Before you get to the week’s new movies, note these upcoming films.
The VanCity Theatre is showing one of the spaghetti western masterpieces, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, on Tuesday. You don’t often get to see these on the big screen. But really that’s where they belong. They’re billing this as “the definitive cut.”
The Cinematheque has revealed its Film Noir schedule for this year. It’s an annual series that runs through the first three weeks of August. A lot of the classics are in it and ironically one of the most celebrated, Touch of Evil, by and starring Orson Welles, is playing there tonight (July 5) as part of another series. And there’s a companion series of crime films by France’s Jean-Pierre Melville. His work hasn’t been much available until recently. Check out http://www.thecinematheque.ca/ or the widely available program guide for more information.
And these are the new ones:
Spider-Man Far From Home: 3 stars
Midsommar: 3 ½
Wild Rose: 3
Because We Are Girls: 4
Too Late to Die Young: 2 ½
SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME: Well, not that far. Just Vienna, London, Prague and Paris. Peter Parker is on a class trip and more interested in pronouncing his affection for a girl played by Zendaya than acting as his web slinging alter-ego. But the high school aura gets interrupted when Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) press him into a fight against some intergalactic villains called The Elementals. Cities gets trashed in spectacular computer-generated effects and the Marvel Universe lives on.
This is its 23rd film, the 8th with Spider-man and with Tom Holland the 4th actor playing him. Light-hearted tone and plentiful humor make this a refreshing one.
Spidey, you might know, died in the “snap” and revived in the “blip” in the last two Avengers movies. So did half the universe. This film follows immediately after. Tony Stark is gone. His aide Happy Hogan, played by Jon Favreau, thinks Peter may inherit his status, but Spider-Man’s nemesis from the comics, Mysterio, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, pops in from another dimension to help fight the Elementals.
Is he a good guy or a bad guy? No spoilers here except this: the story, though true to all that’s gone before, feels more than a bit vague. Probably not to the fans who are into all the minutia, but to me for sure. Still, as a breezy bit of comic book entertainment for a summer evening, it worked fine for me. Stay for some important extras in and after the end credits. (5th Avenue, Scotiabank, Marine Gateway and many suburban theatres) 3 out of 5
MIDSOMMAR: This is being hailed by many as a new classic of the horror genre. Partly because it recalls a real classic,The Wicker Man. (The 1973 English film; not the filmed-in BC re-make). And largely because the director, Ari Aster, made last year’s much-praised Hereditary, an unsettling ghost story and meditation on grief. There are too many problems with his new one to rank it as high as either of those. It’s long (almost 2 ½ hours), slow to evolve, riddled with nonsensical events and motivations and marred by an over-the-top climax that jars with what came before. On the plus side it is engrossing as it slowly builds dread while revealing its story.
A rising star, Florence Pugh, is in the lead as a young American college student, who joins four guys on a trip to a commune in northern Sweden. One grew up there; two are doing research for a thesis and one is after free and easy sex. She has two goals: rekindle a romance with her boyfriend (Jack Reynor) and overcome her grief after her family was murdered. Neither of those is hardly mentioned though after they arrive and gradually learn and get involved in the details of life on the commune.
Outwardly they’re benign but have a sinister underside. The atmosphere is dreamlike; there’s a celebration that happens only once every 90 years and Pugh’s character is crowned (and covered with flowers) as May queen. The film, which does a very good job of illustrating intentional communities, and the group-think they engender, then slides to an extreme ending that I don’t think works. It’s too weird to be really shocking. (5th Avenue, Scotiabank, Marine Gateway and suburban theatres) 3 ½ out of 5
WILD ROSE: It seems like a story you’ve seen before, but give it a chance. It’s more than that. Young woman aspires to make it as a singer and become a star; that’s the basic plot. This is the British version; that’s one difference, and here’s a huge one: she’s a Scot in Glasgow wanting to get to Nashville and into country music. And, it doesn’t even stop there in wandering off the well-known track it seems to be on. All those and a star-making performance by a relative newcomer, make this one worth your while.
Jessie Buckley (just becoming widely known because of HBO’s Chernobyl) plays Rose-Lynn Harlan a free spirit with a country music obsession but any number of impediments. She’s just of out of prison, and is hobbled by a curfew, a disapproving mother (Julie Walters), the job of raising two small children, the make-do work of cleaning lady for a well-off woman (Sophie Okonedo) and her own lack of maturity. How could she ever get to where she wants to go? Films from the U.K. regularly give us plucky strivers like her testing the improbable and Tom Harper’s direction of Nicole Taylor’s script shows she belongs up there with the Billy Elliotts, the Full Monty dancers and others. The film is strong in portraying the aspirations of a dreamer but then keeps it real with a late turn I won’t reveal here. Enjoy the acting by the strong cast, the peeks at the stations on the road to fame and the plentiful country music. The tunes range from classic (Hank Snow and others) to current (Kacey Musgraves and Kelly Clarkson). Buckley belts them out like she belongs. (Park Theatre) 3 out of 5
BECAUSE WE ARE GIRLS: There’s a stunning confrontation at the climax of this film and it’s all the more powerful because it’s real. The camera is there to watch as three sisters verbally attack their parents about the sexual abuse they knew about but didn’t stop. The tension gets extreme with the loud outbursts, accusations and crying (“I was drowning”) and the candid explanation from the father that “in our culture we always blame the girls.” That pretty well encapsulates the situation of many women in BC’s Indo-Canadian community, this documentary by Vancouver filmmaker Baljit Sangra suggests.
The story reaches years back. The three girls in Williams Lake were sexually abused by a member of the extended family living in their house. They told their parents but got no support and years later complained again, this time to get the fellow charged. He was convicted but the case dragged on. The film listens to the girls, chiefly Kira, who claims she’s always been the rambunctious one, i.e. outspoken. Her talk about what happened and their efforts to be heard is blunt and highly emotional. The film was cancelled from VIFF last fall because of the on-going court proceedings, played at DOXA in April and is now at the VanCity Theatre for four screenings. Baljit Sangra, the director, will be there Fri and Sat to talk about the case and how she managed to film those highly-charged scenes. 4 out of 5
TOO LATE TO DIE YOUNG: This film from Chile shows the same tendencies that flourish in modern novels. Don’t tell, let them figure out what it’s about for themselves. We saw something like that in Roma too; scenes and incidents that ramble on against each other without a narrative drive that could keep you glued. But that was a better film; the characters were more interesting. This one has a boring one at the centre. It had a more compelling political background. This one, though set in Chile just as the country was emerging from a long dictatorship, doesn’t mention it. Maybe audiences there know enough to fill in the missing information but we’re left wondering who are these people, artists mostly, who live in this rural colony? How did they get there?
The director, Dominga Sotomayor Castillo, doesn’t explain and is content with letting it be an idyllic but scattered portrait of everyday life there and of a teen girl’s growing up. There are problems with the water supply; a dog goes missing and is found at a house nearby; everyone is expected to prepare a song for a New Year’s party. Sofia, chooses one by The Bangles and performs it with a wistful sadness. She’s dreaming of moving to the city to live with her mother, a professional singer. Why her parents split, we don’t know. Her relationship with a teen boy is getting beyond flirtatious. But here too we get unconnected scenes, not development. Two story lines—hope for mom to show up for the party and a disaster that threatens this paradise—are too brief or too late. (VanCity Theatre) 2 ½ out of 5