The Avengers hold the theatres and the box office again this week but here are a few alternatives and a good bunch at DOXA, the documentary festival. I cover six of them today (four by Canadians) while these from last week , Push, Gordon Lightfoot, Because We Are Girls and City Dreamers are still active too. You read the whole line up at www.doxafestival.ca
Long Shot: 2 ½ stars
Red Joan: 2 ½
Ugly Dolls: 2
Hail Satan: 3 ½
DOXA films: all highly recomended
We Will Stand Up
Propaganda
Illusions of Control
Dark Suns
Call Me Intern
Toxic Beauty
Also Now Playing: The Intruder: --
LONG SHOT: I love it when I can report that a local guy has made a fine movie. Unfortunately, I can’t with Seth Rogen’s latest. His spoof of American presidential politics is often funny but not very sophisticated. The jokes are obvious, mostly smart-alecky. There’s better and consistent satire in the late night talk shows on TV. Here, some of it works but the film largely turns into a rom-com full of immature wish-fulfillment. And I don’t detect much romantic chemistry.
Rogen is a cheeky journalist in this one, until he’s told to behave to please the new owner of the alternative newspaper he writes for. He quits instead and co-incidentally the Hillary Clinton-like Secretary of State (Charlize Theron) is told she needs a speechwriter who can put some jokes into her messages if she’s serious about running for president. Or before that, keep pushing that international environmental pact she has in mind. Sure, she hires Rogen. As a teenager she used to babysit him and according to a flashback stirred up some lusty feelings in him. Well, they’re back as they travel to conferences and hit the cocktail parties. He’s an outsider and often embarrassed. She’s told to drop the environmental stuff (orders from the president who came from TV and listens to businessmen) and that sparks a big idealism vs practicality argument. Inevitable and not at all deep. (Scotiabank, Marine Gateway and suburban theatres) 2 ½ out of 5
RED JOAN: Based on a true story. Yes, but not enough to tell it all or use real names. Or give Judi Dench as much time on screen as she deserves. The film spends much more time with her character’s younger self, played by Sophie Cookson.
Dench plays an 87-year-old widow who was arrested in 1999 for passing secrets to the Soviets. That was 60 years earlier at Cambridge University where quite a few students (remember Kim Philby and others?) got involved with the Communist movement. She worked on the atom bomb project, as Britain (and Canada) were in a race with the Americans, and at the behest of a classmate-and-cousin duo (Tereza Srbova and Tom Hughes) started passing along information. She was motivated by idealism but not much of that comes out in the film. Believe its version and you’ll think it was mostly love that drove her, for the co-conspirator cousin principally but also for a mentor in the lab. The film sinks into romantic melodrama rather than properly elucidating what she was thinking. The acting and the scene setting are fine, but Trevor Nunn, the director, lets the film wallow rather than grab us. (Fifth Avenue) 2 ½ out of 5
UGLY DOLLS: Its heart is in the right place. It delivers a message to kids to respect yourself and tolerate minor flaws in other people. Maybe even yourself. Nothing wrong with that thinking. But it doesn’t connect too much in this animated film which boasts a terrific voice cast and lots of color and still misses the mark. It’s for little kids, but doesn’t really fit them. After a cloying-cute start, that will turn older kids off, it goes over the heads of the young ones. Do they even know the word sycophant or some of the ideas thrown at them about perfection?
Toys move along an assembly line but some are pulled out because they’re imperfect and sent down a pipe to Uglyville. Maybe they’re missing an eye, or an ear, or are shaped wrong. Only later do they learn they are “rejects.” That’s thanks to the most free-spirited among them, Moxy, voiced by Kelly Clarkson. She dreams of getting to the “big world” where a child will own her and play with her. She leads a small group up the pipe and finds The Institute of Perfection, lorded over by the imperious crooner named Lou (Nick Jonas), a crowd of acolytes and a trio of spiteful mean girls. They extol the need to look perfect and threaten “recycling.” A “gauntlet” serves as a test. Too scary for the little ones, not hip enough for the big, and with unmemorable songs (Blake Shelton and Janelle Monáe also sing), the film lands shakely. (International Village, Marine Gateway and suburban theatres) 2 out of 5
HAIL SATAN? That question mark may be there to make us ask: Is this real? That’s certainly the feeling I had watching this vibrant documentary. Is it a put on? Is there really a growing movement of Satanists who don’t bow to Satan but use him to push against “Christian privilege” in the United States? They started six years ago in Florida, now have chapters in 13 states and Canada (although I don’t know where) and are adept at using the media to get noticed. Maybe it’s just a bit of mockery by a bunch of misfits.
First step, they supported prayer in schools because, they thought, it gave them the right to demand equal status for Satanic prayers. They campaigned against 10 Commandments monuments at state legislatures claiming they originated as a movie promotion back in 1956. They struck a statue of their own to put up and they’ve gone to court and Fox-News debates to push their message. Leaders, followers and critics speak out earnestly. The film’s director, university professor Penny Lane, doesn’t take a side but says she’s interested in why people are so susceptible to being fooled. Someone in the film says the news media can easily be manipulated. And the film recalls the “satanic panic” of the 1950s, thanks to Billy Graham, and heavy metal music and even Dungeons and Dragons since then. Fascinating stuff. (International Village) 3 ½ out of 5
And for more documentaries, there’s DOXA. Here are some I’ve seen and strongly recommend.
WE WILL STAND UP nîpawistamâsowin: Prepare to have your ideas challenged about how Canada treated indigenous people. Lawfully, thanks to the RCMP, we’ve been taught. Not so says Tasha Hubbard in this potent look back, primarily at the now infamous Colton Boushie case but also to a long shameful history that came before. Unfulfilled treaties, forced re-location, civil rights restricted, warriors hung, residential schools. The list gets longer and is recounted in an animated sequence.
Then the Boushie killing, by a farmer who claimed he had been trespassing but with a hard to believe defense that it was accidental. The all-white jury believed and acquitted him and that sent Boushie’s family on a campaign to plea for justice.
They got as far as Ottawa where, ironic as it seems now, they met with Jane Philpott and Jody Wilson-Raybould, both still in cabinet at the time, and their boss Justin Trudeau, who offered them a small change in legal procedure. We also see them speak at a forum at the United Nations in New York, a testament to the depth of feeling the case produced. The film is stark and very emotional. It plays Wed and Thurs this coming week, both times with a discussion following.
PROPAGANDA: THE ART OF SELLING LIES: Great topic, lively film, entirely engrossing but, I fear, a little too wide. As Larry Weinstein, the Toronto filmmaker, defines it, almost anything can be propaganda if it’s trying to convince you of something. Ads, speeches, leaflets, sermons, etc., and not just lying ones. Any. All. Even with its overkill though, the film amounts to a valid cautionary tale. Weinstein asks why are we so susceptible to propaganda? Mostly because we believe what we want to believe according to a large cast of experts including Buzzfeed editor Craig Silverman, Globe and Mail Editor David Walmley, artist Ai Weiwei, Steve Bannon in a video, Cree Artist Kent Monkman and the Irishman who drew that iconic portrait of Che Guevera. Cult of personality goes back to Alexander the Great, and all the recent suspects are mentioned, Mao, Stalin (in a very funny film clip), Hitler, right up to you know who today. It’s a most relevant discussion for these times. (Screens Thurs and Fri this next week).
ILLUSIONS OF CONTROL: UBC asst.-prof. and filmmaker Shannon Walsh takes us far to explore a tough psychological concept: how people live with things going wrong and feeling they have no control over them. A Chinese family is trying to keep a growing desert away. A Dene woman near Yellowknife fears the arsenic left behind by a now closed gold mine will get into the water supply. A Japanese woman tests food and people for radiation left over from Fukushima. A Mexican woman searches for a missing daughter, or at least her remains. And with that most common example of powerlessness, a Chicago woman copes with the cancer she’s learned she has.
They’re all stuck, through no fault of their own. They all react in their own ways. I don’t recall seeing despair from any of them and the grit they display, even if it may only be for the camera, is inspiring. (Screens Mon evening and Sun May 12 afternoon).
DARK SUNS: One topic of the five covered in the last film, gets a full 2 ½ examination here and it is gut wrenching. Both tells us that thousands of people have gone missing in Mexico over recent years, probably kidnapped, possibly killed (the film starts at a mass grave) and there’s a growing movement to do something about it. Solo efforts too, like the woman who shows her daughter’s picture to people on busses and asks if anyone has seen her.
Through several chapters and regions the film lays out what people know and suspect. Drug gangs are kidnapping young people (especially women) to put them to work. When they’re finished with them they kill them. Or when a gang takes over a new territory, they kill them. Or ship them away. Sometimes they do it to terrorize other gangs. Sometimes the police help them. Usually they do nothing to stop them. In one particularly bad area they do that to terrorize ordinary people to dissuade them from supporting guerilla actions. We get a huge mass of information like that from activists, journalists, people who’ve encountered the gangs and from desperate mothers. It’s a real eye opener and just as often heartbreaking. The film by Montreal director Julien Elie screens Sun evening.
CALL ME INTERN: To get some jobs, you need experience. But how do you get it? Easy: work as an intern. No pay but responsibility and satisfaction and eventually, a job. Possibly. That’s the line and apparently a lot of employers are using it. This film says there’s a movement building against it. Some interns now see they’re just being used for free labor and that can last for years. Leo David Hyde from New Zealand joined that system to expose it. Where? At a United Nations office in Geneva. Hyde lived in a tent and when a newspaper wrote about it, an embarrassing controversy rose up.
You wouldn’t think the UN would exploit workers like that but they claim that an official resolution prevents them from paying interns. TV debates on Fox, CBC and others puts it in context of the new work environment (the gig economy, contracts, sharing, “coddled” millenials). The film talks to several others to hear what’s really going on. And how it’s growing. The US government uses interns. Monica Lewinski was one, you might remember. In it’s quite calm way, the film is a protest action. Screens Monday at noon.
TOXIC BEAUTY: You really want to smear on that face cream tomorrow? Watch this film first because it points to dangers lurking in many personal care products. For women and men, and in the case of talcum power, babies too. Talc leads the examination here and is, as one scientist says, a “delivery device” for several carcinogens. Johnson and Johnson is facing thousands of lawsuits over it. The film features a woman who won a case but was awarded no damages. She has cervical cancer.
Many beauty products are hormone disruptors, possibly because of preservatives added to them. You’ll get to know a lot about parabens and phthalates and whether alternates are any better in this densely packed with information film. Several times it puts script on the screen but moves along before you can read it all. I glimpsed “limited evidence” in one but couldn’t catch the context. The EU has banned over 1,300 of these chemicals, Canada 500 and the U.S. only 11.The film by Phyllis Ellis of Toronto doesn’t seem alarmist though. Just busy, thorough and worrying. It screens Tues at noon and Wed evening.
Also now playing …
THE INTRUDER: The plot sounds interesting and it was filmed around here a couple of years ago but the studio didn’t preview it for media here. No confidence? They already made a title change; it was originally to be called Motivated Seller. That would be a guy played by Dennis Quaid who sells his large Napa Valley, California home to a young couple (Meagan Good and Michael Ealy) but then refuses to leave. He cuts the lawn and fixes things as if he still owns the place. A psychological thriller, not a horror movie, but who knows?