Low Budget. Movies reviewed: Mourning Has Broken, 12 0’Clock Boys. PLUS the Great Digital and Super 8 Film Fests
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.
You may have noticed: not everyone’s rich. A recent report estimated the world’s richest 85 people have more money than the poorest 3.5 billion people. That’s not even the 1%; just 85 people own as much as half the people in the world. After news like that, it doesn’t seem right to promote some $300 million Hollywood blockbuster. This week I’m looking at low-budget movies, cheap places to see them, and films about the have-nots.
Despite all the Cassandra-like predictions, Toronto still has rep cinemas. Places like the Royal, the Revue, the Fox, Bloor Hotdocs, and Big Picture Cinema let you see an always-changing selection of art films, indies, retro, second-run and cult movies, at a reasonable price.
But there are other screens too. At one end, there’s the Great Digital Film 
Fest showing at Cineplex beginning next week. No rom-coms, but superheroes like Batman from the 80s, rare science fiction pics like Logan’s Run and Japanese anime like Akira.
Just 6 bucks a pop.
At the other end of the spectrum, there’s the Super 8 festival this weekend showing the best of Toronto’s art and indie cinema. Go to the8fest.com for details.
This week, I’m looking at a Canadian comedy/drama about a misanthrope doing errands; and a US documentary about a kid who wants to join a particular type of gang.
Mourning has Broken
Dir: Brett and Jason Butler
A neurotic, troubled man (Robert Nolan) leads a normal life in a Toronto suburb. He lives with his wife and his cat, Mignon. On this special day he has a list of errands to run: wash his car, return his wife’s dress, buy a red velvet cake – simple things like that. He has to do them all that day… or else. So he kisses his wife lying motionless in bed (she’s either asleep, ill, or dead) and sets off. But easier said than done.
He can’t stand small talk and is deeply irritated by almost everyone he sees. And in this movie, he meets an unusual selection of bottom-feeders, douches, nosy neighbours, nasty women, eye-rolling cashiers, know-it-all mechanics, and pushy salesmen. And like Peter Finch in Network, Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver or Michael Douglas in Falling Down, here’s another middle aged, middleclass guy on the brink.
We get to hear his internal stream-of-conscious, his muttered rants, and his 
occasional outbursts. Respect the big screen! he shouts in a movie theatre where people are talking and texting during a film. He stampedes a dad bullying his chubby son. And he goes to a sporting goods store to buy a bat. Uh-oh… looks like Ford Nation is out for revenge.
What’s so special about this day? Who’s the bat for? And what’s he bringing home to his wife?
Mourning Has Broken is very much a one-man show, and character actor Nolan generally carries it off, with the help of dozens of funny (or not-so-funny) side characters. The pace is a bit odd, with him going crazy one scene then back to muttering again the next. (He ends up losing it all and recovering more than once.)
What’s remarkable about this simple story? This feature dramady was made last year for 1000 bucks as part of Ingrid Veninger’s 1K Wave Feature Film initiative. That, friends, is very impressive.
12 0’Clock Boys
Dir: Lotfy Nathan
This is a documentary about three years in the life of an African-American kid named Pug. Pug goes to church in Sunday, has pet turtles and wears his hair in braids. His mom, Coco, is a former exotic dancer. Pugnacious Pug says he likes his life in Baltimore — it’s a city without earthquakes, hurricanes or collapsing buildings. He lives with Coco and his sibs in West Baltimore.
This is a neighbourhood where you learn “the right way to do the wrong things.” And in Baltimore, the thing to learn is dirt biking.
Dirt bikes, dune buggies, fat-tired cars and ATV are the bomb. They zoom down city streets, popping wheelies, revving engines and generally showing off and having fun. It’s a Baltimore tradition. And Pug really, really wants to join this gang.
The problem? It’s the popo, the turtles, 40, peaches… you know, the police. You get fifty or 100 young black men in one place and the cops see trouble, crime, danger. The guys in the group see freedom, fun, and flash. It’s unclear what is, exactly, the crime they’re committing (aside from potentially reckless driving), but the police don’t like it. And the TV news paints it as an epidemic, a horror, an out-of-control crime-fest leading to countless deaths.
So the cops chase down the dirt bikers using police cars and helicopters. Legally, the city has a no-chase policy, but chase accidents still happen. One of which really disturbs Pug’s life.
As his voice changes so does his vocabulary – he uses four-letter words, acts tough, Pug wants to earn his bonafides. But will he ever be allowed to join this group?
12 0’Clock Boys is a terrific slice-of-life doc, seen through a kid’s eyes. It’s filled with sublime, slow-motion dirtbike rallies paired with excellent beats. And rounded off with news clips, outdoor interviews and just people mouthing off. Worth seeing.
Mourning has Broken opens today, 12 O’Clock Boys starts next week in Toronto. Also opening today is the multifaceted French family drama The Past, as well the8fest.com .
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com
Everything. Films Reviewed: 12 Years a Slave, The Motherload, Starred up.
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.
Welcome to an icy cold 2014! People tend to think in big terms with the New Year. They hope everything will improve. So, this week I’m looking at an historical drama about a man who loses everything, a documentary about women who want everything, and a prison drama about a guy with nothing to lose.
12 Years a Slave
Dir: Steve McQueen
Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a nice, middle-class guy in mid-nineteenth century America. He’s a professional (plays the violin) owns a home, is married with children and is an upstanding member of his community in New York state. And he’s black.
So when he’s offered a well-paying gig in Washington DC, he can’t resist and follows the recruiters south. But soon after, he finds himself kidnapped, thrown into a bare cell and beaten. His captors strip him of his fine clothes, his family, his dignity, his status, and even his name. Based solely on the colour of his skin, he’s sold as a slave. A slave!
He’s no longer considered a human being, now he’s just chattel.
And so begins his nightmare. The movie follows the next twelve years (it’s based on Northup’s own memoirs) as he is sold to various southern plantation owners. Some are relatively kind and humane, some monstrously cruel, but none consider that it is fundamentally wrong for one man to own another. He sees slaves being beaten, tortured, raped or even murdered at their owner’s whim. None of this is against the law. They have no rights, no legal standing, no recourse to justice.
On the way, he acquires a violin (from a kindly slave owner). But far from lightening his burden, music is shown as part of the whole slave system. Slaves driven to sing to a pounding drum as they pick cotton. And in one of the most painful scenes in the movie, he has to play ditties on his fiddle as the others are forced to perform grotesque high-stepping cake-walks to entertainer the planters.
Work is a constant danger. If he politely corrects an error or suggests a more efficient alternative he risks being beaten or lynched.
At a cotton plantation he meets a pretty young woman named Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o). She is the fastest worker in the cotton fields (most of the rest got flogged each day for not picking enough). She’s also a “favourite” of Epps, a cruel plantation owner (Michael Fassbender) and a captive to his wishes. But Patsey has to fear equally Epp’s, wife who has it in for her. Solomon observes it all.
Gradually they grind down his pride until he too walks hunched over, never looking a white man in the eyes. Will Solomon ever escape from this hell? And if so, how? And can he grant Patsey request to save her from her hopeless existence?
This is a great film, and you should definitely see it if you haven’t already. It’s painful, shocking, realistic and explicit. It gives a new visual meaning to slavery in most people’s minds. It’s also a tense but satisfying thriller about rescue and escape. Ejiofor and N’yongo are both amazing, as is director McQueen’s usual leading man Fassbender. It won the TIFF People’s Choice award and hopefully many others.
The Motherload
Dir: Cornelia Principe
Some recent books and articles ask “why can’t women have it all?” The “all” being a top job combined with raising kids. Anne-Marie Slaughter (policy advisor to Hillary Clinton) and Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook, COO) both wondered if woman can achieve both of these goals. Why aren’t women allowed the same opportunities to succeed as men?
These works received a lot of criticism. Is evening-out the playing field in the top 1% really the goal of feminism? And why should success be viewed in an acquisitive context of greed and possessiveness?
This documentary avoids some of these problems by looking at a broader range of subjects. In addition to the super-rich and powerful, it also shows middle-class women and one single mother with two jobs. It points out that paternity leave (in Canada, it’s routine only in Quebec) would help even out the discrepancies in the division of work by sex. And it shows how some 
families are thinking about redistributing roles.
The Motherload is an interesting doc dealing with a broad topic in less than an hour. And director Principe, who also produced the fantastic doc The World Before Her, clearly knows her stuff. Still, I’m a bit surprised that it never even touches on the issue of public daycare. While perhaps not an issue for CEOs, isn’t affordable daycare the crucial step in allowing mothers to work and raise children simultaneously?
And finally, I want to mention a fantastic movie — a sleeper that played at TIFF13 – that I really hope will open later this year in Canada. It’s called
Starred Up
Dir: David MacKenzie
Eric (Jack O’Connell) is an 18 year old who’s been “starred up”. That means he’s sent direct from juvie to a real, live adult prison. He seems at first like a vulnerable kid who’s going to die on his first day there. But things aren’t what they seem. His street smarts and prison savvy keep him safe but his high 
threshold for brutal violence and volatile temper could prove to be his undoing. So he joins a special therapy group within the prison walls to help him handle his anger. But he keeps running into trouble with an older, “head” prisoner called Neville (played by Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn). Neville keeps taking charge, instead of discussing and compromising. And here’s the twist – Neville is Eric’s real-live father serving a life sentence! O’Connell and Mendelsohn give unbelievably dynamic performances as the fractious father and son. This is a fantastic movie – look out for it.
12 Years a Slave is now playing in Toronto, The Motherload will air on CBC TV’s Doc Zone next Thursday, and Starred Up should open in 2014. 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
Philadelphia Freedom. Movies reviewed: Jingle Bell Rocks, Let the Fire Burn
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies forculturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, documentary, genre and mainstream films, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.
I was in the US for American Thanksgiving. Had a wonderful visit to family and friends, beautiful places, lots to see and do. But you wouldn’t know it if you watched TV news on Black Friday. It’s an orgiastic frenzy of consumer excess slapped onto an otherwise sedate family weekend. All you could see on TV was the repeated image of two women at a Philadelphia Walmart tasing each other to get at a discount i-Pad. Just crazy.
But they segue nicely into my themes this week: Philadelphia and holiday excess. I’m looking at Canadian documentary about Christmas music. And an American doc about a firebomb dropped on a radical commune in Philadelphia.
Jingle Bell Rocks
Dir: Mitchel Kezin
Mitchel is obsessed with Christmas songs., Not the traditional carols or sing-alongs — Silent Night, Jingle Bells — but the many, possibly countless, record albums released over the past 60-70 years. He believes that, among all the treacle and dross they play constantly for a month and a half every year, there are gems to be discovered. So he goes to every flea market, ducks into every used record store he sees, on the off chance there’s an indie treasure waiting to be rediscovered.
It all started with a Nat King Cole song about a little kid pining for his absentee dad, who won’t be home for Chistmas. His own dad was never there and eventually his parents were divorced. Now he feels driven to recreate the sad feelings 
he remembers from a melancholy tune.
And he’s not alone. There’s a hip-hop producer, a radio DJ, and a rock star, each with their obsessive horde of old Xmas vinyl.
The movie spans decades, including everything from be-bop jazz (that’s Bob Dorough singing with the Miles Davis Quintet in the background) to soul – there’s a risqué song about a Backdoor Santa – to Vietnam protest songs, ordinary pop, 
counter-culture kitsch and hip hop, all the way to the nineties and beyond.
Stars include Flaming Lips, Run DMC, and John Waters, with the movie culminating in an amazing recording session with calypso legend Mighty Sparrow.
Not bad for a documentary. Jingle Bell Rocks is 90-minute look at an ordinary – if oddball – guy with a hording obsession. I can sympathize with the narrator’s plight, but never feel his drive. Anyway, it’s a light subject, not intrinsically exciting. But it’s saved by the music: great tunes.
Let the Fire Burn
Dir: Jason Osder
In the mid 1980s, Philadelphia — a city I love — experienced a terrifying event. A home was bombed, and many people were killed. You might think: terrorists? But the bomb was dropped on a row house from a helicopter… by the police! And as the fire grew, the fireman stood by to 
watch the flames engulf a city block.
How could this have happened? Some background.
Half a century after the civil rights movement, Philadelphia is still a de facto segregated city. It experienced decades of unrest and white flight to the exurbs. Much of this was related to the combative stance 
of the police force and City Hall, led, in the 1970s by Frank Rizzo.
A former police commissioner, Rizzo fought a personal battle against radical groups like the Black Panthers, displaying, at times, seemed more loyalty to his fellow police than toward the people of the city. He was known for his harsh treatment of black people, in general. Well, right in the middle of this was a small, black-to-nature group known as MOVE, headed by the self-named John Africa. They believed in such “radical” concepts as a vegan diet, the raw food movement, animal rights — a new religion that was anti-pesticide 
and anti-technology. The kids walked around naked and everyone shared the same last name. They also proselytized loudly in public, using a megaphone, not endearing themselves to their neighbours.
The police accused them of being an armed terrorist group and raided their home. In the melee a cop was killed, but it was never determined where the shot came from. (The police were caught on video brutally attacking an unarmed Delbert Africa.) Nine members of MOVE were convicted of third-degree murder and jailed.
Seven years later, in an apparent act of revenge for the policeman’s death, they dropped two fire bombs – supplied by the FBI — on the urban commune and stood by, as 11 people, including five small children, 
died. Afterwards, the city’s Mayor, W. Wilson Goode, called for an investigation.
This excellent movie tells the story in an unusual way. The documentary is composed entirely of period news footage, TV interviews, and, most of all, the recorded testimony of the inquiry. There’s no narrator, only voices from that time, preserved on tape. Police and survivors of the bombing all testify why they did what they did and bring light to what was happening that tragic day. (Some police were appalled by what happened and did what they could to rescue people, while others clearly supported it.) Especially poignant is the testimony of a little boy, Birdie Africa, who clears up many of the false claims and misconceptions about what went on. This is a stunning movie and an excellent oral history.
Jingle Bell Rocks (Hot Docs) and Let the Fire Burn (TIFF Bell Lightbox) 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 .
Older Women. Movies Reviewed: Philomena and If I Were You
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.
This week the Toronto Film Critics Association awarded the 2013 Scotiabank Jay Scott Prize for an emerging artist to Matt Johnson, who made the fantastic movie The Dirties. Congratulations – great choice, great new filmmaker. Matt Johnson directed, produced and starred in that comedy/horror meta-movie I reviewed earlier this fall. This is could be the beginning of something big.
They say male movie stars can keep working until they die, but women stop being stars at age 35. It’s hard for older women to find lead roles in movies. Even Oscar winners. But they do exist. This week I’m looking at two movies starring award-winning, older actresses. There’s a British drama about a woman who wants to fill in a gap from her past; and an American comedy/drama about a woman who wants to undo a romantic triangle.
Philomena
Dir: Stephen Frears
Martin (Steve Coogan) is a former high-power party politico who suffers a fall from grace. He finds himself back in his previous profession: journalism. Reluctantly at first, he ends up pursuing a story about a retired, working-class woman named Philomena. Philomena (Judy Dench) was young, unmarried and pregnant when she was sent to live in a nunnery. She loved her infant son. So, one day, she was shocked and horrified to see her little boy driven away, before her very eyes, by a rich couple! She wanted to keep him, but she never saw him again. He was gone, adopted.
Now, many years later, Philomena wants a chance to see him before she dies. The nuns claim to have lost all her records in a fire. So Martin decides to write about Philomena’s story and to help 
her find her long lost son. So off they fly to America. Philomena is suspicious. Maybe he’s just using her to sell his story. Martin, on the other hand, is maddened by her quirky opinions and constantly-changing decisions: I want to go home… Let’s stay for another week… Gradually, Martin’s heart softens as he and Philomena get to know and trust each other better.
Will they locate the adult son? And if they do, will he want to meet his biological mother? Will he even remember her? And, finally, will the convent ever explain why they did what they did?
This movie is a real tear-jerker. Based on a true story, it’s a very touching mother and son drama, with a few unexpected shocks and surprises. And there are at least two scenes that make the audience bawl. On the other hand, it’s quite sexless and sterile – not just the nuns. There’s no romance and no passion. Just anger at injustice, a sad longing for the past, righting wrongs, and a mother’s love for her child. Even though I could feel the movie deliberately tugging at my heart strings, it didn’t matter, since they did it so well.
Judy Dench’s character is rich and expertly played, while the always- funny Steve Coogan is a perfect foil. Well-directed by Steven Frears (My Beautiful Launderette, The Queen) with an excellent script, co-written by Coogan.
If I Were You
Wri/Dir: Joan Carr-Wiggin
Madelyn (Marcia Gay-Harden) is happily married and a successful professional. But when she accidentally spies her husband, Paul, eating a romantic dinner with a beautiful young woman — when he said he was working late — everything falls apart. Is he cheating on her? Is their whole relationship based on a lie?
Flustered and confused, she finds herself following the young woman home. But rather than confronting her, she ends up saving her life. And so they meet. The Spanish beauty Lucy (Leonor Watling) admits that her lover Paul is still married and 
hasn’t left his boring old wife, and Madelyn, in turn, confesses that she caught her husband – she calls him “Fred” – cheating on her with some “bimbo”. They decide to follow each other’s advice on how to rescue their respective relationships. But only Madelyn knows that Fred and Paul are the same man. Can she fool Lucy into leaving her husband?
To distract her, Madelyn encourages the aspiring actress to pursue other goals. She takes Lucy to an audition for a play, King Lear, but somehow ends up cast alongside her. Will Madelyn succeed in her scheme? Or will her web of secrecy come unraveled? And are and her husband still in love?
If I Were You is a cute comedy/ drama. It has some very funny sequences full of unexpected twists — it’s sort of a screwball comedy, with the main character juggling hidden identities and secrets. And the opening scenes – from one to the next to the next — are brilliant. But later on, the movie seems loaded down with clichés and groaners. You have to wonder why so much screentime is devoted to the theatrical sub-plot. That’s not what the movie’s about. Most of all, this movie is a vehicle for the lead actress, Marcia Gay Harden. She’s at the centre of every single scene, and all other characters exist only to react to her (they love, hate, fear or admire her). To like the movie, you have to like Marcia Gay Harden. I do like her, so I enjoyed this film. It’s clever, cute and worth seeing.
Philomena and If I Were You 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
NXNE 2013. Movies Reviewed: Filmage, All Out War PLUS Dirty Wars
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.
NXNE is Toronto’s annual indie music festival. It works like this: Right now, all across the city, on the hour, in dozens of nightclubs and spaces, a different band sets up and plays one intense set, straight through. Then, at the next hour, another band plays, and so on and so on. Plus some really famous bands, like The National, playing for free tonight at Yonge-Dundas Square.
There are hundreds of bands in town for this, from across the country and around the world. Punk to dubstep, indie to experimental, folk rock to hip-hop… you name it, it’s here. And there are also music-related movies (that’s my territory), plus art shows, digital workshops, and even comedians. Quite the experience – you should check it out.
So this week I’m going to talk about two entertaining docs having their world premiers at NXNE, plus a very important one that’s in the news.
Filmage
Dir: Deedle Lacour, Matt Riggle
NXNE is full of rock docs, so you should choose one with music you enjoy. I liked this one, about a largely unknown 80s band called The Descendants. They played non-political, non-scene driven punk-pop like nobody’s business. Eschewing the standard punk clothing and song subjects, they hand scribbled their album covers and dressed however they wanted. They sang about life, love, farting and frustration: songs with non-stop guitars, bass and always, always drums. Their most famous album was Milo Goes to College.
Some of them were only 15 when they started, but the band 
continued on and off, in different guises for another couple decades. It’s said that they were a decade and a half too early. Listen to the music and judge for yourself. While Filmage isn’t exactly a thrilling documentary, it does have lots of great tracks, cartoon bits and vintage pics to complement the frequent talking heads.
All Out War
Dir: Robert Pilichowski
What was called break dancing or breaking in the 80’s was a form of impromptu street-side dancing that started up alongside rap, graffiti, and other elements of hiphop culture. That was then – this is now. All Out War is about some current B-Boys who engage in the dance form as an intense, corporate-sponsored competition.
Matches are set up, judgements are made, winners and losers are decided on. Dyzee, a Filipino-Canadian from Toronto wants to make something with his life, but has to watch out for competing crews who start gang fights to depose him. The
Machine — rural, African-American – is doing well. In the deep south where he’s from, the machine says you prove your worth with the three B’s: B-Ball, B-Boy, and BBQ. Caspar’s a white kid from Hollywood, forced by his stage mom to earn money dancing in ridiculous costumes for TV appearances. And Alienness, an old-skool Latino breaker, once part of the Rock-Steady Crew, is trying to get into Canada for the big competition, the All Out War, the King of the Ring.
If it sounds like a boxing competition, then they’re succeeding in their sports metaphor. The whole event is staged just like a boxing (or MMA) match, complete with an elevated boxing ring, a loud announcer, referees and judges who declare the winners. It’s a sudden- death competition, with each match eliminating one of the competitors.
But it makes you wonder – why did they choose boxing as the genre to imitate? Why not, say, skateboard competitions as the model? Or pole dancing? Or figure skating? If anything, it looks most like the Brazilian dance martial art capoeira. It’s almost as if they had to prove that while it’s a dance form it’s still completely macho and manly and all that (there are no women in this competition). Whatever, excellent precise, sharp photography shows some unbelievable moves, spinning on heads, tying themselves into knots and then flipping back to their feet: incredible. All Out War is a fun, wow-worthy competition to see.
From staged competition of all out wars to the nitty-gritty…
Dirty Wars
Dir: Rick Rowley
Daoud, an Afghan policeman in Gardaz is shot dead at his home by American soldiers, along with three women (two pregnant), when he ventured outside from a birthday party. Then, unidentified special forces (described as “men with beards and muscles”) then dug the bullets out of the dead bodies with knives (to cover up the evidence) and left them to die. At first it was completely denied by the US government
The movie follows investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill (the man who broke the Black Water scandal in Iraq) as he connects the dots, from Afghanistan, back to Iraq, and onward to Yemen, Mogadishu, and all over.
His big revelations made in this new movie may be somewhat familiar to you, as the things he uncovered have already made it to the front page of newspapers: the White House has made frequent statements, promises or out-and-out denials about Scahill’s work.. He shows how secretive special ops, like the previously unheard of JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) have spread around the world. Set up by Bush, they have run rampant 
during Obama’s reign, operating in places where the US is not even at war, like Yemen, sometimes even assassinating US citizens in their operations. The film outlines the war crimes he uncovered in a series of episodes. It’s a combination Indiana-Jones journalistic adventure, and a sad testament to the excesses of undeclared wars. And it shows how it may be the special ops and drone attacks themselves – the dirty wars of the title – that are fueling the anger of future jihads.
Dirty Wars opens today in Toronto, and Filmage, and All Out War are both playing at NXNE this weekend. Go to nxne.com/film for details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com .
Exotica. Movies Reviewed: Hotel Lux, The Rabbi’s Cat, To the Wonder
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.
Images and Toronto Jewish Film Festival continue on through this weekend, with Hot Docs just around the corner. This week I’m looking at movies about people travelling to exotic lands. There’s a German screwball comedy about an actor who escapes the Nazis only to find himself in the heart of Stalin’s Moscow; a French animated film about a group of travellers from Algiers looking for a lost city; and an American romance about a woman from Paris looking for love in America.
Hotel Lux
Dir: Leander Haussmann
It’s Berlin in the 1930s. The comedy team Zeisig and Meyer (Michael Herbig and Jurgen Vogel) work at a successful cabaret, playing Stalin and Hitler. But their livelihood is threatened when the Nazi’s come to power, and political satire is no longer tolerated. An undercover Dutch communist, Frida, suddenly appears, and Zeisig, a notorious lothario, is smitten. Meyer goes into hiding, but Zeisig sees no reason to run. But eventually he must. He flees Berlin with fake papers and the name of a Moscow landmark: the Hotel Lux. Outside, it’s a stately building with a spinning red star on the roof. Inside it’s a rat-infested heap. And what he doesn’t realize is it’s also the epicenter of Stalinism, a hotel filled with the hardcore German communists in exile.
Every conversation is bugged. People are constantly dragged out of their rooms by a diminutive NKVD agent and accused of the worst possible crime: Trotskyism! And, due to a series of strange coincidences and mistaken identities, Zeisig, the Stalin impersonator, finds himself in meetings with Stalin himself. And his old friends, Meyer and Frida, both end up in Hotel Lux, too.
How will Zeisig get out if this mess? Will he have an influence on Stalin’s decisions? Will his true identity be discovered? And will Frida ever like him?
Like an Austrian comedy set in the same era, My Best Enemy, this movie doesn’t have any grave meanings or deep philisophyt to impart. Rather, it’s a fantasy set against a backdrop of the troubled thirties. Hotel Lux is just a cute, old-fashioned screwball comedy, with its history and politics filtered through the eyes of post-reunification Germany.
The Rabbi’s Cat
Dir: Antoine Delesvaux and Joann Sfar (based on his graphic novels)
It’s 1920s in Algiers, part of the North African colony annexed by France. (It’s inhabited by Arabic-speaking Muslims and Jews, and their French speaking rulers.) Rabbi Safr lives with his beautiful but fiery daughter Zlabiya. But there normal life is interrupted by some strange things. His cat suddenly begins to speak, and wants to have religious debates. The dead body of a blond Russian man appears in a wooden crate of prayer books sent from Europe. And a cousin, who travels with a huge lion comes for a visit. The Rabbi Safr, accompanied by a Muslim sheikh, also named Safr, a Chagal-like artist, and an aristocratic white Russian, set off on a road journey in a Citroen. They are on a quest through northeast Africa to find an ancient hidden city, an African Jerusalem, the legendary land of giant Black- African Jews.
On their journey, they encounter nomads, Belgian colonists (in the form of a pink-skinned Tintin in a pith helmet), and pick up new members to join their group.
Joann Safr is a great, contemporary French cartoonist who creates fantastical imaginary worlds. This is the first animated version of his work I’ve seen, and it stays true to his comics. This is a great movie: funny, fantastical, and colourful, and featuring French-Algerian actors like Mohamed Fellag.
To the Wonder
Dir: Terrence Malick
Marina (Olga Kurylenko), a single mother, meets Neil (Ben Affleck), an American tourist who is visiting France. They fall in love in scenic spots. Their love affair is extended when he invites her (and her daughter) to follow him back to America. Ah, America. Calm, rich, honest, she thinks as she pirouettes around her new Oklahoma backyard. Her whispered thoughts are an ongoing narration to her new life there. Ah… l’amour, l’amour, she whispers, turning another pirouette. Je t’aime. Her life is an avalanche of tenderness. Neil doesn’t speak, he just nods or grunts and goes out to check an oil pump.
OK, just so you know, I was describing a typical scene. But the whole movie is like that. It’s like a two-hour-long movie trailer, an endless montage of a bumpy, depressing relationship in an Oklahoma suburb. With a non-stop voiceover of the most painful poetry, the most awful French doggerel ever inflicted on my ears in one dose. I kind of liked Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life from two years ago (he supposedly spent a decade making it) but this one is worthless. I’m not even mentioning the various sub plots — Marina’s depression, a priest who talks to poor people, marital infidelity — because they barely add anything to this meandering, dull story. Avoid this movie at all costs, unless you are looking for two hours of pointless, superficial Hallmark images and loads of false solemnity.
To the Wonder opens today, check your local listings; and The Rabbi’s Cat and Hotel Lux are both playing this weekend: go to TJFF.ca for details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com .
Frenemies? Movies reviewed: The Host, Ginger and Rosa
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.
Do you have a “frenemy”? Maybe someone who is part of your circle but secretly hates you. Or a best friend who becomes a rival, or, maybe, a bitter enemy who turns out to be someone you can depend on. Well, this week I’m looking at two very different movies about young women and their frenemies. One is set in the future where two women’s souls share the same body; the other is set in the past, in the 1960’s, where two best friends become rivals when a certain man comes between them.
The Host
Dir: Andrew Niccol
It’s the future. Aliens have beamed down to the earth from outer space, in the form of glowing, sperm-like liquid crystals. They travel in little silver clam shells and burrow into the brains of their hosts – that’s us — and instantly take over. Pretty soon we’ve all turned into those emotionless aliens. They look just like you and me, except for their eyes: they have glowing rings embedded in their irises.
But one young woman, Melanie, (Saorise Ronan) is a fighter. When her mind gets taken over by an alien called the Wanderer, the internal Melanie refuses to give up. Her boyfriend, Jared, and her little brother are still out there somewhere and she has to save them… So now there are two rivals living in one body – but only one of them can speak to the outside world.
In a crucial mental battle, Melanie wins out over the Wanderer, and they manage to locate the rebels’ 
hideaway – a redneck, survivalist utopia, full of guns and wheat fields and special mirrors as an energy source — that’s hidden between two mountains in the desert. But Melanie is shocked to be attacked by her loved ones. The rebels only see that alien ring in her eyes, but not Melanie’s soul buried somewhere deep inside. So they lock her up in a cave and treat her worse than an animal.
Gradually, the Wanderer (aka Wanda), becomes more like humans with actual emotions. Wanda has eyes for a guy in the desert hideaway, Kyle, but the internal Melanie still loves Jared (Max Irons). Melanie wonders: if Jared kisses her, would he be cheating? Since, even though she looks just like Melanie, he knows her body is occupied by Wanda’s soul. Melanie forces Wanda’s hand to slap Jared’s face when he seems to be enjoying the kiss too much.
Meanwhile, The Seeker (Diane Kruger) an ice blonde she-wolf of the SS, is in charge of finding the rebels and blasting them into submission or even wiping them out. Will the rebels win or the evil aliens? Will they realize Melanie is still alive? And who will win this split personality’s love – Ryan or Jarrod?
The Host, is a romance set within in a science-fiction/action movie.
It’s written by Stephanie Meyers, who brought us the insipid Twilight series (teen romances disguised as vampire movies). I like the main story, but whenever tension starts to build, it turns back into a sexless romance, where the main topic is Will he kiss me, and Does he really, really love me? and Why is he looking at me that way?
It wavers between a not-bad action drama and a romance suitable for a pre-teen bible camp. Saorise Ronan is quite good as the dual-personality alien, as is Diane Kruger as the Seeker, but the male romantic leads are boring and bland.
See The Host if you loved Twilight and want the same thing but with a bit more action, and a science fiction twist. Otherwise, give it a miss.
Ginger and Rosa
Dir: Sally Potter
Ginger and Rosa are best friends. They share everything with each other. They were born in a London hospital in 1945, with their mothers giving birth, side by side, just as the atom bombs were falling on Hiroshima. Fast forward to 1962: it’s the Cuban Missile Crisis, they’re both 17 now, and everyone thinks the atomic bombs are about to wipe everyone out.
Red-haired Ginger (Elle Fanning) is a political activist who writes poetry and goes to protest marches. She sleeps with a peace sign over her bed. She lives with her depressed but beautiful mum (Charlotte Hendricks) but thinks she’s boring and bourgeois. She idolizes her handsome and free-spirited dad (Allesando Nivola), who is an intellectual, a pacifist, and an activist. She also has an extended family, with two gay godparents, Mark and Mark 2, and various protesters, radicals, political organizers, artists and thinkers who hover around her home.
Dark-haired Rosa (Alice Englert) lives with her single mother. She’s Catholic and sexualized. She 
teaches Ginger about sex, boys, making out, and the church. Ginger, in turn, takes Rosa to demos and CND ban the Bomb youth meetings.
But something is amiss in their friendship. Someone they both know well is attracted to Rosa (the feelings are mutual), and that secret relationship threatens to mess up both their lives and turn them from best friends to rivals.
This is a fantastic movie for so many reasons. Sally Potters film captures the mood of a newly radicalized London youth movement, and the very real fear of nuclear apocalypse. But it’s also a very moving story, a coming-of-age in an era fraught with changes. The acting, the moving story, the historical accuracy, even the period jazz music – just amazing. It’s Sally Potter at the top of her game.
I strongly recommend this movie.
The Host and Ginger and Rosa both open today – check your local listings. Also opening is Spring Breakers, a unique and highly entertaining in a style that only Harmony Korine (Trash Humpers, Gummo) could pull off. And coming soon are Images, Cinefranco, Real World, TJFF, and Hot Docs.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website,culturalmining.com
Not Safe at Home. Movies Reviewed: Home Again, Olympus Has Fallen
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.
Festival season is gearing up now, with Hot Docs, Images, and Cinefranco announcing this year’s line-up – fantastic stuff to come. But in the meantime, here are some non-festival releases. Today I’m looking at an action/thriller about one man inside a big house who wants to save the world; and a drama about three people stranded on an island who just want to survive.
Olympus Has Fallen
Dir: Antoine Fuqua
Mike Banning (played by perpetually gruff and surly Scot, Gerard Butler) was once a big man in the Secret Service. But when the First Lady is killed in an accident, he loses his status as a presidential guard. So he’s not at the White House when strange things start happening one morning. An errant gunner pilot flies a plane over the mall in Washington DC, mowing down random tourists, and knocking down 
America’s most famous penis, the Washington monument. Then, a group of tubby but ruthless terrorists manage to capture the White House, including the president and hold him captive. The American Empire is teetering on the brink…
Who are these bad guys? Al Qaeda? Al Shabab? Iraq? Iran? No! It’s the Zeppo of Bush’s “Axis of Evil” – the North Koreans!
The other Secret Service agents all look like part-time tenors in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. (Boy are they white!) But only tough-as-nails Mike is qualified for disasters like this. He gets to the White House on his own and 
opens up communication with his boss (Angela Bassett) and the grumpy, southern Speaker of the House (Morgan Freeman).
The chief bad guy, Kang (Rick Yune), holds all the cards. He is determined to learn the Cerberus defence code (known only to a few top officials). And he demands the DMZ be taken down and the Korean peninsula unified. With his crack team of super-shooters (inexplicably wearing silly Gilligan hats and bandanas over their faces) and computer experts, along with some American traitors, he’s unbeatable. Or is he?
It’s up to Banning to single-handedly beat all the bad guys, rescue the President (Aaron Eckhardt who is much more a Romney than an Obama), his young son, Connor, and the feisty Secretary of State (Melissa Leo). And, while he’s at it, free the White House, and save the world from an imminent disaster. He accomplishes this with old fashioned American know-how, brutal fighting skills, and brutish come-back lines. (Best line: “Kang, let’s
play a round of f*ck off — you go first.”) He improvises, like Bruce Willis in Die Hard, using things he finds on the way. Like smashing in a terrorist’s head using a marble bust of Lincoln. As a Secret Service agent Banning knows every cubbyhole, every secret passageway in the White House.
Antoine Fuqua made the very good movie Training Day, but this is absolutely nothing like that one in style or plot. None of the movie is even vaguely plausible, but it doesn’t need a deep read to understand it. It’s hilariously awful at times, but tense and exciting at others. It’s a classic action movie, complete with explosions, shoot-outs and a virtually unwatchable close-up fight scene with a hand-held camera jiggly enough to make you lose your chili nachos in the lap of the guy in the next seat.
Watch it, laugh at it, and then forget it.
Going Home
Dir: Sudz Sutherland
Due to a change of laws, the US, Canada and the UK are now in the habit of deporting people — landed immigrants who moved to these countries as small children – back to their birthplaces after being convicted even of relatively minor crimes. This drama follows the different paths the three of them take as they are unceremoniously dumped in Jamaica with just a suitcase.
Dunstan (Canadian actor Lyric Bent) is a likeable, big guy from New York. His cousin helps set him up as security at a meth lab in Greenwich Farms, (a tough part of Kingston). He’s working for The Don, a hairy-eyeball young gangster who operates like a high court judge in his neighbourhood, punishing or helping the people there, as he sees fit. Soon he meets the pretty but stand-offish Cherry C. (pop star Fefe Dobson) and likes her a lot. Wants to get to know her much better. But she wants nothing to do with a Deportee.
Everton (played by Torontonian Stephan James) is a clean-cut and naïve, upper-middle-class student from London. He arrives in Kingston like a fish just waiting to be caught. His uncle Sam, who he’s supposed to meet in Trenchtown, isn’t there. He meets up with a cute high school girl, but things just get worse and worse. He soon finds himself homeless and penniless waiting for his mother to rescue him. But she’s a continent away and he can only reach her by long distant phone calls.
And finally Marva from Toronto (Tatyana Ali) was separated from her two young children when she was deported. She can’t find work because no one will trust a deportee. Forced to live with her relatives — a cruel aunt and a skeezy uncle (very well played by Paul Campbell) — Marva feels trapped in an untenable situation. If she can somehow get her kids to join her in Jamaica things will get better.
Will Everton be able to pull himself together and return to England once his court appeal goes through? Can 
Dunston earn enough to buy a forged passport and get back to his little brother in NY? And can Marva get together again with her kids?
The three deportees have their own separate sub-plots with only minimal contact among them. But they are all set in a very real-looking, fascinating Caribbean city (it was shot in Trinidad), with its colourful scenes and dancehalls, marketplaces and homes. And the movie takes place during a growing gang war affecting all of their lives.
I thought there were enough sub plots and sub-sub plots to fill a miniseries, with dozens of different side characters and twists — too much stuff going on for one movie. But by the end it all starts to coalesce, and you really feel for the characters. Great soundtrack – reggae mixed with dance. The acting is also great – especially Tatyana Ali, but also all the small roles, and there are many — and most of the (subtitled Jamaican) dialogue was fun too. As movies go, it’s a depressing plot, one I wouldn’t normally want to rush to see, and Canadian movies are prone to the overly earnest. But this didn’t happen: I liked it! It gives you lots to think about. Home Again is a good, plot-heavy drama that never leaves you bored.
Olympus has Fallen, and Home Again both open today, as does the film Yossi: 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 to Doug Blush about his new film about bipolar people OF TWO MINDS
Hi, This is Daniel Garber at the Movies forculturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
There’s a psychiatric term to describe the condition of extreme mood swings that go from up in the clouds to down in the dumps. It’s known as Bi-Polar disorder. Its been diagnosed, categorized, treated by prescription drugs. Some people fear it and ostracize anyone given that label. Others say the world would be worse off, less interesting without it.
A new documentary, called OF TWO MINDS, gives an account of four people whose lives 
and personalities are tied to and shaped by this condition, by both its good and its bad aspects. And I’m very pleased to have DOUG BLUSH, (who produced documentaries like the Invisible War) co-director, with Lisa Klein, of OF TWO MINDS.
Doug’s talks about bipolar people, what it’s like, how it’s dealt with in popular media, how people handle it, why he chose to make a film about it, Mad Pride, medication, “Bipolar 1 vs Bipolar 2” diagnoses, and more…
Off-Beat Comedies. Movies Reviewed: A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, Identity Thief
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 February and it’s winter and I hate it. With snow comes slush, and with slush comes sludgy puddles. I got sprayed with brown muck from my shoes to my face by an SUV driver a couple days ago. Not fun.
So what better time for a laugh or two.
This week I’m looking at a couple of off-beat comedies about men trying to get their lives back together. Ones a retro look at a man’s midlife crisis; the other is a buddy/road movie about a robber and a rob-ee forced to travel together.
A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III
Wri/Dir: Roman Coppola
Charles Swan III (Charlie Sheen) is a drunk, a womanizer, a stoner, and a self-centred, Hollywood semi-demi-hemi celebrity. He has his own successful design studio where he makes pop-art posters and record album covers for megastars, like his best buddy Kirby Star (the director’s cousin Jason Schwartzman). He is known for his airbrushed images of camp, huge-breasted woman in fringed vests and cowboy hats. He drives around in his vintage car (known for the giant fried eggs painted on the side) to make out with his current girlfriend Ivana (Katheryn Winnick). But, when she digs up a crusty diaphragm a past date left from under a seat, she loses it. She dumps him. She’s gone, his career collapses, his life is over, and he spirals into a dramatic, Hollywood-style meltdown.
An LA meltdown starring Charlie Sheen? Who woulda thunk it? We follow his encounters with his doctor, his psychiatrists, his agent, his lawyer, his friends and his family, all of whom have lots of their own problems and neuroses to complain about. You get to see all this through the filter – and I use the term lightly, since the one thing this movie could use is a filter! — of Charles’s brain, filled with fantasies within stories within meta-memories, until your brain wants to explode, too.
Does this sound messy? It is. It’s a slapdash, hodgepodge mess of a movie, less compelling than confusing, less funny than eye-rolling. It’s just hard to sympathize with a rich successful conceited 
guy having a midlife crisis.
At the same time, it’s a visual smorgasbord. It takes during the 1970s, the “Me decade”, and is filled with all the kitsch icons — the cowboys and Indians, fast-food, sports cars, the bikinis, the faux country/western ranches, the psychedelia, the sideburns, the seventies’ nostalgia for the twenties, forties and fifties. What at the time was thought of as incredible excess, is now almost admirable for its care and craftsmanship. Peter Max, Tom Robbins, Linda Ronstadt…
It shows us an era where you really could get rich designing the cardboard cover of a hit record album, and you were allowed to rent elephants or camels and extras and costumes for that one perfect shot. While I love the music, the images, and even the amazing fonts used for the titles, I find the story a godawful mess.
Identity Thief
Dir: Seth Gordon
Diana (Melissa McCarthy) favours heavy make up, a fright wig and loud, flowered shirts. She doesn’t have any friends. So she replaces them with hairdressers, shop clerks, bartenders. What she does have is a nearly bottomless money pit, a goose that keeps laying golden eggs. She has multiple toasters, fiberglass boats, a new car. But money doesn’t grow on trees – she gets it from other people’s credit cards, using Identity theft.
Meanwhile, in Denver, Sandy (Jason Bateman) a mild-mannered, middle-aged middle-manager, has a beautiful wife, two cute daughetrs, and another one on the way. But suddenly his job disappears, his bank account is drained, and he’s suddenly a wanted criminal – for something Diana did in Florida. He’s the victim, she’s the culprit.
So, after discovering who’s to blame — and without any help from the police — he decides to drive 
across the country to bring her to justice in Colorado. Although a pathological liar, she agrees to come with him, as the lesser evil. You see, she’s being stalked by a pair of slick gangster hitmen and a ruthless bounty hunter, both out to catch and kill her. So Sandy soon finds himself surrounded by her world of con-jobs, frauds, deception and crime. Will he descend to her level, or will she rise to his?
This is actually a funny trip comedy. It’s made by the guy who did Horrible Bosses, and has a similar feel, lots of slapstick comedy with Diana getting 
hit by trucks, Sandy getting punched in the throat, people having embarrassing, kinky sex with Texans in roadhouses… things like that. Lots of sight gags and shtick thrown in just for the laughs, but the movie doesn’t suffer, and the story pulls it along. And Bateman and McCarthy are an excellent team, with her as the funnyman, him as the straightman. Good comedy that’s actually funny, worth seeing for the laughs.
Identity Theft is now playing and Charles Swan III opens today in Toronto. Also playing and worth checking out are some great documentaries. Shadows of Liberty, by Canadian Jean-Philippe Tremblay, exposes the excesses and biases of mainstream media. And 5 Broken Cameras, (directed by Guy Davidi and Emad Burnat) is a devastating, first-hand record of the lives of the people in Bi’lin, a Palestinian village after settler encroachment. Check your local listings for times and screens.
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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