Category Archives: Kick-ass!

The highest honour we can bestow on a film. Anyrhing in this category is a must-see.

In The Shadow of Iris

She is a seductress. So when you show up to put a spare tire on her car and she spontaneously asks you for more, you say yes. Her terms: pretend to kidnap her and keep the ransom money for yourself. Her banker husband is horrid, she says. Maybe she touches you for just a little longer than necessary. Leans in so you can smell her intoxicating skin, catch a glimpse down her low-cut dress.

download-2100-low_IRI-high1 She is out to lunch with the banker. As he pays the cheque, she goes outside for a smoke. Two minutes later, she’s disappeared. The kidnap plot is in motion. A photo of her bound and gagged is texted to the distraught banker, a demand for cash is made. But something goes wrong at the drop-off: fake kidnappings are more complicated than they seem. WAY more complicated.

This french-language movie is THICK with complications. Pea soup thick. Guacamole thick. Grandma’s cankles thick. Charlotte Le Bon, Romain Duris, and Jalil Lespert all put in stunning work; they are the beating pulse of this thing. In The Shadow of Iris is rich, compelling, fertile. The pacing is brisk. Lespert, also the director, pulls great performances out of his costars, necessarily since we don’t always have time for a buffer of motivation. But it’s smart and a little out of the way – a great Netflix find, if you ask me. Sex, money, intrigue, lots of naughty lingerie: what else do you want? No really. WHAT ELSE DO YOU FRICKING WANT?

Hot Docs: Tokyo Idols

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What saved a 43 year old man from depression? What is he so devoted to he refers to it as a religion? What is so intoxicating he’s blown through his life’s savings? Sad-sack middle-aged men in Japan are flocking to ‘pop’ concerts performed by underage girls. They’re called Idols in Japan, they perform in ‘girl groups,’ and to date there about 10 000 of them.

They’re providing a coveted if creepy role in modern Japanese society: comfort to men MV5BOTk0OTQ1NjYzNV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwODA4NzE5MDI@._V1_SX1777_CR0,0,1777,999_AL_ who have very little else going on. In a tanking economy, middle aged men find themselves with poor jobs, little money, and even less confidence. It’s no wonder they’ve stopped dating real women and have shifted their fantasies toward little girls, who run no risk of rejection. The Idols host “meet and greets” where their fans will of course pay a lot of money to have a minute’s worth of childish conversation and a handshake – in a culture where the handshake still has a sexual component to it, having been completely taboo between the sexes until only a few decades ago.

Yes, watching these stunted middle aged men fawn over children is uncomfortable. They worship virginity, prefer girls who are “still developing,” and believe that 17 is past prime. Their worst fear is that these girls will grow up to be strong women. Sapped of self worth, many men in Japan have quit dating ‘real’ women altogether. The birth rate is falling. Idol culture is proliferating. The men who adore them beyond all reason are called ‘Otaku’. These super fans would put even the most fervent Justin Bieber fan to shame. Not long ago, Otaku were considered failures, some song lyrics even called them filthy pigs, but they are becoming more and more mainstream.

The Idols, meanwhile, are on constant parade, never far from a judging eye. Every year there are Idol elections, where the men pick their favourite girls to perform for the next calendar year. For the girls it becomes about winning male adoration, and they become conditioned to want it from an alarmingly young age. The men can spend thousands (monthly!) attending concerts, accumulating merchandise, and buying time with the girls. If this sounds like prostitution to you, you’re not wrong. It’s even creepier than prostitution, isn’t it? There’s no intercourse taking place, but money changes hands for its substitution.

Director Kyoko Miyake does an excellent job absorbing her audience into this obsession. I almost felt like a voyeur, that’s how intimate her access is. And as morbidly fascinating, as this phenomenon is, Miyake expertly nestles it within a social context that deepens our understanding of it. While I was discomforted watching these transactions take place, it’s clear that the lines are blurrier in Tokyo. Miyake carefully shows both sides, the good with the bad, finding what sympathy she can in the humanity of it. Tokyo Idols is a really interesting watch and my only complaint is that I wanted even more. I’m positive there are even darker themes here to explore (what happens to the past-prime girls, for example?) and I can only hope that we’ll see more from this director in the future.

Casting JonBenet

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The case of murdered 6 year old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey still fascinates today. Originally reported as a kidnapping, her strangled body was eventually found in the family home. Her parents were publicly if not legally tried but the case remains unsolved. In ‘Casting JonBenet’, streaming now on Netflix, director Kitty Green uses members of the Ramseys’ Colorado hometown to recreate JonBenet’s last hours. But more than that, the film documents the actors’ reflections on the crime, their theories, their impressions, and their own personal connections and recollections.

Green explores the mythology surrounding the 20-year-old crime, and palpates the collective memory, to which even we, the viewer contribute. It makes for a very different, almost hybrid documentary, that doesn’t so much shed light on the JonBenet case but reminds us of how we’ve all coloured our own recollections over time. The movie’s casting call includes the following characters:

MV5BMTY3NDU3ODUwNl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwNjE3NTE5MDI@._V1_SY1000_CR0,0,1738,1000_AL_ The Mother, Patsy Ramsey, seen by many as suspect #1 since the kidnapping note was determined to have been written on her stationary with her pen from inside the home. Was she jealous of her beauty queen daughter? Frustrated by another bed wetting episode? Did she accidentally kill her, then try to cover it up? Interviews with the press were defensive and unsympathetic. Do you identify with her grief or crucify her for her mistakes?

The Father, John Ramsey, destroyed vital evidence when he moved his daughter’s body, despite being cautioned not to. There were no signs of an intruder. His intuition in finding the body struck police officers as suspicious – did he know too much? And then rumours of sexual abuse circulated. Plus, the family let the ransom note’s 10am deadline slip by without a word, and John was booking tickets for the family to fly to Atlanta that same day.

The Brother, Burke Ramsey, was shielded by his parents from the press as a child but recently came off as creepy if not culpable in an interview. A flashlight in the family home fits perfectly with a gash on her head, and could explain a skull fracture. A piece of undigested pineapple found in JonBenet’s stomach seems to have come from Burke’s nighttime snack – did he strike out in anger? And marks on her back are consistent with toy train tracks in his room. Did her brother kill her and his parents cover it up?

A convicted pedophile living in the area was found with a picture of her in his possession. He also had a stun gun – could this explain those marks on her back? He’d also placed a call to a friend not long after, confession to having “hurt a little girl”. And the knots in the garrote used on JonBenet were consistent with knots used when he tried to choke his own mother with a telephone cord.

Santa, actually a friend of John’s dressed as Santa, visited the home just days prior to the Boxing Day murder, for a party at which the children each sat on his lap. He seemed to pay particular (too much) attention to JonBenet, and even arranged a “secret” meeting with her later.

The only new information in this documentary is the dirty laundry being aired by the actors, about themselves. But it’s a compelling look back and a bracing reminder that JonBenet’s killer was never brought to justice.

Hot Docs: Ask The Sexpert

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When Dr. Mahinder Watsa was starting out his career as a doctor, he wrote a medical column in the back of a ladies’ journal. At the time, young women were dying from back-alley abortions while others committed suicide, unwilling to let their prospective husbands know they were not virgins (due to sexual abuse). Dr. Watsa knew then that there was a problem in India. He wasn’t particularly specialized in human sexuality, but through research, hard work, and years of experience, he made himself so. He was a pioneer of human sexuality education in India, a position still necessary today when many provinces still ban sex education in schools, and a position that he still occupies at _76446807_panos00178357x624 the age of 91. With teachers unable and parents unwilling to discuss sexuality, there’s a huge chasm of ignorance in India, and Dr. Watsa is still doing his best to fill it.

I find it utterly impossible not to be charmed by Dr. Watsa and by extension, by this documentary by Vaishali Sinha. A newspaper sex column, seen as a lark in the lifestyle section of our newspapers, a laugh on late night TV, is vitally important in a country like India. Dr. Watsa writes plainly, even conversationally, to his readers with honesty, openness, and precision – three things otherwise completely missing from the field, which is astounding considering they are confronted by the same internet porn and HBO programming that we are, and yet are completely in the dark about even the basics of reproduction let alone pleasure. What a 10 year old Canadian could answer here, a mother of 4 may be mystified with over there. Of course, it isn’t just ignorance but shame and fear that keep this subject deeply shrouded. It’s discouraging to see the mountain yet to be climbed, but Sinha instead heartens us with the people at the forefront of this movement toward education.

Dr. Watsa is a humble figure, unassuming and prone to humour. He knows his work is important but seems a little struck by his own inadequacy, likening his column to a “drop in the ocean.” In a country of over a billion in population, sex is definitely happening if not openly discussed – or admitted to. Dr. Watsa is a bright light. As a good director, Vaishali Sinha knows that every hero needs a good villain, and he has one: a woman hellbent on inflicting her own “moral” standards on everyone else, and not afraid to take the matter to the courts. Indeed, at the age of 91, both Dr. Watsa and the newspaper he writes for, the Mumbai Mirror, are charged with obscenity, with Dr. Watsa possibly facing jail time if convicted.

This is a fascinating documentary. Sinha has found a brilliant subject and has the good sense to stick with him. I’m positive that he will endear audiences near and far.

30 Years of Garbage: The Garbage Pail Kids Story

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I was probably too young for Garbage Pail Kids. I was possibly too young for Cabbage Patch Kids too, for that matter, but had one anyway, given to me when I was 2 years old and my dumb Mom replaced me with a brand new baby. My Cabbage Patch Kid was named Maud (they came pre-named, with a birth certificate) and she had red yarn hair. My baby GPK_8a_adambomb sister also got one, a brunette named Valerie, which I felt was unfair because she’d done nothing to deserve it besides poop and scream and steal my parents’ love.

Cabbage Patch Dolls were a huge phenomenon in the 1980s, and so too, eventually, were the little trading cards that parodied them. Topps bubblegum did Bazooka and other candy store staples. They’d paired baseball cards with bubblegum for years, and were expanding to “non-sport” cards as well. Failing to secure rights to do a legit Cabbage Patch line, they decided instead to do a “fuck you” line that would skewer these saccharine-sweet dolls.

30 Years of Garbage introduces us to the brilliant, twisted minds behind this idea that was obsessively collected by kids and doggedly censored by parents and principals. Jacques Cousteau, for some reason, cautioned parents that their Garbage Pail loving kids would inevitably end up on cocaine! I may have been too young to appreciate os4_132a this stuff at the time, but I have certainly been aware of them in retrospect. These bubblegum comic artists tapped into a vein of childhood rebellion and ended up making lasting work.

I was shocked to learn that a Garbage Pail co-creator was none other than Art Spiegelman, who wrote Maus, a deeply moving graphic novel about the Holocaust (he uses cats and mice effectively – if you haven’t read it, you simply must). I shouldn’t be surprised that I’d never known the connection – his publishers worked hard to keep it that way!

30 Years of Garbage provides equal doses nostalgia and insight. You don’t need to love the product to find this documentary compelling: who got screwed, who got sued, who won the war between the First Amendment, and Product Disparagement?

But it’s also interesting because I see this fad repeating itself. My little nephew Brady is into something called Shopkins, which as far as I can tell, is a really stupid “toy”. It’s a tiny rubber thing, shaped like some grocery store item, about the size of a pencil eraser. cards21n-2-web He’s got a bag of rice, and a bag of flour that looks almost identical to the bag of rice. How these are fun toys I have no idea. We usually pile them on Lightning McQueen and race. But Brady’s own counter culture is already budding at 5 years old: Shopkins are parodied by the Grossery Gang, the same basic shitty toy, but disgusting (ie, mouldy cheese). I don’t get it, but adults aren’t meant to. It’s kind of cool that he’s got his own little act of rebellion, but if you’re in the mood for some throwback rebellion, here’s a hint: the Garbage Pail Kids are back.

30 Years of Garbage is playing at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival this Sunday, May 7th, 5:30pm at Innis Town Hall.

Joshy

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Joshy has planned a fun bachelor-party weekend away in Ojai, just him and his buddies celebrating his upcoming marriage with as much booze and drugs and strippers as time and space allows. Except Joshy’s fiancee commits suicide, and the weekend’s now been downgraded to just a “hangout” among friends.

Only a few brave friends arrive, besides Joshy (Thomas Middleditch): stable Ari (Adam Pally), determined to keep things light, neurotic Adam (Alex Ross Perry) whose default mode is wet blanket, and Eric (Nick Kroll), the friend with coke and bad ideas. They pick 2f03a127a57d72e5de9a6d7fb71e9cf5 up some hangers-on (Jenny Slate among them) and proceed to have a very weird weekend.

How do men mourn and commiserate with their grieving friend? They mostly don’t. They mostly tamp down their feelings in favour of whatever self-destruction’s close by. The film is largely improvised, making use of all the comedic chops, so the chemistry is crackling even if it feels like the plot goes absolutely nowhere. It’s really about the presumption of our perceptions, and maybe the unknowability of people. The characters disclose things to each other, and expose themselves to us, but we don’t come away really understanding them any better for it.

Joshy has a really ephemeral quality to it, a sense that nothing can last, good or otherwise, and things will inevitably be left unsettled. This may be a comment on closure and its real-life attainability, and that’s exactly when the movie feels the most honest.

This was a humbly entertaining watch for me because I like these guys, but it wasn’t exactly earth-shattering goodness. It’s kind of a cross between a raunchy comedy and mumblecore, so take that admonition with the grain of salt it deserves.

Shiners

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Shoe shiners: at the airport, a busy subway station, a kiosk in your local mall, even on the street corner. There they are, every day, providing a service to the people walking by. Yet this humble profession is often overlooked. Who goes into shoe shining, and why? Director Stacey Tenenbaum gives us a documentary that gives us the answers by putting us in the shoes of shiners around the world.

Filming in cities as diverse as New York, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Sarajevo, La Paz, and more, shoeshining-640x480 Shiners gives a good sense of the universality of pride in one’s work. However, it is also clear that the profession is not viewed the same from one country to the next. In America it is being reclaimed by hipsters who deride the neglect of older crafts. In Japan we see a lot of honour in the skill, in making something old new again. But in other places, it’s seen as degrading work, and the shiners work on the street, earning little money and even less respect.

In that way, Tenebaum quietly addresses poverty and social justice without quite mentioning it directly. Shiners is a character-driven documentary, the shiners speaking for themselves. A mother of young children barely earns enough to feed her family; she refuses to be shamed for her position but insists that her children will be ‘professionals.’

Don, a.k.a. the shoe dude, working a street corner in Manhattan, has a vibrant personality. A former accountant and pastry chef, he’s chosen shoe shining for the sense of freedom it gives him. He talks candidly about the racist connotations of shoe shining, and the satisfaction he’s derived from telling “uppity people” their shoes are dirty.

Shiners excels at providing an insider’s view. It cracks the humanity wide open, and guarantees that you’ll never walk by these people without seeing them again.

This review first appeared at Cinema Axis.

Hot Docs: Do Donkeys Act?

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Did you ever have existential questions about donkeys? No? Well, move on.

Or not. The truth is, you haven’t seen anything like Do Donkeys Act? It’s a documentary about donkeys (a donkumentary?), made reputedly by humans (Ashley Sabin and David Redmon), for the enjoyment of – donkeys? There are no talking head interviews in the film, very little input from people, period. There are, however, extended shots of donkeys just “being.” Filmed on a few different donkey sanctuaries where tired and abused donkeys go to live out the last years of their lives, there are no donkey facts, no never-before-seen donkeys in the wild. What the film does offer is plenty of space to contemplate the life and death of these beasts of burden.

Do_Donkeys_act_1 How do donkeys cry? Do they tremble inside? Do they dream? These are the types of insights and reflexive cues provided by poetic narration provided by Willem Dafoe. We might spend several minutes just gazing upon a bunch of donkeys eating communally from a trough. We may consider the different utterances we hear and attempt to interpret each one. The donkeys are communicating – are you listening?

The documentary takes the humble donkey and elevates him to the star of his own movie. I started to wonder, listening to them honk and hee-haw, if they were perhaps translating the poetry we were hearing from Dafoe. But then, in a mind-bender, I wondered: is it maybe we who are translating their poetry? Mind blown.

Although its run time is brief and it takes a while to get into its unique rhythm, Do Donkeys Act? has an embracing kind of empathy that came to be quite moving. I’m not sure I’ve come away with specific meaning, but I’ve just spent 72 minutes thinking about donkeys, which is 72 more than I’ve ever given them before, and there’s a kind of grace in that, triumph for the film makers, dignity for the film’s brave subjects.

This review first appeared at Cinema Axis, where you can find lots more excellent Hot Docs coverage.

Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent

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Jeremiah Tower, if not the father of American cuisine, is at the very least its very fun uncle. But a case for fatherhood can be made. He burned bright and then disappeared. This documentary finds him.

One of Tower’s earliest memories: sitting on the beach, maybe 6 years old, watching an old man prepare barracuda for dinner. Holding his hands as they held the knives, watching him rub some spice from the jungle on them, the aroma as the fish cooked. The old man said that next they would eat snake, or perhaps iguana, and those exotic dishes got confused as the old man also referred to the “little lizard” in young Tower’s pants. That child’s confusion, food and sex already mixed up in his head, is perhaps why he went on to be a renowned chef. But it’s not the only reason.

CNN Films: Jeremiah Tower documentary He had an unconventional childhood and perhaps not a happy one, travelling extensively with his parents who exposed him to culture and glamour while largely forgetting he existed. Food became his friend and companion, and he’d gluttonously study the menus of all the great restaurants he visited, making friends with the kitchen staff in all the best dining establishments in the very best of hotels.

He never intended to become a chef, but circumstance had made him a cook, and when opportunity knocked, Jeremiah Tower answered. Not only did he answer, he opened the door to a transformation of food and ingredients, and how we thought of them. He was perhaps the first celebrity chef but abandoned it all at the top of his game. Wolfgang Puck, Mario Batali, Anthony Bourdain, and Martha Stewart all speak of him reverently, but it’s clear his legend is still shrouded in mystery.

A couple of years ago, Jeremiah Tower resurfaced, and the foodie community went bananas foster (that’s me making a foodie joke, fyi). He was to be the new Executive Chef at Tavern on the Green, a large restaurant in New York known more for its touristy location than the quality of its food. It seemed a strange move for such a king of the kitchen, but then again, what do we really know of this culinary superstar who walked away from his own fame and success?

This documentary is fun and interesting from start to finish, but a lot of Tower’s mystery remains intact. Lydia Tenaglia shoots him like the lone wolf he is, perhaps a little scattered and deliberately artsy at times, but the truth is, Tower is a force that pulls you in, his charisma alone enough to compel. The Last Magnificent made me hungry – sure, for some of his California cooking, but mostly just for more of him, of this fascinating, elusive man.

Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent opens Friday May 5th in select cities: Toronto,
Vancouver, Calgary, Halifax, and right here in Ottawa, luckily enough.

Tomorrow

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Greetings, Earthlings!

Today is Earth Day. This year’s campaign is all about environmental and climate literacy. Historically people have “celebrated” Earth Day simply by shutting off their lights in the evenings, perhaps playing a board game rather than watching TV, which requires electricity. The Earth actually needs us to do more. This year there is a March For Science in Washington, DC, a rally and teach-in to defend the vital public service role science plays in our communities and our world. Is it crazy sad that such a rally is necessary? Yes it is.

In 2012, Nature published a study led by more than 20 researchers from the top scientific institutions in the world predicting that humankind could disappear between 2040 and 2100. Like, extinction! But it also said that it could be avoided by drastically changing our way of life if we take appropriate measures right now. Scientists are always telling us this and we’re always not listening. Well, listening maybe, but not really willing to change our lifestyle. But a bunch of French film makers got together and decided to try to rattle our cages a bit.

Tomorrow is a documentary that doesn’t just hit us over the head with the problem but rather offers solutions. For the coming food MV5BNzc5MzVkZTQtNmU1Yy00YTQ3LTk3ODMtNjY5ODc0MzU0MGE2XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMzMwODMxMTQ@._V1_SX1777_CR0,0,1777,936_AL_ shortage, they explore urban agriculture, microfarming, and permaculture. As to our reliance on fossil fuels, they visit places that are moving successfully toward renewable resources, cities declaring themselves carbon neutral. They also tackle some of the big things holding us back: economy and government. Since democracy runs on the steam of big business, how can we ever move away from consumerism?

There are lots of important questions to consider in this work by Cyril Dion and Melanie Laurent, but the greatest takeaway is that of hope. If the documentary is a little too ambitious to keep laser focus, it at least presents viable solutions , things you and I can do in our very own communities that will make a difference.

Tomorrow is in theatres in New York and L.A. in time for Earth Day, and a wider release will follow. It’s required viewing for those of us who want to leave this planet in better condition than we found it.