Daniel Garber talks with co-directors Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan about The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Corporations were once thought of as benign entities that employed workers, produced goods, sold them in the market place and paid taxes on their profits. But certain things have changed. CEOs now earn salaries a thousand times higher than some full-time employees.
Lobbyists pour huge donations to 
politicians to change the laws in their favour. Environmental catastrophe is green-washed by fossil fuel corporations. Indigenous lands are seized by big agro, mining and oil companies. Pharmaceutical corporations promote opiates which now kill more people than illegal drugs. And they don’t even pay taxes anymore. Meanwhile their power and wealth grows exponentially, eclipsing national governments and international organizations, privatizing public housing, schools, prisons and 
hospitals. Is there anything we can do to stop the psychopathic behavior of some of these New Corporations?
The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel is a new Canadian documentary, a follow-up to the smash hit doc The Corporation from 2003. It combines shocking stats with cool animation, news footage and 
new interviews with activists and intellectuals, from AOC to Robert Reich and Diane Ravitch – and the corporate CEOs themselves. The film is co-directed by award-winning documentary filmmaker Jennifer Abbott and UBC law professor Joel Bakan who wrote the original book. (They both worked on the first film as well.)
I spoke with Jennifer and Joel via ZOOM.
The New Corporation is having its world premier at TIFF, the Toronto International Film Festival, on Sunday, September 13th at 9 pm.
Daniel Garber talks with director Michelle Latimer about Trickster and The Inconvenient Indian
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Photos of Michelle Latimer by Jeff Harris.
Jarrod is a highschool kid in Kitimat BC. He works at a fast-food drive through and does double duty peddling the happy pills he makes in a cabin in the woods. His mom is a party animal who is shacked up with a tattooed pot dealer and his divorced dad’s girlfriend is preggers. He ends up acting the adult in his 
family. But when he reconnects with his best friend, and a new girl with purple hair moves in across the street, things seem to be looking up. That is until weird things start happening. He’s chased by his doppelganger at a party. A crow seems to talk to him. And a strange man comes to town to tell him he’s his actual father. Are these things real or just drug-induced halucinations? And can that strange man be believed, or is he just a trickster?
Trickster is a new, slow-burn TV drama starting this fall that combines ordinary lives 
with mystery and magic told within the cloak of indigenaity. It has its world premier at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, along with a documentary called The Inconvenient Indian. Inspired by Thomas King’s book, the doc exposes the erasure of history while celebrating a vibrant living culture. Both Trickster and The 
Inconvenient Indian are directed by the award-winning Michelle Latimer who is also known for documenting the Standing Rock protests at the Dakota 
Access pipeline in 2016. Michelle splits her time between Toronto and Treaty 9 territory.
The Inconvenient Indian will have its world premier at TIFF on September 12, 2020, with Trickster premiering on September 15.
I spoke with Michelle Latimer in person, in her Toronto home (two metres apart).
Torn from the Headlines. Films reviewed: Feels Good Man, Biohackers, Tenet
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This week I’m looking at three new movies torn from the headlines, dealing with pandemics, the rise of the alt right and international intelligence. There’s a student searching for genetic data, a spy looking for quantum physics clues, and a cartoonist forced to dissect his favourite frog.
Feels Good Man
Dir: Arthur Jones
It’s 2005, in the early days of social networks, and MySpace is king. Matt Furie is an indie cartoonist who draws Boy’s Club, a comic about four slackers (in animal form) in their twenties who share a house. One image he drew goes viral: it’s Pepe the Frog peeing in a toilet while standing up with his pants pulled down, saying, in explanation, “feels good, man”. Somehow it captures the mood of the time. It spreads to 4chan – a non-commercial, anonymous comment board started by a 14-year-old – where it’s adopted as a meme, and repeated endlessly online. Soon Pepe the Frog turns into Sad Pepe, Smug Pepe, Screaming Pepe – his images are everywhere. A decade later though it’s co-opted by the nascent Alt-Right: Pepe with a Donald Trump wig, Pepe on a neo-nazi flag. Meanwhile, Matt 
Furie, is still just a comicbook artist, not a superstar like his character. And his beloved pepe is toxic. It’s declared an official symbol of hate by ADL (The Anti-Defamation League). What can a small time cartoonist do?
Feels Good Man is a brilliant documentary that follows the rise and fall of an internet meme. It also touches on crypto currencies, Incels, “punch-a-nazi” Richard Spencer, Hillary Clinton, Fox News… basically everything important from the past 15 years is somehow related to Pepe the Frog. It’s narrated by the people involved – on myspace, 4chan and elsewhere – as well as Furie’s fight to reclaim his character using pro bono lawsuits. (Good luck with that – there are 160 million unique Pepe images floating around online.)
And the film also features beautiful psychedelic, animation of Pepe and his friends – total eye candy. Loved it.
Tenet
Dir: Christopher Nolan
An American special ops soldier (John David Washington) wakes up after taking a poison pill to find out he’s still alive. He was captured by the enemy after trying to stop Chechen terrorists in a Ukraine Opera House. Turns out the pill was a fake, a test to prove his loyalty. And now the CIA sends on a special mission spanning continents. His goal? They don’t say. But it involves seducing the wife (Elizabeth Debicki) of a Russian oligarch (Kenneth Branagh) using a forged painting in order to uncover a secret weapon. But first, he and his accomplice (Robert Pattinson) must break into an impregnable tower in Mumbai to uncover information held by an international arms dealer named Priya (Dimple Kapadia). But wait – there’s more. A lab-coated scientist tells him powerful forces of quantan physics are at work: as he movies forward, other people and things are moving backwards through time. While we are shooting bullets they 
catching the same bullets in their guns, as they progress to the past. And unless he completes his mission the whole world will cease to exist.
Tenet is an action thriller about a Black American 007 with a bit of sci-fi jibber-jabber thrown in to make it more interesting. It’s visually stunning, full of brutalist architecture, stark railway tracks and brilliant birds-eye shots of vast industrial wastelands like an Edward Burtynsky photograph. And the special effects are great too, with airplanes plowing into airport terminals, and ingenious fist fights between someone travelling forward in time and someone going backwards. On the other hand, the story is as pointless as it sexless, the characters are dull and opaque, and – despite claims to the contrary – is very old fashioned in its outlook. Men fight while women scheme. Anglo-American spies are the good guys, the world’s policemen, while Russians are the villains. The script is full of fake profundities – “we live in a twilight world” – the plot follows a formulaic uncovering of clues, although with the time/space continuum to keep you interested.
Is Tenet a good movie? No, not really, but after going seven months without a single big-budget new release, seeing this one in an actual theatre (with physical distancing, of course) left me totally satisfied.
Biohackers
Created by Christian Ditter
Mia Ackerland (Luna Wedler) is a young medical student at German University. She lives with three geeky housemates: Chen-Lu (Jing Xiang), a fast-talking science nerd into gene splicing, Ole (Sebastian Jakob Doppelbauer), a socially inept inventor looking for friends; and Lotta (Caro Cult), a rich student who likes sex, drugs and parties. Mia enrolls in a biology class taught by prize winning Prof Lorenz (Jessica Schwarz) and her T.A. Jasper (Adrian Julius Tillmann). She quickly distinguishes herself, starts dating Jasper, and works her wat into the professor’s elite lab. But when she’s asked to supply a DNA sample she panics. What is Mia hiding? What does she hope to discover? What are the professsor’s motives? And can Mia depend on her bio-hacker roommates to join her mission?
Biohackers is a six-part science-thriller TV show about a young student looking for the truth. There are frequent flashbacks to a 
young girl and her twin brother who died in hospital as a child, giving clues to Mia’s motivation. It starts with a teaser – a mass pandemic aboard a passenger train where everyone collapses with a strange virus… except Mia. Which makes it especially relevant during he COVID crisis. (And the rivalry between her and the professor is like Glenn Close and Rose Byrnn in the TV show Damages.) Biohackers makes for a great binge-watch during a quarantine.
Tenet is now playing in theatres across Canada, Biohackers is streaming on Netflix, and Feels Good Man opens today on VOD. This is Daniel Garber at the Movies each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Do opposites attract? Films reviewed: Tito, Uncle Peckerhead, My Days of Mercy
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Do opposites attract? This week I’m looking at three new indie movies about odd combinations. There’s an introvert confronting an aggressive frat boy; a law-and-order lawyer vs an activist opposed to capital punishment; and a punk band with a hillbilly roadie… who’s also a cannibal!
Tito
Wri/Dir: Grace Glowicki
Tito (Grace Glowicki) is a young guy who lives alone in an empty wooden house. He’s tall and gangly, dressed in black with heavy brow and sideburns, and straight hair tucked behind his ears. He always carries a red plastic whistle around his neck, to scare way the baddies. And they’re everywhere, banging at the doors, scratching at the windows or just roaring and howling inside his head. He’s 
very hungry – down to just pickle brine in the fridge – but he’s too scared to go outside.
Everything changes when he wakes up to find a strange man in his kitchen, cooking breakfast. Who is he? John (Ben Petrie) says he’s there to lend a hand and make a friend. Tito is petrified and repulsed by this invasion, but he joins him at the table. John is the yin to Tito’s yang. He’s a frat boy bro who gesticulates with grand gestures and talks and shouts non-stop; while the introverted Tito can barely choke out a syllable. But when he passes 
Tito a joint, the voices in his head turn to music, and he even lets John take him for a walk. Can Tito emerge from his shell? Can this odd couple become friends? Or will it lead to trouble?
Tito is a stylized and impressionistic character study, a look inside an introvert’s brain. Sort of a cross between acting, modern dance 
and pantomime. Petrie is great as John, the self-declared “pussy-hound”. He’s loud, manipulative and bursting with barely-controlled aggression. And Glowicki perfectly conveys a young man’s paranoia with a hunched-over walk, pulled inward and cringing at the slightest provocation. Tito isn’t your usual comedy, drama or art house film, but is fascinating and watchable nonetheless.
Uncle Peckerhead
Wri/Dir: Matthew John Lawrence
Judy (Chet Siegel) is a happy-go-lucky musician in her thirties whose dream is finally coming true. Her punk band – called Duh – is going on their first tour! They make a good trio: Mel (Ruby McCollister) on drums is a ginger-haired nihilist, Max (Jeff Riddle) on bass and vocals is a friendly chowderhead, bald and bearded; and Judy – skinny with long black-hair, who plays bass and lead vocals – keeps the group running. She has everything ready – demo tapes, T shirts, a full roster of music, and clubs booked to play it in. There’s only thing missing: money – barely two coins to rub together. They’ve already quit their day jobs
and they’re being kicked out of their apartment. But when their van gets repossessed, they’re really in trouble. How can they go on tour without wheels?
Luckily they meet a polite and friendly man with a van (David Littleton) who offers to be their roadie. He’ll drive and do the heavy lifting in exchange for meals and gas money. It’s a deal! And what’s his name? “My dad always called me Peckerhead, but you can call me Peck.” They’re all set… except for one problem. At midnight, Peck changes in strange ways, and a hidden evil beast emerges. And pretty soon they’re leaving a pile of half-eaten mutilated corpses 
wherever they go.
Uncle Peckerhead is a horror/comedy road movie, about the usual aspects a touring band faces – pretentious musicans, unscrupulous managers, adoring fans – combined with hilarious extreme violence and gore. It starts out quirky and funny, but gradually builds to an over-the-top, blood-drenched finish. Fun music, silly characters, unexpected situations and lots of splashing blood. Siegel is great as Judy and Littleton steals the show as the aw-shucks, cannibal yokel.
My Days of Mercy
Dir: Tali Shalom-Ezer (Princess)
Lucy (Ellen Page) is a woman in her twenties who lives in a small Ohio town with her older sister Martha (Amy Seimetz) and her little brother Ben (Charlie Shotwell). The three of them drive their camper across the country to protest capital punishment in front of prisons where an execution is about to take place. She’s part of a large community of protesters that regularly meet and comfort one other. At one such demo she shares a cigarette with a woman named Mercy (Kate Mara). The two are quite different – Mara is a well-dressed lawyer with neatly cut blond hair from Illinois, while Lucy is working class, in jeans and T-shirt – but something clicks. When the two meet again they become friends, and ther friendship leads to a relationship. Soon they’re meeting in motels, the RV or in Lucy’s 
home for passionate sex.
But something keeps them apart. Mercy’s father is a cop whose partner was killed. She’s at the demos to support the executions. While Lucy is there because her dad is on death row, blamed for the murder of her mom. She, Martha and Ben have spent the past six years devoting their lives to save him. Can Lucy and Mercy overcome the political and family divisions that keep them on opposing sides? Or is their romance doomed from the start?
My Days of Mercy is a great Romeo and Juliet (or Juliet and Juliet?) romantic drama, tender and moving, and starkly told. Each episode 
is set outside a different prison, punctuated by a still shot of a dying prisoner’s last meal. Their romance is erotic, the sex scenes tastefully done, though surprisingly vanilla (were Lucy and Mercy both raised by missionaries?) It’s beautifully shot in a realistically rendered working-class home and the insides of actual prisons. Ellen Page and Kate Mara are full of passion and pathos as the star-crossed lovers, their story skillfully told. It’s a real tear-jerker – I cried at least twice – both for the couple and the horrors of executions. I recommend this one.
Tito and Uncle Peckerhead are now playing digitally and VOD and My Days of Mercy starts today.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Crises. Films reviewed: Band Ladies, Cane Fire, Castle in the Ground
(Audio: no music)
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com.
I’m recording from my home, once again, looking for ways to entertain you all while movie theatres are out of the picture. So this week I’m looking at three new films, a documentary, a web series, and a dark Canadian drama. There’s a filmmaker discovering Hawai’i’s past; a group of women dealing with a collective midlife crisis; and a mother and son facing the opioid crisis.
Band Ladies
Dir: Molly Flood
Five bored, middle-aged women meet at a local bar to discuss Victorian romances for their regular book club. There’s Marnie (Kate Fenton), a stay-at- home mom with a lackluster life; Chloe (Lisa Michelle Cornelius) a careerist lawyer troubled by her Big Pharma employer; Cindy (Vicki Kim) an aspiring musician / bartender; Penny (Dana Puddicombe) a rich celeb who could pass as a Dragons Den panelist; and Stephanie (Kirstin Rasmussen) a drunk dead-ender recenty dumped by her longtime girlfriend.
But when their inhibitions are loosened by a few bottles of plonk, Chloe storms the stage to tell her secret truth: her bosses peddle opiods to children! Someone captures her rant on their phone and posts it online, and boom! the clip goes viral. But what can they do with their 15 minutes of fame? Why, form a band, of course. What kind? Punk. But can five 
middle-aged women shake up their lives and transform themselves overnight into an 80s style punk band? Or is this just a pipe dream?
Band Ladies is a fast-moving, cute and clever web series. It zooms through the five characters’ lives in six quick, 10-minute episodes, a crash course on the dos and don’ts of starting a band. The actors write their own characters’ lyrics and perform the songs on their first “tour” – as the opening act at a Parry Sound bar. It’s sharp, witty and empathetic – and the whole series is over in an hour.
I like this web series.
Cane Fire
Dir: Anthony Banua-Simon
Beautiful Kaua’i: a tropical paradise where happy Hawaiians harvest sugar cane and pineapples on plantations; where luxury hotels preserve ancient ceremonies by lighting torches each night; and the setting of hundreds of Hollywood features 
shot there. But is that the whole truth? The locals tell a very different story.
This new feature documentary pulls the veil off the island’s past and retells its story through its own people’s eyes. When the US toppled its government and colonized the islands Kaua’i was taken over by five families who controlled most of the land. Hawaiians – and workers imported from places like China, Japan and the Philippines – were kept down by the sugar and 
pineapple plantation owners. Unions were busted, and organizers fired, demoted or sent away. Luxury hotels were built on sacred burial grounds and their culture co-opted or invented by settlers to attract tourists. Stars like Elvis and John Wayne were featured in movies shot there while locals were background decorations. And now locals are further marginalized by the ultra-rich people like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg – buying huge tracts of 
land for their own personal use.
Cane Fire is partly a personal travelogue – the filmmaker goes to Kaua’i to find out about his great grandfather – partly a look at Hollywood’s sanitized depiction of the place; and partly a chance for the people’s own stories to be told. This includes local activists reclaiming the ruins of the once famous Koko Palms hotel built on sacred lands. The title Cane Fire comes from a movie of the same name about local unrest on the island. That movie is now lost, but the documentary fills in the blanks normally missing in depictions of Hawai’i.
Cane Fire is an excellent film.
Castle in the Ground
Wri/Dir: Joey Klein
It’s a cold, dark day in Sudbury, Ontario. Henry (Alex Wolff) is a good son, taking time off from school to take care of his dying mom (Neve Campbell). He feeds her crushed prescription pills each day to help ease her pain. But noise from across the hall – she lives in a rundown tenement – keeps bothering her. So Henry bangs on the door to investigate. There he meets Ana (Imogen Poots) – a sketchy woman with hollow eyes – and some of her unsavoury friends. She’s a cunning addict on the methadone wagon, jonesing for her next fix. And her dealer (a kid she calls Polo Boy (Keir Gilchrist) for his designer tracksuits) says she stole his bag of pills, and the scary guys are asking for it back. Ever the gallant one, Henry steps in to protect her, but soon is drawn 
into her hellish universe of guns, crime and opioids. Can he emerge unscathed with only a hammer as a weapon? And what about those close to him?
Castle in the Ground has a lot of things I avoid in movies – I find movies all about people slowly dying or struggling with addiction, more depressing than interesting. Luckily, this movie, while dealing with these very real phenomena, manages to avoid the moralistic tone that usually smothers stories like this. Instead it jacks up the thriller aspects – drug 
dealers wearing creepy baby masks, car chases, and narrow escapes from dimly-lit drug parties – couched in a constant, surreal haze. Yes, it’s bleak, but the bleakness is mollified by aburdist humour, fascinating details, and stunning night photography, lit with the glare of headlights and the acid glow of neon. And when actors like Imogen Poots and Alex Wolff put their all into a movie like this, it’s worth paying attention.
Band Ladies is streaming now on Highball.tv; Castle in the Ground opens today on VOD; and Cane Fire is having its world premier at this year’s Hot Docs.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Climb every mountain. Films reviewed: Abominable, Monos
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
The majesty and beauty of mountains makes some people stare in awe, while others see it as a personal goal – something to climb, claim or conquer. This week I’m looking at two new movies about mountains. There’s a group of kids in China on their way to a mountain as they protect a mythical beast; and a group of kids in Colombia holding a hostage on top of a mountain as they fight an inner beast.
Abominable
Dir: Jill Culton, Todd Wilderman
Yi is a teen who lives with her mom and her grandmother Nai-Nai in a downtown Shanghai apartment. She’s saving the money from three parttime jobs to travel across China in the path of her late father, a musician. But her life is turned upside down when an enormous furry creature appeared on 
her roof. He has white hair, a huge mouth and pale blue eyes that stare longingly at a nearby billboard advertising Mount Everest. It’s his home, and he wants to go back.
Standing in his path are Mr Burnish a billionaire CEO, and a zoological scientist named Zara. Everest is a Yeti, the legendary Tibetan creature, never captured until Beamish enterprizes nabbed him. They want their specimen back, dead or alive. But Yi has 
other plans. Along with her two neighbours – the selfie-obsessed Jin and the basketball dribbler Peng – they set out on a journey across China. Can they save Everest and bring him back to his homeleand? Or will they all end up captives in a corporate lab in Shanghai?
Abominable is a fun and exciting animated movie for little kids. It’s full of cultural references, from the 
classic Ming Dynasty novel Journey to the West (西遊記), to the classic ’80s film ET: Yi lures the creature with a trail of steamed dumplings instead of Reece’s Pieces, and the alien creature is “Yeti” not “E.T.”. But it’s also fun and original in its own right, with exciting magic, humour, action and the sentimental bits you 
need to make it worthwhile. I saw it with an audience of small children and they loved most of it, but were frightened when it looked like the heroes were going to die (Spoiler Alert: they don’t die… ’cause it’s a kids movie!)
Voices include Chloe Bennet (Crazy Rich Asians) as Yi, and Tenzing Norgay Trainor as Jin. Fun fact: if the name sounds familiar it’s because he’s the grandson of Tenzing Norgay, the Nepali-Tibetan Sherpa who climbed Mt Everest with Edmond Hillary.
Abominable is fun movie for kids that grown ups can enjoy too.
Monos
Dir: Alejandro Landes
On a mountaintop somewhere in Colombia a multi-ethnic, multi-gendered group of “monos” – cool, cute teenagers – are fooling around. They’re stylin’ with hip hairstyles and military outfits. They play games like blindfolded soccer, where you kick a ball with bells attached, into a net that makes noise. Or one-on-one wrestling matches, combining martial arts, modern dance and Capoeira. Everyone has a nickname reflecting something about them: Smurf 
is young and cute, Lady is pretty, Rambo’s a fighter, Swede is light-skinned, Lobo is wolflike… plus Dog, Bigfoot, and Boom Boom. Some even pair off as couples.
Their only contact with the outside world is a staticky two-way radio and a diminutive, muscular man who visits them every so often. He’s from The Organization, a cryptic paramilitary group fighting the government. Their assignment is to 
guard an American woman they call Doctora. The girls braid her hair and the boys invite her to play in their games. The problem is she’s a hostage of The Organization, and a potential source of power and money. So when things go wrong, the monos take 
sides and start fighting each other. And when the enemy bombards them with missiles. things turn into a co-ed Lord Of The Flies. Can they stick together in peace and harmony? Or will 
outside pressure, internal divisions, and harsh military culture lead to harm and even death?
Monos is an aesthetically beautiful look at a period of violence and death in Colombia. The ensemble cast play it as part melodrama, part dance performance, plotted against breathtakingly lush scenery. From sexualized wrestling, to scenes of struggle filmed underwater, to an exquisite pantomime of soldiers walking in the jungle covered in different colours of mud, this highly-stylized movie is as pretty as a Vogue fashion spread, but just realistic enough that you care about the kids and their fate.
Good movie.
Monos starts today at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, and Abominable also opens 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.
Deep. Films reviewed: Destroyer, Hale County, This Morning, This Evening, Ratcatcher
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Tired of fantasy? How about some gritty realism? This week I’m looking at three deep, realistic movies — a documentary, a drama and a thriller — about working class characters living their lives. There are African Americans in the deep south, an LA detective in deep cover, and a young man in Glasgow knee-deep in trash.
Destroyer
Dir: Karyn Kusama
Erin Bell (Nicole Kidman) used to be a young, pretty and ambitious uniformed cop in LA. Pulled from her division for an undercover operation, she was meant to infiltrate a notorious and deadly ring of bank robbers. She posed as a couple with Chris (Sebastian Stan) another cop which led to a relationship. And she made friends with the robbery team, including the sinister Silas (Toby 
Kebell) a long-haired man with a cruel streak a mile wide; and the friendly Petra (Tatiana Maslany).
But things didn’t go as planned. People died, and the thieves got away with bags of loot. Look at her now. She’s a burnt-out husk of her former self. Bell doesn’t walk, she staggers. Her lips are wrinkled, her hair looks like it was cut with garden shears and she talks like Jeff Bridges on a bad day. But when she finds evidence the robbers are at it again, she takes the law into her own hands. Will she stop the killers? Or will they destroy her first?
Destroyer is a fantastic crime thriller about an angry worn out cop on her quest for retribution. It keeps you glued to the screen, heart racing, as you try to figure out what’s going on. It’s told during three time periods, jumping back and forth between 
them, and as you watch it you constantly have to change your assumptions. No spoilers but there are some big shocks along the way. It’s very violent, though from a female point of view: men punching women, women strangling women, women attacking men. Not for the faint of heart. Nicole Kidman totally transforms herself – physically and emotionally – from the naive young woman into the hardboiled cop she ends up as.
Destroyer is a great LA crime thriller.
Hale County, This Morning, This Evening
Dir: RaMell Ross
Hale County, Alabama is in the deep, deep south. You can still find white-pillared mansions built on the backs of slave labour on cotton plantations. It’s named after a Confederate officer whose statue still stands. It’s also where the Rev Dr Martin 
Luther King Jr once sought refuge from the KKK. It’s a rural, mainly black area where people stay on with their daily lives: sports tournaments, childbirth, funerals. There’s a catfish factory, a school, a hospital and churches.
This fascinating documentary is a series of beautifully composed, very short – from five seconds to three minutes – 
and highly personal scenes. A woman tapping her thigh with a flyswatter, a man playing blues on an electric guitar. A baby learning to walk, fritters frying in a pan, kids drinking coca cola. We see teenaged boys talking in the basketball locker room, families baptized at a church, people hanging at 
a beauty salon or a bowling alley. Rolling clouds with electrical storms, the first drops of rain on the pavement, a deer caught in the headlights, and a solar eclipse. The filmmaker RaMell Ross who started photographing there when he moved to the town, records what’s going on all around him in an impressionistic collage of portraits, time lapse, and tableaux: a joyous celebration of African American life in rural Alabama.
This beautiful film is on the Oscar shortlist for Best Documentary Feature.
Ratcatcher (1999)
Wri/Dir Lynne Ramsay
It’s 1973 in Glasgow, Scotland. James (William Eadie) is a gawky lad with ears that stick out who lives with his working- class family in a crumbling flat. His father (Tommy Flanagan) has a scar on his cheek from a fight, his mother (Mandy Matthews) has holes in her nylons. The yard outside is piled high with trash – the garbagemen are on strike – so the mice and rats are having a ball. James lives his life carefully, 
avoiding dangerous gangs of teenaged bullies who dominate the streets.
He sometimes visits a stagnant canal nearby, badly in need of a dredging. There he meets a much older and sexually active teenaged girl. The bullies have thrown her glasses in the water, but James doesn’t fish them 
out – perhaps he thinks he has a better chance if she can’t see him clearly? She seduces him, inviting him to spend the night. But the canal also brings him horrible feelings of guilt: a friend of his drowned there when they were fighting in the water.
One day, James jumps onto a bus and takes it to the end of the line where a new housing development is being built. It’s 
on the edge of the city, right where oatfields meet the streets. He explores the empty construction site – will this be his new home?
Ratcatcher is a slice-of-life, coming-of-age drama about life in an urban slum as seen through the eyes of a young man. The characters are mainly played by local residents, non-professional actors who bring a gritty realism to their roles. This is Lynne Ramsay’s first film (from 1999) and one I’ve always wanted to see, but never had a chance until now. You should, too. It’s a realistic and touching movie about hard times… but with an uplifting finish.
Destroyer is now playing in Toronto, Hale County, This Morning, This Evening opens tomorrow, and Rat Catcher plays next Thursday as part of the 1999 Millenial Movies program playing this month (until Feb 12) at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Dreams and Memories. Films reviewed: An American Dream, The Sense of an Ending
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Spring film festival season continues in Toronto with the Canadian Film Fest. This annual event showcases new indie features along with short films before each movie. Films range from horror to comedies to dramatic thrillers, but they’re all made by Canadians. There’s even a Rob Ford movie.
This week I’m looking at movies about memories and dreams. There’s a British look at a forgotten past, and a Canadian take on the American dream.
An American Dream: The Education of William Bowman
Wri/Dir: Ken Finkleman
William (Jake Croker) is a corn-fed high school football player whose NFL dreams are shattered with an untimely tackle. So he sets out to make it on just his moxie and good looks. He bounces from Wall Street to skid row, from porn actor to bible thumper in a matter of days. And the omnipresent cameras, reality shows, and fake news networks turn William into a national hero. This is an outsiders’ view of America as a land of God, guns, and puritans obsessed with pervy sex. There’s government surveillance and a culture of fear that’s all but drowned out by a steady stream of celebrity adulation. That’s the American Dream covered by this picaresque, dark comedy.
It’s by Ken Finkleman, known for his screenplays and CBC comedies. This one is a lot of fun.
The Sense of an Ending
Dir: Ritesh Batra (Based on the novel by Julian Barnes)
Tony (Jim Broadbent) is a divorced, retired Englishman whose adult daughter Susie is pregnant. He and his divorced wife, a lawyer, take turns going to pregnancy classes with Susie. And he spends his time running a tiny, vintage camera shop. But his dull, eventless life is shaken up by an unexpected letter. In university, he fell for Veronica, an aloof and pretty woman. He spent a crucial weekend at her home, where he met her sexually vivacious mother Sarah, her ineffectual father and her Cambridge-educated brother. The letter he receives is a legal document — Veronica’s 
mother Sarah is dead, and he’s mentioned in her will. She left him the diaries of Tony’s best friend Adrian Finn who died many years ago. This brings back a flood of memories of his youth.
Adrian once remarked that history is written by the victors of wars, and we can never know the thoughts of a dead man, one who chose his own ending, unless we are inside his head. So he is determined to read 
Adrian’s diary. But he’s blocked from doing so by Veronica (Charlotte Rampling) who hands him a letter he wrote instead of Adrian’s diary.
You see, when they were all students Tony discovered that his best friend had an affair with his first crush. And faced with such a cruel act of betrayal he wrote a spiteful letter to Adrian cursing him and Veronica and any children they might have. To hell with them all. And now, he is haunted by those words.
So to clear his conscience, and to find out the truth, he starts following Veronica around and enquiring about her family and her past. But the truth he finds is way beyond what 
he ever expected.
The Sense of an Ending is a fantastic retelling of Julian Barnes’s Booker Prize-winning novel. It’s told through Tony’s recollections, as he relives his lost past with the revelations of these letters. And as his perceived memories change with each shocking revelation, we see the old Tony superimposed in his memories of his younger self. I love Julian Barnes’s novels, and it turns out I read this one years ago, but 
the movie version was different enough that it didn’t spoil the story. This is a surprisingly moving film told in a gently shocking way. And the acting is fantastic – not just Broadbent and Rampling, but the entire cast. Great movie.
The Sense of an Ending starts today in Toronto; check your local listings. An American Dream is the opening night film at the Canadian Film Fest. For tickets go to canfilmfest.ca. This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Crafty Women. Films reviewed: Hevn, Love & Friendship, The Intervention
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
In movies, tricksters or con artists are usually played by men. But this week I’m going to talk about movies where women are the sneaky ones. There’s a scheming widow in England’s stately mansions, a mysterious visitor to Norway’s wild west… and a couples’ reunion in the deep south.
Love & Friendship
Dir: Whit Stillman, Based on the novella Lady Susan by Jane Austen
Lady Susan (Kate Beckinsale) is a ravishing woman in 19th Century England. She has beautiful auburn curls and a plunging neckline. She’s also very intelligent – she could charm the cufflinks off a shirtsleeve. Men are like putty in her hands. She’s also morally lax. Marriage is a contract for the hoi polloi – for the priveged it should be thought of as a stepping stone. Lady Susan loves her landed gentry lifestyle, but after the death of her husband Vernon, she has no land, no home… and no income. Luckily she still has 
ample friends and in-laws with money to burn. But when word of her extramarital dalliances reaches the wife of her host, she is forced to flee and come up with a new plan. She sends her grieving daughter Frederica (Morfydd Clark) off to boarding school and starts the gears aturning.
In addition to her secret bedmate, Lady Susan is being wooed by two men. One is Sir James (Tom Bennett), a rich landowner who smiles a lot and is dumb as a post. The other is young and handsome Reginald DeCourcy (Xavier Samuel) in whose home 
she is now a guest. He has been warned about her wily ways and is initially resistant to her friendship. But he learns to love her witty repartee and complex verbal jousting. Though she never says so, Lady Susan hopes to marry him and secure her — and her daughter’s — financial status. But her plans start to crumble.
Frederica is kicked out of boarding school because Lady Susan never paid tuition. Lady Lucy Manwaring suspects adultery involving her husband and tries to expose it. And her best friend 
Alicia (Chloe Sevigny) can help her with her schemes in London but only if her much older husband (Stephen Fry) is kept out of the loop. Can Lady Susan win her man, restore her status, keep her secret lover and get the money she wants and needs?
Love & Friendship is a Jane Austen novel re-imagined as a wonderfully witty screwball comedy. Director Whit Stillman took the unfinished story and added his own touches. He introduces each character – and there are many — with their names and brief descriptions appearing on the screen. The acting is good across the board, the costumes, music and settings (shot near Dublin) are all delightful. I liked this one a lot.
Hevn
Dir: Kjersti Steinsbø
Andrea (Siren Jørgensen) is a soft-spoken travel writer with a short boyish haircut. She arrives in a small town in western Norway in the middle of the night, unannounced. Why is she there? She works for a famous travel magazine and wants to interview Morten (Frode Winther) the local hotelier. So the scruffy bartender, Bimbo (Anders Baasmo Christiansen) promises to introduce her to him in the morning.
This is a small town where everyone knows everyone else. And it’s a beauty. Rows of wooden houses line one side of a
pristine green fjord, and stark mountains dominate the other side. And Morten’s white hotel overlooks it all.
The next day the blond and athletic Morten welcomes Andrea and offers her a suite in the empty hotel. And his wife Nina, noticing Andrea came without a suitcase, offers her 
open access to all her clothes.
Andrea is clearly uncomfortable with all the nice things being offered. So uncomfortable that she runs to the bathroom to puke. She hasn’t told them why she’s really there. She’s not a travel writer, her real name is Rebekka, and she’s there to get revenge… through entrapment.
She visited the town with her much younger sister when she was just a teenager. And Morten did something then that led to her sister’s suicide. She wants him to suffer for what he 
did… but did he actually do it? Is he still assaulting young women? And will she be discovered before she carries out her goal?
The movie is called Hevn (means revenge in Norwegian) but this is no Valhalla; its a festering pit of deceit and treachery. ‘s a not-bad psychological thriller. The Nordic scenery is breathtaking and the cast is attractive, but the story is not that gripping. We can understand Andrea’s struggle and feel her passion and fear, but we never learn anything about her backstory. It’s as if she lives only for revenge for her sister’s suicide. The film wavers between Big Issue and psychological thriller, without ever deciding which one it wants to be. This movie is OK, but not great.
The Intervention
Dir: Clea DuVall
Four couples, old friends all, are having a reunion. They meet up in a huge house amidst the Spanish moss of a Carolina plantation. It’s a surprise party of sorts. The surprise is they’re there not to celebrate but to break up a marriage. Ruby and Peter (Cobie Smulders and Vincent Piazza) have careers and kids. But their friends all think it’s a sham – they don’t love each other anymore so why are they still together. So Jessie (Ruby’s sister) and Annie another friend plan to hold a secret intervention to tell that couple to face the music. But look who’s talking! Annie (Melanie Lynskey) is a heavy drinker and refuses to commit to her fiancé. Jessie (Clea DuVall) is in a longterm relationship with her girlfriend but they have yet to move intogether, still don’t live together. And the newly single Jack arrives with another surprise: Lola (Alia Shawkat), a 22 year old loose cannon he picked up at a music festival. Lola is openly bisexual, and ready to jump into bed with anyone who strikes her fancy. Will the intervention succeed or fail? And will any of the couples survive this fraught-filled get-together?
The Intervention is a light and likeable relationship dramedy. By light I mean there’s nothing remarkable about the story. It succeeds on the strength of the excellent comic acting of three women: DuVall, Shawkatt and most of all Lynskey.
Hevn and Love & Friendship both open today: check your local listings. The Intervention — which will be released later this summer — is premiering at Toronto’s Inside-Out LGBT film fest. The festival is on now and for the next 10 days. Go to: insideout.ca for showtimes.
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 Angry Inuk director Alethea Arnaquq-Baril at Hot Docs
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Photos by Jeff Harris.
We’ve all seen the photos: a white-furred harp seal pup looking up at the camera with tears in its eyes, almost saying won’t you please save me from those evil, greedy hunters who want to skin me 
alive just for my fur? Images like these have been seen worldwide and raised millions of dollars for animal rights and environmental groups, from Greenpeace to IFAW.
What is wrong with that picture? A lot, say Inuit activists, and it’s making them angry.
Angry Inuk is a new documentary from the NFB, that’s having its world premier at Hot Doc’s documentary festival. It looks at the role of the seal hunt in Inuit culture, and the terrible consequences the well-meaning EU ban on seal products has had on Inuit lives. It also follows a group of Inuit people trying to change minds. Their stories — and her own — are told by filmmaker Alethea Arnaquq-Baril.
I spoke to Alethea at CIUT during Hot Docs.
culturalmining.com 
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