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

TIFF starts in less than a week, but it’s a bit different this year. The press is under a total embargo, even for capsule reviews. But I can tell you about some of the changes. Unlike last year which was totally digital, this year they’re showing movies both on the big screen and digitally (at home). They also claim there will be no tickets, no badges, and no line-ups. No line ups? Unless they’ve mastered the art of teleportation, I’m not sure how they’ll get people into theatres without queues… but we shall see.       

This week I’m looking at two new movies — an action thriller and a musical drama. There’s a young woman in Brazil pursued by Japanese gangsters; and a Pakistani-British rapper in London chased by visions in his head.

Yakuza Princess

Co-Wri/Dir:Vicente Amorim

(based on the graphic novel by Danilo Beyruth)

Liberdade is the Japanese-Brazilian section of Sao Paolo, one of the largest communities of ethnic Japanese in the world, outside of Japan.  Akemi (Masumi) is there to improve her Portuguese. She has a part-time job selling LED lighting at a booth in the market working for a strict boss. In her free time, she practices Kendo, a martial art using bamboo swords. She’s devoted to her sensei, who stresses the importance of these lessons. And she loves singing at the local karaoke bar. 

But due to an unexpected turn of events, she meets a strange man with no name (Jonathan Rhys Meyers). He has total amnesia — he doesn’t know who he is ,where he’s from and why he’s there. His face is covered with scars; he recently evaded a police-watch at his hospital bed where the cops wanted to question him about a certain sword, found beside his nearly-lifeless body. He also wants to know about the sword — he recognizes its importance — the only thing he can remember. Akemi has to fight off three aggressive young punks who cat-call her as she performs her song. They stalk her home and threaten and break into her apartment. She fights them off using her latent skills in self-defence, but it’s three-to-one, until the sword-wielding scarface steps in to help. Then a third player enters the picture and joins in the fight. Takeshi (Ihara Tsuyoshi) is a highly ranked member of a powerful Yakuza clan. (The Yakuza refers to organized crime groups and their devoted members who are both powerful but also outcasts  within Japanese society.) He’s in Brazil on a mission: to track down Akemi, the only surviving member of a faction wiped out in a power struggle 20 years earlier when she was just a little girl. She knows nothing about any of this. Which of these two men is her ally… and which one is her killer? Takeshi, the ruthless Yakuza or the scar-faced swordsman with amnesia? And where did his strangely alluring Katana sword come from?

Yakuza Princess, as the title suggests, is an action/thriller about an ordinary young woman who discovers she’s the heiress to a faction of gangsters whose rivals are trying to kill. This is a Brazilian movie, and the script is in three languages English Japanese and Portuguese. It’s also pretty kitschy in its fetishistic version of Japanese culture, filled silent ritual bows and singing swords. But movies like this are allowed to be kitschy — they’re all about the fights: sword fights, fist-fights, jiu jitsu matches, gun battles and chase scenes. All of which are nicely choreographed. Ihara Tsuyoshi is a former stuntman, Masumi is a singer-actress, and Irish actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers has been playing dangerous pretty-boys in TV series and movies for many years. In this one though, his face is so covered in scars and blood he’s barely recognizable (probably so stuntmen can play him in the fight scenes.) Yakuza Princess may be super-cheesy and bloody with a convoluted plot,  but it’s a fun action thriller. With an ending that suggests many more sequels yet to come.

Mogul Mowgli

Dir: Bassam Tariq

Z (Riz Ahmed) is a rising South-Asian English rapper. He just finished a sold-out American tour and he’s flying high, hanging with his American girlfriend Bina and his British manager. And now he’s slated to go on a world tour, as the opening act for a superstar. This is the big break he’s been waiting for. So he decides to spend a week in London’s East End with his family who he hasn’t seen for two years. But nothing has changed.  The new dishwasher is still sitting there in a box. His bedroom is full of the  cassette tapes he rapped to as a teenager. His dad (Alyy Khan) is a failed entrepreneur full of get-rich -quick schemes that never get off the ground. And his mom (Sudha Bhuchar) has her own quirks. When the chilli peppers she chars over a burner gives off no aroma — she says it’s a bad sign. Turns out she’s right. Z is suddenly afflicted by an unidentified ailment. 

Within a day or two his muscles cease to function. He can’t walk, can barely  even stand up. But his world tour is leaving in a couple days! IN the hospital a doctor had worse news. It’s an autoimmune disorder of unknown origin. Luckly there’s a new tincture they can try on him — it just might work. But among many possible side effect is the loss of fertility.  And even worse, his manager wants to replace him own the world tour with an awful rapper wannabe. Suddenly the famous performer is emasculated and immobile, deserted by his friends and depending on his eccentric parents’ superstitions to get through the day. Under the influence of the experimental meds he slips into a twilight zone of dreams, visions and hallucinations. Will he live or will he die? Will his former powers be restored? Can his career and reputation be rescued? And will his self-confidence ever return?

Mogul Mowgli is a brilliant showcase for the great young British actor Riz Ahmed. It’s hilarious surprising, and filled with sharp self-criticism. It chronicles the fall of a famous rapper — Riz Ahmed wrote his own versus — and the loss of face that entails. It also reveals the inner-workings of the London Pakistani  community — at home, in the mosque and in the wider world. And how the children of immigrants navigate their split identities. Everything Z sees and hears makes its way into the versus he’s constantly composing in his head. It’s told in an almost surreal manner, through the inner workings of a possibly dying man’s mind. Z is haunted by a groom whose face is covered with garlands of flowers, while his hospital gown morphs into a sequinned suit.

I really liked this movie. 

Mogul Mowgli and Yakuza Princess are both opening theatrically and/or digitally across Canada 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