The Odyssey: save your money from this overly hyped film

I can usually tell if I'm going to like a movie in the first five minutes. I went into Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey with optimism held high. But immediately there was something jarringly wrong. The characters spoke English! Yes, I know this is a tried and true Hollywood tradition dating back decades to movies like The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur and Cleopatra. But for some reason it didn't seem right here in such an obvious 3000 year old Greek myth. And partly it was who was speaking. In this case such recognizably box office boffo stars as Matt Damon (who otherwise does an admirable job as hero Odysseus) and Charlize Theron, who as a nymph looks like she's on a fashion set and can't be taken seriously at all. Yet I kept trying to find things admirable or absorbing about the film, partly I guess because of the overwhelming positive hype this picture has gotten in its one short week since release. But it never gathered traction. First, this is a movie heavily loaded with dialogue. Action film fans - who I suspect make up most of the audience - would have been numbed by all the weighted and grave conversations, about which I'd bet they couldn't care a flying fig about. And that's if they were decipherable because most were rather garbled. I really was expecting more action but it came few and far between. There were only a few mythical battles with monsters - the cyclops Polyphemus, the six-headed Scylla and giant soldiers who shred Odysseus' men and boats. Yes, the assault on Troy by Odysseus' Greeks - including of course the Trojan Horse - is dramatic but as dramatic or less than I've seen in a hundred other storming-the-gates type films. And really all these scenes are rather bloodless, both physically and emotionally. And, in between, the interminable dialogues among various characters, which may have put several members of the audience to sleep (the girl in front of me kept scrolling). This is a long film (172 minutes) and about half way through I gave up, my mind settling into a state of numbness and sort of on autopilot as the rest of the story unfolded. The best things about this film? Some of the ships and their grizzled rowers at sea fighting the elements and yes the dramatic encounters with the mythical terrors. The military costumes were good. But the film is overly long - thanks to the dialogue, Chris! - and could have been chopped by at least an hour. And I thought how it could have been improved by a more capable director (did I say that?). Less, less dialogue and more ambient sounds, creating surreal scenes and real psychological drama as the characters navigate through astonishing challenges, as befits a mythic journey.

A film with too much sex on the brain

I thought The Invite (Olivia Wilde) might be an update on Mike Nichols’s 1966 Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf with Richard Burton & Elizabeth Taylor. Not really. Though the premise is two couples getting together for an evening’s gathering at one couple’s home. It’s a film based on the Spanish flick The People Upstairs (Cesc Gay) in turn based on his stage play. I generally liked it. Here you have two fashionable millennial couples meeting for the first time, though they had previously bumped into each other in their apartment building. The inviting couple – Wilde as Angela and Seth Rogen as Joe – are a quarrelling neurotic twosome, so disconnected one doesn’t know what the other explicitly told them that morning. The other – Hawk (Ed Norton) and Pina (Penélope Cruz) - seem more together and appear the dominant of the two. He’s a retired firefighter (dubious to Angela because of his fay ways) and she a sexologist with searing insights into the opposite couple’s behaviour. Hawk turns out to be a psychobabbling New Ager. Meanwhile Angela is the most insecure of the foursome, aiming to please with her charcuterie board and nervous tics. The damper is Joe, who’s not into it from the start. The film moves at a pleasingly quick pace and is abundant with close ups – even facial – of our characters, Wilde’s in particular with her excited eyes and scrunchy cheeks and goofy movements, reminiscent of Diane Keaton (to whom the film is dedicated). I enjoy seeing Rogen in anything and he’s perfect as the modern curmudgeon here. As the evening progresses there is some stripping down of defenses (like in Virginia Woolf) but we’re really on track for something else, which I don’t know if I was crazy about (reminding me a bit too much of the 1970s). One thing’s for sure: if this is similar to the Spanish flick, which I’d like to see (of course it's not on Netflix), the people who made these films have too much sex on the brain. I also found the ending - how to say - a bit schmaltzy. Besides the absorbing close-ups the film also featured a type of device I hadn’t seen in movies for some time, heavy violin chords to punctuate the storyline. That was brilliant. 

It was Tuesday (cheap night) at the movies and a light bulb had gone off in my head. Book online, damnit, and avoid the line-up at the theatre. Sure enough when I arrived the lobby was congestingly full of people. I simply wandered in and just showed my phone ticket code. Surprised more people aren't doing this…..Speaking of theatre-going, on the hottest day this year the cineplex offered welcoming AC and I had thrown on a long sleeved shirt for warmth. But when in Florida earlier this year I noticed moviegoers coming to the cinema with blankets. Well, it is Florida. It also reminded me of the old Mad magazine cartoon about people coming out of the theatre hating the movie but saying it saw was worth it because of the air conditioning!

The Windsor International Film Festival’s (WIFF) tickets go on sale Sept. 22. I can’t wait. This year, with a slightly later October festival start, I’ll be able attend the full 11 days of the magnificent little festival that grew into probably Canada’s best regional fest and is now rivalling many big cities’. 

In stunning Malta, it's a cinema fest by the sea

I wasn’t planning to attend the Mediterrane Film Festival. In fact I’d never heard of it before. Until that is I got an email from the British Film Institute’s (BFI) PR agency, doing publicity for it. And I’d recently had the idea of going to Malta. So why not kill two birds? It’s a week-long festival in the capital city Valletta and in its fourth year still small and growing with only 30 films. But it has garnered some major titles like The Christophers with Ian McKellen, Couture with Angelina Jolie, Gus Van Sant’s Dead Man’s Wire, Moss & Freud about model Kate Moss’s collaboration with artist Lucian Freud and Broken English about singing great Marianne Faithfull. The films were also mainly in the evening, which gave me lots of time

to sightsee around Malta and its two main islands. What disappointed me was the lack of attendance. There were screenings with less than 10 people  and I don’t think I saw one entire cinema filled, and the theatres (all at one complex) were not large. Hard to explain why. The city and environs were inundated with billboards and various city sites had special areas roped off for celebrity guests and awards. One Malta resident put it down to typically poor local planning - “it’s Malta!” – while another suggested “the Maltese” will take a while to get used to something new and different. In any case here are some capsule reviews. Australia’s Beast of War (Kiah Roache-Turner) was a strange mashup of an Oz version of Jaws and WWII survival. Some good acting about sinking ship survivors but strange that someone would want to make a movie so obviously like the original. Maryam Touzani’s Calle Malaga with perhaps Spain’s greatest living film actress Carmen Maura was a poignant statement on aging and place, set in a Spanish colony in the Moroccan city of Tangier. Leyla Bouzid’s In a Whisper, a family story, subtlety revealed the oppression that gays face in Tunisia. If The Last Viking (Anders Thomas Jensen) is an example of Danish black comedy I want less of it, please. The film somewhat amusingly exploited violence for violence sake to make – what? – a point. Lost on me. Ordinary Battles (Margo Roe & Brick) was two films about 1) a dedicated nurse’s professional on the job struggles and 2) interpersonal rivalries among a longtime group of friends on a wilderness trip. The acting was good in both. Larry Yang’s The Shadow’s Edge was one of those ultra-violent Chinese crime dramas – and the violence came hot and heavy and repeatedly over this more than two-hour flick - with more crashes, explosions, mass brawls using hundreds of stuntmen. Not exactly my cup of tea but you’ve got to admire the sheer energy of making a film like this. Gus Van Sant’s Dead Man’s Wire is based on the real life 1970s kidnapping of an Indiana mortgage company honcho, and reminiscent of the current arrest of Luigi Mangione in United Heathcare Brian Thompson’s murder. Finally, another film based on real events, Nicolangelo Gelormini’s Gioia, was a searing romantic tragedy..... Let's hope this festival truly grows.

History obviously repeats in this feminist Brit flick

History repeats itself in Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day. But that I mean that just this week, in Britain, there was a blatant case of alleged misogyny at the University of Cambridge. A male professor was accused of being ”wicked” and subjecting a female colleague to “psychological torture.” Not just that but Cambridge’s prestigious Institute of Astronomy  was described as having an altogether “bad history of misogyny.” Perfect! And just in time for the opening weekend of Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day (in certain markets). Directed by Tina Gharavi it’s based on the little known Woolf novel of the same name. 116 years doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of difference in the charges hurled again the institute, as our heroine Katharine Hilbery (Haley Bennett - The Magnificent Seven, Hillbilly Elegy), finds. The story takes place in 1910 where headstrong Hilbery, a brilliant amateur astronomer, eschews society’s norms by trying to pursue a singular career outside of a conventional and confining (for women) life. The sets and costumes are spot on in this historical remake. And US actress Hilbery is a more than convincing Edwardian Brit (she also played in Cyrano). Timothy Spall (Mr. Turner, The Last Bus), one of Britian’s premium actors, does a turn as a stuffy authoritarian father, and with his twisted peevish face (reminiscent of a Francis Bacon portrait) he’s perfect for the role. And three-quarters of the film is the sub-plot of Bennett’s efforts to elude his grasps. Lily Allen plays the suffragette Mary Datchet, a major influence on the still evolving Katharine. The other theme is Hilbery’s indifference towards marriage, blowing hot and cold and playfully stringing her slightly buffoonish paramour (Jack Whitehall) along. But there is something very cliché-ridden about the film. We’ve seen this all before – a struggling yet assertive young feminist wanting to break society’s bonds, something albeit a good deal harder to do more than 100 years ago. If you’re a rah-rah feminist you’ll probably cheer her on regardless. Otherwise, the best the film has to offer are the period settings, the cast (very good) and particularly the searing irascible Hilbery (actor Bennett) herself. 

A nine-hour flight: that will be three films, thank you

My Air Canada Zurich to Toronto flight Monday was going to be a grind, even after a one-and-a-half hour delay leaving Zurich because of some European Union aircraft monitoring program that day. The flight is 8.45 hours. I spent the first hour or so finishing downloaded newspapers from my previous hour-plus flight. Now it was twiddling my thumbs time. Okay, let’s have a look at AC’s entertainment offer. I am one of the few people who praises AC (Canucks notoriously bad mouth the airline). Besides the fact they still offer booze at meals - and in a plastic as opposed to paper cup! – their back-of-seat entertainment system is one of

the most voluminous I’ve seen. As I scrolled through offerings, Polly Findlay’s Midwinter Break came up. Released this year I’d  been wanting to see it. It’s the story about a couple from Glasgow, long married, trying to revitalize their relationship with a short trip to Amsterdam. It stars one of my fave Brit actresses Lesley Manville, and Irish actor Ciarán Hinds. They’re Baby Boomers who seem to have arrived together at the end of their tether. The winter scenes of Amsterdam’s streets are gorgeous, as is the artwork in the Rijksmuseum (don’t forget to see the Night Watch). But there is unsettling ennui as the couple stroll by the moonlit canals. Manville’s Stella is

going in an opposite direction to the taciturn Gerry (Hinds) – stereotypical husband alert! – and the trip dissolves. Or does it?.....Next up on my flight were two vintage French films. First was Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour (1967) with Catherine Deneuve. I’d seen this before. Deneuve as Séverine is a bored housewife who wants, shall we say, a walk on the wild side or to jump-start her libido. She applies as a prostitute to a high-class Paris brothel (Geneviève Page as Madame Anaïs is especially memorable in projecting an authoritative though tender charm). The film shows many intimate images (though no nudity) and I wondered what the passengers behind me may have thought with a very young and slim Deneuve (her wide eyes reminding me of Princess Beatrice’s), stripping down as she services her mainly bizarre clients…..The third film was a French Nouvelle Vague classic, Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1962 Le Doulos, starring the great Jean-Paul Belmondo and, like in the last film, a personal fave, Michel Piccoli. Le Doulos refers to a police informer. And a hat. And since this is 1962 and criminals looked like businessmen, which in a way they were, they all wore hats. This is an age-old crime flick of betrayal among gangsters, Belmondo’s Silien outsmarting his brothers and the cops among some nasty happenings. This Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) film has all the earmarks of a classic noir, "à la française", with double dealings underlying the cliché, No Honour Among Thieves. Just put your fedora down gently.

Pass the popcorn and ridicule this movie

Normally I would never watch romantic schlock like It Ends with Us (based on the Colleen Hoover book), the 2024 Netflix film directed by Justin Baldoni and starring him and Blake Lively. But given the massive controversy over the film and lawsuits back and forth between the two prime stars, Netflix's release of the film this weekend was a longing-for-popcorn moment. I sat back and watched and smirked the whole way through, constantly mouthing cutting remarks to both of the stars though I sided with Baldoni on this one. Lively filed a lawsuit against Baldoni and Baldoni countersued, then a settlement was reached over the past month. She accused him of sexual harassment, ironically given that is a theme of the film. It was the stuff of constant Hollywood headlines and even I, someone not much into celebrity gossip, couldn't stop reading about it. So regardless of any quality the film might have had technically it's overlaid with the feud surrounding it. It's kind of like watching Tommy Wiseau's The Room, often considered the worst movie ever made. Technically, Ends is well made if a bit romantically syrupy. It oozes cotemporary vibes with Lively striking out as as a small town girl (Lily Bloom - seriously) in Boston opening her own flower shop. On a summer rooftop evening she meets Ryle, whom she takes for a crypto bro (he looks it) but is a neurosurgeon. Love, uh, blooms. And there is loads of intimacy, leading one to see how one or another of the characters may have stepped over the line. In the film Lively struck me as more vulnerable (and younger) than I imagined and Baldoni extraordinary handsome and a take no guff kind of guy (hence counter lawsuit). But what annoyed me the most was how gooey hip contemporary the whole thing was, complete with Rob Simonsen and Duncan Blickenstaff's plaintive emotive score. More chardonnay please, please. 

The most famous jazz piano concert record that almost never came off

Köln 75, directed by Ido Fluk, is a documentary that doesn't seem like a documentary. It's about this legendary German music promoter, Vera Brandes, and her production of a Keith Jarrett concert in Cologne (Köln) Germany in 1975. Which just happened to result in the best selling live jazz piano concert recording of all time. Yes, it's an against all odds kind of story but this actually happened. Brandes was a hell-raising 18-year-old when she met famed Brit jazz saxophonist Ronnie Scott, who made romantic overtures in a local club. Nothing came of it but he saw her fearlessness and drive and hired her to book club dates. Learning literally on the job - and by the skin of her teeth - her recognition grew as Cologne became the centre of Germany's jazz scene. While the rest of the world was caught up in mid-1970s rock and roll (remember the Doobie Brothers?) and jazz was seen as old hat Köln and Vera were tuned to a different vibe. The film is creatively made, at turns with a third person narrator, but cutting sharply to a fictionalize style drama. The movie, of course, is about Brandes, and also her rebellion against her staid authoritarian parents, her father especially who despised what she was doing and made no effort to conceal his disdain. But Brandes's "bratty" personality underlined her goal of moving in the moment of the jazz world. When the famed pianist Keith Jarrett came to Germany she was chosen as his promoter. Jarrett, a prodigy and pianist with legendary Myles Davis but who struck out on his own, agreed to come to Köln. But tired and physically in pain and hearing the concert piano was poorly tuned he adamantly refused to play. That put Vera on the spot as she had paid upfront 10K Deutsche Marks and promised her mother (who lent her the money) she would quit music promotion if the concert failed. It didn't. But the excitement builds as Brandes and her friends work to a frenzy to see the concert - with a tuned if otherwise deficient piano - come off. Brandes is played by Mala Emde, Jarrett by John Magaro and Michael Chernus as jazz journalist Mick Watts (the last two of Orange is the New Black fame), who hitches a physically uncomfortable car ride across Europe with Jarrett and his producer Michael Eicher (Alexander Scheer), who'd go on to found ECM Records.