Let me add one more note about the history that Parasite made at the Academy Awards. It is the first Korean Film to win an Oscar and the first non-English language film to win Best Picture. But its creator, Bong Joon Ho, also did something that hasn’t been done in 67 years. He personally won four Oscars. Walt Disney did it in 1953 with four films. Bong won as director, screenwriter, and producer in two categories for this one film.
Parasite is on almost twice as many screens starting today. In Canada that’s 144. But not at the Rio here in town and that’s got the theatre into another petition campaign. They want Ottawa, through its Competition Bureau, to stop the Cineplex Theatres corporation to stop using its near-monopoly power to prevent films like it to get into independent theatres. When I last looked last night, over 6,000 people had already signed.
And these are new this week:
Portrait of a Lady on Fire: 4 ½ stars
The Assistant: 3
Sonic the Hedgehog: 3 ½
K-Docs Film Festival
Downhill: 2
Fantasy Island--
The Photograph--
PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE: This is one of those rare films that is close to perfect. I can’t find anything wrong with this rapturous slow-maturing love story between two women in 18th Century France. It’s got a thorny start, a pressing time limit on the way and a wistful ending all elegantly written, acted and crafted into a film you should see. I can’t imagine why this didn’t get a nomination at the Academy Awards. France’s equivalent, the César awards have given it 10 nominations. At Cannes, it won for best screenplay.
It’s a film about longing and the glances that convey it. Director Céline Sciamma orchestrates them beautifully to the pace of a classic novel. She also wrote it. A young artist (Noémie Merlant) is called to a seaside estate in Brittany to paint a portrait of a young woman (Adèle Haenel ) soon to be married. (She’s the blonde in the picture and, incidentally, a former partner of Sciamma’s). Problem: the subject won’t pose because a portrait would advance the marriage which she doesn’t want. The artist has to study her and paint in secret. As she does she gets to know her, and of a tragic incident in her past. They have long talks about love. What is it like? “It’s hard to say”. They end up in bed. “Do all lovers feel they’re inventing something?” The feminist theme continues with a servant girl and an unwelcome pregnancy but that’s secondary to their love story, which flames for a time and offers a bittersweet addendum. No matter what your taste, this film can stir you emotionally.(5th Avenue) 4½ out of 5
THE ASSISTANT: Compared to the lurid testimony we’ve read from the Harvey Weinstein trial, this film, which revolves around a man somewhat like him, feels tame. You want some noise; some melodrama. Instead you get a restrained look at sexual politics in an office of an entertainment mogul. It’s not even a look; it’s a slow realization by a lowly employee of what is going on. Most of it is suspicion based on fragments of evidence: stains on a couch, a fallen earring, a waitress brought in from an Idaho ski resort and put up in an expensive hotel. There’s value in that approach; it points out signs people should pay attention to at their workplace. But in a movie you want more.
Julia Garner, who last year won an Emmy for the TV series Ozark, is low-key but effective as the assistant. We see her do the photocopying, appointment booking, phone answering, mail opening (too much actually) as the film underlines that her status in the office isn’t very high. So what power does she have to report her boss’s behavior? She gets condescension from two male co-workers and there’s a great scene when she finally goes to a human resources guy (Matthew Macfadyen). He does his best to not understand what she’s telling him; says it adds up to nothing and assures her that she’s safe: “You’re not his type.” In other words, people know and don’t speak up. The office culture portrayed here by writer/director Kitty Green is accurate and based on some she’s worked in herself. It’s too subtle though. We never even see the offending mogul; just hear him on the phone briefly, getting abusive. There’s also a dim and grey look to this film which further holds back the heat. (International Village) 3 out of 5
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG: Movies based on video games do not have a great track record. This is one of the better ones (the best, according to one expert I talked to) and it’s precisely because it is aimed at kids. That’s a bit odd because how many of them are familiar with the character? He’s a Japanese creation, started in 1991 and that means he’s quite retro these days. Dads would know him better. That he’s an alien from a planet somewhere, hiding out on Earth, battling the evil genius known as Dr. Robotnik,(aka Eggman)...
... with only seven magical dimension-transporting rings to help him. And, of course his blinding speed, which brings on the narrative. He causes a power failure across the US Northwest and draws the attention of both a cop (played by James Marsden) in the small town of Green Hills, Montana and the Pentagon which hires “that freak” Robotnik to investigate. I have no idea how true that is to the many generations of the games, the brief animated TV series or the books that followed but here it settles down into a typical children’s movie. Sonic (voiced by Ben Schwartz, known for his varied TV experience) is lonely and wants to make a real friend. The cop wants to move up to a bigger force in San Francisco. Robotnik, well he’s “the top banana in a world of monkeys” whatever that means. Jim Carrey has a great time playing him with absurd bravado. He’s got drones and a sly wit. There are frantic chases (one to Paris, China, Egypt and back) and a climactic scene on “that pointy building” in Frisco. But Chris Gailus as a TV news anchor is a sign that most of it was filmed around here and on Vancouver Island. It’s a very entertaining family movie. Stay through the end credits for a gift to the fans. (International Village, Marine Gateway and many suburban theatres) 3 ½ out of 5
KDOCS FILM FESTIVAL: This is a look-ahead to the highly regarded festival of documentaries about social justice. It's on next weekend at the VanCity Theatre but actually starts on Thursday, opening with two films about the environment.
INVENTING TOMORROW follows six highschool students from four countries as they figure out solutions to specific problems where they live. There's eutrophication (look it up) in India, lead from tin mining in Indonesia, pollution in Hawaii and Mexico City, and more. The film then watches them take their ideas to the premier science fair on our planet, the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF). (Ironically another film that came through a few months ago followed another group of teens with different projects to the same fair). Both offer a glimmer of hope that there are things that can be done.
BEYOND CLIMATE addresses "the paramount issue of our time", what we used to call global warming from a specific BC perspective and with one the most articulate voices on the subject, scientist and broadcaster David Suzuki. He narrates the film, appears in it to reflect on how our province is being affected, and will be there in person with director Ian Mauro for a question and answer session. The film talks about pipelines, LNG, salmon decline and indigenous rights. There's more on these and subsequent films at http://www.kdocsff.com/
DOWNHILL: Americans took an intense Swedish film and remade it into this bland timewaster. Force Majeure from 2014 was included just last month in the Cinematheque’s festival of the best films of the decade. Don’t expect even a bit of such praise for this new one, although the story is the same (mostly) and the locations are gorgeous. A family goes on a skiing holiday in Austria and the glistening snow and the Alps have never looked better. But a controlled avalanche terrifies when it comes at them as they sit on a patio and alarms the wife and two sons when the father seems to have a cowardly reaction.
That sets up suspicion, denying, arguing and even, by the wife, a brief flirtation off to the side. But the examination of gender roles and human nature, particularly what men are supposed to do, so forcefully examined in the original, is dulled here, and in the case of social class, practically non-existent. Part of the problem is the cast. When Will Farrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus lead you expect a comedy. Some in the audience the other night were trying to laugh but not much of what they saw was funny. There were a lot more sexual references written in compared to what I remember from six years ago. They were generally a distraction. (International Village and suburban theatres) 2 out of 5
Two others also now playing but not previewed:
BLUMHOUSE’S FANTASY ISLAND: That first name is the prolific producer of horror movies that has created a version, in their style, of the old TV series. Remember Ricardo Montalban and Hervé Villechaize as the hosts on the tourist island where guests could have their deepest fantasy staged for them? I can’t say what the film does—it wasn’t available to review—but I understand the fantasies in it all turn into nightmares.
THE PHOTOGRAPH: You’d think that with the ongoing demand for diversity this film would be promoted wider to the media. Not here, though. This is a story of love and history in a black family and was directed by a black woman, Stella Meghie. Issa Rae stars as a woman who delves into her late mother’s life story when she discovers a photo hidden away in a safety deposit box. It shows her with a man she’s never seen. Somehow that leads to a romance of her own, with a hot shot journalist (LaKeith Stanfield). It’s timed to Valentine’s Day.