Multiple stories. Films reviewed: The Debt, Wiener-Dog
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Although every movie is different, most tell a single story. But there are exceptions. This week I’m looking at two new movies that tell a whole bunch of stories, stories that are somehow tied. There’s a dark comedy with a dog-related plot, and a drama related to a plot of land.
The Debt
Dir: Barney Elliot
This movie is made up of three or four linked stories all set in Peru.
Oliver (Stephen Dorff) is a successful financier who works for a multinational bank. He specializes in vulture funds with debt bonds from distressed economies. His current goal? To corner the market in Peruvian real estate debt. He works with his idealistic Peruvian friend Ricardo (Alberto Ammann) to snap up debt at deep discount. But will Ricardo agree to business that might hurt his country?
Maria (Elsa Olivero) is a nurse at a Lima hospital. She’s trying to arrange an 
operation for her mother who suffers from painful rheumatoid arthritis. But no matter how hard she tries, she can’t get surgery scheduled for her mom. Will she have to resort to illegal methods?
Meanwhile in a remote mountainous area, a slick real estate developer named Caravedo (Carlos Bardem) is promising the sky to gullible farmers. Health clinics, electricity, telephones… They are quick to sell, except one die-hard farmer named Florentino (Amiel Cayo). He is angry and will never give in.
And on Florentino’s farm, his son, Diego (Marco Antonio Ramírez) is fascinated by the helicopters he sees. They carry wealthy investors from far away. But they also wreak havoc with his llamas, whom he depends on..
The Debt is a complex story, that brings the diverse plot together by the end. It’s done in the style of movies like Paul Haggis’s Crash – lots of interrelated characters who interact in unexpected ways. It deals with big issues – multinational economies, farmers driven from their land – but in a rather ponderous way. Lots of guilt, responsibility, betrayal, selfishness – things like that. Not my favourite type of movie, but it held my interest and I liked all the Peruvian actors.
Wiener-Dog
Wri/Dir: Todd Solondz
This movie also has four stories, but told in a linea way, and only peripherally connected. They are all set present day New York City and the suburbs and towns around it.
Remy (Keaton Nigel Cooke) is a young boy recovering from chemotherapy. He’s a survivor. His rich but uptight parents (Tracy Letts and Julie 
Delpy) They buy him a short haired dachshund at a puppy mill. But they don’t realize it will open a whole lot of hard-to answer questions. Like do dogs have feelings? What happens if they get sick? Why should she get spayed. — what if she wants to have kids? His mother is forced to concoct more and more outlandish stories to answer the boy’s questions.
In the second story the depressed and friendless Dawn 
Wiener (Greta Gerwig) meets her old teenage crush, the bully Brandon (Kieren Culkin). Brandon is passing through town and sees the girl he used to call Wiener Dog with her very own Wiener dog. On a whim, she agrees to join him on a mysterious road trip to Ohio. What’s in Ohio? She asks. Crystal meth. On the way they meet a band of mariachi hitchhikers and Brandon’s Down syndrome brother.
The third story is about Schmertz (Danny Devito) an over-the-hill scriptwriter with only a wiener dog to keep him company. He is forced to teach self-centred rich kids at a Manhattan film school. His students all write plotless scripts based on their gender-studies relevance not their stories. Where’s the What If? He always asks them. “You gotta have a what if.” But if he doesn’t come up with a what if for his life, he risks being fired.
In the final story, we see an angry depressed grandmother 
(Ellen Burstyne), cared for by another old woman. They never speak, except the occasional requests: Yvette — Kaopectate! Her new pet — wiener-dog of course – she names Cancer. It just seems appropriate. But she has to to come to terms with her own past and precarious future when a visiting granddaughter drops by.
I love Todd Solondz’s movies, even the ones that don’t quite work. They’re all fascinating, funny and deeply depressing. He
creates complex, reflexive stories often with repeated plotlines. The Wiener Family has also appeared in his first movie Welcome to the Dollhouse as well as Palindoromes, so if you follow his movies, it’s gratifying to see what happens to those characters. I love his painfully sad comedies, including this one. The acting is fantastic, especially Ellen Burstyn.
Wiener-dog is great.
The Debt and Wiener-dog 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
Boys will be boys. Films Reviewed: Weiner, Swiss Army Man
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Boys will be boys. By boys I mean men, and a lot of us behave like idiots, get caught, and then end up doing it all over again. Because boys will be boys. This week I’m looking at two American movies about guys being guys. There’s a documentary about a politician trying to revive his moribund career; and a comedy/drama about a guy trying to revive his expired buddy.
Weiner
Dir: Josh Kriegman, Elyse Steinberg
Anthony Weiner was a rising young politician representing part of Brooklyn in the US congress. He was a progressive Democrat, tried and true, and a popular politician – he even appeared as a guest on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show. He was outgoing, friendly, smart and funny. But he was 
forced to resign his seat following a so-called scandal. Basically, he did some sexting – sending sexual selfies by email – to a woman he met online, but never encountered in person. He flirted with a woman online, sent a picture, Weiner shows his wiener – there’s the entire scandal. But it was enough to bring him 
down.
So, a few years later he thinks, maybe I should try again. Maybe, I don’t want to live my life as a guy with a funny name that the punchline of a joke. Maybe the people have forgiven me, and they like what I’m saying. So he decides to run for Mayor of New York City – his hometown.
He travels around the five boroughs, he shakes hands, kisses babies, tries local food. He marches in parades. And he gives speeches 
everywhere – in person, on TV, on the radio. And his popularity grows. But then, remember those selfies, those sexts he sent? Turns out he sent more than one. Scandal!!
Weiner is a fantastic fly-on-the-wall documentary that follows the spectacle of an American political campaign. The cameras are allowed into his home, behind 
the scenes in his headquarters, his phone calls, everything. And you see his campaign crumble before your very eyes… it’s painful. Most of all for his wife, Huma Abedin. If you haven’t heard of her, she’s a smart, beautiful, high-powered political staffer for the Democratic party. She’s also Hillary Clinton’s top aid. And in this movie, she’s the long suffering wife of Anthony Weiner who causes her so much trouble. Great documentary.
Swiss Army Man
Dir: Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert
Hank (Paul Dano) lives the life of a beachcomber on a remote island in the Pacific. He camps out there, living on the flotsam and jetsam that washes up on shore. But he’s no happy camper: No luck with girls, his dad doesn’t like him, no friends. It’s not clear how he washed up on this beach, but, however he got here he’s clearly lonely, misunderstood and depressed. In fact the movie begins with him hanging himself. That is until something new washes up on shore. A person!
Well, a dead body, actually. Hank tries to revive him but he’s clearly just a fully-dressed corpse. But this is no ordinary dead man – this one is full of gas – he loudly farts into the sand. Using this expelled gas, Hank manages to climb on top of him, like a skidoo, and ride him across the ocean.
And when they touch land again, Hank decides to keep him around as a new friend. He calls him Manny (Daniel Radcliffe). Manny’s very useful. When it rains his body fills with water, and Hank can use him like a water fountain – punch him in the stomach and water shoots out his mouth.
But he’s not just a human “Swiss Army Knife”. After a few days, he begins to 
speak. Manny is a tabula rasa, like a newborn babe who knows nothing. It’s up to Hank to educate him about the birds and the bees, truth and lies, and the meaning of life. Finally, Hank has found a real friend. Someone he can share his deepest secrets with. Someone he can share his stale Cheetos with! And as Manny slowly comes back to life, the two of them decide it’s time to look for civilization and move back into the real world.
But is the real world ready for a talking corpse and an oddball loner?
Swiss Army Man is a weird movie. It’s a fantasy seen through the eyes of someone not quite right in the head. It has big stars but with a low-budget indie feel. It’s funny, stupid, weird, cute, quirky and actually sort of touching. I kinda liked it. On the surface it seems like a reboot of Cast Away, where Tom Hanks makes friends with a volleyball. But it’s not. This one doesn’t take itself nearly as seriously – that’s it’s best point.
Weiner and Swiss Army Man 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
Schocken and Scribner’s. Films reviewed: Vita Activa — The Spirit of Hannah Arendt, Genius
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Movies based on books are a dime a dozen: there’s a movie option for every bestseller. But what about movies about the books and writers themselves? This week I’m looking at movies set in the mid-20th century when books really were important. There’s a documentary about a philosopher who pulls her observations together; and a biopic about an editor who cuts lengthy manuscripts apart.
Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt
Dir: Ada Ushpiz
It’s 1963 in Jerusalem. Adolph Eichmann is on trial there as the primary architect of the mass murder perpetrated by Nazi Germany. Covering the trial for the New Yorker is Hanna Arendt noted German-Jewish philosopher. She observes the ultimate bland bureaucrat in a glass box who claims he has no hatred of the Jews he slaughtered and says he is not an ideologue. Arendt observes it all, and coins the term the Banality of Evil to describe it. This sets off a huge controversy. Critics accuse her of minimizing the enormity of Nazi crimes, humanizing the criminal and even partially blaming the victims.
How did she go from a girl from Hanover to a philosopher/journalist in
Jerusalem? The path was not direct. This documentary covers the history of her life, both academic and personal, and her philosophy and writings.
Arendt lived through what she wrote about. Born in Hanover, Arendt was raised by her mother. She studied at the University of Marburg under philospher Martin Heidegger (her sometime lover) just before the Nazis came to power in 1933. She was kicked out of school and suddenly found herself — an ordinary German — as part of a group denounced and dehumanized by government propaganda: the refugees who had fled war and revolution across Europe. What disheartened her 
most was to see German intellectuals (including Heidegger), the very people she revered and was devoting her life to study, incorporating Nazi rhetoric into their own writing and speeches.
She fled to Paris and continued her work. There she witnessed the rise of extremism and totalitarianism across Europe. Imprisoned in a concentration camp by the French, she escaped and made it to New York, where she wrote about totalitarianism, guilt and responsibility.
This film is a historical document that uses recorded interviews – in English, French and German — to explain her ideas and the events in her 
life. It’s illustrated by newsreel footage, government propaganda as well as film from the Eichmann trial. Her writing and letters are read by off-screen actors. And both her critics and supporters — including Karl Jaspers and Judith Butler — are given airtime.
This is a rich and beautiful look at the work and life of Hannah Arendt. It also deals with the debate on her philosophy and the controversies around her coverage of the Eichmann trial. I think this films does a better job than the dramas made about her life.
Genius
Dir: Michael Grandage
Max Perkins (Colin Firth) is a top editor at Scribners and sons, a major New York publisher of fiction. He’s known for championing an unknown writer. He picks up a messy pile of paper, cuts out the unnecessary parts and rewrites it Boom – instant bestseller. Max – known for the fedora he never takes off his head — is the invisible force behind F Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway. He’s the one who edited The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises.
When he’s not at work he’s commuting to the outer suburbs, a bastion of Anglo privilege and conservatism with his wife Louise (Laura Linney) and their five daughters.
But suddenly something upsets the apple cart. A manuscript 
arrives, courtesy of Broadway costume designer Aline Bernstein (Nicole Kidman). She’s married with children but champion an unknown writer whose work has been rejected across the industry. He reads it it and is blown away. And who appears his door but Thomas Wolfe (Jude Law), a youngish man with messy hair and a brown suit with a heavy southern drawl. He shouts and performs rather than converses. As soon as they meet, the older, bookish Max and the young undisciplined Tom become fast friends and devote all their time trying to convert 1000s of messy pages a pile into a coherent readable novel. Cut, cut, cut says Max. But this is my life! 
protests Tom. The book is published to phenomenal success. And then on to the next manuscript to the chagrine of their famileis and livers But will their bromance outlast Tom’s brush with fame?
Genius is an interesting film about writing and editing. That’s what I liked about it.
(Full disclosure: when I’m not reviewing movies I’m editing books – that’s my other job.) I love editing… but is it ever exciting? The movie is filled with writers typing and scribbling, and scribbling away passages with a red pencil. But what the movie really needs is a good edit! It’s filled with tons of speechifying and grandstanding (and dare I say overacting?) Do real writers, even famous ones, talk like they write? Of course not. But in this movie they do.
It’s done as a period piece, complete with beautiful interwar cityscapes, 
period costumes and cars, and a great cast. But somehow this movie manages to be both bookish and overwrought.
Spring festival season continues with ICFF, the Italian Contemporary Film Festival and the Toronto Japanese Film Festival, and NIFF, the Niagara Integrated Film Festival. Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt opens today in Toronto, check your local listings; Genius starts next week in Toronto and Vancouver.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber speaks with Kristin Archibald about I Love You Both
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Krystal and Donny (Kristin and Doug Archibald) are twenty-something twins. They are closer than close: they live together, share secret codes, and text each other whenever they’re apart. Sometimes they even crawl into the other’s bedroom for comfort. And they need it — with their dead-end jobs and horrible relationships.
But at a mutual birthday party a new face enters the picture. Andy (Lucas Neff) is the 
nicest guy either of them have ever met. And both straight Krystal and gay Donny are head-over-heels in love. But who’s the third wheel here? And which one does he love? The answer may surprise you.
I Love You Both is the name of a new first film, having its international premier at Toronto’s Inside-Out Festival. The award-winning movie explores bisexuality, kinship and twinship. It was made by a real-life brother and sister: Kristin and Doug Archibald.
I spoke with Kristin at CIUT in Toronto.
Human commodities. Films reviewed: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, I Promise you Anarchy, Burn Burn Burn
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM..
Do you ever feel like your body is just a list of things to be bought, sold or traded? This week I’m looking at movies about people forced to treat bodies as commodities. There are skate punks in Mexico trying to sell human blood, two women in the UK trying to scatter human ashes… and mutant turtles in Manhattan trying to live like human beings.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows
Dir: Dave Green
Donatello, Micheleangelo, Raphael and Leonardo – Donny, Mike, Raf and Leo for short – are giant CGI turtles who speak like California surfers from the 1980s. They live in Manhattan in a hidden laboratory with their friend April (Megan Fox) and their sensei, a giant rat. Their lair serves as home base in their relentless battle against crime and evil. And in their free time they jump around the city’s rooftops, catching basketball games and eating pizza. But always hidden from view: humans might 
mistake them for monsters or freaks. Now they are fighting an evil villain named Shredder who escaped from prison along with sidekicks Be Bop and Rock Steady. The bad guys plan to assemble an Arc Capacitor made from three parts hidden around the world. If they succeed they will enslave civilization. But not if the turtles can stop them.
I heard this movie was awful, worse than terrible, so I saw it with zero expectations. And you know what? I kinda liked it – simple story, good 3-D special effects, lots of explosions and chase scenes with people falling out of planes without parachutes. Cowabunga! On the negative side, the lines aren’t very clever and it’s hard to reconcile the fuzzy CGI models with the real live people standing beside them. The strangest thing: for a movie aimed at kids, it doesn’t have any young characters — not a single (non-turtle) actor younger than thirty in the entire film.
I Promise you Anarchy (Te prometo anarquía)
Wri/Dir: Julio Hernández Cordón
Miguel and Johnny (Diego Calva Hernández and Eduardo Eliseo Martinez) have been friends, almost brothers, since they were kids. Miguel is solidly middle class from the suburbs, while Johnny is downtown and not as rich. They travel around Mexico City on long boards with a group of pals. They skate free style, do tricks, read Thrasher, smoke a bit of grass, maybe slam some poetry. Johnny likes skating naked around deserted Jai Alai 
courts. And once everyone has gone home Miguel and Johnny retreat to a giant steel vat, for some afterhours groping. Johnny might have a girlfriend named Adri, but he’s chill with sexing it up with Miguel.
Their biggest wish is to build a huge skate park downtown, but that takes money. Miguel has found a way to earn quick cash: selling their blood to clinics. It’s organized by Gabriel, an actor at the Churubusco Studios, who pimps their blood to unknown destinations. With the promise of a huge peso payout, they’re asked to bring 50 donors to their favourite hangout. They round up everyone they know — all their friends, acquaintances, even casual strangers. 
But things go terribly wrong when sleazy criminals enter the picture. Can Miguel and Johnny stay together despite the chaos and mayhem?
I enjoyed this low-budget look at skaters in Mexico City. Good soundtrack, unusual locations. At times it feels almost like a documentary about life on the street – are they all actoirs or just people playing themselves?. The story doesn’t seem completely real, but that doesn’t matter. There are some amazing long takes of skaters just gliding through central plazas, in V formation… like migrating birds.
Burn Burn Burn
Dir: Chanya Button
Seph, Alex and Dan are the fast friends in London. Seph (Laura Carmichael) has flouncy blond hair and a clever mind, but is forced to work as nanny and personal assistant. She’s dating James, a well-meaning but douchey guy who is a financial trader in central London. Alex (Chloe Pirrie) has a stark haircut and a tightly-lipped mouth. She doesn’t like talking about herself. She’s in a long-term relationship with a woman. Dan, the third friend, (Jack Farthing) is the life of the party, given to practical jokes and staying up all night.
The three friends are back together again, at yet another party. 
This time it’s Dan’s wake. He died suddenly, age 29, struck down by cancer. He’s gone but not forgotten. And he leaves Alex and Seph with a final task: to scatter his ashes at four crucial places around the British Isles. At first, they brush off Dan’s wish. Then Seph loses her job and Alex — after OD-ing on scotch eggs, a uniquely British malady — catches her lover with another woman in flagrente delecto. They decide to pack it in and head for the road.
They drive through ancient ruins and natural landmarks in England, Wales and Scotland, carefully following Dan’s painstaking directions and explanations. He accompanies them with a video he made before he died. On the way they encounter a pagan wicker man festival, nightclubs from Dan’s childhood and a number of unexpected sites. And the two of them are forced to reveal hidden secrets and confront buried truths
I liked this one — it’s and quirky and funny road movie. The 
main characters are acerbic not smarmy. While the story may be formulaic, the odd people they meet on the way are fun and original: a bearded hippy, a neurotic tour guide, a runaway housewife, even Al’s own mum. With humour, nice scenery, food for thought, and even a few tears, Burn Burn Burn is a well-made grand tour.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles opens today in Toronto; check your local listings. Burn Burn Burn and I Promise You Anarchy are both playing at Toronto’s Inside Out LGBT Film Festival. 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 Do Not Resist director Craig Atkinson
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Enormous armoured vehicles ply the streets of small town New Hampshire? Police are training in military-style bootcamps? And helicopters are surveilling the movements of everyone on the streets? 
Sounds like something out of Robocop or Minority Report. But it’s all happening now. Homeland Security is intentionally giving military weapons to civilian police forces across the US. And they say, if you know what’s good for you, Do Not Resist.
Do Not Resist is also a new documentary about the deliberate militarization of US police forces by the 
federal government. It was directed by cinematographer and filmmaker Craig Atkinson and won Best Feature Documentary at the Tribeca film fest. It had its international premier at Hot Docs in Toronto and is playing again this weekend.
I spoke to Craig at CIUT.
He told me about SWAT teams, the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, BEARCATs, MRAPs, CSIS, DHS, NSA, DOD, Ferguson, excessive fines and fees, aerial surveillance, “civil forfeiture”… and more!
Life and Death. Movies reviewed: Oddball, I Saw the Light
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s spring film festival season in Toronto right now. There’s Cinefranco Special Quebec showing French language movies for free. Next week is the 29th annual Images festival, with galleries and movie theatres both 
presenting art on film. And Hot Docs, Toronto’s documentary festival is on later this month. But right now, starting today, is TIFF Kids, with movies from all over the 
world for kids age 3-13, including many free screenings.
This week I’m looking at movies about life and death. There’s a real-life drama about a dog trying to keep some animals alive, and a biopic about a country and western singer trying to drink himself to death.
Oddball
Dir: Stuart McDonald
Emily (Sarah Snook) is a conservationist from a small town in Australia. It’s a tourist village filled with locals dressed in historical outfits. Emily lives with her young daughter Olivia (Coco Jack Gillies) and her boyfriend, Bradley (Alan Tudyk) a tourism exec from New York. Her job? To keep alive a tiny flock of fairy penguins. These adorable little birds return each year to nest on a rocky island just offshore. It’s a wildlife preserve. But the penguins are threatened by an invasive, European species – foxes – that is knocking down their numbers. For the
island to remain a sanctuary, free of development, it has to have at least ten little penguins.
So they set up a watchman with a tranquilizer gun to stop the foxes, and build special boxes for the penguins to nest in. But still the numbers decrease. What can they do to save them?
Enter Olivia’s Grandpa (Shane Jacobson) and his dog Oddball. Swampy is a husky, bearded chicken farmer, given to frank talk and wild schemes. Oddball is a furry white dog who keeps the foxes out of Swampy’s chicken coops. Olivia adores her grandpa and his dog. Emily does too, but finds them a bit if a nuisance. Bradley can’t stand the dog. When Oddball runs rampant through the town, all hell breaks loose. He messes up an important event and upsets the apple cart. Literally. The town bigwigs are furious and banish Oddball to the farm 
forever.
But when Swampy notices how kind Oddball is to a penguin he saves, he and Olivia hatch a secret plan: Oddball becomes the official Penguin Guard on the rocky island. But they mustn’t let the bad guys who want to develop the island into a tourist trap – know what they’re doing. Can they save the penguins, outsmart the townfolk and preserve the sanctuary?
This is a cute movie based on a true story. It’s full of fair dinkum Aussie culture. And it avoids most of the pitfalls of kids movies: it’s not too violent or scary, no talking dogs, no princesses, nothing supernatural, and no commercial tie-ups. The only thing this movie is selling is conservationism.
I Saw the Light
Wri/Dir: Marc Abraham
It’s 1944, in Andalusia, Alabama. Hank and Audrey are young musicians madly in love. Audrey (Elizabeth Olsen) is pretty as a picture with her doe eyes and auburn hair. Hank Williams (Tom Hiddleston) is skinny and tall with jug ears. They’re getting married on the sly, with no wedding, no preacher, no guests. They hope to be famous someday, but for now they still live with Hank’s single mom, Lillie (Cherry Jones). She’s a classic stage mother chauffeuring her son to shows for 10 years now. 
Her Hank can do no wrong, but that Audrey – she could be trouble.
Hank and his band — guitar, bass, fiddle and steel — perform their hillbilly tunes on local radio each morning and at a bar at night. Some people like the sad songs he writes, but it doesn’t stop the hecklers and fighters from making his life miserable. One man nearly breaks his back in an unprovoked barroom brawl. So Hank shows up drunk as a skunk at most gigs. Alcohol eases his pain. His mom keeps him happily inebriated dropping bottles of hooch into his coat pockets, and Audrey doesn’t like it one bit. She thinks they’d be famous by now if he weren’t such a lush. And when he drops her from his radio show – her screechy voice is unpopular — things get dicey between them.
Though he’s a prolific songwriter, churning out hits by the dozen, he wants to be known as a performer. His ultimate goal? To join the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee.
I Saw the Light follows Hank Williams’ quick rise to fame, cut short by a heart attack at age 29. Based on a tell-all biography, the movie concentrates on his problems at home and his troubles at work. So we get to see his fights with his wife, his extramarital affairs, his alcoholism, his back pain and his 
addiction to painkillers. At work we’re privy to the back room deals of the country music industry, with his agent/manager Fred Rose (Bradley Whitford) as our guide and sometime narrator. The question is — why? His agent is boring. And his home life is depressing. It’s all very sordid and sad with hardly any good moments to relieve his relentless funk. I’m not saying the movie’s boring, just not fun to watch. We can ogle Hank’s hard times from afar, but we never get to see into his heart or share his passion.
The one redeeming factor is Hank Williams’ music. Something about his songs — both the sad tunes and the upbeat ones – always brings a tear to my eye.
I Saw the Light opens today in Toronto: check your local listings. And Oddball is the opening night movie for TIFF Kids. Go to tiff.net for details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
American Dream, French Nightmare. Films reviewed: The Big Short, Joy, French Blood
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s slow season for movies
right now, but you can catch some unusual ways of seeing films, from the tiny to vast. The 9th Annual 8-Fest shows handmade super 8 films at the SPK Polish Combatants Hall. The Cineplex Great Digital Film Festival is showing classic digital 
crowd-pleasers on the big screen across Canada, including David Bowie in Labyrinth. And online myfrenchfilmfestival.com is showing new French movies around the world until mid-February.
This week, I’m looking at two dramas about the American Dream, and one about the French Nightmare.
The Big Short
Dir: Adam McKay (based on the book by Michael Lewis)
It’s the first decade of the 21st century and Wall Street is booming. Brokers are investing big in the security and stability of derivatives based on subprime mortgages. (Subprime mortgages were a new invention that let you buy a house with no money down.) Funds that cannot fall issued by merchant banks too big to fail. But a tiny collection of investors see it for what it is: a bubble about to burst.
There’s Michael (Christian Bale) a barefoot genius out west known for his investment acumen. Slimy Jared (Ryan Gosling) heads an unusual section of a big firm. He interests the exceptionally abrasive Mark (Steve Carrel) and his gang. And at the same time, two kids in their early twenties who can’t break through the glass walls of Wall Street, somehow manage to catch the eye of Ben (Brad Pitt) a reclusive former investor. We all know what happens. Wall Street crashed leaving millions of people jobless and locked out of their homes.
The movie follows these separate groups as they bet big against Wall Street, and shows us who comes out on top by selling short. And it explains, if you care to listen, some of the arcane economics behind the whole mess, propped up by fraud, deceit and corruption. The Big Short is a fast-moving entertainingly camp and educational Bro Movie.
More on this one in a minute…
Joy
Dir: David O Russell
Joy (Jennifer Lawrence) is a woman who lives with a lovable but misbegotten family. Her bedridden mom (Virginia Madsen) watches TV all day. Joy’s ex-husband Tony (Edgar Ramirez) lives in her basement, and her loving grandma helps with the kids upstairs. And now her auto-repairman dad (Robert de Niro) is moving back home too. Joy once had high hopes for her future but her time is wasted in a 
dead-end job and taking care of her dysfunctional family.
One day inspiration hits. She decides to create and sell a new mop with a removable mop-head, made from a single long loop of string. But how to make it, market it and sell it? She decides to make them in a makeshift factory her dad’s garage, with funding from his girlfriend (Isabella Rosselini) a rich widow. And through a series of lucky accidents she gets a chance to offer it on a TV shopping network. But there are still lots of bumps in the road that might ruin all her plans. Joy is a cute and watchable movie about a woman – and all her quirky friends and family’s — attempt to make it big.
Joy and The Big Short — both nominated for Best Picture Oscar, and neither of which will win — are two sides of the same coin. Both are true stories with similar themes: ordinary people, with a 
bit of luck, and a lot of perseverance and hard work can make lots of money even in these tough economic times. Stay true to your ideas, no matter how unusual, no matter what other people say. … but you have to do it within the system.
Both movies are entertaining, fast-paced and fun, with huge casts and big stars. They take risks in their methods of storytelling. The Big Short breaks the third wall with characters turning directly to the camera to “tell the truth” that the movie leaves out. And Joy features a fascinating, behind-the-scenes look at a live TV set. Joy is told from a “woman’s point of view” (the home life of a mom who sells mops on TV), while The Big Short is basically an all-guy movie (men with invisible families making money at work on Wall Street). I like them both, but don’t expect to be overly challenged.
French Blood (Un Français)
Dir: Diastème
Marco, Braguette and Grand-Guy (Alban Lenoir, Samuel Jouy, and Paul Hamy) are three best friends living in a banlieu, the high rise ghettos ringing Paris. They are French skinheads, complete with Doc Martens, 
bomber jackets and neo-nazi tattoos. Hobbies include getting drunk, getting laid, and attacking strangers on the street, specifically gays, leftists and Arabs. They don’t seem to follow any strict ideology, but seem to really enjoy brawling, fighting and terrorizing immigrants. They soon join the National Front, France’s political party of the extreme right. But then their paths begin to diverge.
Braguette is shot and disabled by a leftwing activist. He quickly rises up in the ranks of the National Front. Grand-Guy is a loose cannon, given to excessive alcohol and drugs. His 
attacks on immigrants turn extreme, culminating in his horrifying torture of a random, middle-aged man. And Marco, after beating, almost to death, a rival skinhead, has a mental breakdown. An altruistic pharmacist takes him under his wing and helps him adjust to a life away from violence and racism. But these changes happen gradually, shown over decades, with the movie providing just a glimpse of their lives, once every five years. It’s up to the viewer to fill in the missing parts. And it culminates in an ultimate showdown between Marco and Braguette.
This is a very violent and disturbing — but fantastic — movie. It looks at the extreme 
right in contemporary France from the points of view of three white, working-class men. The acting is amazing, especially Lenoir, Hamy and Jouy. And it’s incredibly timely; after the terror attacks in Paris, the National Front came that close to winning the last election. I strongly recommend this movie.
The Big Short and Joy are both playing in Toronto, check your local listings; and you can watch French Blood online at myfrenchfilmfestival.com.
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 director Patrick Reed about his new documentary Guantanamo’s Child: Omar Khadr
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Omar Khadr was a Canadian kid born in Toronto into a controversial family. He was captured in a firefight in Afghanistan at a militant camp. A US soldier was killed and Omar, as the sole survivor, was blamed for his 
death. Labelled a terrorist, he was sent to a prison in Cuba at the American military base known as Guantanamo. He was the youngest inmate there and reached maturity as Guantanamo’s Child.
Guantanamo’s Child is also the name of a new 
documentary about Omar Khadr’s stay in that notorious prison. Partly based on Michelle Shephard’s book, the film chronicles his and his family’s lives from his early years in Toronto, his stay in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the decade spent in Guantanamo, and his status today back in Canada. The film premiered at TIFF15 and is now playing in Toronto as part of the Canada Top Ten Film Festival.
I spoke with the film’s award-winning co-director, Patrick Reed, in studio.
Non-Christmassy Christmas movies. Films reviewed: Son of Saul, The Hateful Eight
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Merry Christmas! You’re probably drinking a hot toddy or roasting chestnuts on an open fire somewhere. But this week I want to talk about movies opening today that don’t fit the usual Christmas mould. There’s an American western about eight people in a cabin in a blizzard who want to live to see the sun rise; and a Hungarian drama about a man in a Nazi concentration camp who wants to live to see his son buried.
Son of Saul
Dir: Laszlo Nemes
It’s 1944, WWII, inside the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Saul Auslander (Géza Röhrig) is a Hungarian-Jewish prisoner there. He is one of the SonderKommando, who are kept alive and given certain privileges because of their duties. The Sonderkommando handle the gristliest part of the death apparatus. They tell the newly-arrived prisoners to undress, ushers them into the tiled shower room and locks the doors. The showers are actually gas chambers — that’s where they kill them. Afterwards he unlocks the metal doors again and clears away the dead bodies to be burned. He does this over and over, never seeing the light of day. He is dead inside, just like the bodies he drags away.
At the same time, some of the prisoners are planning an elaborate scheme to photograph the mass murder
. Others are planning to escape, to show the photos to the outside world. Then something unusual happens. Cleaning up the gas chamber, he notices a young man, gasping for breath, but somehow still alive amidst all the dead bodies. It’s like a miracle. Then Saul looks at him: that’s my son.
The Nazi’s quickly put a stop this. They strangle the boy and send him to the morgue for an autopsy to determine “what went wrong”. But for Saul, his life suddenly has a purpose. He, a man with no religious upbringing and no family, now is determined to give the boy a proper burial amidst all the mass killing. It’s an impossible mission. He somehow has to rescue the body, wrap it in a shroud, hide him from the Nazis, find a place to bury him and a 
holy man, a rabbi, to say the proper prayers.
Son of Saul is an intensely moving, high- tension drama. It somehow captures – without comment — the chaos, mayhem and absurdity of a Nazi concentration camp, with its omnipresent death, pain and humiliation.
It’s shot with a handheld camera that follows him, non-stop as he walks around the camp. (Sonderkommandos wear a special uniform that lets them move around the camp.) The action never ceases, from start to finish, constantly on the move adding high stress to the unceasing horror of the film.
It also has an immediacy missing from most Holocaust movies (if there is such a genre). It feels like you are there, following his every step. Also unusual is powerful Christian images of the film, such as Saul holding his blameless son in his arms, like Michelangelo’s Pieta.
Son of Saul is an excellent, if harrowing, movie. And it has a good chance of winning the Oscar for best foreign language feature.
The Hateful Eight
Dir: Quentin Tarantino
Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) is a uniformed military officer walking on the Overland Trail in Wyoming after the US Civil War. He flags down a stage coach and asks for a ride before a blizzard hits. The reluctant passenger, John “the hangman” Ruth (played by a hefty Kurt Russell), doesn’t want anyone on board. He’s taking a woman wanted
for murder to be hanged in Red Rock, and collecting the 10,000 bucks. But he relents when he recognizes the Major – they met once before, and Ruth was impressed to see a black man carrying a handwritten letter from Abraham Lincoln himself. And, it turns out, there once was a very high bounty on the Major’s head. The prisoner is Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) a foul-mouthed murderess with a black eye. She is handcuffed to John Ruth who will only give her up to the to the Sheriff of Red Rock. Warren is also a bounty hunter and carries the bodies 
of outlaws he wants to give to sherriff. And who do they meet next? Why Chris Mannix (Walter Goggins) a notorious southern renegade from the war, who claims to be… the newly-appointed Sherriff of Red Rock! But can he – or any of them – be trusted? Or do they all just want to claim the reward or to free the prisoner.
The snow falls harder till they reach Minnie’s Haberdashery, an inn on the trail. Inside are four unfamiliar men: Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth) a fancy-talking English hangman, General Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern), a Kentucky Fried confederate racist; Joe Gage, a cow-puncher wearing suspiciously clean duds (Michael Madsen) and Mexican Bob (Demian Bichir), an unknown 
man who says he’s filling in for Minnie.
Each of the eight is filled with racist bile, hidden secrets, and countless skeletons in their respective closets. Which of them are the good guys and which are the bad guys. And will any of the hateful eight survive till morning?
I enjoyed this movie, though it’s not for everyone. It’s three hours long, and made in the old style, complete with an overture, an intermission, and a soundtrack by the king of spaghetti westerns, Ennio Moricone. And it’s 
being shown on 70mm film in Panavision. Super wide screen. And while technically a Western, the story is more like an Agatha Christie locked-room mystery: who can be trusted and who is a secret killer? The film gives what we expect from Tarantino: flawless recreations of the look and feel of old movies, extreme violence, and stretching the boundaries of what people will allow on the screen. All of the characters are amazing, especially Goggins as the Sherriff and Jennifer Jason Leigh as the foul mouthed woman. I never felt bored.
But it does leave me uncomfortable for a couple of reasons. For one, the only 
black and female characters are constantly called the B word and the N word. Second, for a western there are virtually no fist fights – lots of shooting but not much punching. The exception is Daisy. She starts out with a black eye, and from there, she gets punch in the face many times by many characters. (I guess that’s supposed to be funny or shocking.) But it made me wonder: why all the men beating up the woman? Still, if Tarantino movies are your thing, The Hateful Eight won’t disappoint.
The Hateful Eight and Son Of Saul 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
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