Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

This week I’m looking at three great new dramas about people facing huge changes in far-flung places. There’s a man in Japan pursued by unknown enemies; a girl in Zimbabwe on the eve of an election; and a sheriff in New Mexico at the dawn of a pandemic. 

Cloud

Wri/Dir: Kiyoshi Kurusawa

It’s present-day Tokyo. Yoshi (Masaki Suda) is a guy in his 20s with a certificate from a vocational school. He’s socially and emotionally challenged. Yoshi lives in a cramped apartment with his girlfriend Akiko (Kotone Furukawa). He works in a factory, pressing clothes, but after three years is still struggling financially with no chance of advancement. Luckily, he has a side hustle: a reselling site where he marks-up cheap goods online and sells them for profit: French designer knock-offs, electronic devices, collectible toys; the content doesn’t matter, just the speed of turnover and how much profit he makes. At the moment, he’s doing so well he decides to quit his factory job, turn his reselling site into a full time occupation and relocate to a large house in the countryside with cheap rent. Akiko agrees to move with him, and he hires a local kid, Sano (Daiken Okudaira) as his assistant. And with the business doing so well, he figures he can relax now and let the cash pour in. But it’s never that simple. 

Strange things start happening. Yoshi is knocked off his motorcycle by a wire stretched across a road.  Someone tosses a chunk of metal through his glass window. And Sano does an ego-surf on Yoshi’s site and finds online chatter from dissatisfied customers threatening to kill him. (He keeps his website completely anonymous). At the same time, local police are investigating him for fraud, Akiko is reaching her breaking point, and Yoshi fires Sano for using his computer without permission, leaving him all alone in his country home. But when armed masked strangers start showing up at his door, Yoshi realizes it’s time to drop everything and get the hell out of there. Who are these angry strangers? What do they want? And how can he get away?

Cloud is both an almost surreal, cyber suspense thriller and a cautionary crime drama. Masaki Suda’s plays Yoshi as a man without any self-awareness… who assumes no one else notices him either.

It starts as a slow-burn, but explodes, halfway through, into a violent, action/thriller, with more than one totally unexpected plot turn. Though the main character spends much of his time staring at a distressingly dull website, waiting for buyers to check in, the outside world is full of geometric sets with sharp turns, cloudy windows, green forests and dark shadows. With lush music played against abandoned warehouse walls, Cloud lets suspense carry us through to the shocking finish. 

I like this suspenseful crime-thriller a lot.

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight

Co-Wri/Dir: Embeth Davidtz

It’s 1980 in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. The Bush War is over, and white minority rule has ended, pending its first democratic election. Bobo Fuller (Lexi Venter) is a seven-year old girl who lives with her family on a dried out cattle ranch. She wears her face dirty and blonde hair tangled. Bobo smokes cigarettes and rides her motorbike around the farm with a rifle strapped across her back. She fears two things: ticks and terrorists.

Her mom Nicola (Embeth Davidtz) makes it clear she will never leave her land. As grandma likes to say, we have breeding, not money. She’s a heavy drinker, prone to guzzling brandy and dancing with abandon during her manic episodes. Bobo’s Dad is more reasonable, but disappears for weeks at a time. Her older sister (Rob Van Vuuren) lives there too, but has no time for her bratty little sister.

So Bobo is essentially raised by Sarah (Zikhona Bali) their nanny and housekeeper. Bobo tries ordering her around like a grown up — bring me my porridge! — but Sarah sets her straight: she’s too young to be bossy. And it’s Sarah who tells her stories, answers her questions and explains what happens to us after we die.

The family gets together with other whites in nearby farms for parties and barbecues. But there’s tension in the air as they await results from the election. Sarah, too is worried: she might be targeted by nationalists if seen taking care taking care of a girl like Bobo. What will happen after the election? And will any changes be permanent?

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight is a drama based on the memoirs of Alexandra “Bobo” Fuller. It’s full of abrasive characters and their casual racism, and pulls no punches in their portrayal. The whole film is shot through the eyes of a little girl, so with the camera kept low, we might just see people’s legs from under a table or an obscured lens when she’s squinting at the sun.

Actress Embeth Davidtz evokes her own South African background (where the movie was shot) in telling Bobo’s story. This is her first time directing, and its a fascinating adventure in creativity. And though her excellent portrayal of a difficult, bi-polar Mom — alongside Zikhona Bali’s terrific turns as Sarah — , it’s really about Lexi Venter as Bobo, who gives a natural performance in every scene, either as the centre of attention or as quiet observer.  

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight is an excellent memoir of a difficult period of history.

Eddington

Wri/Dir: Ari Aster

It’s April, 2020 in Eddington, a small town in New Mexico, just as the Covid lockdowns mask mandates are kicking in. Working class Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) is the town Sheriff, just as his dad was before him. He lives in a ramshackle home with his catatonically depressed wife Louise (Emma Stone) and her conspiracy-theory addled mother Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell). He works with his two faithful officers Michael (Micheal Ward) and Lodge (Clifton Collins, Jr).

On the better side of town lives the upper-middle-class Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) —  a smooth talker and a consummate politician — who is running for re-election. He is expected to open a mysterious tech conglomerate on the outskirts of town. His son, Eric (Matt Gomez Hidaka) is an arrogant and spoiled rich kid. He hangs out with his friend Brian (Cameron Mann), drinking beer and smoking pot. They are both after idealistic high school student Sarah (Amélie Hoeferle) who they try to impress by quoting Angela Davis. Then comes the news that George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis, has been killed by police. Demonstrations follow but the small town is already divided on ideological grounds, with everything recorded on cel phones and posted online: those who wear masks with social distancing, vs those who don’t. But as tensions build, and Mayor Ted publicly humiliates Sheriff Joe, he declares he’s running for mayor, too. 

Eddington is a sharp and scathing social satire about life in America during the pandemic. It’s half dark- comedy and half thriller/horror as it devolves from light absurdity into a hellish fantasy. It covers a huge variety of topics, including religious cults, false memory syndrome, big tech, culture wars, white supremacy, the dark state, and indigenous relations… to name just a few. I love all of Ari Aster’s movies — Heredity, Midsommer and Beau is Afraid — and Eddington, though more of a Western than strictly horror, continues his cycle. While Joaquin Phoenix’s Joe is the film’s focus, it’s actually an ensemble cast with at least 20 crucial roles.

Eddington is brilliant, hilarious and shocking… putting his magnifying glass on all of us, just a few years ago.

it’s a must-see.

Cloud, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight , and Eddington all open this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings.

This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.