Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

Fall film festival season continues in Toronto with all sorts of movies to catch your fancy. Rendezvous with Madness shows movies about addiction and mental health, accompanied by discussions with the audience. They also have a knack for finding unknown amazing films whose directors or stars end up famous just a few years later (I saw my first Joaquin Trier flick at Rendezvous with Madness!)  Also opening soon are Planet in Focus, with docs about environmentalism and climate change, and Toronto after Dark, on through the weekend, a pioneer in horror and fantasy.

But this week, in honour of Hallowe’en, I’m looking at three movies with a bit of hocus-pocus. There’s a man with a guardian angel, a brother and sister who can speak to the dead, and a mad scientist who wants to builds a new human… out of dead body parts.

Good Fortune

Co-Wri/Dir: Aziz Ansari

Arj (Aziz Ansari) is at a low point in his life. He has a degree in archaeology and lives in LA, but the only work he can find is gig work, deliveries or standing in long lines so rich people don’t have to. He’s so poor he has to sleep in his car. There were a few bright spot in his life; he meets Elena (Keke Palmer) a union organizer at a big box hardware store, and they even went on a date; and he got a short term job as a personal assistant to a billionaire venture capitalist named Jeff (Seth Rogan) whose main activity seems to be sitting in saunas and ice baths. But as luck would have it, he gets fired from the job, things go bad with Elena and even his car — his only possession — gets towed. He’s penniless, in debt, and all alone. What does he have left to live for?

What Arj doesn’t know is he has a guardian angel named Gabriel (Keanu Reeves) looking out for him. In order to save his his life Gabriel — breaking all the angel rules — appears to him. He tells him that he has lots to live for, that money can’t buy happiness, and that Jeff is just as down as he is. And to prove it, he switches their lives. Now Arj has the swank mansion while Jeff is at the gig jobs, barely making enough money to pay for his next meal. The problem is Jeff hates his new life, while Arj has zero complaints about being rich. Gabriel did a boo boo by directly interfering with human lives, and his angel boss Martha (Sandra Oh) tells him, if he doesn’t fix it up, he’s going to lose his wings. Can Arj get Elena to see him again? Will he voluntarily give up all his newfound wealth? Can Jeff survive in his new environment? Will Gabriel manage to make everything right again?

Good Fortune is a light comedy co-written, directed and starring Aziz Ansari. It’s cute and funny, if not terribly original. It combines A Christmas Carol, Eddie Murphy’s Trading Places, and It’s a Wonderful Life, with a bit of updating with current details. I like its portrayal of poverty, in all its miserableness, and the mundane life of Angels is fun, too. Seth Rogan does his same old schtick, but he does it well, Keke Palmer has a low-key role, Aziz is personable, and Keanu Reeves actually smiles — haven’t seen that in a few decades. 

Good Fortune is nothing spectacular but it is cute and totally watchable.

Black Phone 2

Co-Wri/Dir:  Scott Derrickson

It’s wintertime in the early 1980s in the Colorado Rockies. Finney, Gwen and Ernie are three teenaged counsellors in training at a Christian winter camp. There’s a forest, a lake and some spectacular mountains in the background. And they sleep in heated log cabins. But where are all the campers? They stayed home, due to a record- breaking blizzard that closed all the roads. Then why are the three of them there? Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) — who has prophetic dreams — keeps getting messages from her dead mother that tell her to go to this camp. Ernie (Miguel Mora) has a major crush on Gwen and will follow her anywhere. And Finney (Mason Thames) wants to keep on eye on his little sister to make sure nothing bad happens. And the two of them know a lot about bad things happening. A couple years ago, Finn was kidnapped by a sadistic masked serial killer called the Grabber (Ethan Hawke) who murdered countless kids. But a black phone in the basement cell where Finney was locked up allowed him to speak with ghosts of the kids who had died there, and — with the help of Gwen who located him through her dreams — managed to survive, escape and kill the Grabber. But now, years later, the dead seem to be communicating with Finney again, with broken down payphone constantly ringing when he walks past (he dulls his terrifying memories with lots of cannabis). Gwen is even more affected, caught in a fugue state in her half- awake dreams, where she she sleepwalks through the snow in her pyjamas, looking for something.

Now at this deserted camp they are haunted by three scary murdered children sending scratchy messages through Gwen’s dreams and through a broken payphone. And worst of all, the Grabber has somehow reappeared. Can the three of them manage to find the dead boys, solve the mystery of the camp, and survive the return of the terrifying serial killer? Or are they all doomed to die?

Black Phone 2 is a follow-up to the very scary original from a few years back. It keeps all the same characters and actors, plus a few new ones: the camp’s owner Mando (Demián Bichir) and his cowboy daughter Mustang (Arianna Rivas). The story is dominated this time by Gwen not Finney. I love the grainy dream sequences that bridge between sleep and reality. And the pace is steady throughout the film. There are some frightening parts, but it just doesn’t seem as scary as the first one. I think we’re supposed to be terrified to see an invisible Grabber iskating on the ice with a mask on but it just looks kinda silly. The plot of the first movie was straightforward and direct. This one is convoluted and confusing. And it includes a fair amount of spiritual messages and scriptural quotes that don’t really add to the story or to its scariness.

Again totally watchable, good horror, just not as scary as the original one.

Frankenstein

Co-Wri/Dir: Guillermo Del Toro

Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) is a medical student in Victorian England. The son of a minor aristocrat, the world is his for the taking. But when he shows his research in a dramatic performance before his professors — by bringing the head and torso of a dead man back to life using electric shocks — he is immediately expelled. Luckily he finds a benefactor (Christoph Waltz) from the continent to sponsor his research.  Frankenstein sets up his laboratory in an isolated castle. Like a modern prometheus, he goes through piles of dead bodies, cutting out the choicest bits to create his new, superior man. He is joined by his milquetoast younger brother William (Felix Kammerer) and William’s beautiful and intelligent bride Elizabeth (Mia Goth – she has perfect name for this movie). But when the creature (Jacob Elordi) is brought to life using a bolt of lightning, he doesn’t turn out as expected: he is a monster, a brainless slug who can only say one word. His experiment a failure, Frankenstein flees his castle burns down his laboratory, leaving career in ruins, and allowing the monster to die…or did he?

The rest of the movie follows the creature as he grows, learns to speak and read, discovers his own strength and power, and to differentiate between good and bad. But how will he turn out? And will humans ever accept him? 

Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein is an entirely new look at Mary Shelley’s novel, unlike any version before it. The green-faced, flat-headed Frankenstein is nowhere to be seen. Elordi is amazing as this tabula rasa with unexpected powers and emotions. He’s a completely sympathetic character for the first time. It’s the scientist who is the real monster in this movie, but one with motives and who can feel remorse. It takes place in locations you’d never associate with Frankenstein, starting aboard a ship in the Arctic. 

There’s also an extended chapter set in a cabin in the woods with a blind hermit. Yes, this Frankenstein is a gothic horror movie — which he’s been making all his life, like Crimson Peak (2015) — but this one takes it to a higher level. It’s visually stunning, wonderfully acted, it’s long but never boring, and besides the violence, gore and horror, there’s also romance and pathos, friendship, beauty and self-discovery.  

What can I say — this is one great Frankenstein.

Frankenstein and Good Fortune which both premiered at TIFF, and Black Phone 2 all open in Toronto this weekend; 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.