Summer tentpoles. Films reviewed: The Deepest Breath, Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
A tentpole is a movie that, despite its extremely high budget, is expected to help a studio stay afloat so they can make lots of mid- or low-budget movies — the films I try to cover. But since a lot of these tentpoles are popping up this summer and inundating us with ads and publicity, I can’t completely ignore them. So this week, I’m looking at two of them — an action movie and an action/adventure — plus a sports doc.
The Deepest Breath
Wri/Dir: Laura McGann
Alessia Zecchini is an Italian woman whose dream — since she was a little girl — has always been to free dive. Freediving refers to an extreme sport usually done in natural settings. While there are many variations, it generally involves swimming straight down underwater as deep as you can go, and then turning around and swimming back up to the surface. The type Alessia competes in involves a weighted rope that she follows when swimming down and up. The deeper you go, the better your chance of winning a competition or breaking a world record. But countless people go deep-sea diving — what sets this type apart? Free diving is done without scuba gear; competitors hold their breath the entire time they’e underwater. (We’re talking two, three or four minutes or longer!) It’s considered an extreme sport because if you swim too deep you might black out and drown. So there are safety divers who accompany you, to mitigate the danger — they propel your body to the surface if you pass out. One such safety diver is Stephen Keenan, an Irishman known for his skills and dedication. The two become close in their repeated dives. But can they remain safe in such a dangerous sport?
The Deepest Breath is a sports documentary about Stephen, Allessia and other free divers both in and out of competition, as well as talking-head interviews with their friends and relatives. I was attracted to this documentary because I love underwater 
photography — the deep blues, the colourful fish, the coral reefs, whales and orca people might see as they explore the depths. And the photography is quite beautiful. But I hadn’t realized that most of the movie would just be people competing as they swim down and then up again. Free climbing — rock climbing without ropes or nets — is a highly skilled and very hazardous sport. (A great doc called Free Solo came out a few years ago). Free diving is not the equivalent. It’s just about who can hold their breath the longest as they swim up and down a rope, like a human yo-yo.
There are historical precedents, like women in Japan known as ama (海女) who used to swim topless in deep and rocky waters searching for pearls in oyster beds. But they did it as an occupation, not as a hobby. For the life of me, why do people risk their lives at something so pointless? I also found the movie manipulative: misleading audiences about implied relationships which may or may not have been real, while dropping false hints about the death of certain characters (no spoilers).
If you are a fan of (or a competitor in) free diving or other extreme sports, you’ll love this movie. Otherwise… maybe not.
Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, Part 1
Dir: Christopher McQuarrie
Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is a spy who carries out top secret assignments as part of the IMF — the Impossible Mission Team, known only to Kittridge, his boss (Henry Czerny) who works for the US government, and other members of the team. His mission? To rescue a special key from another agent, Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson) and bring it back. But this is no ordinary key. When interlocked with a second, one, this key can activate a lethal weapon so powerful it makes atomic bombs look like BB guns. The key was stolen from the Russians by an unknown entity, possibly an example of artificial intelligence gone rogue. Hunt liberates the key, but his plans are interrupted by a new player on the scene. Grace (Hayley Atwell) is a beautiful and glamorous thief, who can pick any pocket and open any lock. She’s working for Gabriel (Esai Morales), a mysterious and ruthless villain who represents The Entity — that unknown person, group or computer program seeking to rule the world. And her nimble fingers soon take possession of the key. It’s up to Hunt and his team to follow her through scenic spots in Europe and get back the key, before the Entity blows us all up. But who can he trust?
Mission: Impossible — Day of Reckoning is a light, fun movie with non-stop action. I find Mission: Impossible movies annoying for their ponderous plots and Tom Cruise-centric focus. This time, it’s funnier than usual, and also has many interesting characters: Ilsa, 
Grace, but also a deranged assassin named Paris (Pom Klementieff) and a diffident criminal broker known only as The White Widow (Vanessa Kirby). That’s right, this is an action movie with four fascinating female central characters! That’s rare. The stunts and special effects are really impressive, as is the scenery in Rome, Venice, and across the continent.
On the other hand, the dialogue in this movie is atrocious. I mean abysmally bad, in some scenes. A sequence set in the Pentagon may live on in history as some of the worst lines ever written. (Could it have been written by AI? No, it’s even worse than that.) It’s also Part One of a two-part series, so you’ll have to watch another one next year to tie up the loose ends.
But if you’re looking for pure summer entertainment, check this one out.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Dir: James Mangold
It’s 1944 in Nazi Germany. Indiana Jones (a de-aged Harrison Ford) is an archaeologist known for his bravery and derring-do. With his side-kick Basil Shaw (Toby Jones), they’re hoping to find a priceless relic amongst countless crates of stolen loot. They are captured and tortured by their cruel adversaries, but manage to escape, along with part of an ancient Greek device invented by Archimedes— the Dial of Destiny. Flash forward 25 years to Manhattan in the late 1960s. Indie is now an over-the-hill college professor, whose get up and go has got up and went. His treasure-hunting days are over, his wife (Karen Allen) has left him and his students don’t care what he says. But everything changes when Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), Basil’s daughter, shows up unannounced. She grabs the dial and runs off with it to Morocco. She’s not the only one interested in this dial — government agents want it, too, and so does Dr Voller (Mads 
Mikkelsen) a former Nazi turned NASA rocket scientist who Indie and Basil encountered back in 1944. Indie reverts to his old personality, and complete with hat and whip, he flies off to Morocco. And after some jostling and negotiations, he joins Helena and her loyal street-urchin pal Teddy (Ethann Isidore) on a transcontinental journey to locate the other half of the dial. But who will get there first?
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is the latest, and possibly the last of the movie franchise. Considering Harrison Ford is 81 now, I think he carries it off pretty well. Does the movie work? Totally. It’s a family-oriented action/ adventure film. Maybe I like it for the 
nostalgia factor, which is the basis of the whole series — Spielberg and Lucas made Raiders of the Lost Arc in the 80s in an attempt to recapture the movies they grew up with. But it has enough twists and turns, secrets and surprises, to keep you interested, start to finish. Mads Mikkelsen plays a perfect villain, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge is great, too. I actually really liked this one — it redeems the whole series.
One thing I don’t normally do is compare two movies, but I was struck by how similar this movie is to the latest Mission: Impossible. They both have chase scenes driving tiny cars pursued by gun-crazed drivers — a yellow Fiat 500 in Rome in Mission: Impossible, vs a Morrocan tuk-tuk in Indiana Jones. They both have half of a device with incredible power — a key and a dial — and are searching for the other half. They both have fight scenes on the roof of a fast-moving train passing in and out of tunnels. And 
there’s a clever pick-pocket — Grace in Mission, Teddy in Indie — who befuddles both the hero and the villains. And each of these tentpoles cost about $350 million each to make: That’s more than the budget of every feature made in Canada that year put together. Which is better? I liked them both, but I’d say Dial of Destiny is the better one.
Indiana Jones and thee Dial of Destiny is playing now, Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, Part 1 and The Deepest Breath both open 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.
Nannies. Films reviewed: Mary Poppins Returns, Roma
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s holiday season, between Christmas and New Year, a good time to catch up on all those movies you’ve been meaning to see. This week I’m looking at two new movies, a musical and a period drama, about nannies. There’s an ageless nanny in London with a magical touch, and a young nanny in Mexico City with a touch of sadness.
Mary Poppins Returns
Dir: Rob Marshall
It’s the 1930s in London, the time of The Great Slump. Michael Banks (Ben Whishaw) is a recently widowed father of three adorable kids – Anabel, John, and Georgie. They’ve lived in the house for generations, right beside an eccentric Admiral who fires cannons off his roof. Michael wants to be an artist, but works as a bank clerk to make ends meet. The kids struggle to act like grown-ups now that their mother is gone. And his sister Jane is doing her part as a social activist and union organizer. But an unexpected visit by two lawyers from 
the bank he works for throws the family into disarray. Turns out Michael defaulted on a loan and has until midnight Friday to pay it back or the entire family will be evicted from their own home.
What to do? Who can they turn to for help? Mary Poppins (Emily Blunt), of course!
Michael and Jane have almost forgotten that she saved the two of them when they were kids, and here she is back again, aged not a day. There is something magical about her, but only if you allow the impossible to happen. The kids are much too mature to fall for her tricks… or are they? Soon they’re swimming in the ocean via their bathtub, and travelling to a music hall in an animated world inside a chipped bowl. They visit Topsy (Meryl Streep) a flibbertigibbetty repair woman who lives upside down, to fix the bowl. They race through London piled up on a bicycle driven by Jack (Lin Manuel Miranda) who lights the 
city’s gas lamps. And they buy magic balloons from an old woman (Angela Landsbury) in the park. But can magic save their home before the bank’s evil Mr Wilkins (Colin Firth) takes it all away?
Mary Poppins Returns is exactly what the title promises: a continuation of the original story, one generation later. Jack was the chimney sweep’s son in the original, now he’s a lamplighter who narrates the story in song and dance. Michael and Jane are grownup versions of the original kids. The costumes – in bright yellows and fuscias with white boater hats – are pure Disney.The music, songs and dances, even the combination of flat cel animation with real people is just like it used to be. The score, the art direction, everything was a spot- on recreation of the original. The only differences are this Mary Poppins is decidedly sexier than the original, (Emily Blunt is amazing) and the cast isn’t lily white anymore. Lin Manuel Miranda is nicely endearing as Jack, though never having seen the hit broadway musical Hamilton I didn’t quite get the camera’s adulation of him.
I didn’t grow up with Mary Poppins, so I hold no deep sentimental attachment, but even so it scored high on my nostalgia meter, tugged at my heartstrings and made me feel warm inside. This is a wonderful G-rated musical and a genuine kids’ movie that also appeals to grown ups, a rarity these days.
Roma
Wri/Dir: Alfonso Cuaron
It’s 1970 in Mexico City. Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) lives in a beautiful house with a grand staircase, and walls lined with bookshelves. There’s a narrow tiled passageway that serves as a garage, where a big dog runs around. And four cute kids — Toño, Paco, Pepe and Sofi — who happily play spaceman games. Cleo lives there but it’s not her house. The kids pet their dog while Cleo shovels the poop. She’s the nanny and also the maid, the one who gets blamed when there’s trouble. And there’s lots of trouble these days, with Señora Sofía (Marina de Tavira) the mom, trying to run the house with Papa 
on a long business trip to Quebec. She has help from the grandmother, Señora Teresa, but it’s a world without men, at least until Papa comes back.
Cleo is from a village and not yet used to city life. She spends her free time with the cook and her boyfriend Fermin (Jorge Antonio Guerrero). Fermin is a Kendo fanatic – martial arts saved my life, he says – prone to bouts of kicking and punching the air in the nude following sex. But when Cleo tells him she’s pregnant with his child, he disappears without a trace. What will happen to her baby? Who will take care of the kids? And will the family’s father ever come home?
Roma is a slice-of-life look at Mexico City in the tumultuous early 70s. It follows Cleo, a poor indigenous girl who speaks Spanish as a second language, and Sofía’s upper middle class family, as they try to understand one another, even while they both face family crises. It’s a slow-moving drama with normal, mundane family problems alternating with episodes of violence, terror and natural disaster. Cleo is viewing gurgling babies in the maternity ward just as an earthquake hits. She travels with the family to a hacienda 
where family dog heads are mounted on a wall like hunting trophies and forest fires break out. A simple trip to a downtown furniture store coincides with a government attack on student protesters.
Watching Roma is an immersive experience, filled with sound and unexplained images appearing on the screen. It’s shot in exquisite black and white – Cuaron is the cinematographer, as well as writer and director. Long, low shots almost always from far away: looking longingly down long corridors, at figures in a field before a spacious mountain range, or watching Cleo and 
Fermin from behind as they watch a movie on a screen even further away.
This is a lovely rich movie but one that intentionally keeps the audience from getting too close to any of the characters. We’re observers, but the action is far away, through a window or behind a closed door. No close ups, reaction shots, or gushing movie score, even with Cleo. But the cumulative effect – the sounds, music, images characters and historical events based on Cuaron’s own childhood – gives it a powerful impact.
See it in a movie theatre while you still can.
Mary Poppins Returns is now playing in Toronto; check your local listings. And you can see Roma on Netflix or at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Movies within Movies. Films reviewed: The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology, The Wagner Files, Saving Mr Banks
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.
There are movies… and then there are movies within movies. This week I’m looking at some juicy brain candy, films that cross or blur the barriers between movies and real life. There’s a documentary with a Marxist lecturer who steps into the movies he talks about; a dramatized documentary that answers Bugs Bunny’s question What’s Opera, Doc?, and a drama set in Disneyland… about trying to make a movie.
The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology
Dir: Sophie Fiennes
What does the shark in the movie Jaws have to do with totalitarianism*? Well, a lot, if you listen to Slavoj Zizek.
If you haven’t seen him before, Slavoj Zizek is a real hoot. He’s this huge bombastic, bearded Slovenian who likes to talk – a lot.
A Marxist, he approaches ideology in unusual ways: pop culture and totalitarianism; Lacanian philosophy and The Big Other; social class and sexuality. A typical topic: how come Beethoven’s Ode to Joy was a national anthem for everyone from the extreme right to the extreme left? From Nazis to Peruvian Maoists? He seems to make sense — even when it’s complete nonsense.
You might think – how can I listen to this guy lecture for two hours straight? The way the movie works is he shows a clip from a film – say Reifenstahl’s Triumph of Will – and the next scene has him, in black and white, dressed in period uniform. He talks about a movie, and then he’s in the movie he’s talking about.
If you have an itch for some complex political chatter about pop-culture, The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology is the perfect place to find it.
(*In case you’re wondering about the shark in Spielberg’s Jaws… Zizek says it’s the Big Other, a way of reducing all of society’s fears and anxiety into a single entity. Fascism uses it to galvanize the population against a single feared “enemy”.)
Moving from the broad to the specific, here’s a new, experimental documentary about Wagner, called:
The Wagner Files
Dir: Ralf Pleger
Wagner! He’s the 19thcentury German composer best known for his symphonies and operas. You’ve heard the expression “It’s not over till the fat lady sings”? They’re talking about the valkyrie Brünnhilde from Wagner’s ring cycle.
But who was Wagner? Not what you might think. This doc digs up the skeletons in Wagner’s closet. He was born in Leipzig and became a composer famous across Europe. But it turns out his trips to Paris, Venice, Munich were partly so he could outrun his creditors! He was deeply in debt. Then there’s his friend Hans von Bulow, an aristocrat and musician. Wagner was sleeping with von Bulow’s wife, Cosima, a 
raven-haired beauty who was also Franz Liszt’s granddaughter. She gave birth to Wagner’s kids while still married to von Bulow. Scandal! Sounds almost like a soap opera.
Then Wagner befriended King Ludwig of Bavaria – a crazy gay king who built a castle inspired by a Wagner opera. They had a passionate – though non-sexual – affair, and he became Wagner and Cosima’s patron, showering them with money and paying for his four-part opera and the Bayreuth festival in Bavaria devoted to his work.
Then there’s his fetishes. Wagner covered himself with feminine things –rose-coloured silk and velvets. They found his dead body clothed in pink robes.
Wagner and Cosima also had a dark side. He wrote a virulent tract against Jewish musicians and composers, saying they were members of an “inferior race” ruining German culture. And later (after Wagner died) the widow Cosima became closely tied to Hitler and the Nazi party, a tarnish still associated with Wagner’s work.
The movie uses both experts — conductors, historians, writers – and actors who portray Cosima and Richard… but in 20thcentury settings: Cosima posing dramatically; Richard rolling around in his pink feather boas. Half drama, half doc, German dialogue, English narrator. This is a strange but endlessly fascinating movie.
Saving Mr Banks
Dir: John Lee Hancock
Mrs Travers (Emma Thompson) is an uptight, posh writer in her 60’s living in London, sipping tea and reading Gurdjieff.
She wrote Mary Poppins and Disney has been trying to buy the rights to it for decades. Finally, in 1961, she agrees to fly to LA to meet Walt Disney himself (Tom Hanks).
She is not impressed by America. She says it smells like chlorine and sweat. And she’s creeped-out when she finds her hotel room filled with stuffed, giant Mickey Mice. At the studio she objects to 
everything the writer and songwriters (the Sherman brothers, played by Jason Schwartzman and B.J. Novak) show her. Who are these penguins? She said no cartoons! Why is Mr Banks (the father) portrayed as mean? And the mother as uncaring?
But then her childhood is gradually revealed in a series of flashbacks. She’s actually not English at all. She grew up in the Australian outback. Her mom was depressed. Her dad (Colin Farrell) was an alcoholic bank manager who hated his job. He told her life is just an illusion. And then there’s the inspiration for Mary Poppins.
Can Walt discover what’s holding her back from making a movie? This is a cute, heavily nostalgic and somewhat moving biopic, about turning a book into a movie script. The songs are great and lots of fun. Emma Thompson is terrific as the hard-to-like Mrs Travers who gradually opens up. Totally believable. Tom Hanks role is less rounded, more superficial. Why? Think about it: a Walt Disney movie about their founder shot on the Disney backlot? It’s like a Vatican-made drama about the Pope. So the Disney scenes are restricted, but the Travers scenes allowed to blossom.
The Wagner Files — at the Carlton — The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology — at TIFF — and Saving Mr Banks all open today 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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