Scary creatures. Films reviewed: Jurassic World Rebirth, 40 Acres, Sorry Baby
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Yorgos Lanthimos, who brought us films like The Favourite and Poor Things, didn’t come from nowhere; he’s been directing weird, original movies for two decades. One of his first — and one of my first reviews on this show — is Dogtooth, which still holds a place in my heart. It’s being re-released on the big screen in July, so if you haven’t seen it, now’s your chance.
But this week, I’m looking at three new movies about people dealing with scary creatures. There are dinosaurs on the equator, cannibals on the prairies, and a monster in a New England college town.
Jurassic World: Rebirth
Dir: Gareth Edwards
It’s present-day New York City, where giant, benign dinosaurs amble through city parks. Bennet (Scarlett Johansson) is a hard-boiled mercenary who dares to go where you’re not supposed to be to steal things you aren’t supposed have. Her latest client? A certain Mr Krebs (Rupert Friend), the sketchy rep of a Big Pharma multinational. And the job? To bring back blood samples from three of the biggest and most dangerous dinosaurs in the world: one from the sea, one from the sky, and one from the ground. The only place these creatures live is around the equator, in areas international law says we can’t go. But Bennet will, along with her longtime collaborator Kinkaid (Mahershala Ali) and their henchmen. Rounding out the pack is Dr Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) a palaeontologist whose dream has always been to see the dinosaurs (whose fossils he studies) alive and in the flesh.
Along the way they rescue a family whose plans — to sail across the Atlantic — are capsized when their boat is attacked by a giant sea monster. They all end up on an island, full of 
hybrid dinosaurs created in labs a generation ago by genetic scientists who abandoned the project when it became too dangerous. But which of them will survive 24 hours among those killer beasts?
Jurassic World: Rebirth is an action adventure, the latest instalment in the ongoing franchise. It’s a cautionary tale of what happens when ambitious scientists bring dinosaurs back to life to build a profitable theme park. Ironically, while the theme parks are gone, the movie feels like a series of carnival rides. First you’re in a speedboat escaping something in the water, then you’re hanging from a cliff, avoiding killer Pterodactyls… Which makes it fun and entertaining, but in an entirely predictable way.
I loved the thrill of the raptors in the first Jurassic Park, but the weird and artificial dino-hybrids in this version look more sad or silly than scary.
40 Acres
Co-Wri/Dir: R.T. Thorne
It’s the near future in rural Canada after an apocalyptic pandemic has left the whole world in ruins, starving for food. Hailey Freeman (Danielle Deadwyler) lives on the same farm her African-American ancestors moved to after the US Civil War. She’s a hard-ass mom who rules her family like a sergeant (she spent time in the military). Her oldest son, Manny, (Kataem O’Connor) still responds to her questions with only a yes ma’am / no ma’am. Though they live a calm and peaceful life — trading goods with other farmers using shortwave radio and a shared depot — just outside the gate marauders rove around, trying to break into farms and steal their coveted farmland. The Freemans are a blended family, Black and indigenous, with Galen as Dad (Michael Greyeyes) Hailey as Mom, the older kids from previous marriages, and the younger kids born here. They are trained not just how to plant and harvest, but also how to handle heavy artillery, hidden beneath their house. Hailey may operate in a constant state of paranoia, but there are reasons for her extreme caution. If the predators at the gate break through, they won’t just take the farm, they’ll eat the family. Yes, the outsiders are cannibals!
But Manny is growing up, and when he sees a beautiful young
woman (Milcania Diaz-Rojas) swimming in a lake outside the farm, he is stricken with equal parts love and lust. And when she appears at the fence begging for help he sneaks her inside. Can she be trusted? Or is she a cannibal? And could this mean the end of the Freemans?
40 Acres is a post-apocalyptic, science fiction action thriller. It’s gripping, surprising and pretty scary. It presents an unusual point of view, combining an American individualistic, top-down, gun-friendly “get off of my lawn” attitude with a multicultural, work-together Canadian ethos. It’s also a zombie-pocalypse movie, but without the walking dead — it’s humans who do the killing and eating. And in between violent shootouts and fights, the lovely cinematography gives us lots of misty cornfields and lush forests on which to feast our eyes. But the biggest reason to see 40 Acres is Danielle Deadwyler, a dynamic powerhouse in her role as Hailey.
All I can say is: Wow!
Sorry Baby
Wri/Dir Eva Victor
Agnes is an assistant prof in English Lit at a small liberal arts college in New England. She’s lonely, depressed and frightened living in a draughty home with just her cat to keep her company. Well, that and a neighbour who occasionally drops to share her bed (Lucas Hedges). Thankfully, her best friend and former housemate Lydie (Naomi Ackie) is back for a much-needed visit. They lived together as grad students, but while Lydie found work — and a female lover — in New York City, Agnes is trapped in the same college, with same home, same faculty, same courses… she even works out of the same office that used to belong to her thesis advisor. On the surface, she has achieved all the measures of academic success… so why is Agnes so miserable?
Flashback to a few years ago. Even as she is struggling to finish her grad thesis, something very bad happens to her: she is sexually assaulted on campus by someone she knows very well. Though Lydie is supportive, her doctor and the school administration are not. The bad thing is made worse by how messed up she gets afterwards. How can Agnes deal with, accept and overcome her past?
Sorry Baby is a deeply personal coming-of-age story about one woman’s life in the academic world and the dark incident that colours it. Now, I bet you’re thinking: this is an 
important issue, but it sounds like a real drag so I don’t want to watch it. And listening to how I just described it, I understand why you’d think that. But you’d be totally wrong. This is a very funny, sardonic dark comedy, with quirky characters and realistic situations anyone can relate to; the sexual assault is never shown, only talked about. And the film is packed with brilliant scenes: Agnes talking with a snack bar owner, meeting Lydie’s unfriendly partner and their new baby, serving jury duty, her relationship with her sex buddy, and dealing with her fellow student and detestable rival Natasha (wonderfully played by Kelly McCormack). So I really liked watching this movie but was wondering who is this actress I’ve never seen before, sort of a new Aubrey Plaza? But it wasn’t till the final credits rolled that I realized the writer/director is also the lead actress! Eva Victor plays a literary version of herself.
Sorry, Baby is her first film and it’s pretty fantastic.
Jurassic World: Rebirth, 40 Acres and Sorry Baby all open this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks with Joshua Oppenheimer about The End at #TIFF24
Photograph by Jeff Harris.
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s some time in the not so distant future. A tight-knit family live in a mansion furnished with old masters and French impressionist paintings on their wall. Their stay-at-home mom is fastidious with keeping things in order. Dad is a retired powerhouse exec who made a killing in the Indonesian oil industry. And their beloved homeschooled 20-year-old son who is curious about the world and loves playing with his toy train set. This lovely, peaceful household is complemented by their faithful butler, Mom’s best friend, and a doctor who is always on call. But something is wrong here. Why is their skin so pallid, their lighting unnatural, and why don’t they ever go outside? It’s because they’re living in a bunker, hidden deep underground as the planet burns. These people may be the only survivors of the end of the world.
The End is also a new film, a musical drama about the last survivors of climate catastrophe. It’s fascinating and devastating, infused with dry, dark comedy. The End is directed and co-written by award-winning filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer, best known for his shocking documentaries The Act of Killing and the Look of Silence.
I spoke with Joshua Oppenheimer on-site at TIFF.
The End opens theatrically in Toronto on Dec 13, 2024.
Tricks, Tracks, Traps. Films reviewed: The Killing of Two Lovers, Deliver Us From Evil, In the Earth
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Spring Film Festival Season is on in Toronto, digitally speaking. Coming in the next few weeks are the Toronto Japanese Film festival, the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, Inside Out, Toronto’s LGBT film festival, and events organized by the Toronto Palestine Film Festival.
Starting in two weeks is the ReelAbilities film festival with shorts, features and docs about deaf and disability cultures, including a comedy night. All screenings are pay-what-you-can. Go to reelabilities.org/toronto for more info.
This week I’m looking at three new movies, from the US, the UK and Korea. There’s a husband who feels tricked by his wife, a hitman tracked by a killer; and an earth scientist trapped in a psychedelic forest.
The Killing of Two Lovers
Wri/Dir: Robert Machoian
David (Clayne Crawford) lives in a small-town in the southern US. He used to have ambitions to be a singer-songwriter, but now he works as a handyman doing odd jobs to keep his family afloat. He married Nikki (Sepideh Moafi) straight out of high school, and they now have four kids. But the spark is gone. David is living with his Dad now — he and Nikki are on a trial separation. It’s meant to help fix their broken relationship. But when he finds her in bed sleeping with another man, he feels lost and angry, and starts to carry a gun.
Meanwhile he wants to bond with his kids and keep the family together. His oldest daughter is furious with them both. And the younger ones (played by real-life siblings) are just getting by. Can Nikki and David ever get back together? Or will David’s brooding anger finally explode into violence?
The Death of Two Lovers is a relationship movie done in the style of a high-tension crime pic. It’s told through David’s eyes, so we feel his boiling rage and inner turmoil. He takes out his anger on a boxing dummy, and practices shooting with an old pistol. The soundtrack is full of repeating sounds — slamming car doors, creaking noises — unrelated to the actual images you see. And his encounters with Derek (Chris Coy) his moustached rival looks like it’s headed for disaster. No spoilers, but this is not a crime drama; it’s a movie about the (potential) collapse of a family. The acting is great and bit of a it’s tear-jerker, but it seems trapped within an unclassifiable and misleading genre.
Deliver Us From Evil
Wri/Dir: Hong Wan-Chan
In-Nam (Hwang Jung-min) is a Korean hitman who kills for money, but only targets organized criminals. His assignment: a ruthless yakuza boss in Tokyo who exploits sex workers. It’s his final assignment; once complete, he plans to retire somewhere with warm beaches and lax banking laws where he can enjoy his blood money in peace…somewhere like Panama? But his dreams are shattered with a blast from the past. His ex-girlfriend he hasn’t seen in 9 years is trying to reach him. Her nine-year-old daughter Yoo-min has been kidnapped. He drops everything and flies to Bangkok to investigate. He’s too late to save her but maybe little Yoo-min is still alive. He hires a local Korean woman named Yoo-Yi (Park Jeong-Min) to translate for him and serve as his guide. She works at a Patpong bar, and needs the extra cash to pay for sex-reassignment surgery. Together they uncover a terrible truth: a ruthless Thai operation that kidnaps small kids, especially Japanese and Koreans in Thailand, to sell their organs to rich people back home!
What In-Nam doesn’t realize is that he’s a marked man… the hitman is on a hit-list. The Yakuza boss he assassinated had a brother named Ray aka The Butcher (Lee Jung-jae). This guy is ruthless and deranged, and can do terrible things with his very sharp knives. Can In-min rescue Yoomin (and the other 
kidnapped kids) before their organs are yanked from their innocent bodies? Is little Yoomin — who he’s never met — his own daughter? And who will survive the fight to the death: Ray who is out for vengeance; or In-Min?
Deliver us from Evil is an intense crime action/thriller set in in the underworlds of Korea, Japan and Thailand. The first half hour is a bit dull: too much talk, talk, talk, and not enough action. It’s a complicated plot that needs a lot of explaining. But once it starts going it never let’s you down, with lots of fistfights, marital arts, knives, guns and cars. It’s a world where everyone’s corrupt: competing criminal gangs, local con artists, international syndicates and cops on the take. If you’re disturbed by violence, blood and awful situations— stay away. But if you like action, suspense, intense fighting, and some interesting characters, Deliver Us From Evil is a good watch.
In the Earth
Wri/Dir: Ben Wheatley
It’s England in the near future, where an unknown virus pandemic is wiping out the population. The country is a mess with food shortages and strange new laws. Martin (Joel Fry), is a mousy scientist who arrives at a nature preserve to study the soil there. (He also has a hidden agenda, to contact Alma another scientist who disappeared, leaving a puzzling diary.) After passing the medical tests, he sets out into the woods accompanied by a guide. Olivia (Hayley Squires) is a no-nonsense forest ranger with her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She can assemble a pop tent in a couple minutes and knows every inch of the woods. But while they slept a stranger attacked them, stealing their shoes, clothes and Martin’s crucial radio equipment. Luckily they encounter Zach (Reece Shearsmith), an eccentric, bearded, back-to-the-land type who is shacked up nearby. He tends to their wounds, makes them some food and gives them comforting elderflower tea. Unluckily Zach is a lunatic who drugged their tea and tied them up. He says all nature is 
connected, and we must listen to a common brain to find out her wishes. And this includes using Martin and Olivia in bizarre rituals and possible sacrifices. They must escape! But a natural mist has settled all around them generating microscopic mushroom spores and unbearable sounds. What is the truth in these woods? And can Olivia and Martin overcome its allure?
In the Earth is a weird, science-fiction/horror/ fantasy about humans fighting nature — and the earth fighting back. It was filmed just a few months ago during the height of the pandemic in the UK. And it’s full of psychedelic visions and creepy sounds. Ben Wheatley’s movies are unique and either you like them or you don’t. But I thought it was fantastic. There’s a fair amount of violence and gross-outs, but it’s all done in an art-house style, not your typical Hollywood horror. If you’re in the mood for a freaky, indie movie, this one’s for you.
The Killing of Two Lovers Starts today on all major platforms, In the Earth also opens today at the Virtual TIFF Bell Lightbox; and Deliver us From Evil will be available on VOD, digital and on disc on May 25th.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Is Halloween Cancelled? Films reviewed: Peninsula, Antebellum, Anything for Jackson
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Is nothing sacred? They’re cancelling Hallowe’en! No trick-or-treating, no candy, and no parties. I get it, it’s a pandemic. But it’s still Hallowe’en. So, to fight the COVID blues you might try watching scary movies at home.
This week I’m looking at three new horror movies, all violent, gory and sure to keep you up at night. There’s zombies in South Korea, a time warp in the Confederate deep south; and Satanic retirees in Southern Ontario.
Peninsula
Dir: Sang-ho Yeon
Jung Seok (Gang Dong-Won) is a former soldier living in Hong Kong. He’s a refugee, one of the last to escape the Korean peninsula before all other countries closed their gates to them. A pandemic, caused by a lethal virus created in a biotech laboratory, infected the entire population, turning them all into jerky, writhing zombies that feast on human flesh. The few, uninfected survivors – like Jung Seok and his brother in law Chul-min (Kim Do-Yoon) – are despised and feared. So when shady Hongkong gangsters offer them a deal, they take it. The job? Return to the zombie-infested peninsula to recover an armoured car full of US dollars, and drive it to 
the Port of Incheon to board a waiting tanker. If they survive, they keep a share of the spoils and can restart their ruined lives. Easier said than done.
Turns out, there’s not just zombies there. Chul-min is captured inside the money truck by crazed former soldiers from a rogue army base. Chul-min is forced to fight against zombies in a make-shift stadium for the soldiers’ entertainment. Jung Seok, on the ther hand, is rescued by two baby drivers, little kids who mow down zombies on the street for fun. They take him back to their family – their mom Min Jung (Jung-hyun Lee) and a deranged grandpa who thinks he’s communicating by radio with a “GI Jane” who will come to rescue them. Can Jung Seok and 
his newfound family rescue Chul-min, find the cash and drive it to Incheon in time?
Peninsula is a gripping, action thriller set in a dystopian futuristic Korea. It’s a sequel to Train to Busan, the hit zombie movie from a few years back. It incorporates themes from movies like Mad Max, Hunger Games and The Walking Dead – good people forced to live in distorted versions of their world in order to stay alive. It follows the rules of the zombie genre – Zombies are blind at night, attracted to light and loud noises, travel in packs – but there are enough new situations and human characters to keep it interesting. Peninsula is pretty good.
Antebellum
Wri/Dir: Gerard Bush, Christopher Renz
Dr Veronica Henley (Janelle Monáe) is a writer, academic and activist who is famous for her appearances on cable news panels. She specializes in the intersectionality of race, class and gender as a roadmap for revolution. She’s off to a prestigious conference where she’s giving a speech. But she is troubled by horrible recurring nightmares where she’s trapped as a slave in pre-civil war America. One day, she receives a puzzling call from an unidentified southern white woman (Jena Malone) whose voice is laden with sinister white-supremacist undertones. Veronica dismisses her as another crank. But after a girl’s night out with her best friends (including Gabourey Sidibe), she is kidnapped and knocked out. When she awakens, she’s caught in her own terrifying dream: trapped in a 
southern plantation run by Confederate soldiers. She’s forced by overseers on horseback to pick cotton by day, and is sexually assaulted at night. She and the others are robbed of their freedom, identity, their bodies and even their names, and are forbidden from talking to one another on pain of death. What hell is this? Is it time travel, or just another dream? And can she ever escape?
Antebellum is a very scary movie where the horrific world of American slavery serves as the ultimate horror setting for contemporary Black characters. It also adds subtle references to the rise of modern-day white supremacists — Confederate soldiers march with torches just like the alt-right in Charlottesville. Janelle Monáe is great as the modern-day heroine trapped in a disgusting simulacrum of plantation slavery. But the movie suffers from editing problems – it depends on a twist ending (no spoilers) that doesn’t fit right with the supposed “magic” and time travel elements. But maybe I’m analyzing it too much. If you’re in the mood for extreme horror, violence (and some satisfying revenge sequences) you’ll like Antebellum.
Anything for Jackson
Dir: Justin G Dyck
Wri: Keith Cooper
Audrey and Henry (Sheila McCarthy, Julian Richings) are an older, married couple in a small Canadian city. He’s a family doctor and she takes care of their home. Once a week they meet a group of unusual hobbyists at their local library. What’s unusual about their group? They are a Satanic coven. And what do they want from Satan? They want their little grandson Jackson back (he died in a car crash) and they’ll do anything to make it happen. So they kidnap a pregnant woman Shannon (Konstantina Mantelos) and lock her in a soundproof basement room. They don’t want to hurt her – Audrey keeps saying “Sorry!” and crochets little handcuff cozies so Shannon’s wrists don’t chafe – they just want Jackson’s soul to possess her foetus. 
Let’s not make this unpleasant, Audrey says.
And they have a thousand-year-old guidebook to tell them what to do. But their fool-proof plan starts to unravel. Rory, who shovels their snow, keeps turning up at the wrong time. A police woman drops by to investigate a missing person. And Ian (Josh Cruddas), a super-creepy ginger-bearded devil-worshipper from their coven, discovers their secret and tries to take 
over. Worse than all of them, supernatural demons begin to haunt their home. Will they ever see their grandson again? Or have they let loose horrible creatures from hell?
Anything for Jackson is a great horror movie about ordinary, kindly Canadians doing awful things. While it starts as a dark comedy, it soon becomes a scary horror movie powered by monsters, ghosts and demons. Sort of a supernatural Fargo, or Rosemary’s Baby but from the point of view of the Satanists. The special effects are on the cheap side, but the acting and story are quite good.
I like this movie.
Anything for Jackson is premiering at Blood in the Snow, Canada’s horror, genre and underground film festival on right now; you can watch Antebellum on disc and VOD; and Peninsula is also available to rent or to own.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Women on the move. Films reviewed: Dora and the Lost City of Gold, Light of My Life, The Kitchen
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Who says exciting movies are always about men? This week, I’m looking at three movies about girls and women facing danger in unusual places. There’s a pre-teen girl surviving post-apocalyptic America; a teenager exploring the jungles of Peru; and a gang of middle-aged housewives fighting back in Hell’s Kitchen.
Dora and the Lost City of Gold
Dir: James Bobin
Dora (Isabela Moner) is a smart and friendly 16 year old girl. She was brought up by her academic parents (Eva Langoria, Michael Peña) in the jungles of Peru, where she made friends with all the animals – especially Boots, a monkey. Now her parents want to discover the legendary ruins of Parapata, an Incan city of gold – not as treasure hunters, but as 
explorers. But it could be dangerous. So they send her to stay with her cousin Diego (Jeff Wahlberg) in far off LA. But life at Silverlake High is not what she expected. Despite her relentless positivity, students tease her for her childlike un-coolness.
Diego finds her embarrassing. Student president Sammy (Madeleine Madden) scorns her as a rival. Only astronomy nerd Randy (Nicholas Coombe) likes her. But when she is kidnapped and flown back to Peru, along with Randy, Sammy and Diego. it’s up to Dora to escape the bad guys – including mercenary treasure 
hunters and a masked fox named Swiper – rescue her friends, and find the Incan ruins of Parapata.
Dora and the Lost City of Gold is a very cute take on the popular educational kids show. It’s simultaneously a tongue-in-cheek satire of the original cartoon, and a deadpan recreation of it. Boots and Swiper are there in CGI, but there’s no talking backpack. It’s primarily for kids, but there’s lots of laughs for grownups – like a psychedelic drug scene and a bit of romance. There’s even a song about how to dig a hole to bury your poop when camping in the woods. I saw it with a 50%-toddler audience who loved it. I liked it, too.
Light of My Life
Dir: Casey Affleck
Rag (Anna Pniowsky) is a tough, outdoorsy girl going camping with her dad (Casey Affleck). She’s a preteen with short hair dressed in boyish clothes. He tells her bible stories to put her to sleep. Thing is, they’re not camping for fun. A terrible plague wiped away half the world’s population – the female half – right when she was born. So rag, short for raggedy ann, grew up in an all-male world. leaving only men and some boys. Her dad is terrified about what might happen to her – men can’t be trusted. So they live in a 
perpetual state of seclusion and escape. He never sleeps. He teaches her how to spell – she reads voraciously – and about the birds and the bees.
They find an empty house and move in, but Dad is terrified when she tries on girls clothes. But when they find an isolated house populated only by bible-thumping grandpas, he thinks they might finally live a normal life. Can the one of the last girls on earth lead a normal life? And will her dad ever relax?
Light of My Life is a low-budget drama about the love between a father and a daughter in extreme circumstances. It’s filled with long scenes of flashlight-lit dialogue in lush, moss-filled forests, punched with occasional bursts of fear and violence. Anna Pniowsky is fantastic as Rag, and Affleck is good as her conflicted father.
I just wonder… what is the point of this movie? That girls in an all-male world will still gravitate to their own gender expression? That guns, bible, and the family are the only things we can trust? This is a zombie movie without zombies, and not nearly as good as Leave No Trace (about a dad and daughter living off the grid). This movie is not bad, just not that great or original.
The Kitchen
Dir: Andrea Berloff
It’s 1978 on a hot summer’s night in Hell’s Kitchen. Claire, Cathy and Ruby are three working class women waiting to hear from their husbands, gangsters with the Irish mob. Cathy (Mellissa McCarthy) is happily married with two young kids. Ruby (Tiffany Haddish), originally from Harlem, is an outsider who doesn’t get along with her matriarchical mother-in-law (Margo Martindale). And Claire (Elisabeth Moss) is just a punching bag for her abusive husband. But when their husbands get 
jailed by the Feds, they find themselves with no money, no income and few prospects for work. So they decide to take over their husbands’ jobs.
Though untrained, they seem to have a knack for collecting protection payments from local stores. And when they fight off rivals within their husbands’ gang, they become “queenpins” of the 
neighbourhood. Cathy does the talking, Ruby collects the bucks, and Claire finds new strength in doing “the messy stuff” – shooting, killing, and getting rid of dead bodies. She’s tutored in these skills by Gabriel (Domhnall Gleeson), a ginger-haired hitman with a history. Their business expands northward and southward, with graft, extortion and prostitution. But can they handle the disloyal members of their gang, powerful Mafia dons from Brooklyn, and FBI agents on their tail? And what will happen when their husbands get out of jail?
The Kitchen is a brilliant new twist on the classic gangster movie, with three 
women rising up in a dog-eat-dog world. Based on a comic, it’s full of love, compassion, violence and intrigue. McCarthy and Haddish are comic actors but convincing in their serious roles, and Moss and Gleeson are even better.There are some missteps. Could working-class financially-strapped women in the late 1970s have no experience working? And some bizarre references to Gloria Steinem and “feminism” seem totally out of line. (There’s no feminist solidarity here; these are three criminals clawing their way to the top.) And the ending is lacklustre. But altogether this is a beautifully shot, fast-moving story that’s fun to watch. The Kitchen is a great crime drama, with women in the lead.
The Kitchen, Light of My Life, and Dora and the Lost City of Gold 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.
Getting away. Level 16, Triple Frontier, The Panama Papers
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s international Women’s Day, a great time to check out some movies directed by women. If you haven’t seen the great Colombian film Birds of Passage, see it now. And Objects of Desire, a retrospective of French master Claire Denis’s films is also playing now at TIFF. She’s one of my favourites.
This week I’m looking at people trying to get away with something. We’ve got orphan girls running for their lives, war vets running off with sacks of loot, and journalists rushing to publish the biggest data dump in history
Level 16
Wri/Dir: Danishka Esterhazy
Vivien and Sophia are two teenagers at an all-girls boarding school for orphans. They wear identical uniforms: skirts, shirts and ties during the day, and floor-length cotton gowns at night. Classes consist of B&W educational films from the 1950s shown on flatscreen TVs. Their teacher, the strict but 
beautiful Miss Brixil (Sara Canning), visits each unit to teach them feminine virtues like cleanliness, subservience, obedience and silence. And their most important exams are not about reading or math but applying cold cream to their cheeks and taking their vitamins.
They live under a panopticon with surveillance cameras recording every move and thedisembodied voice of a Doctor (Peter Outerbridge) who tells them 
what to do. They’ve never been outside this drab institution, since the air and sunlight out there are “hazardous”. Besides, it’s important to stay pretty and clean so a nice family will adopt them some day. And now that they’re at Level 16, that someday is coming soon.
Headstrong Vivien (Katie Douglas) is excited to hear she might be leaving this place; she’s been counting the days. But all her hopes and dreams are shattered when the nearsighted Sophia (Celina Martin) tells her a secret: 
don’t swallow the vitamins! When Vivien takes her advice she is shocked by what she finds out. The “vitamins” are actually sedatives and what happens to their limp bodies at night is not nice at all. What is this place? Why are they there? What is it like outside its walls? And can they ever escape?
Level 16 is a scary and weird speculative fiction look at a distopian future as seen through the eyes of teenaged girls. It’s full of strange anomalies: why do the guards speak Russian? Where did all these fake-happy educational film clips come from? Does this movie take place in the past… or in the future? It feels like a cross between Never Let Me Go and The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s a low budget film shot on a single location (and one that is bland, industrial and and claustrophobic to look at), but it had enough shocking twists to keep me fascinated until the end.
Triple Frontier
Dir: JC Chandor
Santiago (Oscar Isaac) is a paramilitary cop working in an unnamed Latin American country. His police team raids low level drug traffickers… but they are also on the take. Any witness who tries squeal on Lorea’s — the fugitive drug kingpin — whereabouts is immediately executed to keep him quiet. But Santiago (an American) has his own informant in Lorea’s HQ. He discovers for himself where the big man is hiding. Rumour has it there are millions in cash just sitting in the jungle, waiting to be taken. So he flies back to the States to 
meet with his former special-ops army buddies. They loved their time in the military, but it hasn’t treated them well as veterans.
Miller (Charlie Hunnam) is a low-level army recruiter with a bad goatee who delivers the same speech over and over. Davis (Ben Affleck) tries to support a teenaged daughter from a failed marriage with the pittance he earns flogging condos. Morales (Pedro Pascal) is a helicopter pilot whose license was taken away for 
drug offenses. And Ben (Garrett Hedlund), Miller’s brother, is an MMA cage fighter — not a great long-term career plan.
Santiago says, let’s get what the government never gave us but that we deserve: millions in cold hard cash. And don’t worry, it’s a flawless plan. Sure enough, the heist works great. In fact, it works too well. They are faced not with millions of dollars but hundreds of millions, far too heavy for them to carry. Their momentary greed makes their exit plan impossible. Can they lug their bags of loot through the jungle, over a mountain pass and down to a the ocean (through the multinational 
“triple frontier” of the title)? Or will mother nature – and the vengeful locals who inhabit it – kill them first?
Triple Frontier has strikingly beautiful scenery, famous-name actors and a well known director and scriptwriter. So how come it sucks?
Well, it’s a boring and sexless buddy action flick with inane, bro dialogue: I got your back… I love you man… we deserve this. Do you really care if they get away with the money they stole? More than that, it reeks of exceptionalism. It’s co-written by Mark Boal, who brought us the vile Zero Dark Thirty, a movie which said we Americans are always the good guys, torture is useful and all Muslims are potential terrorists. For this movie just substitute drug traffickers for terrorists, and South Americans for Muslims. Almost every person they encounter is corrupt, dangerous, and out to kill us. It’s up to our heroic soldiers to stop these caravans of latino drug traffickers from invading our border.
OK, I admit there is a good chase scene near the beginning, but the rest of it is a total waste of two hours and five minutes.
Ugh.
The Panama Papers
Wri/Dir: Alex Winter
It’s 2016 in Munich, Germany. Bastian Obermayer, an investigative journalist at the Süddeutcher Zeitung receives a mysterious message. A whistleblower calling himself John Doe says he has some information to send him. But because of its importance and sheer volume he has to be sure his identity is kept secret and the information gets released, What is this information, where did it come from, and why is it so important? The data leak is from Mossack Fonseca, a Panama law firm known for its secrecy. Their clients include both organized crime and upstanding world leaders all hiding their money so they don’t pay taxes. The amount of money lost in taxes worldwide is stupendous: it’s the reason 
social services have been cut and why the wealth distribution gap between the ultra rich and everybody else is the highest it’s been in a century.
The Panama Papers tells this story through the eyes of the journalists involved in its release. It feels like a chapter of All the Presidents Men, but on a much bigger scale. The papers were shared – in secret! – with over 300 investigative journalists worldwide. And the outcome and blowback that 
followed changed the world. The Prime Minister of Iceland, top figures in FIFA, Argentina, Pakistan and Spain were forced to resign. Others in Russia, the US and Syria were also implicated in the multinational scandal. And top journalists like Malta’s Daphne Gaizia, were murdered because of their role in exposing these crimes.
The Panama Papers is a great documentary that churns politics, investigative journalism and conspiracies into a potent brew.
The Panama Papers is now playing at Hotdocs Cinema, you can catch Triple Frontier’s stunning cinematography on the big screen before it moves to Netflix, and Level 16 opens next Friday; 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.
Dark Summer Movies. Films reviewed: It Comes At Night, Awakening the Zodiac, My Cousin Rachel
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Even on the hottest summer day, it still gets dark at night. So this week I’m looking at some dark summer movies. We’ve got rednecks stalking a serial killer, an aristocrat falling for a black widow, and an ordinary family fighting an unknown plague.
It Comes at Night
Wri/Dir: Trey Edward Shults
Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) is a 17-year-old boy who lives with his parents in a huge wooden house in the woods. He sneaks around the dark halls and passageways late at night when he should be sleeping. He’s an insomniac plagued with strange dreams. And there’s a reason for his nightmares. A terrible disease – like Ebola mixed with small pox – is killing almost everybody and no one knows how it spreads. That’s why his parents Paul and Sarah (Joel Edgerton, Carmen Ejogo) fled the city and moved into this 
abandoned and isolated house. They are well equipped with gas masks, water purifiers… and guns, if they need them. They boarded up all the windows and doors except one: a red door that opens into a mud room.
One night, they hear a noise from behind the red door. It’s a young man covered in dirt (Christopher Abbott). Is he a thief or an 
innocent family man? And is he infected? Sam beats him up and leaves him to die tied to a tree with a bag over his head. But when he’s still alive the next day, he lets Will, his wife Kim (Riley Keough) and their little boy to move in with them. But can they be trusted? And are they clean?
Don’t be misled by the title. It Comes at Night is not a conventional horror movie with scary monsters; ordinary people who discard 
conventional morality when faced with extreme circumstances. It feels like a zombie movie, but without the zombies. It’s violent and disturbing but without the expected triumph or disaster. Great acting, amazingly shot with indoor scenes all lit by the glowing lanterns the characters carry. It has an almost surreal feel to it, as it switches between Travis’s fears, dreams and sexual fantasies and the horrible reality if his post-apocalyptic life. See this if your looking for a spooky and violent art house drama.
Awakening the Zodiac
Dir: Jonathan Wright
Mick and Zoe (Shane West, Leslie Bibbe) are a neerdowell couple living in a trailer park in rural Virginia. They drive a rusty pickup looking for work to improve their lot in life. For Mick this usually means a get-rich-quick scheme with his good buddy Harvey (Matt Craven). Their current plan? Treasure hunting in delinquent storage spaces: you pay a few hundred bucks to take ownership of the contents. And Harver thinks they’ve 
struck gold in the form of stacks of 8mm films dating back to the sixties. He’s uncovered the personal footage of an infamous serial killer known for his brutal murders and the cryptic messages he sent to the police. Zodiac disappeared in 1968, never heard from again. But there’s still a $100,000 reward in his head. Zoe, Mick and Harvey want the big bucks but first they must prove the storage locker belongs to Zodiac. Can they find the evidence they need before the killer finds them?
Awakening the Zodiac is a corny horror/thriller. It has some scary parts and a few shocks, and the main characters are likeable. Unfortunately it gets bogged down by a ridiculous plot and rusty script. Would a genius serial killer save all the evidence of his crimes and then forget about it? If you found valuable films wouldn’t you rather sell them than stalk a serial killer? (But I guess there’d be no movie) Even the 8 mm selfies look like what people make nowadays, not what a serial killer would have shot in the sixties. The biggest problem is when we finally discover who the killer is, he or she is just not scary enough. Save this one for late night TV.
My Cousin Rachel
Dir: Roger Michell (Based on the novel by Daphne du Maurier)
Victorian England. Philip (Sam Claflin) is a young aristocrat with a fiery temper not given to fancy words and deep thoughts. He lives in a stately mansion in the English countryside. An orphan, he was brought up by his much older cousin Ambrose, his finances handled by his godfather. He is deeply loyal to these two surrogate fathers and is expected to marry 
his longtime friend Louise (Holliday Grainger) his godfather’s daughter. He spends his time galloping through the rolling hills, steep cliffs and sandy beaches of his vast estate.
Philip is lord of the manor, but works alongside his servants and tenant farmers at harvest time. But things take a turn for the worse when his ailing cousin Ambrose writes him from Italy that his wife 
Rachel Ashley (Rachel Weisz) is trying to kill him! Before he can rescue him, his cousin dies and Rachel shows up unannounced. Full of hatred and vowing revenge, Philip confronts the murderous witch. He expects a crone with a wart on her nose. Instead, she’s a charming and sophisticated older woman with dark good looks even shrouded in widow’s weeds.
Philip falls madly in love, throwing money, family jewels and even 
the estate he’s due to inherit at age 25, if only she’ll marry him. She kisses him by candlelight even as she concocts odd tasting tisanes for him to drink. Is she killing him or nursing him back to health? Is she a serial 
killer and con artist, or merely a woman trying to secure her future? And is Philip the victim or an abusive lover who expects to possess whatever woman he desires?
My Cousin Rachel is an old fashioned gothic romance, complete with beautiful costumes, stunning scenery, authentic songs and a realistic, modern take on English country life. It’s based on a novel from the 1950s, but to modern audiences, parts seem out of date, like Philip’s ridiculous naïveté. The movie starts slowly but eventually gets really good with some shocking twists and turns toward the end.
It Comes at Night, Awakening the Zodiac, and My Cousin Rachel 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
Mind Twisters. Movies reviewed: A Field in England, Divergent, Nymph()maniac (Parts 1 and 2)
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.
Brain teasers, mind-bogglers. This week I’m bringing you some real brain-twisting films. There’s a sci-fi-action-romance about a young woman caught in a futuristic caste-system determined by personality; a Euro comedy/drama about sex; And an absurdist British period piece about … I’m not quite sure what.
A Field in England
Ben Wheatley
It’s 17th Century England in a field near Norwich. The civil war is raging. Three scruffy wanderers end up travelling together. They are heading toward a legendary alehouse where all their problems will be solved, all their differences will disappear. But things get complicated when O’Neal, a tall, sinister man, appears — seemingly out of nowhere — with a nasty henchman. The necromancer’s servant (one of the three travellers), tries to arrest O’Neal. But a warrant without a musket to back it up isn’t worth much in an English field. Instead, O’Neal press gangs the three men to dig for treasure. At least I think that’s the plot, but I’m not exactly sure.
People in this movie appear, disappear, die, un-die, turn into wooden posts, and drop magic mushrooms into unwatched soup pots.
Shot in beautiful black and white, with excellent contemporary experimental music, it leaves me scratching my head. Is it all just an acid trip by men wearing three-cornered hats in an historic battle reenactment? I cannot say. But it definitely belongs in the movie file labeled “WTF”.
Divergent
Dir: Neil Burger
It’s Chicago a hundred years in the future. Society is divided into five castes, each with its own rules. Erudite is for the intelligent professionals who wear Wall Street suits. Abnegation is where the sympathetic and selfless helpers go — they control the government. And Dauntless is for the paramilitary – brave and aggressive.
Young Tris’s family (Shailene Woodley) is Abnegation. They wear beige, meditate, and eat whole grains. Tris only looks in the mirror for a few seconds each day. But when she attains age of majority and takes the annual test — to determine personality and faction – something strange happens. The test doesn’t work on her – it can’t assign her to a particular faction. This could mean she’s “Divergent” — someone who displays a personality that transcend a single type. And if the authorities find out, they’ll kill her.
To everyone’s surprise, she ends up joining Dauntless, trading beige burlap 
for black leather. She eats her first hamburger. She and the other Dauntless newbies are thrust into a world of violent, brutal competition, runaway L-trains and parkour jumping. She answers to a sadistic trainer Eric (Jai Courtney). Only her new best friends like Chris (Zoe Kravitz) help her hang on. But when she meets a Dauntless named Four (Theo James) is it love at first sight?
In order to stay in the faction she has to pass a series of tests that subject her to her worst phobias — her mind is read and recorded by a computer. Tris has to keep reminding herself: it’s not real.Will her secret be revealed? Is Erudite, headed by Jeanine (Kate Winslet) plotting against the Abnegation faction? Is Four on her side? And will he ever understand how much Tris loves him?
Although Divergent occasionally veers into Twilight territory, with a few too many dewy-eyed moments, it mainly sticks to plot, action and great special effects. I liked it: a simple but neat concept, great special effects, and Shailene Woodley and Theo James are good as a team of romantic fighters.
Nymphomaniac
Dir: Lars von Trier
Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is lying half dead in a dark alley, when an elderly intellectual (Stellan Skarsgard) finds her. He takes her into his home and nurses her back to health. She says she’s a nymphomaniac. And she proceeds to tell him the story of her life; specifically, the sexual parts.
The stories she tells are based on the pictures she sees on the wall of his room. Is 
she an unreliable narrator? Maybe, but her stories are fun to watch.
Her first orgasm makes her levitate and leads to a visit by the Virgin Mary. (The Whore of Babylon, says Seligman.)
Later, she intentionally loses her virginity to a man named Jerome (Shia LeBoeuf). She describes it like this: first I lay on my back and he thrust three times. Then he turned me over and thrust five times. And here’s how Seligman responds: Three, then Five? Why that’s part of the Fibonacci number sequence!
Joe is unadulterated sex. Seligman (an asexual virgin) represents pure reason.
As a young woman, she and a friend compete to see who can pick up – and have sex with — the most men, sequentially, on a train. The winner gets a bag of candy. Seligman: Why that’s like fly fishing – you send out the lure and try to reel it in at just the right moment!
Joe describes how she dates many nameless men simultaneously, avoiding all emotional entanglement. She actually rolls dice before calling a boyfriend to decide whether to be nice, pouty, or to drop him altogether. But she discovers her game affects many people besides just the men she has sex with.
Love rears its ugly head. Jerome is back, and she falls for him hook, line and 
sinker. But are they sexually compatible?
She describes encounters with anonymous men, a long relationship with a BDSM master (Jamie Bell), her try at a 12-step program, and finding a protege (Mia Goth) to take her place.
This movie is much too long to describe in a short review. It’s full of cinematic quotes from Von Triers’ earlier films – his own movie scenes reenacted. He 
insults critics, pundits, himself… and occasionally the audience. For example, a scene about Joe and two (supposedly) African men dredges up hoary racial stereotypes — it’s intentionally offensive. But it’s followed by an equally long scene with Joe and Seligman debating “political correctness”. The ridiculous sex scene is 
really just a straw man to make way for a long discussion.
It’s also a movie full of explicit sex and nudity: at one point there are a hundred consecutive penis pics, but mostly it’s vagina, vagina, vagina. This movie could be subtitled The Vagina 
Dialogues. The symbols are everywhere: tunnels, alleys, window curtains, sliding doors, and holes in walls. It’s a woman’s sexuality filtered through the eyes of a male director.
There is also some repulsive, graphic violence, especially in Part 2. But above all, the movie’s a comedy. And I liked it – all four and a half hours.
A Field in England is now playing, and Nymphomaniac (Parts 1 and 2 — separate tickets), and Divergent both open today in Toronto – check your local listings. The Pasolini retrospective continues at TIFF (tiff.net) and Cinefranco, Toronto’s francophone film festival, starts next week: details at cinefranco.com.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Halloween! Movies Reviewed: Superstitious Minds, Ginger Snaps, Bounty Killer
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies forculturalmining.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.
Hallowe’en – it’s the scariest night of the year! And things are getting scarier and scarier. CSEC: The Communications Security Establishment Canada – this country’s own NSA. Did you know they’re allowed to spy on Canadians, as long as you’re speaking to someone outside the country? And with no watchdog, no judicial control? They’re free to do whatever they want with no one watching them! Scary…! Maybe you’re a Bell Canada customer? Beginning two weeks after Hallowe’en they want to keep a record of every web page you visit, every call you make, every TV show you watch, and every place you visit carrying your cell phone! Scarrry!!!!
Yes, it’s a very scary time of year.
Awooooooooo!
So in honour of this frightening holiday, I’m looking at some very halloweeny things. There’s a documentary on superstition, a classic horror film about sisters in suburbia, and a post-apocalyptic action/western about a futuristic world.
Superstitious Minds
Dir: Adrian Wills and Kenneth Hirsch
Are we all superstitious? I’m pretty careful about spilling salt. And are we becoming more or less so in an increasingly scientific world? Well, according to a new documentary, we are as superstitious as we’ve ever been, maybe more so, with people under thirty the most superstitious of all. It’s what keeps us grounded and gives us control in facing an uncertain, unpredictable world.
This documentary covers international phenomena like Mexico’s Day of the Dead, Feng Shui in Hong Kong, and the rituals and taboos Newfoundland fishermen stick to to keep from being lost at sea. As well as small things we notice everyday, like the rituals of everyone from sports fans to Shakespearean actors.
One example: the strange jagged angles of the Bank of China building in Hong Kong led to widespread worry that it was upsetting their economy with it’s intrusive, knife-like nature. So HSBC – that’s the Hong King Shanghai Bank of Commerce – actually put metal cannons on the roof of their sky scraper to shoot all that bad energy back at the Bank of China, thus neutering it’s negative charms.
This is an interesting documentary, with lots of colourful vignettes talking heads, and some reenacted montages about superstition. (I just wish it dealt less with the psychology of it, and more with the magic.)
Ginger Snaps (2000)
Dir: John Fawcett
The Fitzgerald sisters, have been BFFs since they were 8. They signed a pact to be dead before they’re 16. In the midst of all the suburban conformity, Ginger and Brigitte (Katherine Isabelle and Emily Perkins) wear saggy cardigans, thrift store kilts and messy hair. They resist the bullies and jerks in their high school and revel in the depressing-ness of it all. Their only hobby? Acting out elaborate fake-suicides they save on Polaroid photos.
Life in the suburbs is predictable, except that all the neighbourhood dogs are turning up dead. Who is doing ths? But one night, on a full moon, Ginger feels different. She gets scratched by a wild dog, right when she’s having her first period… and things start to change.
She becomes, aggressive, erratic and highly sexualized. She starts wearing plunging necklines to school. And what about those scratches on her body? They’re starting to 
change too. She feels hairier, bloodier… meaner.
The school nurse explains it’s just puberty, but they both know the change means something more. And the two sisters find their relationship is fraying at the edges. Brigette likes the old Ginger, but her sister wants her to change like she did. Ignoring the nurse’s advice, Ginger has unprotect sex with a stoner at her high school – and seems to have passed the strange virus on.
People to start to die in mysterious circumstances….
It’s up to Brigitte to find a cure and bring her back to normal before she kills everybody. She turns to Sam (Kris Lemche) for help. Sure he’s the local pot dealer, but he’s also the only one besides Brigitte who believes in Lycanthropia – he ran over a werewolf once in his delivery van. But will they get to Ginger before she snaps? Before she makes the complete transformation to wolfdom?
Ginger Snaps was made in 2000 and I think it’s fair to say it’s attained classic Halloween movie status, along with more famous pics like the Shining, the Exorcist, and Videodrome. It’s distinctly Canadian… with street hockey, grow-ops, sex-ed and roadkill, but without that uncomfortable earnestness that mars some Canadian movies. It also avoids the puritanical nature of mainstream American horror movies, the ones that kill off characters that have sex or take drugs. And it has a refreshingly subversive subtext: Ginger Snaps is a feminist monster movie where the sisters are doing it for themselves.
This is not a special effects-driven movie — it depends on its great story, acting and originality, instead.
Bounty Killer
Dir: Henry Saine
It’s some point far in the future. Corporations have taken over the world with governments withering away. But horrible wars between companies fighting for market share have left the US a wasteland. Now bounty hunters are celebrities followed by papparazzi for their brave exploits. They seek out the outlaws – all of whom now wear suits and ties (the business execs who ruined everything).
The champ hunter, Drifter (Matthew Marsden) brings in the bodies of every outlaw he can find. He’s as rootless as tumbleweed and mean as a rattler. But has a new competitor Catherine (Kristanna Loken), as ruthless as she is beautiful. She rides fancy sports cars and wears knee-high white boots. They are all old friends, lovers and sometime enemies. But when Drifter’s face appears on a wanted poster, Katherine vows to hunt him down. Can Drifter (and his gun-caddy side-kick) cross the badlands, avoid the bands of so-called gypsies in the desert, and make it 
to the council building to clear his name? On the way he has to escape the face-painted warriors and ride in things like a camper fan pulled by two Harleys – like an old west horse and carriage. (Great image!)
Bounty Killers is a western but the cowboys drive choppers through the desert, not horses. It’s got the brothels, the ghost towns, the angry mob, the outlaws and the sheriffs. And it all feels like a live-action graphic novel – mainly cause that’s what it is. A comic written for the big screen.
I liked this movie – super low budget but punchy, slick and fast moving. Lots of hilarious side characters – all based on movie clichés but different enough and funny enough to keep you glued to the screen.
Ginger Snaps is playing at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on Halloween night (tiff.net), Superstitious Minds is airing on CBC TV on Doc Zone (also on Halloween night), and Bounty Killers played at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival, which is screening its closing films tonight.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website,culturalmining.com
March 30, 2012. Battles Royal. Movies Reviewed: The Hunger Games, The Raid: Redemption, Gerhard Richter — Painting
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, genre and mainstream movies, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.
I’m back again, to review three movies. With the recent re-release of the Japanese horror/thriller Battle Royale (Dir: Fukasaku Kinji, 1990) I thought it was appropriate to look at great battles and fights to the death. One’s about a girl who must fight 23 other teenagers on national television; one’s about a cop who has to kill literally hundreds of bad guys in an apartment complex; and one’s about a master artist who has to fight a constant battle with his adversaries: the paintings he creates.
Hunger Games
Dir: Gary Ross
It’s sometime in the future in America, with the country split into 12 districts, divided by what they produce. They are all poor, while the people in the capital are rich, living their lives obsessed with grotesque, Louis XVI clothing and wigs. Catniss (Jenifer Lawrence) is extremely poor since her father died in a mining disaster, so she hunts for food (illegally) with her best friend Gale and a bow and arrow. Without the squirrels she catches she, her mother and her sister Prim would starve to death.
This country is called Panem and it operates on the bread and circuses principle (keep the people fed on bread — panem — and entertained). So while the people are just eking by, the President forces two “tributes” — a teenaged boy and girl from each district — to fight to the death each year in a televised reality show. Sort of like the Olympics, except no one wants to be chosen by the random “reaping”. They are dressed, trained, and sent away to a forest with cameras hidden in every 
knothole and behind each shrub.
parachutes, paid for by donations from the fans.) But Jennifer Lawrence looks like a big, healthy milk-fed athlete, not the vulnerable wiry but headstrong little girl I was expecting. When she gets sent off to the capital she barely glances at the fancy array food. And she never really eats. Petta (Josh Hutcherson), on the other hand, is much more believable in his role.
The Raid: Redemption
cutting with various bladed weapons (kids… don’t try this at home!) So its up to him to fight them off, one by one, so he can reach the penthouse suite and arrest the chief bad guy. But he has to deal with corrupt cops in his own team, and a mysterious connection he has to a player on the other side.
Gerhard Richter — Painting
other. Each painting is an assertion that tolerates no company.
slowly across the painting breaking up the colour into crackly, or smooth, or patchy areas. It’s a new painting, now, and stays like that one for another few days until he decides to change it, junk it, or keep it as is. It’s like the movie shows paintings that don’t exist anymore in galleries, they’re just the stages of the painting now on a wall somewhere.
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