It’s Canada Day and as often happens it’s hard to find a Canadian film playing. Here’s all I could find:
Strange Brew, the Bob and Doug McKenzie romp, is at The Park tonight.
That kicks off the theatre’s new policy of special bookings only. You know, one nighters, stage plays beamed in, classic films, that sort of thing. Good luck. Cineplex hasn’t be able to make anything else work there.
The Rio is showing two films by Canadians, I Am the Blues (Tues) in which Montrealer Daniel Cross listens to some old-style music in Louisiana and The Amazing Nina Simone (Sat, Sun & Mon) a celebration of the famous jazz singer by former Vancouverite Jeff L. Lieberman. And tonight they’re showing The Last Waltz, Martin Scorsese’s film of the farewell concert by The Band, one of the best rock bands Canada has ever produced.
There’s Canadian content also in The Angry Birds Movie, now only at suburban theatres, and The BFG. Both were made here.
These are the new ones this week:
The BFG: 3 ½
The Legend of Tarzan: 3
Our Kind of Traitor: 2 ½
De Palma: 4
Mia Madre: 3 ½
The Daughter: 2 ½
Swiss Army Man: 1 ½
The Purge: Election Year: --
THE BFG: We used to get films like this at Christmas, all tinkly music and magical tone and sweet fantasy. But enjoy it anyway in summertime where more raucous children’s fare, like next week’s Secret Life of Pets, is more common.
It’s from three major talents, and a charming newcomer. Roald Dahl wrote the book, Steven Spielberg directed it from a script by Melissa Mathison, who also wrote E.T. for him, and Mark Rylance, who he directed to an Academy Award performance in Bridge of Spies, delights as the giant prone to malapropisms like “human beans” and “veggiterribles.”
The newbie is 10-year-old Ruby Barnhill who has only done a bit of television in England before this. Since this was filmed here in Vancouver, you’ll also find some local actors scattered around.
Entertaining, not particularly scary, the film is mostly about the friendship of two outsiders. An orphan girl and the giant who takes her away to “giant country” one night.
He had to; she caught sight of him and might have reported him. He’s gentle and, unlike the other giants, never eats children. That’s why they’ve rejected him and only come around now and then to intimate and sneer.
He spends his time collecting dreams in glass jars to distribute to sleeping children. In a sudden plot and mood turn, they both visit the Queen to get help against the giants. It’s less emotional than you’d expect, slow at times and pretty thin as a story.
But the ambience and look are superb. Rylance is again excellent, and made large through flawless film trickery; Barnhill is never cutesy and Jermaine Clement voices one menacing giant. A previous version, made for English TV, cut out the very prominent fart jokes. They’re back. Yes, even at Buckingham Palace with the Queen and her corgis. Just a slight caution for you. (International Village, Marine Gateway, suburban theatres)3 ½ out of 5
THE LEGEND OF TARZAN: We’ve had Tarzan movies ever since 1918. Most recently an animated version from Disney in 1999. So what can you do that’s fresh in 2016? The approach tried here is commendable, update it by bringing in real history and real issues, but that has turned out to as much self-defeating as valuable.
The sense of awe and discovery we would expect is dissipated. Many of the jungle scenes, the swinging on vines and all that, are brief and only in flashbacks because Tarzan, aka John Clayton III, is in London as the story starts, nattily dressed and a member of the House of Lords.
He turns down a chance to go back to Africa for “trade discussions” but is convinced to go for another reason, to help an American writer, George Washington Williams (an actual historical figure) investigate the slave trade. This is way beyond the usual animal poaching or diamond thievery Tarzan movies have dealt with.
But that story line dulls the man-and-nature themes that make the character special. Tarzan (Alexander Skarsgård) and Jane (Margot Robbie) find colonial abuse when they return to the Congo.
King Leopold of Belgium is bankrupt. His man on the ground (Christoph Waltz) is raising money through the slave trade and plots to sell Tarzan to an old enemy for diamonds. The result is a pretty standard adventure stage-managed by David Yates, who also directed four Harry Potter films.
There are some good battle scenes and a stirring animal stampede but Skarsgård has little charisma and Waltz has done this villain act before. Samuel L. Jackson too. His Williams is pretty well the same character he was in The Hateful Eight. The film isn’t a miss; just not special. (Scotiabank, Marine Gateway and suburban theatres) 3 out of 5
OUR KIND OF TRAITOR: Whenever I think of John Le Carré that highly involving TV production of his Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy comes to mind. And then the recent much-less energetic movie version of the same novel.
This new film is rather like that second example. It’s got all his trademarks, a cynical view of government departments, international intrigue, deep mystery about what is true or not and yet it doesn’t spark. Except for one actor, Stellan Skarsgård (father of the new Tarzan by the way). He shouts, and rails, and welcomes and boasts and brings life to these proceedings.
He plays a money launderer for the Russian mafia. A friend’s family has just been killed by them and he fears he’s next. So he picks on a couple vacationing in Marrakech, played by Ewan McGregor and Naomie Harris, first with an invite to an extravagant party, then his tale of anxiety and finally a request to deliver a USB memory stick to British intelligence in London.
It could reveal mafia money at work in England and bring down some high-level politicians. All he wants is asylum for himself and his family. The MI-5 contact (Damian Lewis) demands more evidence and ropes McGregor and Harris into finding it for him. I love movies about ordinary people drawn into plots like this. Unfortunately this one drifts and dawdles. Except when Stellan is around to bellow and make jovial noise. (5th Avenue) 2 ½ out of 5
DE PALMA: No critics, fans, old colleagues or anybody but Brian De Palma talking for almost two hours about the movies he’s directed. And it’s absolutely fascinating. He’s got theories about filmmaking, stories from the set, from inside the studios, gossip and occasional bits from his own history.
All that blood in Carrie was from watching operations by his surgeon father. Dressed To Kill was inspired by another type of operating by his father, his philandering. There was working with Orson Welles who refused to learn his lines, and Cliff Robertson who leaned his head to reduce his co-star’s camera presence and Sean Penn who got Michael J. Fox to act angrier by whispering “television actor.”
There’s his surprise that Scarface became so big with hip hop types, first roles for a very young Robert De Niro and for Sissy Spacek who earlier worked for him as a set dresser, and his realization now about what he did wrong with Bonfire of the Vanities.
He softened it. On the other hand, he fought hard to kill Robert Towne’s dull ending for Mission Impossible. He keeps going like that, one by one through all his films, with stories and clips and stills from each one of them. He really opens up talking to the two directors who made the film, Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow (young brother of Gwyneth). There’s insight, humor, passion for movies and they add up to a must for film fans. 4 out of 5.
The VanCity Theatre is also screening a retrospective of 13 of his films over the next three weeks. See the schedule at http://www.viff.org/
Also at the VanCity …
MIA MADRE: I hope you don’t doze of off before this Italian film manages to engage you. Give it a chance. Early on it doesn’t indicate where it’s going. It meanders through two parallel stories without showing how they are connected.
Eventually it does join them and you come to realize it’s a very personal story the director, Nanni Moretti is telling. His mother died at the time he was making his last film and in this one a woman director (Margherita Buy) is going through the same emotional ordeal. At the same time she has to deal with an underachieving daughter and a self-aggrandizing actor (John Turturro) who has come from American to be in her film.
He claims to have worked with Kubrick, doesn’t memorize his lines, wanders off script and then denounces the script as terrible. Buy holds back her feelings both on set and in some very tender scenes with her dying mother.
But for how long? There’s tension, real human sentiment and in Turturro some very funny show business. A smart film about contradictions and rising above them. (VanCity Theatre) 3 ½ out of 5
THE DAUGHTER: Henrik Ibsen's play The Wild Duck re-surfaces in Australia re-worked into a modern soap opera. Not only is it not fun, preferring the dreary side of the spectrum, it has little impact. That might be because what transpires is not shocking anymore.
We’ve seen stories like it many times. I kept thinking of the very different story and approach in the Danish film, The Celebration, which does manage to shock and lingers in your memory because of it. This one won’t.
It originated as a stage presentation by actor, writer and now director Simon Stone. He got Geoffrey Rush to play a lumber baron who shuts down his sawmill, throws most everybody in town out of work but holds a big celebration for his second wedding.
His first wife committed suicide and his son, back from the US for the occasion, figures out why. His name is Christian. So how long will it be before he tells his best friend (now one of the laid-off-workers), his father (Sam Neill) and his daughter (the smart Hedvig, played by Odessa Young) the truth? Not long after he starts drinking again, that’s when. The acting is very good but the material doesn’t feel of the present day it is now set in. (International Village) 2 ½ out of 5
SWISS ARMY MAN: This one is for you only if you’re looking for an extremely weird film that makes no sense. You might find it funny. Apparently some do.
At Sundance it was known as “the farting corpse movie” based not only on what happens in it but also the phenomenon that when people die, their bodies have air to expel for some time. Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert inflict that upon Daniel (the former Harry Potter) Radcliffe who we first see dead on a beach, then found by Paul Dano, playing a suicidal castaway, and then ridden by him like a jet ski propelled by that flatulence. After that they bond.
They get into deep conversations. “What is life?” Daniel asks. Dano tells him “You’re like the multi-purpose tool guy,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. They recall their non-success with women but both admire some in a sports swimsuit issue.
They discuss sex and masturbation and death. Worse: Daniel spouts water from his mouth which Dano drinks. Interested yet? Seems juvenile to me even as a metaphor for loner guys unable to connect with the world. Nice scenery, though. California woods looking much like North Vancouver. (5th Avenue) 1 ½ out of 5
Also now playing …
THE PURGE: ELECTION YEAR: The nasty high concept of this series gets topical. Candidates campaign for and against it in an election. You’ll remember from the two previous movies that the purge is an annual government-sanctioned blast of payback and bloodletting.
For 12 hours, all crimes, even murder are legal. It lets off steam, culls the unwanted and reduces unemployment. Ridiculous premise; surprise hits. I haven’t seen this one but I’m told it’s tense and mean like the others. (Scotiabank, Marine Gateway and suburban theatres)