Twentieth century troubles. Films reviewed: White Bird, Hold Your Breath, Saturday Night
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Lots and lots of movies coming to Toronto. Opening this weekend is the monster comedy Frankie Freako by Toronto’s own Steven Kostanski; and next week, look out for the Goethe Films, Aftermath: Echoes of War series featuring classics by Fassbinder and Wim Wenders at the TIFF Lightbox.
But today, I’m looking at three new movies, all set in the 20th Century. There’s dustbowl horror in 1930s Oklahoma, Nazi occupation in 1940s France, and the opening night of a live TV show in 1970s New York City.
White Bird
Dir: Marc Forster
It’s 1943, during WWII, in a picturesque French village near the Swiss border. Sarah Blum (Ariella Glaser) is a happy middle class kid in her school with high marks and many friends. And she loves drawing pictures in the margins of her notebook. One young boy clearly has a crush on her. Julien (Orlando Schwerdt) is smart and kind, but also a victim of bullying. Not only does his father work in the sewers but Julien has a brace on one leg and uses a crutch to get around, making him a ready target for cruel bullies. But things change rapidly under the Nazi Occupation. Sarah and the other Jewish kids are pulled out of class one day to be deported to the camps. She alone manages to escape and hide in the woods. But the former class bullies are now classroom Nazis and they’re always on the look out for Sarah. Luckily she has a saviour — it’s Julien, of course, who lets her hide in the hayloft of his barn. As the months go by, he serves as her one-man classroom, relating the lessons she misses each day. And as they get to know each other better, they grow closer — is love at hand? And can they keep her hidden during the Nazi Occupation?
White Bird is an historical romantic drama. Adapted from a YA 
graphic novel by R. J. Palacio, it’s a sequel to an earlier book (also adapted into a film) called Wonder. The historical plot is framed by a kid named Julien in present-day New York, whose French Grand-mère (Helen Mirren) is telling him a story from her youth. I found the movie OK, with some real weepy moments. It does have odd details: why is the French resistance’s oath Vive l’Humanité!? But I like the graphic novel feel of the whole thing, with rapid story development and unexpected twists and turns. If you’re looking for a good, historical, teenaged tearjerker, check out White Bird.
Hold Your Breath
Co-Dir: Karrie Crouse, William Joines
It’s 1933 on the Oklahoma panhandle. Margaret Bellum (Sarah Paulson) lives with her two daughters on a farm. Life is miserable. Once their land was covered with acres of wheat, the cows and horses thriving in the barn. But years of drought has turned their land into a giant dustbowl. It’s so bad that you can choke to death in a dust storm. Her husband Henry is in Philadelphia looking for paid work, leaving the three women alone, waiting for his first paycheque to arrive so they can join him. Rose (Amiah Miller) the older daughter is yearning to see a big city, while little sister Ollie, who is deaf (Alona Jane Robbins) is shy and easily frightened. Especially so since Rose read her a scary book about The Gray Man, a mythical bogeyman who embodies the terror of a dust storm. The neighbours are nervous, too — rumours abound that a drifter made his way into someone’s home and killed all the women.
So Margaret is on high alert, her rifle cocked and ready to fire, 
when a drifter appears in their barn. Wallace Grady (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) calms her down, saying he knows her husband who told him to check up on his family. I’m a man of the cloth, he says, and a faith healer. But strange unexplained things start happening. Is he a killer or a pastor? Does he have supernatural powers? Or is he the mythical Gray Man?
Hold Your Breath is a psychological thriller in a gothic setting. It’s spooky and creepy, and a little bit scary, full of feelings of suspicion and psychosis. the acting, especially Sarah Paulson, is quite good. One thing I found interesting is, though it’s ostensibly set during the Great Depression, it feels like an allegory of the recent pandemic. The family puts on elaborate white face masks to protect from the lethal dust whenever they go outside, are afraid to leave their home, and they are terrified of an unknown invisible enemy who can “get inside their home and their bodies unnoticed, just by breathing”.
Nothing is very surprising here, and the story seemed less scary than tragic, but if you’re heavily into southern gothic horror, I think you’ll appreciate Hold your Breath.
Saturday Night
Co-Wri/Dir: Jason Reitman
It’s October 11, 1975 in New York City, and in a few hours a new show will be broadcast live across the United States. It’s a new concept; not the “live” part; that was a staple of TV programming from its earliest days. What’s new are the guests — Jim Henson and his muppets — the comedians — Andy Kaufman and George Carlin — the controversial topics, the live musicians, and the “not ready for prime time” players. The show is meant otherwise be produced on the fly with minimal rehearsals — they plan to read their lines from cue cards or just wing it. The show is Saturday Night Live, and up until the moment it airs, no one’s sure whether the show will be canceled even before it starts.
It’s up to the creators Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) and Dick Ebersol to get the show ready in time. Lorne is working closely with his writer (and partner) Rosie Shuster (Rachel Sennot). But he’s badgered by network VPs who seem to be determined to make it fail. On top of this, John Belushi has passed out somewhere, the union crew refuse to put the set together, they can’t find a live 
audience to sit in a studio at midnight, snd all the local station bosses are there with their own gripes.
What can a guy do?
Saturday Night is an instantly forgettable but warmly nostalgic look at the start of an iconic TV show. More surprising is the movie is genuinely funny. A lot funnier, in fact, than the TV show it’s celebrating. This is not a documentary; it’s a comic dramatization of what might have been going on that first night, exactly 50 years ago next week. There’s an enormous cast, with every producer, writer and comic portrayed by people who weren’t even born when that show started.
I love the frenetic energy running through this film, as the camera flies around the set following a plethora of characters all talking at once as they try to get the show on the air. It has a cast of thousands, it’s fun to watch and never boring. Like I said, there’s nothing much to it, but I enjoyed Saturday Night.
Saturday Night and White Bird both open this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings. Hold Your Breath is now streaming on Disney+.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Fighting. Films reviewed: Seagrass, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Testament
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Fall Film Festival Season keeps on rolling. I had the pleasure of attending the opening-night screening of the ReelAsian film festival. It’s the delightful comedy/drama The Queen Of My Dreams, directed by Fawzia Mirza. It follows a queer Toronto woman in Karachi for a funeral as she recalls her own and her estranged mother’s) history in Pakistan in the 60s and Halifax in the 80s — all while listening and dancing to Bollywood songs. ReelAsian is in its 27th year showing films from across that continent and in the asian diaspora, now through November 19th. And the Shorts not Pants festival opens on November 17th. In case you’re wondering it’s not about cut-offs or basketball shorts — it’s a curated short film festival, which I’ve heard is quite good.
This week, I’m looking at three new movies — one of which is playing at ReelAsian. There’s a fight over a painting in Montreal, a fighting couple on an island near Nanaimo, and a fight to the death in the city of Panem.
Seagrass
Wri/Dir: Meredith Hama-Brown
It’s the summer of 2011. Judith and Steve (Ally Maki, Luke Roberts) are riding a ferry with their kids to a rocky island near Nanaimo, BC. They’re renting a cabin complete with a kitchen, and there’s even a swimming pool with lots of games and hikes planned for all the kids there. It’s a shady forest that leads to a mysterious dark cave on the shore. The couple in the next cabin, Pat and Carol (Chris Pang and Sarah Gadon) — a white and asian pair like Judith and Steve — swear the last time they spent on the island was a life-changer. The thing is, they’re not there for a vacation. It’s a place where couples can look at their relationship and try to work out their differences through daily group therapy 
sessions. The kids, Steph and Emmy (Nyha Huang Breitkreuz, Remy Marthaller) have problems of their own to work out. 10-year-old Steph doesn’t want to babysit her 6-year-old sister — she’d rather mess around with friends at get-togethers.
The problem is Judith is depressed — she’s been that way since her mom died many months earlier. And now she’s regretting she never talked with her about the internment camps Japanese Canadians were put in during WWII. Or what happened to her dad’s fishing boat. It’s like there’s a ghost or spirit lurking above the family — is it the kids’ late grandmother or just the general bad feelings? It’s not just that, Judith isn’t sleeping with Steve anymore. And Steve is increasingly jealous and angry that Pat — the husband next-door — seems to be spending too much time with Judith. As the pressure builds it begins to affect the kids too, leading to a potentially frightening conclusion.
Seagrass is a stunning look at secrets revealed at a getaway in British Columbia. It’s also about identity, history and family, especially of Japanese-Canadians. I found it very moving, a bit of a tear-jerker actually. At the same time, it makes you uneasy to watch the story unfold, and the unexpected revelations it leads to. It’s not your typical marriage counselling movie; it’s equally about the kids, and the subtle racism they face. The cast is uniformly great, but especially Ally Maki as a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. This movie also does amazing things both visually and audibly, from pop songs to eerie sound effects.
Great movie.
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
Dir: Francis Lawrence
Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth) is a young man with a keen intellect. He’s handsome, popular and ambitious. He lives in Panem, the capital city of a post-apocalyptic world. A top student at the Academy, the training grounds for the nation’s top leaders, he’s in line for the Plinth prize. He needs to win it because, although he’s from an aristocratic family, he’s poor. So poor, his cousin Tigris makes his shirt buttons out of bathroom tiles, and school lunches keep him alive.
But the scholarship is at risk when Dean Highbottom (Peter Dinklage) declares all students must participate in the Hunger Games as a mentor to a tribute, the kids sent to the capital from each outlying district. Lucy Gray (Rachel Zegler) from District 12 is his Tribute — if she wins the Hunger Games, Coriolanus gets the prize money. So he will do anything to keep her alive. She’s a pretty songbird — from a long line of travelling musicians — who dresses in colourful outfits. The two hit it off, and prove a formidable team of underdogs. Will they beat the odds, and survive? And is there relationship more than just a game?
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a gripping action-adventure movie based on the dystopian YA novels. I read avidly the trilogy when it first came out, but was less attached to the related movies — I only watched the first one, maybe because I knew what was going to happen. But this one took me by surprise; it’s a prequel, set half a century before the other books. So I found it exciting, dark and gripping. It is violent — after all, this game is about 24 kids murdering one another in a stadium. But this is set in the early years of the Hunger Games: the capital is battle-scarred and decrepit. Drones sent to the tributes are primitive and dangerous, as likely to kill a player as to send them food or 
water. These hunger games are darker and grittier. I like the novelistic turns of plot, and the truly evil characters, especially Dr. Volumnia Gaul wonderfully played by Viola Davis as a mad scientist who creates terrifying animals — the snakes and birds of the title — to stymie the districts and their tributes. Zegler is good as Lucy, singing as much as she talks, and Blyth is great as the conflicted Corio. The explosions and pyrotechnics look fantastic on a big screen, so if you’re into this kind of movie, see it now, not on some future TV streamer.
Testament
Wri/Dir: Denys Arcand
Jean-Michel Bouchard (Rémy Girard) is a retired writer and archivist in Montreal. He still has an office but lives in a venerable, public retirement home. Never married, no kids, but he still has many friends to spend time with. Suzanne Francoeur (Sophie Lorain) is the directrice of the building, and keeps her eagle eye on anything that could disrupt her tightly-run edifice. But when a group of college protesters set up camp across the street chanting Free First Nations! she isn’t sure how to handle it. The anglophone demonstrators say the building is full of racist art.
The issue at hand? A 19th century fresco on a wall in the music
room depicting Champlain’s first meeting with the Iroquois. The protesters say the French are settler-colonists in fancy dress while indigenous men are depicted as primitive barbarians, while the women are topless. Meanwhile, Jean- Michel’s close friend Roger, a fitness and health food nut, suddenly drops dead right in front of him. Jean- Michel receives a literary prize, but is mistaken for someone else with a similar name. And Suzanne seems to be standing just outside his door whenever a young woman visits him in his bedroom — why is she there? As the tension from the protesters grows, media, Quebec nationalists, bureaucrats and politicians all descend on the home. Can Jean-Michel stop the madness? Or is this the beginning of the end? And what will happen to the mural?
Testament is a political and social satire about Quebec’s aging boomers, as their rule ends. Denys Arcand has been covering this cohort for four decades, in films like The Decline of the American Empire, The Barbarian Invasions, and The Fall of the American Empire. This one shares similar themes and some of the same actors as well. The characters are stereotypical and amusing — anglo protesters are buffoons, seniors are clueless busybodies, feminists snarl, while politicians tell baldfaced lies — but he pokes at the politics from all sides. It has a huge cast, including Robert Lepage (who had his own controversy involving indigenous issues) as an effete arts/politics leader in an hilarious parody of himself. There’s also a romantic subplot — no spoilers — and, surprisingly, some very moving moments.
If you want to understand Quebec cultural politics — with a lot of laughs — you must watch Denys Arcand’s Testament.
Seagrass is playing at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, one of many great films at the ReelAsian Film Festival. Testament and Hunger Games both open this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Big Changes, Big Trouble. Films reviewed: Every Day, The Party, Annihilation
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Everybody knows change is good, but big changes can lead to big trouble. This week I’m looking at three good movies about women facing big changes. There’s a British politician with a once-in-a-lifetime career change; a biologist investigating changes that are scientifically impossible; and a high school student whose boyfriend changes bodies once a day.
Every Day
Dir: Michael Sucsy
Rhiannon (Angourie Rice) is a highschool student in Maryland. Her mom’s a careerist, while her dad, since his breakdown, stays at home painting pictures. Her boyfriend Justin (Justice Smith) is a popular athlete… and a bit of a jerk. So she is surprised when he agrees to play hooky and spend the day just with her. It’s the perfect date: They explore downtown Baltimore, he pays attention to her, stops smoking, they share intimate personal stories, find their special song, and for the first time, they
actually have fun together. Is this true love? But the next day he’s acting like a douche again, with only vague memories of the day before. It’s like he’s a different person. What’s going on?
What’s going on is he was a different person that day, someone named “A”. “A” is a bodyless being who inhabits a different person each day and — like Cinderella — departs that body at exactly midnight. 
“A” has no choice of who they’ll wake up as, except that it will be someone their age who lives nearby. “A” could be a boy that day, or a girl, could be black, white or asian, could be straight, gay or trans. Could be ugly or attractive. Rhiannon and “A” have to find each other each day to carry on their relationship. Hint: “A” knowing Rhiannon’s phone number helps a lot. Can their love overcome “A”’s ever-shifting identity?
Every Day is a cool, young adult fantasy/romance that works. It’s set in Maryland, but was shot in Toronto, and it has a Degrassi feel to it, where the multiracial, multigender nature of the cast is omnipresent but not central to the plot. Instead it deals with questions of identity, look-ism, and mental illness.
I liked this movie.
The Party
Wri/Dir: Sally Potter
Janet (Kristin Scott Thomas) is a politician in the UK celebrating her promotion, the pinnacle of her career. Starting tomorrow, she’ll be the Shadow Minister of Health for the opposition Labour Party. So she’s throwing a party for her nearest and dearest. They 
arrive two- by two . There’s Martha (Cherry Jones) – a lesbian feminist university prof with her earnest partner Jinny. Cynical April comes with her flaky boyfriend Gottfried (Patricia Clarkson and Bruno Ganz), a self-professed healer. And Tom — a nervous and brittle financier (Cillian Murphy) — comes without his wife Marianne, Janet’s closest friend and 
workmate. Janet’s husband the grey-bearded Bill (Timothy Spall) sits alone in the parlour spinning vinyl as she bakes her vol-au-vents, to show that a woman can feel at home both in Westminster and in her kitchen. Problem is, her hors d’oeuvres are burning even as her party is collapsing like a house of cards, as each guest reveals a big secret. There’s cocaine, champagne, a 
fire, broken glass, face slaps… even a handgun.
The Party is a drawing room comedy that pokes fun at the social conceits of a generation of middle-class, leftist baby boomers. It’s the work of Sally Potter, director of Orlando and Ginger and Rosa. Shot in black and white with a wicked musical soundtrack that shifts the mood from scene to scene, it clocks in at just over 70 minutes, as a short-but-sweet English comedy.
Annihilation
Dir: Alex Garland
Lena (Natalie Portman) is a biology prof at Johns Hopkins who specializes in mutating cancer cells. Her husband Kane (Oscar Isaac) – a soldier she met when she was in the army – is missing and presumed dead. But when he shows up at her bedroom door, seemingly with no memory of what happened and how he got there, she decides to investigate. She’s valuable to the military, a woman as comfortable with a petri dish as she is with a submachine gun. She joins a crack team of scientists, all women, headed by the laconic psychologist Dr Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Their goal is to explore unknown territory within a swampy National Park.
It’s encased in something called “the Shimmer”, a phenomenon eminating from a lighthouse on the coastline. No one who goes into the Shimmer comes out alive (except for her husband 
Kane) and it’s getting bigger and bigger each day. From the outside it looks like a giant rainbow-coloured, plastic shower curtain that’s melting upwards. On the inside it’s even stranger, a world where distinctions like “animal/vegetable/mineral” cease to exist. It’s both beautiful and grotesque, filled with Chihuly crystals, human topiary and brightly-coloured tree fungi. Unrelated species are combining and mutating at a rapid rate, into a cancerous growth — just like the cells Lena studies, only prettier. And they’re affecting the five women too, both their minds and their bodies. Video messages they 
find (left by previous soldiers) only make things worse. Can Lena survive the hideous creatures and her deranged and suspicious teammates before she faces the scariest entity of all?
Annihilation is a terrifying exercise in horror sci-fi psychedelia. It references everything from Arrival, to The Wizard of Oz to Apocalypse Now, as the team paddles their way though a Heart of Darkness in their search for emerald city. Natalie Portman is great as the elegant soldier-scientist, and director Alex Garland brings us a different take on post-apocalyptic images. Annihilation is the kind of psychedelic fantasy that keeps you guessing.
This movie is scary-pretty… and pretty scary.
The Party comes to Toronto next week (check your local listings); Every Day and Annihilation open today. 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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