Deliveries. Films reviewed: Dog, Parallel Mothers PLUS BTFF!
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s Black History Month and The Toronto Black Film Festival is on now through Monday, February 21st celebrating its 10th anniversary. It’s showing — get this! — 200 movies, including features, shorts, documentaries, and more, from Canada and around the world. It features the Canadian premier of Krystin Ver Linden’s Alice, starring Common and Keke Palmer. There are also panel discussions, and if you’re an emerging black filmmaker, check out the Fabienne Colas Foundation’s Being Black in Canada program, with films geared specifically to cities like Montreal and Halifax. There’s also a special tribute to the late Sidney Poitier. That’s at the Toronto Black Film Festival – TBFF for short — all happening through Monday.
This week, I’m looking at two new movies, one from the US, the other from Spain. There’s a war vet delivering a dog, and a fashion photographer delivering her baby.
Dog
Dir: Reid Carolin, Channing Tatum
Jackson Briggs (Channing Tatum) is a vet with a dog. Nothing so unusual about that. Except he’s a veteran, not a veterinarian. And the dog isn’t his. And he’s driving it down the West coast to attend a funeral — the dog is invited, not Briggs. Huh? You see, Briggs wants to reenlist — he’s an Army Ranger. He spent the past three years in a fog of alcohol and drugs, but he’s all dried out now and ready to ship off. But his Captain isn’t so sure. So they make a deal. Briggs drives Lulu, a decommissioned army dog, to the funeral of a member of their company who recently died. Lulu was an important part of his life, so it’s only fitting she should attend his funeral. In exchange, the Captain agrees to look again at Briggs reenlisting. 
Lulu, despite her name, is no French poodle. She’s a Belgian Malinois. She looks like a German Shepard but smaller with a charcoal face and pointy ears. They are specially bred for security forces and trained to defend, attack and track. And Lulu has PTSD, she goes crazy if you touch her ears, or if she hears loud noises like thunder, guns or bombs. These are fiercely loyal dogs but they have to trust their owners. And Lulu and Briggs don’t like each other, so she’s muzzled and stuffed into a tiny kennel on the back seat. Soon enough though, she has completely destroyed her plastic prison and is chewing up the carseats. Can Briggs get Lulu to the funeral in time? Or will the two of them tear each other apart first?
Dog is a nice road movie about a man and his dog, and the people they encounter on their journey. People like two beautiful women who practice tantric sex; a dangerous hippie who runs a 
grow-op; a dog trainer, a psychic, and Briggs’ long-lost daughter. They wind up in a luxury hotel, in abandoned barns, a night in jail and hitchhiking in the desert. And all along the way, we have Briggs’s non-stop monologue as he talks to Lulu. Luckily, the dog and the actor are interesting and appealing enough to keep your attention with the point of view shifting back and forth between Briggs and Lulu. Dog is a low key comedy-drama, but with enough surprises, laughs — and a few sad parts — to make it a worthwhile watch.
Parallel Mothers
Dir: Pedro Almodóvar
Janis (Penelope Cruz) is a high-profile photographer in her late 30s. She’s in a Madrid hospital about to give birth for the first time. There she meets a teenaged girl, also single and pregnant, named Ana (Milena Smit). She comes from a rich family — her dad’s a businessman, her mom an actress — but they are divorced and Ana is less than enthusiastic about raising a kid. Janis, on the other hand, can’t wait.
Her baby is the result of a fling with a man she photographed once, named Arturo (Israel Elejaide). He’s a forensic anthropologist who works with an organization that disinters, identifies and reburies many of the lost victims of Spain’s fascist dictator Francisco Franco. More than 100,000 people are still 
missing, many killed by Franco in the Spanish civil war and afterwards. This includes Janis’s own great grandfather and others from her ancestral village. Arturo says he’ll look into her village, but he can’t promise her anything.
But back to the two mothers. After a few years, one of their babies dies, and the two bond together to raise the surviving kid. But both mothers hold deep dark secrets they have yet to reveal. Can Janis and Ana make it as a couple? What about the child? 
And then there’s Arturo… and her village?
Parallel Mothers is a wonderful, tender, surprising and moving drama set in Madrid. Like all of Almadòvar’s recent movies, it has an amazing story, told in an eye-pleasing manner, from the opening line to the closing credits. They all share recognizable styles and images, as well as his troop of actors, 
including Rossy de Palma, but Parallel Mothers is also a unique stand-alone film. If you’re already a fan of Almadòvar, you will love this one and if you’ve never seen his films before, this is a gapped place to start.
Dog opens theatrically in Toronto this weekend; check your local listings. Parallel Mothers is now playing at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Time. Films reviewed: Anthem of a Teenage Prophet, Jordan River Anderson: The Messenger, Pain and Glory
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Time is malleable. This week I’m looking at three examinations of time. There’s a Spanish drama about a director reclaiming his past, a YA drama about a teen who can see the future, and a documentary about the present-day problems of indigenous, special-needs kids.
Anthem of a Teenage Prophet
Dir: Robin Hays
It’s 1997 in small-town Stokum, Michigan. Luke (Cameron Monaghan) is a highschooler in small town. He’s into skating, music and art. He lives with his straightlaced dad and flaky mom (Juliette Lewis). He used to climb towers with the tall and wiry Fang (Grayson Gabriel) his best friend since kindergarten, but they had a falling out. Now he’s hanging with Stan, a popular B-ball jock, and Stan’s girlfriend Faith (Peyton List). But everything changes when he follows Stan to a party at Fang’s place. After lots of drinking and 
smoking, Luke has a vision: Someone will be killed in the morning in a hit-and-run just outside their school. They dismiss this as a stoner daydream, but record it on video, just for fun. And sure enough, best friend Stan winds up dead, exactly as predicted.
Eyewitness news picks up the story and soon there are media trucks parked out on his front lawn. He’s stared at at school, and somehow blamed for Stan’s death. Only Faith stands up for him. Will his prophetic dreams continue and can he use it to save people from dying? 
Are Faith and Luke just mourning Stan or is their something more between them? And what happened between Luke and Fang that soured their friendship, and will they ever make up?
Anthem of a Teenage Prophet is based on a popular YA novel, and holds many of its standard features: rudderless youth looking for meaning, potential love story, friendship, bullying, and prejudice; and a hint of the supernatural. And it’s set in the late 90s, a world of Thrasher, Mortal Combat, white rap and ironic T-shirts. Beautiful scenery (it was actually shot in BC) nice soundtrack and credible acting, Anthem is a good, though not great, teen movie.
Jordan River Anderson, The Messenger
Dir: Alanis Obomsawin
Norway House is a beautiful Cree community in northern Manitoba. But, due to pregnancy complications, little Jordan River Anderson was born in a Winnipeg Children’s Hospital. There he received constant attention from doctors, therapists and experts helping the boy communicate and understand what was going on around him. He was partially paralyzed, could not speak and breathed using a respirator. But he could only spend limited time with his parents and family since he needed constant care. Most special-needs kids are eventually sent from hospital to their parents home or a halfway house with caregivers 
near to their family. But Jordan never left the hospital – he died there. Neither the province nor the federal government would put up the funds it required for the move, care and refurbishing.
Why? Because he’s indigenous.
Enter Cindy Blackstock, a lawyer and social worker specializing in indigenous cases. She crafts a bill, The Jordan Principle, to ensure no child would be left unfunded to to intergovernmental disputes. It is passed unanimously in the House of Commons. Jordan’s Principle says that a child of need will be cared for by the first level of governmental contacted. All is well. Sadly no. Not a single kid is helped since it’s passage. The government budgets the funds to fight Jordans 
Principle in court, but not a penny more in its budget to pay for care needed for indigenous special needs kids.
Jordan River Anderson The Messenger is the sixth in a series of documentaries by Alanis Obomsawin, outlining the struggles between First Nations and the Canadian government since the founding of this country. It follows Blackstocks legal battles and the very personal stories, captured in photos and home videos, by Jordan and other indigenous families with special needs kids. This is a one-hour documentary that deals with a heartbreaking story, but one that ends on a hopeful note.
Photo of Alanis Obomsawin by Jeff Harris.
Pain and Glory
Wri/Dir: Pedro Almodovar
It’s present day Madrid. Salvador (Antonio Banderas) is a celebrated Spanish director at the peak of his career. He is looking back at his old notebooks, and letters, taking stock of his life. And he finds it miserable. His body is failing him, his creative well has gone dry. No sex, no love, no pleasure aside from swimming. But as he looks at his life two periods come back to him. As a child he lives with his mother (Penelope Cruz), who takes in laundry, and his father. They are forced to make their home in whitewashed caves, underground. But young Salvador (Asier Flores) is a precocious lad, singled out for his talent by a priest at his school. He teaches a 
handsome teenaged bricklayer Eduardo (César Vicente) how to read and write. In return poses for a painting by Eduardo. Little Salvador idolizes Eduardo but doesn’t understand his feelings. With his parents now gone, what remains from his childhood?
The other period he reflects on is making his first movie in the early 1980s. It is being shown at the Cinematheque in Madrid, and they want him to appear alongside that films lead actor Alberto (Asier Etxeandia). The problem is Alberto is a heroin addict, hates Salvadors guts and they haven’t seen each other for more than thirty years, What was the scandal that led to such a long lasting grudge? Can it be mended? And who is the missing piece in that puzzle?
Pain and Glory is a fantastic and fascinating autobiographical film by Pedro Almodover. It is 
ostensibly fictional, the names have been changed, but is clearly based largely on Almodovars life. It plays with time, character and genre, flashing back to early times, and repeating short scenes with subtle differences. It starts with Salvador writing a book, but somewhere, secretly turns into him crafting a film, leaving the viewer to piece it together. Lush and colorful, moving and funny, Pain and Glory is an intricate recreation of Almodovars own life andwork.
Pain and Glory starts today, and Anthem of a Teenage Prophet starts next Friday in Toronto; check your local listings; and Jordan River Anderson, The Messenger is one of many movies at ImagineNATIVE through Sunday.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks with Luis Ortega about El Ángel
Adult language, topics.
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Photos by Jeff Harris
Its 1971 in Buenos Aires Argentina. Carlitos is an innocent-looking boy with an angelic face and blonde curls. But this teenager has a strange hobby. He enjoys 
breaking into homes undetected and taking things.
He’s an expert cat burglar, born to steal. He loves what he does, but has no one to share his triumphs with. That is until he meets Ramon. Ramon is bigger, darker, and tougher and comes from a family of 
petty gangsters. Carlitos is smitten, and soon they’re a team – one with homoerotic undertones – and together they wreak havoc across the city. And when guns enter the picture, people start to die. Is Carlitos the devil 
incarnate? Or an angel gone astray?
El Ángel is a new feature film from Argentina written and directed by Luis Ortega. This is Luis’s first film and it features an unknown actor in the title role. El Angel was featured in the Discovery series at TIFF and is opening soon in Toronto.
I spoke to Luis on site at TIFF 18.
El Ángel is Argentina’s official submission for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars.
Christmas movies. Films reviewed: Julieta, Fences, La La Land
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s Christmas weekend with lots of movies to choose from. This week I’m talking about three excellent movies to see. There’s a woman in Madrid haunted by her past, a married man in Pittsburgh fighting off his demons, and a young couple in LA looking for love in a city of lost souls.
Julieta
Dir: Pedro Almadovar
Julieta (Emma Suarez) is a middle aged woman who lives in Madrid. She is making a big change, leaving her longtime lover Lorenzo (Dario Grandinetti) and moving to Portugal after countless years of waiting. What is she waiting for? Word from her daughter Antia, who disappeared without a trace many years earlier. She’s all ready to go when she runs into her daughter’s childhood friend Beatriz on a street corner, who says she saw Antia in Lac Como. And so begins the telling of a mysterious story divided into three chapters.
As a young woman, Julieta (Adriana Ugarte) is a brilliant and beautiful prof. Her 
students all love her. But when she meets Xoan — a handsome and rugged fisherman — on a train, her life is turned upside down. A man is killed, a deer runs past the train, and she falls heavily for Xoan. Is it love at first sight? She visits Xoan (Daniel Grao) at his home by the water. But he’s not at home, just a suspicious and protective housekeeper (Rossy de Palma) who won’t let Julieta wait for him inside. Eventually they live as a couple and raise their daughter Antia together. Julieta meets Xoan’s friends, including the sultry 
sculptress Ava (Inma Cuesta),
But after a tragic turn of events, Julieta is back in Madrid, raising her daughter alone. She falls into a deep depression, and young Antia spends more and more time with her best friend Beatriz. Still later, Julieta retraces her steps, trying to explain why she lost her daughter so many years ago.
Julieta is a great drama, the product of an unexpected combination. It pairs Almadovar – known for his lush, passionate melodramas and over-the-top comedies — with Canadian author Alice Munro’s quirky, understated stories about women in small town Ontario. Does it work? Yes, yes, yes. With its small fishing boat on a lake, classrooms, caribou running past a train, along with jealousy and infidelity, it’s an intrinsically Canadian story… and yet perfectly Spanish. I really liked this movie.
Fences
Dir: Denzel Washington
It’s the 1950s. Troy Maxton (Denzel Washington) works as a garbage man for the city of Pittsburgh. Each Friday, he comes home from work with the same things: a sack of potatoes, a piece of lard, a mickey of gin, and his pay envelope. The money goes to his wife Rose (Viola Davis) but he shares the gin with his best friend Bono. Troy met Bono in jail as a young man. It’s also, where he learned to play baseball, and where he met Rose a kindly visitor. He has two sons: Lyons who is a jazz musician (Troy calls it Chinese music) and Cory (Jovan Adepo) a high school athlete. His brother Gabriel – with a metal plate in his head — carries a trumpet to play for St Peter at the pearly gates. Troy, though, is more worried about the Devil.
Troy and Rose are deeply in love, Cory’s doing great in school, everything seems perfect… but it isn’t.. Troy wants to show he’s the man of the house, and everyone’s afraid of him. He tries to stop Cory from going to college on a football scholarship. (He once was a pro baseball player once but now he’s hauling rubbish.) Gabe has moved out, and best friend Bono says Troy is looking too closely at other woman. Can this family stay together? Or is it teetering on the brink of total collapse?
Fences is a small movie that feels more like a filmed play. Great dialogue — adapted from his own script by August Wilson – and basically one setting, with little action other than crossing the floor or sawing a board. Flashbacks are talked about, not shown. But the grandness of the characters and the stories they tell does come through. Director Denzel Washington doesn’t hog the screen; instead he lets all the other actors bloom before the camera. Davis and Adepo are outstanding, in fact all of them are great. But this film is more stage-worthy than cinematic. Fences is a moving and revealing look at an African-American family in the 1950s.
La La Land
Dir: Damien Chazelle
Mia and Sebastian are strangers in LA. Mia (Emma Stone) is an aspiring actress. She commutes to a major Hollywood studio each day, to work not as an actress but as a barista at a coffee chain. She lives with other actresses who enjoy the party scene but none of whom has made it big. Each audition Mia goes to is worse than the one before. But she’s hoping her one woman show wi’ll convince Hollywood she’s ready for stardom. Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) is a serious musician who composes grand jazz opuses on his grand piano. He’s a jazz purist who would rather die than perform with a fusion band. He pines for the old jazz joints, now rapidly turning into tapas bars. Ironically he ends up working in a rundown piano bar where his hard-ass boss (JK Simmons) makes him play Jingle Bells, over and over again.
Mia and Sebastian first meet in an LA traffic jam, and it’s hate at first site. Later, when he rescues her from a bad date, they hit it off. This leads to more meetings where together they explore the classic sites of old 
Hollywood: like the planetarium from Rebel without a Cause.
Together, supporting one another, they think they can conquer the world. But will their success be what tears their relationship apart?
La La Land is a very good movie that’s also a musical. That means extras singing and dancing their hearts out on the LA freeway. Gosling and Stone use their real voices and legs, but they’re not Gene Kelly or Julie Andrews. They’re popular actors trying hard to sing and dance. It makes their performances real and touching, but not super fantastic. It combines fantasy, a complex plot, extended flashbacks, and touching moments of love, with beautifully shot images and catchy songs. It’s a tribute to a forgotten Hollywood by young people yearning for purer days. A very good movie.
Julieta starts today and Fences and Lala Land open on Christmas Day 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
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