One film is at the head of the pack this week, maybe the whole year. 12 Years a Slave is a fierce look at a vile history. Among the other films this week you’ll find two dealing with time travel, several on Africa, the last days of both Diana and Cory Monteith and a scathing view of modern China.
Here’s the list:
12 Years a Slave: 5 stars
Ender’s Game: 3
About Time: 2 ½
Last Vegas: 3
Diana: 2 ½
Man of Tai Chi: 3
A Touch of Sin: 4
Cutie and the Boxer: 3
Griot: 3 ½
New African Films: --
All the Wrong Reasons: 2 ½
Free Birds: 2
12 YEARS A SLAVE: This is not only a must-see; it’s also a masterpiece. I can’t think of anything in it to complain about. It’s the most accurate depiction of slavery in the U.S. that I’ve ever seen, unflinching in what it shows but restrained enough to modulate the horrors. Slaves are abused and whipped. We feel the pain but we’re not grossed out. There’s one whipping later on that is hard to take but even that is less than the big outrage: taking away the freedom of human beings and keeping them as property. We get all the details plus one man’s fight to get free.
The story is true, shortened from a memoir that was a bestseller soon after Uncle Tom’s Cabin but disappeared for over 100 years. I guess America didn’t need too many reminders. It can’t be avoided now. The film and at least three stars are going to get nominations for many awards. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Solomon Northup, a free black from New York state who was abducted, sold as a slave and made to work on various plantations. The film shows him on two, first employed by a relatively kind master played by Benedict Cumberbatch and then a psychotic one played by Michael Fassbender. There’s also a slave named Patsey played with startling power by newcomer Lupita Nyong'o. She’s abused, but at the same time is the owner’s mistress, part of a weird psycho-sexual theme that develops late in the film. All along the way it’s Northrup’s dreams of freedom that hold our attention. They’re interrupted by shocking violence and hits to his dignity but he declares, “I will not fall into despair.” The horror is tempered with hope. And later on by Brad Pitt, as a Canadian carpenter. All true. (5th Avenue, International Village and two suburban theatres) 5 out of 5
ENDER’S GAME: It used to be a point of discussion that electronic games are training the soldiers of tomorrow because their wars will be fought on computer screens not on the ground. This movie, from a short story that became a novel and then a series, runs with that idea. Teenagers are recruited into a training school where they work at video monitors to hone their aggressive skills.
Harrison Ford is the project leader, Viola Davis is a psychologist and together they bring in a 14-year-old cadet (Asa Butterfield) because he shows a talent for strategy. Later Ben Kingsley comes along to lead him into a battle simulation. What he’s really getting is a Bush-like concept of militarism. A race of extra-terrestrials once attacked Earth. Ford, gruff as usual playing Col. Graff, says hit them before they come again. “The purpose of the war is to prevent all future wars,” he asserts. How many times throughout history has that been said? It’s a short debate here and the target audience, teens mostly I would think, will find the special effects, including some nifty zero gravity exercises, far more appealing. (Dolphin, Scotiabank and many suburban theatres) 3 out of 5
ABOUT TIME: Mix the whimsical side of Love Actually with the nuttiness of Groundhog Day and you might be able to envision what you’ll get here. Richard Curtis, who wrote and directed the first, and seems to have drawn ideas from the second, gives us another pleasurable tale of young Londoners in love.
A woman from over here or at least the U.S. (Rachel McAdams) is the quarry for geeky young Tim (Domhnall Gleeson). He meets her at a party, messes up an opportunity but knows how to get a second chance. His dad (Bill Nighy) had confided in him that the men in their family can reverse time. Tim just resets to a earlier time and conducts himself differently. He’ll do that over and over again in this movie. I suppose it’s a treatise on making the best of everything you do. In that, it’s fun, witty at times and bouyant in mood, but also pretty light and flimsy. (5th Avenue, International Village and Park & Tilford in North Van). 2 ½ out of 5
LAST VEGAS: There’s no Hangover here. These guys are too old to carouse quite like that. But they do kick up a few heels and flip a few chips on a weekend in Last Vegas. There are four of them, Academy Award winners all: Michael Douglas, Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman and Kevin Kline, who won for A Fish Called Wanda. They were the Flatbush 4 in their youth in Brooklyn. Now, 58 years later Douglas is getting married (to a woman half his age) and hosting a bachelor weekend. De Niro comes under protest because of an ancient issue with Douglas, and before long they’re at odds again. They’re both interested in a lounge singer played by Mary Steenburgen, another Oscar winner.
The hi jinx remain tame; the jokes about what old people can and cannot do and what medicines they have to remember to take predominate. Some scenes get silly; others sentimental but in a quest for mild entertainment with a good heart as played by some old troopers and a few thoughts on long-lasting friendship, you’ll feel rewarded. (International Village and many suburban theatres) 3 out of 5
DIANA: Naomi Watts gives it a good try but can’t capture the essence of the late and beloved Princess Diana. Her strength and her charisma aren’t there. Partly, it’s the fault of the script which is pedestrian and feels like a TV movie. It portrays her too much as a little-girl-lost, which would work if it also showed scenes to justify the image. We only get the motivating background spoken, by her, and she comes off as whiney and needy because of it. We only see her briefly with her sons and only from far away.
The story tells of her love affair with a London heart surgeon, named Hasnat Khan. He came after Charles and before Dodi Fayed in her life and the film, based on a book by Kate Snell, does a lot of imagining. Who knows what Diana and Hasnat said to each other in bed after sex? Or privately anywhere? Still it’s not a disaster as some British critics have it. Naomi has Diana’s mannerisms and voice right, though not always her appearance. Naveen Andrews doesn’t look that much like Dr. Khan but does come across as charming and strong. The film explains well the pressures were under. It also looks substantial with good use of settings and locations and great care in working in the events that were public. It does not stoop to re-creating the fatal car accident. (International Village) 2 ½ out of 5
MAN OF TAI CHI: This is also a meditation on aggressiveness and as so often happens peace wins the moral ground but fighting gets the attention. Martial arts guy Tiger Hu Chen plays a Beijing tai chi enthusiast (named Tiger Chen) who sees more than serenity and exercise in his sport. Although his master at the temple recommends meditation, he fights and wins in a televised contest. That draws an invite from a shady promoter (Keanu Reeves) to join an illegal underground fight-to-the-death in Hong Kong. Chen does because he needs money to save his master’s temple from a developer and a crooked building inspector.
The story is trite but the presentation makes it entertaining. Reeves, who is also making his debut as director, keeps the camera moving, the editing tight and the focus on his main theme: loss of innocence. (He can’t do anything about his own stiff acting though). Chen is remarkable in his fight sequences, sometimes twirling into a jump to give a kick to the head or flipping over and kicking upside down in midair. Watch for him. He’s got a future. (Rio on Broadway) 3 out of 5
Three at the VanCity Theatre …
A TOUCH OF SIN: The ever-popular question “what is going on in China” gets a visceral answer in this four-story film by Jia Zhangke. He’s known for tales about the lives of real people. Here he takes on a bigger reality: China’s obsession with money. Consumerism is paramount; tradition is falling under the advance of modern life. The stories he uses to illustrate his themes are based on real events. A coalminer gets revenge when he learns of corruption in the privatization of a mine. A migrant worker thinks a gun will help dispel his poverty. A woman is humiliated at the sauna where she works. An aimless young man drifts from job to job. Each story leads to violence. It’s shocking, gripping and, according to a gentleman who sat beside me when I saw the film at VIFF, a perfect match for the China he knows. For the director it’s also a call to action. “Do you understand your sin?” he wrote in the film’s last line. He won a big award at Cannes for his screenplay. (VanCity) 4 out of 5
CUTIE AND THE BOXER: That’s what’s so great about documentaries. You get to meet people you had no interest in and often enough find they’re delightful. Case in point: Ushio Shinohara (the boxer) and Noriko Shinohara (she’s Cutie). He’s an avant garde artists from Japan who arrived in New York in the 1960s, just in time to hang out with Andy Warhol. She was half his age when she arrived, married him, shelved her own art ambitions and had his child.
They’re still together but like many old people they express their love one minute and bicker the next. “I’m not his assistant,” she insists. Yes she is, he says, because “the average one has to support the genius.” The film is full of scenes capturing both their affection and the competition. While he creates paintings with boxing gloves and struggles to pay the rent with the earnings, she’s re-lit her artistic drive by telling her own story in cartoon drawings starring Cutie. The film shows parts of it in animation and in a wall installation when she gets a joint gallery show with him. It’s a unique view of a woman’s personal growth and a union that’s endured. (VanCity) 3 out of 5
GRIOT: This one played at the film festival in 2012. It’s back with a special extra. The two musicians featured in the film and now big on the world music scene will follow the film with live concerts on two of its four days. The film starts Saturday, plays again Thursday and will have the live addition next Saturday and Sunday. (At a special price).
It’s a documentary about a traditional figure in Senegal called the griot. He’s a musician, storyteller, village leader and herald of news, including war. Ablaye Cissoko, who plays the kora, a stringed instrument and sings soulfully, comes from a long line of griots. German-born Volker Goetze, now a New York resident, made the film to document his story, his ancient calling and a bit of Senegal’s economic problems. He also joins in now and then with his jazz trumpet. It’s a surprisingly successful mix and with or without trumpet the music in the film is wonderful. (VanCity) 3 ½ out of 5
NEW AFRICAN CINEMA: There’s more from the formerly dark continent in this series at The Cinematheque organized by UBC’s African studies program. The goal, they say, is to display a shift that’s gone largely unnoticed. Young filmmakers are less into “didactic” films about their countries and more into personal philosophy, “interiority and poetics”. So looking over the list (which you can find at www.thecinematheque.ca) you’ll notice a film about Barack Obama’s half-sister in Kenya and another about the Rawandan genocide. Not unexpected. But you’ll also see Restless City.
It’s about Nigerian immigrants in New York, trying to survive among gangsters pimps and prostitutes. It was directed by Andrew Dosunmu, an immigrant from Nigeria himself. His background is fashion and music-videos and has just been tabbed to direct the long-planned biography of the late Fela Kuti, the Nigerian musician and political activist. The series runs until Thursday the 7th.
ALL THE WRONG REASONS: It’s not for the right reason that this film has some fame. It’s Cory Monteith’s second last movie and though he’s good in it, he also more than a bit bland.
He plays a department store manager in Halifax with ambitions of moving up in the company, which would also require a move to Toronto. He’s got a wife (Quebec actor, Karine Vanasse) who works upstairs at a bank of monitors watching the store and suffers from the trauma of losing a sister. She can’t bear anybody touching her which keeps Cory out of her bed and drives him into the arms of a new clerk, played with trashy glee by Emily Hampshire. Cory’s wife, meanwhile, gets close to an ex-fireman (Kevin Zegers) working security in the store while he tries to get his old job back. He lost a hand in an accident. Get it? Two damaged people coming together, while two others are, well, just getting it on. The script by first-time director Gia Milani covers a lot of ground in these relationships with uneven results. She charts the strains well enough but resolves them with more than a little wish-fulfillment fantasy. (International Village) 2 ½ out of 5
FREE BIRDS: This is an odd one. Just a month before American Thanksgiving it comes to remind kids that what they’ll be eating that day was a living creature that’s been slaughtered for food. They learn about it in a story of one turkey (Owen Wilson) who figures out the truth, “turkey paradise” is a lie, every bird in the flock will be eaten. Jump ahead through some incredible events—a pardon by a Bill Clinton-like president, relaxing at Camp David, a scheme by a wildy crazy turkey (Woody Harrelson) to steal the camp time machine—and two turkey activists are back in 1621 just a day before Pilgrims and Indians hold the first ever Thanksgiving feast.
If they can get them to eat something else, turkeys will be saved for all time. A scowling Miles Standish (Colm Meaney) is the lead hunter, Amy Poehler is among the turkeys he’s stalking. The film has lots of weak gags among some pretty good animation (especially the time travel sequences). A new company in Texas created it showing they have ambitions far above turkeys. But they threw in so much that they’ve missed anything charming or exciting. Stereotypes and trite story elements roam free. And it’s not even with a vegetarian message, judging by the alternative they come up with, which by the way is also a gross example of product placement. (International Village and many suburban theatres) 2 out of 5
NOTE: All images are movie stills provided by the studios. They are the exclusive property of their copyright owners.