There are only two regular releases this week, both worth seeing, and also a batch of new recommendations for the film festival. Read on.
Judy: 3 ½ stars
Abominable: 4
VIFF titles: The Lighthouse, 63 UP, The 20th Century, The World is Bright, White Lie and Birthday
JUDY: It would have been all-too easy to boost the lurid factor in this tale of the very last days of Judy Garland. She was hooked on prescription drugs and drink, erratic in her behavior, often late for shows and very lonely. When she went to London, England for a series of concerts, she had to leave her children with an ex-husband who she was feuding with. Her good days were past her. Instead of pushing all that to noisy extremes, the film finds humanity in her. It empathizes and tries to explain and Renée Zellweger through her very compassionate performance makes that tone feel right and believable.
The film, based on a stage play and directed by Rupert Goold, who also has a theatrical background, is thoughtful, not groveling. We get the sadness of Judy’s life at the time but also, in a few electric musical performances, the vibrancy she still had and could let out. Zellweger manages to look like her but doesn’t imitate. She interprets, maybe drawing on memories of her own downtimes. She signs well enough and does really well in emulating some of the excitement of her concert performances. The film though tries to blame all of Judy’s problems on her early days when she became a star in the Wizard of Oz, was pushed by an insistent stage mother and cruelly intimidated by MGM boss Louis B. Meyer. We get lots of flashbacks back to then. The thirty years and several husbands between that time and London are hardly mentioned. So, go for the show, not all the answers. (International Village, 5th Avenue and suburban theatres) 3 ½ out of 5
ABOMINABLE: That’s two films in less than half a year about a yeti, aka abominable snowman. Remember Missing Link from April about a sasquatch who wanted to rejoin his cousins in Tibet? We’re in Beijing this time where a young yeti has escaped his captors and, inspired by a travel ad on a billboard, yearns to get back home to Mount Everest. There’s an E.T. feel here; he’s soulful and lost; three kids find him and try to help, and a group of explorer-adventurers want to re-capture him to prove their leader’s scientific credentials.
The animation, mostly done in China, is beautiful and extremely detailed. It creates a picturesque road trip and travelogue in which the three teens (Chloe Bennet, Tenzing Norgay Trainor and Albert Tsai) have to ditch their differences and selfishness and work together. Always a good lesson in children’s films. They have to outwit the nasties (adventurer Eddie Izzard, and zoologist Sarah Paulson) who are right on their tail. They have drones and helicopters; the kids only have courage and luck, and a surprise ability by the yeti to invoke harmony with nature which proves helpful. With close calls and a speedy pace, this is a fine animated adventure directed by Jill Culton, who previously was storyboard artist at Pixar. (International Village, Marine Gateway and suburban theatres) 4 out of 5
And these are recommendations for the weekend at the Film Festival. I’ve already highly touted Parasite but had no access to some other big titles like The Painted Bird, Just Mercy and Hidden Life. Big or little, here are some I have seen.
THE LIGHTHOUSE: Next weekend at VIFF, you can catch some powerhouse acting between two popes. Meanwhile, how about two lighthouse keepers? Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson are just as strong playing guys who are stuck with each other, get on each others’ nerves and come apart in a classic site of claustrophobia, isolation and sinister legend. It’s bad luck to kill a seabird. A previous keeper went crazy because he believed there was “some enchantment” in the light. Ghosts of Robert Luis Stevenson and Herman Melville seem to haunt this story directed with great, edgy atmosphere by Robert Eggers. He made his name with a moody horror film called The Witch. He’s continued on to riveting and chilling effect here.
Dafoe is the senior keeper and flings out orders accordingly. Pattison, as the new guy, has to address him as “Sir,” do the chores, paint the lighthouse, push a wheelbarrow in a downpour and never talk back. He doesn’t, by the way, but then he is supposed to be a Canadian. He’s got a bad episode in his past which Dafoe eventually manages to get him to talk about. He, on the other hand, is prone to bellowing especially during the inevitable storm that all but shuts this New England lighthouse down. Oh, and one of them sees mermaids. Yes, it’s weird but immensely moody and intriguing. Crazed too. It plays only once now, Sat evening, but will be back in three or four weeks for its regular run.
63 UP: It’s been seven years since 56 Up so of course it’s time to check in again to see how the children we’ve watched growing up since 1964 are doing. This is the ninth film to do this, the eighth directed by Michael Apted (who will be at VIFF Sunday afternoon to talk about it) and it’s yet another engrossing update. One of the originals has opted out, one who did but returned is still back and one, who we learned last time had a serious disease, has died. The others are as chatty and philosophical as ever.
Neil, for instance, the boy who wanted to be an astronaut but became homeless and then a local politician, does some lay preaching and hates BREXIT. It was like taking poison, he says and not really a vote against Europe but against all politicians. John says it’s “a leap into the dark.” Tony, the cabbie, rails about Uber. Sue, divorced and then engaged to be married, is still engaged. That’s 20 years now. There have been other divorces, major moves and job changes, retirements, new grandchildren. It’s become like watching your neighbors’ lives progress. Most in the group have mellowed enough to accept what has and hasn’t changed. Andrew, who became a solicitor, says the class system is changed. It’s now more based on “fame and achievement.” Nick disagrees. “People from the right public schools still run the country,” he says. Nuggets of wisdom and personal stories again make this a delightful film. Advance tickets for the Sat evening and Sun morning screenings are already sold out. Pass holders better get there early.
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: There’s something reassuring here. It shows that Canadians can make films that are outrageous, cheeky and hilarious. We know that but it’s worth mentioning with every example that comes along. This is Canadian history re-imagined, sent-up and sort-of-correctly represented all at once. Matthew Rankin, now living in Montreal, has absorbed all the off-the-wall techniques of Winnipeg’s Guy Maddin, who he used to work for, and made a film precisely in his style about William Lyon Mackenzie King.
He was our 10th Prime Minister, a bachelor, a mama’s boy all his life and a weirdly fastidious individual. Rankin found how strange he was by reading his diaries and got much of that into this film. Nothing about his war-time leadership or his political acumen, but lots about sex with shoes, clubbing seals, a national inferiority complex (“long have you smoldered in your disappointment”) and a generally impish view of our history as espoused by Rankin. King, played by Daniel Beirne, is a nebbish. Mom, played by Louis Negin, a tyrant. Her insistence that King is great, propels him. The film shows him and every Canadian institution with a skewed twist, usually with hand-painted backdrops, once riding a giant duck, later in a funhouse loop. BC is a hill of tree stumps. Dazzling, inventive and mischievous fun. It plays Sat late and Mon evening.
THE WORLD IS BRIGHT: This film has everything: intense drama, a true story, a mystery, outrage, concerned parents trying to get answers and later an apology. It’s one of the stronger features at VIFF this year and brings back a story that was in the news years ago. A young man died in Vancouver; his parents in China were told he had been murdered, then that he had committed suicide and that he had already been buried. A year later the death certificate finally arrived and that allowed the parents to come and find out what had really happened. The film takes you intimately on every step of their search. Ying Wang in Richmond spent ten years getting to know them, filming them and documenting the story for this bracing and highly affecting film. She included some re-created scenes to fully tell it.
Shi-Ming Deng (the first name means bright world) was here to get a western education. He suffered set-backs, growing paranoia, a bar fight, a day in jail, a dispute with an immigration officer, a deportation letter and then suicide. Two days later there was money withdrawn from his bank account. That’s never been explained, but the parents, aided by lawyer Lawrence Wong, found out most everything else. He had married, then divorced. He felt he was being followed and carried a knife. He felt he was mentally ill but couldn’t tell his parents. It carries a big stigma in China. There’s much more: failed lawsuits, emotional scenes with the parents both here and in China, and an arguable conclusion by the director. In a postscript she blames unrecognized mental health problems among immigrants. She hasn’t proved her point conclusively, but she’s made a gripping film. It gets a world premiere Sunday evening and screens again the afternoons of Oct 3 and 9
WHITE LIE: This intriguing film from Toronto, starring Kacey Rohl from here in Vancouver, is getting international attention from a company in France. You can catch the wave early and you’ll be pleased because it’s a tense, well-acted and involving movie about deception and trying desperately to avoid being exposed. Directors Yonah Lewis and Calvin Thomas have a future once this absorbing film gets known.
It tells an unlikely story absolutely convincingly. Katie, played by Rohl, is raising money to go for an experimental cancer treatment. The problem is she’s lying. She doesn’t have cancer. She’s only pretending and has to work hard to keep the scam going when her father (Martin Donovan) tweets for everyone to know that she’s lying. She pays a young doctor to get her a falsified hospital record but major problems and considerable suspense get in the way. She’s got a rocky psychological background that sort of explains why she’s doing this and a shaky love affair with her girlfriend which adds to the exotic character of her life. Surprisingly, you don’t condemn her. You try to figure her out and that makes the movie work. It screens early this afternoon and Tuesday late afternoon.
BIRTHDAY: I can’t think of another film I’ve seen that’s as sensitive an exploration of the grief that people feel after a death or as wrenching as it crescendos into a flood of tears. What’s that got to do with a birthday? Well, there’s apparently a tradition in Korea that a loved one who has died should be commemorated on what would have been his birthday. The grieving of one couple is the entry for director Lee Jong-un to recall a notorious disaster. A ferry boat sinking five years ago drowned several hundred children on a school trip and later drove a president from power. The film shows the aftermath.
A family support group formed and kept the issue out in public but as the film brilliantly shows people differ on how to keep it alive. They demand compensation; some don’t want it. Families break up. The central one in this film has the mother and father strongly disagreeing. She wants to mark her son’s birthday; he definitely does not want to. The sharply written and intensely-acted drama explains why. He was away at the time of the accident; she blames him for being away when he was most needed. A lot of highly-charged arguments happen before a celebration is held. It turns into the most intense and prolongued crying sequence I can remember in a movie. The film is not dreary, just strong. It screens this afternoon and Sunday evening.