One movie is bigger than all the others this week but look, there’s far more quality down below. Old and new. And regretfully, a potentially very interesting title wasn’t available to screen and review. It shows Ilhan Omar before she got to Washington, into Trump’s tweet storm and into his fan’s chant to “send her back”.
These were available:
Fast&Furious Presents Hobbs&Shaw: 2 ½ stars
Little Forest: 4
Amateurs: 4 ½
Free Trip to Egypt: 3
Buñuel in the Labyrinth of Turtles: 3 ½
FILM NOIR: The Hitchhiker: 3
FILM NOIR: The Bigamist: 3 ½
Time for Ilhan: not previewed
FAST & FURIOUS PRESENTS HOBBS & SHAW: Sure, why not? They (Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham) were highlights in the two most recent films in the franchise so give them their own to keep pummeling and insulting each other. The result is as ridiculous and fun as you could expect. Over the top in action, dumb in plot and rousing, if you don’t think about it too much. Just go along with the pedal firmly pressed down full by stuntman-turned director David Leitch, who recently did the same here in town with Deadpool 2.
Hobbs and Shaw are called in to save the world from one of the shakiest story ideas in some time. A secret organization has a virus that could wipe out humanity and (somehow) enhance it through “evolutionary change.” Idris Elba plays a guy already enhanced. He sees the world through a computer display, boasts that he’s a “black superman” and helpfully identifies himself as “the bad guy”.
Vanessa Kirby almost steals the film as an agent who steals the virus, swallows it and sets a clock ticking down. Shaw (her brother) and Hobbs have 48-hours to find the machine that can extract it out of her. They get into three wild vehicle chases (in downtown London, at Chernobyl and in a tow truck and helicopter chase on a cliff in Samoa). They crash or throw guys through plate-glass windows, walk down the side of a skyscraper and generally defy all stunt-action logic. All the while they banter about their relative merits, often their genetalia (“like balls on a bulldog”) and even quote both Nietzsche and Bruce Lee. It’s a madcap comic book on screen but long and more excessive. Helen Mirren is one of three big-name cameos. (5th Avenue, Scotiabank, Marine Gateway and many suburban theatres) 2 ½ out of 5
LITTLE FOREST: Frantic summer movies not your things? State of the world got you on edge? Maybe this film from South Korea can help. It has the power to calm and slow you and like the young woman in it get back down close to the earth. Kim Tae-ri is endearing as Hye-won who leaves Seoul (and her worries over whether she has passed her college exams) and returns to the small town where she was raised. There she settles back into the slow pace of life, the change of seasons and her memories. Mom is prominent in those but only in flashbacks. She’s gone; no explanation given. Hye-won re-connects with her wistfully by following her recipes to make all the dishes she remembers. There are many of these cooking and presentation scenes.
She also re-connects with two old friends who had stayed in town: a young woman who works at a “boring” bank job and a guy who has taken over managing his family’s orchard. There’s a hint of a romance between them which Hye-won’s return interrupts. No resentment or outright jealously though. Just a few gestures and subtle looks and the film maintains a serene ambience all the way. It’s contemplative and pulls you into savoring every detail so that it never feels slow. Just peaceful. It’s actually a re-make of a two-part Japanese film which was based on a manga. Here it’s part of a mini-festival of Korean films but plays not just once, but five times over the week. See https://viff.org for more. (VanCityTheatre) 4 out of 5
AMATEURS: This seemingly straightforward comedy about a small town in Sweden is actually rich with observations about the world as it is these days. It just doesn’t shout them out so you’re not getting an editorial. But you do get thoughts on immigration, refugees, tolerance, globalism, cheap labor in developing countries and international investment. Nothing dull and leaden though. They’re part of a light, breezy and often funny movie.
A small town that’s lost its economic base, the leather and textile industry, to cheap imports gets wind that a German mega-retailer (comically called Superbilly) is looking to expand. A promotional video could show off the town but the first attempts by students at the local high school are too realistic. A professional is brought in and a local teacher, a second-generation Tamil immigrant (Fredrik Dahl, excellent) has to put up with his boasts about his documentary expertise and help him.
Two girls meanwhile continue making their own film on their smart-phones and manage to capture the real character of the town, the good and the not so much. In one sequence they get people talking about why they’re willing to buy cheap goods even though they know they were made in sweatshops. That’s typical of how director Gabriela Pichler deftly inserts sharp criticism without weighing down what we’re watching. It’s her second film on the subject and evidently deeply-felt. (VanCity Theatre, starting Saturday) 4 ½ out of 5
FREE TRIP TO EGYPT: It’s a holiday trip and a plea for understanding. Maybe a little too much of the former but a good try at the latter. Tarek Mounib, formerly of Halifax and Ottawa, now a successful entrepreneur in Switzerland, was so distressed by the intolerance he saw rising in the US he got an idea to counter it. He offered Americans who feared Muslims a chance to interact with some in Egypt, where he was born, to make this film and spread a message of co-operation. The group he took included an ex-Marine, an evangelical preacher, a black cop, an elderly Jewish couple, a single mom and a former beauty queen who thanked God a lot.
It might have been more significant if some of the people who refused to go, like the woman in the picture, had been there. Those who were seemed to have only mild fears about Muslims. They were friendly, open to listen and visit with the Egyptians they were paired up with. “My mind is turned over,” one says. It didn’t seem that hard. They were like a tour group. The only friction was over something called “zar” (a healing ritual dubbed polytheism by some). Most odd was the Egyptian who was loudly pro-Trump and his tax cuts. Still, any show of international connection is good and you’ll leave this film with a warm feeling of optimism. (Screens Sunday evening at the VanCity Theatre followed by a Q&A with Tarek Mounib vis skype. 3 out of 5
BUÑUEL IN THE LABYRINTH OF THE TURTLES: This is a fascinating animated film with a true story about the great Spanish director Luis Buñuel. How true is open to question. It comes from a graphic novel and shows an episode in his life that’s not well-documented. But it is interesting. After a hit film (Un Chien Andalou) and a scandalous anti-clerical one (L’Age d’Or), Buñuel was penniless, had split with his collaborator Salvador Dali and set out to follow his left-wing principles and make a documentary about people in the poorest province in his native Spain. What he showed in 1933, forgotten people, dirty conditions, hunger, inbreeding, got the film banned for years.
Along the way we learn about him and the making of art. He had anxiety dreams (long-legged elephants, for instance), felt inferior to Dali and craved the respect of his father who he thinks demeaned him. We see dad choking him in one dream. When we see him at work he’s driven, perfectly willing to make up scenes to make his points. He hears of a donkey stung to death by bees and stages exactly that. He misrepresents a funeral, films a dying child and resorts to animal cruelty, that in a scene of mountain goats falling off a cliff. We see actual scenes from the film. They’re cut into the animated story which shows but can’t really explain this provocateur. (VanCity) 3 ½ out of 5
FILM NOIR: The Cinematheque’s annual binge of fatalism is now on for the next three weeks. Last night’s opener, Detour, plays again tonight, Saturday and a week Sunday. Several other classics including The Big Heat, The Killers, This Gun for Hire and Mildred Pierce are coming. So is a rare one, Too Late for Tears. The notes say it’s been long unseen but is back in a crisp new restoration.
There’s also a sidebar series, six films by France’s top crime film director, Jean-Pierre Melville. His best-known and most influential works, Le Samourai and Bob le Flambeur are included.
You can find the schedule and details on all the films at www.thecinematheque.ca/
I checked out the two by the lone woman director who worked in Film Noir: Ida Lupino.
THE HITCH-HIKER, her first, is a sleek and tense road trip in California and Mexico. Two guys on a fishing trip (Edmond O’Brien and Frank Lovejoy) pick up a guy hitchhiking (William Talman). He pulls out a gun and menaces them from the back seat, revealing bit by bit that he’s a psychopath.
He forces them to drive through the desert and across the border and back, to elude a major manhunt forming on their tail. Lupino has tight control of her material and make this film tough and edgy but ends it too easily. (3 out of 5)
THE BIGAMIST feels more like a woman’s film from the 1930s than a 1953 film noir. Edmond O’Brien, again, stars as an errant husband. His wife (Joan Fontaine) can’t have children and wants to adopt. He’s a traveling salesman who meets a willing waitress (played by Lupino), gets her pregnant, marries her and tries to live in two families. The adoption official (Edmund Gwenn) gets suspicious and traps him into telling all the what, and especially the why. It’s melodrama but remarkably sympathetic. Also slyly funny with allusions to Gwenn’s biggest role at the time, Santa Claus on 34th Street. (3 ½ out of 5)
And this timely one, which was not available to preview ...
TIME FOR ILHAN: This one seems even more relevant right now. Ilhan Omar is the Somali-born member of the US Congress (and the so-called "squad") about whom the crowd at a Trump rally chanted "Send her back." Three years ago, before getting to Congress, she was elected to the Minnesota legislature, the first Somali Muslim woman to win such an office in the United States. This film shows a hard-fought campaign and according to a few notices I've read a portrait of a tough and rising political star. (VanCity Theatre Sun evening and Mon afternoon)