It’ll be a smaller Vancouver International Film Festival this year. Understandably. I count some 95 features on the list. Last year, there were 216. They’ll be available online for as little as $9 (better than Toronto’s festival where prices start at $19). Some will also be shown in-house at the newly renovated Van City Theatre. The good news is that the opening film will be shown free of charge in 12 theatres around the province. How that will work isn’t clear yet. Watch for more info at https://viff.org.
The festival starts Sept. 24 and people from anywhere in the province will be able to stream the films. That’s handy, but you give up the chatting, comparing and recommending you do in regular years as you wait in lineups. Among the highlights I’ve noticed so far: The New Corporation, the followup to the locally produced critical view of the business world; Falling, Viggo Mortensen’s directing debut; Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round; and Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman in The Father.
Charlie Kaufman, whose new film I praise very highly today, will do a creator talk (online, I think) and that opening film is Monkey Beach, Loretta Todd’s version of the acclaimed novel about courage, spirituality and ghosts in a Haisla community here in B.C.
Today’s films are ...
Mulan: 3½ stars
I’m Thinking of Ending Things: 4
Feels Good Man: 3½
Entwined: 3½
I Propose We Never See Each Other Again After Tonight: 3
Measure for Measure: 2½
Odd Man Rush: 2½
MULAN: I wish it was possible to see this one on the big screen. It’s large, colourful, intricately set-designed and offers some spectacular battle sequences. It also cost $200 million to make, which is surely why Disney is charging extra for it on its streaming service — $29 dollars above your subscription fee. Worth it if you can gather the whole family and maybe invite in some neighbours. They’ll enjoy it all. It’s a grand, sweeping film, a live-action remake of the animated version of 22 years ago, and successor to a long history before that. The story is legendary in China, originally from an epic poem and adapted for films, the stage and print many times. It supports ideals of honour, courage, family and (extra emphasized here) equal abilities of women.
Mulan raises all that when she breaks the rules and goes off to war pretending she’s a man. She’s going in place of her aging dad when an army is raised to fight off invaders from Mongolia. Not Huns, as in the previous film, but Rourans. There are other changes, too: no mini dragon voiced by Eddie Murphy; but a phoenix instead (more symbolic in Chinese culture); and a cast of well-known Asian actors like Gong Li (as a witch), Jason Scott Lee (as the invader), Jet Li (as the Emperor) and Tzi Ma and Rosalind Chao (as Mulan’s parents). She (Liu Yifei) has to prove herself in the army (she does that with both fighting skills and gymnastics) and hide her gender (no showers with the guys, for instance). Early scenes feel quite standard, but when the momentum picks up, we’re fully with her. There’s vitality in Niki Caro’s direction. She told a similar woman-can-do story in her best known film Whale Rider. (Disney+) 3 ½ out of 5
I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS: No, not her life. Her relationship with a recently acquired boyfriend, says the young woman in this latest mind-twisting movie by master twister Charlie Kaufman. Imagine films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Being John Malkovich, both of which he wrote, or Anomalisa and Synecdoche, New York, which he directed as well, and you’ll get a hint of what you’re in for. Whip-smart, chatty, verging on surrealistic, that’s what. And, this time, based on a novel by a Canadian, Ottawa-area-based Iain Reid. Apparently though, liberally altered under Kaufman’s own fixations about aging, regret, inadequacy, memories of a high school outsider, art, parents, and more. The sum of it all is immensely engrossing, almost mesmerizing.
Jessie Buckley and Jesse Plemons play the couple. Her thoughts come via voiceover as they drive through a snowstorm to the farm of his parents (David Thewlis and Toni Collette). They chat at length about movies and art and much else, but don’t really connect. She recites a gloomy poem. He recalls a musical he once sang in. It gets eerie and weirder at the farm. The parents are friendly and welcoming, but seem to change from one scene to the next, getting older, practically doddering, then younger and livelier. It’s a brilliant version of one of those “meet the parents” visits. A stop at an ice cream shop (during a blizzard?) and then a high school add to the strangeness. It’s quite a puzzle in that it never really lets on what it’s about, but it’s so rich with spoken ideas and musings and hints to meanings (and incidentally, fine acting and writing) and bits of sly humour, that you can’t get bored. (Netflix) 4 out of 5
FEELS GOOD MAN: This one will have you pondering again exactly what is going on these days. In politics, among the so-called base, among fringe groups and on and by the internet. Weighty stuff not usually related to ephemera like Pepe the Frog, but watch his influence. Matt Furie, a San Francisco comic book writer, created him and in the very first scene, shows how he draws him.
It’s so easy that people on the internet can reproduce him and insert him into photos and new cartoons to make comments., as they are wont to do. Many are political. Just watch how many Pepe Trumps the film finds. The thinking is that Pepe has appealed to the cheeky side of a lot of young men “living in their mom’s basement” and to subscribers to the free-for-all website 4Chan. They pick up on Pepe’s mantra, “It feels good.” But then, also as they are wont to do, some put a stronger spin on him: white supremacist images and Nazi symbols. Some public figures, like the odious Alex Jones, pick up on it and promote him. Pepe has gone viral, TV commentators like Rachel Maddow mention him, but Furie’s pacifist image is in tatters. Can he get his character back? The film watches him try. A fascinating film with lots to think about. (available video on demand) 3½ out of 5
ENTWINED: While we’re thinking about film festivals, note this one that played Toronto’s last year and has finally reappeared. It’s a superbly creepy and eerie one from Greece, but partially in English, and offers a nice, tingly atmosphere and quite a few surprises. It’s a horror movie without gross stuff.
A doctor arrives at a small village resolved to do good. Bad start, though, he almost runs down a woman on the way in. The villagers are standoffish and warn against visiting a certain house out in the woods. As one says, “God marked the evil ones so we can tell them apart.” Of course, the doctor goes there, finds the woman he almost ran down and concludes she’s in trouble. She’s rather child-like about trees and nature and terrified of letting the fire in the fireplace go out. An old man she lives with abuses her. What’s really going on is gradually revealed, and it’s not what he thought. This is a fine chiller and fantasy directed by Minos Nikolakakis, stepping up from his background in short films. (Video on demand at Amazon, Google Play, iTunes and many others) 3½ out of 5
I PROPOSE WE NEVER SEE EACH OTHER AGAIN AFTER TONIGHT: It’s not a dismissal line. It’s an invitation to talk openly — i.e., no regrets about what you say now if we’re not going to meet again. It’s one of a number of quirky elements that make this romantic comedy from Winnipeg a little different. A young Filipina (Hera Nalam) says it to a Mennonite man (Kristian Jordan) on a first date. An unusual hook-up, maybe, but not to the writer-director Sean Garrity. He says he was struck as he was growing up there how many Filipinos and Mennonites he saw around town. So this film reflects one part of the real Winnipeg. The story in front is enjoyable, but familiar.
He goes away for a while; she takes that as a rejection and sees other guys, sleeps with one and has some explaining to do when her guy returns. He’s upset (“You destroyed this.”), walks out, and she has to look for him with little information, only the name of a town he came from. The writing is good (though with a few weak spots in the plot) and the acting by the two leads is natural and endearing. Overall, according to some notes I’ve seen from people who know the city, the film captures its look and feel perfectly. For the rest of us, it’s amiable and charming. (International Village — 2 screens — and Landmark Guildford) 3 out of 5
MEASURE FOR MEASURE: A lesser play by Shakespeare is updated into a crime thriller. That doesn’t happen all that often, but this is Melbourne, Australia, in a public housing project with a notorious reputation. “Commission flats,” the locals call them. The film succeeds quite well, despite the improbable connections.
Hugo Weaving, named Duke, rules the place as a crime boss, but starts having doubts, morality you see, after a drug-related killing. Like in the play, he goes away to ponder and puts his protege, Angelo, in charge. One of his enforcers, Farouk, has a sister, who, after the killing, meets and falls in love with a musician, Claudio. She wears her hijab and is not of Claudio’s crowd. Farouk strongly disapproves. As you can see, the story is contorted to match the play and, at the same time, reflect current matters: inequality, class divisions, immigration, guns and drugs. And gangs controlling public housing projects. Any humour is gone; what’s left is bleak and severe and peppered with bits of philosophy like, “We all cross the line sometimes, but it’s still a line.” The film is gritty and the actors, especially Weaving, give strong performances. It just feels like we’ve seen much of this before. (Video on demand) 2½ out of 5
ODD MAN RUSH: Here’s a hockey film that involves people who actually know the sport. Notably, the lead producer: Howard Baldwin. He has owned NHL teams, ran the rival WHA for a time, merged it with the NHL and now makes movies. In this one, Alexa Lemieux, Mario’s daughter, and Trevor Gretzky, Wayne’s son, play important secondary roles.
Most important: The source is a memoir by Bill Keenan, who lived what he described and co-wrote the screenplay. Jack Mulhern is his stand-in as a player who dreams of getting to the big leagues, but after a college injury, tries his luck in Europe. The teams he plays for are minor league, for sure, first in Germany, then when he’s traded, in northern Sweden. There’s a light, irreverent tone in how they’re portrayed and the film is a wannabe Slap Shot, but with fewer hijinks. The ambience feels real; it’s the drama that’s weak. The constant yearning to get back to play in the U.S. versus a nagging feeling that it’s out of reach should have more impact than it does. A sweet romance with a local woman (Elektra Kilbey), who also wants to get to the U.S. but into the art world there, adds another point of interest and that helps a bit. Not enough, though. (Available digitally and on demand) 2½ out of 5
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