Monthly Archives: December 2015

A Very Murray Christmas

Let’s get one thing straight: this isn’t Scrooged, the redux. It’s a plotless variety show without a lot of variety, but it’s got Bill Goddamned Fucking Murray, so what else do you want?

It’s Christmas Eve and Murray is contractually obligated to put on a Christmas special live from the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan. He’s in no position to be doing such a thing and the show is doomed to hell, but so what? His piano accompanist is Paul Shaffer, for crying out loud. How bad could it be?

Well, as Amy Poehler and Julie White come bustling into his room to assuage his pre-show jitters\brow-beat him into meeting his obligations, it would seem that they are worried too. There’s a blizzard blanketing NYC, and none of the celebrity guests have shown up. No guests at all, actually, except for Michael Cera, playing a slimy talent agent desperate to sign Murray (who is famous in real life from being unrepresented).

Murray starts off singing dejectedly but can’t even finish his first song. The special’s a disaster! But wait! Who’s that sight for sore eyes revolving through the door? Why it’s none other than Chris Rock, here mistakenly, but here nonetheless, and despite his vehement refusals, he gets emotionally manipulating into joining the live broadcast. Singing ‘Do You Hear What I Hear?’ as a duet, Murray and Rock are one of the highlights of the show. In a special that’s not even an hour long, Chris Rock proves he may not be a singer but he is indeed an actor; the reluctance to join in spackled across his slowly turns into Christmas cheer as the joy of the song spreads to his heart…until the power goes out, and he takes the opportunity to make his escape.

“Force Majeure!” cry his cheeky producers. The contract taken care of by an act of god, White and Poehler hoof it out of there too, leaving Murray to mope around a nearly-deserted hotel where he comes across a sobbing bride (Rashida Jones) and her wobbly wedding cake. Dream wedding ruined, no guests in sight, no preacher to marry them, and a bunch of lobsters going bad, she and her groom (Jason Schwartzman) have fought.

Never fear: when not hosting Christmas specials, Bill Murray also proffers marital counselling, and so in he goes to save the day, and spark up some more “impromptu” holiday tunes. Jenny Lewis playing a waitress is on hand to do the lady part of ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’, everyone’s favourite date-rape carol, and the band Phoenix is conveniently on hand pretending to be kitchen staff to back up several more ditties, so that Jason Schwartzman can prove there is a worse singer in this thing than Chris Rock.

And then Maya Rudolph shows up playing a washed up lounge singer, and holy hell, she just puts them all to shame. She belts out a ‘Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)’ so good that even Darlene Love would approve (she sang that song on Letterman every Christmas since 1986 except for the writer’s strike in 2007 – this will be her first year without, since Dave is retired). It’s not surprising that Rudolph is amazing: she is, after all, daughter to soul singer Minnie Riperton and composer-songwriter Richard Rudolph. Oh, and granddaughter of Teena Marie. She’s got chops, plus extra credentials for often impersonating Beyonce on SNL, and for playing in a Prince cover band called Princess. And I’ve got a huge crush on her.

Then the action mysteriously leaves the Carlyle Hotel for a decked-out soundstage in New Jersey, where two new guest stars join the festivities: Miley Cyrus, cheating on her own cameo in The Night Before, and George Clooney to mix the martinis. An unlikely pair? If you say so!

I wish I could find something to be grumpy about with Miley’s performance, but the truth is, she sounds good. Perched atop Shaffer’s piano, Silent Night is rendered faithfully, although there’s probably a little too much leg for the holy parts. The real surprise, and delight, is when Clooney pipes up during ‘Santa Claus Wants Some Lovin.’ Is the world ready for this side of George Clooney? Unfortunately he flashes a lot less leg, but he does look awfully dapper in his suit.

Anyway, director Sofia Coppola did quite a job of rounding up a slew of stars and dipping them in Christmas coating. You can play a real game of celebrity bingo, as you’ll see in the comments. There’s no plot, no story, no moral: just a lot of the ever-charming Bill Murray. It’s available on Netflix and it’s the kind of thing you can easily just put on in the background while you do some holiday baking or cleaning or wrapping, or better yet – some imbibing.

Cheers.

Awards Season Kickoff – 2015 Golden Globes and SAG Awards Nominations

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2015 Golden Globes Nominations

Best Motion Picture, Drama
Carol
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant
Room
Spotlight

Best Motion Picture, Comedy
The Big Short
Joy
The Martian
Spy
Trainwreck

Best Director – Motion Picture
Todd Haynes, Carol
Alejandro Iñárritu, The Revenant
Tom McCarthy, Spotlight
George Miller, Mad Max
Ridley Scott, The Martian

Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama
Cate Blanchett, Carol
Brie Larson, Room
Rooney Mara, Carol
Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn
Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl

Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Comedy
Jennifer Lawrence, Joy
Melissa McCarthy, Spy
Amy Schumer, Trainwreck
Maggie Smith, Lady in the Van
Lily Tomlin, Grandma

Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture
Jane Fonda, Youth
Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight
Helen Mirren, Trumbo
Alicia Vikander, Ex Machina
Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs

Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama
Bryan Cranston, Trumbo
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant
Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs
Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl
Will Smith, Concussion

Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy
Christian Bale, The Big Short
Steve Carell, The Big Short
Matt Damon, The Martian
Al Pacino, Danny Collins
Mark Ruffalo, Infinitely Polar Bear

Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture
Paul Dano, Love & Mercy
Idris Elba, Beasts of No Nation
Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies
Michael Shannon, 99 Homes
Sylvester Stallone, Creed

Best Screenplay – Motion Picture
Emma Donoghue, Room
Tom McCarthy, Josh Singer, Spotlight
Charles Randolph, Adam McKay, The Big Short
Aaron Sorkin, Steve Jobs
Quentin Tarantino, The Hateful Eight

Best Animated Feature Film
Anomalisa
The Good Dinosaur
Inside Out
The Peanuts Movie
Shaun the Sheep Movie

Best Motion Picture, Foreign Language
The Brand New Testament
The Club
The Fencer
Mustang
Son of Saul

2015 SAG Award Nominations

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role

BRYAN CRANSTON / Trumbo
JOHNNY DEPP / Black Mass
LEONARDO DiCAPRIO / The Revenant
MICHAEL FASSBENDER / Steve Jobs
EDDIE REDMAYNE / The Danish Girl

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role
CATE BLANCHETT / Carol
BRIE LARSON / Room
HELEN MIRREN / Woman In Gold

SAOIRSE RONAN / Brooklyn
SARAH SILVERMAN / I Smile Back

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role
CHRISTIAN BALE / The Big Short
IDRIS ELBA / Beasts of No Nation
MARK RYLANCE / Bridge Of Spies
MICHAEL SHANNON / 99 Homes
JACOB TREMBLAY / Room

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role
ROONEY MARA / Carol
RACHEL McADAMS / Spotlight
HELEN MIRREN / Trumbo
ALICIA VIKANDER / The Danish Girl
KATE WINSLET / Steve Jobs

Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
Beasts of No Nation

Straight Outta Compton

The Big Short

Spotlight

Trumbo

Surprised? Bored? Disappointed? Let’s discuss in the comments!

Whistler, Day 5

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Whistler is gorgeous. What a great place to hold a film festival. Even for a non-skier, the village is full of activities and temptations for any palette. And the people are SO friendly. Within minutes of our arrival, a complete stranger was fishing through her coin purse to give us a quarter to loose a shopping cart at the market, and if you take so much as a single hesitant step anywhere in the village, someone will stop to assist you, sometimes a designated helper, other times just a dedicated resident, whether you’ve asked for it, or want it, or not.

I wish I was equally impressed with the film festival itself, but I’m not. It made an immediate nasty impression on me when I arrived at the gala

only to be put on the naughty list for holding contraband (ie, my camera). Here’s the thing. Don’t tell people from around the world to come to your film festival in a picturesque little village, and then tell them not to take pictures. Second, don’t call this a film festival or else I might have the idea that actors and directors are debuting their films and will be walking red carpets expecting to be photographed. There were precious few celebrities in Whistler, not even the ones who were billed, but I didn’t know that yet. I was still thinking you were a real festival, Whistler, and so I expected you to treat me like a real attendee. Instead you treated me like a criminal – only of thought crime, I suppose, since I hadn’t yet seen a single movie and could not have pirated your precious material – BUT I OWNED A CAMERA so of course I deserved to be lectured like a felon wearing finery. No matter that you’d already let in a hundred people with phones equipped with the exact same video-taking ability. No, no, by all means single me out and shame me. I’m sure I deserve it.

But on the topic of that first night, the “opening gala” as it called itself,

which apparently was just an excuse to charge $35 dollars to watch a movie when all the others cost only $13. What does a gala make? Was it the cash bar, or the obligatory speech from the mayor? Next year can I pay extra not to hear that speech? As you know, Jason Priestly and Kim Cattrall were announced as the in-house celebrities, and yet we saw not a single hair from either of their heads the entire week we were there. And if you’re not trotting them out for the opening gala, then for what?

Difficulties and disappointments permeated this festival no matter which way we turned. The St. Lawrence festival that we attended last month wasn’t perfect either, but this being its inaugural year, we were more understanding. Whistler is boasting that this year is its 15th, and by now, they really should know better.

If a screening was scheduled to start at 8:30pm, they didn’t start letting

people in until 8:30pm, which means not a single movie ever started on time. The theatres were sitting there with empty seats, but for some reason, the paying public was not allowed to sit in them. Even once you were in the theatre you’d be lucky to score a seat, as half of them were always reserved. Nobody ever showed up to sit in those reserved seats, so they’d yank the reserved signs last minute, which means the very last stragglers to arrive got the very best seats in the house, while people who had lined up politely got stiffed, EVERY DAMN TIME.

Sean and I were supposed to see 11 movies at this festival but only saw 10. We were in line waiting to be let in to see The Wave when we were told that no one could figure out how to download the movie from the usb, and so it was indefinitely delayed – “90 minutes at least.” We were told we could either come back 90 minutes later, or we could trade in our passes for passes to anoth

er movie. But here’s the rub: we’re at a festival. Our schedule is set. Waiting 90 minutes leaks into our next film. And we don’t have any other holes in our schedule to allow for a substitute film. Other people had just driven up from Vancouver and couldn’t stick around for these options, but reimbursement was flatly refused. The 90 minute wait was of course commuted to an outright cancellation, and no makeup screening was ever scheduled, which means we were shit out of luck. We travelled 4500km to see these movies, and it’s kind of heartbreaking to leave unsatisfied.

Honestly, we were unsatisfied before we got there. The programming was not solid. We knew going in that although there were quite a few “big”

movies on the bill, we’d only get to see one of them because they were all scheduled to play at 9pm on the Saturday night. Apologies to Sarah Silverman and James Franco, but I went with Emma Thompson. And at least that screening went off without a hitch. Others were not so lucky.

Two of our screenings – two out of ten, mind you – were interrupted because microphones in other screenings were being broadcast in our theatre. I felt bad for the director of Chasing Banksy, because some woman was mindlessly singing nonsense into a mic and that was broadcast right in the middle of his movie, drowning out its actual sound. It was particularly ironic since they were unable to provide him a

microphone when he was introducing the movie – a world premiere, no less – and he had to resort to using his “outdoor voice.” And the same thing happened again at the Ethan Hawke movie where several audience members apparently recognized the voice and were shouting “Hey Paul, your mic’s on!” so that instead of one distraction there were dozens. Awesome.

Anyway. I think the Whistler film festival is fine if you live in Whistler and

don’t mind being bandied about, and enjoy watching movies in the freezing cold. And no, I don’t mean it was cold in Whistler, because actually it was quite mild. I mean the theatres were unheated. Thank goodness for blanket scarves, which served more as blanket than as scarf – although I did see other people toting actual blankets around, and others just huddled under puffy coats. Luckily Whistler the resort town rocks. It’s fun and full of energy and we had a great trip even if a certain festival let us down.

Whistler, Day 4

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Born To Be Blue: Ethan Hawke plays Chet Baker during a period of time in the 1960s when he was approached to make a movie about his troubled life as part of a comeback effort. It’s inspired by Baker, but not a true biopic, so Hawke has plenty of room to spread his wings and make the character his own, in what is probably one the best performances of his career. His charming junkie act lends a little humour to the proceedings, surprisingly, so it’s not as bleak as you might think. His co-star, Carmen Ejogo, plays a composite character representing Baker’s “women” and is stunning, not just because she’s beautiful but because she gives a delicate and refreshing performance, a real break out, and fearless alongside such a seasoned professional. Canadian actor Callum Keith Rennie rounds out the cast as Baker’s long-suffering agent, and he attended the screening to tell us all about painting fake palm trees to make Sudbury pass for California, and squeezing in the shots before the first snowfall of the year. This movie was a real passion project for Hawke and it took a long time, and funding from both Canada and the UK, to get the thing off the ground. It’s a real treat for jazz fans because the music permeates this film, as it should. It’s filmed in a kind of jazzy way too, a little offbeat maybe, but with plenty of sparkle. So if you can get over Hawke’s terrible Chet Baker teeth (or lackthereof), you should find lots to enjoy in this fantastic, tragic film.

River: An American volunteer doctor in Laos becomes a fugitive when he intervenes in the rape of a young woman and her assailant’s body is later pulled from the Mekong River. It’s one of those spiralling, out of control situations, and we’re right in the heart of it thanks to writer-director (and Canadian!) Jamie M. Dagg. Fuelled by fear, the doctor makes an attempt for the US embassy. The editing has energy that propels the story forward, but it’s more than just a thrilling escape attempt. This movie leaves you wondering about the ethics of visiting or living abroad – obeying laws that may clash with your own ethics, and who pays the price when the two disagree. Sean’s got a great review of the movie here.

The Legend of Barney Thomson: Robert Carlyle directs himself in the eponymous role, an awkward and shy Glaswegian barber who just so happens to take up a new hobby: killing. An inept local detective (Ray Winstone) is on to him, and it becomes a battle of the bumbling fools to see whose luck will run out first. One thing Barney’s got going for him: his mother, played uproariously by the ever-wonderful Emma Thompson, who goes balls to the wall with her delivery. Kitted out with a prosthetic neck, her accent is through the roof and it’s the most fun I’ve seen her have with a role, maybe ever. The movie is FUNNY. The accents are a little thick to my Canadian ears, but the jokes land so quickly that I never struggled for long. It’s like the Scottish Fargo – an absurd farce that’s just a whole lot of fun. Carlyle was very humble at this, the North American premiere of his movie (sidebar: this one too was funded with Canadian dollars!). He called his character’s suited look a tribute to his father – “My dad was a tie man his whole life.” He acknowledged several other personal touches, including shooting on locations where he’d grown up. He credited Danny Boyle with being a particular influence – “he just creates the right atmosphere” and taught him “not to interfere.” He also called a certain scene a “definite nod to David Lynch” (his Blue Velvet, in fact), but I won’t spoil it for you because it’s sure to make you smile. This movie was entertaining and well-executed, so I was surprised how emphatically Carlyle responded to an audience member who asked “Do you want to direct more films?”, the answer being “No!”

Passing Time in Airplanes

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Oh, watching movies in airplanes. It makes me feel like a Dr. Seuss character. Not only am I cavalier about a technology I admittedly don’t understand, but I’m actually so bored by this magical, flying tin can that I’m actually watching practically new releases at the same time. Plus trying not to accidentally elbow my tiny plastic cup of water, or that of my neighbour, while also holding on to my precarious ear buds (those of you with similarly tiny ears will understand: ear buds are NOT one size fits all). If Sean and I decide to watch a movie together, we have to try to synchronize the pressing of the Play button, or else one of us is watching with a delay. AND we have to ignore what everyone else is watching around us for fear of spoiling an untold number of movies in a matter of minutes.

On our way there, Sean watched Mr. Holmes. I tried to watch it with him but the jack was broken and I was only getting sound in my left ear, which was giving me a left ear-ache.

On our way back, we watched Bridge of Spies. Apologies to Mr. Spielberg because we absolutely intended to see this in theatres, it’s just that life and other movies kept getting in the way. And this movie did not deserve this treatment from us. I LOVED it. I was sorry to be seeing it on a screen the size of a box of tictacs but happy to be seeing it at all. That Tom Hanks. Tom Fucking Hanks. This guy is the bomb. If
you haven’t seen it, it’s about an ordinary lawyer who is asked by his government, during the cold war, to defend a Soviet spy. He accepts, for his country, even though this means he quickly becomes the second most hated man in America. He’s an honourable guy who goes above and beyond – even putting himself at risk by going over to Germany to negotiate for a prisoner swap. Joel and Ethan Coen, who co-wrote the script with Matt Charman, deliver the goods, and Spielberg knows just what to do with them. It’s interesting that with enough distance, this isn’t just about espionage anymore, it’s about seeing the humanity on both sides. What a relief. And here’s a nod to Mark Rylance who gives a nuanced and impressive turn as the spy. It’s a very grown-up character, drawn evenly, bravely, and with dignity, and Rylance lives up to every detail. The movie also manages a fair bit of humour – a spoonful of sugar to help the history lesson goes down. It was gripping, it was smart, and I loved the shit out of it.

Vacation is the newest installment in the National Lampoon tradition, with Ed Helms taking over the role of Rusty Griswald, who just wants to take his family on a vacation to Walley World (god knows why). It tries really hard to live up to its predecessor, going as far as stealing whole plot lines without really doing them justice or finding their charm. Ed Helms is watchable as always, and the truth is, we did chuckle. Although because we failed to press Play at the EXACT same time, I was
watching one or two seconds ahead of Sean, which meant every time I squeezed his thigh he knew a joke was coming, and every time I pinched it, that something gross was about to happen. And a lot of gross things happen. Because if you can’t be witty, go for the grossout. This movie relies on every road trip movie cliché you’ve already seen so believe me when I say you can live without it. But if you’re stuck on a plane for 6 hours, you could do worse. Probably.

You know what’s a better way to pass your time on a plane? Reading! And boy have we got just the thing for you! Our dear friend and fellow blogger Carrie Rubin has a terrific new novel out.
It’s a medical thriller called Eating Bull, and you’ll be so absorbed you won’t even notice the seat belt sign clicking on and off like it’s disco night at a truck stop. I totally recommend it, and it’s available for purchase by Canadians Eating Bull at that link, and by Americans over at Eating Bull that one, and to most others up in this place. But for a couple of our lucky readers, we’d like to send you a copy – FREE. Leave a comment on this post to be eligible, and give us a follow\retweet on Twitter for an extra chance to win.

Her Composition

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I’ve yet to comment on my Whistler experience because Jay has already written in detail about our first two days and was so spot on with her reviews of Carol, The Life and Death of an Unhappily Married Man, How to Plan an Orgy in a Small Town, and Love that I felt I had nothing to add. It was Friday (or, as I kept calling it, “Sunday”) that I dared to separate from the other Assholes and brave the Whistler Film Festival alone.

Whistler itself proved easy enough to navigate. I managed to explore almost the entire village on foot in about half an hour and is structured in such a way that even I would find it difficult (though not impossible) to get lost. Her Composition was a different story. After a chance encounter with director Stephan Littger earlier that day, I had the rare and awkward treat of sitting next to him at the Canadian premiere of his debut feature. Littger had already expressed some apprehension about the disappointing speakers at the Village 8 Theater and made a point of encouraging us all to move up to the front of the theater to get the full effect. Sitting so close to him made his anxiety contagious and we both shifted in our seats when the DVD began to skip only a minute into the screening. The problem soon corrected itself though and I was able to relax and enjoy this fascinating and challenging film.

Her Composition is, thankfully, not a comedy, sparing me the pressure of laughing on cue. Malorie (Joslyn Jensen), like Natalie Portman’s character in Black Swan, is an artist who wants to please her instructor so badly that she has trouble truly letting go. With her thesis composition due in a matter of weeks, she decides to start over. Finally getting out of her head, Malorie starts working as an escort and drawing inspiration from the sounds of the city and of her encounters with her clients. Her new unorthodox approach to songwriting feels empowering at first but the narrative begins to get darker and darker as her experiences as a sex worker get more and more dangerous and as her obsession with her masterpiece begins to border on madness.

Littger’s frustration with the house speakers is understandable. The sound mixing makes or breaks a film like this and Littger and his team have clearly put a lot of thought into how to communicate texture through sound. Malorie hears music in her head which, of course, is inspired by the sound and rhythm of the world around her. To communicate this to the audience- the relation between a man’s grunts during climax and the song in her head- is the hard part. It’s a work of exceptional editing and sound mixing.

Even if all the subtleties of the sound weren’t showcased as well as Littger would have liked, he’s still got Jensen- whose performance is nothing short of captivating. Her transition from teacher’s pet to tortured genius is believable every step of the way. I was disappointed that she was unable to attend the Canadian premiere last week because I would have been happy to meet her and congratulate her.

I hope a lot of people see this in theaters with speakers that would make Littger proud.

Whistler, Day 3

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Amerika: A documentary about a Canadian grad student who goes over to the Czech Republic (where her parents immigrated from) to discover “tramping” and have an adventure. The film fails to introduce us to our two main characters. She, we come to know, is the Canadian, and he…well, he’s just there. No word on how they hooked up or how they came to be travelling together. Tramping is an alternative way of life for Czechs. It’s leaving everything behind and hitting the road, living on the land, sleeping in the open air. Some live like that permanently, off the grid and housed in a forest that feeds them. Others tramp on weekends and go back to their white-collar jobs during the week. It’s an idealized but dying culture, and interesting enough I suppose, but I felt pretty disconnected from the film, and not just because I really loathed the Canadian, applauding silently in my heart when she got dunked into a river. Of course the Canadian was on hand at the screening to answer all of our burning questions (I did not ask “Why couldn’t you have gotten eat by a bear?” or even “Does the Czech Republic even have man-eating animals in its wilderness?”) and it was revealed that the random travelling partner was in fact the film’s director. We didn’t notice that ourselves because he uses a “character” name in the movie. He recruited her for this film and set up all of their itinerary, and arranged for the tramps to be met along the way, the “cast” and crew sleeping in hotels at night while pretending to hike during the day. The whole thing was contrived and while I struggle to call it a documentary, I have no qualms at all about calling it bad.

Angry Indian Goddesses: This one won runner-up for People’s Choice at TIFF this year (Room nabbed the title) but we didn’t get to see it then and are happy to take it in now. Billed as India’s first female buddy movie, it’s a comedy-drama about the wild, bachelorette-style female bonding rituals enacted after one woman announces her engagement…and then it gets turned on its ear. Actually, that’s putting it too mildly. The shifts in tone in this movie are JARRING. On the whole I really liked this movie. It’s a lot more grown up than what Bollywood usually offers. The women are all compelling and we get to see a side of India not normally presented to us. But when the movie goes dark – and it goes DARK – there’s little warning. It’s pretty abrupt after the hijinks and singing and dancing. So steel yourself. But do see it. There’s not a lot out there like it.

Chasing Banksy: After Katrina, street artist Banksy arrives surreptitiously in New Orleans and leaves behind some mysterious pieces of art on the city’s abandoned, derelict buildings. Anthony, a starving artist in New York, knows that Banksy’s work goes for upwards of a million, so he plots to track down the artwork and retrieve it. He and a couple of buddies take the road trip of a lifetime to see if they can become rich stealing art. This movie appealed to me because its concept is really interesting. Is art that’s made for the public allowed to be taken by the public? Is it meant to be transitory? Should it be allowed to rot or be demolished? Or should it be preserved, even if preserving it means stealing it? Can you steal something that doesn’t belong to anyone? Does it belong to everyone? And should you monetize art that’s meant to be free? So many interesting questions and this movie just killed me because it failed to really wonder about any of them. It’s not a good movie no matter how you define the terms, and that’s a real wonder since the star and co-writer actually went to New Orleans to steal some Banksy art. Why, then, is he so bad at pretending to be himself? I’m not sure, but this movie really let me down.

River

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Of all the films we saw at the 2015 Whistler Film Festival, River was my favourite, and apparently, I’m not alone. When the bulk of WFF’s awards were handed out yesterday, River won the Borsos Competion for Best Canadian Feature Film!

As well, writer/director Jamie M. Dagg was honoured twice in connection with River, for Best Director and Best Screenplay (naturally). River’s lead, Rossif Sutherland (Donald’s son and Kiefer’s half-brother) also received an honourable mention in the Best Performance category. And when the People’s Choice Award is announced tomorrow, I will be rooting for River to win that too, because it’s awesome.

What was it about this movie that grabbed me? There’s so much there to love. It’s a Canadian-Laos co-production, the first of its kind and the first western movie to be filmed in the southeast Asian country of Laos (if you’re rough on your geography, Laos is nestled between China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar). It’s hard to call anything we see onscreen beautiful, exactly, but the surroundings almost become a character of their own. The title, though generic, is fitting because the seemingly omnipresent water is an obstacle that our protagonist grapples with again and again.

The movie starts in a frenzied emergency room and the tension only builds from there. Every sight and every sound tightened the knot in my stomach as I watched the action unfold from there. The cinematography is fantastic, the editing is tight, the score is amazing, and Rossif Sutherland is a revelation as Dr. John Lake. Dr. Lake is one of the doctors in that frenzied opening scene, and the outcome results in him being asked to take some time away. After a night of drinking at a vacation spot in south Laos, Dr. Lake witnesses a sexual assault and from there everything goes to hell.

Rossif commands our attention right away. He’s got more than a little Jack Bauer in him, frenetic, unstoppable, and big enough to have eaten Kiefer whole. But Rossif is clearly set on making his own name rather than relying on his lineage, and in River he delivers a star-making performance. From the start, Dr. Lake is not a super likable guy, but Rossif makes us root for him anyway. We’re with him all the way through his journey and Rossif owns every single frame.

At all times, Rossif is an overpowering presence in the best of ways, and it is clear that the foundation for his stellar performance is Jamie Dagg’s work behind-the-scenes. It’s hard to believe this is a Canadian movie and even harder to believe this is Jamie’s first feature film. The action scenes, and there are many, flow naturally, are perfectly staged and suck the viewer right in. Despite the fact we know in our gut that this can’t end well, we follow Rossif eagerly, because he and River are so compelling. And just when you think it can’t get any better/worse, Dagg’s script delivers a fantastic payoff that elevates Dr. Lake and this movie to a whole new level, which did not even seem possible because what came before was already so great.

During the Q&A, we were told that this movie is being given a wide release in the spring of 2016. How wide seems yet to be determined, but this is a movie you need to track down and experience. Because River will take you on a wild ride that you won’t soon forget. Don’t miss it!

Thoughts and Themes from Whistler Film Festival

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Whistler Film Festival’s slogan is “Inspiring and Connecting Stories that Matter”, which is so generic I had to look it up even though it is attached to the pre-movie montage at every screening and we’ve seen ten movies in the last four days. But in the spirit of WFF’s slogan, here are some thoughts and themes inspired by our time here at the festival.

1. Consistently great Canadian movies

At least half of the movies we saw were Canadian or co-Canadian productions, and they were consistently good. Canadian content rules have conditioned me to see Canadian movies as filler and nothing more, but I need to get over that notion and Born to be Blue, How to Plan an Orgy in a Small Town, The Legend of Barney Thomson, and my favourite of the festival, River, are helping me ease into that new mindset.

2. Real-life storm porn

It’s a good thing we brought an umbrella. The local weather forecast called for 110 inches of snow this week. I didn’t bring my ruler, and most of that snow had turned into rain by the time it reached the village (which is 5,000 feet below the mountain peaks) but I think for once th witner e meteorologists got it right. Even the rain was pleasant, though, and the thick, fluffy
snow capped off the idyllic experience in this beautiful mountain town (or more accurately, “resort municipality”, because it doesn’t seem that anyone actually lives here).

3. Technical difficulties

From long, unmoving lines in an empty 8 theatre cinema, to lines that were permitted to m hqdefault erge when they should have been kept separate, to triple viewings of the same commercial, to cancelled screenings, to reserving more than half the seats in a theatre for patrons who never showed, the Whistler Film Festival was an utter mess. This topic deserves its own article, so stay tuned!

4. Australians

There must be more Australians in Whistler than anywhere outside Australia. It’s absolutely insane that their accent here is more common than ours. Whether you’re in the gondolas, hotels, theatres, coffee shops, pizza places, box offices, restaurants, equipment rental places, or grocery stores, in Whistler there is no escape from talk of dingoes eating babies.

5. Uncircumcised penises and other gratuitous nudity

I lost count of the number of penises I saw this weekend. It was a lot. And I think there might have been even more times when I thought, that woman is only naked because the director/screenwriter/executive producer wanted the excuse. omg-gross-roger-rabbit-censored-1