MOVIES: Daughters and Alien Romulus. You couldn't get a bigger contrast.

Cinephiles in and near Vancouver are about to be delighted. The local art movie house, the VanCity Theatre, or VIFF Centre, re-opens tomorrow. It was closed for almost three months for renovations and that left a big gap in the local cinema scene. 

It's coming back with these well-regarded new films: Chuck Chuck Baby, The Gullspång Miracle and Red Island (I have not had a chance to preview them but the first two are 4-star writes the publicist). Also showing will be these from the past, Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno, Stop Making Sense, the great concert film, three by Alfonso Cuarón, Roma, Gravity and Children of Men and to really show off the re-newed venue, two screenings of one of the greatest visual epics ever made, David Lean's 1962 classic Lawrence of Arabia. 

You can find out more at https://viff.org/whats-on/

Or read here about what's new elsewhere: 

Daughters: 4 stars

Alien Romulus: 3

The Death Tour: 4

Close to You: 3

The Union: 2 ½

Jackpot: 2 

DAUGHTERS: You're not likely to see a more emotionally powerful film this year. It'll bring tears for almost anybody who watches it and a whole rash of thoughts about justice, injustice, forgiveness and that special bond daughters feel for their fathers. The film shows it as its strongest, when it's taken away. 
 

It follows four little girls whose fathers are locked up in jail and on this special occasion get to visit them. It's a “Daddy Daughter Dance” organized by an activist group called Girls For A Change, based in Virginia. It happens in a Washington prison and in the weeks leading up to it Aubrey, Santana, Raziah and Ja’Ana talk movingly about what it means to them. They want a connection with their dad. At least one hardly knows what he looks like. One is extremely intelligent and you sense how much damage his absence may cause in her life.

Meanwhile, inside the prison a “fatherhood coach” is preparing the dads for the event. He gets them to talk about their life, hears what they expect and calls the absent father problem, “the father wound.” Many of the dads suffered it themselves. At least one regrets the mistakes he's made and that sent him to prison over and over. The film doesn't look at one issue: that all these men are black. We can ponder ourselves what that says. When the dance happens, it is most affecting. The documentary is co-directed by activist Angela Patton and filmmaker Natalie Rae who is from Vancouver and is now based in Los Angeles. (Netflix) 4 out of 5

ALIEN ROMULUS: This is the 7th (9th by some counts) entry in the series that Ridley Scott started back in 1979. He's a co-producer this time and has endorsed the work of director Fede Alvarez. And, no wonder, most of it is terrific. Tense, icky and scary at times, speedy, honoring the classic first film and recalling quite a bit of what happened then and after. Also it re-creates the look and feel of the first one which gave us a grungy industrial ambience in a mining operation on an other planet, not the sparkling high-tech spaceships we usually get. All that is laid out in a leisurely first half and then all hell breaks loose. The third act is frenetic with high-powered action. 
 

Several employees of the Wayland Yutani Mining Corporation set out from their base to find what they think is an abandoned space ship, but turns out to be much larger, a de-commisioned space station. Among them is a young woman names Rain (Cailee Spaeny, who we last saw playing Priscilla Presley) and an android who she calls Andy (played by David Jonsson). He prefers to be known as a synthetic man; has been directed to do what's good for her and later gets a new directive: do what's good for the company. All that sets the scene nicely for when they encounter the first alien; giant, mouth dripping with gooey saliva and fast on the chase. Our friends have several near misses jumping into giant doors just before they close. Or sometimes being locked in by those doors.

Then smaller creatures scamper around like an infestation of over-sized spiders. A company avatar on a monitor explains part of what's going, that mankind isn't fit to live in space and can't wait for evolution which is too slow. Then an absolutely bonkers twist in the story builds on that and sets off a final action blow-out. It's fun, if you don't require subtlety. (In theaters everywhere) 3 out of 5

THE DEATH TOUR: No, it's not a horror movie. It got that name informally because, as it's said in the film, it's “the hardest tour in sports.” Every winter it takes a group of wrestlers north from Winnipeg to remote Indigeous communities with names like Pauingassi, Pimicikamac and Manto-Baawitigong to put on a show. They build a portable ring and toss and kick each other around, punch and crash, while an audience (of mostly children, it seems) cheers and claps and yells joyously. 

We get extended scenes of that action directed by Stephan Peterson and Sonya Ballantyne and performed by wrestlers with names like “Massive Damage,” “The Eskimofo” (a play on a word no longer in fashion) and “The Scottish Warrior” (actually Sarah McNicoll, seen in this photo). 
 

The tour brings entertainment to people who don't get much of that. But it's meant to do more: to bring light into communities that, as tour promoter Tony Condello explains, still suffer the effects of colonization, racism, generational trauma and isolation. The suicide rate is 2 to 9 times the national average. His message to the kids is simple: “Be proud.” As somebody says in the film, it's really a life tour. With the snowy roads and remote settlements, it's also a genuine bit of Canadiana. (The film is on a Canadian tour with dates still coming in Winnipeg, Calgary, Saskatoon, Regina, North Battleford, Vancouver and Montreal). 4 out of 5 

CLOSE TO YOU: This feels like an authentic representation of what life must be like for a trans person. Not surprising because Elliot Page co-wrote the story and it's his first film since he transitioned. He was nominated for an Oscar back in 2008 for Juno. 

Courtesy of Mongrel Media

Here he plays Sam, who lives in Toronto and goes east to the town of Coburg for his father's birthday. He hasn't been back in five years and dreads going because he feels the family rejected him when he transitioned. They're smiling and welcoming when he arrives but bit by bit nuances emerge. Some seem obliged to be polite. Mom still thinks of him as “my little girl”. Dad was accepting but says he felt “helpless.” One asks if he has sex with men or women. And a brother-in-law talks about “the rules” expected in how to talk to him. In a clumsy way he's trying to understand but Sam takes it as an insult and a loud argument breaks out. When others try to calm him down he yells that nobody cared back then, why now? Seems possible. To me there's one problem: a former lover (lesbian, when Sam was still a woman) is back in a rekindled affair with him. It develops gradually but feels unreal. It's directed by Dominic Savage from England, who helped write the story. (Theaters in Vancouver, Victoria, Toronto, Calgary and four others in Ontario) 3 out of 5 

THE UNION: No, this is not about labor relations. It's an international spy epic with lots of action but not enough logic. It seems a computer with all the personal information about every government worker in the US, including military and secret agents, has been stolen. How could that be? Doesn't say. It's about to be sold in an online auction on the dark web. How is that known? Doesn't say. But it has to be stopped and the way to do it is to join the bidding and thereby find out where the auction is and barge in to get back the case holding the device. 

An autonomous outfit inside the CIA, called The Union, is on the job. Halle Berry plays an agent, J.K. Simmons, her boss and the Union's founder, and Mark Wahlberg a construction worker. Why him? He won't be traced by the bad guys because his name isn't in that database. As Berry puts it, he's a “nobody.” He's also a former boyfriend of her's (back in highschool) and after sedation and a grab by two agents is along on the adventure. It by the way, is speedy and lightearted which may make up for what it lacks elsewhere. We get snappy dialog, gun battles and motorcyle chases, some tense action on rooftops and balconies on the side of tall buildings. And a confusing development: there are five groups after the device, and that means there are five devices. (?) Anyway the action moves from London to Istria, which is part of Croatia, where this was filmed with the help of tax breaks. Quite fun, if you're able to not think too deeply about it. Oh, and the last scene suggests there may be plans to make more of these. (Netflix) 2½ out of 5 

JACKPOT: I suspect this film is meant to be a satire. I just don't get anything important in what it's saying. The idea is weak, cynical and derisive. A screenwriter's creation. 

It's set in Los Angeles in 2030. That would be two years after the Olympics, which isn't mentioned. There's been a great depression, the state is broke and in a desperate move has created a “Grand Lottery.” The jackpot this time is $3.6 billion, possibly a send up of that Powerball lottery we hear about when it's pot gets huge. The difference here is that anybody can kill the winner and earn the prize. You can't use a gun, but anything else is OK and you have to do it before sundown or the winner is safe. You'd expect great tension as the day moves forward. You get mobs chasing but I wouldn't call it tension. It's relentlessly hyper. And too silly.

The stars do good work though. Awkwafina, as an aspiring actor, is a surprise winner of the lottery. Somehow everybody knows, can recognize her and, of course, chases after her. Mobs form pretty well anywhere. And in good free enterprise form, businesses have risen to protect you from the mob. John Cena plays one of those security guys and even advertises on TV. Canadian Simu Liu plays a competitor but he's such a pretentious self-promoter that you know he can't be trusted. A sequence with rapper Machine Gun Kelly is funny. Not much else is. (Prime Video) 2 out of 5