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Written by: Gilbert Seah

Parent Category: Articles

Category: Movie Reviews

Published: 06 November 2023

The biggest film surprise opening this week is Eli Roth's inspiring horror comedy THANKSGIVING.   Total fun showing that ghastly horror can be entertaining when it is delivered smartly and funny.    Big ones like NAPOLEON and THE HUNGER GAMES prequel make their debut.  The best feel-good film NEXT GOAL WINS deserves a mention and a look.

 

FILM REVIEWS:

BELIEVER 2 (SOUTH KOREA 2023) ***

Directed by Baek Jong-yul 

 

`Netflix’s latest South Korean original film is BELIEVER 2 a sequel to the 2018 crime action film BELIEVER. BELIEVER is a remake of the Jonny To Hong Kong action film DRUG WAR.  The film is directed by Baek Jong-yul and the cast includes the return of lead actors and actresses.

The sequel follows Won-ho's (Cho Jin-woong reprising his role) investigation of looking for "Rak," who disappeared after Brian's (Cha Seung-won) incarceration while getting to the core of the elusive drug cartel.   It is Lee that Won-ho is after, that he believes he can capture.  At the start of the film, his supervisor takes him off the case saying that he does not know who Lee is or where he is, or even his gender.

This is the rare South Korean film that is shot in Norway.  Being filmed in Norway, one can expect some stunning landscapes on display.  The introduction of the two twin mute cooks adds a fresh element to an otherwise well-worn drug cartel detective and mouse chase movie genre.  The film runs almost two hours, could be edited shorter but nevertheless moves at an acceptable pace.  Director Baek ups the angst in the violence department with a new killer, a female who cannot hold her head up straight, from China, Baek ups the angst in violence department with Big Knife, an emotionless, chain-smog executioner who sports bad skin and rotten teeth, thick glasses and a penchant for decapitations.  He concluded.  The film suffers otherwise from the lack of both a strong narrative and a more solid plot that even new nuanced characters introduced into the film cannot make up for.   The original BELIEVER in this respect is the better film.

BELIEVER 2, a Netflix original premiered at 28th Busan International Film Festival in the 'Korean Cinema Today - Special Premiere' section on October 5, 2023.  It is available for streaming on Netflix this week from November 17, 2023.

Trailer: 

BLOW UP YOUR LIFE (USA 2022) ***

Directed by Abby Horton & Ryan Dickie

 

The film begins with Jason  Trumbo making a recording that introduces the film’s subject.  Jason Trumbo is clearly distraught.  The recording goes as such:  My name is Jason Trumbo.  I am a man on the run.  I came across some files I was not supposed to.  To keep them secret these people want me dead.  This is my life  This is my story.  This is my life.  This is my story!   As expected, the film flashes back to tell Jason’s story from the very beginning.

The film is described as a comedy thriller and it plays as one.  But a whistle-blower story and one from a large pharmaceutical company is quite serious and no joke.  The fact that the film is played partly as a comedy unfortunately undermines the seriousness of the matter.

Jason (Jason Selvig), a disillusioned pharmaceutical employee, is fired after a drug-fueled social media post goes viral, but when he accidentally discovers a deadly opioid conspiracy hidden by his former boss (Davram Stiefler) he sets out to redeem himself.  In this noir comedy-thriller set in the age of tech, Jason goes on the run as a reluctant whistleblower trying to expose the crime with the help of his computer-wiz cousin Charlie (Kara Young) and his journalist ex-girlfriend Priya (Reema Sampat), but the CEO (Ben Horner) at the heart of the scandal has other plans.

The dialogue could be funnier and comes across often as quite lame. “Shit.  Shit.  She. What am I to do?” Complains Jason to Charlie at one point.

The overall flaw of the film is that the whistleblower story lacks clout.  It does not help that the film, as said,  is constantly played lightly for laughs.

Jason Selvage barely passes as the lead.  The actor has a good physique at least, as observable in the scene where he crouches down in the shower stall.  Despite hard attempts, Selvage is unable to display distress or desperation, relying of the dialogue instead, the dialogue itself not being too good either.

BLOW UP YOUR LIFE has nothing that one has not seen or heard in real life with whistleblowers of big companies especially large pharmaceuticals.  Snowden’s whistleblowing film is a case in point.

It does not help the film that the audience does not root for the main characters.  In the film, Jason comes across as a glorified loser.  He is fired from his job for going to social media with his “lah -di fucking dah” attitude after much partying.  When he comes across the whistleblowing files, which he stole while repairing a friend’s computer, a friend who is working for the company, Jason is half-decided as to what to do and consults his friends.  It would help if his character is strong, and Jason would blow the whistle for it is the right thing to do.

The film’s exciting parts include a fight in the car park and a car chase that place at night - all executed without too much aplomb or excitement, appearing to be inserted here for a filler and a little excitement.

BLOW UP YOUR LIFE is available VOD and opens on Prime Video Apple TV on Nov. 21

Trailer: 

BOLIVAR (USA 2021) ***

Directed by Nell Teare

 

James Walsh and Nell Teare make a good-looking filmmaking team, Teare directing and co-writing with Walsh while both starring in the film as well.  Teare plays the protagonist role of Maggie while Walsh plays Maggie’s handsome but troubled brother.

  It has been three months since her mother’s death, and Maggie is struggling to keep her head above water; daydreams of childhood haunt her waking moments as she navigates a failing marriage, a neglected career and a father (Robert Pine) who will not engage with his own grief. On one particular morning, she is awakened by a pounding on her door. Her younger brother, Sonny (James Walsh) whom she has not seen since before her mother passed, shows up on her doorstep, unaware of their mother's death. Over the next week, Maggie walks a fine line between acceptance and becoming a tragedy herself, but Sonny’s return forces her to make sense of a reality that may not be what it seems.

“Why are you so cold?” asks Maggie’s ex at one point in the film.  ‘I don’t know how else to feel,” comes her reply.  The same question can be asked in the film why does it feel so cold, especially during the first half hour.  “You need to be loved.” comes the reaction. In the next scene, Maggie meets someone who could be the person to love her.

There is nothing really wrong with the film as it plays safe.  The only risk the director and scriptwriter take is the extensive use of flashbacks.  What the audience learns about Maggie’s past, her emotions and her trauma are all told via flashbacks.  there are too many of these resulting in the film feeling too disjointed.  Also, when effort has been put into a single scan to have the mood built up, the work is destroyed by the sudden insertion of a flashback.  In real life, everyone has problems.  Everyone has to deal with the passing of a loved one.  Everyone has a back sheep in the family.  And almost everyone has a kid  The problem Maggie faces looks like a common one, and one that is too common to create much excitement, and one that lacks a certain freshness.  The film at least can claim to be one that is based on a credible premise.  The most interesting parts of the film occur whenever Maggie’s crazy brother shows up, who often blames Maggie (this is quite funny - his way of reasoning) for all his troubles.  Even their father says to him: “What is wrong with you?  Your mother is sick and you are behaving like a fucking child.”

The film is called Bolivar because Port Bolivar is where Maggies’s family spent time there when her family dynamics got together.   Port Bolivar is an unincorporated community located on the northern shore of the western tip of the Bolivar Peninsula, separated from Galveston Island by the entrance to Galveston Bay. The Bolivar Peninsula itself is a census-designated place, in Galveston County, Texas, and part of the Houston–Sugar Land–Baytown metropolitan area

BOLIVAR is available On Demand, Digital and DVD this week from November 14, available to rent and purchase on all major platforms, including AT&T U-Verse // DirecTV // Dish Network // Sling TV // Prime Video // AppleTV // Vudu // Xbox // Google Play and  YouTube Movies.  Not a bad film that took its time to be released on various platforms, The film has won awards at the Gulf Coast Film and Video Film Festival.

Trailer: 

THE HUNGER GAMES: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (USA 2023) ***

Directed By Francis Lawrence

 

Hooray for THE HUNGER GAMES.  It brought (together with the TWILIGHT and DIVERGENT franchises) its distributor, film company Lions Gate to heights never achieved when its stock price was more than $30 a share.  At the time of writing this review, the stock price has plummeted to below $10.  Lions Gate has had minor successes with JOHN WICK and THE ILLUSIONIST films, and the only hope for the stock price to rise is for the company to be acquired.  Lions Gate owns Starz, a minor streaming service.

THE HUNGER GAMES film series is composed of science fiction dystopian adventure films, based on The Hunger Games trilogy of novels by American author Suzanne Collins. The films are distributed by Lions Gate.   The series has made box-office stars of many of its actors including Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth.  

The new film, a prequel, has a modest budget for a dystopian sci-fi blockbuster of $100 million.  Compare this to Disney’s THE MARVELS with a very risky budget of $250 million. Given the past history of Lions Gate, it is not surprising that they are playing it safe with the company in desperate need of another hit.  Playing safe, the modest budget can be seen with a smaller number of stars not including Peter Linkage and Viola Davis.  The main actor is a relative unknown Tom Blyth, a handsome and body-chiseled English actor, last seen in Terence Davies’ excellent BENEDICTION in 2021.  Director Francis Lawrence returns as director.  The result is a safe HUNGER GAMES film with the same look, atmosphere and feel as the franchise.  Why change something that works?  Why rock the boat?  HUNGER GAMES fans should not be disappointed.

Years, before he would become the tyrannical President of Panem, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow (Blyth), is the last hope for his fading lineage, a once-proud family that has fallen from grace in a post-war Capitol. With the 10th annual Hunger Games fast approaching, the young Snow is alarmed when he is assigned to mentor Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Ziegler), the female tribute from impoverished District 12. But, after Lucy Gray commands all of Panem’s attention by defiantly singing during the reaping ceremony, Snow thinks he might be able to turn the odds in their favour. Uniting their instincts for showmanship and newfound political savvy, Snow and Lucy Gray’s race against time to survive will ultimately reveal who is a songbird, and who is a snake.”

The film is a bit puzzling to follow as director Lawrence does not spend time to let the audience digest all the facts of the story  But one can put the story together, nevertheless unless one wishes to read the novel or the synopsis before seeing the film.  A certain amount of credibility is required though, as the heroes Coriolanus and Lucy Gray survive the greatest odds.  The film also goes into the need to have civilized HUNGER GAMES, though the argument is not thoroughly convincing.  The production is modest and effective with a good futuristic look, like London (as seen in the roundabout)  in the future.

THE HUNGER GAMES: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes opens the weekend of November 17th and hopes to gross $50 million in the opening weekend.

Trailer: 

 

THE JOB OF SONGS (USA 2021) ***

Directed by Lila Schmitz

 

In Doolin, an isolated village teetering on the western edge of Ireland, a community of musicians seek joy and connection through music as they face a modernizing world.

The beauty of Count Clare is the film’s beautiful and astounding setting.  The audience is told that it is a little island right out in the Atlantic and the film’s next shot shows the cliffs - with a warning sign - Dangerous cliff ahead.   

The next scene takes the audience to the village of Doolin,  in Clare County.

Tourists flock to the west coast of Ireland to take in the breathtaking Cliffs of Moher, but the real treasure lies in the soulful, acoustic sounds wafting out of pubs and living rooms of Doolin, County Clare. Nobody knows the effect of music on people but without music, we have nothing, says a character at the start of the film,  The denizens of this unspoiled coastal village of tight-knit neighbours and unlocked doors revel in the passion and history of their traditional folk songs, using music as a thread through generations to create community, connection, and joy.

THE JOB OF SONGS was made by a crew of three women, who are first-time feature filmmakers: LILA SCHMITZ (director, producer, editor), ANIKA KAN GREVSTAD (director of photography, producer), and FENGYI XU (producer). The film was made with the support of acclaimed documentarians double Oscar-winning writer-producer-director Bill Guttentag and Emmy and Grammy Award-winning documentarian Doug Pray.  The film has screened at numerous prestigious International Film Festivals including DOC NYC, Galway Film Fleadh, Newport Beach Film Festival, Rocky Mountain Women’s Film Festival, Milwaukee Film Festival, and many others. It won Best International Documentary at the Galway Film Fleadh. 

The documentary works for its simple charm which celebrates the simple beauty of life, just like taking the time to observe a bird.  The tradition of songs brought down from one generation cogeneration is clearly displayed in all its glory and importance.  The people, of Doolinare older, though a few younger folk can seen in the background.  People need to find a voice.  When conversations get hot and heavy, these people say they should take up the song,  One of the most beautiful songs heard in the film is called “Reel Me” about refugees.

The gloomy skies of the area contribute to depression.  It is at this point of the film that the film undertakes a more somber tone.  Since the cliffs have opened, there have been many suicides due to depression.  An interviewer also talks about a song dedicated to his brother who died in a car accident just short of the age of 24.  The case of a bit too much drinking is also addressed.  The topic of grieving is also examined alongside the music,yet the music is beautiful with the pipes and lyrics of the songs.  Charm and melancholy blend well together near the film's end, bringing the film to a memorable end.

THE JOB OF SONGS, running a mere 74 minutes, opens on digital platforms on November 21, 2023. The film has a running time of 74 minutes and will not be rated by the MPAA.

Trailer: 

IN LOVE AND DEEP WATER (Japan 2023) **

Directed by Yûsuke Taki

 

 

The plot of this new original Netflix mystery comedy thriller is set on a massive luxury cruise ship. While at sea, the loyal butler Suguru, nicknamed ‘lightning rod’ and a mysterious woman named Chizuru cross paths as they try to uncover a murder mystery that occurs on the ship.

The premise sounds like the film that could be taken from an Agatha Christie murder mystery shot in an exotic setting where anyone (passenger or staff of the luxury cruise ship) could be the killer.

Unfortunately, everything goes wrong in this otherwise very silly and badly executed mystery whodunit.  For one it is no longer a whodunit when the killer is revealed right during the first quarter of the film.  The two main characters are supposed to form the love story but their meeting (their two partners have started cheating with each other) is too silly to make any sense.  The protagonist is described as one with no pride.  As the ship’s main butler, he apologizes for every single complaint and makes himself subject to ridicule and shame.  The girl appears out of nowhere with evidence of her partner's cheating.  How did she find him and get aboard the cruise ship?  The two exhibit totally annoying behaviour.

Watching  IN LOVE AND DEEP WATER is like taking a cruise ship vacation and being stuck with unpleasant fellow passengers who cannot be ridden.   Worst still, the film runs over two hours, which is far too long for a mystery thriller comedy, least of all a terrible one.

IN LOVE AND DEEP WATER is opus on Netflix for streaming this week.

Trailer: 

MAY DECEMBER (USA 2023) ***

Directed by Todd Haynes

 

Todd Haynes, the veteran director of more than a dozen critical hits from his best gay period coming-out drama FAR FROM HEAVEN (Haynes was nominated for Best Original Screenplay that he wrote) to his lesbian love story CAROL, practically a gay copy of David Lean’s masterpiece BRIEF ENCOUNTER, MAY DECEMBER is arguably director Hayne’s most controversial subject. However, pedophilia takes second place to another hidden agenda, one that is not really made crystal clear in the film, but one that audiences need to discover.

MAY DECEMBER is a black comedy-drama film directed by Todd Haynes from a screenplay by Samy Burch, based on a story by Burch and Alex Mechanik.  It follows an actress. Elizabeth Berry  (Natalie Portman) who travels to Georgia to meet and study the life of the controversial woman, Gracie (Julianne Moore) she is set to play in a film. It is loosely inspired by the story of Mary Kay Letourneau. 

The premise of the film is set twenty years after their notorious tabloid romance gripped the nation, a married couple with a large age gap buckles under the pressure when an actress arrives to do research for a film about their past.  The woman Gracie has had sex with her Grade 7 student and while in prison, gave birth to twins.  The twins are now grown up and it is the time for their graduation.  The film is a slow burn which is puzzling as to what the film’s main aim is.  It seems to question the awkwardness of people, and how they handle this peculiarity of nature. The question is who is the trusted one and who is the one that is stable.  Gracie has been criticized as a mental mess for what she has done, but she apparently has all he life well organized together.  or so it seems.  The film examines her life in parallel to what is happening to her as her life is revealed in a film in which the actress will portray her.

The script takes a huge detour with the real story of Mary Kay Letourneau.  She was imprisoned for underage sex and had her sentencing reduced on the condition that she did not see the boy again.  But she did and was imprisoned with the original term while giving birth to the second daughter in prison.  Though loose based on Lettourneau’s tabloid news, her story could have been totally dismissed from the credits, as too much liberty had been taken.

Credit should be given to Haynes for indulging in such a difficult topic, with a story examining the complexities of guilt, acceptance, awkwardness and true love.  It is dangerous that the film does not condemn the fact that this is a case of underaged sex, and Gracie is truly guilty and that adolescents should be protected,

MAY DECEMBER, a Netflix original film, premiered at the 76th Cannes Film Festival on May 20, 2023. It is scheduled to be released in select theaters in the United States on November 17, 2023, before streaming on Netflix on December 1, 2023.

Trailer: 

 

NEXT GOAL WINS (USA 2023) ****

Directed by Taika Waititi

 

The underdog sports team gets a new coach who needs to redeem himself.  This is not a new theme but one that has been used time and again in a sports feel-good film, the most recent being CHAMPIONS in which a former minor-league basketball coach played by Woody Harrelson is ordered by the court to manage a team of players with intellectual disabilities.  So there was much trepidation when I read the theme of the new Taika Waititi film about a disgraced Dutch American soccer manager Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender) leading a losing soccer team to victory.  But this feel-good film by Waititi who shows ingenuity and brilliance works wonders.  Waititi is a New Zealand director who became famous with little films like BOY, WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS, JOJO RABBIT, and blockbusters like THOR: RAGNAROK.

The film’s setting is American Samoa, which is an island out in the Pacific.  The nation of American Samoa (population 45,000) was never going to be an international football powerhouse, but a 31-0 loss to Australia put them in the record books in the worst possible way. Dutch-American manager Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender) lands in the slow-paced island community determined to inject footballing discipline into the team as they make a qualifying run for the 2014 FIFA World Cup.  The owner of the club has made the bet that his team would win just one goal.  Hence the film title.

Michael Fassbender is a terrific actor and he shows his talent for comedy in this outing in which he comes across as not too bad.  But the winning performances come from the Samoan actors playing the footballers.  Though Fassbender is good, the discovery is Kaimana, who plays real-life team member Jaiyah.  Like Jaiyah, Kaimana is a member of American Samoa's fa’afafine community and delivers a warm, deep, and commanding performance in every scene.  Kaimana is a real revelation, able to make the audience cry and laugh simultaneously.  The performance with Jaiyah, flicking her hair in the midst of an important match is plain hilarious.  It is hard to believe that the film is based on true events and true characters like Jaiyah and Rongen, the actual characters shown at the end of the film during the closing credits.

Whether this is true or not, Rongen wears the T-shirt with the words Miyagi during the soccer qualifier.  (Miyagi is the Japanese trainer in THE KARATE KID).  There is a wax-on. wax-ff scene in the film too.

The film is based on the documentary by Mike Brett and Steve Jamison — where the pleasure comes from watching the characters on the pitch, Indigenous Samoan players who mostly sucked, mostly knew it, and still played their hearts out.  But director Waititi also adds his magic touch.  Instead of letting the second half of the climatic match play out the normal way, he infuses the flashback with a voiceover approach.  The team manager has a hearty attack, actually a heat stroke, and faints during the second half of the match.  When he gains consciousness, his son, also a player recounts the second half of the match giving his interpretation.  Waititi’s film is also very, very funny.

NEXT GOAL WINS opens November 17th.

Trailer: 

THE STONES AND BRIAN JONES (UK 2023) ***½

Directed by Nick Broomfield

 

From director Nick Broomfield comes BRIAN JONES AND THE STONES, a time-capsule documentary that explores the creative musical genius of Brian Jones, founder of the Rolling Stones.  The director Nick Broomfield had met Brian Jones on a train when he was 14.  Broomfield described Jones as a friendly guy who said that he was a trainspotter.  Who was to know, Broomfield said, that Brian Jones would be dead 6 years later.  Brian Jones was the founder of the Rolling Stones, and at the time was more popular than the titular Mick Jagger.  Jones gets most of the fan mail, more than Mick Jagger.  Jones got around 60% while Jagger around 20% of the mail.  Yet many to no one has heard of Brian Jones.

The doc BRIAN JONES AND THE STONES aims to change all that.  The film, largely shot in black and white, at its best transports the audience back in time to the 60s and 70s at the height of the fame of the Stones.

Broomfield personalizes Jones with information about him and his parents.  Parents want to see themselves in their children till they grow up enough to become individual personalities of their own, as mentioned early in the doc.  His father was not happy with the son being in the band, especially not with long hair, and wanted him to have a proper job like himself.  Jones was seen to be a joker but could get a bit aggressive if he did not get his way.  Yet, he was always forgiven as he was such a nice guy. 

In 1962, looking for members to form a blues band, Brian Jones posted a want ad, which led him to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.  Inspired by the title of a Muddy Waters’ song, Jones came up with the name “RollingStones.”  Although he was the original fan favourite, Jones soon found himself overshadowed by Jagger and Richards who wrote their own songs, trading off Jones’ beloved blues for a more rock ‘n’ roll sound.

  It was the Swinging Sixties – and Jones was living a life of sex, drugs and (reluctantly) rock ‘n’ roll.  The film covers many areas – his strict parents, his serial girlfriends, his tumultuous days with “It Girl” Anita Pallenberg, his firing from the band, and his death less than a month later at age 27.

The film also mixes unseen archival footage with interviews.  Bill Wyman appears on camera, pointing out how Jones’ skill as an instrumentalist gave songs like “Ruby Tuesday” and “Paint It, Black” their distinctive sound.  Others offering thoughts off camera are Jagger, Richards, Charlie Watts, former girlfriends, schoolmates, friends, et al.  On a sad note,

40 years after Jones died, a repentant letter from his father was discovered.

There are some marvellous performances captured in archive footage like the rendering of  “Come On” by the Stones, their first hit.

THE STONES AND BRIAN JONES opens November 17 in Toronto (Hot Docs Cinema), Vancouver (Vancity), London and Waterloo!

Trailer: 

THANKSGIVING (USA 2023) ****

Directed by Eli Roth

 

In interviews, Thanksgiving director Eli Roth promised his new film be an incredibly gory and satisfying R-rated slasher experience with creative and bloody kills.  The film originates from the fake trailer from the film GRINDHOUSE.

The film begins appropriately with the film taking place in Plymouth, Massachusetts on Black Friday and the American Thanksgiving.  As with many Black Friday specials, Right Mart, the big departmental store has got bargains galore, most notably the waffle toaster that everyone is clamouring about.  It is 10 minutes before the store opens and there are hundreds of customers behind barricades, making the store opening the scene of a possible riot.  Things are pushed to the limit when a couple of teens (VIPs) are allowed to enter early, as they’re related or close friends to the Right Mart’s owner.  Through the glass, the teens tease those outside waiting resulting in the barricades broken down and the crows breaking into the store like a stampede out of control.  Director Roth directs this scene with great skill and aplomb showing his prowess at editing, dialogue and sound.  The sequence is also terribly hilarious and also serves as a satire for Black Friday America.  Absolutely brilliant!  The chaos also resulted in horror as many customers ended up killed not including a footballer who has his hand crushed in the stampede and a security guard’s head smashed face down into the broken glass of the store window.

This Black Friday incident, adds to the killer's motive for the Thanksgiving-themed murders.  The film plays like a whodunit with the identity of the killer (very hard to guess) revealed at the very end. 

  Roth has proved his talent with gory films like the HOSTEL films and THE GREEN INFERNO.   The first killing gives a new meaning to the phrase 50% off.  The recent torture horror film SAW X did a good box-office number recently and this one should do well.

Co-written by Roth and Jeff Rendell, the film is well constructed with a slasher killing and a climax that takes place during the town’s Thanksgiving parade.  As in the SAW films, the film has new and ingenuous scares that are both scary and fun enough to have the audience shriek and laugh at the same time.  One gory scene involves the killer piercing the victim's ears with corncob skewers.  If that is not sufficient to push the film towards the R-rated limit the trampoline scene in which a victim falls and bounces off the trampoline that has spikes shoved through it will surely do the job.  While SAW X is deadly serious,  THANKSGIVING is serious fun.

The young cast as well as veterans like Patrick Dempsey and Gina Gerson are all nothing short of fantastic having fun in their roles as well.

Horror films have taken over Christmas (BlACK CHRISTMAS) and Thanksgiving t(his film).  Easter would be the obvious next target.  THANKSGIVING has likely the best advertising caption on its poster - There will; be no seconds.   What will come next for Easter?  KILLER BUNNIES?  ‘There are only going to be bad eggs this Easter’ could be the caption.

Trailer:  

TROLLS BAND TOGETHER (USA 2023) **

Directed by Walt Dohrn

 

The 2D animated CGI combination feature TROLLS BAND TOGETHER is the third of the TROLLS franchise and basically Justin Timberlake’s baby, spearheading the project. involving himself in the music and starring (his voice) in it.  It is aimed mainly at smaller kids, who from the film’s preview screening, allowed family, the children were simply delighted with the product, even though there is a lack of imagination in the story or dialogue with most of the latter depending on silly one-liners and punch lines.  The review could do the same with a line like the film going in one direction, unfortunately, the wrong one.

The film begins with a generally uninspired and unfunny first performance of the BroZone, a boy troll band delivering a failed unison performance that led to the band’s breaking up.

After two films of true friendship and relentless flirting, (if one can remember) Poppy (Anna Kendrick) and Branch (Justin Timberlake voting in a griller high-pitched voice) are now officially, finally, a couple!  As they grow closer, Poppy discovers that Branch has a secret past. He was once part of her favourite boyband phenomenon, BroZone, with his four brothers:  Floyd (Golden Globe-nominated electropop sensation Troye Sivan), John Dory (Eric André; Sing 2), Spruce (Grammy winner Daveed Diggs; Hamilton) and Clay (Grammy winner Kid Cudi; Don't Look Up). BroZone disbanded when Branch was still a baby, as did the family, and Branch hadn't seen his brothers since.  But when Branch's bro Floyd is kidnapped for his musical talents by a pair of nefarious pop-star villains--Velvet (Emmy winner Amy Schumer; Trainwreck) and Veneer (Grammy winner and Tony nominee Andrew Rannells; The Book of Mormon)--Branch and Poppy embark on a harrowing and emotional journey to reunite the other brothers and rescue Floyd from a fate even worse than pop-culture obscurity.

The film lacks the existence of an evil or at least a terribly funny villain.  The success of the film appears to depend on the cuteness of the trolls, just like Universal’s Illuminata films depend on the cuteness of their Minions in the DESPICABLE ME franchise  The trolls thus appear in an assortment of colours including different hair colours and styles, the hair at least allowing the audience to distinguish one troll from the other.  The BroZone brothers sport different accents, as they are played by white and coloured actors, which might confuse the littler audience.  The film is colourful enough with a myriad of colours, especially in troll city and other settings of the story.  When the BroZone performs as in the other choreographed sequences, the animated choreography is cute and synched enough to delight the audience, both kids and adults alike.  The animation is said to be inspired by the animated classics of  The Beatles’ THE YELLOW SUBMARINE (1968) and Walt Disney’s FANTASIA.

TROLLS BAND TOGETHER has already been released in international markets, starting with Denmark on October 12, 2023, and is scheduled to be released in the United States and locally in Canada and Toronto on November 17.

Trailer: 

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Details

Written by: Gilbert Seah

Parent Category: Articles

Category: Movie Reviews

Published: 04 November 2023

FILM REVIEW: 

 

BIRTH/REBIRTH (USA 2022) ***
Directed by Laura Moss

 

BIRTH/REBIRTH tells the birth or rebirth of a dead daughter.  The birth/rebirth is the result of an experiment a pathologist conducts to her success.  It is a re-telling of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein classic with a few notable differences.

Firstly it is a female re-telling.  All the characters are now female.  The doctor is still a doctor but a pathologist.  A new character, a mother is involved and the monster is also a female.  Secondly, there is more humanizing in the story.  All the characters are displayed as human beings with real emotions that matter.  Thirdly, the story takes a different direction after the ‘monster’ is created.  The monster is also not a monster but a ‘previous human being’.

Rose (Marin Ireland) is a pathologist who prefers working with corpses over social interaction. She also has an obsession — the reanimation of the dead. Celie (Judy Reyes) is a maternity nurse who has built her life around her bouncy, chatterbox six-year-old daughter, Lila (A.J. Lister). When one tragic night, Lila suddenly falls ill and dies, the two women's worlds crash into each other. They embark on a dark path of no return where they will be forced to confront how far they are willing to go to protect what they hold most dear.

Director Moss does her utmost best to make her Frankenstein tale as credible as possible. She invests the first third of the film into examining the 2 characters of her story.  She shows a diligent rather worried human being, Rose, just not a crazed experimenter.  When the two initially meet, Rose has her nose hit by the door and the following scenes show her with a bleeding nose, which causes the audience to have some sympathy for her.  Celie the mother is shown to be a caring yet desperate mother who would do anything to bring her dead daughter to life, regardless.  Her desperation to search for her missing daughter initially also takes some screen time.  Director Moss clearly established the raison d’être of both women to continue the Frankenstein experiment much further.

BIRTH/REBIRTH is largely a female picture.  The two protagonists are female, the experiment is the daughter and the director of the film is also female.  Director Moss keeps the female issues at hand, not letting them cloud the main story.  Both actresses Ireland and Reyes are totally convincing in their roles.  The interaction of the two characters, initially strangers then forced to bond together make a large part of the storyline,

BIRTH/REBIRTH is an impressive directorial debut from Laura Moss (a filmmaker from NYC whose work has screened at Tribeca, Rotterdam, and SXSW+ who has reimagined Mary Shelley’s classic horror myth Frankenstein into credible modern setting with real people with real issues.  As believable as it is, the film is more mysterious than scary with the story leading into a different ending that would also only lead to disaster.

BIRTH/REBIRTH opens Exclusively On Shudder Nov 10th, 2023.

Trailer: 

CYBERBUNKER: THE CRIMINAL UNDERWORLD (Germany 2023) ****

Written and directed by Max Rainer, and Kilian Lieb

 

This documentary reveals how a group of hackers powered the darkest corners of the internet from a Cold War-era bunker in a quiet German tourist town. The word underworld has a double meaning - as in crime and also underneath ground level.

CyberBunker was an Internet service provider located in the Netherlands and Germany that, according to its website, "hosted services to any website except child pornography and anything related to terrorism".  The company first operated in a former NATO bunker in Zeeland, and later in another former NATO bunker in Traben-Trarbach, Germany.  In 2013 the company purchased its second bunker, in Traben-Trarbach, Germany.  The film has aerial footage that shows the bunker and its idyllic surroundings.  But one has to go below the surface to find out what is really going on. 

The film is a well-documented account that is arranged to pique one’s interest from the film’s very beginning  The film opens with the introduction of the founder, known as Xennt, the mastermind, being interviewed supposedly from prison.  The doc also claims that lal video surveillance seen in the film are re-enactments.. Xenntclaims that the site will host everything except child porn and terrorism.  But his high ideals eventually led to criminal activity.  The film examines all the 5 levels of the bunker and what each level hosted.  The employees also called teams, have breakfast and dinner together and may live there while often frequently visiting the German town close by.  But the company sees money and financing.  The doc reveals that the money comes from hosting pornography.  They were hosting porn sites as a cash cow, generating traffic, and getting money in whatever way they can.  When the major of Traben-Trarbacj had complaints about criminal activity, Xennt invited the mayor to come to take a look and insisted that there was nothing to hide and that all doors were always open for inspection.

There are quite a few interviews that enhance the film’s credibility as well as provide intrigue, including from the FBI and the director for the Wall Street Market.  The interviewees are one of the intriguing points that make this doc tick.  Xennt is also interviewed showing that he had the charisma to attract all the people to work under him

The doc should be seen with a recent doc called BILLION DOLLAR HESIT, also about web hackers.  Global, dynamic, and eye-opening, BILLION DOLLAR HEIST tells the story of the most daring cyber heist of all time, the Bangladeshi Central Bank theft - a good companion piece with CYBERBUNKER.

At its best, the doc plays like a suspense thriller.  An undercover investigator posed as a volunteer and entered the facility to gather information.  The founder, Xenon himself welcomes the investigator posed as a gardener who planted spruces and stayed without getting any pay for his job.  The investigator also brought in another investigator, posed as a cleaning lady who had access to all the rooms in the bunker

All good things or rather in this case, all bad things eventually come to an end.  CYBERBUNKER: THE CRIMINAL UNDERWORLD, a Netflix original (mainly in German), one of the best doc of the year, is informative, scary, and thankfully highly watchable for its easygoing treatment of the material.  It opens for streaming this week on Netflix.

Trailer: 

 

THE MARVELS (USA 2023) **

Directed by Nią Dacosta

 

Disney has and is still going all out on the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).  The latest offering is a lesser-known Marvel action superhero called Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) who has had her own movie called CAPTAIN MARVEL and now returns with the latest film, THE MARVELS with two sidekicks or teammates.  The production cost is a hefty $250 million.  THE HUMGER GAMES prequel which opens next week, cost a modest $100 million in comparison.  It is like make it or break it.  And the film is a terrible mess of story and narrative in too expensive a film.

The film features the characters Carol Danvers / Captain Marvel, Monica Rambeau, and Kamala Khan / Ms. Marvel.  Produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, it is the sequel to the film Captain Marvel (2019), a continuation of the television miniseries Ms. Marvel (2022), and the 33rd film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).  It stars Brie Larson as Carol Danvers, Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau, and Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan, as the 3 main heroes.

Following the events of Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers destroys the Supreme Intelligence, which subsequently leads to a civil war among the Kree. Hala becomes barren as it loses its air and water, with its sun dying as well.  In the present day, Dar-Benn, the new leader of the Kree, succeeds in finding one-half of the Quantum Bands, of which Kamala Khan has the other half. Dar-Benn harnesses the power of the Band to tear apart a jump point in a space, which would later be discovered by S.W.O.R.D.  Nick Fury (played by Samuel L. Jackson in the rare role where he does not use the ‘mf’ word), now on S.A.B.E.R., hosts the Kree-Skrull Peace Talks and calls in Carol and Monica Rambeau to investigate a jump point anomaly near S.A.B.E.R. When Monica touches the jump point, she, Carol, and Kamala switch powers. The switching causes the three to fight each others' Kree enemies, leaving the Khans' house destroyed in their wake. As the three women return to their original places, Fury and Rambeau visit Kamala on Earth.

A bit of humour is provided by the Khan family as Kamala struggles with her superpowers.  But the humour is very slight in this supposedly lighter-hearted Marvel action superhero movie.  The villain is also less evil than usual and actor Jackson delivers one of the mildest roles in his career.  Even the formidable Jackson was unable to provide any laughs.

As the uninteresting film jumps all over the place, just as the action heroes jump all over the universe, the effect eventually gets quite numbing.

This clearly is an action hero movie with a female slant, with the villain and the female teammates action heroes. 

True to form as in all Marvel films, one has to stay till the end of the end credits for a surprise. 

THE MARVELS have received mixed reviews by many critics, and good reviews by some more sympathetic reviewers.  THE MARVELS opens November the 10th in theatres.

Trailer: 

STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING (USA 2023) *

Directed by Roger Ross Williams

 

The film in a phrase to paraphrase the content covers ‘the history of racism’.

Contrary to popular conceptions, the film reveals, though the point is not explicitly stated, that racist ideas did not arise from ignorance or hatred. Instead, they were devised and honed by some of the most brilliant minds of each era. These intellectuals used their brilliance to justify and rationalize deeply entrenched discriminatory policies and the nation's racial disparities in everything from wealth to health. And while racist ideas are easily produced and easily consumed, they can also be discredited. In shedding much-needed light on the murky history of racist ideas, Stamped from the Beginning offers us the tools we need to expose them--and in the process, gives us reason to hope.

The film’s source material is the excellent National Book Award Winner of 2016 by Ibram X. Kendi entitled -  Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas.  Kendi is also featured in the film speaking on racism,

Award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues in Stamped from the Beginning, that if we have any hope of grappling with this stark reality, we need to, and the film strives to aid the audience in understanding how racist ideas were developed, disseminated, and enshrined in American society.

The film dotes on a few examples to stress the case against racism.  When the first black woman published a poetry book, it shocked the white people’s world so much that they believed that such art could not originate from a black person.  Phillis Wheatley is this woman who produced art.  She was interrogated to determine if she wrote the poems.  What gives white people this right to question the black woman?  That is the question posed and a very relevant one.  Another case examined is the legitimacy of the President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson.   Since the 1790s, he was rumored to have had children by his slave Sally Hemings. According to scholarly consensus, Jefferson probably fathered at least six children with Hemings, including four that survived to adulthood.

The film works like a history lesson and the illustrations shown on the screen remind one immediately of identical illustrations (there are a few animated sequences though where the illustrations move to life) seen in history textbooks.  True to form, the film starts with the origin of the word slave.  The word originates from the word slav and the first slaves that worked were Eastern European Slavics before African slaves were used.  The reason black slaves were more popular is that they could not blend in with the white population if they escaped compared to the while Slav counterparts.

The film cites Bacon’s Rebellion as the rebellion against the privileged white landowners by both the white and black slaves arguing it was a spark in the start of whiteness and black segregation.  But it does not state the real purpose of this rebellion, thus distorting the facts to suit the film’s purpose.  Bacon’s Rebellion was an armed rebellion held by Virginia settlers that took place from 1676 to 1677.  Nathaniel Bacon led it against Colonial Governor William Berkeley after Berkeley refused Bacon's request to drive Native American Indians out of Virginia.  Thousands of Virginians from all classes (including those in indentured servitude) and races rose up in arms against Berkeley, chasing him from Jamestown and ultimately torching the settlement. 

STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING though biased against all white folk in general (hardly anything good to say about white folk), does shed excellent light on the origin of racism.  The film opens on Netflix for streaming on November 10th.

Trailer: 

THE STONES AND BRIAN JONES (UK 2023)

Direct by Nick Broomfield

 

(Review to be posted Friday evening)

Trailer: 

TESTAMENT (Canada 2023) ***

Directed by Denys Arcand

 

Click on the link for review:

https://toronto-franco.com/article/21-cinema-movies/394-film-review-testament

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Written by: Gilbert Seah

Parent Category: Articles

Category: Movie Reviews

Published: 23 October 2023

 FILM REVIEWS:

 

BEYOND UTOPIA (USA 2023) ***½

Directed by Madeleine Gavin

 

BEYOND UTOPIA is a documentary film about North Korea, directed by Madeleine Gavin.  The film debuted at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. The documentary centres on Seungeun Kim, a pastor who defected from North to South Korea and who facilitates North Korean defections.  At the start, audiences are informed that the film is about people trying to escape the most dangerous pale on earth.  And that is North Korea.

The doc is called so for the reason that North Koreans believe that they live in a Utopia even though millions have died in the recent famine and many still live in poverty.  They see through television, propagated by the North Korean dictatorship that every other place in the world is in poverty.  They see homeless people in the United States and are told that South Korean children do not even have clothes to wear.  The North Koreans do not have any idea what the world outside is like, thus believing that North Korea is a Utopia, of course not knowing any better.

The doc opens the world of North Korea to audiences and it is a very disturbing world.  North Korea has two prisons and if one is sent to the worst one there is no chance of ever seeing freedom again.  If sent to the more lenient one, they are tortured and if set free, it is after a long stretch with much suffering.  Defectors who are caught and many of them are tortured and beaten.  The scene showing one captured defector being beaten and kicked is almost too brutal to watch.

The doc boasts that nothing is seen on the screen are re-enactments.  Everything appearing onscreen is actual footage.  All sorts of secret cameras were used, including flip phones.

  The hero and main subject of the film is Pastor Kim.  On the outskirts of Seoul, Pastor Seungeun Kim runs an “Underground Railroad” to help North Koreans escape, employing a network of brokers in North Korea, China, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. This dangerous route must be taken to freedom in South Korea.  For a decade, Pastor Kim has helped 1,000 defectors, jeopardizing his own life.  Pastor Kim is constantly at risk of being kidnapped by North Korea.  If that happens, he would not only be killed but tortured and beaten before that.
The film follows two stories that began in the months before the pandemic.

These are some of the last known attempts at defection from North Korea.  The first involves the Rohs – a family of five, including a mother, father, two young daughters and an 80-year-old grandmother.  Their journey means crossing rivers, climbing mountains and traversing jungles on foot.  The doc shows maps showing the routes of possible escape.  Many have to take extreme distances of detouring to escape detection and capture.  The second is about a mother who hasn’t seen her son since she defected 10 years ago and wants to bring him – now a teenager – to South Korea.  With every furtive phone call, the emotions play out – from anticipation to fear.  The son had been tortured to half his weight in prison.  He is beaten with angled rulers and has broken teeth preventing him from eating and walking properly,

  More intriguing as it is disturbing, viewers also get a look at what life is really like inside North Korea – through clandestine footage, or from interviewees like author/defector Hyeonseo Lee.  How do residents get water?  Why do they have to collect their “poo”?  It’s interesting to hear the Roh grandmother’s rosy viewpoint after decades of indoctrination.

BEYOND UPTOPIA is one doc that would surely open one’s eyes to the horrors that mankind still install for the sake of power.  The North Korean regime has been compared to Nazi Germany and with reason.

Trailer: 

 

GHOSTS OF THE VOID (USA 2023) ***

Directed by Jason Miller

 

“It’s called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.”  So goes the saying at the start of the film before the first image occurs, the line from comedian George Carlin.

Spending the night in her car, a newly homeless woman wrestles with exhaustion, her crumbling marriage, and the threat of mysterious, masked strangers.  Jen and Tyler Wilson (Tedra Millan and Michael Reagan) used to have it all: a solid marriage, a nice home, and careers that promised a bright future.  But when Tyler's drinking problem worsens, and his writer's block continues, the debt collectors show no mercy, forcing the couple out of their home and into their car.  The film is largely set in the dead of night with the couple in or by the car.  Their past life is revealed in flashbacks.  They seem to think it is the creditors who are responsible for the horrors imposed on them.

Beyond stressed, exhausted, and overwhelmed with feelings of failure, Jen and Tyler park their car in a vacant lot, hoping to get a good night's sleep before dealing with the realities of tomorrow.  However, their sleep becomes interrupted by homeless passersby, mischievous local kids, and eventually, ominous strangers in harrowing masks.  Why don’t they drive off?  Two reasons.  Someone has placed a tire clamp on their car.  Then Jen leaves the keys in the lock of the trunk and the keys are then stolen.  Tyler has had it and goes after what thinks might also be teenagers creating pranks.  When he says: “It’s ok - I will be back.”  He will be in trouble.  he then encounters the three masked predators.

Writer/director Jason Miller carefully crafts a riveting, slow-burn thriller that delves deep into the psychological depths of a crumbling marriage stuck in the middle of nowhere.

The film contains a simple premise.  With something simple, less can go wrong.  The saying holds. GHOSTS OF THE VOID exposes the fragility of the human psyche in the face of adversity while leaving audiences to question the thin line between reality and the supernatural.

The masked strangers who up only after two-thirds of the film - in the three colours of red, white and blue (the three colours of the American flag, indicating more of the American dream becoming a nightmare.  They live in individual blue, red, and white tents.

The pressures on her -  Tyler drinks and abuses her.  He has a temper.  She is pressured by her mother to get a job and leave him.  The question is whether she should leave him.  But according to Jen, she loves him.

GHOSTS OF THE VOID has won several awards in international film festivals, particularly horror film festivals.  A well-made combination of horror drama and thriller, GHOSTS OF THE VOID is proof that a simple premise story without any need for the supernatural can result in a tense horror film.   GHOSTS OF THE VOID is available on digital and on-demand on November the 7th, 2023.

 Trailer: 

HANDS THAT BIND (Canada 2021) ***

Directed by Kyle Armstrong

 

HANDS THAT BIND has one common thread with the recent Martin Scorsese’s epic KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON.  Both films open with a vast landscape, in this film the Canadian prairies of Alberta beautifully shot by cinematographer  Mike McLaughlin, (the scene of the burning carcass of the dead heifer in the dead tree as dusk settles in is stunning).   Both films tell a story between man and his land, and both films introduce various stories before honing in on one.  HANDS THAT BIND contains several different narratives each of which could diverted into a different story film.

The setting of the film is 1981, Alberta and it is a handsome period piece without the nuisance of modern gadgets like the cellphone and the laptop.  1981, Alberta.  Having severed ties with his own father, Andy (Paul Sparks) toils as a hired hand to support his wife ( Susan Kent) and two young children, hoping he will eventually inherit the farm from his boss Mac (Nicholas Campbell).  No such luck!  Andy serves as a substitute son to both Mac and a lonely neighbour (Bruce Dern - generous of the star and veteran actor Dern to lend his hand to this Canadian production).  But Andy’s hopes are dashed when Mac’s prodigal son (Lance Liboiron) shows up.  The darkly handsome son is a lazy loutwho clearly is underserving of his father’s love.  He had lost his job in the oil fields.  Andy refuses his boss’s suggestion that he return to his own father’s farm, (the riff between Andy and his father not explained at the film’s beginning) rebuffs his wife’s wish to go back to work herself, and instead makes a choice that plunges him toward chaos.  Meanwhile, his turmoil is mirrored by mysterious occurrences – mutilated cows, burning trees, and unexplained lights.  The world is becoming increasingly unfamiliar.

The several stories that could evolve include:

• perhaps a sci-fi story with aliens from Andy’s observation of the weird lights coming from the night sky
• a predator movie which could explain the mutilated refer which showed no signs of blood
• a family drama between Andy and wife 
• the estranged relationship between Andy and his father
• the story of the white man and the indigenous land (Andy finds an arrowhead at the start of the film and discards it elsewhere in the field).

Director Armstrong has a good feel for his material and his film comes across as genuine and authentic.  The drama is never overdone and much of it can be seen from the undertones of the scenes rather than huge outbursts from the characters.

The film is directed by Armstrong, who grew up in southern Alberta, this being his second feature after UNTIL FIRST LIGHT.

  The meticulously crafty Western Canadian film won the 2022 Edmonton Film Prize, awarded by the Alberta Media Production Industries Association (AMPIA) in collaboration with the Edmonton Arts Council.   HANDS THAT BIND opens November 3 in Toronto (Scotiabank)!
The film is also available on November 3 to rent or buy across Canada on the Apple TV app and other VOD platforms. The film opens on November 24 in Edmonton (Metro Cinema).

 

THE HOLDOVERS (USA 2023) *****

Directed by Alexander Payne

 

Written by David Hemingson and directed by Alexander Payne, this film won the runner-up prize for the Audience Choice Award at TIFF.  The film could be considered an updated variation of Charles Dickens’s A CHRISTMAS CAROL, in which the miser is replaced by a very strict and unflinching schoolmaster whose past catches up with him with the help of a troublesome student who eventually brings out the man’s good side.   The film is both sad and funny with Paul Giamatti (already an Oscar nominee in CINDERELLA MAN) delivering a career-best Oscar-winning performance.  

During this process, Paul is forced to deal with one particularly rebellious but troubled student, Angus (Dominic Sessa), who is grieving the loss of his father. 

Set in the early 1970s (the year no revealed till the new year is shown on the TV), the film follows Paul Hunham (Giamatti), a disliked teacher at Barton Academy, who's responsible for supervising students who are unable to return home for the Christmas holidays.  Dominic Sessa, a newcomer who plays the ld role as Angus Tully, the dent holdover is also nothing short of excellent, holding his own against Giamatti.  Sessa will be an actor to definitely be reckoned with.

The atmosphere of the 70s is exceptionally created, thanks to the cinematography, dialogue, wardrobe and sets.  If one is to watch a 70’s film like Mike Nichols’ two classics, THE GRADUATE or BOB AND CAROL AND TED AND ALICE, one cannot tell that THE HOLDOVERS was not made in the 70’s.  The year 1971 is not given to the audience well into the film, though one notes that it is not a modern piece because of the absence of the use of cell phones.  The soundtrack also sounds like something that could be composed by Simon and Garfunkel who scored the soundtrack for THE GRADUATE.

One also learns the all-important lesson that there are much more alike in human beings than one can imagine.  The fact that the film is set at Christmas with sad characters also enlivens the contrast between sadness and joy.  Extremely funny and quotable dialogue too!  Two examples are:  “A body that does not exercise devours itself.”  “You are cancer pain in human form”.  And there are countless more in Hemingson’s articulate script.  The script also contains a few powerful lines.

THE HOLDOVERS was runner-up in the People’s Choice Awards at the Toronto International Film Festival losing first place to AMERICAN FICTION, though in my opinion, the two excellent films should have their places switched.

THE HOLDOVERS is one movie that will make one laugh and cry at the same time - sometimes during the same scene.  One of Alexander Payne’s (SIDEWAYS, DOWNSIZING, THE DESCENDENTS) most emotional movies.

Trailer: 

HURRICANE SEASON (TEMPORADA DE HURACANES (Mexiso 2023) ***½

Directed by Elisa Miller

Halloween October 31st still attracts lots of horror features.  A new surprise arrives from Mexico which, thankfully does not have to resort to the supernatural to supply the scares.

Many famous directors begin by making short films.  When these make it to festivals and win big prizes, the directors get a chance for big-time - feature films for the bid studios.  Elisa Miller is a prime example of such a breakthrough director.

There are several reasons HURRICANE SEASON, a Netflix original horror flick should be watched.  Firstly, the film’s director Elisa Miller is a Palme d’Or winner.  She won the Cannes Prize for her short VER LLOVE in 2007.  Secondly, her film, based on the book of the same name has the perfect moody and horror atmosphere rich with superstition and mystery of a poor Mexican village where the village folk have nothing better to do but create trouble for each other.  The village also keeps a deadly secret.  Thirdly the film also contains a breakout performance by putting teem Palma Alvamar as she comes-of-age amidst all the turmoil.

The atmosphere is created right from the film’s first scene.  “What its that rotten stench?” asks one of the boys as they venture through the trees onto the river.  It is a not and swealtring day, and one can almost smell the stench of the sea corpse floating in the canal. ripe with a snake writhing out of the corpse’s mouth.

When \this group of teens finds a corpse floating in a canal, the brutal reality behind the perverse crime unravels a town's hidden secrets.

The corpse, the audience learns belongs to a questionable woman the villagers call a witch.  The so-called witch holds grand parties with young boys with lots of sex and rugs involved.  None of the villagers like the witch but a group of older women turn up at the place station to claim her body in order to give her a proper burial.  It is at least what she deserves, one of them says, before they are shared out of the place amid lots of female swearing.  The scene then shifts to the protagonist, played by Almavar, who now tells her story that she wishes to report a murder.  The story then occurs about this moody unloved (by her grandmother) who wants to just grow up with a bit of love.

The girl had witnessed the witch having sex with her cousin and reported it back to her grandmother.  But the cousin is her grandmother’s favourite son and the girl has hair cut as the grandmother accuses her of telling lies about her favourite grandson.

HURRICANE SEASON is filmed in Mexican Spanish and offers a good atmospheric coming-of-age scary rich Mexican drama.  It opens for =streaming this week on Netflix.  The film has won its director Best Picture at the Moria Film Festival.  The film is definitely worth a watch.

Trailer: 

JEZABEL (Argentina/Mexico 2023) ***

Directed by Hernán Jabes Aquila

 

Four wealthy, hedonistic young adults are tormented by a brutal murder in this new erotically charged psychological thriller.

The new psychological horror thriller which can also be listed as a crime thriller, from Argentina takes the name JEZABEL (also spelled often as JEZEBEL) from the biblical character in the Book of Kings in the Bible’s Old Testament.  Jezebel is known to be the conniving, wicked and manipulative Queen of Israel.  Jezebel was the daughter of Ithobaal I of Tyre and the wife of Ahab, King of Israel.  According to the biblical narrative, Jezebel, along with her husband, instituted the worship of Baal and Asherah on a national scale.  In addition, she violently purged the prophets of Yahweh from Israel, damaging the reputation of the Omride dynasty.  But in the film, the name is used for Eli’s prom website.  Eli does not know what to do with her life but she wants to make lots of money.  So she intends to go to prom.  But things do not turn out as she had planned and she dies a violent death,

JEZABEL is set in present-day Venezuela, where political and social chaos reigns, four best friends Lolo, Cacá, Eli, and Alain live a carefree lifestyle as wealthy young adults in Caracas, Venezuela.  Their hedonistic relationship, full of drugs, group sex, and dangerous (often sexual) games, comes to an abrupt end when one day Eli is brutally murdered.  Still haunted by her death sixteen years later, Alain is shocked to discover that Eli’s alleged killer is not who everyone believes he to be.  The dominating math teacher, is the one, who has also tormented the friends is not that innocent either.  With the help of journalist, Salvador, Alain must confront the ghosts of his past in this erotically charged psychological thriller.

Director Jabes’ films his debut feature as an artistic and stylish thriller in nonlinear mode - intercutting his story in flashbacks.  The film is in reality a whodunit with lots of distractions.  It is almost impossible to guess the identity of Eli’s killer, not because of the intricate plot, but because of the story’s outrageous premise and all the false clues that go along with the plot.  It is for this reason that the audience feels cheated in the storytelling, stylish though it may be, that the film fails as a satisfactory whodunit.

Director James places lots of distractions on the whodunit.  Salvador and Alain begin a torrid gay affair that does not line with the story as in Alain’s early years, Alain has non-gay sex, only heterosexual sex with his three other female friends.  Director James does not shy away from the sex scenes - gay or heterosexual.  The result is some very hot sex scenes that serve to provide some excitement to the film.  The story also includes the political and social problems of Argentina - the elections and freedom of the elections.  The students complain about the political situation but instead of doing anything, indulge in their own selfish tendencies.

JEZABEL opens on VOD and other leading platforms on November the 7th 2023.

LOCKED IN (UK/France/USA 2023) **

Directed by Nour Wazzi

 

The title LOCKED IN of the new Netflix original psychological thriller comes from the medical term: locked-in syndrome.   Signs and symptoms of locked-in syndrome are usually characterized by quadriplegia (loss of limb function) and the inability to speak in otherwise cognitively intact individuals. Those with locked-in syndrome may be able to communicate with others through coded messages by blinking or moving their eyes, which are often not affected by the paralysis.  The symptoms are similar to those of sleep paralysis. Patients who have locked-in syndrome are conscious and aware, with no loss of cognitive function. They can sometimes retain proprioception and sensation throughout their bodies. Some patients may have the ability to move certain facial muscles, and most often some or all of the extraocular muscles. Individuals with the syndrome lack coordination between breathing and voice.  This prevents them from producing voluntary sounds, though the vocal cords themselves may not be paralyzed.  One of the best films with the locked-in syndrome is the French film True Story THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY, based on Jean-Dominique Bauby's 1997 memoir of the same name, the film depicting Bauby's life after suffering a massive stroke left him with the condition.  In this film, LOCKED IN,  after a nit and run, Katherine (Fameke Janssen suffers from locked-in syndrome.  Her nurse MacKenzie is a well-meaning worker who earnestly tries to help her recover while finding out the truth behind the accident.  There are a lot of unanswered questions.  This deals with an unhappy newlywed Lina (Rose Williams) who finds herself battling with her mother-in-law, who happens to be Katherine who is also her adopted mother.

The film has a complete plot with a script by Rowan Joffe and contains lots of twists and side plots.  Lina’s mother dies and the mother’s best friend Katherine, a Hollywood car takes her in as her guardian.  Katherine has a son, whom Lina eventually falls in love with and marries.  The son suffers from fits and is generally unhealthy.  Enters the local doctor, Robert whom Lina falls in love with.  Katerie’s late husband leaves the will of the estate of his sonny Katherine has nothing.  Lina now the wife with the son has control over the estate.  So, the twist and turns of the street unfolds.

The story though a little complicated is a good one, with lots of potential for black humour and unexpected thrill and suspense. The result could be a top-notch thriller.  Unfortunately, the film fails to reach that level.  The story ends up looking implausible and unbelievable, with no thanks to what might be needed as tight direction and a more focused script.

Of all the actors, Janssen as Katherine comes across as the best performer..  Alex Hassell, who plays Doctor Lawrence, who ends up the villain of the piece could have delivered a more sinister performance,  It is difficult to pinpoint exactly what prevented the film from being the tithe black thrilling psychological drama it could have been, instead of a largely unbelievable piece of fictional horror that comes with a slasher ending.

LOCKED IN opens for streaming on Netflix this week.

NUOVO OLIMPO (ITALY 2023) ***

Directed by Ferzan Ozpetek

 

Turkish-Italian director Ferzan Ozpetek has a ton of films already under his belt, the most famous one being FACING WINDOWS.  NUOVO OLIMPO is his latest Netflix collaboration and the title refers to the name of the repertory Italian cinema house in Rome where two lovers meet for the first time.

 NUOVO OLIMPO is a gay romantic drama film set in late 1970s Rome.  One thing to note is that the two main male lovers also carry on heterosexual love affairs, though one eventually for a long-term gay relationship with somebody else.  The story follows two young men who meet by chance in Nuovo Olimpo and fall deeply in love.   It is never explained, but the cinema appears to be a pickup place for male gay sex and the nasties are carried on in the cinema’s lavatories.  This is where Enea notices a shy Pietro.  They meet in the restroom but do not engage in sex.  “Is this your first time?”  Enea questions Pietro.   Pietro declines sex but they meet again at the cinema.  They end up having pizza instead but eventually have sex in Enea's friend’s grandmother’s apartment.  From the sex scene, it does not seem that is  Pietro’s first time.

There were riots in 70s Rome.  A big protest that turns into a riot results in the cinema house being opened for the protestors to take refuge.  Pietro suffers a broken arm and they lose touch.  Why they do not exchange addresses or phone numbers is one of the story’s mysteries and flaws.  It appears to be an excuse for a lone 30 years romanticizing the hope of finding each other again.   Pietro keeps coming to the cinema but Enea never returns.

As time flies, Pietro becomes an important surgeon while Enea succeeds as a successful film director, the first gay director to come out with what he describes as emotional films.

NUOVO OLIMPO is indeed a slow burn.  It takes half an hour before the two lovers take to the bed, Pitro keeps giving silly excuses while Enea patiently waits.  The concept of love through the ages - time and space will not get in the way of love (this appears to be the message in the film)  - a poetic and aspiring one comes instead quite forced and if one examines the film and story more carefully as it unfolds, quite unbelievable and cliched, including the scene when Pietro appear to Enea by the window of a passing train.  (Really?)  Director Ozpetek also aims at blending the nostalgic element of cinema into the romance.

Enea (Daminano Gavino), and medical student Pietro (Andrea Di Luigi) do make hot lovers and the two male actors, particularly Gavis extremely adorable.  But the make-up that goes on the two actors as they age through 30 years is plain horrid, least of all, laughable. The film sweetly filters a love for cinema through a love between two people, though it’s not quite a romance for the ages.

NUOVO OLIMPO is currently streaming on Netflix this week.

PRISCILLA (USA 2023) ***

Directed by Sofia Coppola

 

Priscilla is a 2023 American biographical drama film written, directed, and co-produced by Sofia Coppola, based on the 1985 memoir Elvis and Me by Priscilla Presley (who serves as an executive producer) and Sandra Harmon. Who else better than Sofia Coppola, the director of strong female-themed films like THE VIRGIN SUICIDES, LOST IN TRANSLATION and THE BEGUILED to direct this very personal film on the wife of the one and only Rock and Roller Elvis Presley, Priscilla Presley?  The film follows the life of Priscilla and her relationship with Elvis Presley.  Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi star as Priscilla and Elvis.

PRISCILLA, first of all, is not a very likable personality, as depicted in the film, and also likely so in real life. Director Coppola shows Priscilla as such and this poses a problem for the film if the audience dislikes or does not connect with its main character.  Priscilla comes from a devout Christian family and was not allowed much freedom as a teenager.  She is also shown as not very bright, and not doing well at school.  A moment in the film that shows Priscilla cheating on an exam, by promising her classmate that she will be invited to an Elvis party, shows her tomb dishonest and of a questionable nature.  Though understandable, Priscilla is jealous of her husband’s popularity with other girls.  She is quietly hot-tempered and impatient.

Director Coppola keeps the film focused on only two characters - Priscilla and Elvis.  No other supporting characters take any part of the spotlight.  The colonel, Elvis’ manager who largely controls the business of Elvis is never shown on camera.  Elvis is just heard talking to the colonel on the telephone, unlike the biopic ELVIS where Tom Hanks as the colonel overshadows the Elvis character.  The result is a claustrophobic depressing film that goes into depression mode just as the two characters go down the rabbit hole.

The editing and the music and songs in the soundtrack are, however, beautifully scored.  The sets, decor, and art direction all clearly evoke the period atmosphere so important in the story-telling,  As for performances Cailee Spaeny is wonderfully captivating while Jacob Elordi makes a really sexy Elvis, especially when he is in his swimming trunks.

Director Coppola shies away from the Elvis performances.  Only the quieter tunes like “Love Me Tender” make the cut to the soundtrack.  The film mentions the decline of Elvis showing his temper tantrums, throwing stuff at Priscilla at one point and then apologizing later.  Elvis’ drug use (taking the hallucinatory LSD) is shown with him partaking with his wife, Priscilla.  The arguments between the married couple are displayed in all its ugliness.

PRISCILLA is a very well-made film, no argument here, but it is a story that comes out too personal with director Coppola focussing too much on Priscilla and Elvis leaving all other characters that might enliven the story to the sidelines to the point of omission  The film is not a pleasant watch, understandably as who would like to watch a couple’s marriage go downhill or watch their fights all the time?  (Unless it is over the top as Mike Nichols’ direction of Edward Albee’s WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?

PRISCILLA opens in theatres on Nov the 3rd.

Trailer: 

QUIZ LADY (USA 2023) ***

Directed by Jessica Yu

 

In QUIZ LADY a brilliant but tightly wound, game show-obsessed young woman, Anne (Awkwafina), and her estranged, train-wreck of a sister Jenny (Sandra Oh), must work together to help cover their mother’s gambling debts.  When Anne’s beloved dog, Linguini is kidnapped, they set out on a wild, cross-country trek to get the cash the only way they know how: by turning Anne into a bona-fide game show champion—the host of the game show is played by none there than Will Ferrell.

This is not a particularly well-written or original scripted comedy.  Apologies to the scriptwriter, but there is nothing really fresh or original that one has not seen in comedies like his one before.  The humour is mixed with family drama as Jenny is constantly in need and has to be bailed out by Anne.  But together the film shows they can achieve much more.

It all begins with Anne getting a phone call from her mother’s nursing home.  “Your mother has left us,”  says the person to Anne on the line.  “Oh, that was horrible phrasing.  I meant your mother has disappeared from the home.”  As an example of the comedy in the script, the comedy is not that funny.  But the comedy works wonders under the comedic duo of Sandra Oh and Awkwafina who both prove their comedic prowess together.  They also outshine Will Ferrell in laughs.  The plot and story just roll the film around and the drama between the sisters is a standard family drama that one knows will be solved at the end.

Despite the mediocre script, QUIZ LADY is still a barrel of laughs owing to the excellent comic timing of the comedic duo Sandra Oh and Awkwafina.  QUIZ LADY opens for streaming on Disney Plus this weekend, after premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival last September.

Trailer: 

SLY (USA 2023) ***

Directed by Thom Zimny

 

SLY is the documentary on Sylvester Stallone, one of the hottest stars of all time, the only one to remain number 1 at the box office for decades.  His ROCKY and RAMBO franchises have crowned him action hero number 1.  Now close to the age of 70, his new franchise THE EXPENDABLES stars elder action heroes.

In the film SLY, Sylvester Stallone looks back on his life and career in this valedictory documentary directed by Thom Zimny.

Sylvester Stallone is  Rocky Balboa, John Rambo, and Barney Ross, the guy who runs the team of aging action heroes known as The Expendables.  The doc shows the other side of the man - an artist who’s spent the last half-century trying to prove he is more than just a guy from Hell’s Kitchen — to his critics, to his family, and most of all, to himself.

For Stallone fans, the doc takes a nostalgic trip down memory lane of both his successful and failed films.  ROCKY, Stallone’s success story is, of course, examined in great detail.  But the doc does not shy away from the next two failures that followed.  F.I.S.T. was a disaster (nicknamed J.U.N.K) and PARADISE ALLEY (name forced to be changed from HELL’S KITCHEN) before ROCKY 2 made Stallone’s comeback.  The doc shows the struggles of Stallone and the pressures and demands of the film business.  Out is not a friendly environment.  The doc contains many scenes from his films reflecting the actor's ups and downs in life.

As much as the doc talks about Sly’s life, his unsuccessful marriages are clearly omitted.  The death of his son, Sage is mentioned though, and how the death affected the actor.

Those interviewed include Quentin Tarantino  who praises Stallone to no end, also giving his views on Stallone’s films, ROCKY’s director John Avildson and the other action hero Arnold Swartzchenegger,

SLY premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival with Stallone present to talk about the film, despite the actors strike.  The film now opens for streaming on Netflix.  SLY is an easy enjoyable watch and a comfortable look at Stallone’s philosophy on life.

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Written by: Gilbert Seah

Parent Category: Articles

Category: Movie Reviews

Published: 22 October 2023

REEL ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL 2023

The Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival (Reel Asian), Canada's premier pan-Asian festival,  will open with Canadian filmmaker Fawzia Mirza’s debut feature The Queen of My Dreams. From November 8 to 19, 2023, the Festival will take audiences on a cinematic journey, transcending borders and bringing the world closer together. This year’s lineup consists of 15 features and 57 shorts from Canada, India, Iran, Japan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Reel Asian will also present three thoughtful and creative multimedia experiences through their RA:X program and welcome a number of esteemed industry professionals for their Reel Ideas conference. For the full programming lineup and ticket information visit reelasian.com.

“The continued success and popularity of Asian cinema in Hollywood has brought our collective stories and experiences to the forefront, leading to significant growth in our community’s industry both abroad and in Canada,” said Deanna Wong, Executive Director, Reel Asian. “We’re so proud to welcome audiences back to the festival, which aims to bridge cultural divides, inspire meaningful conversations, and celebrate Asian voices. There is a need for our stories now more than ever and we hope to continue offering a bigger and better festival each year.”

Capsule Reviews of select Films:

BABY QUEEN (Singapore 2023) ***½

Directed by Lei Yuan Bing

 

Singapore is well known for its Bugis Street and female-dressing males, though today modernized beyond recognition recently due to ‘progress’  BABY QUEEN, a very personal exploration of the practically non-existent drag scene in Singapore is told from the point of view of ‘Opera” her drag name, as she/he makes a name for him/herself and his/her ethnicity.  The doc opens with the boy as a child dancing to Cinderella before moving on to the present where the boy is now an adult putting on makeup to become a gorgeous-looking drag queen, that would make many a female jealous.  The film is shot in the many languages spoken in the city island state, including pigeon English, Chinese dialects and Malay.  The film is an easy-going watch and avoids making a statement or any criticism of Singapore laws which are well known for its general un-acceptance of homosexuality. The film or doc runs a little over an hour and makes itspoint.  Very persona, very effective, and very representative of Singapore,

 

 

OKIKU AND THE WORLD せかいのおきく

Directed by Junji Sakamoto 攫㘭朇㮼 | Japan 2023 | ***½

 

OKIKU AND THE WORLS is a gorgeously framed period black and white piece (though there are a few splashes of colour) with convincing sets and a wonderfully created atmosphere that gives the film the look of the classic Samurai films, like those helmed by Master Akira Kurosawa.   The audience is told that as the samurai world opens to the outside world, everything is turning to shit as the scene shifts to its protagonist, collecting shit (for manure) and making a living.  Set near the end of the Edo period around 1958, the film presents a fresh take on samurai culture.   Okiku (Haru Kuroki) is the daughter of a fallen samurai. The two of them now live in a tenement far from luxury. One day, she meets Chuji (Kanichiro) and love blooms. The problem is that Chuji is a manure man who collects excrement to sell to farmers.   Despite the downfall of the Shogun era, there is still a social gap between them.  The film is told in 7 parts, the last part is called OKIKU AND THE WORLD.  Shit has never been so hilariously depicted in a film.

 

RELICS OF LOVE AND WAR (Canada 2023) ****

Directed by Keith Lock

 

There is much to learn and discover in this amazing 40-minute film by filmmaker Keith Lock, the film told mainly with a voiceover that puts together an amazing true tale using old photographs.  Lock narrates the story of how his mother (directly from China, a petite 4 ft 10 inc but very pretty lady) married his father in Australia, who was training with other Chinese Canadian veteran volunteers for the top secret suicide mission, Operation Oblivion.  This incredible story is set against the backdrop of the Second World War, at a time when Chinese Canadians could not vote, swim in pools, or hire white women for their businesses.  Canadians were to sit at the back of the cinema, not allowed to vote and were only allowed to work in grocery stores, laundry, or restaurants.  Yet they showed resilience and were found to show leadership and intelligence when trained by the military instructors.  Lock’s film is a powerful yet nostalgic film that makes Asians (this reviewer included) stand proud and tall in an unjust world that needs them more than they need them.

Trailer: 

 

SEAGRASS (Canada 2023) ***½
Directed by Meredith Hama-Brown

 

SEAGRASS has an idyllic opening on a ferry where two young sisters (Remy Marthaller and Nyha Huang Breitkreuz) playfully run around enjoying the view and the trip aboard the ferry.  They are going to a retreat with their parents traveling via the ferry.  Set in the mid-1990s, a Japanese Canadian woman, Judith  (Ally Maki, THE BIG DOOR PRIZE) grappling with the recent death of her mother brings her family to a self-development retreat. When her distressed relationship with her husband (Luke Roberts, GAME OF THRONES) begins to affect the children’s emotional security, the family is forever changed.  The film covers several key issues and explores questions relating to fear and security, it is about a distressed family, motherhood,  grief, shame, intergenerational trauma and racial identity.  It is about all these seemingly disparate things, but the thematic tissue that connects them all is “fear” and the various ways that uncertainty affects our relationships and sense of stability. Director Hama-Brown steers her relationship family drama into its emotional climax that includes a little suspense to boot in what can be termed s meticulously crafted gem.

SMALL FRY (South Korea 2023) **

Directed by. Joongha Park 

 

A three-handler about three teens meeting with not much really happening.  Ho-jun, a flailing actor, has found relative success as a social media influencer, hawking fishing hacks. He preps his live stream at his preferred fishing spot, only to be disrupted by an obnoxious stranger, Director Nam, a hotshot independent film director about to shoot his first feature. He has invited rising actress Hee-jin for a quiet pondside chat to convince her that his film will be a star-making breakout role—only Hee-jin isn’t sure about Director Nam’s film, or his ulterior motives. As the day progresses, links between Ho-jun, Director Nam, and Hee-jin entwine and unravel to reveal each character’s ambition, pettiness, and pathos as they try to reel in their respective dreams.  Director Park devotes almost equal screen time between the two males with the female bridging the gap between the two male egos.

 

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Written by: Gilbert Seah

Parent Category: Articles

Category: Movie Reviews

Published: 20 October 2023

FILM REVIEWS:

 

BURNING BETRAYAL (Brazil 2023) **

(O lado bom de ser traída)

Directed by Diego Freitas

 

This sexy misery romance drama is based on the book by Sue Becker and directed by Diego Freitas

Babi discovers a betrayal by her long-term partner and decides to embark on a new adventure in life. On this journey, she meets Judge Marco and they begin to live a story permeated by a lot of sexual tension.

The film begins with a sexy night motorbike encounter in which a girl rescues a fellow male biker before having torrid sex.  Turns out to be a dream and the girl, Babi (Giovanna Lancellotti) is about to be married but ditches her fiancé, Caio (Laruzi Sampaio) after discovering his unfaithfulness.   Babi meets the man in her dream in the form of a mysterious judge, Marco (Leandro Lima).  Her best friend and office colleague, Thiago (Bruno Monteleone), who has the hots for her looks on.

All the goings-on are in reality pretty silly and ridiculous, all seemingly an excuse for a scenario for hot sex.  The sex scenes are erotic enough with lots of contoured hot nude bodies performing the act in different positions.  Babi appears to be in trouble but one could really care what happens to this loose lady.  Both boring and silly, best to give this one a miss.  BURNING BETRAYAL opens for streaming on Netflix this week.

LOS  DELINCUENTES (THE DELINQUENTS) (Argentina 2023) ****

Directed by Rodrigo Moreno

 

The difference between commercial filmmaking and non-commercial filmmaking is vast.  The former follows formulaic rules like the Disney and major studio movies whose only surprises are often the innovative expensive special effects.  Director Moreno, on the other hand, has surprised audiences at Cannes this year with his stranger-than-fiction bank heist movie THE DELINQUENTS.  It is a different kind of bank heist film, just at the point in which one might term it ground-breaking filmmaking - and one to break the rules.  This is what makes THE DELINQUENTS such a pleasure to watch.  It is hard to predict where director Lorena will take the journey.  Running a lengthy 3 hours, the film is divided into two parts - each part significantly different.   THE DELINQUENTS refer to the two responsible for the cash stolen from a bank vault. The bank heist is surprisingly simple enough to execute, without much aplomb or ingenious planning.  It is what happens after that is surprising.  One can never foretell what life might dish out.

Fed up with his job as a longtime employee at a Buenos Aries bank, Morán (Daniel Eliás) helps himself to $650,000 – twice the amount he would earn if he stayed until retirement.  Moran breezily strolls in stuffs the money in a case and walks out.  Morán plans to turn himself in.  Serving 3 ½ years in prison beats working 25 more years at the bank.  But prison holds a few unexpected nasty surprises for Moran,  He asks fellow employee Román (Esteban Bigliardi) to hide the money – in return for a percentage, once Morán is released.  While Morán slogs away behind bars, Román heads out to bury the cash in the bucolic Cordoba foothills, where he meets locals Morna, Ramón and Norma (Margarita Molfino), the latter to whom he finds himself attracted. 

Director Moreno invests a fair amount of screen time in the personalities of Moran and Ramon.  Moran is shown to be calculative and rather cunning, smart in both literary and accounting and though looks loutish with his gut and balding head, displays a certain charm.  One can see the reason Norma is attracted to this generally outward-looking unattractive man.  Moran is one who plans and attempts to control his destiny. Roman, on the other hand, is more of a simpleton who lets fate control his life.  As expected when the two clash, the unexpected occurs.  There are a lot of ‘unexpected’s that appear in Moreno’s somewhat marvellous tale of fate and life.  The life lessons taught in the film are subtle and rather brilliant.

The film progresses rather slowly and at the same pace throughout the 3-hour length.  Yet Moreno is a superb storyteller who keeps his story interesting from start to end.  He thankfully does not intercut the two stories that would destroy the intrigue built up in each.  The one thing that might frustrate audiences with this film is the non-Happy Hollywood ending that Morena reveals at the end.  However, on careful thought, the ending would have been the most likely outcome.

THE DELINQUENTS debuted in Un Certain Regard at Cannes 2023 – is Argentina’s Oscar 2024 entry for Best International Feature Film.  Definitely a recommended watch, THE DELINQUENTS opens October 27 in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal!

Trailer:  

 

FREELANCE (USA 2023)

Directed by Pierre Morel

(Review embargo  lifted on Thursday 3 am.)

 

Action pics with a solitary mercenary fitting against a massive enemy are currently a dime a dozen.  Action stars range from Bruce Willis to Sylvester Stallone to Liam Neeson are just too many to name.  Wrestling stars like Dwayne Johnson and now John Cena have jumped on the action bandwagon.

The question is what sets FREELANCE apart from the standard dime-a-dozen action flick?  The unassuming title FREELANCE indicating the mercenary is freelanced is also not one to stand out.  FREELANCE, to the film’s benefit, has a few benefits.  Firstly, wrestler/scot John Cena is an actor with screen presence as well as muscle.  Secondly, the director of FREELANCE is Pierre Morel who helmed the exceptional box-office successes of TAKEN DISTRICT 13 and THE GUNMAN and he is French.  The third bonus is a script that puts more emphasis on the characters, though this might seem cliched or previously used.  And lastly, there is some message here about American conglomerates out to make money at the expense of unknowing victims.  FREELANCE is the feature writing debut of television screenwriter Jacob Lentz, who does not do a bad job at all.  His one-liners are quite funny and reminiscent of the one-liners used by Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger in their action blockbusters.

The action sequences are sufficiently exciting with some hand-to-hand combat between Cena and the villain.  This looks staged as one knows Cena is the stronger fighter, he has a wrestling background and muscles and all.

Years after retiring from the Army, former Special Forces operator Mason Pettits (Cena) takes a job providing security for journalist Claire Wellington (Alison Brie) as she interviews Juan Venegas, (Juan Pablo Raba) president of Paldonia.  Paldonia is a fictitious South American country where the recent discovery of oil has attracted foreign interest.  The film is shot in Colombia, Colombia standing in for Paldonia.  Colombia looks completely stunning with its natural forests and rivers.  When a military coup breaks out in the middle of the interview, the three are forced to escape into the jungle together.

FREELANCE is an entertaining enough action comedy with both action and laughs, illustrating that one does not need to spend millions of dollars (this film had a budget of a modest $40 million) with special effects or superstars to create.

FREELANCE opens in theatres on Friday, October 27.

Trailer: 

HELL HOUSE LLC ORIGINS: THE IAN CARMICHAEL MANOR (USA 2023) ***

Directed by Stephen Cognetti

 

A group of cold case investigators stay at the Carmichael Manor, the site of the grisly and unsolved murders of the Carmichael family back in the eighties. After four nights, the group was never heard from again. What is discovered in their footage is even more disturbing than anything found on the Hell House tapes.

HELL HOUSE LLC ORIGINS : THE IAN CARMICHAEL MANOR is the fourth film in the Hell House LLC series.   But rather than being considered a ‘part 4’ or a prequel the film contains a stand-alone original story within the Hell House LLC universe yet is set in the present instead of making a precursor to the original trilogy.  The film explores some of the themes and origins of the hotel’s mythology while introducing new characters and mysteries surrounding the events that took place in 1989 in a stand-alone origin story.

The story takes place in 2021 and follows a group of internet sleuths who travel to the remote Carmichael Manor.  The film begins with the co-founder of a group called Net Sleuths interviewing a crime writer before moving to two females getting permission and travelling to the mansion.  Located deep in the woods of Rockland County, New York, the estate is the site of the infamous 1989 Carmichael family murders that have gone unsolved to film’s setting day.  What they discover are secrets that have been hidden away for decades and a terror that has been lurking in the shadows long before Hell House.   The audience is brought to date with the murders.  Mother and daughter are found brutally murdered i  bed while the father, Arthur, the chief, and the son Patrick have gone missing.

Director Stephen Cognetti uses the found footage technique in this entry of HELL HOUSE.  To his credit, Cognetti builds up each character in the story so that his audience can connect with each character,  The film is an example of low-budget filmmaking, the director reported to be working full time while making this film.

The film ends up a combination of a haunted house and found footage horror that works reasonably well given the limitations of the script.  Horror fans should not complain.

The film will screen at the IFC Center Theatre on Tuesday, October 24 in New York as part of the Shudder Showcase, a monthly series that serves up special advance screenings of some of the leading genre platform's most exciting and provocative upcoming titles. 

The film will be available to anyone with a Shudder or AMC+ subscription in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Latin America, Spain and Portugal.

Shudder offers a promotion to watch HELL HOUSE ORIGINS for free,  For fans who do not yet have a subscription, Shudder offers a 7-day free trial.   Terror Films Releasing has teamed with Shudder to offer this special promo code: HELL HOUSE LLC  The code will be good for a 14-day Free Trial from the date of activation, but this special code expires on October 21, 2023, so be sure to activate it before October 21 but no earlier than October 18 to catch the premiere of Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor on October 30.

Trailer: 

THE KILLER (USA 2023) ****

Directed by David Fincher

 

Filmmaker David Fincher took the project to Netflix knowing that he would be allowed more freedom and perhaps more money for THE KILLER, a nuanced thriller from a nuanced and stylish director known for breaking the rules in his creation of crime films like THE USUAL SUSPECTS, his biggest and critically successful hit.  Netflix has again got a winner, which explains Netflix being the best and most profitable streaming service in the world, hands down.  Netflix stock has gained 16% in one day as a result of beat earnings and subscriber growth.  Netflix notably finances films from other countries making it profitable in those countries as well.

Three ’S’s best describe THE KILLER.  Slick, stylish and sexy.

The film begins with THE KILLER (Michael Fassbender) priming a kill, after spending many days in observation.  THE KILLER then describes how boring the job of a killer like himself is, and if one cannot survive boring, then this job is not up your alley.  “How difficult it is to endure boredom,”  he says.  Yet, believe it or not, director Fincher attempts to prove otherwise - that boring can be entertaining and succeeds tremendously in proving the fact.  Director Fincher shows boredom without being boring.  This of course shows director Fincher’s prowess, with some groundbreaking filmmaking,  With long waits for a killing and with things going wrong, and with lots and lots of voiceovers of the killer contemplating what life means, like being part of the few but not of the many; the importance of not being recognized erc..  The story unfolds in a no-nonsense, very slick way, divided into  7 parts (maybe a nod to Fincher’s film SE7EN), each party with the killer targeting a different hit.  They all tie into the story in a very stylish way.

The fight choreography, especially the ultra-violent extensive one in the middle of the film is reminiscent of JOHN WICK 4, though this is by far, the more superior film.  Scenes like Michael Fassbender crouching naked in a shower stall are also tremendously sexy as is the aforementioned macho fight between the two muscled men.

The film is not without humour, and the humour is a mix between deadpan and observational.  The funniest remark is made on the Tilda Swinton character.  “What does she look like?’  The killer asks.  “She looks like a cotton swab,” comes the answer.  And the description is dead correct, which the killer also admits.  There are quite a few surprises in how things turn out in each of the killer’s targets, and it is neat to note how everything turns to shit after his first mistake of missing his target.  But one has to dismiss a bit of creditability as the killer has managed to attain dozens of different passports and lots of cash and weapons, with no reason given.  But such are expert killers in the field.  No one ever questions how James Bond can become on top of everything.

The film is an adaptation of the Matz French comic book The Killer, with Allesandro Camon writing the script.  The script gets my vote for one of the best-adapted screenplays of the year.

THE KILLER opens for a limited run at the TIFF Bell Lightbox before streaming onto Netflix.  Best scene on the big screen and maybe a repeat screening on Netflix.

 

SISTER DEATH (Spain 2023) ***

Directed by Paco Plaza

 

Somewhat related to the well-known horror flick VERONICA, this Spanish horror movie is a well-crafted horror film from start to end.

The film begins with an ambiguous scene in which a young girl holds a cross to defend her villagers from some evil, seen at a distance.  She has some powers as the villagers congregate around her.  The film flowers 10 years later in what is now the present and Chapter 1 of the story entitled “The Holy Girl”.  The audience sees a new nun entering a school concerted from a previous convent.  The girl is now this sister being shown the ropes at the new school.

But the sister has doubts.  She confesses to the priest that she is not ready.  “And what if the vision is not the Mother Mary? she asks.  The priest says that things would get better if she fasted and prayed, but she is still not convinced.  And things get strange.

Director Plaza enlivens his film with some humour.  Mother Superior tells the sister: “You think Was not young and beautiful like you?  I would have become a cabaret artist.”

SISTER DEATH is not a bad horror film, though a bit of a slow burn (her first class is tense and two of her pupils have to be excused from the class, one peed in her clothes), but beware and be warned, aided by some solid period atmosphere.  The cinematography is stunning with the pretty nuns all clothed in pure white amidst an often dark and black background.

It is surprising Shudder did not pick this film up.  SISTER DEATH opens for streaming this week (October 27th) on Netflix.

WHEN EVIL LURKS (Argentina 2023) ***½

Directed by Demian Rugna

WHEN EVIL LURKS from Argentina, marks one of the best possession horror films in a while.  One of the possessed persons is just a bundle of boils and pus and downright ugly to look at if one can bear to look at him.  WHEN EVIL LURKS is one prized horror film, in fact, one of the best acquired for premiering on Shudder, the horror streaming network,  Though the film is premiering at TIFF Midnight Madness, the film is available for preview on Shudder for Shudder press.

WHEN EVIL LURKS (an excellent title for a horror movie - one just has to love the word ‘lurks) has all the elements of a good horror film.  There is lots of audience anticipation, violence and gore, evil in its vilest form and a confrontation climax where the evil is finally dealt with.

Director Rugna creates new rules for his demon possession pic.  It is not the Roman Catholic church against Satan.  The new rules include not turning electric lights on as the demon can hide in their shadows; no guns can be used to eradicate the possessing demon and staying away from animals which the demon can easily enter.  There is also a special gadget that can be used at the end of the film to fight the demon.  Though these are creative and spin a change over past rules like Dracula being afraid of sunlight or demons of the cross, it is not established where the origin of these rules or the gadget really comes from.

Pus and Blood is a favourite horrific site used in horror films.  LORD OF THE RINGS, New Zealand director Peter Jackson took this to the extreme in his horror flick BRAINDEAD (also released a cut version, direct to video under the new title DEAD ALIVE with several cuts made.  I was fortunate to see the uncut version at the Toronto International Film Festival and again on video in its cut version with the pus scene modified  In the original BRAINDEAD, the mother, turning into a zombie, is at the dinner table.  Her ear falls off into her custard and the pus and blood from one of her boils shoots and lands in the bowl of custard of a dinner guest, who unknowingly scoops a large spoonful of custard hiding the bodily fluids into his mouth,  In WHEN EVIL LURKS, the possessed person, after being possessed by a couple of months is in a very sorry state.  He is in this case a big pus ball, constantly emitting pus and blood through erupting boils on his face and other parts of his body.  It does not help that he is also an obese person, wheezing and begging for someone to kill him and end his suffering.  It gets more bloody disgusting, in a good way, if one can take it, as his huge corpse is dragged in a bed sheet out to the car outside, the sheet then ripping and the body falling to the ground.  “Get a blanket,” shouts one of the bearers.  This is the film’s most grotesque and best scene.

WHEN EVIL LURKS builds up extremely well but suffers a slight letdown at the end.  Still, this horror flick has plenty of innovations and scares to offer.

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Written by: Gilbert Seah

Parent Category: Articles

Category: Movie Reviews

Published: 06 October 2023

Highly Recommended and my best international film of the year AUTONOMY OF A FALL opens 25th.   Martin Scorsese's epic saga of the Osage murders KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON opens. this week.  These two are must-sees.

 

FILM REVIEWS:

 

ANATOMIE D’UNE CHUTE (France 2023) ***** Top 10

(The Anatomy of a Fall)

Directed by Justine Triet

 

The film that both received great applause during the screening at Cannes and the coveted Palme d’Or (Best Film) is a taut courtroom drama and thriller that keeps one glued to the screen from start to end.  

Great performances from all especially the lead, Sandra Huller and including the dog that vomits and has its eyes rolled and whitened.  

Sandra (Sandra Hüller) is a successful German writer who lives in the French Alps with her husband Samuel (Samuel Theis) and their visually impaired son Daniel (Milo Machado Graner).  The son had suffered a visual loss due to a car accident that the father blamed himself for.  A brilliant, decibel-bursting opening scene suggests tensions in their isolated chalet, so when Samuel is discovered dead in the snow beneath one of their windows, suspicion is quickly aroused.  Did Samuel take his own life, or was he pushed to his death?  When the police investigation proves to be inconclusive — its varying angles hinting at the microscopic examination to come — Sandra is ultimately indicted and put on trial.  

Sandra insists “I did not kill him.”  But her lawyer says that, that fact does not matter and that what matters is what it looks like in court.  The prosecuting attorney is understandably nasty and can twist all the evidence against Sandra, forcing her to unveil her emotions and her life.  The twist near the film’s end ties all the ends tidily in what is an excellent film all around.

There are many segments that demonstrate both the director’s Triet’s mastery and cinematic verve.  The scene in which the judge brings the son into her chambers to tell him that she will not allow him in the court because the trial might be too disturbing for a young kid is a case in point.  The boy argues that he has already been hurt by the father’s death and the mother’s trial.  When the judge insists that certain facts should not be known to the boy, Daniel replies that he will learn everything from social media and the internet.  The camera moves away from the boy’s face to reveal a dilated pupil of his eye, reminding the audience that Daniel is visually impaired.  The judge’s reply is not heard but the next scene shows the boy attending the trial.  The segment also shows that the judge is not one that always has the correct answers.  Another lengthy segment is a recording the court hears of an argument between Sandra and her husband before the accident. Director Triet has the ability to draw her audience into their argument.  Their reasons for fighting are very real and something that every couple can relate to.

Director Triet’s film runs over two hours but the time flies in this compelling film.  I have seen the film twice once at the Toronto International Film Festival and again with a screen prior to the film’s release.  The strength of an excellent film must survive a second viewing.  intriguing second viewing.

A must-see for all those who love courtroom drama and relationships/family conflict.  The couple fight vigorously but “Samuel is my soul-mate” Sandra declares.  ANATOMIE D’UNE CHUTE is filmed in French, English, and a little German.

Trailer: 

 

THE DEVIL ON TRIAL (USA 2023) **

Directed by Christopher Holt

 

THE DEVIL ON TRIAL explores the first -- and only -- time "demonic possession" has officially been used as a defense in a US murder trial. Including firsthand accounts of alleged devil possession and shocking murder, this extraordinary story forces reflection on the fear of the unknown.  According to the doc, there have 3 such cases in England, two involving arson and one rape all three left the defendants acquitted.

It is quite obvious the intention of the doc, just like the intentions of the couple that work as demonologists in the film - out to cash in a quick buck.  The doc poses the question of whether the possession is a lie.  The answer is given at the end, though there is also some room for doubt.

When the doc’s main subject, David was a child, he was possessed.  The adult David speaks to the screen of the past and how does not like all the publicity that goes with it.  The obvious question that comes to mind is why then is he doing the interview?   This casts a shadow of doubt over what he is saying in the interview.  He for one, believes he was truly possessed and gives vivid accounts of several episodes.  Apparently, during his exorcism, the demon was challenged by Arne, who was present and the demon entered Arne.  Later on, during one drunken night, Arne stabs and kills his landlord.  Arne claims he was possessed and the trial goes on.  The verdict of the trial, though quite obvious, not to be revealed in this review, occurs at the 15-minute mark at the end.

The doc gets quite preposterous at one point when it presents the different stages of possession as if it was an authority on the issue.  One can only shrug at the sheer audacity of forming rash conclusions.

There are a few questions posed that will answer the question if Arne was possessed when he stabbed his landlord.  Firstly, was Arne possessed?  The second question is whether Arne was possessed at the time of the stabbing.  It is quite obvious that the jury would not fall for the ploy.  Director Holt’s doc seems more interested in creating a spectacle than anything else.  He includes in the doc footage taken by David’s family, their audio recording, which the film claims are all actual recordings.  But it could also be a fact that his son David is playing it up for the parents, as one segment explains the possibility.  Director Holt also plays down the verdict of the trial, with the verdict not revealed at the very end, but close to the end.

THE DEVIL ON TRIAL ends up a curiosity piece, basically a tale of a fucked up family and demonologists that would do anything to make a quick buck.  Director Holt appears slanted towards not believing all the possessions less the fact that One the murderer was innocent and should be acquitted.

THE DEVIL ON TRIAL is currently streaming on Netflix.

 

KILLERS OF A FLOWER MOON (USA 2023)  *****  TOP 10 

Directed by Martin Scorsese

 

The 3-and-a-half-hour Osage epic marks another lengthy Martin Scorsese picture collaboration after THE IRISHMAN.  The film opens in a western town struck rich by oil finds elaborately staged complete with panoramic shots and epic music that sets the stage for another Scorsese masterpiece.  If the first 15 minutes of the film is a prelude to what is to come, then the lengthy running time of the film should be a worthy and compelling watch.  And it is.  A following shot of hundreds of coloured flowers by the mountain explains the use of the film’s title as the audience is also slowly introduced to the ‘killers’ of the story.

In 1897, oil was discovered on the Osage Indian Reservation, or present-day Osage County, Oklahoma. The U.S. Department of the Interior managed leases for oil exploration and production on land owned by the Osage Nation through the Bureau of Indian Affairs and later managed royalties, paying individual allottees. The Okage Indians, the audience is told, are the wealthiest and have the highest pa capital income in America.  As part of the process of preparing Oklahoma for statehood, the federal government allotted 657 acres to each Osage on the tribal rolls in 1907. Thereafter, they and their legal heirs, whether Osage or not, had headrights to royalties in oil production, based on their allotments of lands. The headrights could be inherited by legal heirs, including non-Osage. The tribe held the mineral rights communally and paid its members a percentage related to their holdings.  This is the background of the story written for the screen by Eric Roth and Scorsese.

Murders were committed for the purposes of taking over the land and wealth of Osage members, whose land was producing valuable oil and who each had headrights that earned lucrative annual royalties. Investigation by law enforcement, including the Bureau of Investigation (BOI, the preceding agency to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI) revealed extensive corruption among local officials involved in the Osage guardian program.

The film is based on the 2017 book written by David Grann based on these murders.  More specifically, members of the Osage tribe in northeastern Oklahoma were murdered under mysterious circumstances in the 1920s, sparking a major BOI (which became the FBI in 1935) investigation directed by a 29-year-old J. Edgar Hoover and former Texas Ranger Tom White, described by Grann as "an old-style lawman.DiCaprio) who underestimates the evil of his uncle which includes murder and more murder.  FBI agent Tom White (Jesse Plemons) eventually brings the truth to light.

The stellar cast provide stellar performances.  DiCaprio and De Niro ship as do Brendan Fraser and Jesse Plemons.

Director Scorsese takes a risk at a surprise ending (not to be revealed here) that goes completely against the grain of his entire film.  The gamble works, however.  KILLERS shows the Master attempting and succeeding at diverse filmmaking.

Apple Original Films’  KILLERS OF A FLOWER MOON starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, and Lily Gladstone premiered at Cannes to rave reviews and a standing g ovation opened in theatres around the world, including IMAX® theatres, on Friday, October 20, 2023.

Trailer: 

NIGHT OF THE HUNTED (USA 2023) ***

Directed by Franck Khalfoun

 

Why is this happening to me?  This is the all-important question the protagonist, Alice, the victim of an unknown sniper who has her trapped in an isolated gas station store needs to find out, in this low-budget, basically single handler horror suspense flick entitled NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (not to be confused with the noir classic Charles Laughton’s 1955 NIGHT OF THE HUNTER).

When an unsuspecting woman (Camille Rowe, NO LIMIT) stops at a remote gas station in the dead of night, she is made the plaything of a sociopathic sniper with a secret vendetta. To survive she must not only dodge his bullets and fight for her life, but also figure out who wants her dead and why.

The film opens with quite a number of clues, though one suspects that many will be false ones.  The woman has just completed her company conference and is on the way the next morning to a fertility clinic.  The husband on the phone ushers her on.  She is picked up by a colleague in his car in the very early hours of the morning.  They take a detour on Route 51 and end up at the gas station doing a fill-up.  As the woman enters the gas station store to get a few what-nots, the sniper strikes.  Her colleague is outside in the car, wondering why she is taking so long.  As the colleague enters the gas station store to look for her, another bullet from the sniper catches the man in the jugular.

Though NIGHT OF THE HUNTED is not half bad, the premise of the sniper trapping his victim in the store has its limitations and one can only do so much with the limited scenario which means limited opportunity for suspense.  Director Khalfoun, to his credit, creates quite a few little side distractions, mainly in terms of random cars entering the gas station.  The sniper targets these random customers too.  Director Khalfoun also adds as much blood into his feature as he can to up the angst - as the sniper hits John’s (the colleague) jugular and wounds Alice in several bloody spots.  The mystery of who the killer is is also limited by the number of characters ninth story.  It does not really matter who the killer is as the story is not set to be a whodunit.  One hint is that the killer knows Alice very well.  Another hint is the affair that might be going on between the colleague, John, and Alice.  (They share the same bed at the motel while attending the conference.  Yet another hint is the predator’s occupation, such he is such a good shot, hardly misses a  thing.  Director Khalfoun uses the night seeing at one point by Alice hits the light switch to turn off the lights in the ninth store so that the viper cannot see her.   She also pushes the rack of products, using it as a shield.  The film also offers lots of opportunities for product placement as Alice hides at several different areas in the store from the pop refrigerators showing various Coke products and shelves showing canned goods from Hormel and other companies.

Director Khalfoun put in his two cents worth regarding social issues like the ethics of pharmaceutical companies and the Iraq War.

NIGHT OF THE HUNTED is a Shudder original film and opens for streaming this week on the horror streaming service.

NYAD (USA 2023) ***½

Directed by Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi

 

NYAD tells the amazing true story of Diana Nyad (Annette Bening) who on her fifth attempt finally made the open water swim from Cuba to the Florida Keys. In Greek Nyad, means water nymph, the name her Greek father (though not her biological father), gave to her.  Nyad believes the name water nymph is linked to destiny.  Though hardly necessary to be shown as flashbacks, there are a few flashbacks of a young Nyad seen training in swimming with her Greek father.

Annette Bening and Oscar Winner Jodie Foster star in this film depicting the true story of Diana Nyad’s attempt to become the first person to swim from Cuba to the US without a shark cage, decades after she retires from the sport.  She finally made it in the film's last reel, no spoiler here, as it  is already record-breaking news,

At the age of 60, Nyad is frustrated about the way she left her swimming career behind and starts training once again to do the marathon swim she failed 30 years prior.  Her best friend, Bonnie Stoll (Foster), thinks it is a little foolish, but has no choice except to jump in as her coach once it becomes clear that Nyad is not backing down.  It is made known from the beginning of the film, that both females prefer same-sex relationships, and though they had dated in the past, have remained best friends at all costs.  When navigator John Bartlett (a more serious Rhys Ifans), comes on board with the project, they finally have someone to guide her through the shark-infested waters of the Florida Straits.  The arduous swim takes a shocking toll on her body, and Nyad’s obsession starts to wear on the team.

Running at two hours directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin make sure no stone is left unturned in terms of the torture and sacrifice both Nyad and her dedicated team (a total of 40) endure.  The directors are no strangers to extreme endeavors, using their documentary background from FREE SOLO and THE RESCUE to help frame this voyage with archival material where we get to see and hear a young Diana Nyad dive into her passion.

The film includes a subplot involving the friendship of Bonnie and Diane.  They have a big argument confrontation - a scene that demonstrates the power of these two excellent actors, both deserving of an Academy Award nomination - no less.

At the end of the swim and success, Diane Nyad offers three solid pieces of advice to the world.  Never give up on your dreams and two other ones that will not be revealed in this review.  The film ends with shots of the real Bonnie, Nyad and John Barnett, the latter who has sadly passed away.

NYAD premiered at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival with director Chai present for a Q and A.  The film opens Friday, October 20th at the TIG+FF Bell Lightbox.   NYAD is a Netflix original film and will be streaming on the streaming service.

Trailer: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OLD DADS (USA 2023) ***

Directed by Bill Burr

 

OLD DADS (USA 2023) **

Directed by Bill Burr

 

OLD DADS is filmmaker Bill Burr’s comedic debut.  He writes( with co-writer Ben Tishler), directs, and performs in OLD DDS a comedy about 3 friends who become fathers at a later age and learn about child rearing with a time context. So, they find themselves battling preschool principals, millennial CEOs, and anything created after 1987.

It is a simple premise which means there is no plot restrictions in the opportunity (in this case, the comedy comes with pervasive language, drug-use, and other warnings) of comedy.  Like harlequin romance novels and such based films, there is always some obstacle to the romance that must be overcome in order for the romantic happily-ever-after Hollywood ending.  The same goes for comedy.  There must be some problem that comes in the way of the subjects, a problem or obstacle that must be overcome with perhaps some life lessons learned on the way.  The problem with Jack (Burr) is his calling Doctor L, the principal of his kid’s preschool a stumpy cunt.  he has three months to make amends as she has the power to recommend Jack’s son to the better schools.   This is hard for foul-mouth, impatient, and opinionated for Jack to do.  The main obstacle to a happy ever-after story in the film is Jack's anger.  He cannot control his anger, especially when he is told what to do.  The comedy is not as funny as Burr and his ci-writer think, but they do give the humour their best shot.  But the film’s unfortunately full of cliches, so do not expect any surprises from this comedy,

“Don’t bring up politics.  Don’t bring up religion.  Don’t tell another how to raise their kids.”  appears ti be one life lesson.  This is the philosophy the 3 men have to maintain their friendship.’ The magic question in all this is whether the films are funny.  The dialogue might be comedic but other components like the actors and director’s comedic timing are more important factors.  The first scene has one kid beating another with a stick and the dads accessing the situation, just as the audience accesses the film.  It is amusing like the movie, but nothing groundbreaking in terms of comedy.  One should give filmmaker Burr full marks for trying.

The film does manage to pull off a few genuine funny scenarios, like the one where Dr. L, the lady principal that jack just cannot stand  (yes, the one he had previously called a stumpy cunt)  decides to guide Jack to find the proper way.  When Jack brings an olive tree to the school as a peace offering, Dr. L  not only claims that the plant will bring insects not compatible with the ecosystem but laughs at the fact that she believes the olive tree is a plant version of Jack.  Other than that

One surprise is the appearance of Bruce Dern as a driver, his name only appears in the closing credits.

OLD DADS is a Netflix original comedy that opens for streaming on Netflix on October the 20th, 2023.

AIN HUSTLERS (USA 2023) ***

Directed by David Yates

 

The film introduces its protagonist Liza Drake (Emily Blunt) as an awful person.  As her co-worker interviewed by the crime squad describes her; she would do anything it takes and is an awful person.  But can one blame her, is the question the film seeks to examine.

So, the film paints a different picture - that of a desperate person, initially a pole dancer who tries her best to make it good for her epileptic daughter and herself.  One can surely sympathize with a single mother sacrificing for her daughter, despite also caring for herself.  This is all not too rare as the story is based on the real-life story of capitalism run amok in a journal article — chronicled by journalist Evan Hughes in his 2022 narrative non-fiction book, The Hard Sell. 

Like the book, the film lures one into the glamour and excitement of success, however, it may be achieved.  Liza Drake is a single mum working as a dancer at a bar when she meets Pete Brenner (Chris Evans), a greasy drug rep for a pharmaceutical startup on the verge of bankruptcy.  Two desperate people meet.  Desperate times call for desperate measures.  With a hunch about her talent, he recruits her to peddle a new kind of opioid designed to give pain relief to cancer patients.  

The film is interesting enough to show all the ins and outs of the pharmaceutical marketing business and how these companies make their money at the expense of sufferers.  It is clearly the pharmaceutical company that is the villain of the piece and the film treats this as so, with the victims as innocent manipulated employees.   Predictable but still entertaining.  A Netflix original film, PAIN HUSTLERS is also besides being entertaining, informative and insightful with a message to boot.

THE PERSIAN VERSION (USA 2023) *** ½

Directed by Maryam Keshavarz

 

THE PERSIAN VERSION is a personal, semi-autobiographical film (a true story - sort of, the words on the screen tease) about a young Iranian American woman who strives to balance her two opposing cultures (American and Iranian), a story that also serves to be a universal one about mother and daughter, families and secrets.

The film begins with a humourous and light though quite lengthy introduction of Leila and her family, before moving to the present day and the business at hand.   The film then moves to the Present day, 2000s New York/New Jersey.  As the sole girl among eight brothers, Leila (Layla Mohammadi) leads a lifestyle that disappoints her mother Shirin (Niousha Noor) – be it her same-sex relationship (now over) or her career choice (filmmaking, not academia).   Then Leila impulsively hooks up with an English actor (Tom Byrne) after a Halloween party where she dons a burkini (burka and bikini) and he wore the drag queen costume from his lead role in Hedwig and the Angry Inch.  It seems her mother is going to be disappointed again.

 Meanwhile, Leila’s father Ali Reza (Bijan Daneshmand) is getting a heart transplant.  Shirin tells Leila to leave the hospital (although her brothers are there) and instead take care of her mamanjoon/grandmother (Bella Warda).   To Lelia’s surprise, mamanjoon brings up a family scandal.  Scandal?  The scandal is the twist in the story that is revealed only at the end of the film.

  The film then flashes back to the 1960s (and later to other decades) in Iran when a very young Shirin (Kamand Shafieisabet) married newly graduated doctor Ali Reza (Shervin Alenabi).

  Spanning 50 years, the film offers several flashbacks, including 1985 Iran when, as a kid, Leila (Chiara Stella) was the only sibling allowed to travel there because girls couldn’t be drafted into the Iranian military.  Even then, she was strong-minded, smuggling tapes of American music into the country.

  The film is brimming with explosive colour, vibrant dance scenes (Persian style that looks similar to the Bollywood choreography), and lots of pop, including Cyndi Lauper’s original “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” and a reworked Persian version of the song that plays over the end credits.

There are a number of reasons THE PERSIAN VERSION stands out as enduring entertainment.  Among them:-

It is an international story one with the American and the other with the Iranian points of view.

It is a personal story that the audiences can root for, as well as to be able to relate to.

There are colourful characters Like the family matriarch and the grandmother as well as colourful situations (the partying; heart transplant surgery)

The easy-flowing nature of the story unfolds - within different decades, yet flows so smoothly

  The film contains a few highs as well.  One is the applause Leila recovers once her short film has been screened in a theatre.  Another is the mother getting the news that her neck injury wins her enough money to cover her husband’s medical bills.

One of the film’s more amusing segments plays like an old Sergio Leone Italian Spaghetti Western complete with Ennio Morricone-like whistling musical score.  And Leila’s aunt rides around on a bicycle reminiscent of the “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” segment in George Roy Hill’s BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID hit.

In 2011, the director's first narrative feature Circumstance – about the sexual desire between two teen girls in Iran – won the US Dramatic Audience Award at Sundance but also got her banned from ever returning to the Islamic Republic THE PERSIAN VERSION opens on October 20 in Toronto (Varsity & Empress Walk), Vancouver (Fifth Avenue) and Montreal!

Trailer: 

SICK GIRL (USA 2023) **

Directed by Jennifer Cram

 

The new ‘female buddy’ comedy SICK GIRL is so called because the woman-child Wren has not grown up while her other three friends have, two of them having kids.  “Why do people change?”  Wren complains while in a jail cell after being arrested for attacking a bartender.  Her friends put up with her, but just barely.  “I can only have one child,” one complains.

When Wren Pepper (Nina Dobrev) feels her closest friends slipping away, she lets loose a little white lie that snowballs into a colossal, life-altering event.  She claims she has cancer, to invoke sympathy and hope to get the attention missing recently from her other three friends.  Hence the title of the comedy - SICK GIRL.    This is Jennifer Cram’s feature film debut, a take on the price of insecurity and the rewards of true friendship. Wendi McLendon-Covey (The Goldbergs), Dan Bakkedahl (Veep), Bran  Another point is the question of why Wren’s three friends are so clueless on whether Wren is telling the truth about the cancer.

There are some horrific segments like the one in which the 4 girls dance, trying to look cool and funny.  The comedy has degraded to pathetic at this point.  So what else can happen after Wren lies about her cancer?  Apparently, not much,  Other desperate attempts at laughter include the automatic cost of the mini-van door and baldness related to cancer.

The story includes a slight romance between Wren and a coloured cancer patient named Leo, suffering from liver cancer from her cancer support group.  The romance also increases the monotony of the proceedings

She lies in a fit of desperation, at the film’s 15-minute mark that she has cancer is the point at which one should make the inevitable decision whether to quit this sorry comedy or carry on, hoping that it will get better.  The answer is left to the viewer.

So in a story like this, the truth about Wren’s lie will eventually surface.  As the old adage goes: The truth will out!  This is the only thing that the story heads to is what happens then.

Adele Lim’s co-wrier of CRAZY RICH ASIANS)  JOY RIDE, the other female young adult comedy which co-stars Sherry Cola, also in this film looks like a masterpiece compared to SICK GIRL.

Jenifer Cram’s SICK GIRL opens in theatres as well as on digital and on-demand on October the 20th, 2023.

Trailer: 

 

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Written by: Gilbert Seah

Parent Category: Articles

Category: Movie Reviews

Published: 28 September 2023

FILM REVIEWS:

 

THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER (USA 2023) *

Directed by David Gordon Green

THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER is a 2023 American supernatural horror film directed by David Gordon Green and written by Green and Peter Sattler, from a story by Scott Teems, Danny McBride, and Green.  It is a sequel to William Friedkin’s 1973 EXORCIST boasting appearances of both Linda Blair (the possessed Regan) and Ellen Burstyn as Chris MacNeil, the mother.

The parents of demonically possessed girls, desperate for help, search for the only person alive who has had similar experiences: Chris MacNeil.

The film goes to great lengths to ensure the parents are different.  One is a single father and the other church-going parents.  But the main character dealing with the possession and nursing is a nurse Ann (Ann Dowd, who looks hagged after losing quite a bit of weight).

There is a difference between silly and stupid.  The latter adjective is the one most appropriate for this movie - so much so that is laughable, laugh-out-loud laughable in many parts.  The first of these is the earthquake scene set in Port-au-Prince Haiti.  The entire idea (saving the Studios a lot of unnecessary money for the earthquake effects) could have been done away with, with the pregnant mother still going through the same demise.

The clincher is the dialogue written for Ann.  One is the point when Ann declares she was previously a nun.  Another is at the end of the film, when she suddenly an expert in good and evil answers the question: What is Evil?  She gives a monologue on what she thinks evil is.  But the goriest segment is also the most absurd, with poor Chris MacNeil as the victim.

The gory scenes contain different colored, black vomit (pea soup gone bad?) that can swirl into a maelstrom.  The shaking bed and crawling from THE EXORCIST original are all there.

Director David Gordon Green f***ed up the Halloween franchise and outdid the feat with THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER.  The sequel to this dud THE EXORCIST: DECEIVER is already scheduled to be released in 2025.  But the good news is that the box-office projection of BELIEVER is believably encouraging for the reason of the strength of the franchise that Universal Studios reportedly paid a whopping $400 million.  What possessed them?

THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER - twice the possession, twice the stupidity.

Trailer: 

INTO THE WEEDS (Canada 2022) ****
Directed by Jennifer Baichwal

MONSANTO is an American company with products sold and used all over the world.  The company is known to be involved with cancer-causing agents in their weedkiller as well as their improper practices of their genetically modified seeds (GMO) resulting in the reputed company being the most hated company in the world.  Those who have heard of Monsanto know why as there is absolutely nothing good and ethical about the company.   Monsanto makes an extremely good subject matter for documentaries and the new Canadian Doc INTO THE WEEDS is one of them taking on the chemical giant.

INTO THE WEEDS examines Mosnanto’s Roundup weed killer that contains these cancer-causing agents.  The company knows it but refuses to warn customers, preferring to cause death and illness while reaping profits.  INTO THE WEEDS is not the first film to tout the evils of Monsanto.  The docs THE WORLD ACCORDING TO MONSANTO and PERCY VS. GOLIATH are just two other films that tackled Monsanto’s problems, more on the side of their genetically modified seeds and forcing farmers to buy their product and prosecuting those that do not.  The latter film had Christopher Walken play Percy who took on Goliath - the huge Monsanto just like Johnson takes on Monsanto in INTO THE WEEDS.  Monsanto the company has now been bought over by Bayer who has, by default inherited all of Monsanto’s problems and class action lawsuits.

It would be intriguing to have employees of Monsant or even Bayer talk to the camera.  But often, they refuse.  One must wonder about the logic of Bayer taking over such a company and inheriting all its lawsuit problems.

Jennifer Baichwal's INTO THE WEEDS opens with interviews with Dewayne “Lee” Johnson and his mother.   The doc tells the powerful story of Johnson, a former Bay Area groundskeeper who takes on a multinational agrochemical corporation after a terminal cancer diagnosis.  Baichwal follows Johnson through his battle, setting his personal journey against a global environmental crisis.

Baichwal is an acclaimed Canadian director with award-winning films, her most famous ones being ANTHROPOCENE: THE HUMAN EPOCH (2018) and MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES (2006).  Her techniques of camera work are evident in INTO THE WEEDS.  Just like the camera panned rows and rows of manufacturing stations in factories in MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES, INTO THE WOODS see rows and rows of patterned crop growing.  

Though beginning and ending her doc with her subject Johnson, director Baichwal diverts and centres her focus on Monsanto, and rightly so, to make her doc more effective and absorbing.  She achieves a solid balance.  Director Baichwal has done her homework with Monsanto with lots of clips of the employees of Monsanto lying on camera and just being unethical liars and villains.   She has also interviewed on camera monetary compensated victims speaking against the company.  She has crafted a well-researched documentary that rightfully angers her audience as well as informing and educating.

MONSANTO has ended up paying billions for compensation with their products now banned in many countries around the world.  All this is good but many of the sick victims have said on camera, that they would rather have their health back.  What should have been a better result is to see the CEO of Monsanto and other executives put into prison for these crimes against humanity.  

MIRANDA’S VICTIM (USA 2023) ***½

Directed by Michelle Tanner

 

It was only been slightly around a decade ago when the complaint of not enough female content movies were being made or that female filmmakers were under-represented.  The trend has recently not only been reversed but more remarkably so.  It has changed as can be observed by a majority of female vs. male films at the recent Toronto International Film Festival.

Based on true events, in 1963 eighteen-year-old Trish Weir (Abigail Breslin) is kidnapped and sexually assaulted.  Her assailant, Ernesto Miranda (Sebastian Quinn), confesses without legal representation and serves a two-year sentence, only to have the verdict later overturned. In the resulting retrial, a determined prosecutor (Luke Wilson) seeks to hold Ernesto accountable for his crimes, despite grueling opposition from Ernesto's defense attorney (Ryan Phillippe). What follows is a legal proceeding that forever changes the nation's justice system.

“We are now women.  All the world wants is to take from us. I will protect my girls.”  These are the words uttered by the mother, supposedly words of comfort to her daughter after she had been raped., even though she goes about it against the wishes of another daughter The question is how far she would go to protect her daughters, and to what cost?  The daughter gets a glimpse while working that night at the local cinema of the courtroom justice drama classic TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD with the scene of Gregory Peck addressing the court regarding making their decision without passion.  It is clear that MIRANDA’S VICTIM is a woman’s film, from the female director to the main characters all being female, as well as the key issues all being female-related.

The words ‘based on a true story’ appear on the screen at the start of the film.  The film title MIRANDA’S VICTIM also gives it right away that Ernie Miranda is guilty of rape.  The title is also so-called because Trish is a minor and having her name printed in the news would cause not only much disgrace but a destruction of her future life.  The detailed and difficult process of identifying Ernie is meticulously captured on film, with the audience clearly put on the victim, Trisha’s side.  The courtroom trial only begins at the halfway mark of the film with superior performances by Luke Wilson and Andy Garcia as the prosecuting and defending attorneys respectively.  Here in the early 60’s, as evident by the two films screened at the Paramount Cinema where Trish's works are 1962 films, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and Alfred Hitchcock’s THE BIRDS.  The fact that it is the 60s where women are never given the benefit of the doubt is also clearly established throughout the film.  Director Tanner, to her credit, creates a solid 60’s prior mood and atmosphere. 

The performances of the apt cast that includes heavyweights like Kyle MacLachlan, Donald Sutherland, Ryan Philippe and Abigail Breslin as Tosh are to be commended, keeping the film taut and in the right direction of a serious courtroom drama dealing with key issues.

MIRANDA’S VICTIM is a tense and compelling courtroom drama brimming with raw emotions, a drama that also reflects the mores and social behaviour of the times.

MIRANDA’S VICTIM opens in Select Theatres and On Demand October 6, 2023

Trailer: 

RACE TO THE SUMMIT (Germany 2023) ***½

Directed by Nicholas de Taranto and Götz Werner

There have been dozens of films about climbers to the summit of Mount Everest, even one with a female mountain climber screened at the recent Toronto International Film Festival, Lucy Walker’s MOUNTAIN QUEEN: THE SUMMIT OF LHAKPA SHERPA.  RACE TO THE SUMMIT, another winning documentary from Netflix, is different.  It is a race of two climbers, to break records and to beat the other on dangerous north faces of the Swiss Alps.

This sports adventure doc provides edge-of-the-seat entertainment despite the fact it is a doc.  The cinematography is magnificent contrasting the danger faced by. both climbers.  The two climbers are Dani Arnold and Ueli Steck  Arnold is Swiss and Steck is German, which explains the doc being filmed in English and German.

Directors Nicholas de Taranto and Götz Werner devote a fair amount of equal screen time to each climber, allowing the audience to connect with each climber so that there is no favouritism for either one.  No one really cares who will win, for this is not the reason for the film.  The reason, one of many is to observe and celebrate human motivation.

This great media and mountaineering event of two climbers racing to the summit translates to awesome documentary filmmaking.

Netflix has had a string of winning documentaries the recent months with RACE TO THE SUMMIT being one of them.  The doc opens for streaming on Netflix this week.

Trailer: 

 

THE ROYAL HOTEL (Australia 2022) ***½

Directed by Kitty Green

 

Australia can be a nasty place.  And even nastier in the remote outback, as two backpacking Canadian girls find to their dismay.  After running out of cash and credit due to too much partying, as seen on a party boat at the beginning of the film, Hanna (Julia Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick) are forced to take jobs at The Royal Hotel, a bar in the outback.  They are immediately confronted by the sea of rowdy men who fill the bar on a daily basis. There’s no varnish to their testosterone and while Billy (Hugo Weaving of PRISCILLA and other films), the perpetually drunk owner of the pub, toes the line and pushes back on the men when they go too far, he’s also enabled their behaviour in the first place.  Liv tries to brush off the advances, but this only makes Hanna more anxious, as she starts to worry about her friend’s safety in addition to her own. It’s soon clear that the longer the women stick around, the more likely this continual threat will catch up to them.  The nastiness is almost too much for even males to take.  Obviously, the girls survive, after all, it is a female director at work href, and they do it with much aplomb and courage that is summed up due to desperation.  The girls wish to go back to Bondi Beach (the one close to Sydney) even though one of them is unable to pronounce the word Bondi, but all they get is dry-blowing desert sands and a closed swimming pool.  Well done though quite a gruesome grind before the girls come out victorious.

 

 

 

SHE CAME TO ME (USA 2023) ****

Directed by Rebecca Miller

 

Director Rebecca Miller’s film is touted as a romantic comedy but it feels far from it.  In a good way.  SHE CAME TO ME is a quirky, often hilarious look at two families, each with problems almost unsurmountable, for a variety of reasons including past failures and assholism (a word like this does not but should exist).

Director Miller is fortunate to have one of the most talented actors in film and the honours along to Peter Linkage.  He rose to prominence with THE STATION MASTER and has proved himself a master in odd characters, the best of which can be observed in one might be considered his best role, though in a comedy.  In I CARE A LOT, Linkdage played a King  Mafioso of sorts whose mother was taken for senior care against her wishes.  This was a non-recognized non-Oscar nominated role that should have won him the Oscar  In SHE CAME TO ME, Likdage plays Composer Steven Lauddem, creatively blocked and unable to finish the score for his big comeback opera.  At the behest of his wife Patricia  (Anne Hathaway), he sets out in search of inspiration.  One of the film’s best and most hilarious scenes is when Linkdage’s character loses it completely at an opera rehearsal and reams out the opera singer.  The director tells him off: “If you want us to put on a brilliant opera;  then let us put it on.”  He is then advised not to attend any further rehearsals.

Director Miller who also wrote this sardonic script which is best at creating asshole characters.  Besides Composer Steven acting and behaving as an asshole quite a bit of his time, the other one belongs to the character called Trey, an attorney played by Brian D’Arcy.  ‘We should’ve done dinner on a non-school night,”  he makes the most awkward remark at the dinner table when his adopted daughter arranges a first dinner meeting with her parents.  Trey also insists that food be passed to the right at a dinner table so as not to cause confusion,  Trey’s adopted daughter is dating composer Steven’s son.  Trey thinks that his adopted daughter has had sex with the composer’s son and wants to press charges of rape.   Trey’s advice:” You have to learn to be suspicious of people.”

There are also other side plots making the story even more wicked, and more entertaining to watch.

“You know that I can’t resist a romantic story,” says Katerina, “Even if I am not in it.”  Director Miller is smart enough to have her camera focus on and stay on Tomie’s face using both her actor and character’s beauty.

The story could be criticized to be a female-dominated story with the males just brushed aside.  But the script is so well written and performed that the criticism can not only be dismissed but praised for how things turn out.  The film’s best line from Steven: “Katrina, you are a mighty woman!”  

SHE CAME TO ME opened the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival on February 16, 2023.  In May 2023, Vertical Entertainment acquired U.S. distribution rights to the film.[12] It is scheduled to be released on October 6, 2023.

Trailer: 

STRANGE WAY OF LIFE (Spain 2023) ***

Directed by Pedro Almodovar

 

STRANGE WAY OF LIFE is a gay western directed by gay Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar, a film made in collaboration with Fashion House Yves Saint Laurent.

Silva (Pedro Pascal) rides across the desert from his ranch to the town of Bitter Creek, where Sheriff Jake (Ethan Hawke) lives.  Silva and Jake haven’t seen each other for 25 years since their wild days as hired gunslingers and secret lovers in Mexico (their young selves played in flashback by José Condessa and Jason Fernández, respectively).  The morning after celebrating their reunion, Jake says he knows Silva isn’t just here to go down memory lane…  Jake is going after Silva’s son, who allegedly killed his brother’s wife.

Almodovar’s trademark of his use of colour is observable at the film’s start from the coloured decor and the wardrobe worn by Hawke and Pascal, which were designed by Anthony Vaccarello from Yves Saint Laurent.

But this queer western, unlike Ang Lee’s BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, is devoid of emotion and comes across as a very queer (here meaning odd) exercise.  Hawke and Pascal make unbelievable lovers, so bad that they had to use younger actors Condessa and Fernandez to perform the drunk kissing scene, which, fortunately, is quite hot.  Almodovar's film looks like the typical Spaghetti Western (by Sergio Leone) that comes with a shoot-out at the climax.

STRANGE WAY OF LIFE is Almodovar’s short film of 30 minutes.  It will be screened in theatres together with his other 2020 short film starring Tilda Swinton entitled THE HUMAN VOICE.  Both short films are filmed in English.   

STRANGE WAY OF LIFE opens October 6 in Toronto (Bell Lightbox) and other cities across Canada!

Trailer: 

WHEN EVIL LURKS (Argentina 2023) ***1/2

Directed by Demian Rugna

 

WHEN EVIL LURKS from Argentina, marks one of the best possession horror films in a while.  One of the possessed persons is just a bundle of boils and pus and downright ugly to look at if one can bear to look at him.  WHEN EVIL LURKS is one prized horror film, in fact, one of the best acquired for premiering on Shudder, the horror streaming network,  The date has yet to be announced.  Though the film is premiering at TIFF Midnight Madness, the film is available for preview on Shudder for Shudder press.

WHEN EVIL LURKS (an excellent title for a horror movie - one just has to love the word ‘lurks) has all the elements of a good horror film.  There is lots of audience anticipation, violence and gore, evil in its vilest form and a confrontation climax where the evil is finally dealt with.

Director Rugna creates new rules for his demon possession pic.  It is not the Roman Catholic church against Satan.  The new rules include not turning electric lights on as the demon can hide in their shadows; no guns can be used to eradicate the possessing demon and staying away from animals which the demon can easily enter.  There is also a special gadget that can be used at the end of the film to fight the demon.  Though these are creative and spin a change over past rules like Dracula being afraid of sunlight or demons of the cross, it is not established where the origin of these rules or the gadget really comes from.

Pus and blood is a favourite horrific site used in horror films.  LORD OF THE RINGS, a New Zealand director, Peter Jackson took this to the extreme in his horror flick BRAINDEAD (also released a cut version, direct to video under the new title DEAD ALIVE with several cuts made.  I was fortunate to see the uncut version at the Toronto International Film Festival and again on video in its cut version with the pus scene modified  In the original BRAINDEAD, the mother, turning into a zombie, is at the dinner table.  Her ear falls off into her custard and the pus and blood from one of her boils shoots and lands in the bowl of custard of a dinner guest, who unknowingly scoops a large spoonful of custard hiding the bodily fluids into his mouth, WHEN EVIL LURKS, the possessed person, after being possessed by a couple of months is in a very sorry state.  He is in this case a big pus ball, constantly emitting pus and blood through erupting boils on his face and other parts of his body.  It does not help that he is also an obese person, wheezing and begging for someone to kill him and end his suffering.  It gets more bloody disgusting, in a good way, if one can take it, as his huge corpse is dragged in a bed sheet out to the car outside, the sheet then ripping and the body falling to the ground.  “Get a blanket,” shouts one of the bearers.  This is the film’s most grotesque and best scene.

WHEN EVIL LURKS builds up extremely well but suffers a slight letdown at the end.  Still, this horror flick has plenty of innovations and scares to offer.

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Written by: Gilbert Seah

Parent Category: Articles

Category: Movie Reviews

Published: 25 September 2023

FILM REVIEWS:

ANONYMOUS SISTER (USA 2023) ***

Directed by Jamie Boyle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is the addicted mother and elder sister of the Boyle family who are under scrutiny in this documentary film about opioid addiction and its dire consequences.

The doc is directed by Jamie Boyle.  Jamie Boyle is a two-time Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker living and working in Brooklyn NY. In 2019, she was selected to be part of the inaugural Sundance Talent Forum & Catalyst Lab and on DOC NYC’s 40 Under 40 list. She was the editor, producer, and cinematographer of Jackson (SHOWTIME), winner of the 2018 News & Documentary Emmy for Outstanding Social Issue Documentary. Jackson premiered at the LA Film Festival and was awarded Best Documentary at over fifteen festivals.  This is her family’s story,

The film begins in the 1980s, as the close-knit Boyle family is introduced through home movie footage of their lives in the Colorado countryside. As the years tick by, the youngest family member, Jamie, is drawn to the camera in early childhood, begging to operate it at any opportunity while her older sister, Jordan, embarks on what will become a prodigious figure-skating career.  By the time she reaches her late teenage years Jamie is documenting, in excruciating detail, Jordan and her mom, Julie, as both simultaneously descend into opioid addiction while battling chronic pain. Unbeknownst to her at the time, Jamie was capturing the reality of the opioid epidemic long before it was acknowledged or named when it entered your home under the guise of healthcare when those to whom we entrust our lives became the greatest threat to it.

Thirteen years later finds both family members sober and Jordan newly pregnant with her first child. The pregnancy will mark her first major interaction with the medical community since getting off opioids. Jamie once again picks up the camera as her mom and sister face new hurdles in their hard-won sobriety. What she sees this time is not just a family, but an entire nation, in turmoil.

To the director’s credit, she managed to get a Pardu Pharmaceutical representative to speak in an interview.  What she says, and how the company got their sales reps to monitor and improve sales just speaks for the companies in general on that all they want to do is make mopey.  Their reward system is made up as such so that sales reps and CEOs often go out of their way to improve sales while breaking the law.  Another plus is the candidness of the addict, telling their stories.  “Doctors prescribe pain medicine.  After a while, when tolerance sets in, there would prescribe a higher dosage, a stronger painkiller, and so on. What were they thinking?”

The old adage goes that an addict will not ever think that he or she is an addict.  Secondly, they would think it was okay since the opioid was prescribed by a medical professional and that, unlike drinking, was not looked down upon.

The important question to ask at the end of the film is what the message is that is put across.  One thing is for sure: the only way is to stop the culprits.  This definitely includes the pharmaceutical companies, tobacco, chemical and mining companies.  The best way is to jail the CEOs (the millionaire Sacklers) and their managers for violation.  This, of course never happens, and those working down the line are normally jailed as scapegoats.  The film also shows that the United States is once again the worst violator and that the country is really going down the drain.

One of the rare subjects the film touches on is addiction recovery.  When the words additional recovery are mentioned, doctors shun away.  The father of the family also fears the fact that after the addiction recovery of the painkillers, the pain might return.  The trauma of addiction recovery is also explained in the film as how the brain reacts in terms of a fighting mechanism, that will exert itself during recovery.

ANONYMOUS SISTER is available on demand on October the 17th.

 

THE CONFERENCE (KONFERENSEN) (Sweden 2023) *** ½

Directed by Patrick Eklund

 

Variety is The spice of life as they say.  THE CONFERENCE is a slasher movie but with quite a few variations making this basically typical horror flick into something quite fresh despite the recurring theme of a whodunit slasher film in which one in the group is the guilty killer.

Instead of a group of teenagers, this film based on the book by Mats Strindberg focuses on a group of adults.  To add a little spice this group is a pencil-pushing employee government of some sort agency attending a retreat they’re novelly eager about. The leader complains that the group does nothing as a whole but drink coffee and fill out forms.  The group claims the retreat is at the government’s expense and hopes that the one next year will have them flown to Duba.  “No promises,” says one of the group organizers,  The leader tries to motivate them but to no avail, creating some humour THE OFFICE style - dry and occasionally dead-pan.  This is a film set in Sweden and filmed in Swedish with a beautiful Scandinavian landscape to look at.  As in one of the most advanced countries in intense world, The environment is a key issue.  The Kolaranjon Holiday Village where the attendees arrive for the retreat is in an area where modern development is about to take place, much to the protest of the locals.  Could the locals be involved in the murders?  One of the employees had just returned from sick leave.  For the audience, shoe, of course, is the prime suspect.

  Director Eklund’s film is humorous and amusing (not really laugh-out-loud comedy) in its first quarter or so, where no horror occurs as yet.  For one the employees, much to their discontent are grouped in twos per cabin, most with another that cannot stand to work less spend the night with.  When asked how the groupings came about, the Holiday Village staff says that they are grouped according to their Zodiac signs.

Added 5o the wry humour is the killer’s appearance.  The killer wears a clownish mascot mask with two huge hollows in place of the eyes while exhibiting an override smile.

Netflix continues to make and screen local films from different countries around the world, creating entertainment for those who love foreign films that otherwise never reach North America.  THE CONFERENCE is an entertaining Swedish horror (more pure mindless fun than anything else) that should not disappoint horror fans and foreign film cineastes.   THE CONFERENCE opens for streaming on Netflix Friday, October 13th.

Trailer: 

FAILURE TO PROTECT (USA 2022) ***

Directed by Jeremy Pion-Berlin

 

The phrase FAILURE TO PROTECT is a charge (by the police) given to a negative parent or guardian who failed or was unable to provide adequate supervision or protection which could lead to severe behaviour.  

FAILURE TO PROTECT is a heart-wrenching documentary, especially for those who are parents.  Mother will fight and do anything for their children.  (Except perhaps if a new attractive man comes in the way: writer’s experience),  The film follows five parents - Anna, Trish, Rheta, Ernst, and Rosa - as they fight desperately to reunify with their children taken by Child Protective Services (CPS). It’s an unwavering and nuanced look at the child welfare system where criminals have more rights than parents.  Rosa has four children 2 African Americans and two Latin Americans.  Most of the women have children from more than one man.  Anna says she will continue tonight till the children come back.  She will fight until there is no more fight and then she will still continue fighting.

Through these highly personal stories, the film explores many tough questions, such as do parents whose personal struggles compromised their children’s safety deserve a second chance. Is the CPS system biased against minorities, LGBTQIA+ couples, and the economically disadvantaged? To avoid leaving a child in an abusive or dangerous environment, do social workers remove children first and ask questions later? The film offers an unprecedented, in-depth window into the grim realities of the child welfare system through the often ignored perspective of parents.

The doc smartly also focuses on the children, as they also have an important part to say about the foster care system.  The majority of the children claim that at home, the adults always put down the parents, with words such as, “Is that what they showed you?:”

The doc also shows the point of view of the care services.  One is the chief director of Child Protection Services.  His information is of course,  alarming.  In his county, he gets more than 200,000 calls a year.  For one-third of these, a social worker is sent out.  They claim that the services are there to protect the children and not to improve the family.  What they miss out on are two things.  They could also attempt both or they can be kinder in their delivery of services.  When the services fail, the title.

The film shows the system being broken down, due to the reward system setup.

  The families’ stories showcase the variety of circumstances that can lead to a child’s removal from the home, as well as the trials and tribulations that inevitably follow. The cases are as complex as they are tragic. They include histories of mental illness, as well as allegations of abuse, neglect, and trauma. Parents are pitted against their own children and each other. Along the way, the parents fight to clear their names and prove their fitness as guardians.

FAILURE TO PROTECT is an informative doc about the broken-down American Child Protective Services - more educational than thrilling, though director Pion-Berlin attempts to add some chartroom drama into the proceedings.

The film has screened at numerous prestigious film festivals including Phoenix Film Festival, Julien Dubuque International Film Festival, Atlanta Docufest, and Doc Boston, and has won numerous awards including“Best of Fest“ at Frozen River Film Festival, “Best Documentary” and “Best Director” at Oceanside International Film Festival, “Audience Choice Award” at Atlanta Docufest, “Best Director Documentary” and “Audience Choice Award” at First Glance Film Festival Los Angeles, “Best US Documentary Film” at Doc. Boston, among other awards. FAILURE TO PROTECT will be released on digital platforms by Porter+Craig Film & Media on October 17.

FOE (USA 2023) ***

Directed by Garth Davis

Foe is the second novel by Canadian writer Iain Reid.  The book has been described as a psychological thriller and horror fiction against a science fiction backdrop.  Reid referred to it as a "philosophical suspense story” and co-writing the script with director Garth Davis, the film tens towards this nature, Foe is set in the near future - in the year 2065, as the credits inform, and is about a married couple, Junior and (played by Paul Mescal and Saoirse Ronan) on a remote farm whose lives are thrown in turmoil when a stranger arrives.

The lives of a married couple are turned upside down when a stranger arrives at their farm and informs the husband he will be sent to a large space station, and his wife will be left in the company of a robot.

The film begins with opening credits setting the story of the film.  It is later in the century when water and habitual lands become precious commodities.  Cities will be over-populated, though the film never shows Any of the rural areas abandoned.  The film is shot in southern Australia which explains the huge areas of land and sand.  Director Davis shows one big strip that starts as seen from the inside of a window.  The storms are supposedly caused by, obviously, climate change.  New settlements are being g planned for outer space and it is this fact that the couple’s life is being altered.

The stranger, Terrance from an aerospace corporation called OuterMore. Terrance announces that Junior has been selected to travel to the Installation, a large space station in orbit around Earth.  He will remain there for about two years, before returning home. Junior is deeply in love with Hen and is not happy leaving her alone. Terrance reassures him that while he is gone, he will be replaced by a biomechanical duplicate that will care for her. Junior is horrified.  Terrance from an aerospace corporation called OuterMore. Terrance announces that Junior has been selected to travel to the Installation, a large space station in orbit around Earth. He will remain there for about two years, before returning home. Junior is deeply in love with Hen and is not happy leaving her alone. Terrance reassures him that while he is gone, he will be replaced by a biomechanical duplicate that will care for her. Junior is horrified.  The film follows the book quite slowly with an emphasis on the psychology that comes with the change as well as the introduction of this A.I. robot which the film also calls a human substitute.  To reveal more of the story would deficiently spoil the entertainment of the film, as it is slow and ponderous with nothing really much happening and the tensions between Hen and Junior come across as quite forced.  It is odd that the husband and wife are played by Irish and the stranger played by a Brit for American characters.

One of the film’s flaws is the 'forced' effort put into the characters for the audiences to care for them.  Hen and Junior care for each other but are isolated from the general population and form the audience.

Amazon Studios Will Release FOE Theatrically in the U.S. on October 6, 2023 and Canada on October 13

Trailer: 

VAMPIRE HUMANISTE CHERCHE SUICIDAIRE CONSENTANT (Canada 2023) ***

(Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person)

Directed by Ariane Louis-Seize

The title of the movie VAMPIRE HUMANISTE CHERCHE SUICIDAIRE CONSENTANT (Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person) tells it all.  A young teen vampire is unable to kill her victims to feed on the victim’s blood to survive.  Sasha (Sara Montpetit) is a teenage vampire — well, “teenage” is relative in their world — with an empathy problem.  Unlike the rest of her clan which includes her worried vampire parents, Sasha’s fangs don’t come out when she’s hungry or sensing fear; she needs to feel a personal connection to her prey. And then Sasha meets Paul (Félix-Antoine Bénard), an actual teenager convinced he’ll never enjoy anything in life. She befriends him, introduces him to her world and its secrets, and he happily volunteers to be her next meal. Which would be great, except for the whole empathy thing.  The film serves too, as a novel coming-of-age story.  Director Louis-Seize plays her story deadpan without resorting to theatrics or cheap humour.  For example in the dancing scene, Sasha and Paul just move their bodies right and left instead of breaking out into over-styled choreography.  The blood and gore though present, are toned down a notch or two in this worthy and amusing take on the teen vampire genre.

Trailer: 

ONCE UPON A STAR (Thailand 2023) ***

Directed by Nonzee Nimibutr

 

The traveling cinema.  Cinema was enjoyed in the countryside in Asian countries like Thailand, and even Singapore back in the east had audiences sitting on benches or on a  lawn watching a movie projection on a  screen.

ONCE UPON A STAR, opening on Netflix this week is director Nonzee Nimibutr’s love letter to Thai cinema.  It is the past and the story follows a grope of traveling pharma cinema groups as they go from village to village selling pharmaceutical products like medicine for stomach aches and other elixirs while screening their movie.  There is no sound and the dialogue is dubbed, live by the traveling group.  It is indeed neat to see how cinema was enjoyed in the early days.  As the film claims at the start:  We should learn to know what we love before we begin to dream.

Set in 1970 Lop Buri, the movie features Sukollawat "Weir" Kanarot, Nuengthida "Noona" Sophon, Jirayu "Kao" La-ongmanee and Samart Payakaroon as a local pharma-cinema team who travel around the Thai Kingdom.

Reminiscent a bit of CINEMA PARADISO, ONCE UPON A STAR is a wonderful and light film, though lasting slightly over two hours depicting the love of cinema.

ONCE UPONA STAR a slate of six original Thai titles – four films and two series.  It's no secret that local reIt is also not a surprise that these same releases also do quite well in neighbouring countries, especially in a region as diverse (yet culturally intertwined) as Southeast Asia.

Trailer:

ONCE WITHIN A TIME (USA 2023) **

Directed by Godfrey Reggio and Jon Kane

Godfrey Reggio (Koyaanisqatsi) and Jon Kane direct, Philip Glass scores, and Steven Soderbergh executive produces this surreal fairy tale about the end — and a new beginning — of the world entitled ONCE WITHIN A TIME.

This is an experimental film with a soundtrack of occasionally astounding Philip Grass scores, with no dialogue or lyrics to any of the music.  As there are many scenes with children in clown-like kid-friendly creatures, one can assume that this is a children-friendly fantasy.  The creatures act goofy and make silly choreographed moves, not that everything makes much sense at all.  If the directors attempt to show the beginning of creation, as there is a scene of a male and female encountering a creature that holds an apple. akin to Adan and Eve and the serpent tempting them in the garden of Eden, once is never sure.  It does not always make sense so there is no point trying to figure out what is going on. The images are different and often not something one has seen in fantasies before.  This film is supposed to be a sci-fi fantasy.  As for humour, it is an acquired taste.  One funny moment has a primate, that looks like one taken from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY taking the big bone and hitting the ground only to retrieve a cell phone that the primate looks at with great curiosity.  The film has the look of Fitz Lang’s METROPOLIS and the old sci-fi Russian films such as Andrei Tarkovski’s SOLARIS.

The film, thankfully runs 51 minutes as there can be too much of a good thing or conversely of a bad thing.  Whether  ONCE WITHIN A Time is for you depends on one’s state of mind.  This can be considered an experimental film with a missing (or very weak) narrative that is not for the ordinary commercial moviegoer.

ONCE UPIN A TIME is playing Sunday, October 15th at 5 pm at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.

Trailer: 

 

THE PUPPETMAN (USA 2023) ***

Directed by Brandon Christensen

 

The film introduces THE PUPPETMAN in action with a killing.  A woman is preparing dinner when her husband, David returns home.  A beautiful camera shot, a classic one that shows the man carrying a sharp knife with the camera pointed towards the unbelieving wife.  She is stabbed and killed.

The Puppetman (which is David) is a convicted killer on death row.  He has always maintained his innocence saying it was an evil force controlling his body as he slaughtered his victims. Now Michal  (Caryn Richman), the killer's daughter, begins to suspect that there may be some truth to her father’s claim when those around her begin to die in brutal ways.   Michal appears to be suffering from some sleep disorder that causes her to sleepwalk.  All hope rests on her shoulders to break The Puppetman's curse.  She goes around with a group of teen friends.  This is the typical teen horror movie where the teens are done away one by one as in the FRIDAY THE 13TH and SCREAM franchises.

Nothing really spectacular in terms of plot or differences from another horror movie, except the slasher is replaced by different ways in which the puppet man strikes.  Of the different killings two staged killings stand out - enough to make one flinch in terror, to the director’s credit.  Beware:  Spoiler alert next sentence in italics  One has a girl burning herself after a book catches bonfire in the library and the other has a barbell bearing too many weights coming down on the weightlifter.   But nothing as gruesome and watchable as in SAW X.  An okay watch otherwise for horror fans who have no high expectations.

THE PUPPETMAN premieres Friday, October 13 on Shudder and AMC+

The film is written and directed by Brandon Christensen and starring Michael Paré, Caryn Richman, Alyson Gorske.

THE ROAD DANCE (UK 2021) ***½

Directed by  Richie Adams

 

Ever since The Hebrides was referenced in William Shakespeare’s MACBETH, the Hebrides, way up in the north of the United Kingdom has always piqued my curiosity.  This rare film, THE ROAD DANCE has the Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides, north of Scotland as its setting.  The Hebrides is an archipelago comprising hundreds of islands off the northwest coast of Scotland. Divided into the Inner and Outer Hebrides groups, they are home to rugged landscapes, fishing villages and remote Gaelic-speaking communities. The Isle of Skye, connected to the mainland by a bridge, has a colourful harbour at Portree and jagged 3,000 ft. peaks in the Cuillin mountain range.  From the opening scene of the waves washing the rocks of the Hebrides, the beauty of the landscape is undeniably one of the most stunning in the world.  The film was shot in the Isle of Lewis.

In a small, remote village in the Outer Scottish Hebrides, Kirsty (Hermione Corfield) yearns for adventure and another life across the ocean. Though she finds comfort in time spent with her mother and younger sister, she sees hope and a future with Murdo (Will Fletcher), an intelligent, curious poet. The two fall in love as World War I looms, and Murdo is soon conscripted to join the other men of the village to fight. As a gesture of farewell, the village hosts a road dance, a celebration attended by every resident, but this sense of community is soon shattered by an unspeakable incident that changes Kirsty’s life forever. Sensitively adapted from John MacKay’s 2002 novel, this sweeping tale of adversity and resilience captures the attitudes of the time while offering a moving melodrama for audiences of any time period.

What is worse?  Watching your da dying of cancer or waiting for him, never to come home.  Then there is the universal conscription of all the boys in the village.  “Why are we even fighting this war?” she asks.   But there is hope.  “Maybe the war will end by Christmas.”

Despite the setting and period of the story, the story covers effectively the female issue of abuse and inferiority and rights.   At the fault of a man, the woman frequently takes the blame.  The female must always fight together for what is right and also for the family.  Even though the film plays often like a melodrama, this film still works, the powerful film contains many powerful moments, a few that will bring out both tears and anger.  Other issues addressed in the film include the futility of war, female and male comradeship, religion (“God will forgive you, but I won’t!”  and morality.

Unfortunately, the film has a tagged-on Hollywood ending that mars what the rest of the film had built up.  If the film ended 10 minutes earlier, the film would have been a much better and more credible drama.

THE ROAD DANCE, written and directed by Richie  Adams, based on the book by John MacKay, opens in Theatres and on Digital October 13 in select cities and theatres and to be available to rent and purchase on all major platforms.

Trailer: 

THE ROYAL HOTEL (Australia 2022) ***½

Directed by Kitty Green

 

Australia can be a nasty place.  And even nastier in the remote outback, as two backpacking Canadian girls find to their dismay.  After running out of cash and credit due to too much partying, as seen on a party boat at the beginning of the film, Hanna (Julia Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick) are forced to take jobs at The Royal Hotel, a bar in the outback.  They are immediately confronted by the sea of rowdy men who fill the bar on a daily basis. There’s no varnish to their testosterone and while Billy (Hugo Weaving of PRISCILLA and other films), the perpetually drunk owner of the pub, toes the line and pushes back on the men when they go too far, he’s also enabled their behaviour in the first place.  Liv tries to brush off the advances, but this only makes Hanna more anxious, as she starts to worry about her friend’s safety in addition to her own. It’s soon clear that the longer the women stick around, the more likely this continual threat will catch up to them.  The nastiness is almost too much for even males to take.  Obviously, the girls survive, after all, it is a female director at work href, and they do it with much aplomb and courage that is summed up due to desperation.  The girls wish to go back to Bondi Beach (the one close to Sydney) even though one of them is unable to pronounce the word Bondi, but all they get is dry-blowing desert sands and a closed swimming pool.  Well done though quite a gruesome grind before the girls come out victorious.

 

SILVER DOLLAR ROAD (USA 2023) ***

Directed by Raoul Peck

 

Wars have been fought over land.  White people have stolen land owned by the less fortunate.  These themes have been popping up currently in recent films.  In Martin Scorsese’s KILLERS OF A FLOWER MOON based on a novel taken from true events, a rich white man steals land from the unknowing Osage Nation in what has been known in history as the Osage Murders  In the recent sci-fi psychological thriller FOE based in the Iain Reid novel, land, and water are the only precious commodities in the world.  In the recent THE BURIAL, there is a court fight over the land owned by a funeral home business and in the new Danish epic Nikolaj Arcel’s THE PROMISED LAND, the northern Danish land of Jutland is being contested.

In the black documentary SILVER DOLLAR ROAD, A Black family in North Carolina battles decades of harassment by land developers trying to seize their waterfront property. For generations, the North Carolina waterfront property known locally as Silver Dollar Road was passed through the hands of an African-American family, the Reels. Family members describe it as an idyllic spot where they could earn a living from fishing and growing their own food while isolating themselves from the violence of white supremacy.

But the Reels family’s fortunes changed in the 1970s when developers sought to drive out Black landowners and profit from the real estate. Oscar-nominated filmmaker Raoul Peck tells the story of how the Reels battled over several decades to save their land. He draws upon the in-depth reporting of Lizzie Presser, published by ProPublica and The New Yorker.  Peck’s depiction of the Reels unfolds with novelistic detail, profiling the matriarch Gertrude (that is how the doc begins) in her nineties and her sons, Melvin Davis and Licurtis Reels. The men lived all their lives on Silver Dollar Road, so when they’re served with a court order for eviction aged in their sixties and fifties, respectively, they choose to go to jail rather than give up their home.  Their two options to give up the land or go to jail.  They chose the latter.  No attorney would fight for them.

It is indeed a sorry state of affairs to have the land that all your generations own, even legally as they have the paperwork, stolen from right under one’s nose because of dirty companies and illegal practices that go so far back that no one is sure what is happening.  To put things in perspective, it is not this only family undergoing this ordeal.  According to the film’s statistics, 90% of black people have had their land stolen.

The pain hits home when the film shows what it is like in a prison cell. The jailed family member tells of getting up in the morning, brushing his teeth, walking for two or three hours, and then doing the same again and again.  Suicide is common in the cells.

Peck previously crafted an exquisite essay on Black resistance in I Am Not Your Negro (TIFF ’16).  Now he develops those themes in an equally impressive family saga.

 

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Written by: Gilbert Seah

Parent Category: Articles

Category: Movie Reviews

Published: 23 September 2023

FILM REVIEWS:

THE CREATOR (USA 2023) **

Directed by Gareth Edwards

 

The new 20th Century Fox/Disney sci-fi futuristic A.I. thriller THE CREATOR is a magnificently looking film of extraordinary sets, art direction, and decor but lacks one of the most fundamental elements of human experience - emotion, ironically exactly what A.I. lacks as well.   A deity responsible for the creation of the Earth, world, and universe. Great Spirit, or similar deity in Native American religions is often known as "The Creator”.

The premise is promising though, and it is about time a film touting the evil of A.I. made its point.  Amidst a future war between the human race and the forces of artificial intelligence (AI), Joshua (John David Washington), a hardened ex-special forces agent grieving the disappearance of his wife, is recruited to hunt down and kill the Creator, the elusive architect of advanced AI who has developed a mysterious weapon with the power to end the war… and mankind itself. Joshua and his team of elite operatives journey across enemy lines, into the dark heart of AI-occupied territory only to discover the world-ending weapon he's been instructed to destroy is an AI in the form of a young child.  Apparently, according to the voiceover, L.A.  had been destroyed by A.I., and A.I. is currently banned in the United States.  But not in New Asia.  What is new Asia?  The New Asia shown are Vietnamese-looking Asians in straw hats working in the padi (rice) fields.  The film attempts to be the reverse of what the Americans did in the Vietnam War.

Basically, it is Joshua working with the A.I. child, Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles), and re-connecting with Maya (Gemma Chan), Joshua’s love.  The lack of emotion is clear from the start to the end of the film.  As it is a key point in the story, all of what transpires onscreen is a feast for the eyes but empty on brain and stomach food.  The lack of story, premise aside, also adds to the film’s tedium, which allowed me to doze off, one too many times.

Running 135 minutes too long, the film at least achieved the great-looking expensive effects with $80 million less than the $100 million mark.

Trailer: 

FAIR PLAY (USA 2023) ***

Directed by Chloe Domont

 

FAIR PLAY is the play that goes on between the two lead protagonists, Emily and Luke.  Emily (Phoebe Dynevor) and Luke (Alden Ehrenreich) lead a double life. In one, they’re madly in love, share a cozy apartment, and plan to marry. In the other, they are purely platonic colleagues working for One Crest Capital, where worker intimacy is a violation of company policy.  When Emily is given the portfolio-manager role Luke had coveted, their private and public relationships become equally strained. Luke must work under Emily as her analyst, and finds himself in a position where even a moment’s hesitation can result in his fiancé’s advancement or humiliation.  Already faced with proving herself within a traditional boy’s club, Emily is also forced to contend with the amorous advances of her superior. She’s trapped in a high-wire act where anyone might ascend the ranks or be brutally exiled — depending entirely on whether they bring in the money.

The two leads perform well and make good Chemistry but the prized performance belongs to British actor Eddie Marsan, playing an American here.  As the sinister boss who hits on Emily, Marsan proves once again he is one of the best of his trade, after first bursting into the acting scene in Mike Leigh’s HAPPY-GO-LUCKY as Sally Hawkins’ dodgy driving instructor.

Despite the film’s dominant male workplace setting, the female gender rules.  The main focus in the story is Emily, rather than Luke.  The director is also female and one has to give this lady credit for the convincing business jargon and the ability to create a credible trading company atmosphere.

As the film progresses, one can tell that it moves towards delivering more kitsch than anything else.   The plot design includes dialogue used like ‘dumb fucking bitch’; “Your appearance making you look like a fucking cupcake” to emphasize the #MeToo Movement job used for cheap theatrics or the job dismissal and firing that was considered to be done for the spirit of dramatization coming across as kitsch, instead of reality in the workplace because of excessive garishness or sentimentality.  Still, the effects can sometimes be appreciated in an ironic or knowing way making the film a more compelling watch.

The film unfortunately takes too much than it can chew.  The film goes downhill after the engagement party.  Emily’s and Luke’s confrontation scene in the toilet comes off as more laughable than anything else.  It is a pity as the film worked quite well up to this stage, making the film entertaining to this point.

FAIR PLAY premiered just recently at the recent Toronto International Film Festival and opens in theatres for a limited engagement before opening for streaming on Netflix, the film being a Netflix original film.

Trailer: 

FLORA AND SON (Ireland 2023) ***

Directed by John Carney

 

A 2023 Sundance Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival Selection, FLORA AND SON is the latest feature film from John Carney (“Once,” “Begin Again,” “Modern Love”), and stars Eve Hewson (“Bad Sisters,” “The Knick”) and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (“The Trial of the Chicago 7,” “Super Pumped,” “Mr. Corman”). 

Flora (Eve Hewson) is something of a hot mess. In her own words, “I live in a shoebox with a son who hates me and a da who will not see me.”   She’s feisty, charismatic, and a trouble magnet.  She loves to party, as observable in the first scene with her at a party and bringing a guy home to bed — but she loves her 14-year-old son Max (Orén Kinlan) more, even if it seems like all they do is quarrel. In an effort to bridge the gulf between them, Flora gives Max a guitar, but Max’s ideal musical instrument is his computer, which he uses to construct infectious dance tracks.

The film covers several issues with the power of music; song and mother relationship; single mother problems; and coming-of-age both of mother and son among others.  Working as both a comedy and drama director Carney also steers his film in the right direction keeping on track with the main subject at hand which is the power of music in overcoming a mother and son’s problem relationship  The tunes heard on the soundtrack, supposedly arranged by both FLORA AND SON sound quite neat too.

Certain dialogue comes across as too condescending and false, those lines where the mother’s or the son’s music are praised.  When Flora plays the C chord for the first time, she is told: You own the C; No one can take it from you, and so on… sounding quite corny at that,

Single mom Flora (Hewson) is at war with her teenage son, petty thief Max.  Encouraged by the police to find Max a hobby, she rescues a beat-up guitar from a dumpster and finds that one person’s trash can be a family’s salvation. Rather than let the guitar collect dust, Flora opts to develop her own musical chops,   Taking online lessons from Jeff (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a handsome troubadour who shows Flora how to form basic chords and introduces her to the genius of Joni Mitchell. Flora falls for Jeff, despite the fact that she’s in Dublin and he is in Los Angeles. But as Jeff pierces Flora’s heart, he also inspires in her a creative urge that might lead to a whole new way of connecting with Max.

Director Carney invests an entire segment on the song “Both Sides Now’ by Joni Mitchell.  Flora is told that there is a song she has to listen to and she listens to “Both Sides Now” as performed by Mitchell on the television.  The melody and lyrics, reflecting how life can be looked upon are simply beautiful.  Director Carney demonstrates both the seeming effortlessness of  coming up with a hit song as well as the care and work that is actually put in (a metaphor for filmmaking?) to create it.

FLORA AND SON is directed, written, and produced by John Carney, and produced by Anthony Bergman, Peter Cron, Rebecca O’Flanagan and Robert Walpole. The film is executive produced by Cathleen Dore, Milan Popelka, Alison Cohen. FLORA AND SON premieres globally on Apple TV+ on Friday, September 29.

Trailer: 

 

 

NIGHTMARE (Norway 2023) ***

Directed by Kjersti Helen Rasmussen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The paralysis of the body, while the brain is fully functional, is a really disturbing thought that makes really scary scenarios movies.  In CALVARY, Brendan Gleeson’s priest is told of a boy taken to see the doctor by his parents.  Something goes terribly wrong and he awakes but is unable to speak, hear, or see.  But he can feel the excruciating pain but is unable to scream or tell his parents.   And the worst thing DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY, based on a true story, the patient is almost fully paralyzed except that he can blink with one eyelid, though his brain is fully functional.  With therapy, he achieved writing a memoir by blinking that one eye.  In the new Norwegian horror film, sleep disorder is the subject.

Mona and Robby are a young couple in love. Robby has just landed his dream job, and they’ve scored an amazing deal on a spacious, if run-down, flat. Never mind that it requires quite a bit of renovation. Never mind the neighbours’ constant fighting, and screaming baby... Never mind that Mona is suddenly plagued by night terrors which grow more intense every time she falls asleep… Robby is eager to start a family, despite Mona’s hesitation. Eventually, Mona’s issues spiral dangerously out of control as she becomes convinced that she is being attacked by a mythical demon – the Mare – intent on possessing her unborn child.

The audience is quick to be informed at the film’s start that 1 in 3 people suffer from sleep disorders,  And a definition of sleep paralysis follows - a condition in which the body is paralyzed while the brain is fully awake, trapped between dream and reality.  It is often that the inability to distinguish the difference between reality and dream is a huge scare.

Audience anticipation and curiosity are heightened at one point in the film when Mona is asked whether she finds it strange that the sleep doctor is treating so many patients for lucid dreaming in her building.  One of his patients, Siren jumped to her death from Mona’s balcony during a party.  (“Or was she pushed?” questions a cop.

NIGHTMARE, the film has lots of opportunity going for it as a really scary horror flick owing to its creepy and little-known subject.  One variation the film goes into is the concept of controlling one’s nightmares.  It is assumed that if one is awake, then one can get out of one nightmare and control it to some degree,  Mona is given this option by her doctor who allows her to flick on a light switch to wake herself up, if she is capable of doing that in her dream.  Mona does, but the light is faulty and does not turn on - though Mona is saved in the nick of time.

Not much is used of the Norwegian culture in this film from Norway, though one might say that there is advanced ed technology on dream and sleep disorders, medically, Norway being an advanced country.  But there are nice shots of the city with the lights on, a city that often spends days on end without much sunlight.

NIGHTMARE opens for streaming on Shudder, the horror streaming service on Thursday, September 28th, and is definitely worth a look based on content.

Trailer: 

PAW PATROL: THE MIGHTY MOVIE (Canada 2023) ***

Directed by Cal Brunker

 

PAW PATROL is a very popular Canadian series for kids, created by Keith Chapman and produced by Spin Master Entertainment, with animation provided by Guru Studio.  In Canada, the series is primarily broadcast on TVOntario as part of the TVOKids programming block. TVO first ran previews of the show in August 2013.  The series focuses on a young boy named Ryder who leads a crew of search and rescue dogs that call themselves the PAW Patrol. They work together on missions to protect the shoreside community of Adventure Bay and surrounding areas.  Each dog has a specific set of skills based on emergency services professions, such as a firefighter, a police officer, and an aviation pilot.  In this film, PAW PATROL: THE MIGHTY MOVIE, to keep up with recent super action hero films, a meteor attracted to the earth gives each dog super powers.

All of her life, Skye has felt like she has been unappreciated by the rest of the PAW Patrol. Eager to prove she can be an asset to the team, Skye gets a chance when a magical meteor crash-lands in Adventure City, giving her and the other PAW Patrol members superpowers as they become the Mighty Pups. In order to steal the pups' powers, Mayor Humdinger escapes from prison and teams up with a meteor expert named Victoria Vance to steal the pups' crystals.

For animated films, especially ones for kids like PAW PATROL: THE MIGHTY MOVIE, one would expect a bit more caution in its accuracy.  At the film’s start, a fire sets propane tanks on fire, and the paw patrol puts out the propane gas fire by water.  This is dangerous and children should be taught that not all fires are put out by fire.  

The villain, clearly voiced by a black woman from its accent, is played for laughs rather than villainous.  “I am not a mad scientist,” she claims: “I might be a scientist and I might be mad at times.”   So much for kiddie humour.

The villain and main protagonist Skye are notably female, proving once again that the female movement in film over the recent years has worked wonders.

You have to take matters into your own hands or paws, if you are the small” Skye” is the smallest and littlest of the PAW PATROL.  There are quite a bit of story that goes along with this notion.  Skye is the first one to get the superpowers and feels that for the first time, it can excel.  st and want a better life.  The message comes with an encouraging tune.  It is difficult not to like a film that offers endearing moments like these.

It should be remembered that PAW PATROL is a Canadian TV series that many Canadian and North American children grew up with.  It is necessarily childish (for example: listen to all the child-like voices) and adults should be forgiving of the film catering more to children than to them.  RAW PATROL is a decent effort, and more entertaining for the little ones.  Warning: The dialogue also gets quite corny!

Trailer: 

THE RAT CATCHER (USA 2023) ****

Directed by Wes Anderson

 

Wes Anderson (THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL, THE FRENCH DISPATCH, THE FANTASTIC MR. FOX) makes his grand debut on Netflix this week, utilizing the incredible worlds British author Roald Dahl conjured. With Rupert Friend, Richard Ayoade and Ralph Fiennes this 17-minute short THE RAT CATCHER is a story of one such person.  A rat-catcher (Fiennes) is a person who kills or captures rats as a professional form of pest control, keeping the rat population.

This story was written in the 40s when Dahl was living at Wisteria Cottage in Amersham.    He wrote about the area and the locals.

When the film opens a rat catcher appears at a petrol station greeted by Claud (Friend) and the narrator (Ayoade).  This short amplifies the technique Anderson uses in his storytelling/filmmaking that makes him such a unique and wonderful filmmaker.  Director Anderson films his story in a way that enhances the curiosity of his story while emphasizing the three different personalities.  The characters played by the actors: Fiennes is secretly evil and sinister, Friend is the more talkative one.  The contrast of the characters makes the story more intriguing, while Anderson keeps the twist in the plot ahead of the audience.  There are choice lines like: Everybody has rats.  The bet on how he can kill a rat without touching them is also curiosity taken to its height.

The release of this particular short kicks off a few days worth of Wes Anderson shorts coming to Netflix, with THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF HENRY SUGAR opening Wednesday, this one Friday, and Poison to be released each one on the following days.

THE RAT CATCHER  is available to stream on Netflix this week Friday, September 29, 2023.

THE RE-EDUCATION OF MOLLY SINGER (USA 2023) ***

Directed by Andy Palmer

 

 

In the recent teen comedy NO HARD FEELINGS, Jennifer Lawrence had to teach her employers’ teen son the facts of life.  On the brink of losing her home, Maddie finds an intriguing job listing: helicopter parents looking for someone to bring their introverted 19-year-old son out of his shell before college. She has one summer to make him a man or die trying.  In a new teen Lionsgate comedy THE RE-EDUCATION OF MOLLY SINGER, a similar premise follows.  Talk about film originality.  Maddies is a new attorney hired by the law firm but her partying days are overlapping with her work hours.  Her boss at the firm now her new boss, asks her to look after her 19-year-old son at her old alma mater.

The details:  In college, attorney Molly Singer (Britt Robertson) was the life of every party. Now, she’s about to be fired because she cannot leave her partying ways behind. Molly’s boss, Brenda (Jaime Pressly), tells Molly there’s one way to save her job: re-enroll at her old alma mater, befriend Brenda’s socially awkward son, Elliot (Ty Simpkins), and take him from zero to campus hero. Aided by her best friend (Nico Santos), Molly goes to battle with stuck-up hall monitors, boozed-up frat brothers, and her old archenemy in a hilarious quest through the past to save her future.

There is at least, more story in this film than in NO HARD FEELINGS.  A few other things have more going for this film.   First and foremost is a supporting character, Molly’s best friend, Ollie played by Nico Santos, who is immediately recognizable from the comedy TV series SUPERSTORE and also proved himself in films as in CRAZY RICH ASIANS.  In MOLLY SINGER, he plays Molly’s best friend, who also happens to be gay.

Whether this comedy will make Lionsgate Money is the big question, a company that did well with the DIVERGENT and HUNGER GAMES franchises, but not for want of trying.  A new HUNGER GAMES film is set to open this fall.   There are plenty of product placements from Coca-Cola to even a burp on Lionsgate Media as can be observed as a headline on the front page of the newspaper that a judge in the court is reading while waiting for attorney Molly to show up.

THE RE-EDUCATION OF MOLLY SINGER is the third movie this year with an irresponsible adult hired to babysit a young teen.  Originality aside, the film is entertaining and generates barely sufficient laughs.

SAW X (USA 2023) ***½

Directed by Kevin Greutert

 

The original 2004 SAW film tells killings revolving around the mystery of the Jigsaw Killer, who tests his victims' will to live by putting them through deadly "games" where they must inflict great physical pain upon themselves to survive.  SAW X the latest in the SAW franchise is the tenth instalment.   The franchise was created by Australian filmmakers James Wan and Leigh Whannell, and consists of ten feature films and additional media. Nine of the ten films primarily revolve around the fictional serial killer John "Jigsaw" Kramer, while one film revolves around a copycat killer. 

SAW X is the tenth installment overall in the Saw film series and serves as both a direct sequel to Saw (2004) and a prequel to Saw II (2005). 

Weeks after the events of Saw (2004), John Kramer (Toby Bell) travels to Mexico after learning of a potential "miracle" cure for his terminal cancer.  Toby learns of a so-called ‘miracle cure’ from one of the members of his cancer group.  Armed with money and desperation, he travels to Mexico to undergo treatment. However, he soon realizes that the entire operation is a fraudulent scheme targeting vulnerable individuals.   Finding a new purpose, the infamous serial killer and his apprentice abduct the con artists and subject them to a horrifying new series of traps.  The message in the story is; “We live, you die.  F*** You!”  Bell is featured in the film more than any other in the series.  In fact, Bell is also shown as a killer with a heart, as he believes that innocent people, like the boy he saves, should not die.  And f*** the rest!    So, Kramer indulges in various ideas, courtesy of Greutret’s ‘imaginative’  script to come up with ideas like chopping off legs, picking brains, sucking out eyeballs (“I don’t like what I see…”)just to mention a few.  The traps get really nasty, including one in which the victim has to cut off his scalp and packman his own brain to fill a jar in order to save himself.  Lots of screaming by the victims to enhance the terror.  To add a female slant into the picture, the main villain is a really nasty female.aw X

Written and directed by Kevin Greutert, the film surprisingly contains a few twists in the plot.  The deadly games get not only more inventive but more violent as the film bloodies towards a worthy climax.   Also, one should stay for the closing credits as there is a surprise more-to-come segment occurring midway.  

SAW X delivers what is expected from the SAW franchise, so if one is not prepared for torture and more torture, blood, gore, and violence, then best to avoid the film.  Victims of]f scammers might especially delight in the torture.  Who would not like to see someone who has stolen money from innocent and often helpless victims suffer the consequences?  But given the film’s ‘content’, director Greutert succeeds well in a real horror torture flick that definitely makes its mark.

SAW X makes its mark on Friday, September 29th.

Trailer:

SOLO (Canada 2023) ***
Directed by Sophie Dupuis

 

SOLO follows the relationship struggles of Simon (Théodore Pellerin) and Olivier (Félix Maritaud), a handsome, charming fellow drag artist from France.  They begin a  tumultuous relationship for the reason of a clash of different personalities.  Simon is a skilled makeup artist by day and a sensational drag artist by night.  Young and carefree, his energies are overwhelmingly set on honing his act and partying.  Just as Simon is getting accustomed to this exciting new relationship, his long-estranged mother, Claire (Quebec screen icon Anne-Marie Cadieux), swoops back into his life.   Director Dupuis shows Simon is a good-hearted person with reasonable needs, but it’s just as obvious he’s caught in a pattern of codependence, desperately seeking approval from two strong personalities equally incapable of granting it. In the end, the one person Simon truly needs to commune with is himself.  The drag shows are bright and sassily performed complete with elaborate costumes.  Director Dupuis captures the behind-the-scenes of the drag shows with credible effect.  SOLO is entertaining enough though the depiction of Simon’s relationship struggles appear manipulative to a fault.

THE SWAN (USA 2023) ****

Directed by Wes Anderson

 

 

Wes Anderson (THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL, THE FRENCH DISPATCH, THE FANTASTIC MR. FOX) makes his grand debut on Netflix this week, utilizing the incredible worlds British author Roald Dahl conjured. With Rupert Friend s the adult Peter Watson and Ralph Fiennes as Roald Dahl, this 20-minute short THE SWAN tells the story of three boys, two bullies and a swotter.

The release of this particular short kicks off a few days worth of Wes Anderson shorts coming to Netflix, with THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF HENRY SUGAR opening Wednesday, this one Thursday while The Ratcatcher, and Poison to be released each on the following days.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More is a 1977 short story collection by British author Roald Dahl. The seven stories including THE SWAN are generally regarded as being aimed at a slightly older audience than many of Dahl's other children's novels.  The stories were written at varying times throughout his life. Two of the stories are autobiographical in nature; one describes how he first became a writer while the other describes some of Dahl's experiences as a fighter pilot in the Second World War.

Ernie, a loutish school bully, receives a rifle for his 15th birthday. He and a friend use it to shoot small birds before training it on the school swot, Peter Watson. At gunpoint, Peter is made to lie in the path of an oncoming train; he survives by sinking into the trackbed as the train passes.   As this short film is an American production the word ‘swot’ is not used as terms like swot and swotting are not used in North America.  A bookworm or pupil that studies all the time likely a teacher’s pet is termed a swot.  This story is told in the same way as in Anderson’s THE WONDERFUL WORL OF HENRY SUGAR, narrated in the first person but spoken by the characters in the story themselves.  As the young boy Peter Watson appears on the screen, his adult film also appears by his side as a man narrating the story.   Wes Anderson’s style is unique though he draws inspiration from other filmmakers like Woody Allen (the narration) and Pedro Almodovar (the colour palette).

Next, the bullies take him to a duck pond and force him to act as their "retriever dog". The bird-loving Peter becomes incensed when Ernie kills a swan, and Ernie responds by promising to make it fly again. He accomplishes this by cutting the bird's wings off and tying them to Peter's arms, before forcing him to climb to the top of a weeping willow. Peter declines the bullies' invitation to jump, but a shot from Ernie's rifle hits him in the leg and knocks him off balance.  The rest of the story should not be revealed except to say that this is a very sad yet wonderful story about strength and resilience.

THE SWAN is available to stream on Netflix this week Thursday, September 28, 2023.

SWAN SONG (Canada 2023) ***
Directed by Chelsea McMullan

 

SWAN SONG is more about the legendary ballet dancer and artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada, Karen Kain than of the ballet Swan Lake.  The film is called SWAN SONG as it shows Kain’s inside the National Ballet of Canada’s 2022 production of Swan Lake, directed and staged by the legendary Karen Kain.     The segments involving prepared answers in the interviews are obvious for the lack of the word ‘like’, as compared to the unprepared ones where that word is overused.    Director McMullan, who co-directed last year’s EVER READY with Tanya Tagaq on throat singing, has an eye for vulnerable moments, as when Genevieve Penn Nabity, a junior member of the company, is offered an opportunity she’d never expected.  One complaint is that director McMullan takes her doc to an overdone happy Hollywood ending.  Kain is praised so many times that it becomes annoying.  Kain, before the opening night was worried as a lot went wrong during the final dress rehearsal but on opening night, Kain kept saying that everything went on perfectly on opening night, going on to praise everyone over and over again.

 

THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF HENRY SUGAR (USA 2023) ****

Directed by Wes Anderson

 

Wes Anderson (THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL, THE FRENCH DISPATCH, THE FANTASTIC MR. FOX) makes a grand debut on Netflix this week, utilizing the incredible worlds British author Roald Dahl conjured. With an all-star cast, this 40-minute short The WONDERFUL WORLD OF HENRY SUGAR tells the story of a rich man, Henry Sugar (Benedict Cumberbatch, POWER OF THE DOG, DOCTOR STRANGE) who learns about a yogi who can see without using his eyes and then sets out to master the skill in order to cheat at gambling.”  Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley, Dev Patel, and Richard Ayoade also star.

The release of this particular short kicks off a few days worth of Wes Anderson shorts opening on Netflix, with The Swan, The Ratcatcher, and Poison to release each on consecutive following days.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More is a 1977 short story collection by British author Roald Dahl.  The seven stories are generally regarded as being aimed at a slightly older audience than many of Dahl's other children's novels.  The stories were written at varying times throughout his life. Two of the stories are autobiographical in nature; one describes how he first became a writer while the other describes some of Dahl's experiences as a fighter pilot in the Second World War.

Henry Sugar, an independently wealthy man who enjoys gambling, finds and reads a doctor's report on a strange patient who called himself "The Man Who Sees Without Using His Eyes".  Henry learns how to read playing cards, and wins a large sum of money that he throws out his window only to cause a riot in the street below.  A police officer (Ralph Fiennes) scolds Henry (“You are an idiot!)” and suggests that he find a more legal form of charity, and Henry vows to establish the most well-equipped and supportive orphanages on the planet. In Roald’s story, this plan works until he reaches Las Vegas, where he unknowingly collects a huge sum from three casinos owned by the same Mafioso and narrowly escapes the owner's thugs.  The mafioso part is changed ninth film.

The short story is written and directed as a short film by Anderson in what might be described as a wonderful film by Wes Anderson.  Anderson’s film unfolds very much like his previous two films THE FRENCH DISPATCH and ASTEROID CITY.  The film is narrated in the third person, often read by the character himself, in the first person.  For example; Dev Patel’s doctor says in one segment in the film:  “There’s a knock on the door,” I said as Patel’s character speaks and turns towards the door.  Director Anderson makes sure his audience is always aware that they are watching a film with the props and sets moving around as in a studio set.   The same tactic is also used with actor Benedict Cumberbatch who plays Henry Sugar.  Ralph Fiennes plays the writer, who one assumes is the writer Roald Dahl himself.

THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF HENRY SUGAR opens for streaming on Netflix on Wednesday.

Trailer: 

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