Vancouver’s out of reach housing prices get a quick examination in a new film. It’s the one that most interests me at the current DOXA documentary festival. My reaction is below and for other films at the festival look for Lincoln Kaye’s coverage.
My reviews include the biggest film so far this year and the one I think is the best.
Here’s the list:
Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2: 3 stars
I, Daniel Blake: 5
Vancouver: No Fixed Address: 3 ½
Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent: 3 ½
The Dinner: 2 ½
GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY Vol. 2: Goofy humour, anarchic vibes and an alternative to the formula setting in at Marvel movies. That made volume one a mega hit three years ago and pumped up the anticipation for this one to fever levels. Well, rest assured you get more of the same but be warned it’s not quite the same.
This one tries too hard and belabours some of the best stuff. The novelty and surprise factor is lower. Many of the jokes are weaker and there’s an uncomfortable slowdown in the middle before the pyrotechnics salvage the film. The creators, including the repeat director, James Gunn, also the screenwriter, got carried away with the razzle dazzle of the special effects and let the story meander. Also, you’d better know the first film or the comics to really follow this one.
The guardians are pursued by two forces, a band of thieves and mercenaries called Ravagers and by attack pods sent by Ayesha, the ruler of Sovereign (where one stole some batteries). But family issues take over the plotline, possibly to elevate the film. Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) meets the father he never knew (Kurt Russell) and they have issues to work out. Dad wants Peter to join him to rule the universe.
But he’s more interested in flirting with Gamora, one of his team-mates played by Zoe Saldana, and cracking jokes about the old TV show Cheers and David Hasselhoff. She’s involved in a sibling rivalry with her sister Nebula that is getting vicious and the team, which is really a family, is hardly together. They’re scattered apart through most of the film. The quips by Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) are more caustic, Drax, played by wrestler Dave Bautista, gets most of the funny lines and Groot (still voiced by Vin Diesel but now as an ultra-cute young one) steals the later scenes. Sylvester Stallone is only in it briefly.
The film is just too busy to keep it all working together smoothly. (5th Avenue, Dunbar, Scotiabank, Marine Gateway and many suburban theatres) 3 out of 5
I, DANIEL BLAKE: I’ve seen it again since the film festival and am as sure as ever about the extremely strong recommendation I gave it back then. You’re going to come out of this one buzzing, maybe even gasping, with the emotions it has put you through. Ken Loach’s latest study of people at the bottom of the economic scale is humane, powerful and angry, and believe it or not, very funny. Well, early on, before the anger rises. It’s his best film in some time and the jury at Cannes recognized that when it gave him their top award, the Palme d’Or.
He follows the frustrations of two people dealing with England’s welfare system. Daniel, played straight by a comedian named Dave Johns, is a carpenter who can’t work because he has a heart problem. He wants the English version of a disability allowance. The bureaucrats cut him off and repeatedly promise the “decision maker” will phone to explain. Nobody does.
Daniel is told to apply on-line but computers are new to him. Fumbling with them and with bureaucracy is where the humor is. The mood gradually darkens when he also tries to help a young single mother with two kids (Hayley Squires) get social assistance. There’s a heart-breaking scene in a food bank. The ladies there show some caring; most everybody else cites rules. The scenario feels real because Paul Laverty the writer got real stories from workers and clients of England’s Department of Work and Pensions. The actors don’t feel like performers at all. Except for the heavy accents, which are assisted with subtitles, these people could be right here in town. (5th Avenue) 5 out of 5
VANCOUVER: NO FIXED ADDRESS: The film I’ve been most interested in at the DOXA Film Festival is this almost-good documentary about Vancouver’s housing crisis. It’s a quick overview of the problem but with few traces of digging down deep. Condo King Bob Rennie offers his usual solution, build more, with no mention of who is buying. Gregor Robertson, the mayor, says his government doesn’t have the power to do much, with no mention of the smaller powers they’ve declined to use. You only see one house being smashed down. But David Suzuki has some strong observations about community and healthy neighbourhoods. Those concepts are in decline around here as speculators have turned housing into a commodity.
The film should be more forceful in advocating for a fix. Instead it spreads itself too thin by trying to cover too much. The demand that’s boosting house prices is coming from outside, says an economist. Families are leaving. Millennials are OK with tiny apartments. Communal groupings are common. Homelessness is rising. Much of this we already know. What’s driving it? How much of the money that’s flooded in is dirty money? What can we do?
That’s what we need to know. Kerry Gold writes about it often in The Globe and Mail. Two other reporters, Sam Cooper of The Province and Sandy Garossino of this site and The National Observer, make some valuable statements in the film and will be part of a panel after it is shown at DOXA Saturday night.
It’s a hot topic but that’s the only screening at the festival. Better check the website http://www.doxafestival.ca/ to see if there are any tickets left. The film gets a two week run at the VanCity Theatre starting May 19 and a TV date on Knowledge Network in the fall. Though incomplete, it is a good introduction. (DOXA at SFU downtown campus, Saturday at 7:00) 3 ½ out of 5
JEREMIAH TOWER: THE LAST MAGNIFICENT: On our recent trip to San Francisco my wife and I ate at the Chez Panisse restaurant over in Berkeley. We knew it was where the California cuisine and eat-local movements originated way back in the 1970s but we didn’t know half the story. This documentary adds a lot. It says that it wasn’t Alice Waters, the owner, who created that food revolution but a man who came in one day looking for a job and who she told to do something with the soup she had cooking. Jeremiah Tower did, remade the whole menu, brought in a high-class clientele and became America’s first celebrity chef.
This documentary produced by Anthony Bourdain and directed by Lydia Tenaglia (TV experience) tells what happened after and before. He grew up a rich kid whose parents took him travelling but often left him alone on trains and ocean liners. In re-creations we see his exposure to style and the good life. After Chez Panisse he gained even bigger fame at his own restaurant called Stars. Celebrities partied there and he mingled with them drinking champagne. But again he walked, spent years in Mexico, re-emerged at a tourist restaurant in New York and walked again. He tells what happened but not too much about why. Martha Stewart, Mario Batali and others can’t either although they speak highly of him. A friend says nobody really knows him. Another cites a “utopian possibility of being because that’s what kept the darkness away.” It’s not the whole story and some of the later segues are confusing but he’s a fascinating character and the film isn’t just for foodies. (Park Theatre) 3 ½ out of 5
THE DINNER: This film is frustrating because it takes forever, probably three-quarters of its running time, to get to the point. Two couples (Richard Gere, Rebecca Hall and Steve Coogan, Laura Linney) sit down to a meal in a restaurant so upscale that Coogan declares the cost of the wine “an act of war.” Earlier he had pronounced the Renaissance as “the beginning of the end.” He’s got mental health problems and it seems that’s what the film is about. He calls himself “a warrior for the underclass,” families “oppressive, unloving and cruel” and his brother (Gere), a congressman making a run for governor, elitist and self-serving. The two wives come out with calming or angry comments now and then and a political aide periodically interrupts with campaign news.
So, what is all this about? They need a plan. Three sons have committed an unspeakable crime. We see it in flashbacks. How to react? Cover it up? Let it come out? It’s already going viral on social media. When they finally get to it, they carry on a robust debate around the table and in various other places when characters storm away in anger. They take positions you don’t expect. That’s refreshing but they don’t solve anything either. Maybe if they had gotten to it earlier. The story is from a 2009 novel by the Dutch writer Herman Koch, already filmed twice and now transposed to the US. The director, Oren Moverman, has shown in other films that he can explore tough issues efficiently. Not here, even though the cast is strong and hypocrisy is a natural for drama. (International Village) 2 ½ out of 5