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
More festival films. Ammonite, Labyrinth of Cinema, La Belle Époque
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Toronto is a Red Zone and movie theatres are closed, but the fall film festival season continues with ReelAsian, featuring films from East, Southeast and South Asia and the diaspora; and Cinefranco showing new, French-language films from Europe, Africa, and Quebec.
This week I’m looking at three new festival movies. There are three young Japanese guys sent back in time; an English woman who digs up dinosaur bones; and a grumpy French artist who wants to go back in time… so people will stop treating him like a dinosaur.
Ammonite
Wri/Dir: Francis Lee
It’s the 1840s in Lyme Regis, a small town in Dorset, England. Mary Anning (Kate Winslet) lives with her mother Molly in a small house attached to a tourist shop. She sells seashells by the seashore. Fossils, to be exact, the remains of ancient dinosaurs. Her archaeological findings are on display in the British Museum, but, as a woman, she gets no credit for her discoveries and is blocked from joining the male scientists. But she continues her dogged work each day on the cliffs and pebbled beach. Which is why she is uninterested when Murchison, a rich London dilettante, knocks on her door, unannounced. Mary is gruff and headstrong and has no time for fools. But he persists. He loves her work and wants her to mentor him. And he’ll pay her well for her time. He’s accompanied by his young wife Charlotte (Saoirise Ronan) who suffers from melancholia. But when he takes off for the 
continent, Mary is stuck taking care of the depressed woman. She’s uninterested in frail, pale Charlotte until she takes ill and almost dies. She nurses her back to health, and the two women discover an unknown connection. Is it love, lust or just a passing fantasy? And what will happen when Murchison comes back?
Ammonite is a beautiful historical drama, a romance based on real-life characters. Kate Winslet and Saorise Ronan play the passionate pair, in a relationship riddled with jealousy, class-differences and misunderstandings… but also friendship as they explore new grounds, both emotionally and sexually. With really great performances set against a stark, cold world of water, pebbles and bones, Ammonite is an exquisite love story.
Labyrinth of Cinema
Wri/Dir: Nobuhiko Obayashi
A movie theatre near Hiroshima, Japan is closing down after many years, so everyone in town shows up. There’s Noriko – an innocent young girl in a sailor suit (Rei Yoshida) who says she learns about history by going to movies; Mario, a nerdy film buff (Takuro Atsuki); Hōsuke – a war movie fanatic with little round glasses (Takahito Hosoyamada); and Shigeru – a flashy-dressed, son of a buddhist monk (Yoshihiko Hosoda) who moonlights as a debt collector for the Yakuza. But as the movie starts, they step into the actual film and find themselves transported to the past. They’re in the Tokugawa era, the days of the samurai, feudal Japan ridden with uprisings and civil war. Later they’re soldiers in the Japanese Imperial army, invading China. And they end up trapped in Hiroshima on the day of the atom bomb. And at each stage of history, despite their efforts, they 
witness young Noriko in danger – whether as a Chinese spy, a sex slave, or a starving Japanese girl. Can they protect innocent Noriko without being killed themselves? Or will they fall into the trap of senseless, nationalistic war?
Labyrinth of Cinema is a highly-stylized retelling of modern Japanese history through movies. It starts out at a confusing, frantic pace, jumping from scene to scene recreating silent films with comical overacting. Later it slows a bit as the scenes get darker and more troubling. Over the course of this three hour epic, it uncovers aspects of Japanese history – war 
atrocities, women-led armies, the Kenpeitai, the slaughter of Okinawans – shown in the manner of films in each era: jerky movements in the 19th century; melodramatic scenes in the 30s and 40s. It’s narrated by the poems of Nakahara Chuya, and the screen is kept busy with superimposed, sidebar quotes. The various characters are played by the same group of actors alternating roles in a theatrical style. This is director Obayashi’s last film – he died of cancer after completing it this summer – who was known both for his TV commercials and his horror movies. Labyrinth of Cinema is a long, devastating survey of history and war. If you want to really understand Japan, you should watch this experimental film.
La Belle Époque
Wri/Dir: Nicolas Bedos
Victor (Daniel Auteuil) was once a successful cartoonist known for his graphic novels and editorial cartoons. But when his newspaper goes digital he loses his job, and no one reads his comics anymore. Now in his sixties he’s unemployed, bitter and depressed, a dinosaur who can’t keep up with the times. He’s been married to Marianne – a beautiful Freudian psychoanalyst (Fanny Ardant) – for decades, but the spark is gone. She can’t stand his constant complaining anymore. So one night she kicks him out with just his clothes, a portfolio of drawings, and a small paper card he received at a dinner party.
It’s an exclusive invitation issued by Time Travellers, a high-priced service that lets you revisit the past. In their vast studio, they recreate clients’ own memories, using actors and scripts, accurate down to the smallest detail. Victor goes back to that day in the 70s when he first met his wife in a bar called La Belle Époque. The Time Travellers CEO Antoine (Guillaume Canet) is an arrogant perfectionist, a tyrant who treats his actors like trash. He views each scene with hidden cameras and, using tiny mics, shouts directions 
into his actor ears. He hires his tempestuous on-again, off-again girlfriend Margot (Doria Tillier) to play Marianne, because he wants this recreation to be flawless – he feels he owes Victor a personal debt. But she’s too good, and Victor thinks he’s falling in love again… and not with his wife. Can the marriage be saved? Or will this hi-tech re-creation lead to disaster?
La Belle Époque is a satirical French comedy about romance, nostalgia, and second chances. It deals with French stereotypes: the men are either insensitive boors or intellectual bores, the women moody harridans. His re-created memories are funny and surprising but still just a simulacrum. But as the story develops, you begin to care about the characters, and join in with their laughs, tears and surprises. La Belle Époque uses a fascinating concept to make a very entertaining movie
La Belle Époque will play at Cinefranco film festival which starts next Friday; Labyrinth of Cinema is showing at ReelAsian film festival from November 12th through 19th; and Ammonite which premiered at TIFF, opens theatrically today across Canada (check your local listings), and digitally on December 4th.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Future/Past. Films reviewed: James vs His Future Self, Resistance
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
I love watching movies in theatres, but under a lockdown that’s not an option. Here a few ways to watch films at home for free. Kanopy offers an excellent selection of films which you sign out using your library card – up to eight a month. New additions include bizarre films like Borgman (review ), comedies like Young Adult (review ), and classics like Warren Beatty’s Reds. Look for it on your public library website. The National Film Board of Canada has tons of movies, documentaries and animation online now for free. Go to nfb.ca/films. And if you’re francophone or want to practice your French, myfrenchfilmfestival.com offers free short films and animation for kids.
But new movies – movies you pay for – are still being released online. This week I’m looking at two new movies. There’s a WWII drama about a famous entertainer’s encounters with the enemy in occupied France; and a science fiction comedy about a man who encounters his future self in Canada.
James vs. His Future Self
Dir: Jeremy LaLonde
James (Jonas Chernick) is a particle physicist who works at a lab. His obsession? Time travel. He lives at home with his sister Meredith (Tommie-Amber Pirie). Their mom and dad were killed in a terrible accident 15 years earlier, so she functions as his de facto parents, tearing him away from his scientific calculations long enough to eat a meal or get some sleep. James works alongside the beautiful and brilliant Courtney (Cleopatra Coleman) a science geek like him. She’s up for a position at the 
CERN Accelerator in Geneva. James harbours a secret crush on her, but are the feelings mututal? They do get together regularly for video nights with Chinese take out – but that’s the entire extent of his social 
life. Until his world is turned upside down by a taxi driver named Jimmy (Daniel Stern).
Jimmy is a crusty old guy with a greying chin beard. He loves croissants, music, and waxing lyrical about living in the present. But he has a dark side as well. (He could be Ram Das’s evil twin). More important, he claims to be James’s future self. Jimmy says James will invent the time machine, with fame, fortune and a 
stellar career devoted to science. Hooray! Except Jimmy came back from the future to stop him: don’t do it or you’ll end up like me: tired, bitter and alone. Fall in love, have fun, enjoy your life. Can James reconcile his future incarnation with his current scientific obsession? Can he get along with Meredith? Or fall in love in with Courtney? Or is this all just a hoax?
James vs His Future Self is a surprisingly good time-travel comedy, that does it all with virtually no special effects. Daniel Stern (Breaking Away; Home Alone) as “future James” looks absolutely nothing like Jonas Chernick (Borealis interview, A Swingers Weekend review)… but it doesn’t matter. Why use expensive de-aging technology (like in the Irishman review) when you can just say “time travel messes you up.” Jeremy LaLonde (Sex after Kids – interview; The Go-Getters- review) is always doing these weird and quirky comedies, and they just get better and better.
Stern and Chernick are great as the two James, and Coleman and Pirie also show their stuff. The movie was shot up north in beautiful Sudbury. My only question is: How come there are two Canadian movies that opened in 2020 with a female lead moving to Switzerland to work on the CERN Supercollider? Doesn’t matter. James vs His Future Self is a good film to enjoy at home.
Resistance
Wri/Dir: Jonathan Jakubowicz
It’s the late 1930s in Strasbourg, France. Marcel (Jesse Eisenberg) works at the family Kosher butcher shop run by his dad (Karl Markovics: The Counterfeiters). But he’d rather be at his night job: impersonating Charlie Chaplin onstage at a downtown brothel. But war is looming, so he starts work at an orphanage inside a huge castle for little kids fleeing Nazi Germany. Two sisters, Emma and Mila (Clémence 
Poésy, Vica Kerekes) also work there and Marcel really likes Emma. (Feelings are mutual.) The tiny refugees are frightened and speak no French, but Marcel discovers he can communicate without words. He starts performing silently as a mime, expanding the skills he learned at theatre school. He’s a natural — one performance and they forget all their troubles. He also teaches them how to be silent themselves, especially if they’re being chased by Nazi soldiers. 
Then comes the invasion, and they all flee south to Limoges. There he and his friends all join the resistance to fight the German occupation, led by the notorious Klaus Barbie (Matthias Schweighöfer) known as the Butcher of Lyons. He learns to forge passports and perform acts of derring-do. But can he lead the orphans to safety in the Swiss Alps?
At the beginning of Resistance I was cringing and squirming in my seat. All the actors, including Jesse Eisenberg, speak in that annoying, generic, fake European accent. Worse than that, it looked like it was going to be about orphans, clowns and the holocaust, a potentially lethal combination. Something like Jerry Lewis’s 
legendary, infamous lost film The Day the Clown Cried. Luckilly, Resistance isn’t bad at all. It borrows from a lot of movies about the German occupation, especially Melville’s Army of Shadows, but it has many new scenes: hiding, escape, chase. It’s actually quite good, very classic in style, feeling like movies from 50-60 
years ago. More interesting still, this is a biopic about Marcel Marceau, the most famous mime anywhere, ever. I never knew he was in the French resistance. This is a movie with an accomplished international cast (from across Europe, North and South America) many of whom appeared in other WWII dramas (Son of Saul, The Counterfeiters) and a Venezuelan director. So if you’re looking for an historical movie complete with thrills and tears, Resistance is one to watch.
James vs His Future Self and Resistance are both available now online.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Turning thirty. Films reviewed: Space & Time, Standing Up Falling Down
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Blockbusters are good, but once in a while it’s also fun to watch real people in real situations without any green screens or CGIs. So this week I’m looking at two nice movies, both low budget and independent, that look at the lives of millennials turning thirty. There’s a romantic drama about a physicist and a photographer with a seven year itch, and a dramedy about a drunk dermatologist and a standup comedian with itchy skin.
Space & Time
Wri/Dir: Shawn Gerrard
Sean and Siobhan are a Toronto couple in their twenties. Sean (Steven Yaffee) is a professional photographer who still develops his prints old-style in a darkroom. Siobhan (Victoria Kucher) is doing her graduate degree in astrophysics but longs to work with a supercollider. They’ve been together for seven years so are spending their anniversary camping out on the Toronto Islands, just the two of them. But something doesn’t click. They wonder if there’s another Sean and Siobhan in a distant parallel usiverse that’s doing better than they are. Like when Sean used to take her picture all day long… and when they made love on every bare surface in their 
apartment?
But back on earth, Siobhan dreams more about the Large Hadron Collider in Cern than she does if Sean. She wants to study there, in Switzerland… and he can come too, of course. Sean, meanwhile, seems more concerned about whether or not to buy a rice cooker. He also wonders about fellow photographer DD (Risa Stone). She’s pansexual and so much more free-spirited than career-oriented Siobhan is these days. And Siobhan is fighting off scientific super nerd Alvin (Andy McQueen) in her 
office. Is he cute or just a pain? The couple is still in love, but can they stay together? Are upside forces working against them? And what would happen if they take a break?
Space and Time is a bittersweet romance about a couple turning thirty who is forced to reassess their lives. It looks at desire, love, and the pluses and minuses of living together. It’s an unapologetic indie actually set in Toronto, with recognizable buildings everywhere. It has some glitches. In the opening scenes it frequently cuts to outside images, setting the whole movie up like a graphic novel. But they go away after that scene, as if they ran out of energy. But it rightly deals with real-life issues… like couples whose main reason for staying together is that it’s too difficult to find separate apartments.
While not perfect, Space & Time works as a gentle, low-budget look at the lives and times of urban millenials in Toronto.
Standing Up Falling Down
Dir: Matt Ratner
Scott (Ben Schwartz) is a failed standup comic. He left his girlfriend in a lurch when things were getting too serious. He swore he’d make it big in LA. But now he’s home again, in long island with his tale between his legs. He’s moved back into his childhood bedroom in his parents house in a working class neighbourhood. He still pines for Becky, but she ended up marrying someone else. He’s jobless, sexless and nearly homeless, with no ready prospects. He even has a strange skin reaction he’s always rubbing. His life is a disaster, until a strange old guy bumps into him in a bar toilet, staining his pants. Marty (Billy Crystal) is a funny old man in a fedora, who tells Marty what’s what. Take it easy, he says, and enjoy life. Tell a joke, lighten up. Marty’s an alcoholic dermatologist who cures Scott’s skin problem, gratis.
But he has his own demons to handle. Marty’s adult son won’t talk with him, both his former wives are now dead, andhe doesn’t have many friends outside the bar he frequents. Can this odd couple become good friends? Or are they both carrying too much baggage to let loose?
Standing Up, Falling Down — the title refers to the unusual friendship 
between a standup comic and an alcoholic — is a sweet story about two lonely people. It’s a working class comedy, but less uproariously funny than warm and witty. A dramedy. Billy Crystal has still got it, and Ben Schwartz is a likeable newcomer (just saw him last week as Sonic the Hedgehog) . Also funny are Scott’s sister Megan () who works in a convenience store. There are lots of dramatic sideplots along with occasional pathos. But it’s mainly about the light interplay between these two comic actors, thirty-five years apart.
Space & Time and Standing Up, Falling Down both open today in Toronto; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Daniel Garber talks with Renée Beaulieu about Les Salopes at #TIFF18
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Marie-Claire is a professor of Dermatology at a Montréal university. She’s in her forties and happily married to Adam, with two teenaged kids. She is researching whether skin cells – which convey touch, the most important of all senses – react to sexual pleasure. And as part of her research she pursues a course of radical experimentation: she decides to sleep with whatever man she desires, whether at work, at play or at home. She finds sexual pleasure 
without guilt. That is, until she begins to feel the backlash…
Les Salopes: or The Naturally Wanton Pleasure of Skin is a new movie at the Toronto International Flm Festival. It’s an erotic feminist tome that shifts the focus of desire, seduction, pleasure and satisfaction to the female gaze, with men as The Other.
Les Salopes is written and directed by Renée Beaulieu, a screenwriter, filmmaker and teacher at the Universite de Montreal.
Les Salope has its world premier tonight; I spoke with Renée Beaulieu in studio at CIUT.
Daniel Garber talks with Alison McAlpine about her new doc CIELO
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Have you ever stared at the night sky and the stars and planets up there? What does it mean and how does it relate to our lives?
A new documentary premiering next Friday looks at the skies above the Atacama desert in
northern Chile, the scientists and astronomers who observe them, and the people born there and who live beneath them.
It explores the filmmaker’s personal impression and interactions with the people she meets. It’s an astronomical, 
spiritual, anthropological look at life in a desert beneath the vast bright stars.
The film is called Cielo, and its filmmaker is Alison McAlpine. Alison’s award-winning and critically acclaimed documentaries have played at film festivals around the world. 
I spoke to Alison McAlpine in Montreal by telephone from CIUT 89.5 FM in Toronto.
Cielo opens in Toronto on Friday, August 10.
Daniel Garber talks with Daniel Zuckerbrot about The Science of Magic
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Magic.
The word conjures up visions of magic wands and abracadabra, Harry Houdini and Harry Potter, legerdemain and prestidigitation. It’s mysterious, it’s uncanny, it’s… supernatural. But what if I 
told you there is a scientific basis to magic?
The Science of Magic is a new documentary that looks at just that — the psychology and neuroscience that lurks behind even the simplest card trick. This fascinating documentary goes right to the 
source: the magicians (and magicienne) doing their tricks, with white-coated scientists watching them intently.
It’s written and directed by documentary filmmakers Donna Zuckerbrot and Daniel Zuckerbrot, known for their deft handling of magical themes.
I spoke with Daniel Zuckerbrot in studio at CIUT. He talked about magic, magicians, Julie Eng, change blindness, Deception, filmmaking, eye movement… and more!
The Science of Magic premiers on Sunday, March 18th on CBC’s The Nature of Things.
End times? Films reviewed: Arrival, The First, the Last
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
With the reality of the recent US election sinking in, people are using words like Brexit 2, Armageddon, Apocalypse and even Thermonuclear War. So this week I have a couple end-of-days movies to capture the prevailing mood. There’s a Belgian western about lost souls who think the world is about to end, and a US science fiction drama about scientists trying to stop the world from ending.
Arrival
Dir: Denis Villeneuve
Dr Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is a linguistics professor who speaks Chinese, Portuguese and Sanskrit. She occasionally translates top-secret documents for the US government. She has red hair, blue eyes and porcelain-like skin. She once had a daughter she adored but Hannah died of an incurable disease. Now Louse lives alone in a brick and glass lakeside home comforted only by her memories. Then something cataclysmic happens.
Twelve enormous, lozenge-shaped spaceships arrive on earth. They hover, silently and menacingly, over twelve random places, including Montana in the North America. there’s rioting in the streets, mayhem, mayhem, mayhem. Right away, she gets a knock on the door; it’s Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) a high-ranked officer. He needs her help translating strange clicking sounds into English. Translate? says Louise. I can’t translate a language I don’t understand.I need to speak directly to the aliens. So they whisk her off to an army base in rural Montana along with an arrogant physicist named Ian (Jeremy Renner). Together they’re expected to figure out why the aliens are there and whether the army should 
attack them. Easier said than done.
The aliens let them board the spaceship, kept separate by a glass wall. Louise is shocked by what appears in the mist. No little green men here; these aliens are septipods – hideous sea creatures with seven legs — and hands that look like starfish. These mollusks have pulpy-grey bodies and can shoot out ink, like octopuses. Louise also discovers they are highly intelligent, with a sophisticated written language with multi-dimensional ring-shaped characters that look like Japanese brush painting. They float, suspended, underwater.
And their cryptic message? Something involving weapons! This pricks up the ears of a sinister CIA agent, her nemesis. With the world on the brink of thermonuclear war, it’s up to Louise to communicate with the aliens and decipher their message before armageddon.
Arrival is a fascinating and thoughtful science fiction drama, told through the eyes of an academic. It’s part of the new trend of science-y fantasies that favour intellect over explosions. It’s similar to films like The Martian and Gravity, but I like this one the best. While Jeremy Renner is dull and Forest Whitaker unremarkable, Amy Adams is great as the pensive Louise. Arrival takes place in a barren military camp and it’s overloaded with khaki, camo and annoying Cold War jargon like domino effects and zero-sum games. But it’s also a feel-good movie with a truly surprising twist. It can satisfy your craving for excitement without resorting to superheroes.
The First, the Last (Les Premiers, les Derniers)
Wri/Dir: Bouli Lanners
It’s present-day Wallonia, a place of barren fields, billiard halls and abandoned warehouses. Cochise and Gilou, two rough-and- tough middle aged guys, are hired by an anonymous client to retrieve a valuable lost telephone in exchange for lots of cash. Gilou (played by the director) is a white-bearded man in a midlife crisis, who thinks he’s dying, while Cochise (Albert Dupontel) is a moustached heavy in a leather jacket, always ready to fight but looking 
for love. Gilou sets up camp in a lonely motel run by an ancient innkeeper, who looks like an old-age version of himself. Cochise moves in with a woman he meets on the road.
The phone they seek is in the hands of a mysterious young couple named Esther and Willy (Aurore Broutin, David Murgia) who are making their way down a highway, dressed in high-viz orange 
jumpsuits they found on their journey. They are society’s outcasts, mentally disabled and homeless, but at least they have each other. They need that comfort now, especially since Willy learned that the world is about to end (he saw it on TV). Esther declares they must find a proper gift for a final visit she has to make before it’s all over. And they meet a Jesus-like figure on the way, who tries to take them under his wing.
But neither pair realizes they have wandered into the badlands, an area filled with crooked sheriffs, black marketeers, and all- around villains who don’t take kindly to strangers. So while the phone hunters are tracking down the outcasts, they’re all being sought — violently so — by the bad guys. There is also a mysterious 
gangster, an antlered stag, a mummy and a lost child to make things interesting. Can any of them find what they’re looking for?
The First, the Last is a satisfying — if baffling — western, set among the highways and desolate fields of French-speaking Belgium. It has the “European” feel of a movie like the Lobster, only not so straightforward. There’s also twangy music, nice cinematography, and all-around good acting, including a cameo by Max von Sydow as an undertaker.
Arrival arrives today in Toronto, check your local listings; is playing at the EU festival, now until the 24th. Tickets are free, but be sure to line up early to get a seat. Go to eutorontofilmfest.ca for showtimes. This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Rom not Com. Films Reviewed: Gloria, Tim’s Vermeer, For No Eyes Only
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, documentary, genre and mainstream films, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.
It’s Valentine’s Day. For some reason, romance in movies has been inexorably tied to comedy. You’re in love? It must be a joke. Well, today I’m forsaking the romcoms and the soppy romances. I want to talk about some unusual movies about love, sex, and obsession. A Chilean movie about a divorced woman’s search for love, an American doc about a man’s search for proof, and German flick about a kid’s search for secrets.
Gloria
Dir: Sebastien Lelio
Gloria (Paulina Garcia) is an average, middle-aged divorcee in downtown Santiago. Her life is stale, worn-out. She lives alone in an apartment, with just a noisy neighbour and a hideous, hairless cat intruding on her privacy. Her home life is depressing, her office job is stultifying. And her kids are adults now. But she’s not willing to give up. She’s still full of energy – she wants to enjoy life, sing songs, fall in love, be in a one-on-one relationship. And, well, she wants to get laid.
So she starts hanging out in discos that play seventies music. (The people there all look like they went to this club back when those songs were new.) She goes there to pick up men – much older men. Ideally, she wants a man who is honest, who respects and desires her.
After some misfires, she falls for Rodolfo, a very conservative, rich, elderly 
man. He takes her for a drive to show her his wealth, his power. At first their relationship seems solid… but can she trust him? He interrupts their lunches with extended calls on his cel. And he’ll drop everything to run home whenever his daughters say they need him (He’s divorced – he says — but he’s still responsible for his girls.)
She wants him to meet her family and friends. Will he commit? And will he fit in with her lifestyle? (Gloria’s a free-thinking Chilean, Rodolfo’s roots are with Pinochet’s right-wing military.)
Although this movie is told in an everyday manner, this is a fantastic, bittersweet look at one woman’s life. The actress, Paulina Garcia, completely embodies and embraces Gloria – flaws and all. She convey’s what she’s thinking; not through words, but in her eyes. The whole movie is told from her point of view, and she exposes everything – body and soul — for the camera. This is a fantastic movie, and Garcia’s performance is flawless and unforgettable.
Tim’s Vermeer
A Penn and Teller film; directed by Teller, narrated by Penn.
Tim Jenison is a tremendously successful Texan inventor of devices gadgets and software. Somehow, he became fascinated by the paintings of Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. How could they be so perfectly 
lit, so realistically focused, so uncannily lifelike? He embarks on a mission – an obsession really – to discover the mechanical basis behind Vermeer’s art. He is convinced that Vermeer used a camera obscura – a dark room that projects inverted light images against a wall – long before photography and electric light was discovered. To his theory he adds the element of dentist’s mirrors, little discs on sticks.
Next he sets out to prove it – by rebuilding an exact replica of all the things portrayed in one of Vermeer’s paintings! Why? He recreates the furniture, the windows, the musical 
instruments, everything… then sets up his camera obscura and dentist mirrors and begins to paint. Can he do it? Told by the team of magic debunkers Penn and Teller, this is a strange but fascinating story of a rich man who has the time and money to pursue his obsession. The strangest thing about his painting is the complete and total absence of any artistic feeling or aesthetic sense.
For No Eyes Only
Wri/Dir: Tali Barde
This is a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. In that movie, Jimmy Stewart is stuck in a wheelchair with a broken leg but – through his apartment’s rear window he can see into the windows of the apartment behind him. And he thinks he witnesses a crime.
In this movie, Sam (Benedict Sieverding) is a high school student in Germany.
He’s the star field hockey player but has a broken leg. He was mowed down by the new kid, a tall and intense guy named Aaron (directorTali Barde). Sam is sure Aaron is up to no good. With too much time at home, Sam discovers a hacking system that allows him access to his classmates’ computer cameras – his personal rear window. This gives him an inside view of all his friends’ bedrooms – everything they don’t want anyone else to see. Including Livia (Luisa Gross), his secret crush.
Luisa is mature confident and sophisticated, while Sam loses all his bravado and stumbles when talking to her. She takes the lead and invites herself to his home for some “computer lessons”. She’s figured out Sam’s been watching.
At first she’s angry, but, soon she’s joining in on his intramural spy-project. That’s when they notice something strange is going on with Aaron. Where’s his dad? Why does he hide a kitchen knife in his bedroom? What’s he carrying to the basement? Is 
there really a crime? Or is it just their overactive imaginations?
It’s a fun movie but with an after-school-special feel to it – it’s a little too cute for a thriller. But if you consider it was made for just a fistful of Euros (less than 4000) by a recent college grad… Incredible! Though made in 2012, with Snowden’s recent revelations about NSA spying on ordinary people, this film is even more relevant today.
Gloria opens today in Toronto and Tim’s Vermeer opens next week: check your local listings. For No Eyes Only is playing this weekend at the TIFF Next Wave festival. Go to tiff.net/. Also opening today is the fun Paraguayan thriller 7 Boxes, and the amazing courtroom documentary Pussy Riot: a Punk Prayer about the Moscow trial of Russian activists/musicians Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Daniel Garber talks to writer/director Eileen Thalenberg about her new doc BABIES: BORN TO BE GOOD
Hi, This is Daniel Garber at the Movies for Cultural Mining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
A baby’s mind is a tabula rasa, a blank slate waiting to learn what’s right and what’s wrong, what actions are good or bad… at least that’s what we thought.
But a new documentary called Babies: Born to be Good, (to be broadcast on CBC’s The Nature of Things on October 25, 2012), says that’s not necessarily so: humans are born with an innate sense of good and bad, fair play, honesty, and right and wrong, and it takes years of learned
behaviour to change these thoughts. Here to explain more about this interesting topic is writer/director Eileen Thalenberg.
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