FILM: My Old Ass

Our first Saturday movie night in a while. We weren’t sure what to expect from My Old Ass, a film about a free-spirited young girl, Elliott, who tries magic mushrooms on her 18th birthday, and ends up meeting her 39-year old future self. What would you want to tell your younger self? And what would a young you want to ask your older self? Elliott lives in a small Ontario town on a beautiful lake, but is determined not to be a third generation cranberry farmer, and is looking forward to going to college in Toronto. She’s in that poignant week at the end of her last childhood summer, about to leave her family and friends, with a heady mix of excitement looking forward and wistfulness about what she’s about to leave behind. There are some wonderfully funny moments and some wonderfully tender moments, and it is ultimately heartwarming and heartrending, and will leave you with a lot to think about. Maisy Stella is compellingly charming as Elliott, and Aubrey Plaza is funny but also wordlessly profound in moments. Very highly recommended.

FILM: Robot Dreams

The animated feature Robot Dreams is an unexpectedly beautiful story about companionship, relationships, and life’s unexpected turns. The story is told without any dialogue, just expressively drawn anthropomorphic animal (and robot) characters set in a gorgeously drawn New York City. The artistry of the drawing is just a parade of delight, and the story is completely engaging for the whole 1:40 run. The uncliché ending left me pondering what layers of metaphor and worthy life lessons lay beneath the charming and earnest story I enjoyed so much.

FILM: Ghostlight

 The beauty of Shakespeare’s works is that they are so much a part of our culture that they can be adapted and translated in all manner of creative ways. The film Ghostlight gives us a unique new spin on Romeo & Juliet, not so much as an adaptation of the play, but a story in which a community theatre production of the play helps a family work through deep emotional issues in unexpected ways. Shakespeare as therapy. The film unfolds the story deftly, at first just introducing us to Dan, a generally mild-mannered construction worker who shows a bolt of anger that seems to come out of nowhere. And then we meet his daughter Daisy, who has even more serious anger management issues and is about to get thrown out of high school. Wife and mother Sharon is just trying to hold the family together. Through a random encounter, Dan gets pulled into a local community theatre group who needs someone for a reading they’re doing. That encounter turns out to be just what he needed at that moment, and through his improbable continuing involvement with this bunch of theatre geeks, the story of what this family is really going through, and how they might get through it, unfolds. The main actors are not big names, but they are a real-life father, mother, and daughter, and their chemistry in the film is great. If you with patient ears (and eyes) attend, you will be moved.

FILM: Hit Man

Hit Man, while it doesn’t require quite the same level of seat belt as The Fall Guy, is also great summer fun. This is Richard Linklater (the “Before” trilogy, “School of Rock”, “Dazed and Confused”) taking on film noir romance-murder-mystery in New Orleans. Glen Powell stars as Gary Johnson, based on a real-life story of a mild-mannered college professor who moonlights for the police department as a fake hit man. Johnson turns out to be a master of disguise and acting, as he wears a wire to catch people attempting murder-by-hire. It’s fun to see this side-career evolve, but then things get really interesting when he ends up romantically involved with a woman who seeks out a hit man to take out her abusive husband. Lots of good classic noir twists (think Double Indemnity) with a good dose of steamy romance (think Body Heat), and add a pinch of philosophical reflection on whether people really can change.

FILM: The Fall Guy

The Fall Guy is an unabashed petition to the Academy to finally create an Oscar for stunt work. Director David Leitch is not only familiar with action thrillers, having helmed films in the John Wick, Fast & Furious, and Deadpool franchises, but he’s also a stuntman himself, having been a stunt double for Brad Pitt and Matt Damon. This film does double-duty as a rom-com with Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt (who wouldn’t cheer for them?) as well as an action thriller, all while highlighting the craft of stunt workers. This fun story follows Colt Seavers (Gosling), a veteran stunt man who flamed out years ago when a stunt went bad, and Jody Moreno (Blunt), a rising director working on an action-thriller-sci-fi-romance. The big name star of her new picture has suddenly gone AWOL in the middle of the shoot, and the producer recruits Seavers to find the star, while possibly rekindling their romance that also flamed out years ago. When Seavers’ quest to find the missing star suddenly turns into its own real-life action-thriller, with blockbuster stunts and some nice plot twists, the movie gets really good. As a romance, it’s a bit cheesy, but as an action thriller with a meta layer, it’s really good fun and you’ll be cheering in the suspenseful end of the film and the end of the film-within-the-film. And you’ll join the chorus clamoring for that new Oscar category for stunts.

FILM: Challengers

Challengers, directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name, among others), makes tennis look sexier than ever. Zendaya plays a fierce up-and-coming tennis star, Tashi Duncan, who ends up in a complicated relationship with two other young tennis stars Patrick (Josh O’Connor) and Art (Mike Faist). The two guys have come from prep schools and backgrounds of privilege, while she has definitely not, and has had to work hard for everything she has. “Tennis is a relationship,” Tashi says early in the film, and the game at its highest level of competition is inextricably intertwined in the relationships of these three, with the two guys, closest of friends, also competing for Tashi. It all takes some interesting twists and turns, with a riveting final match with so much riding on it. The strong performances are underscored by great sound engineering, where the effort of every swing and the impact of every contact of racket with ball are visceral with layers of emotion.

FILM: We Grown Now

We Grown Now is the most heartwrenchingly beautiful film. Early on, one of the characters says that there’s a poetry in everything if you look for it, and this film proves that out. The film follows two young boys growing up in a sprawling public housing project in Chicago in 1992. It has the tender bittersweetness and nostalgic wonder of Stand By Me, the honest examination of Black American experience like A Raisin in the Sun, and some love for Chicago with a couple of winks at Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but none of those comparisons captures it. Everything you might think of when you hear “public housing project” – struggling single-parent families, poorly maintained buildings, drug gangs, random shootings – is all there, not glossed over, but not the focus either, just the background for showing how someone can still see the stars through the cracks in the ceiling. During the credits of the film, there is a series of beautiful archival photos of people living in the Cabrini-Green housing project (since demolished) where this film was set, and I wonder if those were the starting point for writer-director Minhal Baig to imagine what life was like for those people in that place and time. I know it’s only April, but I’m ready to nominate this film for next year’s Oscars in nearly every category. The script is so fresh, original, authentic, and full of heart. The direction is absolute master class in what film should be about, tethered to cinemaphotography that is the most gorgeous visual poetry. The ensemble of actors are brilliant, making a compelling story of action and expression from this character-driven, slice-of-life script. I can’t remember the last time (if ever?) I thought that sound added so much to a film, but here sounds as simple as the drip of a leaky pipe add a rich dimension. And all enhanced by a subtle but powerful orchestral score. This is truly film-making at its best.

FILM: Wicked Little Letters

In 1920 in the quaint English seaside town of Littlehampton, a curious scandal erupted when scores of townspeople started receiving nasty handwritten letters full of profanity to make the Edwardian mind explode. Based on this strange-but-true story, Wicked Little Letters is a wicked little delight, thanks to memorable performances from Olivia Coleman as prim spinster Edith Swan living with her parents and Jessie Buckley as foul-mouthed Irish immigrant Rose Gooding living in the adjacent row house. A small constellation of other great characters and actors add color to the story as well. Rose is framed, but by whom and why? We find out halfway through, but the real question is whether the perpetrator can be caught, or whether the powers that be prefer a tidy solution even if it’s not true. Littlehampton’s first woman police officer Gladys Moss (Anjana Vasan) is on the case, but a lot of social structure and expectations stand in the way. A little social commentary is smuggled in, but under cover of an engaging procedural with a hefty dose of dark comedy. We loved it.

FILM: One Life

 

One Life presents the inspirational story of Nicholas Winton, a young Englishman who visits Prague in 1938 to help with a refugee organization, and is horrified to witness the plight of hundreds of Jewish families with young children fleeing from Hitler. Despite the seemingly impossible challenge of finding money and sponsors and moving the English immigration bureaucracy, he organizes the rescue of hundreds of children in the weeks and days before Hitler invades Czechoslovakia. After the war, his efforts were generally unknown, and he personally felt very burdened with the memory of all of the children that he was unable to save. The film cuts between showing the events of his heroic efforts just before the war, and then his life some four decades later. Anthony Hopkins gives a masterfully nuanced performance as the guilt-ridden Winton in his later years, in a role that could have been maudlin in lesser hands. Helena Bonham Carter is also pitch perfect as his mother in the 1938 scenes. While the film is inevitably compared to Schindler’s List, it is its own unique story, and a very timely one, in illustrating the plight of refugees in a war zone, and the genius of boldness to do what might seem impossible. The film’s title, One Life, alludes to the Jewish proverb that saving one life is to save the whole world, but it also shows what difference one life can make. You may walk out after this film wondering, as I did, what you could be doing with your one life.

FILM: Problemista

I thoroughly enjoyed Problemista, bringing cinematic magical realism to the story of a young Salvadoran man with big dreams navigating the Kafkaesque US immigration system chasing sponsorship in the New York City art world. The protagonist Alejandro (played by Julio Torres, who also wrote and directed), despite an endless barrage of obstacles, clings to the optimism instilled in him by his artist-architect mother, and never loses the literal bounce in his step. There are delightfully creative surreal touches, like the literal personifications of Craig’s List (fiendishly portrayed by Larry Owens) and Bank of America, and the imagery of Escher-like staircases, escalators, and office mazes, of hourglasses ticking down (Alejandro only has 1 month to find a new job when he unexpectedly gets laid off), and of other immigrants who just fade into thin air when the bureaucracy announces their time is up. And there are very real touches, like the claustrophobia of a Brooklyn apartment shared by too many roommates. And then there is Tilda Swinton playing a self-absorbed monster of an art critic who tantalizes Alejandro dangling the prospect of sponsorship if he can just do one more impossible thing. Every character is delightfully exaggerated, making light so that you can’t help but laugh, despite what is an unbearable situation. But Alejandro is an unsinkable rubber duck who will not be held down, propelled by force of will to an unexpectedly hopeful ending note. In the end, the film pulls of the trick of keeping heavy things light, keeping the viewer off-balance and delighted, but leaving you thinking about entitlement and privilege and wondering how we might make our system just a bit fairer for the people who have to engage with it.

FILM: A Haunting In Venice

Since we’re not horror flick fans, we’d been glossing over A Haunting in Venice in the movie listings, until we finally realized that it’s a Kenneth Branagh Agatha Christie film. Branagh returns as inspector Hercule Poirot, lured out of retirement to discredit a medium (Michelle Yeoh) as she holds a séance for a famous opera singer mourning her beloved daughter who fell (or jumped? or was pushed?) to her death from her room in their home, which happens to be a haunted palazzo in Venice. There’s a whole cast of characters, all of whom have secrets and potential motives, and everyone is locked in the palazzo on Halloween night during a storm, as more bodies start to pile up. Nothing is predictable, except of course that Poirot will figure it all out by the end. But along the way, even the great skeptic starts to wonder if there might actually be ghosts after all. The Venetian scenery is gorgeous, and the whole film is very spookily atmospheric. Our kind of Halloween film!

FILM: Cassandro

Gael Garcia Bernal delivers yet another knock-out performance in Cassandro, a film based on the real-life story of Saúl Armendáriz, a Mexican-American “luchador”, a professional wrestler in the melodramatic Mexican style of wrestling. Saúl became famous as an “exótico”, a traditional luchador character role who is a flambuoyant drag queen, generally there to be the punching bag for a macho opponent. Saúl (under the character name Cassandro) decided to buck tradition, flip the script, and be an exótico who defeats his macho opponents. The film is really engaging and layered, not only telling the underdog story of Cassandro’s rise to fame, but also exploring Saúl’s relationship with a closeted macho luchador, and with his supportive mother and estranged father. Two thumbs up from us.

FILM: Barbie

The Barbie film opens with a 2001: A Space Odyssey parody to explain the origins and impact of Barbie on the world, with Helen Mirren narrating in most serious BBC voice. At the outset, director Greta Gerwig has her tongue planted so far in her cheek that it actually curls around and tickles the brain a little. Barbie the brand encompasses a multitude of contradictions, with the stereotypical Barbie, impossibly thin with pink shoes and stylish wardrobe, also trying to inspire girls through the years by modeling being a doctor, a pilot, and an astronaut, while still always embracing her core pink perfection. The film leans into these contradictions, with a hilarious vision of life in “Barbieland”, where women (mostly named Barbie) live in wall-less and staircase-less dream houses and rule the world, and men (mostly named Ken) exist just to hang out at the beach in hopes that a Barbie might pay attention to them. Every day is perfect and pink in Barbieland until a rupture in the separation between Barbieland and the real world threatens to change everything, and Barbie must go into the real world to fix it. The film is a delightfully playful and visual confection with lots of winks and nods to the long history of the Barbie brand (embracing its less successful as well as more successful spin-offs), but the confection wraps a core of feminist critique that raises weighty questions about gender-based role models and the “male gaze”. Happily, the philosophical underpinnings aren’t so heavy as to lose track of telling a fun story and keeping us smiling and laughing, even while this Barbie forges new ground in providing a new role model for 21st century girls.

FILM: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is a rollicking E-ticket ride from beginning to end, and a marvelous way to send off the beloved but aged professor-adventurer. Bravo to the now 80-year old Harrison Ford who can totally still bring it. The film opens with immediate high adrenaline at the close of WWII, when a 45-year old Indiana Jones and an Oxford archaeology colleague are trying to keep some invaluable ancient artefacts out of the hands of the Nazis. There was some amazing AI-driven CGI de-aging, but that’s the actual Harrison Ford doing all that running and fighting in and on a moving train. Then we flash forward to “present day” 1969, when the 70-year old Professor Jones is nearing retirement, a curmudgeonly old man in highest “get off my lawn” dudgeon, beating on his young neighbor’s door when the music is too loud. But just when he’s despairing of getting this new generation of students to care about anything, it turns out that there are still a few remaining Nazis with some diabolical plans concerning ancient artefacts with supernatural power. And just like that, as fast as you can crack a whip, the aging Indiana finds a new reason to race across Morocco, Greece, and Italy, solving ancient mysteries and unlocking secrets, with Nazis (and possibly the CIA) in hot pursuit. The film shifts into high gear and never lets up, with high speed chases, and lots of winks and nods to previous films. The other moving part in this engrossing contraption is the appearance of Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Helena “Wombat” Shaw, Indy’s long-neglected goddaughter. She might be the perfect partner for this latest last adventure. Or is she? “How did you turn out this way?” Indy asks her at one point. “You mean strong, confident, beautiful, and exceptionally capable?” she retorts. Indeed, she is all that, and if she turns up in more movies, I’m in. At risk of spoilers, I’ll say no more except to say that the ending is pure gold. And also, speaking of active octo+genarians, bravo to John Williams who at age 91 has turned out yet another marvelous score, fanning the familiar themes and introducing new ones. If you have any nostalgia for Indiana Jones, or just if you enjoy a good action-adventure film, don’t miss it!

FILM: Asteroid City

Last weekend we had the pleasure of seeing Asteroid City. Filmmaker Wes Anderson has a distinctive style that you either love or you just scratch your head wondering what was that. Each of his films have their own unique sense of time, place, color, and mood, and yet each is unequivocally Anderson. Here we’re in the 1950s, in a southwest roadside rest stop of a town somewhere along some Route 66-like highway. The color palette is ripped from the tailfins of 1950s cars. Even the sky seems airbrushed turquoise. Jason Schwartzman plays a newly widowed man driving with his four young children to move in with their grandfather when their car breaks down in Asteroid City, a wide spot in the desert road where an asteroid landed years ago, and which hosts a sort of “space camp” for nerdy young kids, with nuclear test explosions going off occasionally in the distance. The whole place goes on military lockdown when an actual alien shows up to repossess the asteroid. For a normal movie, that might have required a spoiler alert, but in a Wes Anderson film, the plot is tentative at best, so there’s little to spoil. As usual, there’s a whole cast of familiar actors including Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Tilda Swinton, Steve Carrell, Edward Norton, Matt Dillon, Margot Robbie, Adrian Brody, Willem Dafoe, and even Jeff Goldblum makes a cameo as the alien. Everyone wants to have a part in Anderson’s fertile imagination. None of them act normally, but deliver their lines as if they’re all a little bit on the spectrum, unexpressive and unfiltered, like cartoon characters speaking their captions and their thought bubbles at the same volume. What they say is always deadpan, sometimes clever, and sometimes made me laugh out loud, as they move through a series of beautifully crafted scenes. Even emotional aspects are handled in a detached and unconventional way (like Jason Scharzman waiting three weeks to inform his children that their mother has died). It was quirky and odd, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, although I couldn’t for the life of me tell you why.

We had a special treat going to see the film in its first week. Landmark Theatres have taken over the Sunset Five cinema and not only done a very nice job renovating it, but they created a full premiere experience for this film including several of the actual sets and costumes in and around the lobby. They had also created special Asteroid City Instagram filters that we were invited to play with while waiting for the film to start. We sorely miss the Arclight, lost to the pandemic, which was a movie-lover’s dream theatre and used to do that sort of thing regularly. We’re delighted to see that Landmark seems to be stepping in to fill that void. Bravo!

FILM: Past Lives

Past Lives is a charming and beautiful film about childhood sweethearts who intermittently reconnect over very long gaps. Na Young / Nora is still a little girl when her family emigrates from Seoul to Toronto, and as an adult she moves on to New York. Hae Sung never forgets her, even as both he and she go on to find other partners. But their encounters are electric when they briefly reconnect twelve years later and twelve more years later. The whole film is a beautiful meditation on love and fate and life choices, and the Korean concept called “in yeon”, which is like a karmic ripple through reincarnations of chance encounters. And only the fate could have them reconnect at ages 12, 24, and 36 in sync with the Korean zodiac calendar. The chemistry between Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) is palpable, and the actors convey so much without words. The film is gorgeously written and directed by Celine Song, somehow fusing impressionism and realism, with cuts of close and long, faces and scenes, like stream of consciousness, letting awkward silences be pregnant and electricity flow. The theme, texture, and time element are reminiscent of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy, but with an added element of shifting identities with immigration, having to leave things behind for the opportunity to gain new things. This is Song’s directorial debut. I’ll look forward to more from her.

FILM: Of An Age

Of An Age is the second feature film from Macedonian-Australian writer-director Goran Stolevski, and won some acclaim at film festivals in Australia. It depicts a fleeting romantic encounter that leaves indelible marks on the two lives even 11 years later. I found it very reminiscent of Richard Linklater’s classic Before Sunset, not only in concept, but in its minimalist, live-stream feel. I’m sure that Stolevski must have seen the Before trilogy and thought to himself, I’ve got to make a gay version of that for a young Macedonian immigrant in Melbourne. The romance is a tantalizingly smoldering build, propelled by the strength of the actors’ performances and their chemistry. Will we see a sequel ten years later?

FILM: Close

The Belgian film Close is a vivid, tender, heartbreaking coming-of-age story of two best boyhood friends whose friendship is tested by the social crucible of starting middle school. It won the Grand Prix at Cannes, and is a contender for Best International Feature Film at the 2023 Oscars. While the coming-of-age genre is well-explored for adolescents and sexual awakening, there are far fewer “coming-of-a-younger-age” films that are presexual and innocent. My friend Alan compared it to Stand By Me, a similar story of childhood friendship at that age, young enough to be innocent, but powerful enough to mark you for life. (Perhaps we have to go back to 1986 to find something so comparable.) And he noted the likeness between Eden Dambrine, the young star of Close, and the young River Phoenix, in their captivating performances. The film is very cinematic, in that much of the story is shown rather than told, and Eden Dambrine’s talent to convey emotion wordlessly is breathtaking. So much just plays across his face as he is attending a concert, or running through a field, or lying in bed. It’s haunting. (Think of Timothée Chalamet looking into the fire at the end of Call Me By Your Name.) The underlying emotions are enhanced by the visually lush film. Scenes of harvesting flowers (the family business of one of the boys) harken paintings of Dutch masters but with impressionist colors.

FILM: A Man Called Otto

If you’re looking for a warm feel-good film, you’ll enjoy A Man Called Otto, in which Tom Hanks portrays a punctilious old curmudgeon whose sole satisfaction in life since his wife died is to patrol his neighborhood for HOA infractions. When a young immigrant family rents a house across the street, Otto’s life is turned around in ways he never expects. It’s apparently a remake of a 2015 Swedish film that I hadn’t known of. To me it was reminiscent of other fine films of the “crusty old man forms unexpected bond with new young neighbors” genre like St. Vincent (Bill Murray) and Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood), though each has its own unique twists. Here we gradually learn about Otto’s past and perhaps what has made him so grumpy. In a grace note of casting, the younger Otto in flashbacks is played by Truman Hanks, Tom’s real life son. Second week in a row we came out of the film smiling through damp eyes.

FILM: Living

In Living, Bill Nighy gives an exquisite performance as Mr. Williams, a dour elder manager in the 1950s British civil service who, when confronted with his own mortality, struggles to find meaning in his life. This is actually a remake of Ikura, an Akiro Kurosawa classic from 1962 but it transplants beautifully from Japanese culture to British with its constrictive social conventions and comic-pathetic depiction of “county hall” bureaucracy. No surprise given this beautifully written adaptation was by Japanese-British author Kazuo Ishiguro (The Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go). We came out of this film smiling through damp eyes.