Before you ponder the new ones, note these festivals. South Asian films are on at SFU downtown through the weekend. Check out http://visaff.ca/ The 18th annual European Union Film Festival starts tonight at the Cinematheque. See more about it below. And Wednesday, the Whistler Film Festival starts up again. You need to plan ahead for that one.
It only runs five days but crams in 89 films this year, half of them feature length. It opens with Carol the lesbian romance starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara which has drawn a lot of praise and just this week led the nominations for the Independent Spirit Awards.
There’s a fun Canadian film on Thursday afternoon called THE COLOSSAL FAILURE OF THE MODERN RELATIONSHIP. The title is from a line of dialogue, not an indication any grand conclusions about modern life. It’s an infidelity comedy about a woman who’s cheating with her husband’s boss and then finds he’s coming along with them on a winery tour in the Niagara Peninsula and is bringing his girlfriend. You can imagine the complications that loom. Local actor David Cubitt plays the lothario.
Check out http://whistlerfilmfestival.com/ for more and then this list of the new ones in town now:
Trumbo: 4 stars
Creed: 3 ½
The Stanford Prison Experiment: 4
James White: 3 ½
The Good Dinosaur: 2 ½
European Union Film Festival: various scores
Victor Frankenstein: not reviewed
TRUMBO: There’s a trap movies like this often fall into. Hagiography. Idealizing a person while telling his story of struggle and even martyrdom. This film does some of that and it takes a bit away from the vitality of its story. It’s a fairly familiar one, to movie buffs anyway. Dalton Trumbo was a busy screenwriter in Hollywood, a supporter of the unions in the industry and a Communist. By 1947, he was under attack along with his colleagues, together known as The Hollywood 10. He refused to answer questions the way Congress wanted, went to jail for contempt and was blacklisted when he got out. The film shows how he kept writing anyway, became a workaholic, and the toll it took on his family. He won two Oscars under other names.
Bryan Cranston plays him as a decent, articulate, optimistic man. Almost too good to be true, though his later speeches about personal liberty are genuinely moving. Helen Mirren is relentless as Hedda Hopper, the gossip columnist who attacked him. Along the way we get a who’s who of Hollywood with actors playing Edward G. Robinson, John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Louis B. Mayer and many others. John Goodman as a profane poverty-row producer and Christian Berkel as Otto Preminger are standouts. They perk up the film when they’re on and save it from the weight of all its explaining and decrying. The message is important and with excellent performances and comedy (and sometimes politics) specialist Jay Roach directing, it’s easy to take. (5th Avenue and two suburban theatres) 4 out of 5
CREED: We may not have been calling for yet another Rocky movie but I’m glad Ryan Coogler did. He wrote a script, took it to Sylvester Stallone and directed this as a drama of urban black life. In that sense it’s a follow to his superb Fruitvale Station. He’s got the same actor in the lead, Michael B. Jordan, but not the tragedy. Jordan is Adonis, the angry son chasing the legend of his father, Apollo Creed, a former boxing champ. Rocky almost defeated him in the first film, did beat him in the second and became his friend in the third. (This is the seventh, and one of the two best).
Adonis, aka Donnie, does exactly what Coogler did. He convinces Rocky to get involved in boxing again, not as a fighter but as his trainer. As a bonus he gets him as a counselor about matters that are true both in boxing and in life. Donnie has to overcome his past. He was in and out of juvenile detention and felt rejected and lost because he was born illegitimate, from an affair his father had. Jordan is suitably intense. Stallone puts in a career-best performance as the wise mentor who is stifling issues of his own. This attention to personal problems outside the ring elevates this film although two major boxing matches are pretty exciting too. (Scotiabank and suburban theatres) 3 ½ out of 5
THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT: This is a gripping and chilling re-creation of a low point in academia. Psychology students know about it but I wonder what was learned. A good question you’ll want to talks over after you see the film.
In 1971, a Prof at Stanford ran a simulation in which 18 students played men in prison. Half were guards; half inmates. They got into their roles so deeply it was scary. They were observed on video monitors. The inmates were meek; the guards intimidated them, belittled them and mocked them. One, played by Michael Angarano, an actor new to me, is distressing in his ferocity. His role model is the sadistic guard in Cool Hand Luke. When the inmates attempt a rebellion, the Prof (Billy Crudup) orders the guards to get control and things get worse. It’s fascinating to watch and raises real questions about human nature. Or does it? Maybe it just shows that some people act like characters they’ve seen in the movies. Real prisons have more controls than this. The main “guard” said he did what he did because the inmates let him. You’ll feel an unspoken allusion to the notorious scandal of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. (VanCity Theatre) 4 out of 5
Playing in tandem with …
JAMES WHITE: This small film pulls off the impossible. It makes us turn completely around about a character we initially despise. James is a New Yorker aimlessly adrift in a habit of clubbing, sex, bar fights and no ambition. He has vague ideas about becoming a writer but trips off to Mexico instead of doing anything about it. “When I get back, I’ll be ready for life,” he says.
Not by his own choice though. Mom has a virulent form of cancer. She’s played by Cynthia Nixon, formerly of Sex and the City, and he’s by Christopher Abbott who some may know from another TV show, Girls. He has to take care of her and amazingly he rises to the task. First there’s an encounter with uncaring staff at a hospital (a grim vision of the American medical system) and then long sessions of tending to her at home. Those scenes are done ultra-realistically. In a very poignant scene he speaks to her lovingly to conjure up images of living in Paris. The actors are excellent; the first-time direction by Josh Mond is sharp and we’re left to marvel at a character’s transformation. It’s a very affecting film. (VanCity Theatre) 3 ½ out of 5
THE GOOD DINOSAUR: Pixar poured all its talent for wild inventiveness into its last film, Inside Out. There wasn’t much left for this new one. It has the usual kid-movie elements-- separation anxiety, family, friendship, finding yourself—but they’re told the same way we’ve seen many times before. Worse, the story is based on an educational mistep. It imagines what would have happened if that asteroid had missed the earth and not wiped out the dinosaurs. They plough the soil with their snouts and grow crops. Their children play in the cornfields and a pesky boy, an early human being who doesn’t speak but runs round on all-fours, steals from their storage silo.
Kids won’t mind that the two species lived almost 150 million years apart and couldn’t have met. One told me he liked it best when they became friends. That’s the heart of the movie and develops after the young apatosaurus named Arlo sees his father die in a torrent of water, is himself washed down river and has to find his way home. He re-meets the corn-stealing boy, names him Spot, and together they face bad weather, narrow cliffside ledges and hungry pterodactyls (led by Steve Zahn), trip out on fermenting berries and for a while join some buffalo-herding T-Rexes ( led by Sam Elliott). There’s spectacular animation but the story is dull in spots. And showing both death and animals eating animals, it’s not for younger kids. (International Village and suburban theatres) 2 ½ out of 5
EUROPEAN FILM FESTIVAL: For the first in its 18 year history, there are films from all 28 European Union countries. Malta has finally sent one and it couldn’t be more timely. SIMSHAR is about the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean. A ship has arrived, is stopped from unloading refugees and a doctor goes out to examine them. The film muddles things by running a parallel story of a small fishing boat that goes out to sea illegally and runs into trouble. Only at the end do the two yarns connect as the film advocates helping and welcoming refugees. (Plays Sunday) 2 ½ out of 5
I’ve seen several of the films and no dud yet. These, all showing in the festival’s first week, are some of favorites.
THE KEEPER OF LOST CAUSES, from Denmark, is everything the current Secret in their Eyes is not. It’s got narrative drive and a twisty and very involving story. A cop relegated to the cold cases desk doesn’t believe the finding of suicide in a woman’s death on a ferry boat. As he finds out more or even just speculates, the film enacts what he’s thinking.
It’s terrificly written by Nicolaj Arcel, who also scripted the original Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. (Fri) 4 out of 5
BABY(A)LONE is from Luxembourg, and its submission to the Academy Awards. This is a lovers on the run story but modern and different. These kids are only 13. She’s been in “a looney bin for young people” and he’s about to be sent to a school with more supervision. They watch porn on their cellphone, have lurid rumors swirling about and are told they “want everything without effort.” A disturbing portrait of modern teens. (Fri) 3 out of 5
ADMIRAL from the Netherlands is a good antidote for the image of the noble British we’ve been taught forever. The English king is a loonie and his navy helps his merchants carry on business. Holland has the only republic in Europe but also William of Orange conspiring to restore the monarchy. This is before he conquered England. The film is a sprawling epic that will appeal to history buffs and model ship enthusiasts. It shows major naval battles by deftly blending real boats and model ships. (Sat evening) 3 out of 5
FEVER is from Austria and has a woman trying to learn more about her father’s war record. Not in the world wars, but as a French legionnaire in a rebellion in Morocco. The film ponders colonial war crimes in two time periods— as a girl puzzles over her dad’s photos and then as an adult travels to where he served —and gets increasingly dream-like. At times it feels like one of Guy Maddin’s surrealistic visions. (Monday) 3 out of 5
You can find more information at eufilmfestival.com
Also now playing …
VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN: Mary Shelly’s tale is back one more time. Not as she wrote is though. This time it’s from Igor’s viewpoint. Daniel Radcliffe, the former Harry Potter, plays him opposite James McAvoy’s Victor. They’re friends since medical school and collaborators in those immortality experiments. The storyline says Igor has to rescue Victor from his own madness. I don’t remember that from all those other movies. (International Village and suburban theatres)