Outcastes. Films reviewed: The Mastermind, Regretting You, Bugonia
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
There are a ton of movies opening this weekend with lots of choices for every taste. This week I’m looking at three of them, all about outcasts and rebels. There’s a self-styled art thief in Massachusetts, a daughter fighting her mom when two families are brought together by tragedy in North Carolina, and a pair of cousins trying to save the earth… by kidnapping a CEO they think is an alien.
The Mastermind
Wri/Dir: Kelly Reichardt
It’s 1970 in Framingham, Massachusetts. James Blaine Mooney (Josh O’Connor) is an architect who is down on his luck. He loves his wife Terri (Alana Haim) and their two bright sons, Carl and Tommy (Sterling and Jasper Thompson), but he’s just not earning a living. He has no clients, and is forced to borrow money on the sly from his high-society mom. (Don’t let your father know about this.) He is smart, savvy and full of ideas but spends most of his time puttering around with his ne’erdowell pals. But now he has a get-rich-quick scheme he’s sure will solve all his family problems: stealing modern paintings from his small town art museum.
He tests and calculates every step: a sleepy unarmed guard, no alarms, clear exits, art easily taken off walls. He even has a stolen getaway car, and two henchmen with pantyhose to pull over their faces. It’s foolproof, and they pull it off with barely a hitch. But things goes south when one of the robbers gets caught at another job and spills the beans to the cops. James is labeled the mastermind behind the crime and is forced to flee the town and his family for an uncertain future. Where will he go and how will he survive on the lam?
The Mastermind is a brilliant period piece, a portrait of an America full of sketchy bus stations and flophouses, totally free of patriotic nostalgia. It’s set against — but separate from — the widespread antiwar protests of 1970. Josh O’Connor portrays James as a flawed antihero, who is nevertheless sympathetic. He commits his petty crimes wearing wooly sweaters and corduroy pants. The details in the production design are astoundingly precise. Kelly Reichardt is one of the best American directors you’ve probably never heard of. She 
makes films, not high-concept schlock and if you haven’t seen her movies, this is a good one to start with. The Mastermind is one of those movies that starts in the middle of things and ends suddenly, before you think it’s over, but it all makes perfect sense.
This is a really good movie.
Regretting You
Wri/Dir: Josh Boone
It’s 17 years ago on a hot summer night in North Carolina. Two teenaged couples are at a pool party: Morgan and Chris, and Jonah and Jenny. Morgan and Jenny are sisters, Chris and Jonah best friends. They say opposites attract; Chris and Jenny are wild partiers, who like getting drunk and having wild sex, while Jonah and Morgan are smart, conscientious and non drinkers. Fast forward to the present.
Morgan (Allison Williams) has been married to Chris for 17 years, and they have raised their daughter Clara (Mckenna Grace) since they were still young. Jonah (Luigi-Mangione-lookalike Dave Franco) left town soon after graduation but came back recently and restarted his relationship with Jenny, soon leading to a newborn son. And then there’s Clara: everyone loves her. She’s a high school senior who dreams of becoming an actress after college. She tells her aunt Jenny all the things she can’t tell her mom; she’s like her best friend. She adores her dad Chris, and respects Jonah, who is also her high school teacher. And Clara is crushing on Miller, a popular guy at school,(Mason Thames) who lives on a farm with his gramps, cause his dad is in prison. He likes movies, sucking lollipops and moving roadsigns. But he has a girlfriend so he’s a no-go for Clara.
But everything is messed up when Chris and Jenny are killed in a terrible car crash, leaving Clara without her Dad and her Aunt, Jonah without his lover and the mother of their baby, and Morgan without her sister and the only man she’s ever been with. So Jonah turns to Morgan to form a make-shift family to deal with shock, grief, and the temporary raising of their two kids. (Clara and her Mom aren’t talking.) And while all this is going on, Clara and Miller start hanging out. Can 
these estranged family members adjust to the drastic changes? What secrets will be revealed and what hidden loves awakened?
Regretting You is a very conventional drama/romance about two families recovering from unexpected loss. It’s also a coming-of-age story, along with some unrequited love. Based on a popular novel, it’s a very easy movie, with nothing transgressive: its set among church and proms and school plays and going to the movies. The characters are pleasant, and its directed in an easy-to-watch way: texts sent between Clara and Miller are also voiced, so no need to read. The story is divided between the grown ups and the teens, with the teens the more interesting half. But what’s weird about this one is the catastrophic events all happen off-camera, and toward the beginning. The rest of the movie is just about mending relations and recovering from the shocks. So instead of building up to a satisfying emotional purge, this one starts with the dramatic shock and then just coasts.
While I don’t regret seeing Regretting You, it’s not my preferred type of movie.
Bugonia
Dir: Yorgos Lanthimos
High-strung Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and shy, neurodivergent Don (Aidan Delbis) are cousins. They share a dilapidated house they inherited along with an attached farm, where they eke out a meagre existence — dressed in filthy Hazmat suits — through the cultivation of honey bees. But the bees are disappearing. What’s happening to their colony? They also work at a shipping station for a nearby big pharma corporation that specializes in lethal pesticides. Teddy holds a special grudge toward that company for past digressions it inflicted on him and his family.
The company is Auxolith and its CEO is Michelle (Emma Stone), a high-power, alpha careerist. She lives a magazine-like lifestyle in her modern mansion equipped with high security. She is a perfectionist, who only eats heathy food and insists her hair, makeup and power suits are always flawless. She works out using the latest machinery and is fully trained in martial arts. At work, though surrounded by a retinue of 
yes-men, she seems oddly sterile and detached from all her employees.
But everything changes when Teddy — with Donny’s help — kidnap Michelle and drag her, undetected, to their lair. They shave her head, tie her to a bed, and cover her skin with weird emollients. Does they want money? Fame? A platform for their manifesto? No! Teddy is convinced Michelle is personally responsible for widespread ecological destruction of the planet — including his bees. And her motive? He is convinced she’s an alien from Andromeda with ties to a mothership parked just outside of the earth. Where do his bizarre theories come from? How can Michelle escape their clutches?
Bugonia is a weird movie pitting an eco-terrorists against a cold billionaire industrialist. Like all of Yorgos Lanthimos’s movies, Bugonia is simultaneously hilarious and disturbing. Grown adults talk like stilted children saying profound but outlandish statements. It’s laden with conspiracy theories, that are no less ridiculous than the corporate-speak the other half uses. Lanthimos likes to cast the same retinue of actors from his past pictures, so Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons are back again playing more quirky oddballs (though Aidan Delbis is entirely new). Bugonia is comical and absurd but also dark.
I really like Lanthimos’s style, but some people hate it; he’s not for everybody. But if you’re looking for something wack and dark and weird, you’ve got to see Bugonia.
Bugonia, Mastermind and Regretting You all open in Toronto 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.
A triptych and a prequel. Kinds of Kindness, A Quiet Place: Day One
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
If you’re wondering what to do on this long holiday weekend, I can tell you what you should do. Go see some movies. Here are two I recommend — an art house drama and a horror thriller. One’s a prequel in Manhattan, the other’s a triptych in New Orleans.
Kinds of Kindness
Co-Wri/Dir: Yorgos Lanthimos
(Past reviews: Poor Things, The Favourite, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Lobster, Alps, Dogtooth, )
It’s nowadays in the American deep south, where a lot of strange things are going on. Robert (Jesse Plemons) is an executive who lives a highly regimented life. Each day he reports his stats to Michael, the CEO. These include exactly what he eats at each meal, how much he drinks, even whether or not he slept with his wife (Hong Chau) the night before. He follows his boss’s orders down to the smallest detail. In return, his boss pays his salary and his car and sends him pricey — but inherently useless— gifts. But when Michael orders Robert to murder someone, he draws the line.
Daniel (Plemons) is a police officer whose wife Liz (Emma Stone) is lost at sea in a boat accident. She is eventually rescued and returns home. But he insists she’s not really his wife: she looks, speaks and acts exactly as his real wife did, but he is sure she was switched for someone else. So he thinks of ways to expose her plot.
Two strangely-dressed members of a bizarre religious cult 
(Stone and Plemons) centred on bodily fluids, are seeking a woman to join their group, because of special powers she might have. But is their devotion to the cult leaders Aka and Obi (Chau, Dafoe) absolute? Or do they owe allegiance to certain outside forces?
Kinds of Kindness is a series of three short, complete films shown in sequence. While each story has different characters, they are played by the same cast: Stone, Plemons, Chau, Dafoe, plus Margaret Qualley, Mamoudou Athie, and Joe Alwyn. Only one character, a cryptic, usually dead or nearly dead man known only as RMF (Yorgos Stefanakos) is in all three.
But this is a Yorgos Lanthimos film, so naturally it’s loaded with awkward behaviour, stilted dialogue, and deadpan humour. He also flirts with the most shocking and gruesome themes imaginable, things like accidental suicide, cannibalism, 
self mutilation, and drugged sex, but presented in the most blasé way possible. The art direction is brilliant, presenting garish consumerism in the form of giant pantsuits and bright coloured sports cars. So uncool it’s beyond brilliant.
The acting is fantastic.
Plemons plays variations on a theme: angry white guy, kiss-ass white guy, and angry kiss-ass white guy. Dafoe is a domineering patriarch, whether all-powerful, ineffectual or benign. Margaret Qualley can sex it up as a kept mistress or play it down as a veterinarian. And Emma Stone is perfect, as always, with fully-developed oddball characters in at least two of the films. I know people who love Lanthimos’s movies and people who really hate them. I’m on the love side, but I can’t say Kinds of Kindness didn’t disturb me. It did.
But that’s part of his genius.
A Quiet Place: Day One
Co-Wri/Dir: Michael Sarnoski
Samira (Lupita Nyong’o) is is a depressed and lonely poet. She doesn’t live in NY City anymore; nor does she write. She lives in a hospice now, waiting to die of an incurable illness, with only a kind nurse (Alex Woolf) and a little black and white cat named Frodo to keep her company. But today will be a bit different. She and the the rest of the patients are heading into the city to watch a show. Sam agrees to go, as long as she can have one of the things she misses most — a slice of NY pizza. But the trip is cut short by a surprise emergency announcement: everybody must leave the city immediately! The emergency is a series of fighter jets that are dropping something on the city, something dangerous and deadly. Soon the streets are chaotic, filled with crashing cars and screaming people. Sam is separated from her group, stunned by a huge explosion that leaves her covered with dust and ash.
What’s going on? A small army of enormous creatures that look like a deadly cross between insects and gorillas have descended on the city, slaughtering and eating hundreds of people at a time. They have long claws that can slash you apart, and can find you using their extremely sensitive sense of hearing. They can hear a pin drop a mile away. On the other hand, they can’t see, they can’t smell, they can’t swim. So if you stay completely 
still and make no human -ike noises, they can’t find you. The tunnels are flooded and the bridges destroyed to contain the monsters so the only way off the island is by ferries leaving the South Street Seaport. Waves of people head south… except Sam., her cat and an Englishman in a suit she met named Eric (Joseph Quinn). They’re walking against the tide, heading up to Harlem together to claim that last slice of pizza. But can they stay quiet long enough to get there alive?
A Quiet Place: Day One is an apocalyptic, dystopian thriller horror. Lupita N’yongo does an excellent job as a woman who is both strong and dying, adding pathos to what could have just been fear. I saw the IMAX version and the sound and camerawork is amazing, with blurred backgrounds and amazing tricks in the dark using flashlights and phones. Special effects are seamless; they look completely real. And there a number of moving scenes that rise above the usual horror you expect, like the foreboding in a marionette show. There are lots of poignant moments like that. Occasionally it goes over the top in its 
sentimentality, — like when Eric does a Charlie Chaplin style pantomime — but it usually stays in check.
Day One is a prequel to the rest of the Quiet Place series, giving some hints as to the origin of a world overrun by monsters, while intentionally leaving much of it unanswered. Are they aliens? Biological weapons? Were they created on earth or did they come from outer space? I don’t know, but it keeps you wondering all the way through this powerful horror thriller.
A Quiet Place: Day One, and Kinds of Kindness, both open this weekend in Toronto; 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.
A New World? Films reviewed: Going In, Poor Things
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
December is supposed to be a time for fun and relaxation, so this week, I’m looking at two new movies that you might find fun to watch. There’s a comedy/action movie set 40 years ago in Toronto, and a wild comedic fable set a century ago in Europe.
Going In
Wri/Dir: Evan Rissi
It’s the late 1980s in Toronto. Leslie Booth (Evan Rissi) is a young lecturer who waxes eloquent about Hegelian dialectics to bored college students. He doesn’t smoke, drink or cuss and stays away from drugs. He even goes to bed early if his on-again, off-again girlfriend isn’t spending the night. But everything changes when a strange man, all dressed in black, starts showing up everywhere he goes. Reuben (Ira Goldman) is a Jamaican-Canadian who wears a huge Star of David around his neck. He used to be Leslie’s best friend, going out on the town every night, but haven’t seen each other for five years. And Leslie has been on the straight and narrow ever since.
But Reuben needs his help, and is calling in a favour. His brother has disappeared, and he suspects it’s the work of a Toronto drug kingpin named Feng (Victor D.S. Man). Feng has cornered the market on a highly-addictive pill hitting the streets known as Pearl. Users love the experience, but addicts end up looking like zombies with solid white eyes. Reuben wants to penetrate this Triad and save his brother’s life, but the only way to do it is to get hold of a pair of tickets to Feng’s annual tournament. So Leslie joins with Reuben 
and finds himself falling into old habits, snorting coke and frequenting sleazy bars to get more information. But the closer they get to their target the more dangerous it all looks. What is that tournament about? And can they rescue Reuben’s and get out unscathed?
Going In is a Toronto action/comedy movie set in — and in the style of — the 1980s. It’s also a buddy movie with a black guy and a white guy, like Lethal Weapon, Beverley Hills Cop or Silver Streak. But unlike those Hollywood hits, Going In is a micro- budget movie — we’re talking tens of thousands not hundreds of millions — with unknown actors and minimal special effects. Evan Rissi 
wrote, directed and stars as Leslie, while Ira Goldman who plays Reuben also produced it. And Victor D.S. Man as the villain looks like he walked straight out of an old Hong Kong flick.
Surprisingly, this movie works. It’s clearly low-budget but it doesn’t seem slapdash. While it plays into a lot of film conventions and stereotypes, there are some very original scenes that I’ve never seen before — like the tournament they’re trying so hard to get into (no spoilers) It also has a good soundtrack, a b-ball match, some fight scenes and even a psychedelic out-of-body experience. And it’s not afraid to have the CN Tower constantly popping up in the background, to remind us that it’s Toronto, not NY, Detroit, Boston, Phillie or any of the other cities Toronto usually pretends to be in movies shot here. Keep in mind that this is a DIY movie, not from a big studio, and you might get a kick out of it.
Poor Things
Dir: Yorgos Lanthimos
Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) is a medical student in Victorian England. He regularly attends surgical demonstrations by Dr Godwin Baxter (an unrecognizable Willem Dafoe) a controversial scientist with outrageous ideas. Baxter’s face is grotesque, like something that was cut into pieces and sewn back together. But the doctor takes a liking to shy Max, and hires him to live in his home and look after his daughter Bella (Emma Stone). Bella is a beautiful woman in her late 20s, but who behaves like a recently-hatched duckling just learning to walk. She has a vocabulary of just six words, and is given to stabbing, tearing or biting anything put in front of her. But with Max’s help, she quickly learns to speak and think, and is full of questions about the world. She is not allowed out of her home — it’s too dangerous, they say. You see, Bella is an adult woman with a baby’s brain implanted in her skull, one of the mad scientist’s latest experiments. As she matures, she and Max fall in love and plan their wedding — though still in a strictly patriarchal relationship (she refers to her father/creator Godwin Baxter as God for short.) But before they can marry, a scoundrel named Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) shows up on the scene. He sweeps Bella off her feet with the introduction of something new into her vocabulary — sexual pleasure — which she greatly enjoys. He 
promises endless sexual satisfaction and rollicking new adventures if she follows him on his trip. Bella realizes Duncan is a cad and a rake but agrees to go with him anyway, postponing her marriage to Max indefinitely or at least until after she sees the world.
She sets off on this journey with Duncan aboard an ocean liner docking in various ports which she naively explores and learns from what she sees. She’s the ultimate fish out pf water, a novelty to all she meets, because she speaks so frankly and forthrightly. Bella has yet to learn basic societal rules about class, money, capitalism, sex, nudity and modesty. She explores this strange world scientifically and logically, much to Duncan’s dismay. Who is she really and where did she come from? Is sex a market commodity or something more personal? Will her naivety lead to disaster? Or will she return, 
triumphant, to London with her innocence intact?
Poor Things is a brilliant social satire about sex, class, feminism, and society. It incorporates elements of 18th century novels like Fanny Hill, Tom Jones and Candide. It’s surreal, absurdist and psychedelic, but ultimately comes across as a fable or a morality play. It’s all filmed on an elaborate set (shot in Hungary), in a weird, steampunk Europe that never existed beneath a sky filled with blimps and zeppelins. (It looks like Terry Gilliam’s movie Brazil.) The costumes are outrageous — Bella has enormous shoulder pads bigger than her head. Emma Stone is amazing as Bella, though Mark Ruffalo overdoes it as Duncan — teetering between funny and ridiculous.
I’ve been following Yorgos Lanthimos’s films since Dogtooth in 2009, and this one revisits many of his earliest themes: absurdist humour; adults who speak awkwardly like small children, and who grow up isolated, never 
allowed to leave their home, by a dictatorial, god-like father figure. It feels like Dogtooth Part Two: The Outside World. But now he commands a big enough budget to build ornate sets, costumes and wigs, with dozens of fascinating characters. I’m sure some of you will hate this movie, or be offended by it, but I think it’s absolutely brilliant.
Poor Things opens this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings. Going In is available digitally online across North America, from December 19th.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.
Controversial European Directors. Films reviewed: The Favourite, The House that Jack Built
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com.
This week I’m looking at two movies in English by controversial European directors from Denmark and Greece. There’s a satirical horror movie about a Jack in his house; and a historical dramedy about a Queen in her palace.
The Favourite
Dir: Yorgos Lanthimos
It’s England in the early 1700s, a time of heavy makeup, high heels and elaborate wigs. (I’m talking about the men here). Women, on the other hand, rule the country. At the top of the heap is Queen Anne (Olivia Coleman) a 
long-suffering widow. And always by her side is her childhood friend Sarah Churchill, the Duchess of Malborough (Rachel Weisz). Her husband is leading a battle in France, leaving Sarah free to her own devices. She advises the Queen about when to go to war and whose taxes should pay for it. Together, they – not the male politicians – decide where the country should head.
Until one day, when a new woman appears on the scene, upsetting the delicate balance. Abigail (Emma Stone), Sarah’s naïve cousin, shows up at the palace gates asking for a job. She is pretty and speaks with an upper class accent but she hasn’t been rich since her father, a 
compulsive gambler, lost her in a card game when she was still a teen. Now she’s single again and penniless. They put her to work as a scullery maid where the other servants treat her cruely. But gradually Abigail learns how to play the game.
She seduces a young aristocrat she meets in the woods with the aim of marrying up. And she manoeuvres her status in the palace by “accidentally” running into the Queen as often as she can. She expresses sympathy for the sad Queen and the rabbits she keeps as pets to replace all her lost children. While Sarah can be cruel and domineering – 
she dresses in dominant, tight black bodices, and sends withering looks at Anne when she gets too sentimental – Abigail presents herself as a dainty ingénue, devoted to the Queen’s happiness.
Is it all just an act? And can she replace Sarah as the Queen’s favourite?
The Favourite is a brilliant comedy – based on historical facts – about two women fighting for the Queen’s favour. It’s also a love triangle, about what happens in the royal bedchambers behind closed doors. It’s by Greek director Yorgos 
Lanthimos, whose unique style I’ve loved since his first film Dogtooth almost a decade ago. All his movies (Alps, The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer) have a strange stilted, faux-naïve style to them that puts some people off. His characters always seem slightly out of place in their suburban homes. But by setting it in an 18th century royal palace, suddenly the dialogue (Deborah Davis, Tony McNamara) seems witty, not stilted, and everything makes perfect sense.
With its exquisite costumes, beautiful musical score and great acting, especially Coleman and Weisz, this is a great movie.
The House that Jack Built
Wri/Dir: Lars von Trier
Jack (Matt Dillon, in a despicably good performance) is an independently wealthy engineer who would rather be an architect. He is building himself a house. But he is also a perfectionist with OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) which makes him a captive of his own fear of failure. Each 
version he tries to complete ends in frustration. So he turns to other ways to express himself artistically.
But he’s also a psychopath with no moral sense so first he has to teach himself to fake normal emotions so people will trust him. He uses these new skills to meet women, often at random, and murders them. He 
takes the bodies to a huge walk-in freezer, poses them, and then send his photographs to the tabloids as Mister Sophistication. These are his “works of art”.
And despite how obvious and blatant his killings are – he even brags to the police that he’s a serial killer – nobody ever tries to stop him.
The film is narrated by Jack’s voice, off camera, confessing all to a man named Virgil (Bruno Ganz) in a reference to Dante’s Inferno. Jack tells Verge about a few of his more than 
60 murders, which are shown in explicit detail on the screen. The unnamed victims – strange characters all – are played by Uma Thurman, Siobhan Fallon Hogan, Sophie Gråbøl, and Riley Keough (Elvis’s granddaughter).
Is Jack the epitome of evil? Or just an amoral idiot? And will 
he ever be punished for what he did?
The House that Jack Built is Lars von Trier’s latest work, and like many before – Antichrist, Melancholia, Nymphomaniac – it’s a tough movie to watch. Excruciating, actually, because you know there’s going to be more horrible violence coming up. I was in a constant state of cringe through most of the movie.
But in retrospective it seems very elegant and funny, a 
self-referential exercise in comedy/ horror/satire. Like most of von Trier’s movies, it’s told in chapters and sub-chapters, bookended by Jack and Virgil’s conversation. It’s also filled with repeated cultural 
references, visual and audio, including Glenn Gould Plays Bach, Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues video, David Bowie’s Fame, William Blake’s drawings and Delacroix’ The Barque of Dante… even clips from von Trier’s own movies. Jack compares his “art” — the murders themselves and the arranged bodies — to the works of these great artists.
This film is Lars von Trier’s reply to past accusations of 
being a nazi, a misogynist, a bigot and a narcissist. Here he invents a character that combines the worst elements of all of these, and spews it back at the viewers in triumphant, hideous glory.
One thing: the screening I went to was a total sausage fest. The audience was maybe 99% male — rockers, hipsters, film geeks, von Trier fans and Incels — so when parts of the audience burst into laughter and applause when Jack violently attacks and mutilates yet another nameless female victim, it just added to the general creepiness of the experience.
The Favourite opens today in Toronto; check your local listings; and The House that Jack Built opens next Friday in theatres and on VOD.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Dark Comedies. Films reviewed: The Square, Happy End, The Killing of a Sacred Deer
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
TIFF started just last night and continues through the 17th. I’ve seen a lot of the films now, but I’m barred from commenting on most of them until they open. So I’ll tell you a bit about a few European movies having their Canadian Premiers at TIFF. All three are dark comedies.
The Square
Dir: Ruben Östlund
Christian (Claes Bang) is a rich, handsome and successful man at the top of his game. He’s divorced with two kids and uses his single status to pick up women for one-night stands. At work, he’s the chief curator at a famous art museum inside a former royal palace. The gallery is known for challenging old ideas… it’s revolutionary! Like the new show he’s working on, called The Square: a simple brass plaque on the plaza where a statue of a king on a horse once stood. Now the square
welcomes everybody, as a place of respect and responsibility, whether you’re rich or poor, have- or have-not, Swedish born or a recent immigrant.
But things start to go wrong, that call into question his intehrity and high- minded beliefs. When con artists steal his celphone, he traces it back to a public housing highrise, but doesn’t know which apartment it’s in. So he prints up hundreds of threatening letters and drops them into each apartment mailbox. At work he scoffs at an accident involving an art installation – just replace it, 
he says, no one will notice. He hires young MBA hot shots to promote The Square, but doesn’t pay attention to an offensive promotional video they make – it’s all good, as long as it goes viral. And his personal life spirals out of control when he tries to juggle responsibility toward his bratty kids, with his sex life. Will his life and career all collapse from a series of awful mistakes? And will he realize he’s part of the system causing all these disasters?
The Square, by the director of Force Majeure, is a biting satire about hypocrisies in the art world, told in a series of very funny vignettes. Like when a night of sex with a woman he meets (Elizabeth Moss: A Handmaid’s Tale and Mad Men) turns into a hilarious fight over who owns the used condom – the man or the woman. It’s a long movie but a very enjoyable one. And it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes.
Happy End
Dir: Michael Haneke
Georges Laurent (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is the patriarch of a Laurent enterprises a huge corporation based in Calais France. It’s run by his daughter
Anne (Isabelle Huppert) a no-no-nonsense business woman. Her brother Thomas (Mathieu Kassovitz) a successful surgeon, lives on the family estate with his young wife Anaïs. Then there’s the third generation. Pierre (Franz Rogowski) Anne’s son, knows how to wear a hard hat, but 
that’s about it. He’s responsible for a disaster that happens at a construction site. And Thomas’s daughter Eve (Fantine Harduin) from a previous marriage re-enters his life when his ex-wife suddenly gets sick. The cute and innocent little girl is not as nice as she seems. She’s a tiny psychopath who does horrible things just for the lulz – and to 
share them anonymously on Snapchat. And Georges, the patriarch, desperately wants to end it all.
Happy End is a very dark comedy about a rich, dysfunctional family. Haneke its great director, does something really unusual: He recreates characters from a previous film, but with an entirely different back story. Amour, Which won an Oscar in 2013, was about an elderly musician man, Georges, facing his wife’s dementia. IN Happy End, Georges (and his daughter) are back again played by the same actors, but this time not as musicians but as corporate leaders. And this time it’s a comedy not a tragic romance. Another great movie.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer
Dir: Yorgos Lanthimos
Steven and Anna (Colin Farrell) and Nicole Kidman) are a Cincinatti power couple, both successful doctors. They live in a beautiful home with their two kids. Everything is normal, except… theres a teenaged boy named Martin (Barry Keoghan) who Steven is spending a lot of time with. He meets him on the sky, treating him to lunch at a local diner, meeting him beneath city bridges. He buys Martin a Rolex as a birthday gift. And then Steven takes him to meet his family. What’s going on?
It turns out the boy’s father died a couple years before on the operating table. Steven was the heart surgeon. At first Martin wants to befriends – he even tries to set Steven up with his mom (Alicia Silverstone) at an awkward dinner date. But his true motives are much more sinister. He says Steven must suffer as much as he suffered when s father died. He wants him to sacrifice – in 
the manner if the ancient greeks – a sacred deer. Meaning one of his family members: his son, his daughter or his wife. And due to some strange condition that the doctors cannot diagnose, the two kids become paralyzed from the waste down. Only Stevens decision can stop this terror.
The killing of a sacred deer is advertised as a horror movie, and there is a bit of that, but like all of Lanthimos’s movies – from Digtooth to the Lobster – it’s more of a dark comedy with a bizarre premise. And like in all the movies, the characters talk like robots, say inappropriately formal things, and don’t notice their own strangeness, because everyone in the movie acts the same way. You get the feeling he doesn’t treat it completely seriously. For example, whenever he’s near Martin, even in an innocuous situation I, the extra loud forbiding music starts to play. I think I liked it, once I accepted the premise. And it is alternatively very funny and disturbingly shocking.
Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Square, Happy End are all playing at TIFF. Go tiff.net for details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Greek Myths and Fables. Films Reviewed: Boris sans Béatrice, Chi-Raq, The Lobster
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Greek myths are not just kids’ stories; they’re full of sex, violence and magical transformations. This week I’m looking at plays, myths and fables from Ancient Greece interpreted by three great filmmakers. We’ve got two films — set in Chicago and Quebec – based on ancient Greek themes; and a futuristic fable by a modern Greek director.
Boris sans Béatrice
Wri/Dir: Denis Côté
Boris Malinovsky (James Hyndman) is a self-made man. He owns a factory in Montreal, a beautiful country house, and his wife, Béatrice (Simone-Élise Girard) is an M.P. He’s tall, fit, rich and successful. He’s also self-centred, stubborn and arrogant. He can’t stand incompetence and lets everyone know it. Things are 
going well until Beatrice climbs into her bed and succumbs to melancholia. (Sounds like a 19th century novel.) Now she’s catatonic and requires Klara (Isolda Dychauk) a ginger-haired young Russian woman, to take care of her 24/7. Boris loves Beatrice, but what can he do to help her?
Enter a Deus Ex Machina: a mysterious man (Denis Lavant) dressed in gold brocade, who speaks an especially eloquent French. He arrives in an expensive black car, in a grassy field backlit by floodlights. He tells Boris that Beatrice’s illness is his fault. He must change his ways.
Boris changes his ways all right. He is sleeping with Helga, a work colleague (Dounia Sichov), and even flirts with young 
Klara. Beatrice continues to decline, until the Prime Minister (Bruce Labruce) drops by to check up on his member if Parliament; and even his estranged, left-wing daughter – who lives with toga-clad young men – tries to help. Will Boris ever change? Or will he end up like Tantalus, the demigod permanently punished for his hubris? And are his worries real or imaginary?
Boris sans Beatrice is a satirical look at life in a Quebec – a multicultural place where ambitious people can get ahead, but where success is always precarious. The cast, especially Hyndman, Girard and Lavant, are all terrific. I like this movie.
Chi-Raq
Dir: Spike Lee
It’s present day Chicago, a city wracked with gun violence that has killed more people than American soldiers killed in the Iraq War. There’s a real war going on between two gangs, the Trojans and the Spartans. Lysistrata (Teyonah Parris) lives with Chi-Raq (Nick Cannon) who wears the gang’s colours, while Irene (Jennifer Hudson) hangs with Cyclops (Wesley Snipes) their rivals. Fighting escalates until two things happen. An innocent schoolgirl is gunned down by a stray bullet and Lysistrata’s home is firebombed. Her neighbor, Miss Helen (the amazing Angela Bassett), grudgingly offers shelter and some
sage advice. Stop all this killing. The plan is for all the women in both gangs, in fact all the women in Chicago — even the sex workers — to say no more sex until you lose the guns. Or as they say in the movie:
No Peace, No Pussy.
This becomes an all-out protest that grinds the city to a halt, with women occupying a military base. But can they teach the men to put down their guns, take responsibility and do the right thing?
Does this story sound familiar? It should. It’s based on 2,400-year-old drama by Aristophenes. And like the original, it’s spoken in rhyme (this time in rap or in song with elaborate dance numbers) And there’s an omniscient, anansi-like narrator (Samuel L Jackson). It’s also a bit antediluvian. Is a woman’s primary role to provide sex for their male partners? Really? This is 2016. And the film could use an edit – it’s too long. Still, I quite liked Chi-Raq. A first-rate cast, with the spark of Spike Lee’s earlier films, missing for years.
The Lobster
Dir: Yorgos Lanthimos
It’s the future. Things are a lot like now except in this world two is good, one is bad. Loners – single people — are sent to an austere sanitorium where they have 45 days to couple up. Couples are given special privileges while singles are punished and humiliated. Anyone caught having “loner sex” must wear a chastity belt. And anyone still single 
after 45 days is transformed into an animal and let loose in the nearby forest. But the forest is also filled with runaway loner, humans who have escaped.
The movie follows the latest batch of woebegone singles all frantically searching for their perfect mate. It’s speed-dating hell. And they’re all insecure. The women are bossy or shy, the men walk with a limp 
or talk with a lisp. And everyone behaves like 12-year-old wallflowers at their first school dance. David (Colin Farrell) is a typical desperate single – he goes so far as to pretend he’s an A-type sadist just to attract a certain woman.
Things go wrong, and later he finds himself in the woods (as a human, not a lobster). He meets another runaway, a nearsighted woman (Rachel Weisz). The laws in the forest, laid down by their leader (Lea Seydoux), are a topsy-turvy version of the 
mainstream: only singles allowed with couples are absolutely forbidden. But what happens if you fall in love?
Lobster is a terrific off-beat comedy. I’ve been following Yorgos Lanthimos since meeting him when his second film, Dogtooth played at TIFF. His films are all highly stylized and uncomfortable satires. Characters speak like they’re reciting lines in a school play, and dress in dated and awkward clothes and hair. I loved his Greek movies but wondered if they would work in English. Not to worry. The Lobster is weird and quirky but totally accessible. You don’t need training in avant garde film to appreciate it. I recommend this movie.
Boris sans Beatrice and Chi-Raq open today in Toronto, check your local listings; and The Lobster starts next Friday.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Happy Families: Dogtooth
Dogtooth
Dir: Yorgos Lanthimos
Younger Brother is sitting. He is sitting on his bed. He is wearing his tennis clothes. Younger Brother likes to play. Father is bringing a stranger for Younger Brother to meet. She will teach him how to have sex. Younger brother may not tell this to Older Sister and Younger Sister. It is very unusual to have visitors come inside their fence. Father will bring her by car because no one can step on the ground outside the fence. Younger Brother must follow directions or Father will punish him. Mother is locked in her room. She is watching her secret TV tapes. Younger Sister and Older Sister are in the bathroom, learning new words today to improve their vocabulary…
Dogtooth is an unusual film from Greece, a fantasy about a control freak of a father who regards his three children as tabula rasa, to be filled with his ideas and no one else’s. And no one will ever contradict him since he keeps them isolated in a fenced-in compound with no outside contact of any kind. The twist is that the “kids” are adults now but still live as children, not realizing there is any other type of existence. The film shifts back and forth from the black humour of social satire to the pathos of a disturbing family drama. It leaves you with a strange, uneasy feeling.
Life During Wartime
Dir: Todd Solondz
Todd Solondz’s dark comedies alternate between two New Jersey families, the Weiners (Welcome to the Dollhouse, 1995; Palindromes, 2004) and the Jordans (Happiness, 1998, Life During Wartime, 2009). The characters continue their depressing lives, while the actors who play them come and go. In this movie we join the three new Jordan sisters, ten years later.
Weepy, hippy Joy (Shirley Henderson) loves helping the needy, but this has landed her an unbearable fiance. He asks for her forgiveness for his latest transgression, so Joy seeks out her family for advice. Her mother Mona in Miami is no help, so she moves on to suburban Trish (Allison Janney) who is dating again. But Trish discovers her pedophile husband has been released from prison and is also seeking forgiveness. Sister Helen (Ally Sheedy), a Hollywood star, is bossy and self absorbed and not much help either. Poor Joy resorts to asking advice from ex-boyfriends from her past, like Andy (Paul Reubens).
The cast is as uniformly excellent as the story is relentlessly, painfully sad. Solondz is an expert at inflicting the unvarnished cruelty of family dynamics on his moviegoers. While there is nothing earth-shattering or different in this movie, it still holds its own as a funnily sympathetic (and pathetic) black comedy in his distinctive, ongoing saga.
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