Not always pretty. Films reviewed: I Really Love my Husband, Orwell: 2+2=5, Roofman
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
TIFF is over but Fall Film Festival Season continues in Toronto. FeFF or Female Eye Film Festival is entering its 23rd year, showcasing features, shorts and docs directed by women. This year’s theme is Always Honest, Not Always Pretty, so you can expect some challenging and surprising work from women around the world. Expect innovative screenings, many with the directors present, as well as pitches, workshops and tributes.The festival runs from October 14-19, at the TIFF Lightbox, the Women’s Art Associations of Canada and the City Playhouse Theatre in Vaughan.
So this week, I’m looking at three movies, one from FeFF and two from TIFF. There’s honeymooners in the Caribbean, a famous writer on a tiny Scottish isle, and an ingenious thief, who lives, undetected, in a big box store.
I Really Love my Husband
Co-Wri/Dir: G.G. Hawkins
Teresa (Madison Lanesey) lives in LA with her husband Drew (Travis Quentin Young). They’ve been married for a year but have yet to go on a real honeymoon. They both work at unfulfilling professions with little time for amorous interludes. But that’s about to change: Theresa and Drew are heading south for a week, to relax and spend time with each other on the sandy beaches of Bocas del Toro, Panama. It’s a chain of Caribbean islands known for their blue skies and warm waves. And even when the airline lose their baggage and the promised welcome meal is nowhere to be seen, they are still happy with the place. The manager, a boyish, non-binary beach bum named Paz (Arta Gee), is ready to help make their stay more comfortable, however they can. For Theresa, that means thinking outside the marital envelope. She urges Drew to join with her in seducing Paz. Though hesitant at first, Drew dives into the three-way, head first, and their marriage feels stronger than ever. And Paz promises to take them to 
their secret island for one final fling.
But the mood starts to shift when jealousy rears its ugly head. A fourth wheel joins the group to make things even more confusing. Kiki (Lisa Jacqueline Starrett) a ginger-haired influencer with a venomous tongue, is a reality-show reject voted off the island. But she stays on, planting bad ideas in the couples’ heads, Can Teresa and Drew’s marriage endure all these complications? Can the insecure Teresa keep her anger in check?
I Really Love my Husband is a funny, bittersweet rom-com about the doubts plaguing a couple of millennials on a belated honeymoon. It pokes fun at a whole generation — from breakfast fasting to mushroom edibles to friendship stones — exposing some of the worst and silliest trends and fads. The characters are as worried about ratings and social networks as they are about actual love and affection. For a first-time feature by a new director with a largely unknown cast, this is a fun slice of life. Madison Lanesey is nicely sardonic, Arta Gee appropriately chill, and Travis Quentin Young always sweet strumming his guitar. Though not totally original, I Really Love my Husband does seem to capture the zeitgeist of LA’s millennials.
Orwell: 2+2=5
Dir: Raoul Peck
It’s the late 1940s in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides on a tiny, inaccessible island called Jura. George Orwell is there to write a novel in an isolated home, inaccessible by cars. His young son, his sister and their housekeeper keep him company as he sits by his typewriter. He’s dying of tuberculosis but wants to make sure his last book is completed and published. The novel is called 1984 and becomes a crucial part of contemporary culture, even today. You’ve probably heard of Big Brother; or at least the surveillance based reality show it inspired. It has been made into many films and TV shows and is referenced everywhere, Words like sexcrime and concepts like doublethink are firmly imbedded in our culture. The book is about the perpetual war between competing totalitarian nations. But more than that, it’s about the propaganda, mass surveillance and thought- control ordinary people are subject to. The hero, Winston Smith, works for the Ministry of Truth propagandizing Newspeak to the nation. But eventually he too falls victim to the machinations of the government of Oceania, ruled by Big Brother. He is tortured because, although he accepts their ludicrous proposition that 2+2=5, and espouses their slogans (War is Peace!, Ignorance is Strength! Freedom 
is Slavery!), he doesn’t really believe them. This story shows that the contents and concepts of 1984 are as relevant today as when Orwell wrote them.
Orwell 2+2=5 is a combination documentary, docudrama and diatribe about Orwell, his writing and its influence on popular culture. It covers not just 1984 but Orwell’s earlier books, including Burmese Days, Homage to Catalonia (he volunteered to fight fascism in the Spanish Civil War), and Animal Farm, his allegorical look at Stalinist Russia. It’s based on both his books and his private correspondence. The movie also uses clips from the many film adaptations of 1984 to tell that story. And finally, it includes a barrage of brand-new news footage of leaders like Trump, Putin, Orban and Xi Jinping. These are altered with Orwellian slogans superimposed in bright colours over the media images.
Raoul Peck is a well-known Haitian documentary filmmaker, and maybe it’s because I already know so much about Orwell and his writings, this movie — with the exception of his last days on Jura — wasn’t as mind blowing as it might have been if it were all new. And it can’t compare to other docs like Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro, his biography of James Baldwin. Even so, Orwell 2+2=5 does stand as a historical document with a good dose of agit-prop.
Roofman
Co-Wri/Dir: Derek Cianfrance
It’s the early 2000s in Charlotte, North Carolina. Jeffrey Manchester (Channing Tatum) is the happy father of a young daughter and twin infants. He’s smart, nimble and observant. But he is underpaid and overworked as his job, and can’t seem to keep the family afloat. When he has to resort to regifting his own childhood toys for his daughter’s birthday party, he realizes something must change. He resorts to a life of crime, involving no violence. He robs McDonalds restaurants by an ingenious method: cutting a hole in the roof after dark, and stealing the cash. After dozens of such robberies the press subs him “Roofman”. His family moves up the social ladder, living the american dream of life with a swank car and and a nicely decorated home. Alas, he is finally caught, and sent to prison. His wife cuts him off, and he can’t even talk to his own kids anymore.
Later, following an ingenious plan, he escapes from prison undetected and looks for a place to hide. Most surprisingly he discovers an unsurveilled corner of a Toys R Us big box store with enough hidden space to make set up a tiny apartment. He initially survives on peanut M&Ms pilfered from the shelves, but eventually moves on to pawning video games and DVDs. And he learns the layout of the cameras and computers, making him virtually invisible… though in plain site. He 
surveils the store management instead of vice versa. He has a crush on one employee Leigh (Kirsten Dunst) a single mom with two teenaged daughters. They eventually meet, unexpectedly, at an evangelical church toy drive (he “donates” toys stolen from his Toys R Us). Sparks fly and they become very close, but with Jeff still concealing his life of crime and his current home. Can he start a new life in his own home town without getting caught? Or should he just get the hell out of there?
Roofman is an exciting adventure / romance / comedy based entirely on a true storytelling. It’s funny, clever and constantly surprising. Channing Tatum is brilliant as Jeff, displaying an acrobatic sense of movement and timing, climbing walls, crawling through ceiling tiles or swooshing around cars on foot to avoid detection. The rest of the cast is also great: former teen actor Kirsten Dunst has eased comfortably into middle age and her character is very empathetic; Lakeith Stanfield is Steve, his sketchy war buddy; Aussie Ben Mendelsohn as guileless Pastor Ron, and Peter Dinklage appropriately dislikable as toy store manager Mitch. Filmmaker Derek Cianfrance (he directed the passionate Blue Valentine and the dark The Place Beyond the Pines) hasn’t made a movie in ages, but if he’s looking for a comeback, this is it.
I like Roofman a lot.
Roofman and premiered at TIFF and open in Toronto, this weekend; check your local listings; and I really love my husband is coming soon to FIFF.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Clandestine, Intimate. Movies Reviewed: Suitcase of Love and Shame, Your Day is My Night, The Place Beyond the Pines
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.
Film festivals continue in Toronto. Cinefranco is on through the weekend, with two new ones starting today. The Toronto Jewish Film Festival is bringing comedies, dramas, documentaries and musicals from around the world. Images is a festival of art, moving images and sound –projected on movie and video screens in theatres and art galleries. This week I’m looking at three films, all from the US, that are both clandestine and intensely intimate and personal. Two films at Images: one’s about a long-distance sexual relationship, the other about people who share the same bed… just not at the same time. And the third movie is about how family rivalries can carry on over generations.
Suitcase of Love and Shame
Dir: Jane Gillooly
It’s the 1960s in middle-America. A married man and a single woman are having a secret, sexual affair. They meet in hotels, a hospital, a planetarium, and record their sexual encounters and fantasies. He promises her he’ll leave his wife so they can be together – but someone else may be listening in. Sounds like a Hollywood movie, but it’s not.
This highly unusual film uses a suitcase of reel-to-reel tapes from the 60’s that someone bought on eBay. It’s the story of two nameless, faceless people who recorded their affair on two tape-recorders, words they 
believed would only be heard by the two of them.
(Here’s a clip: on podcast)
The audio is accompanied by simple, images of period artifacts – tape boxes, matchbooks – and filmed “still lifes” of suburban homes, dogs, cars. The sexually-charged, explicit dialogue is paired with simple, non-sexual but private-seeming visuals. As a viewer, you’re an audio-voyeur, hearing things you’re not supposed to know about. Jane Gillooly has made a haunting, very intimate film, out of material from long before the days of youtube.
Your Day is My Night
Dir: Lynne Sachs
This movie is about Chinese immigrants, documented and otherwise, living in close quarters in Manhattan’s Chinatown. By close quarters, I mean so close that people actually share their beds – half of the tenants work day shifts, half at night. It’s a very diverse crowd, speaking mutually unintelligible dialects. They each tell their own stories. Some do it in casual conversations. Others in a grand manner: like a classic Chinese storyteller, enunciating each word.
This sort of dwelling is not unique to New York. I remember spending time at the notorious Chunking Mansions, an apartment and flophouse high-rise in Kowloon, which had people sleeping in beds so close that the next stranger’s bed was just a curtain away. But I’ve never seen anything quite like this.
I’d call it a scripted documentary.
There’s a wedding singer, a poorly paid worker, a grandmother, a masseur. They each have their say, either in the kitchen, on one of the mattresses they sleep on, or outside on the streets of New York Chinatown. They talk about lost ancestors, about fear of the subway, about Ai Weiwei, about sweet potato varieties.
This is an art piece – so it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s staged. But the content seems real enough, as do the people – identified by name. And the stories are fascinating.
The Place Beyond the Pines
Dir Derek Cianfrance
This is another unusually structured movie, made of three sequential parts. The first part is about Luke (Ryan Gosling).
Luke is a travelling carnie who is in Schenectady, NY for the annual fair there. He’s a bleach-blond, tattooed, motorcycle stunt rider, a darling of the pre-teen set. He’s just passing through when he discovers last year’s fling with Romina (Eva Mendes) brought her a bouncing baby boy named Jason. He’s a father! Romina has a home and a boyfriend now, but Luke wants to be with his son and support him. So he quits his job with the circus, stays in town, and turns to robbing banks on his motorcycle to raise the necessary cash. He ends up in a shootout with a rookie cop, Avery (Bradley Cooper). Like Luke, Avery also has a one-year old boy, named A.J.
The second part is about Avery, who is forced either to confront the corrupt local police force or to join in.
And the third part, is about the two grown-up sons, now 16-year-olds, who are brought together for the first time, as discover how their fathers once crossed paths.
Fortunately, this movie starts with an amazing scene which has Luke on his cycle entering a spinning metal circus globe and zooming around and around inside it – like a human hotwheels car driver. Cool. Unfortunately, it’s downhill from there. That’s the happiest scene in the movie. There are chases and shootouts and love and loss, but the whole movie has a fatalistic feel. Society, class, fatal decisions and 
circumstance try to push us all in certain predetermined directions It’s up to us to make the right decisions.
Visually it’s a very nice movie, and the acting is good, but I found the story rather pat. Cianfrance’s last film, Blue Valentine, was all sex – this one is mainly violence. I enjoyed it, but the blatant story manipulation left me with a meh feeling.
Your Day is My Night is playing on the 19th and Suitcase of Love and Shame is playing tonight at 9 pm, both at Images; go to imagesfestival.com for more information; and The Place Beyond the Pines also opens tonight. Check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com .
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