Daniel Garber talks with Cam Christiansen about Echo of Everything
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
What do punk, gospel, jazz and Andalusian duende music have in common? They all bring an ecstatic reaction from musicians making the music and listeners dancing to it. It’s a primal response dating back thousands of years, with music bringing joy, anger, sadness, and inspiring sex and even violence from its listeners. Are these ecstatic reactions still around today? And are the notes and rhythms 
we hear an echo of ancient rituals or even primordial sound waves?
Echo of Everything is an amazing new documentary about music and how it affects us emotionally, spiritually and scientifically. A highly personal film it incorporates expressionistic scenes in black and white, philosophic interviews and intense musical performances recorded in supersaturated colour. And running throughout is a constant stream of sound and rhythm, recorded around the world.
Echo of Everything is written and directed by Calgary-based filmmaker and animator Cam Christiansen, known for his award-winning features Wall and I Have Seen the Future.
I spoke with Cam in person, on-site during Hot Docs at the Luma Café at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.
Echo of Everything had its world premiere at Hot Docs and is opening theatrically later this year.
Smiles and frowns. Films reviewed: Smile, Triangle of Sadness
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Weather changes with the seasons and so do our moods: one minute it may be sunny, the next dark and overcast. So this week I’m looking at two new movies about changing emotions. There’s a comedy about a frown and a horror movie about a smile.
Smile
Wri/Dir: Parker Finn
Dr Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) is a therapist who works in the emergency psych ward at a large New Jersey hospital. She’s always prim and proper, wearing buttoned shirts, with her hair neatly pulled back from her face. She spends most of her time at work, up to 80 hours a week, but on her free time she likes nothing better than sipping white wine in her bungalow, cuddling her fluffy cat Moustache or just chatting with Trevor, her nondescript fiancé. She is devoted to helping her patients, having survived her own mother’s mental illness and suicide when she was a little girl.
It’s just a normal day when she examines a new patient in intake. Laura is a grad student showing signs of paranoid delusions. She is terrified that someone is out to get her. “I’m not crazy, I’m a PhD candidate!” says Laura (as if the two were mutually exclusive). She’s not sure whether it’s an evil spirit, a ghost or a satanic possession, but whatever it is, it’s been haunting her since she witnessed her prof commit suicide just a few days earlier. It takes the form of people closest to her, 
that only she can see. And worst of all, it has a horrible smile. And before Rose can do anything, Laura violently kills herself right in front of her… with that awful smile plastered on her face. And from that moment on things feel different for Rose.
Her nightmares turn into daydreams. She begins to hallucinate — with figures from her past, including a dead patient, reappear before her, smiling. She has very few people to talk to outside of the hospital: Trevor, and her older sister Holly, who only talks about family and real estate. She visits her own former therapist, who refuses to prescribe anti-psychotics, saying it’s just stress and overwork. But Rose knows it’s something more. Everything that happened to Laura — and her professor before her — seems to be inflicted on Rose now. She finally turns to her ex-boyfriend 
Joel (Kyle Gallner) for help. He’s a police detective now, investigating Laura’s death; perhaps he can find out what’s causing these suicides. Because Rose is sure she’s either going insane, or is controlled by an evil entity… or both! And if she doesn’t do something fast, she’ll be dead in three days. Can Rose figure out what’s happening to her, and stop her impending, smiling suicide? Or is she out of time?
Smile is a good psychological thriller/horror. While it’s occasionally predictable — with some dubiously freudian plot 
turns — it’s mainly a gripping, scary flick. Great spooky music and some cool visuals, like disorienting, upside down drone shots of a cityscape, and a delightful scene change using the camera’s iris. And lots of cute, smiley-face images popping up everywhere in the background. I’ve never seen Sosie Bacon before, (she’s second generation Hollywood, the daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick) but she’s quite good as Rose, gradually transforming from uptight doctor to terrified heroine.
If you’re in the mood for a good screamer, check out Smile.
Triangle of Sadness
Wri/Dir: Ruben Östlund
Yaya and Carl (Charlbi Dean, Harris Dickinson) are a millennial power couple. Carl is a fashion model who is featured shirtless in perfume and underwear ads. He is known for his looks. But he still has to show up for cattle-calls. Yaya, though, is an influencer — her posts and selfies are followed by millions, and sponsors are constantly sending her money and goods to promote. But their unequal status spurs an argument. Why does he have to pick up the cheque when they go out to dinner? He’s the man in the relationship but Yaya is much more famous and earns way more money than Carl. It’s just not fair. So she invites him to join her on an elite cruise ship, all expenses paid.
The boat is an exclusive luxury liner, and the passengers are some of the richest people in the world. One couple made billions selling bombs and landmines. Another oligarch, named
Dimitri (Zlatko Buric) proudly says he earned his fortune selling shit — literally. He cornered the market in fertilizer. And the staff are trained by Paula, the head of the crew (Vicki Berlin), to fulfill any whims or demands of the passengers no matter how outlandish or nonsensical. And Carl and Yaya soon find out that any casual complaint or criticism of a staff member they might make may lead to their instant dismissal. But the ship hits trouble on the high seas, and the captain (Woody Harrelson), an alcoholic communist, can’t stay sober long enough to prevent a disaster.
Later, the passengers and staff regroup on a tropical isle, situated somewhere between Gilligan’s Island and Lord of the Flies. But with a new power structure in place, who will make it out of there alive?
Triangle of Sadness — the title refers to that part of the face from the brow to the bridge of the nose that supposedly conveys happy or sad emotions — is a scathing satire about the state of the world. Told in three chapters — in the city, on a ship, and on a remote island — it follows a young couple as they navigate life among the powerful and super-rich. It also shows what could happen if existing power structures (and the money that reinforces them) ceased to exist. Did I mention this is a comedy? I found it bitingly and bitterly hilarious, though at times disgusting. For humour’s sake, it reverses many presumptions: by presenting men — not women — as sexual objects subject to exploitation; and by pulling away the curtains hiding the transgressions of the rich and powerful.
The acting in this dark comedy — especially by the late Charlbi 
Dean and Harris Dickinson, as well as Zlatko Buric and Dolly De Leon as Abigail a former toilet cleaner who suddenly finds herself as the big fish in a small pond — is excellent all around. The story is told as a comic fable, intentionally never realistic, with settings, costumes, and music, all reinforcing its farcical nature. This is not Swedish director Ruben Östlund first dark comedy — he previously directed such great movies as The Square and Force Majeure — but Triangle of Sadness is the most extreme of all his films, one that takes his themes beyond the expected limits. Though not universally loved, in my opinion this is one great movie.
Smile is now playing and Triangle of Sadness, which played at #TIFF22 earlier this year, opens at the TIFF Bell Lightbox this weekend.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Mind Games. Films reviewed: Spiderhead, Chess Story, In the Wake
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Spring film festival continues through June with Toronto’s Japanese Film Festival and the Toronto Jewish Film Festival showing films for another week. Also on now is the Future of Film Showcase, Canada’s premiere festival for short films. It also has panels, coffee sessions and workshops, covering everything from casting to funding, from locations to issues like equity.
This week, I’m looking at three new movies about people forced to play games. There’s a prisoner playing chess in WWII Vienna, another prisoner forced to play mind games in a secretive American facility; and a detective playing cat-and-mouse with a murderer… ten years after an earthquake in Japan.
Spiderhead
Dir: Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick)
Jeff (Miles Teller) is an inmate in a remote, high-security prison. Located inside a brutalist cement building on a placid lake, it can only be reached by boat or pontoon prop plane. But inside it’s a virtual paradise. Doors are kept unlocked, prisoners chat on colourful sofas while eating canapés, and are free to pursue their favourite pastimes. They can even become friends with other prisoners — like Lizzy (Jurnee Smollett). No violence or distrust here; the benevolent warden Steve (Chris Hemsworth) makes sure of that.
So what’s the catch?
All prisoners are kept placid by a little gadget attached to their bodies, which — through remote control — releases chemical serums directly into their bloodstreams which controls their moods. They are also forced to attend sessions — controlled by Steve and his assistant behind a glass wall — where they test the potency of their pharmaceuticals. Sometimes it’s as simple as making them laugh at deliberately unfunny jokes. Other times they’re placed in the room with a stranger — a female prisoner in Jeff’s case — to see if drugs can make them so thirsty and the other seem so attractive (like “beer goggles” times 1000) that they can’t help having sex on the spot. But things take a sinister turn when Jeff is taken behind the glass wall and ordered to remotely inject painful drugs into other prisoners’ bodies. Can Jeff resist the psychological and chemical pressures put on him? What is Chris’s motive behind these experiments? And is there anything Jeff 
can do to stop him?
Spiderhead — the title is the name of the prison — is a sci-fi psychological thriller, about the dangers of pharmaceuticals and whether we can resist authority if it goes against our beliefs. The film is partly based on the Milgram experiment of the 1960s, where volunteers behind a glass wall were ordered to send increasingly painful electric shocks to actors pretending to be patients. In Spiderhead it’s taken to even greater extremes.
Is this movie good? It’s not too bad — I actually enjoyed it, loved the location and sets (it’s shot in Australia), the cheesy 1980s soundtrack, and the fun concepts, along with some huge movie stars… but the ending is as predictable as it is implausible. The concept is much better than the story. But if you just want be entertained for a couple hours, you could do worse.
Chess Story (Schachnovelle)
Dir: Philipp Stölzl
It’s 1939 in Vienna, and Josef Bartok (Oliver Masucci) is living the high life. He always dressed in formal black and white, and only the finest scotch and the best cigarettes ever pass through his lips. He loves telling jokes with his friends, and waltzing with his beloved wife Anna. As long as the Viennese keep dancing what could go wrong? But that night German soldiers march into Austria declaring Anschluss; it’s all one Reich now. Jacob springs into action, scanning through his ledgers and memorizing the codes before throwing them into a blazing fire. You see, his job is to keep the riches of the Austrian royalty safe from the Nazis in numbered Swiss bank accounts. Hours later he is arrested, but not killed, by the Gestapo and locked in a hotel room. If he tells them the numbers they say they’ll let him go — they just want the money. But solitary confinement can play tricks on your brain. He stays alive by studying a chess book he smuggled into the room.
Later, he is on a ship with Anna heading to America and freedom. But he can’t resist playing 
chess against Mirko, an unusual world chess champion, who is illiterate and can barely form a sentence. But as reality begins to warp, he can’t help wonder if he’s on a ship or still a captive of the nazis. And where is this chess game really taking place?
Chess Story is an historical drama based on a story by Stefan Zweig, the last thing he wrote. He died during the war, in Brazil not Austria, but clearly he was damaged before he left. Everything you see in this film is filtered through Josef’s mind, so you’re never quite sure what is real and what is imaginary. Oliver Masucci who plays him is excellent, portraying a man’s descent from carefree joker to broken soul. It feels almost like an episode of The Twilight Zone episode, but with the emphasis on the characters, not on the twist.
In the Wake (Mamorarenakatta mono tachi e)
Dir: Zeze Takahisa
Det. Tomashino (Abe Hiroshi) is a policeman in northeastern Japan. He is investigating the mysterious death of two middle-aged men, both found starved death in different locations. Is there a serial killer out there, and if so, what are his motives? Turns out they both worked out of the local welfare office. He turns to a young welfare case worker Mikiko (Kiyohara Kaya) to help him put the pieces together. This is also the site of a mammoth earthquake and tsunami, ten years earlier. The detective remember it well, as he lost both his wife and his young son. Now he’s a loner who has yet to deal with his losses.
Meanwhile, Tone (Satoh Takeru) a troubled young man, just out of prison for arson, gets a job in a welding factory. And he wants to get in touch with his makeshift family former after the earthquake: a little kid, and an elderly woman named Kei (Baishô Mitsuko) who cared for the two lost orphans. But things have clearly changed. Could they have driven him… to murder?
In The Wake is a Japanese drama set immediately after an earthquake and a decade later. While it’s ostensibly a police procedural, about a detective trying to catch a killer, it’s also a 
surprisingly powerful and moving drama, that takes it much deeper than your usual mystery. It shifts back and forth between the two periods, as all the major characters were also survivors of the quake. And it delves into the terrible inadequacies of Japan’s austerity cutbacks to to their already inadequate welfare state. The movie features Abe Hiroshi, a huge star from Kore-eda’s films; Baishô Mitsuko , who was in movies by the most famous Japanese Kurosawa and Imamura; and Satoh Takeru best known for the Rurouni Kenshin series. I was expecting something simple, and lucked into a really good movie instead.
Spiderhead is now streaming on Netflix; Chess Story is now playing digitally at TJFF, The Toronto Jewish Film Festival; and In the Wake is playing at the other TJFF, the Toronto Japanese Film Festival, on one day only, June 25th, at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre.
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 Kelly McCormack about her new film Sugar Daddy
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Darren is a small town girl with big city ambitions. She left her divorced mom and adoring sister behind for a music career in Toronto. She found a gaggle of artists to hang with and an apartment-mate who has a crush on her. She earns her rent at a catering job. But when, in a Dickensian plot turn, she’s caught taking home leftover sandwiches — she finds herself fired, broke, starving, and nearly homeless. What to do? She signs onto a service where she’s paid to go on public dates with much older, much richer men. This solves her money deficit… but what about her career and sense of self worth? Will Darren’s new arrangements lead to success? Or is she doomed to failure as an artist on the payroll of a “sugar daddy”?
Sugar Daddy is a coming-of-age feature about a young woman
discovering her self worth, and what her youth, body, and talent will fetch on the open market. The film is written, produced by and starring Toronto-based writer, musician, actor, and artist Kelly McCormack. Kelly has made her mark on stage and screen — you’ve probably seen her as Betty Anne on LetterKenny as well as parts on Ginny and Georgia on Netflix and the upcoming A League of their Own on Amazon.
I spoke with Kelly via Zoom in Toronto. I previously interviewed her along with Alec Toller in 2014 about her off-beat film Play: the Movie.
Sugar Daddy premiered at the Canadian Film Festival on April 1st, and opens on VOD, beginning April 6th, 2021.
Separated. Films reviewed: Dear Comrades!, A Glitch in the Matrix, Two of Us
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Festival and award season has begun, so this week I’m looking at three new movies – from the US, Russia and France – now playing at Sundance or already nominated for upcoming awards. There are people who believe perception is separate from reality; a Communist official separated from her daughter; and an elderly woman separated from the love of her life.
Dear Comrades!
Co-Wri/Dir: Andrey Konchalovskiy
It’s summer in a small Russian city on the Don River, and the people are angry. Food prices are soaring while wages are going down. Thousands of factory workers take to the streets carrying red flags and pictures of Lenin. Is this the Russian revolution of 1905? Or is it 1917?
Neither… it’s the Soviet Union in 1962!
Lyuda (Yuliya Vysotskaya) is a single mom who lives with her and her daughter Svetka (Yuliya Burova) who works in a train factory, She’s an ardent Stalinist. And because she’s an apparatchik — a high-placed local official and member of the Communist Party — she lives a good life. This means access to hair salons, 
nylon stockings, negligees, and Hungarian salami. She’s having an affair with a married official.
The food shortages and wage cuts don’t really affect her.
But her life is shaken up by the walkout at a locomotive factory (where Svetka works) and spreading across the city of Novocherkassk. And their meetings — they’re trying to figure out how to handle this — end up with bricks through the window and Lyuda and the rest forced to 
sneak out through a sewer tunnel. In comes the KGB who want to bring guns ammunition into the equation: the instigators must be stopped. Mayhem and killings ensue. Lyuda is a hardliner, but when her daughter disappears she has to decide whether her loyalty is to the state or to her kin.
Dear Comrades is a moving drama about a real event and the massive cover-up that followed it. It’s shot in glorious, high-contrast black and white, similar to 
Polish director Pawilowski’s Ida and Cold War, but with magnificent, classic cinematic scenes involving hundreds of rioters and soldiers in the public square. Yuliya Vysotskaya’s performance as Lyuda runs the gamut from cold official to angry mother to disillusioned and drunken party member as her entire existence and beliefs are called into question.
This is Russia’s nominee for best foreign film Oscar and definitely deserves to be seen.
A Glitch in the Matrix
Dir: Rodney Ascher
Have you ever had the sensation that everything around you — other people, your job, what you see and hear — is an illusion, that you’re living in a programmed reality? If so, you’re not alone. A new documentary talks to people who are convinced they are trapped in a world like the Wachowskis’ 1999 movie The Matrix, where everything they perceive is just a computer simulation. And anyone else — other than one’s self — is either a part of this conspiracy, or a victim of it, or they don’t even exist outside of your head. And it is only detectable by paying attention to weird glitches in the system, like odd 
examples of deja vu, or coincidences that are too absurd or fantastical to be merely random events.
The doc interviews people rendered into 3-D animated avatars who tell about their own experiences. It also gives a full history of these beliefs, dating back to Plato’s concept of shadows on the wall of a cave, through Descarte’s epistemological example of an “Evil Demon” deceiving us, all the way to the present. This includes a rare recording of a 
speech given by author Phillip K Dick in the 1970s, who says the ideas in his books are not science fiction but science fact. His stories inspired movies like Blade Runner, Total Recall.
A Glitch in the Matrix is a fascinating, informative and bizarre documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival a couple days ago. Aside from the animated interviews and narration, it presents a veritable tsunami of visual references to movies and TV shows video games that deal with these topics. I’m talking hundreds of clips, from the game 
Minecraft, to The Truman Show, to the kids’ book Horton Hears a Who, all of which propose that there are worlds or universes who don’t know they are just tiny self-contained units within much larger realities.
Do I believe I’m living in a glass dome or floating in a sensory deprivation tank? No. But that didn’t stop me from enjoying this mind-warp of a documentary.
Two of Us
Co-Wri/Dir: Filippo Meneghetti
Nina and Madeleine (Barbara Sukowa, Martine Chevallier) are two elderly women who live in Paris (Nina’s originally from Berlin). They first met as children in a public park in Rome, and kept in touch ever since. And for the past 20 years they’ve been passionate lovers who share one floor of an apartment building, floating back and forth between the two homes separated by a hallway. And they’re planning on selling them leaving Paris and retiring somewhere in Rome. The only thing holding them back are Madeleine (or Made as Nina calls her)’s two adult children and her Anne and 
Frédéric and her grandson Théo.
She was married to an abusive husband for Amy years until he died, though her actual relationship was with her lover Nina. But she’s never told her family the truth — she’s too worried about what they’ll think. But when Mado has a sudden stroke rendering her speechless, Nina is suddenly separated from her de facto wife. Mado’s family just think of her as the kindly neighbour Mme Dorn who lives down the hall. They bring in a paid caregiver who blocks her entry into the other apartment. When Nina demands to spend time with her lover, Anne and Frederic begin to regard Nina as a crazy woman who won’t leave their mother alone and cut off all contact. Will Nina and Mado ever see each other again? And can their relationship be saved?
Two of Us is a wonderful and passionate drama about two elderly lovers. It’s the young, Paris-based Italian director’s first feature, but it feels mature and masterfully done. And it co-stars the great Barbara Sukowa (If you’re into German cinema, you may remember her from movies in the 70s and 80s by Fassbinder and more recently by von Trotta), Sukowa is just as good now as she’s ever been. And Chevalier conveys volumes even when she can’t speak. The movie is full of pathos and tears and frustration and joy, you feel so much for both of them.
Two of Us is France’s nominee for best Foreign Oscar, and it’s definitely worth seeing.
A Glitch in the Matrix starts today, and Dear Comrade and Two of Us are both opening at the digital TIFF Bell Lightbox.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Travelling for love. Films reviewed: Make Up, Identifying Features, Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
They say love is true, and some people travel far and wide to keep that love alive. This week I’m looking at three new movies, directed by women in Hungary, England, and Mexico, that explore this theme. There’s a teenaged girl who moves to Cornwall to spend time with her boyfriend; an American surgeon who moves to Budapest to be reunited with her lover, and a Mexican farmer who crosses the country in search of her missing son.
Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time
Dir: Lili Horvát
Marta (Natasa Stork) is a 39-year-old, successful surgeon from New Jersey. So what is she doing at a run-down hospital in Budapest? She moved there, spontaneously to join up with a man she met a conference. They shared a night of passion and swore to meet up again on a bridge in Budapest at a specific time and date. (Marta is originally from Hungary but immigrated to the U.S.) But when she sees her bearded lover Janos (Viktor Bodó) he says he has ever seen her before in his life. She faints on a downtown street, where a young man named Alex (Benett Vilmányi) comes to her rescue. Marta is overcome with emotions. Is she going crazy? Was it all a dream? Or is Janos gaslighting her for some unknown reason?
She gets a job at the hospital where Janos works to be close to him. Meanwhile
Alex turns out to be a young medical student who develops an infatuation with Marta. So this turns into a three way stalk fest with Marta spying on Janos and Alex following her. Where is love? IS it real or imaginary? And can Marta come to terms with her new strange life?
Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time is an intriguing mystery-romance-psychological drama about passion and illusion, alienation and obsession. Marta deals with sexist colleagues and petty bureaucrats, as she tries to navigate a culture she’s not quite familiar with. It’s filmed on the lovely streets of Budapest with a fair amount of unexpectedly strange sex (no spoilers). The movie is a bit confusing in its tone, with, rather than a huge dramatic turning point, it culminates in an oddly absurdist, anticlimactic finish. Preparations is a good movie, but probably not what you expect.
This is Hungary’s nominee for best Foreign Language Film Oscar.
Make Up
Dir: Claire Oakley
It’s winter in Cornwall, England. Ruth (Molly Windsor) is an 18 year old woman, staying at a deserted summer holiday park so she can spend time with her boyfriend. She’s been dating Tom (Joseph Quinn) for 3 years. But rather than a romantic getaway, she’s staying in a grey, gloomy collection of jerry-built cottages near the sea. Everything is covered in plastic sheeting. And her relation with Tom is fraught with tension and jealousy. When she finds a hair in her sheets, that clearly isn’t hers, she takes the bedding to the laundry to wash it clean. There she meets an older taller woman named Jade (Stephanie Martini). Jane makes hair pieces for a local hospital — it takes 30,000 knots to make a single wig, she says.
Now Ruth has someone she can hang around with, talk to, and tell her secrets, none of which she’s getting from Tom. But her obsession with her boyfriend’s possible mistress drives Ruth into an unexpected situation. Can her relationship last? Or will she find a new path among the windswept sand dunes?
Make Up is an impressionistic coming-of-age story about a young woman looking for love while trapped in an almost surreal setting. It’s full of the screeching foxes, detached sexual sounds and blurry vistas set against the banality of service jobs. Molly Windsor is really good as the bewildered Ruth. The movie itself is a straightforward drama but shot almost like an eerie ghost story. This is an excellent first feature from a young filmmaker.
Identifying Features
Dir: Fernanda Valadez
Chuya (Laura Elena Ibarra) is a farmer in Guanajuato, Mexico. She’s a single mom who’s raising her teenaged son Jesus in a small farmhouse. But when he suddenly tells her he’s heading north with his best friend to take a job in Arizona, she packs his bag and says goodbye. And that’s the last she hears from him and his friend. Are they kidnapped? Lost? Or dead? She reports it to the police to no avail. His best friend is found but nothing is found of Jesus except the bag 
Chuya had packed. And when a woman she meets tells her not to give up, she sets out on a journey to try to find her son, or else confirmation that he’s dead.
On the way she falls in with a young man named Miguel (David Illescas) who was recently deported from the US. He is looking for his mom who lives in Ocampo a region plagued with crime. 
It’s also where Chuya thinks she can find the answers to her son’s disappearance. Will she ever find out what happened to him? And can an ordinary, kind woman survive in a society filled with greed, suspicion, and murder?
Identifying Features is a deeply moving and gripping mystery/drama that looks at the lives of Mexicans, trapped within larger forces — el migra, organized crime, and a corrupt police force — over which they have no control. It takes you into fascinating places, rarely portrayed — like indigenous villages, hostels for migrants — that tell an unforgettable story with a shocking ending. Stunning cinematography, and natural acting combined with compelling drama, makes for a terrific film.
Make Up just opened on VOD across North America. Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time, and Identifying Features both open today at the digital TIFF Bell Lightbox.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Two Ladies and a Gentleman. Films Reviewed: Love Sarah, Promising Young Woman, Lupin
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Doug Ford’s latest rules to fight the pandemic say don’t leave home… except when you do But don’t worry, there’s lots to see without going outside. This week I’m looking at two new movies and a TV series. There’s three woman in London opening a bakery, a Parisian thief who’s a master of fakery, and a vengeful woman exposing predators by pretending to be drunk when she’s actually wide-awakery.
Love Sarah
Dir: Eliza Schroeder
It’s present-day London, in Notting Hill (before the pandemic). Sarah is a chef who comes from a family of very talented women. Her daughter Clarissa (Shannon Tarbet) is a professional dancer, and her mum, Mimi (Celia Imrie), is a retired trapeze artist. She plans to open a gourmet bakery/cafe with her best friend Isabella (Shelley Conn). They studied cooking together in Paris. But right after they secure the property, Sarah is killed in a bicycle accident, and her whole family is in disarray. Depressed Clarissa can’t dance anymore, and her dancer-boyfriend kicks her out. Mimi was already estranged from Sarah before she died. And Isabella without a real chef, is forced to go back to her office job. The three manage to overcome their differences and open the cafe in Sarah’s name. But where will they find a baker? In walks Matthew (Rupert Penry-
Jones). He’s a two star Michelin chef who studied with Sarah and Isabella in Paris and slept with each of them (he’s a notorious womanizer.) Perhaps he’s also Clarissa’s birth father… And does he still carry a torch for Isabella?
Love Sarah is a charming, low-key drama about the joys and trepidations of running a business in honour of someone who died. It’s full of vignettes about cooking and baking in a quaint and colourful neighbourhood. There are also chances of romance for each of the three women. The plot is threadbare but the characters — and the actors who portray them — are quite endearing, in that understated English way. Love Sarah is a cute, but inoffensive, picture.
Promising Young Woman
Wri/Dir: Emerald Fennell
Cassandra (Carey Mulligan) is a promising young woman at med school with her best friend Mimi. They’ve planned to become doctors since they were kids. But then something terrible happens. Mimi gets drunk at a party and is raped by another student and the university sides with the man. Mimi commits suicide and a despondent Cassandra quits school, moves in with her parents and drops out of life. She works by day at a dead end job, while her nights are spent in a drunken stupor at tawdry pick-up bars, going home with whatever guy asks her. But things aren’t what they seem. Whenever her “date” inevitably throws
Carey Mulligan stars as “Cassandra” in director Emerald Fennell’s PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN, a Focus Features release.
Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features
himself on this seemingly drunken woman, she jumps into action to teach the predator a lesson. This secret heroin will never be a victim. But can she single-handedly avenge all the people to blame for Nina’s suicide? And will she ever start living a normal life again?
Promising Young Woman is a vengeance thriller that’s full of shocks surprises. Carey Mulligan is fantastic as Clarissa, a multi-leveled character who is both depressing, and funny with a dark, deranged streak running through her. Bo Burnham plays a self-effacing nerd — and potential boyfriend — who challenges her theory that all men are douches; and comic relief is provided by Jennifer Coolidge as her mom, and Laverne Cox as her boss. Promising Young Woman is shocking and deeply disturbing while also reassuringly moralistic. This movie keeps you guessing — and your heart pumping — till the very end.
Lupin
Assan Diop (Omar Sy) is a young boy who lives with his Senegalese father in a palatial estate in Paris. His dad’s a chauffeur for the Pellegrinis, a very rich but ruthless family. He gives Assan a book — classic stories of Arsene Lupin, the eponymous gentleman thief and master of disguises — and tells him to read it carefully and learn from it. Lupin is ingenious and conniving but always a gentleman (they use the English word in this French drama) But when his father is arrested for stealing priceless jewels, Assan is left alone, penniless and orphaned. Luckily an anonymous donor pays for his education at an elite academy. Years later he emerges as a modern day Lupin, reenacting his most audacious thefts and reaping its rewards. He’s married now and has a teenaged son. But when the jewels his father was accused of stealing reappear at an auction, he is determined to get the necklace, prove his father’s innocence and get revenge on Pellegrini, whom he believes set his dad up. But to do
this he must outsmart the police, evade Pellegrini’s hired killers, even while he continues to carry out his intricately planned heists.
Lupin is a delightful new TV series full of capers and adventures, a new take on a classic character. It follows multiple sub-plots: his relationship with his wife and son; his various capers; his war against Pellegrini, and the cat & mouse game he plays with the police. Omar Sy is wonderful in the main role, so much so that there’s little screen time given to the supporting actors — the buffoonish cops and naive millionaires are mainly there as foils for his exploits. Yes, it’s an unbelievable fantasy, and yes, it’s purely light entertainment, but I like it a lot. And after one week with only 5 episodes, it is already trending at #1.
Lupin is now streaming on Netflix. And Love Sarah and Promising Young Woman both open today digitally and on VOD.
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 Allcock about his new doc Fear of Dancing
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
As long as people have made music, we’ve also danced to it. Dancing is artistic expression, it’s sexual attraction, it’s our innermost emotions laid bare. But alongside these cfowded dancefloors are always the unnoticed few, the wallflowers huddled in the shadows, never leaving their seats. Are they stubborn? Are they snobs? Are they just waiting for the right partner? Or is it… something else? Psychologists have a word for this: chorophobia, the irrational fear of dancing.
Fear of Dancing is also the name of a quirky, new, personal documentary. It follows 
subjects around the world – from Canada to Switzerland to Kenya – who suffer from this unusual condition, and the things we’re trying to do to overcome it. The film was made by Canadian documentarian Michael Allcock, known for his writing, story editing and directing on a wide range of topics, from punk rock to poker, from the Unabomber to the Spanish Inquisition. This time, though, he’s one of the subjects of his own film.
You can view Fear of Dancing on CBC Gem in Canada, beginning on Friday, Nov 27, 2020.
I spoke to Michael via zoom from my home.
Self Help. Films reviewed: Becoming Nobody, Brittany Runs a Marathon
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s Labour Day weekend, a good time to catch up on all those things you’ve been meaning to do. That’s why this week I’m looking at two movies – a dramedy and a documentary – about Self Help. There’s a woman who wants to lose some of herself, and a man who wants to lose all of himself.
Becoming Nobody
Dir: Jamie Catto
A hippie walks into a pizza parlour. The guy behind the counter asks: What would you like? The hippie says: Make me One… with Everything!
Old joke, but I’m trying to explain who Ram Dass is.
He’s born Richard Alpert in Newton, Mass., to an upper middle class family, and becomes a clinical psychology prof at Harvard University. In the early 1960s Timothy Leary introduces him to hallucinogenic drugs as a part of therapy. Alpert takes psilocybin mushrooms for the first time and it blows his mind (in the positive sense.) But he wants to know how he can harnass its effects when he’s not high. He drops out, grows long hair and a beard. Somehow he ends up in India, in the Himilayas, right on the border of Tibet. There he studies under 
Maharaj-ji, his spiritual guru – who dubs him Ram Dass, Servant of Rama, Servent of God – and then brings his findings back to America. Back home, youth culture is rejecting the status quo, protesting the war in Vietnam, and opting out of the rat race. They’re looking for new answers. Spiritual answers. His book, Be Here Now (1971) provides just that to a large part of his generation.
I am not a devotee of Ram Dass, I don’t go to yoga classes and I don’t practice meditation in a search for spiritual enlightenment. I do remember being fascinated as a little kid by the cube-shaped book Be Here Now with the hypnotic mandala drawn on its cover.
So I won’t attempt to explain his entire spiritual philosophy in a few sentences. But the film Becoming Nobody, attempts to do some of that in 90 
minutes. It’s basically a selection of his talks and conversations spanning his life from the 1960s to the present – discovery, spiritualism, losing oneself, and accepting death. You see him change from uptight academic, to long-haired hippy, to lecturer with a Dr. Phil moustache, to wise and funny old man. The film is illustrated with cute period footage and framed by a dialogue with the director, British musician Jamie Catto.
For a non-initiate like me, some of what Ram Dass says sounds like a collection of simple aphorisms, a mishmash of Hindu and Buddhist thought. But when you think about it, a lot of what he says really make sense; it’s not just hollow rhetoric. So whether you’re looking for a simple introduction to his philosophy, or just interested in him, Becoming Nobody gives you lots to chew on.
Brittany Runs a Marathon
Wri/Dir: Paul Downs Colaizzo
Brittany (Jillian Bell) lives in a cluttered New York apartment. By day she works as a low-paid usher at a theatre. At night she goes to bars with her roommate Gretchen (Alice Lee). A good time means getting high on adderal and having drunken sex with a stranger in a bathroom stall. She thought her college education would land her a creative job on Madison Avenue. Instead she’s underemployed with a huge student debt. Which depresses her. And to rub salt in the wound, her doctor tells her she’s 60 pounds overweight and if she doesn’t do something about it, she might die.
Could her life get any worse? Actually, it begins to get better when her neighbor, Catherine (Michaela Watkins) – who she’s never met and who she refers to as “Moneybags Martha” when she sees her through the window – offers to help Brittany train with her running club. There she meets Seth (Micah Stock) a slightly effeminate, married gay guy, who wants his kids to respect him and call him dad. Catherine is dealing with a painful divorce and custody battle. So the three form a sort of a 
support group to help Brittany run in the New York City Marathon.
She also lands a long-term house-sitting job, which helps her keep her above water economically and away from roommate Gretchen’s bad influence. She begins to lose weight, her self confidence grown, and she becomes closer to her fellow house-sitter Jern (Utkarsh Ambudkar) a poster boy for slackers. Are they a couple? Can she lose 60 pounds, get a job in her profession, find a home, meet a guy, and run the marathon? Or are these just a series of unattainable hopes?
Brittany Runs a Marathon is exactly what the title suggests – a woman 
trying to run a marathon to achieve a personal goal. But it’s also a really funny comedy. Jillian Bell is hilarious and disarming as the sneaky, funny, self-deprecating Brittany. You also feel for her character as she goes through crushing disappointments. And it deals with serious issues like the ups and downs of weight loss, body image, and depression, without turning into a condescending sermon. It’s a fun, funny, heartwarming and inspiring movie. I like this one.
Brittany Runs a Marathon opens today in Toronto, check your local listings; and Becoming Nobody opens next Friday, September 6th at Hot Docs.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Popcorn Movies. Films reviewed: Cold Pursuit, What Men Want, The Prodigy
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s the middle of winter, and all the highbrow pics have been released. So this week I’m looking at regular, popcorn movies – a comedy, a revenge thriller and a horror movie. There’s a psychic sports agent looking to land a killer client, a man out to find his son’s killers… and a young couple worried their 8-year-old son might be a killer himself.
Cold Pursuit
Dir: Hans Petter Moland
It’s winter at a ski resort in Colorado. Nels Coxman (Liam Neeson) is the town snowplow driver, clearing the roads for drivers from nearby Denver. He lives a respectable unremarkable life with his wife Grace (Laura Dern) and his snowplows. But his life turns sideways when their only son turns up dead from a drug overdose. At least that’s what the police detective (Emily Rossum) says. But his son doesn’t do drugs. Turns out he accidentally disrupted a drug deal involving lots of cocaine. 
Nels decides to take the law into his own hands, work his way up the chain of command and get revenge on the criminal ultimately responsible for his son’s death. On the way Nels kills and disposes of each man he meets. The head gangster is Viking (Tom Bateman) a detestable, effete millionaire whose lackies all look like models in fine suits. His territory is split with an aboriginal Chief named White Bull (Tom Jackson) of the Ute Nation. But when dead bodies show up, Viking thinks 
his indigenous rivals, starting a major drug war. With a kidnapped boy, the local police, the Feds, and Nels himself all converging on a single spot, who will survive the ultimate showdown?
Cold Pursuit is an exact, scene-by-scene remake of the 2016 Norwegian film In Order of Disappearance. Same director, same stunning snow scenes, but this time shot in Canada, not Norway, and the script is in English. I’m not a big fan of Liam Neesen action movies, but he plays this part perfectly: the single-minded revenge killer out for blood. It’s bloody, it’s violent and while somewhat comic, it seems to be missing the sardonic, Norwegian irony of the original.
But I still liked it.
What Men Want
Dir: Adam Shankman
It’s present day Atlanta.
Ali Davis (Taraji P. Henson) is a manager at Summit Worldwide a highly competitive pro-sports management agency. She’s an alpha dog in an all-male office. Her dad (Richard Roundtree), a former boxer, raised her to be a winner in both her work and her private life. When she takes men home for the night she’s always on top. She’s ambitious and self-centred. And with her gay personal assistant Brandon’s help (Josh Brenner) she’s close to landing a huge client – Jamal a star college basketball player. But 
she still can’t break through the glass ceiling and make full partner.
Until… her life changes after a party with her closest girlfriends when a psychic gives her a secret potion, and later that night she gets bonked on the head by a huge inflatable penis. When she comes to, she realizes she has a new secret power: she can read men’s 
minds. Suddenly a whole world is open to her, with all its potential benefits. Like finding out if a guy she’s crushing on has a thing for her. Or what men say to each other when women aren’t around. And where those men-only poker games are taking place. Is this new power the key to her success? Can she penetrate the locker-room bro culture that is holding her back? Can she turn a one night stand with single-dad bartender Will (Aldis Hodge) into a real relationship? Or is all this ESP stuff less of a blessing than a curse?
What Men Want is a remake of Mel Gibson’s comedy from 20 years ago, but with a role reversal. If you’re into pro sports and TV comedies there are tons of celebrity cameos to keep you happy, from Shaquille O’Neal, Jason Jones, Tracy Morgan, Pete Davidson, Mark Cuban, and many, many others. Eryka Badu is great as the psychic, and Taraji P. Henson – who starred in Hidden Figures – carries the show as Ali. But is it funny?
It’s OK, but not that funny. It’s disturbingly full of product placements in almost every scene. They could have done so much more, but in this movie a black woman who reads minds finds out white men may be sex obsessed, devious, condescending and insecure, but none of them are actually racist. (“Yay! — no one’s racist!“) It does talk about the problems inherent in pro sports, but steers away from bigger issues just begging to be addressed. This movie may be facile, safe and predictable, but I enjoyed it anyway.
The Prodigy
Dir: Nicolas McCarthy
Sarah and John (Taylor Schilling, Peter Mooney) are a young married couple in suburban Pennsylvania with a gifted son. Miles (Jackson Robert Scott) seems older than his years. He spoke his first words after just a few months, and at age eight is excelling at a school for exceptional students. And he has an angelic smile he shows his mom and dad. But there’s something not quite right about him. He seems to speak an exotic language in his sleep. And people nearby keep having strange accidents, which Miles claims he knows nothing about.
But when he violently attacks another boy in science class, his parents are 
disturbed. A specialist named Arthur (Colm Feore) says there might be someone else controlling Miles from somewhere deep inside him. Is he possessed by Satan? Does he have a split personality? Or is it something else? And what is little Miles’s connection to a notorious serial killer with a fetish for cutting of women’s hands? Sarah doesn’t know exactly what’s behind Miles strange behaviour but decides it’s time to act… before it’s too late!
If you like extremely scary horror movies, this is one to
see. A disturbing Bad Seed-style story of a parent’s worst nightmare: that their nice kid might actually be evil. Taylor Schilling (Orange is the New Black) is totally believeable as the mother, and young Jackson Robert Scott is extremely creepy as Miles – watch out for him. I still have shivers in my gut.
The Prodigy is classic horror.
Prodigy, Cold Pursuit and What Men Want 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.
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