Girls Adopted. Films reviewed: Queens of the Qing Dynasty, The Quiet Girl, Return to Seoul
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Who are your “real” parents: the ones who raise you, or the ones who gave birth to you? This week, I’m looking at three new dramas from France, Ireland and Canada, about daughters who are either adopted or have foster parents. There’s a French woman in Korea looking for her birth parents, a young woman in Nova Scotia leaving the foster parents system, and a little Irish girl sent to live with relatives.
Queens of the Qing Dynasty
Wri/Dir: Ashley McKenzie
Star (Sarah Walker) is a moon-faced 18-year-old in hospital in Nova Scotia. She feels comfortable there having spent most of her young life in and out of institutions. She’s there because she drank poison — they’re pumping her stomach. She’s over- medicated in a nearly catatonic state. And most alarming, she’s about to turn 19, meaning she’s aging out of the foster child system, and will have to take care of herself, if capable, for the first time. She’s diagnosed as bipolar with ADHD, and is prone to addiction, but her real problems lie much deeper.
An (Zheng Ziyin) a student from Shanghai, volunteering at the hospital, is assigned to keep Star company. He’s artistic, effeminate and flamboyant. He likes traditional Chinese songs (he sings in falsetto), and is obsessed with his fingernails. He imagines himself as a Manchu concubine plotting politics within the Forbidden City. But these two very different people find 
comfort from each other, confessing their secrets and sending texts late at night when they’re apart. And form an unusual friendship.
Queens of the Qing Dynasty is a realistic look at two marginalized, oddball characters finding their place within a bigger, constrictive society. It’s shot in brutally drab locations, like snowbound motels, strip mall mani-pedis, hospitals and group homes, using mainly first-time actors. And despite the depressing or even tragic lives of the characters, it somehow remains light, whimsical and endearing.
This movie is both weird and appealing.
The Quiet Girl
Co-Wri/Dir: Colm Bairéad
Rural Ireland in 1981. Cáit (Catherine Clinch) is a little girl from a big, poor family of farmers. Her Dad is away all day, drinking, gambling and philandering, instead of cutting the hay. Her Mom is pregnant while taking care of a toddler and three or four others. With no one taking care of her, Cait falls through the cracks. She has dirty cheeks and mousy brown hair, is painfully shy and wets her bed. At school, she is bullied and laughed at and labeled an idiot. So her Mom asks her cousin if she could take care of Cáit for the summer while her mom’s preparing to give birth. So her father drives her out to Waterford, but forgets to unpack her suitcase before he leaves.
The Cinnsealachs (Carrie Crowley, Andrew Bennett) are a childless, older couple, middle-class dairy farmers who live in a spotlessly clean house. Cait is terrified to live around strangers, but gradually adjusts. They tell her to be honest here — there are no secrets in this house. They give her boys’ clothes to wear around the farm, and pretty dresses from in town. Soon they’re teaching her how to chop onions, fetch water from the well, or how to milk the cows. She brushes Cait’s hair a hundred times and helps her with her reading. He encourages her to run and exercise. Over the course of the summer, Cait gradually emerges as a bright 
and pretty girl. But locals are gossiping about her — why is she living there? What do they want from her? Does she know their secret? And what will happen once she’s home again?
The Quiet Girl is a deeply touching story of one summer in a neglected girl’s life, amid a caring couple recovering from a loss of their own. The acting is very good, especially Clinch as the quiet girl. The story is both simple and subtle, and sure to move you to tears. Most of the characters speak Irish (with subtitles) throughout the movie, to various degrees of success. (I’ve been mispronouncing Cáit as “Kate” using an Anglicized version of her name.)
I like this movie — and it was nominated for an Oscar for Best International Film.
Return to Seoul
Wri/Dir: Davy Chou
Freddie (Park Ji-min) is a 25 year old French woman at a guest house in Seoul. She’s supposed to be in Tokyo, but ended up here when all flights to Japan were cancelled due to a typhoon. She instantly bonds with Tena (Guka Han) at the front desk, who can speak French. That evening, Tena and other new friends tell Frankie she has classic Korean features, and doesn’t seem French at all. She decides to prove her Frenchness by being provocative, spontaneous and wilfully rude. When she admits she was born in Korea but adopted as an infant in France, they wonder why she hasn’t been to “Hammond” an adoption agency which holds all relevant data.
Frankie is uninterested — she’s here as a tourist — but does carry a snapshot in her wallet of a woman holding her as a newborn babe. She ends up requesting meetings with both of her birth parents. Her birth father (Oh Kwang-rok) is a former fisherman. He takes her home, feeds her, where he and his family prostrate themselves before her asking her forgiveness. She rudely rejects them, and refuses to answer his drunken teary texts sent to her each night. But her mother remains a mystery. Will Frankie ever he meet her birth mother? Does she have any connection to this strange country? Ad what will her future bring?
Return to Seoul is a dark drama of a western woman discovering
her roots. The film is fictional but based on the French director’s own experience in returning to his ancestral home in Cambodia.
Frankie’s story is told in episodes over the course of a decade, in France and in Korea, always on her birthday. Frankie is an enigmatic character, smart and sexy, but also socially obtuse, selfish and occasionally outright monstrous. At times she seems like a female Wolf of Wall Street. She treats the men she meets, both hookups and partners, like a piece of Kleenex to be discarded after use. Most of her past is only hinted at: Was she once a concert pianist? What was her relationship with her French family? But eventually she lets her real feelings show through, if only for a moment.
Return to Seoul is a troubling, alienating and emotionally powerful film.
Queens of the Qing Dynasty, The Quiet Girl, and Return to Seoul all open this weekend at the TIFF Bell Lightbox; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks with filmmaker Robert Eggers about The Lighthouse
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Photo of Robert Eggers by Jeff Harris
It’s the 19th century on a rocky Atlantic island. An old salt and a young jack tar share threadbare lodgings. Their job? Keep a lighthouse burning to warn all passing boats of potential danger. The old man is 
there for the long haul, while the younger one seems to be a temporary replacement. But as the isolation grows they become increasingly unhinged as they try to keep their senses… in the lighthouse.
The Lighthouse is a new film about life in a lighthouse as seen through the fantastical minds of the two men living there. It’s written and directed by Robert Eggers, his second feature after The VVitch.
This interview was recorded onsite during TIFF 19.
The Lighthouse opens next Friday (Oct 25, 2019) in Toronto.
Disruptions. Films reviewed: Marlina the Murderer, Darken, North Mountain
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s Canada Day weekend – a good time for fireworks, beer, and maybe a movie. So I’ve been looking around for films not from south of the border — and three unusual ones caught my eye. Two are from Canada — and one from Indonesia — and two of the three are directed by and feature women.
This week I’m looking at three movies about people whose lives are disrupted by unexpected visitors. There’s a Mi’kmaq trapper fighting off thieves in eastern Canada, a widow fighting off rapists in eastern Indonesia, and a Toronto nurse fighting medieval soldiers… in a parallel universe.
Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts
Dir: Mouly Surya
It’s present day Sumba, an island in Eastern Indonesia near Flores and Timor Leste. Marlina (Marsha Timothy) is a sad and lonely widow. Her only child died years ago, and her husband’s body sits beside her in her home, wrapped in traditional cloth, awaiting his funeral. All she has left are her cattle, chickens and pigs. But her sad relections are interrupted one day by a visitor 
on a motorbike. It’s Marcus (Egy Fedly) an evil, long-haired outlaw from a nearby town. He heard she’s alone and comes there to take advantage. I have a gang of six more men on their way, he says. You’re a woman all alone, so we own you now. You’re going to cook us a meal. We will steal your cattle and anything else you own. And — if 
you’re lucky — we’ll rape you, but not kill you. And there’s nothing you can do about it.
Marlina is sickened and terrified… but not helpless. She poisons four of the men with her chicken soup, and when Marcus sexually assaults her, Marlina, in a moment of desperation, grabs a machete and chops off his head! Not knowing what else to do, she 
decides to turn herself in to the local police.
At the truck-taxi stop she meets a neighbour named Novi (Dea Panendra) who reacts rather mildly to the dead man’s head she’s carrying. Novi is more concerned with her own problems. She’s ten months pregnant but the baby just won’t come out! So they set off down the long and twisting road to the nearest town.
But two of the killers are still after her. Will Novi ever give birth? Should Marlina turn herself in? And what will she do with Marcus’s head?
Marlina the Murderer is a genre-busting drama, part revenge pic, part feminist western, part art house dark comedy. It has an amazingly calm tone in the midst of horrible crime. There are horses, and posses, and road 
trips and fights. I haven’t seen many Indonesian movies, so I’m far from an expert, but the two stars were both in great action movies I actually have seen: Headshot and The Raid 2 – which is a good sign. And it introduces the music, customs and amazing scenery and people of Sumba, a place I had never heard of before this film, but now at least have experienced a taste of it.
Marlina the Murderer is a brilliant, rich and baffling movie.
Darken
Dir: Audrey Cummings
Eve (Bea Santos) is a Toronto nurse who’s feeling down. She’s depressed and her life has lost its point. Until one day she runs into a woman on a sidewalk calling for help. The woman is dressed in a strange medieval leather outfit and is bleeding from a knife wound. She asks Eve to rescue her friends. But when Eve opens a door to a nearby building, she finds herself, like Alice in Wonderland, in a whole other world.
It’s a land called Darken, composed of a series of linked rooms and hallways, It’s always indoors in Darken and always nighttime. It’s governed by a goddess who provides life through her blood and is ruled by an autocratic priestess named Clarity (Christine Horne). It serves as a refuge for outcasts from different eras, all of whom live peacefully together. That is, until now.
The Mother Goddess is out of the picture, and Clarity has declared war on all dissidents. Her spear-wielding guards – 
all decked out in Game of Thrones gear – provide her the muscle; and a lackey (Ari Millen) — who reminds me of the young Penguin on Gotham — defends her legal rulings.
But Eve falls in with the rebels, including the fierce Kali (Olunike Adeliyi) and the kindly Mercy (Zöe Belkin) who communicates using sign language. Which side will win? And can Eve ever get back to her normal world?
Darken is a science fiction/fantasy set in a parallel universe. It ranges from unexpected plot twists to absolute cheese. Above all, this feature shouts TV, from the set design, to the lighting, to the acting and the script. There 
are even scenes that fade to black as if they’re saying: Insert Ad Here. And I find shows shot entirely on dark blue sets claustrophobic. But that’s just me.
On the other hand, women-centred science fiction or fantasy movies are rarer than an affordable apartment in 
Toronto. And this one has a a goddess, an evil priestess, a heroine, and noble fighters — all played by women. The men are there as peripheral characters or arm candy.
And for that reason alone it might be worth seeing.
North Mountain
Dir: Bretten Hannam
Wolf (Justin Rain) is a young hunter/trapper in a Nova Scotia forest. He knows every rock and tree on North Mountain: where to set the snares, where to hunt the deer. He lives a traditional Mi’kmaq life in his Grandmother’s wooden cabin, a life still lit by candlelight. He uses a bow and 
arrow to kill the animals he eats, and honours and respects each life he sacrifices. It’s a simple, quiet existence, punctuated by monthly visits to the town store where he catches up with Mona (Meredith MacNeil), a long time friend.
Nothing changes except the seasons, until… he finds an older man’s body leaning against a tree. He’s bleeding, barely alive, and is holding a leather satchel filled with cold, hard American cash. Wolf tends to his wounds until Crane (Glenn Gould) comes back to life. Turns out he’s from this place and speaks the same language.
Their first conversations are fraught with violence and fistfights and filled with suspicion. But at some point their initial violent antipathy shifts to something very different: they become lovers! And just as they’re making sense of it,
a group of strangers comes to the mountain. A posse of crooked cops and organized criminals. They want the cash and don’t care who they kill to get it. Can a pair of indigenous lovers wielding bow, arrow and tomahawk overcome a heavily-armed contingent?
North Mountain is half violent thriller, half passionate, aboriginal gay love story. Rain and Gould (of Plains Cree and Mi’kmaq heritage, respectively) are excellent as the two lovers, and the action – including references to Peckinpaw’s ultra-violent Straw Dogs – is as heart-pounding as any good thriller.
North Mountain, Darken and Marlina the Murderer 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.
Daniel Garber talks with Michael Melski about The Child Remains
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Rae and Liam are a happily married couple, the only guests at a quaint, private hotel. They drove to this out-of-the-way location for a quiet weekend together. Rae – an investigative journalist – is convalescing after a mental breakdown – and Liam, an aspiring 
musician, just wants to help his wife. Little do they know, this bed and breakfast was once a maternity hospital for unwed mothers, where terrible things took place. Some of the babies — and their mothers — were buried on the premises. Rae is troubled 
by strange dreams and visions all around the hotel. And a baby’s cry keeps her up at night. The bad days are long gone… but the child remains.
The Child Remains is a new and very scary movie. Set in small-town Nova Scotia, it’s inspired by true events, but with a supernatural twist. The film had it’s Toronto debut at Blood in the Snow, the Canadian horror film fest. The film is written and directed by award-winning Nova Scotia filmmaker Michael Melski whose movies I’ve followed for half a decade.
I spoke with Michael Melski in studio at CIUT 89.5 FM.
The Child Remains will be relased in 2018.
Unusual relationships. Movies reviewed: Room 213, Your Name, Maudie
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
April 19th is National Canadian Film Day, which bills itself as the world’s largest film festival. On that day — at theatres around Toronto, and across the country – you can see free screenings of Canadian movies, often with actors or directors in attendance. Comedies, kids’ movies, French, indigenous… and they’re all free. Check it out.
This week I’m looking at movies about unusual relationships. There’s a disabled woman who moves in with a recluse, a ghost who inhabits a young girl, and a teenage boy and girl who inhabit each other’s bodies.
Room 213
Dir: Emilie Lindblom
Elvira (Wilma Lundgrun) is a 12-year-old Danish girl heading to camp for the first time. Camp Bjorkuddens is a lot like a Canadian summer camp: it’s on a lake, they play games, roast weenies on sticks and tell scary stories by the campfire. The big difference is instead of tents or small, bare cabins they stay in a huge, elaborate building filled with dusty antiques. Elvira has two roommates, the blond and snobbish Meja (Ella Fogelström) and the darker, shy Bea (Elena Hovsepyan). And due to a plumbing problem they move to room 213, empty for many years.
That’s when weird things start to happen. The door creaks open in 
the middle of the night, and treasured items disappear (and the three girls suspect one another). A girl with red hair and bright green eyes named Mebel appears — is she a ghost? And when Elvira’s brown eyes start turning green, is it Mebel taking over?
Room 213 is a scary movie aimed at small children. It’s tame even by YTV standards — no violence at all, no slashers in hockey masks, just general spookiness. And it deals with problems like exclusion, bullying and young love in a multi-ethnic Denmark. But this is definitely a movie for little kids only.
Your Name (君の名は)
Dir: Makoto Shinkai
Taki is a high schooler in central Tokyo. He’s scrawny but quick to fight. He hangs out with his two best friends and has a crush on his sophisticated, female boss at his part-time restaurant job. Mitsuha is a teenaged girl in a remote Japanese village, known for its obscure shinto shrine and little else. She lives with her little sister Yotsuha and her traditional grandmother who knows about the old ways. Things like weaving colourful lanyards, and chewing up glutinous rice, spitting it back into a wooden box so it ferments into sake. Yum! And there’s a celestial comet that passes close to the town every 200 years (that day is approaching soon.)
Taki and Mitsuha are total strangers who live far away from each other. So what’s their connection? Some mornings, Taki is waking up with breasts, and Mitsuha with a penis. Well not exactly; they’re actually waking up inside each other’s bodies. They have to live those days at school, at work and with friends they’ve never met before. It’s not all bad. Mitsuha lands Taki a date with his boss, and Taki gains some insight into shinto rituals. He becomes more mature and she is more assertive. The two manage to communicate with each other using cryptic scrawls they leave in notebooks and diaries recorded on cel phones so they can know what happened during their switch-body days. Until something changes. The 
body switches suddeny stop and all the notes they left each other fade away. For Taki it’s as if Mitsuha never existed and it was all a dream. But it was real. He can’t remember her name, but he knows it all happened. Using a sketch of her town he drew from memory, he sets out to find her.
Your Name is deeply-moving romantic drama with a touch of the supernatural. It’s a beautifully- drawn, animated film from Japan with neat camera angles and lovely art. It’s also a record-breaking smash hit across East Asia that has finally reached these shores. It’s the only movie playing now to sell-out crowds, with huge lineups inside the theatre before each screening. And I understand why. No spoilers, but there’s a wrenching revelation in the middle that sent shivers down my spine, the sign of a really good story. Anime is a particular genre, and if you’re not familiar with it it might be hard to understand, but if you like anime, this one is a must-see.
Maudie
Dir: Aisling Walsh
Maud (Sally Hawkins) is a disabled woman who lives in post-war Digby, Nova Scotia with her controlling aunt. Every moment of her life is supervised and she’s treated like a simple-minded child. But on a visit to a local shop she finds a way to escape: a hand-written ad for a live in housekeeper. Everett Lewis (Ethan Hawke) wrote the note, 
though his house is barely a home. He lives in a rundown shack on a small plot of land, earning a meagre living as a fish monger. He’s unmarried, mainly because no woman can put up with his rudeness.
But Maudie can. After dogged persistence, she moves in with him and immediately starts to work. He is peculiar and abusive, but 
she sticks with it. In her free time she begins to decorate the walls with small paintings of flowers and animals. When her hand-painted postcards sell out at the local general store, she moves on to bigger paintings, selling them for $5 apiece. These catch the eye of a rich woman from N.Y. City who spreads the primitivist paintings among her friends back home. Meanwhile, Maud’s relationship with Everett gradually shifts from 
boss/servant to bedmate to wife. But can a reclusive misanthrope handle living with a recognized artist and local celebrity?
Maudie is the true story of a self-taught painter whose works now hang in famous galleries and in the homes of collectors. It’s also an unusual romance about a pair of social outcasts hammering out an unusual relationship on their own. Sally Hawkins is outstanding as Maudie – you really believe she is who she is playing. Hawke, though capable in his portrayal of such an unsympathetic character, pales in comparison to his co-star. This is a good — though very dark — movie.
Your Name is now playing and Maudie opens today in Toronto; check your local listings. Room 213 is one of many films showing at the TIFF Kids Festival – go to tiff.net for details. And canadianfilmday.ca will tell you where to see free films on April 19th.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Survivors. Movies Reviewed: Ender’s Game, Dallas Buyers Club, The Disappeared PLUS Last Vegas
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, documentary, genre and mainstream films, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.
It’s Movember… time to grow those mustaches, ladies! And keep your eyes open to all the film festivals opening in Toronto this month. Look for: Reel Asian, Rendezvous with Madness, Ekran, Planet in Focus, and the EU Film Festival and Regent Park Film Fest – the last two of which are completely free!
This week I’m looking at three movies about people facing impossible odds. There’s a space drama about small children trying to save the universe; a biopic about a Texan trying to survive the HIV virus; and a Canadian drama about a lifeboat full of fisherman trying to find their way back home.
Ender’s Game
Dir: Gavin Hood
It’s the future. Ant-like aliens have attacked the planet. Little Ender Wiggin (Asa Butterfield) is a smart but bullied school kid. Like his classmates, he has a metal knob attached to his head so the military can read his mind. But when he fights back against a much bigger kid, he’s suddenly pulled from school. Is he in trouble? No, he’s been chosen to join an elite military academy in outer space.
Ender is a smart kid. They choose him both for his analytical thoughts and assertive nature, but also for his compassion. Two military brass (Harrison Ford as hawkish warmonger Colonel Graff and Viola Davis as a compassionate psychologist Major Anderson) are closely studying him. They use Ender as a test case for the perfect soldier, possibly the one who can beat the ant-people in their endless war. Only children, they believe, can absorb and apply complicated digital info fast enough to beat the bad guys. Ender is the perfect leader. He follows orders but also questions authority if things aren’t going right.
He makes friends – Bean, Alai and Petra () – with his fellow child-soldiers at the academy as they train for various battle simulations. These games are like 3-D computer simulations, except they fight physically, in immense arenas without gravity. They learn new strategies, play new games, fight new battles and form 
new teams. And Ender is always there, taking it all in and devising new battle plans.
But he also pines for his family back on earth: his genius parents, his sadistic older brother Peter, and his loving sister Valentine (Abigail Breslin). Just like the two military officers, the brother and sister are fighting to influence Ender toward cruelty or compassion. Which one influenced him the most?
Can the earthlings ever defeat the ant people? Will ender provide the solution? And in the process, will he turn into a baby Hitler? Or a mini-Gandhi?
This movie is based on the popular cold-war science fiction novel. It’s pretty close to the original. I’ve read the book, so it was really fun to actually see it on the big screen. And it handles the good vs bad and all its permutations well – Peter vs Valentine, Col Graff vs Maj Anderson, Earthlings vs Formic beings. Asa Butterfield is good, though a bit wooden or robot like, but that suits the role. It’s a enjoyable sci-fi pic, with an unexpected ending. It’s not a perfect movie, but it’s still smarter than most. It’s also darker than a Star Wars or a Star Trek, and it’s not a straightforward, “feel-good” superhero movie.
Dallas Buyers Club
Dir Jean-Marc Vallee
It’s 1985 in Dallas, Texas. Ron’s a rootin’-tootin’ redneck in a cowboy hat. He’s an electrician at the oil fields, and in his spare time he picks up girls, snorts coke, guzzles alcohol straight from the mickey, and goes to strip bars. His hobby? The rodeo: he likes to ride bulls (not bareback, I hope.)
Anyway, Ron (Matthew McConaughey) also prone to fainting and hallucinating, and he’s looking rather thin these days. He’s clearly illing. While 
he’s in hospital, he meets Rayon (Jared Leto) a trans woman in the next bed. It’s hate at first sight. Homophobic Ron calls her pansy, buttercup, tinkerbell – and that’s when he’s being nice. And she wants nothing to do with him.
When they test Ron’s blood, turns out he’s HIV-positive, his T-cell count is down to eight, and he has 30 days left to live. The FDA refuses to release experimental drugs, even though AIDS patients are dropping like flies. They’re testing AZT at that very hospital, but only as double blind tests, with placebos for half the patients, and lethally high AZT doses for the rest.
Basically, Ron’s dead.
Then an orderly tells him about a doc, down Mexico way, who can get him what he needs. Sure ‘nuff. He doesn’t die. So he starts smuggling the meds, the vitamins and dietary supplements across the border. And Rayon becomes his business partner. The two of them setting up a quasi-legal centre – that’s the Dallas Buyers Club of the title — where members can get access to treatment the mainstream medical profession is denying them. With the help of a sympathetic doctor (Jennifer Garner channelling Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich) they just might beat the system ( the FDA, the hospitals, Big Pharma) that’s trying to shut them down. But can they fight their own illnesses, too?
This biopic works well as a drama. It’s moving, good story, good acting. This is Quebec director Jean Marc Vallee’s first English language film, and he totally pulls it off. (C.R.A.Z.Y. was a huge hit in Canada a few years ago.) Matt McConaughey lost tons of weight for his role, and Jared Leto dressed as a woman (although it’s unclear whether he’s playing an extremely effeminate, cross-dressing gay man, or a transsexual) Maybe I’m totally cynical, but I just get the nagging suspicion that they’re out there performing “big” mainly so they can win some Oscars. In any case, they are good and convincing in their roles, as is Steve Zahn as Ron’s buddy a local cop. All in all, a moving and interesting biopic.
The Disappeared
Dir: Shandi Mitchell
Ever been to sea, Billy?
No, Captain Highliner…
Well, these guys sure have. There are six of them drifting around in a lifeboat in the Atlantic, somewhere off Nova Scotia. There’s the Skipper (Brian Downie) a god-fearing type, and then there are the various sailors, played by Billy Campbell, Ryan Doucette, and others. The mean sailor, the young sailor, the experienced sailor, the bearded sailor, the other bearded sailor… And you can tell their names because they do a role call every morning to see if they’re all still there. (Mannie here, Pete here, Merv here…)
When they’re not rowing the boats (Heave! Ho!) to somewhere, they’re singing 
ribald sea shanties, eating their rations, whittling wood, drinking rum… you know, behaving like fishermen do. Will they spot land? Or will they get rescued? Or will they be like the Flying Dutchman, forever floating on the seven seas?
Have you noticed there are a lot of movies about Men in Boats recently? Book of Pi, Kon Tiki, All is Lost, Captain Phillips, La Pirogue… Well, this is another one. Some of these are great adventures; this one’s more of a character study. I get the impression that the sailors in The Disappeared are all waiting for some ship called the SS Godot to arrive, but in the meantime they’ll sing a few more sea shanties and call it a day.
The Disappeared, Ender’s Game and Dallas Buyers Club all open today in Toronto (check your local listings). Also opening is the so-called comedy Last Vegas, a real groaner about four retired guys (starring great actors like Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline) meeting up in Las Vegas for a final, wild bachelor party before Michael Douglas marries a beautiful young woman. She’s not that young… she’s 35! Douglas says. I have a hemorrhoid older than 35, says the Kevin Kline character. Ugh. Nuff said about this tired, unfunny geriatric version of The Hangover.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
culturalmining.com 
leave a comment