They like to call it “the coolest” film festival, up there in Whistler. I’ve never gone but if you’re in the area it’s worth your time. There are always a few gems that get help building their reputation there. I have reviews of two, Antigone and Volition, further down this posting. Here are a few others that caught my eye among the 86 films scheduled. (You can read about more at https://whistlerfilmfestival.com/ )
Things I Do For money has two Japanese-Canadian cello students in a run-in with the mob in Hamilton, Ont. James and His Future Self is a time travel-thriller (as is Volition). The star, Jonas Chernick, and the director, Jeremy LaLonde, have fared very-well at previous WFF’s and this new film is said to be “laugh out loud” funny.
The Marijuana Conspiracy dramatizes a real-life study in Canada almost 50 years ago into the effects of pot smoking on women. Thunderbird, by Yukon-born Nicholas Treeshin, is about missing women and about righting an old transgression in an indigenous community.
From beyond Canada, Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones are on a scientific mission and in a fight for survival flying a hot-air balloon in The Aeronauts and in Hope Gap Bill Nighy and Annette Bening depict a long-time marriage that is crumbling.
The festival has been on since Wednesday, but those titles are all still available before it ends Sunday.
Incidentally, a standout at VIFF, the Vancouver film The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open got a very positive review in the New York Times last week as well as the coveted Critic’s Pick designation.
Some of today’s new ones are just as worthy.
Antigone: 4 stars
Waves: 3 ½
Varda by Angès: 4
Volition (at Whistler): 3
Frankie: 2 ½
Playmobil The Movie: not available to review
ANTIGONE: This is a very, very loose adaptation of the ancient Greek play by Sophocles. There’s no king disallowing a burial; only a daughter defying the law for what she considers a greater good. The result is a moving and very powerful film set in modern times and a forceful statement about modern issues. It’s Canada’s submission to the next Academy Awards and it absolutely deserves to be there. The competition will be exceptionally strong this year, but I hope it is given a chance because it speaks eloquently to both immigrant and refugee problems and police overreaction.
Québécois writer-director (and this time also cinematographer and co-editor) Sophie Deraspe got the idea from news reports of a police killing of an immigrant in Montreal 11 years ago. In her film, a small-time gang member is killed; his brother is sent to jail and his sister defies the courts and the law to honor her family. It’s already shattered. The parents are dead somewhere overseas, the grandmother is now the head and they’re all “permanent residents,” not Canadian citizens. That means the brother will be deported, although he didn’t do anything. Antigone, in a decisive performance by Nahéma Ricci, won’t stand for that and devises a clever plan to spring him out of jail. It’s designed and staged so well that you can imagine it could actually work. There’s more to come though, including street demonstrations, status as a folk hero, support from some unlikely citizens and quite a condemnation of the immigration system, both of the bureaucrats and their false promises (“the little life they’re peddling.”) (International Village. Also Sunday afternoon at the Whistler Film Festival) 4 out of 5
WAVES: This is refreshing. The Black family in this film isn’t poor and struggling and living around crime and violence. They’re middle class and in a boost for equality they’re like most everybody else, they have problems. A high school senior (Kelvin Harrison Jr) is a winning wrestler with a college in his future. His dad (Sterling K Brown) pushes him relentlessly to succeed because he thinks that will motivate him. It does, to hide an injury until it becomes severe. Meanwhile, his girlfriend (Alexa Demie) is pregnant and back and forth on whether to have an abortion. The problems keep piling on and gets intense and grating. Expertly so under the writing and direction of Texas filmmaker Trey Edward Shults who is developing a big reputation in indie circles.
He throws in a tragedy, which I won’t detail, and then does something audacious. He switches gears. It’s as if this is a two-part film. The story is now about the boy’s sister (Taylor Russell) and her growing romance with a modest student played by Lucas Hedges. After the vibrant and always-in-motion first part where dad yelled “We are not afforded the luxury of being average” and the mood plausibly grew darker, this second part is average, The love affair is so nice it causes a comparative letdown. Maybe it’s to show that black families like any others don’t always live in turmoil. Whatever, it does take us out of the expertly orchestrated high emotion and visual flair we’ve been experiencing and into a calmer place. It’s still a stunning movie, though. (The Park and suburban theatres) 3 ½ out of 4
VARDA BY AGNÈS: “Nothing is trite when you film people with empathy and love.” That’s one of many quotes I loved hearing from the great French film auteur in this relaxed self-portrait. She sits in a director’s chair, faces a big theatre crammed with fans and tells us about her life and what motivated her as a filmmaker, before that as a photographer and later as an installation artist. “Three words,” she states several times. “Inspiration. Creation. Sharing”.
For almost two hours, in two parts, we hear what she meant, illustrated with clips from many of her films, including La Pointe Courte, her first, Cléo From 5 to 7, maybe her best-known, to Vissages Villages, her last before this. (She died in March of this year). We get backstage stories (like what she thought of Robert De Niro speaking French in her film One Hundred and One Nights, how she managed to film The Black Panthers and there’s Sandrine Bonnaire recalling the “real blisters like you wanted” for Vagabond. Best of all we get her philosophy: feminist, humanist, mixing drama with documentary and always mindful of how they affect people. “My films are covered in affection,” she says. This one is for her fans and anyone interested in the craft of filmmaking. (VanCity Theatre) 4 out of 5
Coincidentally you can see almost every film Varda made in a month-long festival the Cinematheque has scheduled. It starts Thursday and runs off-and-on until January 6. Every film I’ve mentioned will be shown, plus rarer titles like Kung-Fu Master, The Gleaners and I and a previous self-portrait From Here to There. Visit https://thecinematheque.ca/ to find out more.
VOLITION: If you happen to get to Whistler by this afternoon you’d do well to catch this one at the film festival there. If not, watch for it in the future. It’s a sparkling Vancouver-made film on a subject that’s always in fashion: time travel. But this one gets into loops and back and forth motion and so much complexity that it’s also an intriguing puzzle. I think it goes too far in that direction but there’s much to enjoy along the way. It’s already drawn laudatory reviews at several sci fi and fantasy festivals.
Adrian Glynn McMorran, known from the Arrow TV series, plays a man afflicted with clairvoyance. He has visions of his future. Problem: they come on at random. He can’t call them up. So, assigned by a gangster (John Cassini) to chart the best future for some African diamonds, he has to keep him waiting. Meanwhile, he sees his own death but not clearly. And we see that an early incident (he rescued a woman played by Magda Apanowicz) has already happened by the time we see it. It gets very complex that way, includes a huge twist along the way and something I thought was a time travel no no: he comes into the same time frame with himself. No matter, it’s a very involving film, briskly paced by director Tony Dean Smith and brightly co-written with his brother Ryan W. Smith. You see a lot of local sights too, like the 2400 Motel. (Whistler Film Festival) 3 out of 5
FRANKIE: There’s an extended scene at the end of this film in which all the characters walk up a hill, and then? They walk back down again. The end. Somehow that’s come to symbolize the entire movie for me. A good idea is played by a top-notch cast but with little payoff. A classy soap opera, if you will. Starting well but gradually turning overly languid.
Isabelle Huppert is Françoise, Frankie to her friends, an iconic movie actress and budding organizer of people’s lives. She brings her entire family (close, distant, professional and even ex) together for a holiday in Portugal where she wants to tell them her cancer has returned, and offer them advice about their own lives. Brendan Gleason plays her second husband; Pascal Greggory is her first, the one who left her because he is gay. Vinette Robinson is her stepdaughter, there with her husband, teenage daughter and failing marriage.
Frankie has invited a make-up artist/ friend from the movies (Marisa Tomei) hoping to hook her up with her petulant son and rookie financier (Jeremie Renier). Marisa has brought her own friend (Greg Kinnear), a co-worker with her on a new Star Wars film, who is trying to woo her. They’re all nice people who we get to know in a series of small scenes that don’t really build up to very much. Nice touristy sights and lore though. (Park & Tilford) 2 ½ out of 5
Also now playing …
PLAYMOBIL: THE MOVIE: Lego and Transformers and others have done it, so why not this German line of toys? It’s a co-production with France and, from what I’ve read, is just short of an advertising feature disguised as a movie. A young boy (Gabriel Bateman ) and his older sister (Anya Taylor-Joy) who takes care of him after their parents die are whisked into a computer game where they become animated characters like everybody else in there. An emperor (voiced by Adam Lambert) rules like in Gladiator; a food-truck guy (Jim Gaffigan) sells magic hay (?), there’s a pirate (Keenan Thompson) and various helpful types including a secret agent (Daniel Radcliffe) and a fairy-godmother (Meghan Trainor). It wasn’t previewed here but I’ve seen posted comments that say small children like it; their parents not so much. And critics? Hardly at all. (International Village and suburban theatres)