As the theatres are shut, the film companies and we are making do in a variety of ways. Semi-binge watching The Crown is popular over there at Netflix. Disney+ is rushing The Call of the Wild and Downhill on to its site early and other very recent films like The Hunt, The Invisible Man and Emma are available from Telus and probably others. Star Wars #9, The Gentlemen and Bad Boys for Life are just days away.
Crave TV, which includes HBO, is offering a 30-day free trial (https://www.crave.ca); Amazon (https://www.amazon.com) is giving free access to its kiddie content, including The Stinky & Dirty Show and the Cinematheque has alerted me to the most interesting free offer.
The streaming service MUBI will let you watch their films free for three months and they’re worthwhile. It’s a curated and changing line up, 30 titles at a time, currently ranging from foreign art house hits like Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate, from Japan, three Louis Malle films from France, an Errol Flynn western and a real curio: Our Daily Bread, King Vidor’s film from 1934 that seems to suggest socialism as a cure for the depression. MUBI (https://mubi.com/cinematheque) charges you $1 to create an account.
Also notice the CBC is filling Saturday’s hockey slot with movies, including this week a second and good stab at making a Canadian war film by Paul Gross. Hyena Road depicts our soldiers in Afghanistan fighting and dealing with their issues, something we normally only watch Americans do.
And these are five other titles you can rent and/or stream.
BACURAU: Brazilian directors Juliano Dornelles and Kleber Mendonça Filho have a serious statement to make here – about exploitation of and condescension towards people out there is small rural communities. And by implication about the nation ruled by an increasingly right-wing government. Don’t expect a heavy political screed though. This is a metaphor about colonialism built out of familiar tools of popular culture: traces of science fiction, war movies, widescreen epics and a great deal of the look and feel of American westerns.
You’re entertained; not preached at.
In a fictional village in Brazil’s insubordinate north-east region, American tourists suddenly show up (led by a German mercenary played by Udo Kier). “Technically we are not here,” he says. The locals who have gathered for the funeral of a revered matriarch are on edge. They’re suspicious of strangers, maybe from experience. The name of their town has disappeared off official maps and a doctor, played by Sonia Braga, has a drunken rant warning “We are under attack.” How, I won’t say right now, but with the help of a notorious (and, incidentally, gay) rebel, who they spring from jail, and then by popping “mood-inhibitor” drugs and picking up guns, they organize to take a stand. It’s equally fun and provocative. (Streaming by viff.org) 4 out of 5
THE WILD GOOSE LAKE: The elements are pure film noir. There’s a mysterious woman. A hood with a complex history now chased by both his gang and the police. Shifting alliances, double-crosses and mystery. Not where you expect though. This is set in Wuhan, the Chinese city so much in the news for other reasons these days. It’s dark and rainy much of the time, fitting the story perfectly.
Zhou Zenong (Hu Ge) is hiding out in a train station when he’s approached by a femme fatale, Liu Aiai (Gwei Lun Mei), offering to be his wife. He asks why his real wife hasn’t come to him; she won’t say and they both go off to find her. That’s the start of a byzantine tale that’ll keep you guessing through his own story which he relates in detail, her history as a “bathing beauty” (a prostitute down at the beach) and a violent war between rival gangsters. Diao Yinan, the director, creates a moody atmosphere and stages exciting chases, shootouts and imaginative images. Most interestingly, he gives a raw and dark picture of a lawless strata of Chinese society. I’m surprised the authorities let it come out. (Streaming by viff.org) 3 ½ out of 5
THE OCCUPANT: This brand new one on Netflix is a creepy psychological thriller that manages something rare. It gets us to sympathize with a perpetrator who is systematically destroying another man’s life. He thinks it will get him back the life and status he has lost. We’re with him all the way. He’s a former advertising executive, now unemployed, humiliated in a job interview (too old) and having to move his family out of the ritzy apartment he can no longer afford. He goes after the man who moves in there.
He (Javier Gutiérrez ) befriends him (Mario Casas), attends AA meetings with him, has him be his sponsor and meets his family over dinner. He infiltrates himself into his life and bit by bit disrupts it, a progression that is fascinating to watch. The scheme starts shaky but ends logically. I can’t tell you where it leads but it’s cleverly written by the two directors, David Pastor and Àlex Pastor. They’ve made and set it in Spain, where they’re from (they now live in the US) and that leads to a problem. The voices are dubbed into English, often well but at key points not so. At those times you’re pulled out of the web of entitlement, class differences and anti-social behavior that the film is spinning. It’s no classic but suffices as a good diversion. (Netflix) 3 out of 5
RESISTANCE: The facts recounted in this film are more interesting than the implementation. Well, except that is, until it becomes a tense thriller in the later going. Before that we watch a young Jewish man in France (played by Jesse Eisenberg) entertain children, perform in a cabaret and argue with his father who wants him to be a butcher not “a clown.” Then the Germans march in (it’s World War II), the young man joins the resistance and alters his passport to read Marcel Marceau. Yes, the man who would later become the world-famous mime. Here, recruited by an ardent activist and sometimes girlfriend (Clémence Poésy ) he helps smuggle Jewish orphans to safety in Switzerland, a story that US Gen. George S. Patton (Ed Harris) tells to a crowd of G.I.’s and we see in flashback.
Eisenberg is agreeable as Marcel, but not particularly compelling. His performances aren’t loose enough and his pronouncements (“I’m ready to fight”) aren’t all that passionate. Maybe we’re just too familiar with him as a laid-back, easy going guy. Clémence Poésy is the real inspirational voice and like so often in the movies, a bad guy makes the biggest impression. That’s Klaus Barbie, played with smooth and deep menace by Matthias Schweighöfer. The film has him play piano and shoot people at the same time. Who can compete with that? Marcel is left as a well-meaning but mild character. The film made in the Czech Republic by Jonathan Jakubowicz, the Venezuelan hit filmmaker and best-selling author, is the same: committed but too much like many before. It’ll be on iTunes starting Tuesday. 3 out of 5
VIVARIUM: The dread and fear of growing up and becoming responsible parents and homeowners are portrayed here with a cocktail of moods. At times this film is amiable, absurd, surreal and creepy. Never did I feel it was real, let alone funny enough or scary. Nor does it build on the meaning of the title: a pen to keep animals in for study.
Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots play Gemma and Tom who visit a realtor’s office to talk about buying a house in a new subdivision called “Yonder.” The unctuous guy sends them to a street where all the houses look exactly the same and all the streets do too. They should have known. A billboard says “Quality Homes Forever.” They find out why, when they try to leave. They can’t. They always end up back at #9 which is fully furnished for them and supplied with food and clothes. Then they find a baby in a box on the front steps; it grows into a screeching kid in no time and soon into a teenager. Tom meanwhile digs a hole in the front yard, for no reason that’s ever explained. A break-down? Maybe. This film doesn’t expand on that; it merely illustrates yet again all that anxiety about settling down in suburbia, this time in England, written and directed by an Irishman, Lorcan Finnegan. It was to open in theatres today but is on Apple TV and on demand at iTunes instead. 2 ½ out of 5