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

Look at Me, a movie from Nova Scotia about an insecure, bisexual actor with an eating disorder, is finally opening in Toronto! In a review about year ago, I called it a “scathing — and humorous — self-examination that exposes Taylor Olsen’s innermost thoughts and fears.” Check it out.

But this week, I’m looking at three new movies (two by first-time directors) from around the world. They’re all about people who work at peaceful and innocuous jobs who encounter danger and even death. There’s a Catholic nun in South Korea, a real estate agent in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and a sheep farmer in rural Ireland.

Dark Nuns

Dir: Hyeok-jae Kwon

Somewhere in Korea, a teenaged boy named Hae-Jun (Moon Woo-jin) is suffering from a serious illness. The doctors are baffled by his condition; nothing they try is working. But Sister Giunia (Song Hye-kyo) a Catholic nun, identifies the problem immediately: the boy is possessed. You see, Sister Giunia is a Dark Nun, a woman born with indigenous shamanistic powers. She can hear what demons say. And this boy needs a full-blown exorcism. But she can’t do it alone.

She turns to Sister Michela (Jeon Yeo-been), a much younger nun, for help. A Dark Nun like herself, Michela is adept at reading tarot cards, and can use her powers to see vision,  and manifestations of evil. But she is a nun now, and a nurse. She said goodbye to all that mumbo-jumbo years ago, and, besides it’s expressly forbidden by the Church — especially Father Paolo (Lee Jin-wook). He may be a scholar of exorcism, but he doesn’t believe in it. But Giunia is convinced the boy will die unless they intervene. Can she get sister Michela to come aboard? Will the church ever let them do it? And can two nuns and a  stammering shaman defeat Satan himself?

Dark Nuns is a pretty typical exorcism/horror movie but with a twist: It incorporates Buddhism and Shamanism within a Catholic ritual. There are a lot of quirks in this movie. Like why do all the Korean priests and nuns have Italian names, like Paolo, and Michela? Are they Ninja Turtles? And the exorcism seemed way off: heavy on the holy water — she pours gallon after gallon of it on the kid! — but awfully light on bibles, crosses or rosary beads. Then there’s the biggest problem of all: it’s a horror movie, but it just isn’t scary. What’s good about this movie? I like the way it compares Korean patriarchal neo-Confucianism with a Catholic Church keeping women out of positions of power. I’m intrigued by the culture-clash of Christianity meets Shamanism. But if you’re looking for a Korean horror movie about shamans and possession, you should watch last year’s Exhuma, instead.

Love Hurts

Dir: Jonathan Eusebio

It’s Valentine’s Day in the suburbs of Milwaukee, and  Marvin Gable (Ke Huy Quan) is busy baking heart-shaped cookies. No, he’s not in love or in a relationship; all his efforts are focussed on his career as a real estate agent. And he considers all his clients as his friends. But everything changes when a valentine’s day letter appears on his desk. Rose (Ariana DeBose) is back in town. You see, before he went straight, he used to be a killer employed by his older brother Knuckles (Daniel Wu) who is a powerful local gangster. And killing Rose was his last job. The thing is, he didn’t kill her and now everyone wants to have a word to Marvin Gable. There’s the poet-assassin Raven (Mustafa Shakir) along with a slew of other killers, with weird names like King, Otis Merlo and Kippy. Can he dodge the bullets and kill the killers, without harming all the clients trying to buy his houses? Or will he be dragged back into a dark world he thought he had left far behind?

Love Hurts is an action movie about people trying to kill each other. Despite the extreme violence it’s told a light and somewhat humorous manner. Unfortunately, it’s also tedious and predictable. The dialogue is dumb, the plot is basically non-existent. (There is also a rom-com sub-plot, with various characters falling in love with their respective crushes, but that seems like an afterthought more than part of the story.) So what’s good about it? Two things. Jonathan Eusebio is obviously a first-time director, but what he is not  new at is fight scenes. He’s a highly experienced fight choreographer, and luckily most of the movie consists of creative takes on people throwing knives and kicks as they destroy the interiors of houses and video stores. This I like. First time I’ve ever witnessed a killing using a bubble tea straw. And the cast is appealing too. It’s nice to see Ke Huy Quan back again after his big comeback in Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. He’s funny! So are Ariana DeBose, Lio Tipton, Sean Astin and Drew Scott… the whole crew.

Is this a good movie? Not really, but it’s very light, easy to watch, and the fight scenes are well-done. 

Bring Them Down

Wri/Dir: Chris Andrews

It’s rural Ireland in the present day. Michael (Christopher Abbott) runs a one-man sheep farm, where prize-winning rams graze on rocky hillsides. His abusive dad Ray (Colm Meaney) sits in the kitchen all day shouting angry epithets in Irish at Michael about all the things he’s doing wrong. In the next sheep farm over, young Jack Keeley (Barry Keoghan) does much the same as Michael but not very well. His dad Gary (Paul Ready)  — who is Michael’s age — tries to keep things going but the farm is bleeding money. Gary is married to Caroline (Nora-Jane Noone), Michael’s ex, and Jack can see his parents are not getting along. Michael hasn’t seen her for 20 years, ever since a car accident killed his mother and sent Caroline to hospital with serious injuries (The accident was Michael’s fault).

But their relatively bucolic lives are interrupted when two rams disappear from Michael’s flock. And there’s only one place they can go — to the Keeley farm just over the hill. But Jack claims they both suddenly died and he threw their bodies into a pit…a very unlikely story. This signals the start of a feud between the two families, involving simmering grudges, sheep poachers, and organized crime. Can their conflicts ever be resolved? Or are both farms headed for ruin, violence and possibly even death?

Bring Them Down is a violent, suspenseful drama about escalating grudges between two houses. It’s done in that chop-up style popular among some European arthouse directors where the narrative is not told chronologically. Your perception of “who is to blame for what” gradually shifts as new scenes fill in the blanks. I liked the acting and the dialogue — half of which is in Irish — and it has a compelling plot. The settings are just beautiful, with wide panoramic views of hillsides at dusk and dawn, and images like Michael carrying a lame sheep draped over his shoulders. There are also some strikingly original tableaux like the sheep at an auction house. This is a good first film — it reminds me of Frozen River and Winter’s Bone, all serious looks at crime in rural settings. But why are all these movies about brooding Irish men so depressing? What miserable lives these people seem to lead! If there were a bit of humour or love, Bring them Down would have been a lot easier to take.

But it’s still a good movie, anyway.

Dark Nuns, Love Hurts, and Bring them Down are all opening 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.