By this time next week the Vancouver Queer Film Festival will be on strong. It starts Thursday with a gala first show, Song Lang, a USA-Vietnam co-production about a romance in a Saigon opera house. That’s followed by a big party and then over 11 days some 100 other films from 27 countries. Too many to detail here but all the information you need, the entire program book in fact, is right here www.queerfilmfestival.ca/tickets. Or for a shorter, more easily usable outline of just the films, use the same url without the word tickets.
VQFF is the second largest film festival in Vancouver and the largest queer arts event in all of Western Canada. It runs Aug 15 to 25.
Meanwhile, there are these:
The Kitchen: 2 ½ stars
Honeyland: 4
Mike Wallace is Here: 3 ½
David Crosby Remember My Name: 4
The Art of Racing in the Rain: 2 ½
Light of My Life: 2 ½
Dora and the Lost City of Gold: --
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark: --
THE KITCHEN: It’s important to tell you right off the top that this is not a comedy. Quite a few people at two preview screenings were surprised to find that what they expected to be a Melissa McCarthy laugh fest, with Elisabeth Moss and Tiffany Haddish at her side, is actually a tough crime drama, with lots of violence, intimidation and extremely rough language. Some humor yes, but only sporadically. The three play gangsters’ wives who, when their husbands are off in prison and it’s tough making ends meet, get into the rackets themselves. (A similar plot was better played out in last year’s Widows).
This story, originally from a graphic novel and set in the 1970s in New York’s Irish section called Hell’s Kitchen, is also told with a feminist slant. Women have been held back. Now they’re doing it themselves, shaking down small business owners for protection money, running street hookers and pressuring the orthodox Jewish developers and jewelers in their neighborhood. The local crime boss is in their way. Not for long. A bigger one, across the river In Brooklyn, takes notice and offers an alliance, or else. The women’s solidarity slips, the husbands come back and expect to re-exert control over their wives and a sly twist emerges. These are all good story ideas but they feel forced together not complementary. It produces a gender switch and not much more. The actors are tops though including Margo Martindale as a mob matriarch and Bill Camp as the ingratiating Brooklyn boss. (International Village and suburban theatres) 2 ½ out of 5
HONEYLAND: You may not ever think that you’d enjoy a documentary about beekeeping in Macedonia. Well, here it is and it’s entirely engrossing, very dramatic and not at all dreary like some foreign so-called art films can be. This one is moving and tragic and hopeful and, most notably, wise about our changing world. We’ve got to get back to living in harmony with nature. We know that. Here’s a vivid example as proof. It’s been winning awards all over, including three at Sundance.
A rough-edged woman with bad teeth, named Hatidze, makes a meager living collecting honey from the bees she tends on a cliff face and in some fallen trees. She sells it to market vendors in town, never getting what it’s worth but accepting it philosophically. She’s the same at home, taking care of a bed-ridden mother without complaining. She’s so in sync with the ways of the bees that she can reach in and pull out the honeycombs without getting stung, even though she’s not wearing gloves. A noisy family that moves into the lot next door is pretty well the opposite. The father thinks beekeeping looks easy, won’t take advice and almost destroys Hatidze’s livelihood. His children meanwhile get stung (even a toddler) and kicked by a cow. The film shows all this vividly and thereby delivers its thoughts about humble people, inconsiderate people and arrogance. (VanCity Theatre) 4 out of 5
MIKE WALLACE IS HERE: There are two meanings there. One, that the famous newsman’s influence is still with us and two, the saying that officials would quake at their desk when told that Mike Wallace “is here.” That’s because he was a fearsome interviewer who asked the hard questions and wouldn’t take bafflegab answers. It was a style he brought to television in the 1950s and made flourish in his four decades on “60 Minutes”. The film tells his story almost entirely with old TV clips from that show and others and gives us a thrilling spin through a wide range of people and subjects. Not a great deal of insight though into how he worked as a journalist.
Sure he got a young Donald Trump to say he has no political ambitions. And a grumpy Ayotollah Khomeini to slag Anwar Sadat (and possibly lead to his assassination). And a Mi Lai soldier to admit to shooting babies. We see him interview a KKK leader, Salvador Dali, Bette Davis, Richard Nixon, a sweaty John Ehrlichman, gangster Mickey Cohen. The list goes on and on and the effect is to present him as much as a celebrity as a journalist. We see old TV commercials that he did, including one for Revlon lipstick. We hear him admit to deep insecurities and even contemplating suicide. And we get his legacy. His confrontational methods led to other newsmagazines and even, according to Bill O’Reilly in a clip, the house style at Fox News. Lots to think about there. Former 60 Minutes producer Peter Klein and former CBC Radio host Kathryn Gretsinger, both now with UBC, will be there after the first show tonight to talk about it. (VanCity Theatre) 3 ½ out of 5
DAVID CROSBY: REMEMBER MY NAME: Sounds like a plea, but he doesn’t come off that way in this documentary where he gets ample time to talk and explain himself. A couple of months ago, in another film, he suggested he had been something of a jerk. He expands on that immensely here. Answering questions by former rock writer Cameron Crowe he describes being ejected from The Byrds, which he helped found. We see the ejection in animation and band mate Roger McGuinn calling him “insufferable.” He also turned Graham Nash and Stephen Stills from his next band against him, and repeated that with the later recruit, Neil Young. Apparently they still won’t talk to him and he wishes he could fix that but can’t figure out how.
He does tell us about his musical life, points to the very room where CS&N first sang together, tells of his affair with Joni Mitchell (which she ended with a song), remembers Jim Morrison as a “dork” and muses that Dennis Hopper was really channeling him in Easy Rider. And he talks about his heroin habit which got him jail time and continuing regret. He got a lot of girl addicted he admits and says he was selfish and “wacko.” It’s an uncommonly candid self-evaluation and along with a batch of musical and news archival clips it’s compelling for both fans and students of stardom. (VanCity) 4 out of 5
THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN: This is one for people who know for sure that their pets love them and aren’t just around for the food. It’s a dog this time but not just any dog. He thinks, is philosophical, analytical, learns from watching TV and offers his thoughts through the voice of Kevin Costner. Oh, and he’s named Enzo, after the Ferrari guy and by the end you might wonder if the car company sponsored this thing. No, it originates in the popular novel by Garth Stein wherein an aspiring race car driver in Seattle (played by Vancouver) adopts a puppy and we watch it grow up into a wise old dog. And wonderful companion, when he isn’t leaking on the floor or tearing apart a room of toys.
TV actor Milo Ventimiglia plays his master, Amanda Seyfried plays his master’s wife and Kathy Baker and Martin Donovan her parents. That’s important because an illness and a child custody court case get into the mix too as if friendly Enzo’s musings aren’t enough to occupy us. He’s miffed when the wife comes along and then a daughter joins the team and takes away much attention. Enzo is steady though. He found out from TV that people in Mongolia believe that good dogs will reincarnate as human beings. He’s hoping. Actually he’s already acting like one as he thinks out loud and the film leans into extreme anthropomorphising mode. Its real purpose of course is to make people cry. It does that fairly well, though not profoundly. It knows its audience and plays to them, not imaginatively or with innovation, but incessantly. (International Village, 5th Avenue and suburban theatres) 2 ½ out of 5
LIGHT OF MY LIFE: Filmed around here, written by, directed by and starring Casey Affleck and co-starring a bright newcomer, Anna Pniowsky, from Winnipeg, this one should get more attention than this. Only one screening is what it gets. Monday at International Village. It should get more. It’s a very personal and heartfelt treatise by Affleck on parents and children and how they affect each other. More specifically, how parents are charged with protecting their children and passing along their knowledge to them. He’s chosen a tense dystopian world to play out his theme.
A father and his daughter travel through it, staying out of sight as much as they can, living in a tent in the woods, rarely getting near people, because as we gradually learn she’s in danger and has to pretend she’s a boy. A “female plague” has killed off almost all women and many men are desperate to grab any still alive. So he shields her, tells her stories, educates her about puberty which she’s entering, about world issues like racism and mostly about right and wrong. That will be tested severely because they can’t keep the world out forever. It’s an interesting array of ideas but the raising of them is too laconic. (International Village Monday Evening) 2 ½ out of 5
Also now playing …
DORA AND THE LOST CITY OF GOLD: Five years after the popular TV show shut down, it gets its first movie spin off as Dora, her monkey and a pack of teens go searching for her missing parents in the jungle. She’s a rarity in our popular culture, a Latina heroine. I haven’t seen the film but Isabela Moner is getting praise for playing this live-action version of the animated character. Eva Longoria and Michael Peña are the parents and Benicio Del Toro is the voice of Swiper, the conniving fox. (International Village and suburban theatres)
SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK: I haven’t seen it but its pedigree is interesting. Tops to me on the list is Guillermo del Toro, the co-producer and co-screenwriter. It’s his first film since The Shape of Water won him two Oscars. This one is from a trio of books by Alvin Schwartz about a group of teens who come across a book of scary stories all of which seem to be about them. The director, André Øvredal is known for a celebrated Norwegian film, Trollhunter, which mixed horror and comedy. Possibilities are good. (Scotiabank and suburban theatres)