Wow. Disneyland shut down. The NBA out. Tribeca Film Festival and more movies delayed. Next week's Quiet Place Part II and Mulan the following week are the latest. All because of the coronavirus. Here in town the Rio and Van City Theatres have issued extra precautions to make you feel safe, mostly with cleanliness and also assurances. The Rio says it’s large enough that you won’t be sitting too close to anyone else. VanCity is making sure of that by selling only half the seats.
Ironically this is another week with a big number of new films in town. 11 in all. More than I’ve been able to catch.
Beanpole: 4 ½ stars
The Whistlers: 3 ½
Red Snow: 3 ½
Hope Gap: 3
My Spy: 3
Bloodshot: 2
Brotherhood: 3
To Live to Sing : 3 ½
I Still Believe: --
Run This Town:--
The Hunt:--
BEANPOLE: Of all the movies new in town right now, this is a must see. It is so deeply felt about the aftermath of war, especially on women, that you’ll have a long time forgetting it. The sentiments it raises are so strong that you’ll hardly think about how grim the background is.
It’s set in Leningrad, Russia about a year after World War II has ended and centers on two women. Iya, nicknamed Beanpole because she’s tall and thin, works as a nurse in a hospital. She’s just as traumatized as her patients and prone to freezing up, quivering and shaking. She’s also caring for the 3-year-old son of her army buddy Masha who returns, sloughs off some very bad news and suggests they go dancing. Masha is a life-force, brilliantly played by a newcomer named Vasilisa Perelygina. In fact both women (Viktoria Miroshnichenko is Iya) have never acted in a movie before and yet they are completely convincing. They get themselves picked up at the dance hall, have sex, meet the parents of one of the guys and insult the mother after she denigrates their contributions during the war. Masha has medical issues that add another layer of deep drama. It’s rare to find a film this rich with emotion and human experience. The director, Kantemir Balagov, is only 28 years old and definitely one to watch. (VanCity Theatre) 4 ½ out of 5
THE WHISTLERS: Corneliu Porumboiu from Romania makes highly enjoyable films stocked with deadpan humor, plot twists and acerbic views of officialdom. He’s outdone himself in his latest, certainly with the funny and the twisty, though with less of the mocking of politicians. He’s mostly concerned with criminals here and a crooked cop. He, played by the well-known Vlad Ivanov, wants to free a crook from prison, at the behest of the guy’s girlfriend (Catrinel Marlon), a real femme fatale. It’s not love motivating her; it’s money. The crook knows where 30 million Euros in illegal cash is stashed. The cop, his female boss (Rodica Lazar) and the Mafia boss he’s been co-operating with, all want it.
He first has to go to the Canary Island named Gomera to learn an ancient language entirely made up of whistles. It’s been used for centuries to outwit authorities, usually over ravines and mountainscapes but works just as well in the modern canyons of big cities and against surveillance cameras. The film takes the idea to pleasingly absurd levels. There are twists and revelations (too many actually) and we don’t know who is loyal to who and who is being honest and not. Operatic music plays now and then to add flavor, although an Iggy Pop record starts the movie and a visit to Singapore ends it. It’s all part of the fun. (VanCity Theatre) 3 ½ out of 5
RED SNOW: I'm not quite as able to draw a connection between Indigenous people in Canada’s north and the Pashtun of Afghanistan, not to the extent that Marie Clements has done in her first movie drama. But she’s made a strong case for how she sees it and, more pertinently, for the need these days to find similarities between people. Her background in documentary film and her heritage (Metis, based here in BC) shape that message. It comes with a pretty good adventure film wrapped around it.
A soldier (Asivak Koostachin) from the Gwich’in people (part of the Yukon and the North West Territories) is captured by the Taliban and interrogated about that code he’s writing in his notebook. It’s not code; it’s his native language. He’s not American, he’s Canadian. “The same,” the Taliban guy says. “You are on my land? Protecting your country?”
The soldier has frequent flashbacks to back home, to an ill-fated love affair and the wise sayings of his grandmother (Tantoo Cardinal). He escapes with the help of a translator accused of being a traitor and his fiery daughter. (She’s a formidable presence played by Mozhdah Jamalzadah, who lives in Vancouver and used to host a radio talk show in Afghanistan). With the Taliban pursuing, they head up into the mountains where we get another connection to our north: heavy snow. We already had snowmobiles on the tundra contrasted with motorcycles in the desert. It’s a thriller with substance, was the most popular Canadian film at VIFF last fall and won three big awards at the recent Women In Film festival. (International Village) 3 ½ out of 5
HOPE GAP: The acting is very strong, especially by Annette Bening, in this convincing drama about a marriage breaking down. It’s got some flaws but it feels authentic. People in long-time relationships will understand exactly. It may resonate, maybe uncomfortably.
Bill Nighy is the husband with not a touch of his familiar irony but a lot of resignation. The couple live in England (Bening does a credible accent), they’ve been married 29 years and they don’t always have much to say anymore. “I want a reaction. I want a real marriage,” she blurts out at one point. He teaches history, currently about sacrifices by Napoleon’s soldiers, which jibes with the title of the stage play the film is based on, The Retreat from Moscow. William Nicholson, who wrote it, also directed the film. The new name refers to a spot at the White Cliffs of Dover and isn’t any more relevant. In the story, the husband has been cheating, decides to move out and has his son visit to be there to comfort his wife when he tells her. It’s all so sudden it’s hard to believe. The talk is mature and still stage-bound but often clever. The other woman’s answer to why she had the right to take the husband is a classic. (5th Avenue) 3 out of 5
MY SPY: We get to see it a month before Americans do. Down there it’s been delayed, an indirect affect of other films moving around because of the coronavirus. Here it plays for spring break and if you go, taking a kid or two, you’ll find a perfectly likeable piece of trivia. Former wrestler Dave Bautista does what other big guys like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Vin Diesel did before him: babysit. He plays a CIA agent who has been demoted to surveillance over a woman in Chicago because she’s the sister-in-law of a dealer in stolen plutonium. Her daughter is a precocious 9-year-old, played by a winning newcomer, Chloe Coleman.
She figures out who and what he is, threatens to blow his cover by uploading some smart phone pictures she takes to the cloud and cajoles him into teaching her how to be a spy. Preposterous, but fun. Much of this is the usual: a CIA agent at show-and-tell; head office watching on monitors, gay neighbors and upset for some when deceptions are revealed. There’s even a brief Meghan Markle joke. But Bautista’s comic chops work (remember him from the Guardians of the Galaxy films?) and Coleman is a charmer. (International Village, Marine Gateway and suburban theatres) 3 out of 5
BLOODSHOT: A lesser-known comic book character from a lesser-known company gives us this super-hero wanna be that misses a chance to fill out its potential. It starts with a contemporary aspiration but settles into something we already have lots off. We’ve seen the predictions for a possible line of genetics research: soldiers who can’t be injured. Vin Diesel plays one here, actually he’s brought back from the dead and several times we see horrible wounds heal right before our eyes. Guy Pearce plays the scientist at a private research company who gave him that capability by injecting tiny robots into his blood.
What he didn’t give him is memory. When flashes of that come back, he becomes obsessed with revenge. He goes after the guy who killed him and his wife and we get lots we’ve seen before. It’s glossy and gleaming but clumsy and confusing. There are small stabs at humor, as when the chief bad guy (Toby Kebbell) with the gawky name Martin Axe comes dancing through a line of carcasses in a meat locker to the tune of “Psycho Killer.” Vin however never wavers from deadly serious. Eiza González fares better as a lab assistant assigned to control him. The film was made in South Africa, pretending unconvincingly to be London, Budapest and elsewhere. The director, Dave Wilson, constructed video games before this, his first movie. The action scenes are hit and miss and the film is just average. (Scotiabank, Marine Gateway and suburban theatres) 2 out of 5
BROTHERHOOD: Here’s a striking bit of Canadian history, evocative of much of our identity and of our fears. Too bad it’s only getting a one-off screening right now, though it will be available on iTunes later this month. It’s a true story, as it says right off the top, about a church camp canoe trip that went terribly wrong on a lake in Ontario’s cottage country back in 1926. Thirteen boys set out; 11 died, as did one of the two instructors. A sudden squall flipped the canoe; the boys hung on in the freezing water as long as they could. Several sacrificed themselves for the good of the others.
All that is depicted in agonizing tension by Vancouver’s Richard Bell, the writer/director. He shows jovial camaraderie at the start as we meet the boys, including cocky Waller, played by Jake Manley, and O’Hara (Matthew Isen) subject to “hyper sensitivities.” A couple of Brendans, Fehr and Fletcher, play the instructors and the script gives them lots of time to discuss courage, grit (“Risk builds character.” “Challenge builds character.”) and boys “feminized” after so many had lost their fathers in the war. Bell undercuts the power of the disaster more than a bit with a few too many flashbacks but later he regains his course with a good depiction of survivor guilt. He, actor Brendan Fletcher and composers Bramwell Tovey and William Rowson will be at the screening to talk about the film. (Rio Theatre, Sat. 6:30) 3 out of 5
TO LIVE TO SING: You think we tear down heritage buildings too often here in Vancouver? Look what’s happening in China. This film has recurring images of houses, entire neighborhoods even, smashed down, the front shovel of giant excavators punching through the brickwork and pulling it down into a pile of rubble. That grows into a leitmotif behind this tale of a cultural institution, traditional Chinese opera, struggling to survive. Only old people are in the audience to watch the Sichuan troupe because, according to an official in this film, it “isn’t cool anymore.”
When the leader gets a notice that their theatre is to be demolished she tries to save it. Zhao Xiaoli plays her as a fervent activist but gets a run around from the town chief’s office (“see the cultural bureau”) and betrayal by some of her performers who are willing to get into something called mask changing. Her niece, Dan Dan, the star of her show wants to sing pop songs and dress, she sneers, “like a prostitute.” The fast change China is going through is encapsulated in this group’s dilemma and it’s depicted with color and dazzle by filmmaker Johnny Ma. He used to live in Toronto and is now back in Shanghai where he was born. He’ll be at the first screening (Saturday 4:30) and do a Q&A afterwards. (VanCity Theatre , four days starting Saturday) and at Metropolis and Riverport on March 23, 7 pm). 3 ½ out of 5
Three that I haven’t seen …
I STILL BELIEVE: A film for faith-based fans goes big, because the previous film by directors Andrew and Jon Erwin was an unexpected hit and made lots of money. This time they tell the true story of Jeremy Camp a star of Christian music who married his wife despite her cancer diagnosis and lost her less than five months later. Shania Twain plays his mother Terry. I couldn’t see the film; the preview conflicted with another. The Christian Film Review calls it “inspiring” and The Wrap says it’s “saccharine”.
RUN THIS TOWN: The story of Rob Ford (the late mayor of Toronto who's brother is now the premier of Ontario) is told in this film by sometime actor and producer and almost-debut director Ricky Tollman. Ford trying to deny his addiction problems was exposed by a woman reporter but that's done by a man here. It arrives unseen but online one review's "boring" is another's "rivetting." (International Village)
THE HUNT: Like The Most Dangerous Game, the grand daddy of the genre, this film is about rich folks hunting people. Literally. It was supposed to appear back in September but was pulled because a mass shooting had taken place. Why now is it’s time is anybody’s guess but it’s booked into over 3,000 theatres and hasn’t pleased the few critics who’ve seen it. It wasn’t previewed here.