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Dennis Quaid as RGN. Also demons in the house, race issues, immigrant problems and kids' baseball
Film festivals are in mind today and even though most of us won't get to them they are important for the glimpse they give of what's coming.
Venice, where award winners often start, is on right now and includes a new Joker movie and Daniel Craig in a gay romance called Queer.
Telluride, also on now, and also a starting place for winners, has a new one by Edward Berger who directed All Quiet on the Western Front and Jason Reitman's film about the early days of Saturday Night Live.
Toronto has been sending out bits of information for weeks and now has its schedule out. It starts Thursday with Nutcrackers starring Ben Stiller and will have Sean Baker's Cannes winner Anora and new films by David Cronenberg, Ron Howard, Paul Schrader, Mike Leigh, Julie Delpy, Angelina Jolie and many others.
VIFF in Vancouver announced its schedule just two days ago. It starts Sept 26 with Ari’s Theme said to be a moving documentary about a composer restricted to a wheelchair by spinal muscular atrophy. The closing film will be another Cannes winner, and sensation, Emilia Pérez, described as "a dizzying musical".
You can see the full TIFF and VIFF schedules online and note that both will be showing the film Universal Language which Canada just this week announced will be our submission to the Academy Awards. It's said to be "a surreal comedy of disorientation" and remembering director Matthew Rankin's terrific 2019 film The Twentieth Century I'm very much looking forward to it.
Meanwhile, there are these ...
Reagan: 2 ½ stars
The Deliverance: 4
1992: 3 ½
Doubles: 3 ½
You Gotta Believe: 3
REAGAN: You might be tempted to watch this biopic about the 40th US president as an interesting sidebar to the campaign going on now to elect the next one. Be careful. It does a few things right but a lot wrong. Dennis Quaid, as he plays Ronald Reagan, gets across his amiable personal style and the film zips through the facts of his life: mid-western upbringing, job as a lifeguard, movie actor, anti-Communist activist in Hollywood, on to politics as governor and president. But it doesn't surmise why his legacy remains so popular.
Factual details are often thin or missing (as in the Iran-Contra Affair) because the film's main purpose is elsewhere: to depict him as a savior, inspired by God to defeat Communism world-wide.
Sure he stood up to the Soviet Union but it's hard to imagine that his famous Berlin speech (“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall”) could on its own have toppled the USSR. His plan in the arms race to make them “spend money they don't have” surely did much more.
His story is told in an unusual way, by a KGB agent (John Voight) who calls him “The Crusader,” cites his religious influences, his mother's mention of “a divine plan” and even his humor for which he was famous. Some of his best jokes are re-told. His economic ideas, which are revered by many, are glossed over. His tax-cutting promise: “If the good lord only asks for 10%, why should Uncle Sam ask for any more?” is there. As is his most famous debating ploy (“are you better off than you were four years ago”). Yes, his legacy persists but this film doesn't enlighten. (Playing in a scattering of theaters across Canada) 2 ½ out of 5
THE DELIVERANCE: Yet another exorcism movie, although they call it deliverance here. I don't know if there's a difference but they look the same. What's new here is the beset-upon family is black and the story is “inspired by” an actual case that got a great deal of news coverage back in 2011. Latoya Ammons and her three children suffered what appeared to be demonic possession in a house they had just moved into. She's listed in the end credits as a consultant.
Lee Daniels is the director and if you can remember his double-Oscar winning Precious from 2009 you know to expect a hard-hitting, strong-language film about black people under extreme stress. Andra Day (who we last saw as Billie Holiday) is the young mother. Her husband is in Iraq and she's drinking too much and is under investigation for bad mothering by a child welfare official played by Mo'Nique (one of the stars of Precious). What's causing those bruises on the children? And living with the family is the mother-in-law played by Glenn Close in surely her most glamour-less role ever. She's got cancer, is bald because of chemo and spouts religion and invective equally. The film starts with just creepy noises but gets to a wild torrent. It's not that scary because you're distracted by the novelty. But it is effective. (Netflix) (4 out of 5)
1992: Here's one to check out because it's intelligent and gripping. It's another movie that tells one story but is really about another. And it's also also Ray Liotta's last film. He delivers perfectly with the gruff fits of anger he was so good at. It's a heist movie; he's part of a gang trying to rob a catalytic converter factory of the platinum used there. It's more valuable than gold. Security is tight but the gang expects the pending verdict in the Rodney King police-beating case will spark a riot which will distract the police and give them a good cover. All that comes true. We get wild scenes of violence, looting and police action in the streets and a very tense robbery at the factory.
Liotta, as a father, is there with two sons (one played by Scott Eastwood, Clint's son). Tyrese Gibson, well-known for the Fast and Furious movies, is there, also with a son (Christopher Ammanuel) but estranged from him and trying to re-connect. Various disputes and alliances within the group enliven the story but the overall theme becomes race relations. It's sparked by the Rodney King action outside and causes Gibson to reflect on “What's left for us if we burn everything down?” and that the rioters are “doing exactly what these white folks want us to do. They don't care about us.” Talk like that appears several times throughout the film and comes to a head over how they treat a Black security guard at the factory. It's a strong film, sharply directed and co-written by Ariel Vroman. (Playing in a few theaters) 3 ½ out of 5
DOUBLES: Here's a satisfying and sweet tale about the immigrant experience, though with considerable exotic and critical elements. A young man from Trinidad comes to Toronto to find his father who left his family on the island some time ago, has stopped communicating with them and is reputed to rich and driving an SUV. If he won't support them, maybe he'll sign over the deed to their house so they can sell it. Toronto, they think, has no black people. Naturally little of this turns out to be true.
Dhani, played by Sanjiv Boodhu, finds the truth. Dad (Errol Sitahal) isn't successful, he's a lowly worker in a restaurant and he's sick. He needs a bone marrow transplant. Is Dhani a genetic match? While he's finding that out he gets to know Anita, a server at the restaurant who has become attached to the old man as a substitute father. She, played by Rashaana Cumberbatch, has ambitions to run a food truck selling Trinidadian food like the curry and chickpea sandwiches called doubles.
And as those storylines move along Dhani learns how bad life in Canada can be for people like them. Some are exploited. Or undervalued. “This country is full of taxi drivers who were doctors back home,” says one. Some who do make it pretend to be more genuine than other immigrants. Food and cooking is the reconciliation driver in this film by Ian Harnarine. An earlier version, a short, was a multi-award winner back in 2011. This is deserving too but only released VOD. Check just-watch.com for where. 3½ out of 5
YOU GOTTA BELIEVE: It's a genre all of itself: underdog sports team rises to do something great. This is a lively and winning example that doesn't wander far from the usual, except possibly in that it brings in too much outside story. A coach's cancer diagnosis, for instance. But then it is a true story and that had to be included to be accurate.
It happened about 22 years ago in Fort Worth, Texas (although ironically part of it was filmed in London, Ontario). The Westside little league team loses all its games. The players are sloppy, they argue and one blames the coach (Luke Wilson) to his face. The assistant coach (Greg Kinnear) just sits in the dugout reading financial reports. They've got a big game coming up againt a tough team that loves to brag. One player feels pressure from his dad. Another admits: “I really do suck.” There are plenty of comic misplays. And a good group of young actors as the players.
Then the coach gets that cancer news, and though his wife (Sarah Gadon) assures “You're gonna beat this,” he knows he can't. Instead, he works up a plan to boost his players' confidence: train them, start winning and get them all the way to the Little League World Series. Impossible? Not when an ex-army drill sargent conditions them and a former pro pitcher teaches them. And when the man who first suggested it is played by Patrick Renna. Some 20 years ago he was one of the players in the classic young-boys-baseball movie The Sandlot. That shows continuity in the genre. The content does too: pep talk speeches happen (“You can’t always count on winning, but you can always count on each other.”) It's all part of it. (A few theaters) 3 out of 5
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