You've some very good choices this week, including a rare 5 out of 5 from me, two publishing friends chatting, a throat singer spouting anger and just in time for lunar New Year a giant sci fi would-be blockbuster from China. If you want more for that holiday try Ascension, which takes you intimately into the new China. To find out where it's available, Google just-watch.com and ask. There are many places. I haven't found any yet for Canada's Oscar hopeful, Eternal Spring, about Falun Gong tricksters who hi-jacked state television in China. Maybe soon.
This week we have:
Living: 5 stars
Turn Every Page: 4
The Wandering Earth II: 3
Ever Deadly:4
Missing: 3
The Son: 2½
LIVING: This film is a must see. It is emotional, heart-warming and also a slap on bureaucracy, which is never a bad thing. And it's got a mesmerizing and delicate performance by Bill Nighy, who deserves an Oscar for it. He plays an office type in a city hall (London maybe) where three women arrive to lobby for a playground. They know of an empty lot that's available. They get sent up stairs, and back down, and to another department and upstairs again. Bill's character eventually agrees to file their document at his desk.
A new hire is cautioned to stay on the “old man's” good side because he does project a curmudgeonly vibe. But he's charmed by the lively personality of a young woman in the office and takes her to lunch, where he learns that her secret name for him is Mr. Zombie. That's the beginning of a conversion, driven by some bad personal news and leading to an uplifting ending that'll bring on more than a few tears. Directed by South African Oliver Hermanus and scripted by Nobel prize-winner Kazuo Ishiguro, this is a reworking of a Japanese classic: Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru. English and Japanese reserve match perfectly. (In theaters in four cities now: Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa and more to come) 5 out of 5
TURN EVERY PAGE: This film is highly entertaining, in an intellectual and literate way. Readers of The New Yorker or the New York Review of Books will especially enjoy it because it takes them into the world they read about all the time. It lets a writer and his editor talk about the long professional relationship they've enjoyed. Mostly.
They've worked together for over 50 years. Robert Caro wrote a classic book, The Power Broker, about New York builder Robert Moses. Barak Obama and Bill Clinton both praise it in the film. Robert Gottleib edited and compressed the mammoth manuscript it started out as. He's worked with many writers (Toni Morrison and others and changed Joseph Heller's title to Catch 22. He and Caro argued many points, comma vs semi-colon remains a huge one, but they're still friends. They've worked through Caro's four books on Lyndon Johnson and expect there'll be a fifth. Caro's focus is power, how it's used, what it gains and additionally, what it does to the people affected by it. LBJ used it well (civil rights and poverty) and badly (Viet Nam war). To Caro he's a perfect subject. Gottlieb collect women's handbags. Huh? There are fun details here. (Arthouse theaters) 4 out of 5
THE WANDERING EARTH II: China sends this sci-fi epic worldwide on lunar New Year and with it jumps back into the international blockbuster race. It was there three years ago when the original film was a huge hit and imagined a crisis brought on by an overheating sun. Analogy for climate change? Maybe, and this film is a prequel with definite hints to the subject. It argues, in simulated speeches at the United Nations, that the whole word has to work together to meet the challenge. China makes that point but the American delegate resists. I imagine that reflects common thinking over there.
In the first film the earth was kicked slightly off its orbit so that it could drift away from the sun. Not too plausible, but straight from a novel by a popular science fiction writer, Cixin Liu. This new film takes place earlier and debates how advisable that really is. There's a race against time to implement it, a hotly-pushed competing plan and terrorist attacks to promote it. It gets weirder. All the world's nuclear weapons are needed to destroy the moon to reduce its influence on the earth. That calls for international co-operation too.
While that's going on a number of personal stories play out. In the main one, a computer scientist (played by Hong Hong star Andy Lau) loses his wife but saves his daughter by transferring her consciousness into a super computer. He's able to talk to her and does repeatedly. That brings human emotions into a film of huge special effects, explosions, grand speeches and even riots. The film is long, almost three hours, but packed and speedy. (In 25 theaters across Canada, 10 in or near Toronto, four in or near Vancouver) 3 out of 5
EVER DEADLY: Part concert film (but what a performance) and part a personal statement about Indigenous people in Canada, this one will move you. Maybe to anger, definitely to empathy as you listen to Nunavut-born Tanya Tagaq talk about her life and perform her modernized form of throat singing. It'll be lilting sometimes, then rough, a growl, a scream, a frenzied wail and then back down. She's won awards for her art and for the first time let it be caught on camera.
She co-directed the film with Chelsea McMullan. And between songs talks about her life and what she calls a deliberate act of violence committed against her people. She's talking generally as well as specifically. Her mother told her how her village was vacated and forcibly moved to another location. Tanya has become an activist speaking up about missing and murdered Indigenous women. You'll hear her anger in some of her songs. She also walks on the stones on a beach (“my playground”) and jokes about vegans telling her people to stop hunting. They've already been made “powerless” by government control. Her songs fight back. It's a strong statement. (Arthouse theaters) 4 out of 5
MISSING: Every once in a while there's a film that stretches fantastically what computers can do. I mean: find anyone's password? Watch videos that are on his cell phone? Call up security camera footage from a foreign country? All on a laptop in your bedroom? Or on a phone? That and more happens in this imaginary vision, dream is more like it, from two filmmakers, Nicholas D. Johnson and Will Merrick who shaped an earlier, similar film called Searching. Here they've got a teenage girl (Storm Reid) trying to find out what happened to her mother (Nia Long) who went on a trip to Columbia, with a new boyfriend, and disappeared.
The American embassy can't help. She can't speak Spanish, so there's a language problem elsewhere (solved with a translation app but only partially). She hires a detective (Joaquim de Almeida) who comes cheap and turns up a few leads that she has to follow herself. All on her computer. What emerges is an extremely twisty story with unexpected turns and revelations. It's clever and fun, but pretty incredible. (In theaters) 3 out of 5
THE SON: Teenage depression deserves a better examination than this. This one isn't all that deep and we end up not sure what to make of it. Well, maybe as an easy introduction to the subject it has value. People learning about it for the first time may find it serves their needs. But be aware, there's more to know.
Hugh Jackman plays a father now in a second marriage. His ex (Laura Dern) shows up alarmed that their son hasn't been in school for a month and tells him to find out why. He talks to the boy ( Zen McGrath) but gets no answers except “I feel that I'm going crazy” and “I'm going under, don't abandon me.” He's got knife scars on his arm. Dad didn't know and doesn't know what to do about it. He's busy. He has a baby with his new wife. His own dad (Anthony Hopkins) tells a sad story himself. Parental missteps come down through the generations. A repeated shot of a washing machine in action symbolizes turmoil in the families. The acting is good but the story feels manufactured. The director, Florian Zeller, made it from his own stageplay. A previous film, also from a play, was a sensitive study of dementia and won Hopkins an Oscar. This film is too thin for that. (In theaters) 2 ½ out of 5
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