss and girlfriend happy, record his prog rock album, stop killing people, and living a normal life? Is he destined for a very dark future? Or is he just losing his marbles?
Destroy all Neighbours (the title says it all) is a comedy/horror movie, with an emphasis on in-your-face, gross-out humour. So there’s lots of disgusting blood and 
gore, but it’s always so exaggerated it’s funny, not scary, in the manner of Monte Python or Army of Darkness. Jonah Ray Rodrigues is the writer/ director/star and the current host of Mystery Science Theatre 3000. I admit it’s an acquired taste, and some of the gags and schtick fall flat, but I was laughing more than not. I happen to like that kind of humour (in moderation) but, admittedly, it’s not for everyone. So if you’re into bloody horror-comedy set in L.A.s skid row, or even if you’ve ever had annoying neighbours, I think you’ll love Destroy all Neighbours.
Freud’s Last Session
Co-Wri/Dir: Matt Brown
It’s September, 1939. Germany has invaded Poland and Great Britain is about to go to war. Sigmund Freud (Anthony Hopkins) and his daughter Anna (Liv Lisa Fries) left their homes and vocations in Vienna after the Anschluss — the unification of Austria and the Third Reich, and moved to London. His office is decorated with the art and bric-a-brac of home: Persian rugs, African fertility statues and Catholic saints. Anna continues to research and give lectures on psychoanalysis and child psychology, but Sigmund, due to his age (he’s 83) and poor health (he’s dying of cancer) rarely leaves his home now. But on this day he has an unusual visitor: CS Lewis (Matthew Goode). Lewis is a don at Oxford where he teaches English and has written a book about Pilgrims Progress. (He later goes on to write The Chronicles of Narnia.) And he’s still suffering from shell shock from WWI. But why are they meeting? Lewis wants to talk with Freud about God and religion. He once was an atheist but now has adopted theism and Christianity as his guiding light. Freud, on the other hand, is a committed atheist and finds all religions equally fascinating and equally false. Still, they have a spirited discussion on a wide range of issues. But certain topics are taboo. For example, Freud refuses to talk about the fact that Anna has a female lover. And Lewis considers his own sexual relationship with his late best friend’s mother as something too private to share. Meanwhile, air raid sirens are going off, Freud is struggling with the oral prosthetic he calls his “Monster” and nobody knows what the future will bring. Will this be Freud’s very last session?
Freud’s Last Session is a fictional historical drama adapted from the successful stage play. There’s no evidence that an elderly Freud and a younger Lewis ever actually met; the story functions more as an intellectual exercise than a theatrical drama. So it’s not captivating, but it did keep my attention. They try to perk it up a bit with flashbacks — Lewis in the trenches in WWI; Freud as a small child — but I found them lacklustre at
best. There are some clever touches, where Freud ends up reclining on the settee while Lewis takes on the analysts role. Of course it has nice period costumes and sets, but the main reasons to see this film is first the topics and second the acting. The topics range from sex to psychoanalysis to theology. Devotees of Freud and/or Lewis may get a kick out of it, but no major revelations here. The acting, though is delightful. Hopkins walks through his usual role — along with a few artfully-placed wunderbars and ja ja ja and das ist gut! so we don’t forget he’s Austrian. Goode is more passionate, fearful and sad. Best of all is German actress Liv Lisa Fries (from Babylon Berlin) as Anna Freud, who gets to rush around London looking for meds for her Dad.
Freud’s Last Session is not bad, but not noteworthy, either.
T.I.M.
Co-Wri/Dir: Spencer Brown
Abi and Paul Granger (Georgina Campbell, Mark Rowley) are married, professionals, double-income, no kids, moving into a beautiful, modern home in rural England. It’s at the end of a long country road, with open staircases, glass walls and a huge garden, all paid for and arranged by Abi’s employer. She’s an engineer who specializes in AI robotic prostheses. She designs the human-looking hands of robots. Paul is currently unemployed, but is in line for a corporate position in London. They’re both looking forward to their first child, and are working hard at it each night.
Now this house is completely on the grid. Everything’s smart — smart windows, locks, heating, computers, lighting — all controlled through a central console, and co-ordinated with their smart watches and phones. The central console, though, is something her company invented. It’s a Technologically Integrated Manservant, T.I.M. for short, or just Tim. Tim (Eamon Farren) is a humanoid robot with perfect male features, blond hair, and artificial intelligence; he’s constantly learning. He’s a prototype: he can cook gourmet foods, do heavy lifting, play the piano, send and answer emails. Abi’s boss is adamant that all his employees have a T.I.M., so they can get rid of the bugs in the system before the upcoming release. Abi, loves her new toy, but Paul is less enthusiastic. Why did T.I.M. barge into their bedroom while they were making love? T.I.M. says Abi’s blood pressure and temperature had risen, he just wanted to make sure she was OK. But Paul suspects T.I.M. of spying on him. He thinks TIM sends messages to Abi whenever Paul visits Rose their only neighbour (Amara Karan), feeding Abi’s suspicious jealousies. And when he catches T.I.M. perving through Abi’s clothes, he knows something is very wrong. Is T.I.M. morphing into something bad? Can a robot even have feelings? And if things go wrong, who will Abi trust: Paul, the fallible human, or T.I.M., the perfect machine?
T.I.M. is a sci-fi thriller about the potential dire consequences of AI given a human form. This isn’t the first humanoid movie — there have been at least a dozen in the past few years — and some of the plot is predictable. And it does have that “pandemic movie feel” to it, with a tiny cast (just four main characters) located in an isolated country setting, but, in this case, it really works. It’s scary, it’s creepy, it’s interesting. It feeds on your worst fears about electronic devices communicating without your knowledge, and the possibility of the singularity, when humans will no longer be essential. I’m not familiar with any of the actors but the cast is good. The storyline is compelling, and most of all, the movie feels believable. So if you ever feel like your smart phone is a bit too smart, you’ll like this scary, sci-fi thriller. It’s a good one.
Freud’s Last Session opens this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings. Destroy All Neighbours is streaming exclusively on shudder.com, starting today; and T.I.M. is now available digitally and on V.O.D.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Dark movies. Films reviewed: Night Swim, The Zone of Interest, All of us Strangers
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
With winter comes grey skies and cold winds that can chill you to the bone. So this week I’m looking at three new movies with a dark theme. There’s an evil swimming pool, a Nazi Commandant, and a man visiting his parents… who died decades earlier.
Night Swim
Co-Wri/Dir: Bryce McGuire
Ray and Eve Waller (Wyatt Hawn Russell, Kerry Condon) are moving into a new home in suburban Minneapolis-St Paul. Their two kids, Izzie and Eliot, are less than pleased to be moving again. Izzie (Amélie Hoeferle) is popular and athletic, so she’ll have no trouble making new friends, but her little brother Eliot (Gavin Warren) is shy and withdrawn. But they are all happy their new home has a huge, built-in swimming pool, whose water comes directly from an underground hot spring. Ray used to be a pro baseball player but was forced to retire because he has Progressive Multiple Sclerosis. He hopes exercise and physio will help him recover and return to pro ball, though his doctor thinks that’s unlikely. Until Ray starts to improve — with a great gain in strength and stamina — which Rayattributes to the waters in their pool. But all is not well in swimming pool-land. There’s something strange in those waters. Apparently, a little girl drowned there 30 years earlier. Next, Eliot’s cat disappers. And now everyone in the family is seeing creatures — and hearing voices! — when they spend too much time underwater. What is going on? Is this pool haunted? Do its waters hold magical powers? And can it be trusted around Izzie and Eliot?
Nightswim is a thriller/horror where the unlikely villain is a swimming pool. While the title “night swim” hints at skinny dipping (or other vaguely erotic plot devices) this film is strictly P.G. No sex, no nudity, just all around spookiness. Even Izzie’s crush is on a squeaky clean Christian swim club member. It’s all about families and little league. But is it scary? Maybe a little. There are some disturbing and violent scenes, but for the most 
Night Swim is not bad, but it’s not very scary, either.
The Zone of Interest
Dir: Jonathan Glazer
It’s the 1940s in Poland. Rudolph Höss (Christian Friedel) is a careerist member of the Nazi SS who is doing very well for himself. He lives a comfortable, middle class life in a nice suburban home with his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) and his daughter and two sons. There are attentive staff to serve their every need, along with all the luxuries of modern living. Rudolf is later transferred to an office job in Germany, but his family stays behind to enjoy their cherished home. He eventually is transferred back again and they continue to live their wonderful lives. Except there’s a twist. His job is Commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau, a death camp where 1.1 million people were being murdered.
But except for a few small hints of what’s going on inside the camp, it’s pretty easy for the Höss family to ignore all of that. The subtle hints include women fighting over newly-arrived stolen clothes; Rudolf having clandestine sex with a female prisoner; and human body parts floating past Rudolf and the kids while they bathe in the river. In one poignant scene the daughter plays a piano piece she found scrawled on a piece of paper by one of the prisoners. She leaves apples tucked into shrubbery by the wall in the hope of helping the music’s composer. But it all ends up with him and other prisoners killed because of what she did. And that scene is filmed using a green, night-vision camera, presumably from the point of view of the guards.
Zone of Interest is a drama about the lifestyles of the SS during the
Holocaust. It’s loosely based on a novel by Martin Amis, and wholly embraces Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “banality of evil” — that the men who carried out mass murder were just boring, ordinary bureaucrats. But it’s really about the supposition that everyone already knows everything there is to know about the Nazi death camps, so why not make a Holocaust movie all about the Nazis, instead. And Glazer (review: Under the Skin) does that very well. He’s an innovative and fascinating filmmaker. But let me ask you this: do you really want to spend one hour and 45 minutes watching a boring but creepy Nazi family living their mundane daily lives just outside of Auschwitz?
I sure don’t.
All of Us Strangers
Wri/Dir: Andrew Haigh (Lean on Pete, 45 Years)
Adam (Andrew Scott) is a guy in his forties who lives on the 27th floor of a new condo in London. He’s working on a screenplay. Adam is gentle quiet and a bit depressed. One night, when a fire alarm goes off, he has to step out of the building, and he realizes he’s the only one in the tower, except a man he sees in a window. Later, Harry (Paul Mescal) the guy he saw, shows up at his door. He’s a real charmer in his 20s, and talks his way inside. They chat, flirt, and eventually end up in bed together.
But aside from Harry and the script he’s writing, there’s something else on Adam’s mind. One day he spontaneously hops on a train out to the London suburb where he grew up. He walks to his childhood home and thinks he sees a boy in his old bedroom window. So he knocks on the door. And to his surprise, it’s his Mum and Dad (Claire Foy, Jamie Bell) still living in the same house. Except “living” isn’t quite right; they both died in an accident in the 1980s when he was twelve, 
leaving his as an orphan. But here they are, the same age as they were then, now younger than Adam is now, but still his parents. They don’t know how long they’ll still be there but they want to make use of this time. Could he take Harry to meet them? How will they react if he tells them he’s gay? Or is this just a fleeting dream?
All of us Strangers is a lovely fantasy drama about isolation and alienation vs family, companionship and love. It’s languidly paced and elegantly presented, though with a surprising end. It’s full of wide, panoramic sunsets, open fields, and empty parks. I’ve never thought of London this way, but in All of us Strangers, this city is nearly empty and 
full of natural beauty, seen through the window of his high-rise condo. From the excellent tiny cast — Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Claire Foy and Jane Bell — to the exquisite cinematography, this is a well-crafted film that manages to be —simultaneously — eerie, dreamlike and romantic.
I like this one.
The Zone of Interest is now playing, with Night Swim and All of us Strangers both opening 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.
My, my. Films reviewed: My Animal, Maestro
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This week, I’m looking at two new films opening this weekend — a horror movie from Canada and a biopic from the US. There’s a young conductor with his eyes on Carnegie Hall, and a young werewolf with her eyes on a figure skater at the hockey rink.
My Animal
Dir: Jacqueline Castel
Wri: Jae Matthews
It’s a cold day in the 1980s somewhere in Northern Ontario. Heather (Bobbi Salvör Menuez) is a young woman with blood-red hair. She reads women’s bodybuilding magazines on the sly and watches female pro-wrestlers late at night on TV. She’s athletic herself — works part-time at the arena’s snack bar — and hopes to join the local hockey team as goalie. Heather lives in the outskirts of town with her grizzled dad who runs a diner (Stephen McHattie), her angry, alcoholic mom (Heidi von Palleske) and the twins Cooper and Hardy (Charles and Harrison Halpenny). She and her little brothers inherited red hair from their mom and an unusual trait from their Dad. That’s why their mom keeps everyone shackled to their beds whenever there’s a full moon. Can’t have them 
running around unwatched after midnight — they might bite someone! Yup… they’re werewolves.
Everyone knows everyone in this town, so when a new face appears at the rink, Heather takes notice. Jonny (Amandla Stenberg) is a beautiful, young, pro figure skater. She’s kept under tight control by her effeminate father (who is also her ice-dance-partner) and her domineering baseball-player boyfriend (Cory Lipman).
But when Heather meets Jonny, they both sense something electric between them. They start going out late at night to parties and adventures, like dropping acid at the casino with their friend Otto (Joe Apollonio). Heather says she wants to show Jonny new things — if she’s not too scared to try. Are they just friends? Or something more? Will Jonny accept Heather’s shape-shifting… never mind her sexuality? Or will Heather’s late-night risk-taking lead to violence, or even death?
My Animal is a beautiful look at a bittersweet romance between a lesbian, hockey-playing werewolf and a (possibly) straight figure skater. Although the two lead roles (starring the wonderful Stenberg and cool newcomer Menuez) are played by Americans, they, and the movie itself, feel totally Canadian, from the Zamboni to the snack bar to the snow-swept highway. (It was shot in Timmins, Ontario). I love the look of this film, playing with red, black and white, from Heather’s dark red bed sheets and ginger hair, to the hockey uniforms and maple leaf flags at the rink. From its gorgeous nighttime photography, to its blurry 80s music tracks, it’s relatively low-budget and simple but really good. Appropriately — and keeping with the red and white colour scheme — it won Best Director, Best Screenplay & Best Cinematography at the Blood in the Snow Film Festival. My Animal picks up on paths paved by classic female werewolf pics like Ginger Snaps.
I liked this one a lot.
Maestro
Co-Wri/Dir: Bradley Cooper
It’s 1943 in New York City. Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) is a musician, composer and conductor in his mid-20s, who suddenly gets a phone call from Carnegie Hall. Their regular conductor is ill, and they want Lennie to come in that day, without any rehearsals, to take his place. He leaps into the role, feeling the music and motivating al the musicians to play with passion. The concert is broadcast live on radio, nationwide, to huge response. This kickstarts his future as a conductor and suddenly the world is his oyster. He celebrates his newfound success with his boyfriend David (Matt Bomer) also a musician, and his career starts to soar.
Later, he meets Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan) a broadway actress originally from Chile. 
They fall in love and raise three children together. He composes movie and stage scores for hit musicals like West Side Story and Candide, and brings largely unknown composers, like Mahler, into the public eye. But Lennie is never quite ready to give up his gay sex life, and has a series of longtime lovers. Can Lennie and Felicia’s relationship weather both his superstar status and his sexuality? Or will it tear their marriage apart?
Maestro is a biopic about the personal and professional life of the celebrated conductor Leonard Bernstein. The musical side of this film is a visual and audio treat, with extended performances recreated with detailed care, in the original locations, Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood, and a cathedral in London. Beautiful music and photography. The film itself is told chronologically in three parts. The 40s and 50s are filmed in the style of movies from that period — gorgeous black and white, with elliptical scene changes, where he’ll leave his bedroom and walk straight onto a stage in front of a cheering crowd. Cooper perfectly captures Bernstein’s physicality in his conducting, jumping on the platform, thrusting a hand forward or balancing on one foot. The second part is in a 
grainier faded colour film to represent the 60s and 70s, while the third section is also in colour but with sharp photography, following his increasing fame and his faltering marriage. These are punctuated by word-for-word recreations of actual interviews.
But there’s a big difference between accuracy and reality. The script seems to be based on actual letters and diaries that Lennie and Felicia wrote at the time. This makes their lines sound scripted or transcribed, not real. And in the first section they speak with mannered voices, as if they were characters in a 1940s movie.
Mulligan is wonderful as Felicia, but you wonder, why — in a movie that puts Bernstein’s gayness 
front and centre — are we seeing detailed and extended private arguments between Lennie and Felicia, while his relationships with men are kept opaque? And for a movie about sexuality, why is it so non-sexual? Aside from an occasional post- coital cigarette (he was a chain smoker) or a short kiss, it’s kept anodyne and almost fully-dressed, a movie you could watch with your grandparents without blushing.
There are many delightful parts of the film, with good acting all around, and, as I said, the concerts are magnificent… I just never felt like I was learning anything new about Leonard and Felicia or delving deeply into their psyches.
Maestro is playing now at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, and opening soon at other theatres across Canada — check your local listings. My Animal is also playing nationally at select theatres.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.
Daniel Garber talks with Liz Whitmere about her new film Cold
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Jane is a 40 year old, middle-class, married woman, who is suffering from an unidentified illness. She’s feeling cold and uncomfortable. her skin is palid, her nails are brittle and food just doesn’t taste right anymore. Even simple things are hard to do. When she stretches for yoga her bones seem to crack. But when she asks her friends, her husband or her doctor, about what’s going on…they all seem to think it’s that change in life that all women go through. But what no one realizes is, it’s not her feelings, it’s not a change in life, it’s her lack of life… she’s dead! Literally. Maybe that’s why she feels so cold.
Cold is a dark and eerie look at one woman’s body told through the lens of of a comic horror movie. It’s also about the diminution of women’s health concerns, and the 
gaslighting of legitimate problems. It’s funny, spooky and very weird. It’s the work of multi-award-winning Toronto-based producer/writer/director Liz Whitmere, whose work has been seen on CBC, CBC Gem and at the Whistler Film Festival. Multi-talented, she’s also known for her acting and standup comedy.
Cold is having its world premiere on November 25th at Isabel Bader theatre in Toronto as part of the Mournful Mediums program at Blood in the Snow (a.k.a. BITS) the Canadian Horror film festival.
I spoke with Liz Whitmere in Toronto via Zoom.
Halloweeniness! Films reviewed: Five Nights at Freddy’s, The Killer, Suzume
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Toronto Fall Film Festival Season continues with Rendezvous with Madness, showing and discussing films about addiction and mental health, on now through November 5th. And on the horizon are Cinefranco, showing great French- language movies from Canada, Europe and Africa starting Nov 3rd; and ReelAsian Film Fest, celebrating its 27th incarnation, featuring pan-Asian cinema, events and media artists beginning on Nov 8th.
But this week I’m talking about three new genre movies — an action- thriller, a horror and an animated fantasy — just in time for Halloween. There’s a hitman tying up loose ends, a night watchman guarding animatronic beasts, and a Japanese schoolgirl closing doors.
Five Nights at Freddy’s
Co-Wri/Dir: Emma Tammi
(Based on the game by Scott Cawthon)
Mike (Josh Hutcherson) is a night watchman at a crumbling, former kids’ pizza emporium. He’s working there because, since their parents died, he needs to take care of his little sister Abby (Piper Rubio). Abby is withdrawn and introverted; she spends most of her days drawing pictures. Mike is especially protective of her, since their brother Garret was abducted by a stranger years earlier and never found. Now he’s worried social services will take her away and give custody to their sinister aunt Jane (Mary Stuart Masterson). And without a steady job, he’s a lost cause.
The thing is, Freddy’s is a weird and creepy place, filled with rusty old animatronic figurines — Freddy, Foxie, Bonnie, Chica, and Cupcake — life-sized robotic creatures that once welcomed kids to the restaurant… until children started disappearing in the 1980s, and the place was closed down. Luckily, Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail) a friendly local cop, is always dropping by to make sure Mike is OK. (Is there a possible romance brewing?) But once ghosts of the abducted kids start appearing in his dreams — and he wakes up with real-life wounds — Mike starts to question the entire job. And when Abby gets involved 
and is playing with the animatronic creatures, things start to look ominous. Can Mike protect Abby from her new “friends”? Will Aunt Jane take her away? And will he ever discover what happened to their brother Garret?
Five Nights at Freddy’s is a light kids’ horror movie about a haunted restaurant, a sort of a Chuck E Cheese from hell. It’s based on a computer game from the early 2000s, which dictates a lot of the characters, plot and even the images. Which gives an ultra-simplistic feel to the movie. The movie mainly takes place inside the dusty pizza emporium, filled with retro video screens and pinball machines; and the scenes with the animatronic characters are uniquely creepy and cool. But in general, the film is predictable, repetitive and not terribly original. But I’ve never actually played the game. The audience where I saw it was screaming and yelling at every line, revelation or scene-change, so, clearly, if you’re already a fan, you’ll love it. Personally, I enjoyed watching it, but found it instantly forgettable.
The Killer
Dir: David Fincher
A self-described ordinary man (Michael Fassbender) who likes egg McMuffins and 70s sitcoms is camping out in a Paris office building, across from a hotel. He enjoys listening to The Smiths whenever he needs to relax. He normally lives in a palatial estate in the Dominican Republic. So what is he doing in Paris and why is he sleeping on a table? He’s a hitman assigned to assassinate a stranger through hotel window. Don’t take it the wrong way; he’s not a bad guy, it’s just his job. But when the assignment goes wrong, everything falls apart. Now he thinks killers are tracking him, and his girlfriend is attacked and almost killed inside his home. Who can he trust? So he sets out to discover who exactly has turned on him, and once he figures that out, he plans to systematically kill them all. But will he succeed in his revenge plot?
The Killer is an action/thriller based on a graphic novel and told from the viewpoint of a sympathetic murderer. There are chase scenes and stake-outs, fistfights and shoot-outs, everything you’d expect in a thriller. It’s chock-full of violence and death, but the twist is it’s narrated in a light and breezy voice-over by the killer himself. 
Fassbender is a great actor, here at his wiriest, and surrounded by a top-notch cast: including Tilda Swinton, Charles Parnell and Arliss Howard. And it’s directed by David Fincher who brought us Fight Club and The Usual Suspects. And it has recurring gags, like the killer using fake names taken from 70s sitcoms (Archie Bunker and Richie Cunningham) to hide his identity. So why isn’t it very good? The problem is the story is more pointless than it is funny or exciting or interesting. It’s lots of action, not so many thrills. The plot itself is plodding, going from numbered chapter to chapter about the next person he’s going to encounter and possibly kill. It just leaves you feeling hollow — killers killing killers. Sure, The Killer is totally watchable as an action movie, it just doesn’t live up to its potential. Instead it elevates mundaneness into mock profundity.
Suzume
Wri/Dir: Shinkai Makoto
Suzume is a teenage girl in Kyushu, Japan. She has lived with her aunt since her single mom died when she was four, but she’s still troubled by nightmares. One day, on her way to school, a handsome young man asks her for directions to an abandoned part of town. Intrigued, she follows him and discovers a strange, freestanding door and a small statue of a cat. After she walks through the door, everything seems the same… and yet somehow different. She can now see things other people can’t — like a huge red plume rising into the sky. The cat, Daijin, comes to life and starts talking. The stranger, named Souta, explains what’s going on. He’s a closer, one of only a few people who can close those doors using a special key. The red plume is actually a giant worm — it’s what causes the earthquakes and tsunamis in Japan. And it will be a disaster unless he closes these doors wherever they start to open. But when the cat turns Souta into a little, three-legged chair, things start to get more complicated. Can Suzume do Souta’s work? Can she turn him back into a human? Can they stop Daijin the cat from causing any more problems? And what will Suzume’s aunt do if she just takes off?
Suzume is a beautiful fantasy-adventure about a girl trying to save the 
world. It’s a picaresque story that spans Japan’s islands, historic sites and the very diverse people at work — from a hostess bar to a bath house — she meets on her journey. It’s fascinating, exciting, and full of surprises. Beautiful images and a nostalgic soundtrack — full of Japanese pop songs from the 70s and 80s — make it a pleasure to watch. It’s especially meaningful in Japan because it takes place in 2023, exactly 100 years after the Great Kanto Earthquake flattened Tokyo. Add to this a semi-romantic story full of world-altering decisions (no spoilers) and you’ll get why it’s so good. The director Shinkai Makoto who brought us the smash hit Your Name again deftly handles tricky stuff like time and space and alternate realities and unrequited love.
If you like Japanese anime, Suzume is a must-see.
Five Nights at Freddy’s and Suzume both open this weekend in Toronto — check your local listings — with The Killer showing exclusively at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
August potpouri. Films reviewed: Bad Things, Lasting Impressions, Strays
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
August is a time to relax travel and have fun, not a time when people want to watch serious movies. So this week I’m looking at a potpourri of different sorts of entertainment than you’re probably used to. I’m talking about lesbians in a haunted hotel, French impressionist paintings on a bistro wall, and abandoned talking dogs in a big city.
Bad Things
Wri/Dir: Stewart Thorndike
It’s dead winter in upstate New York. Ruthie (Gayle Rankin) and her friends are up from the city to spend a night or two at a completely deserted hotel.
Ruthie inherited the place from her grandmother and has to decide whether to give it a go or sell it. With her, are her enthusiastic girlfriend Cal (Hari Nef: Barbie) their hard-boiled pal Maddie (Rad Pereira) and Maddie’s flirtatious acquaintance Fran (Annabelle Dexter-Jones). And it could be a fun weekend: there’s an indoor swimming pool, karaoke, a huge kitchen and tons of empty rooms for pillow fights or foolin’ around. On the negative side, the hotel might be haunted. Fran is the first one to see ghosts, a little girl worried about her fingers, and a pair of female ski champs. Worse, the ghosts can also see her. But when she freaks, the other three just blame it on drugs. Things heat up when Ruthie cheats on her 
girlfriend. But when things start getting really scary, like someone wearing a gas mask while brandishing a chainsaw — they have to decide whether to hightail it back to the city, or stick it out.
Bad Things is a new take on Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining from a feminist perspective. It keeps some of the original concepts but twists them all into something new and original. Instead of blood in the hallway it’s mothers’ milk. And there are lots of psychological thrills and chills — it’s hard to know who is crazy, who’s a ghost, who is living, who is dead, and who is killing them all. The acting is good all around, along with appearances by token heterosexuals, Canadian Jared Abrahamson (American Animals, Hello Destroyer, Hollow in the Land, Sweet Virginia) as Brian the handyman and 80s icon Molly Ringwald as the Woman in Red. Bad Things is a low budget movie shot during the height of the pandemic — The Shining it ain’t — but it is good, funny and scary.
Lasting Impressions: The Magic of the Impressionists in 3D
When is a painting not a painting? When it’s an experience. Over the past 5-10 years there’s been a boom in exhibitions of the art of famous painters… but without the paintings. Van Gogh, Chagal, Monet — they take a huge space and fill it with enormous moving projections of their most famous works to view as you walk around a warehouse or convention centre temporarily turned into a pop-up gallery. These were especially popular during the pandemic when it was hard to travel. But this show is different: instead of an ersatz art gallery, it’s a show, almost like dinner theatre. You sit at small numbered tables, where servers bring wine and snacks. When the show begins, the lights dim and you turn your chair to face the screen. And here’s where out gets interesting. To the accompaniment of popular French music — Debussy to Charles Aznavour to Ella Fitzgerald — enormous blowups of French impressionist paintings — sort of a greatest hits — are displayed one by one. The projections use super-saturated colour with intense effect. Part of the paintings are animated: water ripples, clouds drift, leaves shake. And — with the help of 3D glasses — elements of a painting feel like they’re moving: you’re drifting down a stream, floating above Monet’s waterlilies, or at a ballet rehearsal with poised ballerinas drifting slowly toward you in mid-air. It’s not the same thing as seeing a painting on a wall; this is art as a commodity to be consumed. While the animation doesn’t always work — I’d 
rather see a Frenchman’s long beard or a Tahitian woman’s hair staying still in a Renoir or Gaugin painting, than to watch it sway rhythmically in the breeze — the technical quality is excellent: great sound and beautiful images. I’m of the view, if you want art, go to a museum — there’s a show on right now of Mary Cassatt’s impressionist painting at the AGO. But if you want a pleasant, nostalgic outing, where you can enjoy choreographed pictures, music and a glass of wine, this is it.
Strays
Dir: Josh Greenbaum
Reggie is the perfect dog. Though a bit scruffy around the edges, he is loving, faithful, and true to his master Doug (Will Forte). All he wants is a pat on the head and an occasional “good boy”. So what is Reggie (Will Ferrell) doing in a dark alley in some big city? Turns out Doug is a good-for-nothing, scum-of-the-earth master who abandoned poor Reggie 3 hours away from the small town they live in, so the dog could never make his way back home. Reggie is still hopeful — he’s naive and an eternal optimist — but he is quickly disabused of that notion by some big mean dogs who threaten him. Luckily, the street-smart Bug (Jamie Foxx), comes to his rescue like the Artful Dodger, showing him the lay of the land. Being a stray dog is paradise — you can live like a king with no responsibility. They’re soon joined by two other strays: Maggie (Isla Fisher) an elegant pooch with a keen sense of smell who was traded in by her mistress for a smaller cuter lapdog; and Hunter 
(Randall Park) a former therapy dog who is always sympathetic. But when they discover Reggie’s tragic story they decide to help him get revenge. Their mission? For Reggie to find his way back to Doug… and bite off his penis! Will they make it to the town? And what adventures will they encounter along the way?
Strays is a comedy road movie that’s coarse, bawdy, and raunchy. It’s a typical bro movie, with the sort of humour that appeals to 14-year-old boys… you know, lots of jokes about feces, vomit, urine and penises. But somehow, because it’s guileless dogs (not people) telling the jokes, you can laugh all you want without feeling guilty or self conscious. These are real dogs, not CGI images (except when their mouths move). It gets a bit dark at times — jokes about serial killers and lost kids — and I’m really not a fan of explicit, extended images of dog poop… but despite all that, Strays is quite a funny movie.
Lasting Impressions is now playing at the CAA Mirvish Theatre in Toronto; Bad Things is streaming on Shudder, and Strays is opening across Canada this weekend; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Scary? Films reviewed: The Beasts, The Last Voyage of the Demeter
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
August is Emancipation Month in Toronto, commemorating the end of slavery in the British commonwealth, including Canada. So in honour of that there’s a free screening of RasTa: A Soul’s Journey, at Daniels Spectrum in Regent Park on August 13th.
But this week I’m looking at two new, scary movies. There are sailors who want to abandon ship, and farmers who don’t want to leave their land.
The Beasts
Co-Wri/Dir: Rodrigo Sorogoyen
Antoine (Denis Ménochet) and Olga (Marina Foïs) are a middle aged professional couple living in Galicia in northwestern Spain. He’s a burly, reserved man, while she is direct and no-nonsense. They gave up their lives and careers to settle among the rocky hills, growing organic tomatoes and vegetables. They love the simple life, working hard, breathing the fresh air and taking long walking through the nearby forests and hills They get along well with some of their neighbours, but not all of them. And especially not Xan and Lorenzo, a pair of wiry, adult brothers who keep nomadic horses. Lorenzo (Diego Anido) may be simple-minded but is prone to cruel, practical jokes, with Antoine as the victim. Xan (Luis 
Zahera) is much worse. Xan insults him, calls him a derogatory name for French people, mutters veiled threats and even spits at him.
At the centre of their dispute is a contract which Antoine and Olga refuse to sign. A multinational energy corporation wants to turn the village into a wind farm. But after all the money, time and work they have put into it, they don’t want to throw it all away for a small buyout. It’s their home. This is what makes their neighbours so angry. They want to leave their ancestral homes forever. And as their fight grows, it gradually turns to violence. What will become of them?
The Beasts is an intense, dark drama played out in a clash of cultures and class. The film starts with a group of men physically wrestling with horses in slow motion. This motif comes up later in the movie in an 
unexpected way. It’s billed as a thriller, but it’s not — I’d call it more of a slow-burn drama, spread out over more than two hours. The dialogue is in French, Spanish and (I’m guessing) Galician, since it doesn’t sound like any Spanish I’ve ever heard before.
Is it a good movie? I like the characters, and the acting and the drama, and its beautiful cinematography, locations and music. But the film has a weird structure, with a very long ending after an intense chapter in the middle. It’s less thrilling or scary than it is creepy and disturbing, though it does have a satisfying finish. I just don’t quite get the point of this movie. If you like feeling uncomfortable for a couple hours but not really challenged, then you’ll probably like The Beasts.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter
Dir: André Øvredal
It’s the 1890s and the three-masted Demeter is loading at a Romanian dock, preparing for its voyage to Dover, England. Captain Eliot (Liam Cunningham) has mustered all his sailors on the ship, as well as Wojchek, his first mate (David Dastmalchian), Joseph, his bible-thumping cook (Jon Jon Briones) and his eight-year-old grandson Toby (Woody Norman). It’s the captain’s last voyage so he wants to pass on some of his lore. The only unfamiliar face is Clemens (Corey Hawkins), the ship’s doctor. Not a sailor, but he does hold a medical degree from Cambridge (very uncommon for a black man in Victorian England). But with such a small crew, even the doctor has to take his turn steering the ship and on night watch. But the most unusual thing is this ship’s cargo: a series of large wooden crates filled 
with dirt and branded with a sinister-looking mark. The locals refuse even to board the ship, but the crew is happy that there’s a big cash bonus if they deliver the cargo in time.
Unfortunately, things start to go wrong pretty quickly. First, a female stowaway is found on board — and sailors considered women on ships bad luck. Anna (Aisling Franciosi) is half dead, speechless and frightened. Clemens keeps her alive with frequent blood transfusions. Then all the ship’s animals — from livestock, to a dog, to even the rats hidden in the hold — are found dead. And then the crew starts disappearing, one by one. Is this a disease? A stowaway killer? Or something even worse? And will the Demeter and its crew ever reach its destination?
The Last Voyage of the Demeter is a well-crafted thriller/horror about a vampire on board a ship, based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula. And — no spoilers here — if this vampire looks familiar, it’s because he’s Nosferatu, the cadaverous, long fingered, pointy-eared creature made famous by the silent German expressionist masterpiece by FW Murnau, released a full century ago (1922). This Nosferatu can fly, 
swim, hypnotize its victims and seemingly pass through walls. He’s almost indestructible. The film is beautifully shot in a German studio, with the camera flying down long passageways, into the galley, under tables and up to the sailmasts. The soundtrack is punctuated with tapping sounds that reverberate the length of the ship. The acting is quite good all around. And this vampire is a scary one.
The one thing that’s missing is pathos — with a few exceptions, you don’t feel close or attached to most of the characters. But that’s a minor problem in a good horror movie. And this one gives new life to a very old vampire.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter and the Beasts are both opening this weekend in Toronto, with The Beasts playing at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
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