Category Archives: Kick-ass!

The Meddler

A widow moves across the country to be with her only daughter. It sounds trite and cliched and we’re only one sentence in. Hold up. Does it help if I tell you that Susan Sarandon and Rose Byrne play the mother and daughter? It should. Keep reading.

In fact, The Meddler may very well be tale as old as time. After her husband’s death, themeddler_trailer1 Marnie has a little bit of money and an awful lot of time, so she packs up her New Jersey home and finds herself a condo in L.A. where her daughter Lori writes for television. Marnie’s California awakening is intoxicating. She loves all the things that most of us hate about L.A. But shopping at The Grove and volunteering only fill up so many hours. The rest are spent calling or visiting her daughter. Her daughter is not impressed.

Marnie calls Lori when a new Beyonce song comes on the radio. She calls her when she hears about a serial killer roughly in the area. She calls her when Lori hasn’t called her back, and she calls her again when that one isn’t returned either. Then she texts. Then she knocks on the door with bagels. Or doesn’t knock but just comes in.

Small cracks in Marnie’s Positive Polly act surface: she’s grieving and trying hard not to show it. And she’s achingly lonely. So when Lori suggests that her therapist has meddler_xlarge encouraged her to set boundaries with her mother, Marnie sees the therapist herself. And when that doesn’t go as expected, she finds other people to mother, like the ‘genius’ she overuses at the Apple store, and a friend of her daughter’s who’s more receptive to advice and well-intended intrusiveness.

None of these really get to the heart of her pain though; her meddling is just a bandaid on her very wounded heart. She isn’t prepared to be alone so early in her golden years. She feels guilty about an inheritance that feels like blood money. And the only person who understands her grief is the daughter who’s pushing her away. Marnie wants to hold Lori close because her daughter is a piece of the husband she’s missing, but Lori needs distance from the mother who only reminds her of her father’s absence. The disparity is heart-breaking.

The Meddler is a very interesting meditation on grief and the various ways it’s expressed. The movie is marketed as far fluffier than it is, however with Susan Sarandon in the lead, there’s a lot of joy and laughter mixed in with everything else. She gracefully navigates between the bubbles of emotion as they rise to the surface. The writing is stronger as a drama than as a comedy but Sarandon is talented with any material, and lights the way with her stunning luminescence.

The 4%

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“The next Kubrick, in no one’s mind, is a woman.” – Julie Delpy

TIFF has organized this short documentary and asked tonnes of industry professionals, including a glut of top female talent, why such an enormous gender disparity exists in film making (only 4% of directors are female).

5f75e13ac3a619390745379e3ae3057d The talking head interviews are culled extensively from the guest list of the 2015 festival, and include the likes of Toni Colette, Michael Moore, Patricia Clarkson, Judd Apatow, Mimi Leder, Paul Feig, Catherine Hardwicke, Angelica Huston, Jill Soloway, Mira Nair, and so many more.

Even as females slowly break through in producing, writing, and starring roles, the director’s chair remains elusive. Directing is a boy’s club, is run by a patriarchy. We are conditioned to think male when we think director. And if a woman is holding the megaphone, she effectively neuters herself in order to be taken seriously.

The documentary also touches on females being hired exclusively for “female”stories when in fact they long to tell a breadth of stories just like their male counterparts. Directing takes vision, shamelessness, openness, patience, and discernment – these are abilities that women are capable of. What it does not actually require: a penis. So why then were there more female directors in 1929 than there are today?

This documentary made me think about a female director we saw at TIFF – Hope Dickson Leach (The Levelling). She co-founded the initiative Raising Films, a campaign to make the film industry more parent-friendly. It’s certainly not a women-only concern, but it is a barrier to get more women on a film crew.

Sarah Solemani, star of Bridget Jones’s Baby, took the campaign to the red 14199431_1403270093023633_6583121126926777920_n-188x300.jpg carpet when she broke out a sign reading ‘Budget the Baby’. She says “As an actor I can claim a massage or a facial but I can’t claim childcare. Actors are the most pampered people on sets. It’s the crews — the electricians, catering, camera people — who are often on set at 4am.” Hope Dickson Leach is a mother of two herself; you can imagine what a grueling 20 hour day on the set can mean to a family with young children.

The 4% is a small commitment – just 30 minutes of your time to enlighten yourself on a topic we should ALL be concerned about. It’s not just women who benefit from a more inclusive work place. They have stories and perspectives and voices that are distinct and worthy, and they need to be told and seen and heard. Equally.

TIFF: LBJ

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We had an interesting overlap this year at TIFF: we saw both Jackie, which follows First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in the moments and days following JFK’s assassination, and we saw LBJ, which follows Lyndon Baines Johnson as he inherits the White House following JFK’s assassination. Both movies have actors portraying Jackie, John, Bobby, Lyndon, and Ladybird, and both movies have value.

Jackie will of course be an awards contender; LBJ was more of a wild card. It’s by director lbj Rob Reiner, a venerable talent who hasn’t directed anything of note in a couple of decades. As he introduced this film to the TIFF audience, however, it was clear that this movie really meant something to him. He talked of being a young man during LBJ’s time in office, and hating him because he was the man who could send you to your death in Vietnam. Only with time, age, and political engagement could he look back at Johnson as something more. He was the president who had to shoulder the burden and responsibility of John Kennedy’s legacy. He took over lots of the civil rights work that JFK had begun, and LBJ is the one who pushed it through, though history sometimes forgets to give him credit for this.

You may be surprised to hear that Woody Harrelson plays LBJ, underneath a not inconsiderable amount of makeup and prosthetics. Jennifer Jason Leigh steps in as Ladybird, in a career move that I can only imagine is a little depressing to a 1980s babe. It may not be intuitive casting, but it is inspired – it makes them come alive, not just as historical figures but as real, flesh and blood people, in a way I haven’t seen before. Rob Reiner’s position is also that Lyndon was a very funny man, and the unexpected joy of LBJ is how much you’ll chuckle watching it.

It’s a safe movie though, a conventional one that won’t speak to audiences or to history lbj-2016 the way Jackie does. That said, I still found it to be quite enjoyable. The film neglects to give us a complete picture of the man, but does focus interestingly on LBJ’s rivalry with JFK, allowing Harrelson to swing between cockiness and shame and a whole presidential gamut in between – it’s refreshing to watch him flexing so readily after a string of second-banana performances. He’s playful bordering on hammy, showing us wit, vulgarity, searing intelligence, and frustrated ambition.

One of my favourite scenes occurs between Harrelson’s LBJ and a nasty Richard Jenkins as Senator Russell as LBJ haltingly tries to explain the importance of civil rights to a bigoted southern senator while his black maid serves them dinner. So while this is in fact a clichéd biopic of “an important man”, it’s also got little touches and details that make the ride worth it. Rob Reiner is no stranger to political dramas and isn’t afraid to show us that even the most idealistic of political agendas necessitate some manipulative, under the table handling.

LBJ is Reiner’s best work in years, and Harrelson’s too. It doesn’t soar to the great heights of Jackie but it does make an interesting companion piece to it. What the heck – see them both.

TIFF: The Levelling

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When her brother commits suicide, Clover does something she hasn’t done in ages: she goes home. ‘Home’ is a relative term – right now it’s the trailer beside a crumbling farmhouse damaged by floods where her surly father sleeps at night. Having just deeded the farm to his now-deceased son, her levelling_01 father is working at keeping what’s left of the farm running. Clover, meanwhile, is trying to piece together what would make her young, whole-life-ahead-of-him, brother put a gun to his head. Neither is mourning in a conventional way, and they’re certainly not doing it together.

The Levelling is somehow beautiful without trying to be. So is its star, Ellie Kendrick. There is strength and vulnerability to both. Shot on location in Somerset where floods actually did threaten farms, director Hope Dickson Leach was fascinated by the plight of farmers who invest so heavily in something so fickle as land. The Levelling, her first feature, is told from the stark perspective of people for whom life and death are matters of course. levelling_03 When death is part of business, part of the lifestyle, part of every day, what toll does it take, and at what remove do they experience more personal brushes with mortality?

Blunt emotions roil beneath a landscape of precise, economical film making. Dickson Leach keeps a cool, steady tone. Her lead, Ellie Kendrick, is perfectly distilled in her restrained performance, never boiling over in a role that could easily have been histrionic in less capable hands.

The Levelling had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, in its discovery section. Dickson Leach is in fact a discovery, and having discovered her, it will be just as important to keep an eye on her for great things to come.

Captain Fantastic

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Captain Fantastic, the movie and the man, asks big questions, gives brutal answers, and leaves you with deep thoughts for analysis.

Captain Fantastic, played with vigour by Viggo Mortensen, is a man raising 6 kids in the woods like a pack of wild coyotes. They’re off the grid. They hunt web1_160715_edh_captfantastic_m-1024x682 and grow food, read meaty novels by campfire light, and train their bodies strenuously, sometimes dangerously. Each kid has a unique, made-up name so they’ll be the “one and only” in the world. It sounds heavenly or lonely, depending on your perspective. Not all the kids are happy. Not all the parents are happy either, although so far I’ve only mentioned Captain Dad. Mom, as it turns out, is off in a mental health facility, and has been away from the family for several months before they learn she’s committed suicide.

Her death is the catalyst for the family returning to civilization to attend her funeral.

Viggo Mortensen is fantastic, although not always likeable. I’ve seen enough documentaries to know that raising a family off-grid, though idealistic, is not always so great for the kids. In Surf Wise, a doctor raises his kids on the beach, establishing a surf school. He turns out some great athletes, but the kids are otherwise totally unprepared for real life. Without education or even identification, it’s tough for them to rejoin the ‘real world.’ In The Wolfpack, a bunch of kids are kept pent up in a New York apartment. They develop rich inner lives and lots of art, but are totally unaware of what real life entails. In Captain Fantastic, the kids are book-smart but lacking in experience. They don’t know how to interact with the modern world, so unless all of them are prepared to continue subsistence living, and form an incestuous colony, it’s not really a sustainable lifestyle. And the kids are growing resentful.

Captain Fantastic raises a lot of interesting questions about parenting. Should a parent’s decisions always be respected? Are anti-capitalist, anti- movies_captainfantastic establishment values best addressed by dropping out of society? How much freedom is too much freedom for children? And what kind of risk is acceptable? And do children need to sometimes be shielded from difficult or painful concepts, or is complete honesty always the best policy?

This film is quite funny in parts, and quite serious in others. And by serious I mean I cried a small ocean’s worth of salty tears. The kid actors are mercifully good, and Mortensen is generous with them in their shared scenes. Writer-director Matt Ross delivers some pretty satisfying emotional release, and a captivating twinning of joy and sorrow. Unfortunately the script dips a bit in its final acts, letting Captain Fantastic off a little easily, but it’s already a philosophical triumph by that point, a good movie that’s actually about something.

Three Days in Auschwitz

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Auschwitz may or may not be on your list of places to visit. It’s not your typical holiday fare, to stand on the ground where millions were murdered. A trip to Auschwitz is not a day easily spent. It is somber and it is difficult, and it is meant to be. Living history is what makes it real for us, turns a textbook event into something concrete that happened to real people, not very long ago in our human history. The evilness makes it feel surreal, and it takes a real emotional impact to ground the experience for us once again.

The act of remembering belongs to all of us. This is how we heal. It’s also how we learn, and how we make sure it never happens again. It seems just as important today as it’s ever been to challenge prejudice, discrimination and hatred.

And it’s a tribute to the dead. Millions of lives lost, cruelly. People made to suffer, to live in agony, to live with the constant loss of loved ones, to live with ghosts, to live without the promise of a future. There are fates worse than death.

And it’s in memory of the survivors, those who survived the camps but lived with the scars. Who were faced with the daunting task of rebuilding. Who struggled with grief. Who scraped their hearts raw in the search for forgiveness. Who went on, alone.

We are all saddened\enraged by what we know of the Jewish genocide at the hands of the Nazis. The Holocaust is a dark shadow for humanity. We all owe a debt of some kind, and we pay it in part by bearing witness.

Three Days in Auschwitz is a documentary by Philippe Mora covering his own trips to visit the site. His mother had been thrown in a concentration camp and was rescued from it just one day before she would have been shipped to Auschwitz herself. Eight other family members perished there. It’s a tough subject but we’re soothed by its graceful score by Eric Clapton.

Mora’s film is not filled with facts or figures, none of the statistics we’re all familiar with anyway. It’s just a humble attempt to grapple with its reality: an act of mourning, an act of vengeance.

Visiting Auschwitz with a heavy heart and a troubled stomach, you find the thing that speaks to you: will it be one shoe, left behind? The remains of an oven built to roast people? The electrified, bard-wired fence that represented hopelessness to the millions of people imprisoned and starving behind it? For Mara it seems to be the train tracks. It’s an image he comes back to often. Auschwitz was chosen by Hitler because of its easy access by train. Bodies were crammed into cars, many dying before they reached their final destination. The trains were incessant. People were “sorted” as they disembarked, some sent straight to death, others sent into slavery first. The train tracks great disturb him.

And that’s the thing. A visit to Auschwitz may make you feel sick. Watching this documentary may do the same. It should. Don’t turn away. Don’t say it’s “too hard.” Remembering is the easiest part of this thing, and you’re lucky that this is the role you were born to play. If ignorance and hatred are what allow atrocities like these to be committed, then education and remembrance can help fight them. Do your part: it’s available on DVD and VOD and in select theatres September 9th.

Short Film: TUB

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797 151 Americans are masturbating right now. You’re welcome for that mental image. A single man might rub one out anywhere there’s a wifi connection and a box of tissues but for many married men, the shower is stealthier. With so much spilled seed washing down shower drains on a daily basis, have you ever thought about what happens to it all? Of course you haven’t. You’re not a sick fuck. But do you know who has thought about it, and thought about it a lot? Bobby Miller.

Sorry to out you, Bobby, but actually, he kind of shined the wank spotlight on himself when he debuted a short film called TUB at Sundance in 2010. For a brief time, it was all anyone could talk about, and here’s why: a young man who can’t commit to his girlfriend impregnates his tub instead. Accidentally, of course. But still. A controversial 12 minutes.

When we saw Bobby Miller at Fantasia Film Festival, he was introducing his first feature, a little slice of body horror called The Master Cleanse. He struck me as a very funny guy with an offbeat sense of humour and a certain sensitivity. His film impressed me by being well-written and way more thoughtful than any such movie has a right to be.

Miller has said that he hopes TUB will “become the new Jaws, but y’know, for masturbation” which is about the greatest ambition I’ve ever heard publicly stated and I sincerely hope it’s the headline of his resume. Because I’m certain I’ve aroused your curiosity (though hopefully no more), seek out the brilliant short film TUB.

His name is Bobby Miller, folks. He’s going to be famous some day.

Whistler, Day One

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We’re in beautiful Whistler, British Columbia for the opening gala of the 15th Whistler Film Festival. The Whistler Film Festival (WFF) styles itself ‘Canada’s coolest film festival’ which I suppose is a clever play on the fact that it’s up in the mountains at a gorgeous ski resort town, the very best in skiing that North America has to offer, in fact.

The whole of Whistler is really constructed around this magical skiing. The hotels are “ski-out” – there are ski valets so you can ski right to the lobby door, check your skis, and walk right to your room in your stocking feet if you so wish. The village is packed with all the vacation delights you might hope to partake in when not skiing – there’s shops and galleries and most of all, ultra-deluxe restaurants for your taste buds’ every desire, and they’re all snuggled up cozily in a pedestrian-only enclave. If you’re tired of skiing, you can try snowshoes, or zip-lining, or dog sledding. Or, you know, fuck that shit: there’s award-winning spas and hot springs, and I’m telling you right now there’s nothing more romantic than sitting in a hot tub with a glass of champagne while the snow falls quietly around you.

Of course, being assholes, we’ve come to one of Canada’s most naturally stunning outdoor spaces, nestled between two majestic mountains, in order to spend time in a cramped, windowless room, watching movies.

Welcome to the Whistler Film Festival!

Last night, after a celebratory dinner to toast Sean’s birthday (warning: food porn on Twitter @assholemovies ), we hit up the opening gala where the feature presentation was Carol.

Carol is a Todd Haynes-directed drama starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. Carol (Blanchett) is struck by the kindness of a stranger named Therese (Mara) just as her life is falling apart. Picture New York, 1950s: her marriage is ending, messily, and custody of her daughter is uncertain. She pursues a friendship with the much younger woman but they struggle when their feelings turn romantic. The world isn’t quite ready for such an affair.

Obviously I think Cate Blanchett is the bee’s knees and it strikes me now that I’ve never really heard a single word said against her. She’s easy to adore because she’s consistently great. I think Oscar will remember her come nomination day, and it might be knocking on Mara’s door as well. Blanchett is an absolute dream here, so present in every scene, so poised. Her anguish is apparent in a look, the lowered lashes, the head turned just so. She’ll remind you of an actress from another era, which is perhaps appropriate since this is a period piece (Matt pointed out that Haynes seems to favour “the 1950s in the closet”, and felt that Carol not only stood up to Far From Heaven, but exceeded it).

Haynes sets a mournful tone early on. His direction is artful, considered. The story is slow, and simple, like a rose in his hand shyly opening its petals. We rely so much on the silent interplay between our two leads, so much is said just by their smouldering eye contact that we need excellent, ready camera work, and get it. Mara and Blanchett enhance each other on-screen, there’s a crackling electricity that makes it almost titillating for us to be eaves dropping on their early encounters.

But this is the 1950s. Things aren’t going to go smoothly for these two. This is not just a character study. It’s a story of suppression, repression, forbidden love. The programming director of the Whistler Film Festival introduced it say “This film moved me to tears, and I hope it does you too.” I thought it a little strange that he wanted me to cry, hoped that I would cry, but he was right. I was moved.

Carol is as rich as the chocolate tart we had for dessert last night. Every bite is nuanced and full of flavour. Both sinful and sweet, every crumb devoured without regret because it is good. And when it’s done, you can leave the table feeling satisfied.

Last Tango in Paris

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If you notice a theme here over the next 10 days, you’re both perceptive and right. I’m off to Paris and to celebrate, I’ll be posting – guess what? – reviews of movies set in Paris! Mais oui!

I must be in a weird mood, and I’m trying not to read into the fact that the first Paris movie I thought was none other than the craziest of crazies: Last Tango in Paris. If you’ve seen it, you can’t forget it. Marlon Brando plays Paul, a man mourning his wife’s suicide. He meets a young woman, Jeanne (Maria Schneider), when they both view the same apartment with intention to rent. They begin fucking. It was a “no strings attached” relationship before those words really existed. So stringless in fact that Paul insists they share absolutely no personal information, not even first names. The affair continues, graphically, for quite some time, until one day Jeanne shows up to find the apartment empty and Paul gone, without a word of goodbye.

But the story doesn’t end there! They meet again, on the street, and this time Paul, in his grief, spills his story, but Jeanne finds that this loss of anonymity is not exactly to her liking, disillusioning in fact.

Director Bernardo Bertolucci was inspired by his own sexual fantasies to make this film. He opens it with two paintings by Francis Bacon, which he visited frequently in real life at the Grand Palais Royal. The film’s palette draws heavily from the colours in these paintings, which reminded Bertolucci of Paris in the winter. He had lofty ambitions for the film, inspired by great art, but what he turned out was instead akin more to pornography?

Why? Because both stars felt “violated and raped” by the process. Maria Schneider, young and naive at the time of filming, felt manipulated into filming some of the more graphic scenes, including one in which Jeanne is sodomized (butter being the infamous lubricant of choice) but the “real tears” are Maria’s, who felt humiliated. Her shock and revulsion make it impossible not to feel guilty by association. Brando was so incensed that he refused to speak to Bertolucci for 15 years after filming wrapped.

Opening in 1972, of course there was great controversy. People in Paris faced weeks of lineups since foreigners from neighbouring countries with greater censorship laws flocked to see it where they could. In New Jersey, protestors called “Pervert!” to those who dared to see it, and the viewing prompted housewives to apparently “vomit in disgust.”

Nevertheless, the film was undeniably ground-breaking and free, and 40 years later, we’re still talking about it.