The latest about movie streaming: Warner Brothers has learned from Universal’s success with The Trolls. They’ll be streaming Scoob! (yes, Scooby-Doo) instead of holding it back.
Hollywood Suite (of which you can catch a free preview these days) is adding a long list of titles, some recent, like Django Unchained, many older, like A Hard Day's Night, and some as far back as High Noon (1952).
Toronto's Hot Docs Festival will be streaming, not screening, everything this year. I'll have the first title in two weeks.
Next week, Netflix will have a new David Spade comedy. Did you think they were over?
New highlights on other services include Downton Abbey, The Goldfinch (a dud, unfortunately), and Disappearance at Clifton Hill, a good Canadian film set in Niagara Falls.
The five I review today are all above average, too.
Light From Light: 4 stars
Becoming: 3½
This is Not a Movie: 4
Spaceship Earth: 3½
The Willoughbys: 3
LIGHT FROM LIGHT: Here’s a film you should seek out. It’s one of those small modest ones that are increasingly rare, in danger even, in this era of the movies. It’s a ghost story, of sorts, but only obliquely. Human problems — loneliness, emotional isolation, the difficulties of making connections, the allied difficulties of ending connections — are the real concerns here. They’re expressed in what initially appears to be a standard haunted house investigation in rural Tennessee.
A part-time ghost hunter (Marin Ireland) is asked to visit a lonely widower (Jim Gaffigan) who believes his wife, recently deceased in a plane crash, is still with him, causing lights to flicker and keys to move. Also along to help in the investigation are the ghost hunter’s teenage son and his girlfriend who rig up cameras and monitors and add something even more important. Commitment issues. Some variation of this afflicts all four of these characters and that’s what writer-director Paul Harrill explores in parallel with the mystery haunting. There’s suspense, particularly in a solo walk through the dark house at night, but not the usual jump scares. There is exceptionally good acting, economical dialogue, an easy pace and a caring view of real people. (Streaming at https://thecinematheque.ca/ for a very reasonable price.) 4 out of 5
BECOMING: This film reminds us all, Americans and America-watchers alike, that politics there used to be better. Former first lady Michelle Obama is the spark, although she hardly mentions politics. Obamacare isn’t heard at all. There’s just a reference to “careless power” being rampant these days, and I knew what she’s referring to. It’s the only allusion I detected in this ample assemblage of her personal thoughts and insights to the man now in charge. This is the story of her own life as expressed during a tour promoting her book, Becoming. At every stop, she fills an arena with adoring fans and is interviewed by celebs like Oprah Winfrey and Stephen Colbert. She also holds discussions with young people in small groups and it is there you really see her appeal: She listens and people warm to her.
We also get very personal family scenes with her brother and mother, and looking through a family album, we get her life story. “I am from the south side of Chicago. That tells you as much about me as you need to know,” she says. The film is about upward mobility and the barriers Black people have to overcome. She was rejected by a university, but got there anyway. Her white roommate was moved for fear of a Black woman. She regrets the “racism and tribalism” still around in the U.S. It’s an intimate portrait, all complimentary and not at all questioning. But then it was produced by the company she owns with her husband, Barack (who has a showy cameo near the end) and was directed by an admirer, Nadia Hallgren. OK, but I can’t imagine any dirt to be found anyway. (Netflix) 3½ out of 5
THIS IS NOT A MOVIE: If you’re interested in serious journalism (and since you’re visiting this site, you surely are), this documentary is for you. It hears from one of the most vibrant reporters ever as he explains himself, and watches him in action in some of the most troublesome spots on Earth. Robert Fisk is seen reporting on gunfire, explosions and nasty armed men in Syria at the height of the civil war, in Lebanon, Israel, Palestine and, on his first assignment, Northern Ireland. He’s famous for reporting live as bombs were falling around him, and he’s been at it for 40 years.
The film, by Canadian director Yung Chang (born in Oshawa), a co-production with the National Film Board, gives us lots of archival examples of his work and, most welcome, his philosophy. It could be a guide for any reporter. “If you don’t go to the scene … you can’t get close to the truth” is just the start of his thinking. He reports exactly what he sees, even if that makes enemies. He’s been called both an anti-Semite and a Zionist, for instance. We see him talk fairly to both an Israeli settler and a Palestinian who lost his land. He doesn’t show it, but we know who he sympathizes with because elsewhere he says this: “As a journalist, your job is to be neutral and unbiased, but on the side of those who are suffering.” He has advice like that throughout the film and also tells his own story. A Hitchcock film, Foreign Correspondent, attracted him to the profession, and a Rupert Murdoch editor drove him from the Times of London by completely changing a story about Americans shooting down an Iranian airliner. He went to The Independent and carried on. (Streaming at https://viff.org.) 4 out of 5
SPACESHIP EARTH: Here’s a documentary you should see. It’s mostly history, but also a look towards the future, and a celebration of visionaries who act out their idealism. And one more thing: It corrects the misunderstood reputation of a project in Arizona back in 1991-93 called Biosphere 2. For those two years, eight people lived inside a giant, closed-in structure built like a geodesic dome inspired by Buckminster Fuller. They had a simulated Earth inside, complete with land for agriculture, habitat for wildlife, and an ocean complete with a coral reef. It was a prototype, they imagined, for what we’ll have to build if we ever start colonies on other planets.
It’s not remembered as a success, but director Matt Wolf sets the record straight with new interviews (most of the participants are alive and still involved in ecological projects), and with ample film from the time (they tried to document everything). It evolved out of a theatre project in San Francisco in the 1960s and the fad back then for starting intentional communities. With a charismatic leader and a Texas billionaire’s backing, it grew into a huge endeavour that spoke to a variety of ecological issues, including global warming, which it recognized early. It was a media sensation (“important”), then a target (“cult,” “trendy ecological entertainment”). The film explains the problems that arose inside the dome (oxygen deficiency, personality conflicts) and then trots out a well-known character as a villain. But it validates the premise that “small groups are engines of change.” (Available now across all on-demand and digital platforms.) 3½ out of 5
THE WILLOUGHBYS: This animated comedy has been on Netflix for a couple of weeks, but I had to catch up to it for two reasons. One: It’s produced by Bron, the very busy company based in Burnaby. Second: Parents may need more kid-entertainment during the lockdown. This one is vibrant, cheeky, and fun. One plot point may be a problem, though. It’s the plan that four children come up with to get their annoying parents out of the way. I mean really out. Mom and dad (Jane Krakowski and Martin Short) are self-obsessed. The children, led by Tim (Will Forte), get them to travel to some very dangerous places and hope they don’t make it back.
To their chagrin, the parents hire a cut-rate nanny (Maya Rudolph), and they’re not free at all. They try to pretend they're orphans, but that brings agents from children’s services. There’s a real orphan, a baby, who they take to a candy factory, and a cat (Ricky Gervais), who narrates everything in his typically caustic style. It’s taken from a popular book by Lois Lowry and is directed by Kris Pearn, who also does extra duty as co-writer, executive producer (one of 11), and voice actor in a small role. He’s worked on many animated features, usually in character development. This one entertains with a frantic energy and colourful visuals, not front-rank as these films go these days, but with so many fast visual gags, few will notice. (Netflix) 3 out of 5
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