It’s another week with one film up there above all the rest. In quality? No, in box office potential. There are good alternatives though, four of them Canadian, and if you’re into film technology, Quentin Tarantino’s latest, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, in another format, the extra-large 70 mm size that he likes but only the Park Theatre is equipped to show around here.
Elsewhere, we’ve got …
It Chapter 2: 2 ½ stars
A Colony (Une Colonie): 4
Genesis (Genèse): 3 ½
The Great Darkened Days: 2 ½
That Higher Level: 4
The Proposal: 3
IT CHAPTER 2: This is from the second half of Stephen King’s mammoth novel. The first became the biggest grossing horror movie ever. This one is bound to do well too but didn’t do much for me. Except annoy. It’s excessively long, almost three hours, creeps along much of the time and now and then throws some jump startles at you. The scary scenes are isolated and don’t accumulate and build.
The six kids who called themselves the Losers Club in the first film are now grown up and scattered. It’s 27 years later, the exact interval on which the demonic clown Pennywise makes his appearances. The club re-assembles at the urging of the one who still lives in the small town of Derry, Maine (looking a lot like Oshawa and Port Hope, Ont.) and we’re forced to watch their personal stories separately and at length. Twice.What they did as teens (acted out in flashbacks with the original young actors) and what they’ve done since they’ve grown up and moved away.
James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain, Isaiah Mustafa, Jay Ryan, James Ransone and a standout Bill Hader have distinct personalities and histories and disparate encounters with the evil clown and ghoulish variations. Jessica is doused with a roomful of blood in her key scene. They each have to face up to their long-held fears (which oddly they’ve all but forgotten), seek out a relic to invoke an indigenous American ritual and go after the clown. Briskly directed by Andy Muschietti, beautifully presented visually and clear in its message that we’re stronger together, it still drags. For one thing there’s not enough Pennywise. Bill Skarsgard plays him with a creepy, smiling menace but he’s not around for long stretches. We get disjointed other stories while we wait. (5th Avenue, Dunbar, Scotiabank, Marine Gateway + suburban theatres everywhere) 2 ½ out of 5
A COLONY (Une Colonie): Emilie Bierre, the teen girl at summer camp near the end of Genesis, plays the lead in this even better, even more resonant film, also from Quebec. It’s a universal story. She is a country girl named Mylia, timid, reticent, unsure of herself, learning about life beyond the farm she lives on. She wants desperately to join in with the sophisticates at school but feels too insecure. A party girl is a mentor in exchange for homework help, although she’s on her phone most of the time.
Mylia is awkward in sports and at a party, where drinking the punch makes her woozy. Under the smooth writing and snappy direction by Geneviève Dulude-De Celles and Bierre’s delightful acting you emphasize fully with her, maybe even identify. It’s a very good exploration of that part of growing up.
Another plot point sets this film apart from the usual. Mylia lives near a native reserve and becomes friends and falls gently in love with an Abenaki youth (Jacob Whiteduck-Lavoie). He helps her out a few times and she learns a different view of the world from him. And she watches him react when a class discussion of pioneer attitudes towards Indians brings on some mocking laughs and he fights back out in the hall. It’s a very Canadian story, well-observed and evocative but with a bitter-sweet ending. The film won Best Canadian at the Whistler Festival and Best Picture and Best First Feature at the Canadian Screen Awards. (Cinematheque Sat, Sun & Mon) 4 out of 5
GENESIS (Genèse): Maybe it’s because Quebecker Philippe Lesage has a background in documentary film that this drama by him feels so real. He observes and understands, in this case the anxious times when adolescents start (and try to figure out) their love lives. Often not figure them out. Here half siblings Guillaume and Charlotte chart their personal paths in radically different ways.
She (French actress Noée Abita) is living with a photographer who offends her with a suggestion that they could start seeing other lovers as well. She’s upset but drifts into doing exactly that. It’s surprising; she doesn’t seem the type but a streak of narcissism inside her well-behaved self prompts her. There’s a disturbing outcome.
Guillaume meanwhile (Montreal actor Théodore Pellerin) is the class clown at school, the teacher’s favorite target for censure and a teen unsure of his sexuality. He’s a loner at parties, can’t qualify for the hockey team and affronts his best friend by trying to kiss him. “I was just curious,” he says. Lesage finds much anybody can relate to in these stories and then makes a complete switch to two younger teens noticing each other at a summer camp. It’s sweet, unrelated to what came before but a life-goes-on declaration. (Cinematheque, Sunday evening) 3 ½ out of 5
THE GREAT DARKENDED DAYS: Montreal director Maxime Giroux put his thoughts about America, the world today and capitalism into this film but I think he lost many of us. He knows what he’s saying; for the rest of us it’s a lively though obscure road trip. It’s in English and incessantly pessimistic about humanity.
Philippe (Martin Dubreuil) is on the move somewhere. He left Quebec to escape being called up for war. (Maybe World War II. It’s not specific. We hear Gen Patton on a radio and later an REM song.) He’s a Charlie Chaplin acolyte and a few times echoes the film The Great Dictator. He’s roaming the American west, that iconic part of the country and runs into a succession of mean-spirited, some of them violent people. He rides freight trains, wakes up in snow, stops at the home of a woman (Sarah Gadon, terryfing) who treats her daughter like a dog. A cigarette salesman (Cody Fern) is the most pleasant of the people he meets on this increasingly hallucinatory trip but it’s not help he’s got to offer. He’s a representative of a system. The film has atmosphere and mood and a pretty obvious message, I think, about America, wartime or not. It was a big winner at the Canadian screen awards. (Cinematheque, Sat, Mon + Wed) 2 ½ out of 5
THAT HIGHER LEVEL: Too bad it’s being shown only one time this week because this film is inspiring. Certainly for musicians learning and developing their craft. For others of us it’s also educational. We see the 100 or so musicians in the National Youth Orchestra at work, in rehearsals, getting instruction and then performing on a 26-day tour across Canada culminating in a final concert at the Chan Centre at UBC. We get a generous excerpt from that one.
We watch the students work on their art. It’s thrilling when a violin girl is advised she’s playing too hard and then gets it right. We learn something too when an instructor explains the background for the main piece they play, Death and Transfiguration by Richard Strauss and when the students talk about the emotions it raises in them. They talk about expressing themselves, contemplating its meaning, understanding the history it reflects and “the importance of transcendence.” For many this is an early step to a professional career. As a trumpet boy puts it: “This is what I’m doing now. This is it.” The enthusiasm is infectious. The film’s director, John Bolton from here in Vancouver, understands. He’s been a viola player. (VanCity Theatre, Sunday afternoon at 3) 4 out of 5
THE PROPOSAL: Jill Magid is an American conceptual artist and here in her own film we see her most famous creation. Controversy, mostly. You might just get enraged by what she did and also why she felt she had to do it. I’ll have to leave some of this background skimpy so as not to spoil it all. But here goes.
Mexico’s most famous architect, Luis Barragán, influential in the Modernist movement, a prize winner and exponent of what he termed “emotional architecture” died in 1988. His house was named a world heritage site but his archives (photos, drawing, notes, etc.) ended up in Switzerland, owned by a furniture company and kept inaccessible by the owner’s wife. She claims to be a scholar and with the power of copyright keeps others away.
Magid came up with a lurid plan to get the material freed up and back to Mexico. She had Barragán’s cremated remains opened up, (we see it done) a portion taken out of the urn and … well, converted in a way and offered in trade for the archives. The plan was based on a rumor about how they got to Switzerland in the first place. We see secret footage of Magid’s meeting with the wife, many letters between them and a lot of newspaper commentary with words like “ghoulish”, “barbaric” and “ingenious.” The film doesn’t have the whole story but it does provoke thoughts about legacy, respect for the dead and ownership of creative works. It’s all pretty creepy though. (VanCity) 3 out of 5