Before the films below, here’s a tip to a very good one. The Guilty is a superbly tense thriller from Denmark that is showing just once, so far, at 4 p.m. Wednesday at the VanCity Theatre sponsored by the Vancouver Foreign Film Society. It’s been an audience favorite at festivals, was great at VIFF and I’m more than surprised that it hasn’t come back for a long engagement yet.
A cop working an emergency 911 desk takes a call from a woman who’s been abducted. He spends the rest of the film on the phone trying to help her. Once he changes to another room but that’s the only variation. You have to catch it to appreciate how gripping it is and all the surprises it tosses at you.
The other new films are these:
Vox Lux: 2 ½ stars
The Upside: 2 ½
Is There a Picture: 3 ½
The Woman Who Loves Giraffes: 4
A Dog’s Way Home: --
Replicas: --
VOX LUX: Here’s the anti to A Star is Born. It’s not sunny and light; it shows a pop star turned mean and narcissistic by the machinery of modern show business. Actually if that’s all it was, it would be a better movie. It’s got flash and color and Natalie Portman inhabiting a diva personality while performing songs by Sia. Lyrics like “I’m a private girl in a public world” expose the deepest emotions of the star while her adoring fans take them in as if they mean something. Jude Law and Jennifer Ehle are there as stock music-business types to guide her career, soothe her outbursts and get her to that glittering concert that climaxes the movie.
But this film, by actor-turned-director Brady Corbet, isn’t content with that familiar story arc. He’s said the film is about America’s loss of innocence and the anxiety that the constant news cycle creates. So in the background, and occasionally intruding into the story, are Islamic terrorism (in Bosnia), 9-11, Christianity, drug and alcohol abuse, and right at the start, a mass shooting in a high school classroom. That’s a lot for a simple pop-star tale to take in. She survived the shooting, got a start in her music career out of it and years later, with Portman now playing her as an adult, has become bitter and petulant. That’s come on so suddenly we have no time to figure out why. She’s also a mother to a teen daughter. By what father? Not explained. Portman is magnetic though spouting lines like “People have been trying to take me down for years, but I won’t stay down.” It’s the story that fails her this time; full of holes here; cluttered there. (Rio Theatre) 2 ½ out of 5
THE UPSIDE: I was dreading this. Motor mouth Kevin Hart toning it down and playing sincere seemed unlikely (to say the least) and possibly embarrassing if he didn’t manage it. Good news. He does it, pretty well most of the time, with only a few lapses into his raw comic ways, and he strikes up an easy chemistry with Brian Cranston in this re-make of a hit movie from France. The two spar, become friends and influence each other in an ever-in-vogue story of a black man and a white man learning to let go of their differences. (See Green Book for more of that). The differences here are mostly economic and class. Kevin plays an ex-con who needs a job, Cranston is a super-rich author needing a caregiver. He’s in a wheelchair and can only move his neck. (“And your mouth,” Kevin quips). Nicole Kidman is around to express disapproval now and then, as a business manager.
The story, as told in the French film eight years ago, is true. It’s been moved to New York with a few details to Americanize it. “You as rich as Jay-Z?” Kevin asks. “No, richer,” Cranston says. He will introduce Kevin to opera and learn from him the joys of hot dogs, listening to Aretha Franklin and smoking pot. Surprisingly, there’s some subtlety in how this all plays out and the film rolls smoothly to the feel-good destination it promises. There are cliches for sure, but the original film had them too, and some of the caregiving scenes inappropriately go for laughs. The biggest problem here is the film found it hard to come to a close and had to resort to a very obvious idea. Still: quite entertaining. (International Village and suburban theatres) 2 ½ out of 5
IS THERE A PICTURE: It was on a trip to Vienna a few years ago that I came to realize how world-renowned some of our local artists had become. There were giant banners all over and ads on the sides of buses trumpeting a gallery show by Rodney Graham. That was big, and this film by Harry Killas and Ric Beairsto explores how it got so. They look at his work and four other Vancouver photographers, Ian Wallace, Jeff Wall, Marian Penner Bancroft and Christos Dikeakos, to illuminate the photo-conceptualism they practice. It’s known as the Vancouver School and brought the city an interesting accolade from a US writer: “The third most important art scene in North America.” The film lightly scoffs at that, but only lightly.
It celebrates the highlights, shows the key works and listens to the artists tell their story. Jeff Wall wanted photos to hang large like oil paintings. Ian Wallace still considers himself a painter. Graham says he’s “a dabbler.” Bancroft explores history and Dikeakos contrasts the old and the new. I didn’t hear a clear explanation of what the Vancouver School is but it seems to be an amalgam of painting, photography and movies. They carefully stage their photos. Wall in particular is seen setting up a work called Boy Falling out of a Tree by coaching a boy doing exactly that, several times. There’s a breezy, casual tone here and old film and sound from the band UJ3RK5 that three of the artists were in add to that. David Wisdom, also in the band, William Gibson, author, and Fred Herzog, photographer, toss in comments and we get a good overview of the scene. (VanCity Theatre. Friday’s show, where people from the film will answer questions, is standby only. Six other shows are available.) 3 ½ out of 5
THE WOMAN WHO LOVES GIRAFFES: You may not know the name Anne Innis Dagg but you should. She’s a pioneering Canadian scientist who only recently has been properly recognized for the groundbreaking work she did. She studied giraffes. Motivated by an awe-inspiring sight in a zoo when she was only three, receiving no help besides her own determination, she made her way solo to South Africa when she was 23 and for a year observed, filmed and documented the behavior of the animals. That was years before Jane Goodall and Diane Fossey started their much-better known studies of primates. Apparently people are just not as interested in giraffes.
The film by Alison Reid takes us through several emotional phases in her story. She published widely, wrote a book that became a standard but couldn’t get tenure at any of the three Ontario universities she applied to. A human rights commission denied her complaint; she got out of academia and did more animal study and writing on her own. It was decades later that the organizers of a conference in the US found her, brought her down and honored her. That led to a return trip to Africa and a first-hand look at the giraffes’ current decline. There’s color film from 60 years ago as well as now and rare sights like two giraffes fighting and a male’s unique test to see if a female is in heat. In many ways, this is a fascinating film. (VanCity Theatre) 4 out of 5
Also now playing …
A DOG’S WAY HOME: This family film is moving and sometimes thrilling (according to Variety) but it wasn’t previewed for critics around here. Too bad, because it was filmed here (and in Ladner and Hope) and directed by sometime resident Charles Martin Smith. You’ll also see local actors sprinkled throughout, people like Ben Ratner, John Cassini and Arielle Tuliao. The dog is a stray kept secretly in a no-pets apartment in Denver. After a visit to comfort a veteran (Ashley Judd) in hospital, it is caught by an animal control officer (Cassini), escapes and has to find its way home. That’s 400 miles. There are wolves along the way and apparently the dog narrates the story. It has the voice of Bryce Dallas Howard. The book by W. Bruce Cameron was very popular with children and he helped write the screenplay.
REPLICAS: Another one that passed on media previews out here and also has Canadian connections. There’s Montreal money and special effects work in here, although it was filmed in Puerto Rico. The story sounds goofy. Keanu Reeves plays a scientist (?) who is trying to transfer human emotions and memories into a computer. No luck but when his wife and three children die in a car accident he tries the experiment on them. To bring them back, of course. Even without having seen it, I can sense a bunch of story problems. That may not matter, though. Eventually all the speculative ideas get trampled anyway as a battle against a ruthless corporation takes over the plot.