Yearly Archives: 2016

Tribeca: Ordinary World

Note: when this film premiered at Tribeca, it was called Geezer.

Perry is the Geezer in question, a middle-aged suburban dad with edgy hair and a family he loves, but he’s just a little bit checked out of his ordinary life. As he turns 40 he’s stewing in what-ifs, foremost among them, what if I hadn’t left my punk rock band just as it was maybe about to take off?

He’s no semblance of a musician now. He works in a hardware store and only manages to sneak in a few chords around his kids’ morning routine. But on the occasion of this milestone birthday he decides to treat himself to the wildest party a has-been can muster before noon and he runs in to an old flame who reignites old dreams.

Geezer_film It’s not exactly ground-breaking material but here’s the gimmick that’ll put butts in theatres: it’s Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong playing Perry. And is it pretty effing cool to see him play the guy he might have been had his own post-punk outfit not taken off when it did? Yes, yes it is.

So then the question you’re next going to ask is: Holy shit, can Billie Joe act? And the answer is no, no he can’t. I mean, the director, Lee Kirk, told us he was a great actor, but the movie seemed to indicate that the Kirk’s pants were on fire. Sean thought he was okay – inoffensive, but he never forgot for a 720x405-Geezer_press_1 moment that he was watching Billie Joe Armstrong. I, on the other hand, thought it was a scootch worse than that. Unnatural. Self-conscious. Very “you can tell I’m acting because my hand is over here on my hip, which means I’m going through some internal conflict I’m not subtle enough to convey any other way.” And yet I’m not going to condemn him because the movie really is a vehicle for him. He’s what makes it cool and relevant, makes the movie rise above the other mid-life-crisis\path-not-taken meditations. Plus, Kirk pads the cast with some better talent: Judy Greer as the old flame, Selma Blair as the current wife, Chris Messina as the scowling brother, Fred Armisen as an ex-bandmate.

The theme may be familiar, but I still admired the writing. Kirk tries to take a fresh perspective, never blaming the wife and kids for Perry’s lack of success. geezer The regret without resentment shows maturity I’m surprised to see in a character like Perry. Billie Joe never quite transcends the role, but there is an honest vulnerability there that’s a little charming. And Billie Joe is not just a casting liability, he’s an asset to the soundtrack because he’s written some original music for it, and the movie is never more confidant than when Armstrong is performing. In this he excels. The songs he wrote are great and I imagine they’ll be invading your radio waves sometime soon, lending the movie some major credibility.

I can be certain about the music because we were treated to a concert immediately following the screening. Billie Joe had Green Day drummer Tré Cool backing him up and Jesse Malin on rhythm guitar. They launched into the film’s first song, Devil’s Kind, with Cg0_FVfWYAAgOcu an energy that defies the fact that Armstrong is in fact a middle-aged father of two. They played a couple of Green Day tunes as well, Scattered and then American Idiot, which morphed into Bad Reputation. Oh, did I not mention that Joan Jett was in the house? Yeah, she has a small cameo in the film but she got up on stage and showed the boys what a scene-stealing badass she still is. Her voice hasn’t aged a single minute and the woman’s still sporting leather pants. Armstrong closed the night with Ordinary World, the film’s acoustic ballad, and I couldn’t help but wonder at the twinkly goodness of my life. In the movie of my life, there is no path not taken.

Note: Geezer has since undergone name change. Now known as Ordinary World, it will see a release October 14 2016 – on DVD\streaming and in select theatres.

Special Correspondents

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It looks promising on paper: two radio station journalists get locked out of a big story in Ecuador so they decide to make it up instead. Eric Bana plays images73W735HW Frank, the dashing and charismatic reporter while Ricky Gervais plays his lackey, Finch. Finch is a clumsy and oblivious guy with a beautiful but disloyal wife (Vera Farmiga) whose ineptitude causes he and Frank to miss their career-making flight to Ecuador just as a war is breaking out.

Unable or unwilling to admit their mistake, the two men decide to hole up in New York City and broadcast fake reports convincingly doctored via satellite phone. Somehow neither anticipates that this will get out of hand, even when a sweet colleague (Kelly MacDonald) worries over the increasing threat to their safety. Do things snowball? Yes, yes they do.

Ricky Gervais adapted the script from an existing French movie (Envoyes tres speciaux). Nobody skewers celebrities quite like Gervais, his stand-up is tightly written and expertly delivered, and he’s got so many successful TV shows that IMDB stopped counting . Movies, however, seem not to be his forte. There were moments during Special Correspondents when I thought: “Niiiiiiice.” but those turned out to be little desert islands in a huge sea of disappointment.

The premise is teeming with satire potential but the movie is devoid of Special1 anything intelligent or funny or worthwhile or clever. It’s flimsy. Like, paper-thin. And the characters are so one-dimensional that while we can’t really believe that there is not one but two Hottie McHottersons willing to bed Finch, we also don’t really care. This feels lazy and phoned-in and at times it also looks downright cheap, and I don’t just mean that it was filmed in pretend-NY Toronto (although it was. Sidebar: Gervais’s father is Ontario-born and French-Canadian).

The cast is fairly impressive but the poor script and direction make sure there are no stand-outs (and to be honest, I’m still wondering if the stuff with America Ferrera was just really weird and unnecessary or if it was as downright racist as it felt). In the end, Special Correspondents isn’t even a satisfying way to pass the time. If you’re looking for something decent to watch on Netflix, look elsewhere – perhaps to Grace & Frankie, a series that actually does have something to say, and lands laughs while doing it.

Scared Shitless: Alone or with a Group of Strangers?

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So I finally saw the rest of Hardcore Henry. I completely stand by my review of the first 45 minutes and am only disappointed in myself that I gave this inexcusably boring failed experiment of an action movie a second chance.

Despite receiving some very generous reviews from some of our Honourary Assholes, Hardcore Henry didn’t quite draw the crowd that I was expecting. In fact, for the first time in my life, I found myself alone in a movie theater for a full 96 minutes.

Having the room to myself had its advantages. I didn’t have to glare at anyone for eating noisy nachos or checking their phone and could even feel comfortable to check my own phone whenever I wanted. I also got up and changed seats twice. I didn’t enjoy the Coming Attractions though.

Have you seen the preview for Lights Out?

It’s fucking scary!!!! Now imagine watching it in a big dark room all by yourself where the speakers are so loud that nobody outside would be able to hear you scream. I couldn’t help but look over my shoulder throughout the previews. They actually make these previews way too scary if you ask me. Here I am sitting down to watch a guilty pleasure action movie and am stuck watching terrifying clips of scary movies that I never would have consented to see.

This trailer didn’t have the same effect when I was forced to sit through it again, this time with twenty or so other people who came to see Green Room. There seems to be a feeling of strength in numbers when dealing with the paranormal. I didn’t know anyone else in the theater but I felt safer knowing that they were there.

That feeling of security didn’t last once Green Room started. If you haven’t heard of this (by my count) third feature from writer-director Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin), it features a young punk band who barricade themselves in their dressing room after a controversial set to protect themselves against neo-Nazis. It’s the kind of movie that makes you fear your fellow man and wondering what the guy sitting behind you is capable of.

Saulnier takes his time at first to give us a chance to start to like this struggling touring band. As the story unfolds and the sense of danger continues to intensify, it becomes harder and harder to guess what’s coming next. Which isn’t to say that there is any real mystery or even any major twists. Saulnier isn’t nearly lazy enough for that. He just presents believable characters in a credible (at least credible for this genre) situation and dares to ask “Now what?”. It’s a violent film with terribly violent things happening to its characters on both sides of the door. Somehow, however, it never feels sadistic or exploitative. Every act of violence in Green Room is presented as a terrible thing and, for once, there isn’t a single character that seemed to want this situation to turn this bloody.

So, to sum up, see Green Room if you don’t mind a tense and occasionally punishing 95 minutes, don’t see Hardcore Henry, and don’t watch the trailer for Lights Out alone.

“Nuts!”

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Nuts: a pejorative term indicating insanity; a slang word for testicles. In the case of “Nuts!”, it’s both.

nuts-documentary-1 J.R. Brinkley was a doctor in small town Kansas who, through the grace of his revolutionary goat-testicle transplant surgery, cured many men of impotence and infertility while bringing vitality and prosperity to the town. Brinkley had to build hospitals just to deal with the growing demand, and almost accidentally became a radio pioneer simultaneously, broadcasting ads for his services and answering write-in medical questions between blasts of good ole country music. Despite exponential interest and a horde of faithful followers, the American Medical Association accused Brinkley of “quackery.” Just as they set out to discredit him, he came out with an elixir just as 3suknzs_7ZdkkSzSTUmjXyzJGnOxJrFPD4GX9-ypnY4 (1) effective as the goat-testicle procedure but with much less risk. And then he ran for governor, with a slogan borrowed from a laxative commercial. True story.

How have you never before heard of this broadcasting maven and trailblazing doctor? Whatever the answer, Nuts! director Penny Lane will make sure you never forget him. Her mixed-media documentary uses his official biography as a jumping-off point, and whatever archival footage and modern day interviews can’t cover is brilliantly animated. And I do mean brilliantly: not only is the animation a perfect match for this strange and whimsical tale, it’s also impeccably timed and used judiciously. Different animators are nuts.0.0 used for each segment, but there’s a uniform style that injects a lot of kinetic energy into a story hilariously but dryly narrated. You won’t believe how quaint goat fucking can look.

Eventually the film moves from eyebrow-raising to downright subversive, with enough old-timey euphemisms for erections (or the lack thereof) to keep you in patter for your next hundred dinner parties. Lane has already shown herself to be a thoughtful and engaging filmmaker (Our Nixon) but with Nuts! she proves herself worthy of a Brinkley-esque empire. You can’t help but admire the way she weaves the story together; she examines what amounts to an American folk tale but she does it with modern tools that turn the story on its head. Penny Lane is her own brand of documentarian, and quite possibly on to becoming this generation’s best. Nuts! is not to be missed.

This post was first published over at Cinema Axis, where you can find lots more great Hot Docs coverage.

Angry Inuk

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An Inuit community in Canada’s northern territories faces an interesting challenge. How can a culture, that prides itself on a patient and understated expression of anger, make themselves heard when their opponents are famous for a more aggressive approach?

Canadian seal hunting has gotten a lot of media attention since the late 1970s thanks to well-funded animal rights groups and their celebrity spokespeople. The brutal clubbing of baby seals in Newfoundland and Labrador may be the most common image associated with seal hunting but, for many Inuit people living in Nunavut, the practice looks very different. Traditional seal hunting, in a culture well-known for a humane and non-wasteful approach to killing animals, can be a matter of survival in some parts of northern Canada. Not only do they eat the meat and wear the fur, the latter of which is a necessity with the region’s frigid temperatures, but they also need money to survive just like the rest of us. One way they can earn money is by selling products made from seal fur.

Although the laws related to seal hunting make exceptions for the Inuit, decreased demand due to such laws, and the propaganda put out by Greenpeace and other organizations, have driven prices down, making it harder for them to survive economically. In Angry Inuk, filmmaker Alethea Arnaquq-Baril follows fellow Inuit activists to Ottawa, Toronto, and Europe as they try and tell their side of the story.

Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, using fantastic footage of northern Canada, gives us a behind the scenes look at traditional seal hunting and the preparation of furs. More importantly, she takes the time to lay out the historical and political context that can limit the options of First Nations communities. And finally, by focusing on a social media campaign designed to educate people about traditional seal hunting, she gives hope for a more constructive dialogue in the future.

It’s a side of the story that is so often drowned out by extremely vocal activist groups that have the money and resources to make themselves heard. At my day job, I work as a social worker with First Nations and Inuit people and even I have never heard the story of seal hunting told quite like this. Regardless of your position on animal rights, Angry Inuk is a fascinating film, one that offers a perspective that we don’t usually see.

Originally posted at Cinema Axis.

Frank and Cindy

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When GJ returns home from school, his mother, Cindy, has a surprise for him: “I quit drinking!” An even bigger surprise than her 15 months of sobriety? She’s also spent all of his savings. So it turns out he’s home for good. Deprived of film school, he turns the camera on his fuck-up Mom and her has-been rock-star husband, Frank.

MV5BMTYyNTkwNjg4OV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwNzUyNTM1ODE@._V1_ This film is actually a dramatic reenactment of a documentary of the same name, by G.J. Echternkamp. And his parents are undoubtedly larger than life, which in this case is a kind euphemism for colourfully pathetic, hopeless losers. Rene Russo and Oliver Platt play the titular characters and you’ve got to admire their abandon. They each give strong performances, and you’ve got to give props to Russo in particular for her willingness to throw herself into such an unflattering role.

When GJ has enough of their codependent craziness he seeks out his biological father for some commiseration but he surprisingly turns out to be in Frank’s corner. It’s way too easy for GJ to blame his struggles on his underachieving parents, but when that’s not getting him anywhere, what then?

Watching this film and reminding myself that Frank and Cindy are real people makes this a particularly excruciating experience. And to be honest, the screenwriters trying too hard 2015 Features-FrankAndCindy1 to stick to the source material means this movie has no real backbone. It ambles but doesn’t amount to much. And weirdly, GJ seems to be the least developed character – it’s his story but he’s a pretty passive player. And that feels ironic since Echternkamp himself helped bring this script to life, and he’s also sitting in the director’s seat, although at times he seems to forget about the advantages of feature vs documentary – he could make the scenes look amazing yet seems to enjoy filming in dank little corners.

At any rate, this is clearly a personal film for Echternkamp. There’s catharsis happening here. And self-indulgence. Lots of that. But Russo and Platt are good, good enough to make up for the film making foibles.

Tribeca: Life, Animated

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When you get to see a movie like this, it’s kind of a privilege to get to talk about it.

Life, Animated is a documentary featuring the amazing Suskind family. Actually a fairly typical, loving American family who happen to have a son named Owen who’s autistic.

Owen, the youngest of two boys, was a happy and rambunctious little 3 year old when autism reared its head, and suddenly the Suskinds had a boy who wouldn’t talk and who’d lost many of his newly-acquired toddler abilities and motor skills. He remained quiet and withdrawn for many years until his mother recognized a pattern in his gibberish – it was actually a line of dialogue from The Little Mermaid.

Owen was a big fan of Disney cartoons and often watched them with his family. What they hadn’t realized until then was that Owen wasn’t just watching them, he was studying them. He’d already memorized the complete scripts of several movies, and was learning to equate emotions with the slide-owen-drawing exaggerated facial features on his favourite cartoon characters. One day Owen’s father is able to hold his first conversation with him in years simply by pretending to be Iago, the talking parrot from Aladdin.

Fast forward to today, and Owen is a bright young adult. He’s learning skills to help him be more independent, and when he graduates, he’ll be moving into his own condo in a group home. Owen has flourished because his family was able to communicate with him through his beloved Disney movies. Disney canon became their family bible and Owen came out of the autism shell because of it. The Suskind family knows that Disney films won’t do it for all autistic kids, but they are encouraging families to find that one thing their child is passionate about, and to make it family culture. This is how they brought back their son and they only wish the same for others.

Owen’s dad Ron met the filmmaker, Roger Ross Williams (technically the first black Oscar-winning director, for a short he did in 2010), when both worked at Night Line. Ron had just written a book about his family’s experience and thought it might make an interesting documentary. Williams agreed. So do I.

I don’t know about this film’s potential to “save” other autistic kids. Owen is of course still autistic, but his parents and his brother can reach him now, they ZZ49547432 can express their love and see it reflected back, even if it’s a line originally quoted by Belle to the Beast. What I do know is that this film opens a lot of doors. This isn’t just a talking-head piece, we actually get to visit with Owen in his new situation, and his family as they continue to take on new challenges. We get to see autism in action, impacting a family and influencing a community. And we get to see that Owen is a guy with wants and needs like any other. He expresses them differently, and once you get the hang of his language, it’s not necessarily even worse, it’s just different.

Now as a young man, there’s still nothing Owen likes better than to chill with a Disney flick. When he’s feeling anxious, it’s 3 scenes of Dumbo. When he needs to overcome odds, Hercules will do the trick. When he grapples with growing up, it’s The Lion King to the rescue. It’s a code, but once deciphered, it’s actually pretty ingenious.

I do hope loads and loads of people will see this, and be encouraged to start a dialogue about what autism is and how we can all be part of a workable solution. Autism is a spectrum disorder, which means not all are like Owen. Some will be more or less affected, but I think the takeaway is that perhaps all lives could be improved if only we were looking for the right kinds of answers.

This isn’t the first documentary to look at autism, but what makes this one so Cg2IZfdWgAEvZad interesting and watchable is Owen himself, a very dynamic individual. He’s at his best at the helm of his Disney Club, where other learning-disabled young people gather to watch and discuss Disney animation. They may even run lines afterward, or play the score, and once in a while Jonathan Freeman, voice of Aladdin’s villain Jafar, drops in to lend a hand, and even Gilbert Gottfried, voice of Iago himself, has attended, but nobody knows the lines better than Owen himself.

Owen proved this at our screening at the Tribeca festival where he proudly put his skill on display, playing opposite Gilbert Gottfried, and even feeding him ZZ15895CF1 the lines. Many of the film’s crew were on hand, as well as the entire Suskind family, to launch this movie into orbit. There’s a lot of love and care gone into this work, and some of the best bits are when Owen’s own stories are beautifully animated (by Mac Guff). Owen identifies more with the sidekicks rather than the heroes of his beloved films, and he brings them to life in a very moving way.

They hope to take it to theatres this summer and I hope that you will all take the time to see it – it’s something special.

Captain America: Civil War

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captain-america-civil-war-team Spider-Man. Ant-Man. Falcon. Black Panther. These are the top four characters, in order, in Captain America: Civil War. You might think it’s a bad sign that neither Captain America nor Iron Man is on that list, but you’d be wrong! Although you would be right in thinking I wish this had been a Spider-Man movie with a Captain America/Iron Man cameo, rather than the other way around.

The downside to all of this is we’ve seen it all before. Not only in the sense that it’s roughly the six hundredth comic book movie that came out this year, but also because DC’s eulogy to the millions of fictional civilians killed every year by superheroes came out just six weeks ago.

One big difference between the two movies: Marvel’s is ~~far~~ better. Though like Batman v. Superman, Civil War is too long. With that said, I’m willing to forgive Marvel since that extra run time was used to shoehorn in Spider-Man. Who, as mentioned at the start, was AWESOME.

Another big difference: Marvel’s movie is ~~way~~ funnier. Civil War would have won by default anyway since there were no laughs at all in BvS, but Civil War is legitimately funny in between the dead family member melodrama.

But as with BvS, don’t expect anything new, don’t expect a good villain, and don’t expect the story to make any goddamned sense. Really, the only differences between the two movies are that (a) we’re glad to see/meet Marvel’s supporting heroes while DC’s just felt like filler; and (b) most of Marvel’s heroes are eager to make us laugh even while fighting, which is a welcome change from DC’s rainy night fights between surly mumbling demigods. Spider-Man is the perfect example of Marvel’s success in both categories, and that’s enough to make this movie worth watching.

Mostly, that’s because Spidey is the best superhero ever and I’m pumped he’s back in the MCU, where he belongs. Though I am suffering from chronic end-credit-scene-fatigue, as a Spider-Man fan I’m glad I stuck around ’til the very end. Hint, hint.

Captain America: Civil War gets a score of eight webslinging vigilantes out of ten.

Clouds of Sils Maria

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To be honest, I watched this movie some time ago, it’s just that writing about it in any meaningful way was a little daunting.

It’s about an actress, Maria (the fabulous Juliette Binoche), who has had a CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA lauded career after being launched in the theatre playing Sigrid, a sizzling ingénue. Now, years later, the playwright and her mentor has died, and there’s interest in re-staging the play, and Maria is approached to star. The catch? This time she’d of course be playing the role of the older woman, Helena, in a complicated May-December lesbian office unrequited romance (whoa, that’s a mouthful).

Should Maria take the role? Initially she declines. She finds the older character to be a bit pathetic, too much of a doormat. But the director is tenacious and Maria is not exactly afraid of a challenging role, so she accepts. She retreats to a remote chalet with her personal assistant (Kristen Stewart) and they begin rehearsing the play, only in the rehearsing, Maria again grapples with her distaste for the weakness of the character, and must face her own feelings about aging.

Chloe Grace Moretz floats in as the scandal-prone Hollywood It Girl who is to play the younger woman. She flatters Maria with fandom but ultimately plays the role much differently than Maria did, which further drives Maria to feel obsolete, and to wonder if this older character is perhaps an uncomfortable reflection of herself.

Clouds-of-Sils-Maria-14 I didn’t find the story-telling in this movie to be quite satisfactory, but the performances were top-notch. There’s an intense, almost sexual chemistry between Binoche and Stewart that makes their rehearsals a rare treat to watch. Not often are two such strong female characters allowed to shine on the screen together with such naked feeling.

Binoche loved the idea of this movie so much that she approached director Olivier Assayas with it and convinced him to write the script as well. In a funny meta twist, Assayas co-wrote the script of Rendez-Vous, which was the film that helped make Binoche a star. Binoche claims she strove for such authenticity that she accepted a brief role in Godzilla just so she could believably deliver a line about acting in blockbusters.

Chanel (the fashion house) stepped in not only with wardrobe but with financing so that Assayas could film in 35mm. The movie does in fact look totally gorgeous, not least because it’s filmed on location in Sils Maria, Switzerland. And Binoche reins over this film with stately grace, simmering jealousy, raging insecurity – every bit of it layered and nuanced to perfection. Maria is dealing with a changing industry and a role that requires alarming introspection, but what Binoche and company accomplish is to make us ask ourselves – are we Sigrids, or are we Helenas?

Cheer Up

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When it comes to sports movies in general, and cheer leading ones in particular, we’ve seen the gamut: we’ve seen big, decisive wins, tragic near misses, hard-earned second places, and undeserved firsts. Canadian-born director Christy Garland shows us the side rarely seen in movies but always there in real life; she shows us the losers.

cheerup In Cheer Up, we meet Finland’s second-worst cheer leading squad. On the heels of a humiliating loss, Garland explores what it takes to keep going in the face of defeat. Where will the girls find motivation? The documentary follows three of the women in particular – coach Miia, and team members Patu and Aino. We soon realize that their struggles and failures are not just confined to the gym. Miia’s personal life is on the rocks, Patu is grieving her mother while her father impregnates a new girlfriend, and Ainu follows the highs and lows of first love, and all the teenage angst that comes with it.

Actual cheer leading is quite minimal in the film, but team practices tend to be full of CfJ8RVBW8AQ8j2K tears, tumbles, and bloodshed. Miia travels to the cheer leading mecca of the world, Texas, to seek inspiration but finds that their aggressive, winner-takes-all spirit just doesn’t translate back home.

The sum of all these parts is a stark look at the emotional toll of constant failure. Cheer Up isn’t just a title, it’s an admonition. These girls are the bleakest, saddest, most serious cheer leaders you’ve ever seen. Smiles are a scarce commodity. Despite their lack of success, Garland never loses respect for her subjects. The young women are shown to be complex, thoughtful, and strong – a big stretch from the sport’s usual Texas-sized cliches of empty cheer-up-movie pep and ponytails. It’s refreshing to remember that not everyone goes home with a trophy. For these women, and many others, success will have to be defined elsewhere.

This movie premiered at the Hot Docs film festival in Toronto; this review first appeared at Cinema Axis, home of many more excellent Hot Docs reviews.