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

The Toronto International Film Festival is less than a week away, bringing you the best of next year’s movies today. So this week I’m going to share a bit of Canadiana, an overview of movies playing at TIFF. But first, some Americana, two nostalgic biopics opening this weekend. There’s a president straight out of Hollywood, and a baseball team deep in the heart of Texas.

Reagan

Wri/Dir: Sean McNamara (The King’s Daughter, The Miracle Season)

Ronald Reagan is born in the town of Tampico, Ill, in 1911, to a bible-thumping mom, and an alcoholic dad. After summer jobs as a lifeguard he plays on a college football team for three years. His life in show business starts as a radio announcer, but he is eventually is drawn to Hollywood, where he has minor success in B-Movies. He marries Jane Wyman (Mena Suvari) a much bigger star than he is. They get divorced and he eventually marries Nancy Reagan (Penelope Ann Miller), who stays with him throughout his career, He rises in the union ranks till he’s head of the Screen Actors Guild. As his acting career tanks he turns to politics, and is elected Republican governor of California, from 1967 through 1985. And eventually becomes the 40th president of the United States. 

He runs on an upbeat conservative platform, and wins he a landslide. He cuts taxes to the very rich, brings a huge increase in military spending and a decimation of public welfare, while also running up the national debt. He pointedly ignores the AIDS epidemic, killing 100,000 mainly young people in the 1980s. And he brings the world to the brink of a nuclear holocaust, before switching to a more cooperative stance with the USSR’s new leader Gorbachev. He survives an assassination attempt, the Iran Contra scandal, and much, much more, all carefully noted in the film.

Reagan (the movie) is a comprehensive dramatic biopic about the life and career of this man. It’s hagiographic in its outlook and revisionist in its politics. It clocks in at 2:15 minutes but seems even longer, with its plodding retelling of every one of Reagan’s more famous moments or speeches. The costumes all look like recreations of Ralph Lauren fashion spreads in Vanity Fair. The acting varies widely. Dennis Quaid is adequate but not  believable as the much older Reagan. Lesley-Anne Down is absurd as a genteel and elegant Margaret Thatcher. But Penelope Ann Miller is uncanny as Nancy Reagan, perfectly capturing her look, voice, and expressions. It’s chronologically precise but full of blatant opinions and half-truths. Were the Contras really freedom fighters? Was it Reagan’s speeches and policies that brought down the Berlin Wall and the fall of the Iron Curtain? If you think so, this movie is for you. The twist is it’s all narrated by Jon Voigt (with a heavy Russian accent) as a KGB agent who supposedly followed Reagan’s career. Which fits, given the Cold War propaganda vibe of the whole movie.

This one’s a clunker.

You Gotta Believe

Dir: Ty Roberts (12 Mighty Orphans)

It’s the early 2000s in Fort Worth, Texas. Bobby and Jon (Luke Wilson, Greg Kinnear) are best friends. They go fishing together and are the coach and manager of the local Little League baseball team. Both their sons are players. Unfortunately, the team is terrible, ranked last in their division. They can’t even make it to first base. They’re a gang of 

oddballs and misfits. One with glasses, one with braces, a redhead, sleepy, happy, sneezy, doc… you get the picture.  Due to some odd circumstances they’re asked to go to the playoffs. But both Jon and the team members are less than enthusiastic. Why subject ourselves to even more of this constant failure?  Until they come up with a real reason to play, to try hard… and maybe even to win. Bobby has cancer. And he would love to see them in the championships. So they get together, enter heavy training, exercise and practice, practice, practice. And guess what? They make it all the way to the Little League World Cup in Massachusetts! But now they’re in the big (little) leagues… can they pull off a win? And can their enthusiasm help Bobby in his fight against cancer?

You Gotta Believe is a cute and funny family picture about kids and baseball. It’s based on a true story, and shows where the characters are now, 20 years later. The teams are all male, and so are most of the characters, except Sarah Gadon and Molly Parker as Jon and Bobby’s wives.  I am the opposite of a baseball fan, but even I know the difference between a strike out and a home run. (Lots of both in this film, though strangely very few singles doubles or triples.) There’s nothing terribly new or original in the story, but it’s still watchable by kids and some grownups. If you like baseball, and stories of comradery and teamwork, you’ll like this one.

Canada at TIFF24

TIFF brings us great movies from around the world; here are a few Canadian movies that I want to see. From the classics there’s Young Werther a contemporary retelling of Goethe’s famous novel, minus the sturm und drang; as well as a new version of  Bonjour Tristesse, based on the 1950s book written by a teenager. Guy Maddin’s Rumours is about the G7 leaders lost in the woods, while David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds has an inventor connecting with the dead. Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language envisions a bilingual Canada where everyone speaks French or Farsi; and Sofia Bohdanowicz’s Measures for a Funeral, about a renowned violinist. Sophie Deraspe’s Shepherds (Bergers) tells of a Montreal copywriter who flees to the alps; and Kazik Radwanski’s Matt and Mara about college friends reconnecting.

There are also some first features: Omar Wala’s Shook about a writer who falls for a barista, and Marie-Hélène Viens and Philippe Lupien’s Vous n’êtes pas seuls, about a pizza deliverer who falls for a musician but gets kidnapped by aliens. And Seeds, by Kaniehtiio Horn, about an influencer who signs a juicy contract promoting a multinational corporation only to discover they’re bad, bad, bad. And I’ve already told you about Sook-Yin Lee’s Paying for It. That’s just some of the Canadian films at TIFF this year. 

Reagan and You Gotta Believe both open this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings. TIFF starts next Thursday — go to tiff.net for tickets.

This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.