The maestro of your filmgoing life

It’s not often that I will sit through a foreign film, sans sous-titles - for almost three hours. But that was the case with the recent screening in Montreal of Ennio: The Maestro, about the movie music composer that has probably had more impact on the filmgoing experience – scratch that, has had – than any other musician over the past half century. Outside the rarefied world of cineastes (ha), however, the vast majority of people wouldn’t recognize his name. But you certainly recognize the music. Ennio Morrione made his mark with the Sergio Leone’s so-called "Spaghetti Westerns" of the 1970s, starring of course Clint Eastwood. When you hear the song The Good The Bad and the Ugly – also the film name – that music is indelibly Morricone’s. But he composed music for a whole swath of films that created a sound backdrop that in many ways was just as dramatic or more so than the visuals on the screen. The documentary Ennio: The Maestro by Giuseppe Tornatore is a superb portrayal of this genius, who died in 2020, with numerous interviews with composers around the world as well as filmmakers like Eastwood, Quentin Tarantino, Bernardo Bertolucci and musicians like Pat Methany and Bruce Springsteen. From Once Upon a Time in the West to The Mission, Cinema Paradiso to The Battle of Algiers, even The Thing and Bugsy,  Merricone’s unique musical stamp will unmistakably catch your ears, a character in its own right. And sitting through three hours of Italian with French sub-titles? Not a problem. Just let this scintillating music wash over you.

A nice little film I also caught in Montreal is Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up starring Michelle Williams and Judd Hirsch. There aren’t a lot of films about artists – the visual kind who paint or make sculptures – and this one delves into a fictional artist colony in uber artsy Portland (satirically "Portlandia") Oregon. But this is a soap opera of sorts, and the artists are often frenemies, praising each other’s work as they vie for exhibition space, and encountering such daily frustrations as not having hot water in their apartments. The film's at times humorous and moving and the art is great.

The Eight Mountains is another set-in-Italy production by Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch, based on a book by Paolo Cognetti. It takes place in the Italian Alps between the 1980s and present. But the film’s title is not about those mountains, but a Buddhist phrase about life’s accomplishments. The story follows Pietro and Bruno, who meet as kids on vacation in the Alps. Pietro is a city boy and Bruno, who grew up in the mountains, shows him the rugged mountain ways. But a major plot twist occurs regarding their upbringing, which has a kind of reverse outcome. Later, as adults, Pietro (Andrea Palma) and Bruno (Francesco Palombelli) rekindle their friendship but have obviously gone different paths. Bruno maintains, somewhat stubbornly, his rural roots. Pietro is now trying to make his way as a writer. This is a quiet character-driven film with exceptional scenery, some of which must have been extremely difficult to shoot as scenes take place on mountain ridges and glaciers. Perhaps a tad long but it’s an honest look at friendship and what bonds people together.  

Be very afraid in Beau is Afraid

I’m not given to over-the-top superlatives when describing films and most films, even good ones, often leave me slightly disappointed. So, it’s with pleasure to discover a film that is innovative and pushes the limits of what the medium can do. I’m speaking of Ari Aster’s Beau is Afraid, starring Joaquin Phoenix (photo). From the very first moment this film is a visual knockout and a spellbinding human and psychological tale. Coming in at one minute under three hours it’s one of those flicks that, as we used to say so long ago,  “blew my mind.” The film is very appropriately described as “surreal tragicomedy horror." Joaquin as usual is brilliant. If you have a mother complex you might want to skip the film; it’s full of Oedipal symbolism. But there’s other themes – the plight of  many American cities (though it was shot in Montreal - ha) – near dystopian cesspools where criminals’ rule and cops don’t, and where graffiti and vandalism reign and human decency doesn't. The story centres around Phoenix’s character Beau, a fragile soul just trying to get by. I won’t say more lest to spoil an incredibly unspooling plot. And visually the film’s a stunner – wide angle and close up shots and vivid clashing colours depicting a surreal universe, mixed with magic realism and animation. 

I’ve ignored Matt Johnson’s Blackberry after reading a searing critique of it last week in National Post. A former executive who worked with Blackberry founders Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie eviscerated it as essentially a complete fraud – a farce and cartoonish – of how the once iconic Canadian tech company started and grew. “It was all made up,” Dennis Kavelman writes. And “seems to go out of its way to diminish and tarnish the legacy and employees of one of Canada’s great technology stories.” I know movies take liberties, but I drew the line here.

Meanwhile, sometimes you have no choice about which movie you want to see, especially if a friend suggests it and there’s little alternative at the local Bijou. Hence, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (Kelly Fremon Craig) based on the tween and teen-themed novelist Judy Blume’s book. Yes, this is a female tween movie par excellence, right down to girls chanting how to bump their breasts to longing - "please God!" -  for their first menstrual cycle. Good acting, though, especially by Abby Ryder Fortson as Margaret and Rachel McAdams as mom Barbara.

And anyone expecting the much-ballyhooed Air (it’s number nine at the box office) to be a film about the athletic feats of b’ball great Michael Jordan should pause. This is nothing other than a business procedural through and through, with Nike execs trying to draw Jordan to a contract to boost their court shoes division. It features an especially well acted Matt Damon as scout Sunny Vaccaro though Matt has gotten grayer and put on a little weight. And the visuals remind us of how tacky the 1980s were. The film might be better suited for Business 101.

Finally, both Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret and Air follow a lot of movies lately with their pop music sondtracks of Baby Boomer nostalgia - the early 1970s for the first film, the mid-1980s for the second. Sometimes I think these films' producers want to show off the music of their youth as much as they want to make a movie.

20 years, and many still don't know local festival exists

I got to four films at this year’s Windsor Jewish Film Festival (last week). The opening night Farewell Mr. Haffmann (Fred Cavayé) starring perhaps France’s biggest male film star Daniel Auteuil turned out to be a treat – an acting duo between him and co-star Gilles Lellouche as Francois Mercier - which could have been set during the Holocaust or at any time or place. It’s a morality tale pure and simple, turning on honor and betrayal between two men…..Next up was the Tango Shalom (Gabriel Bologna), a zany comedy about an Orthodox rabbi (Jos Laniado) who must come up with funds to save his cash-starved shul. He’s an amateur dancer and when he hears about a tango competition with boffo winning bucks decides to enter. Problem: he can’t touch a woman other than his wife. An ingenious solution is found in this enjoyable ensemble family flick (think My Greek Fat Greek Wedding), though a tad long, with a both predictable and unpredictable ending…..The Replacement (Óscar Aibar), a Spanish crime thriller, was inspired by true events of the early 1980s. Cocaine smuggling, a policeman’s suspicious death and a certain expatriate community all come together in this fast-paced and well acted police procedural…..Time to Say Goodbye (Viviane Andereggen), is a story about a 12-year-old Hamburg boy about to face his Bar Mitzvah. He’s captivated by a certain religious surgical procedure. But the movie is really a kind of Wonder Years story about coming of age and the misty eyed crushes boys can have on beautiful adult mentors. 

It still surprises me that so many people in Windsor aren't aware of the Jewish film festival, which celeberated its 20th anniversary this year and is older than the better known Windsor International Film Festival. I ran into two people who were attending for the first time and were astonished they didn't previously know the festival existed. 

Meanwhile, I almost fell out of my chair when I opened The Detroit News’ entertainment section and saw a film review of the newly released How to Blow Up a Pipeline (Daniel Goldhaber). What? A film endorsing terrorism? But apparently this is simply pro forma now. And critics will write reviews without passing judgement on the contents (can you imagine if it was called How to Blow Up an Abortion Clinic?), as per the News. I found it sickening. 

There for the grace of...

 

For gripping stories featuring innocent characters, caught in the grips of unintentional crimes – and for which every bone in your body rails out against the injustice of it all – look no further than three film noirs from the 1940’s. Two of them star Edward G. Robinson, who we always think as the tough guy but who, in these films, he plays the naïve innocent. They are The Woman in the Window (1944) and Scarlet Street (1945) both by Fritz Lang. The third is The Suspect starring Charles Laughton (1944) directed by Robert Siodmak. In The Woman in the Window Robinson plays a mild mannered professor who is accused of a murder in a police procedural that will keep you on the edge of your seat. In every step, as he tries to cover his allegedly dastardly trail, he risks falling into the clutches of the law. In Scarlet Street Robinson plays an artist hobbyist who's ensnared in a plot by two criminals to exploit his naivete and art, leading to nasty consequences all around. In The Suspect, Laughton is a decent, kind professional man who, through no fault of his own, is accused of murder. Personal morality is the central theme here, leading to a conclusion we may or may not have expected. All three films are intriguing because of the contrast between the characters’ solid personalities and high principals and the accusations against them, the pace of the narrative as the films unwind, and the plot twists which are intriguing in themselves.

The Windsor Jewish Film Festival is back for its 20th season, running April 24 – 27 at Devonshire Mall. Ten films are on tap, ranging with themes about the Holocaust to modern Jewish life. Farewell Mr. Haffmann is set in Vichy France as Jewish residents are forced to identify themselves. Where Life Begins is a tale of an Orthodox family moving to rural Calabria and the freedom the family daughter experiences in her new surroundings. Hitler’s Aunt is a story about life in German-occupied Poland when a rural citizen risks his family’s life by hiding Jews. Barren is another tale of an Orthodox Jewish woman rebelling against the constraints of her “conservative” social structure by being forced to become a mother. Tango Shalom is a fun play on getting around Orthodox rules in a dance competition, all for the sake of saving the rabbi’s school from bankruptcy. In Image of Victory, set in 1948 Palestine, Hassanin attempts to liberate farmers, his values tested as “both sides re-evaluate what they understand about war.” The Replacement, set in Spain, is a police procedural about a strange murder of a police inspector the main character has replaced. Those Who Remained is a “lyrical story” through the eyes of a young girl about the healing process of surviving Holocaust victims. In Time to Say Goodbye, another comedy, set in contemporary Germany, a 12-year-old is humorously torn between the demands of his recently divorced Jewish parents. And in Four Winters, the “myth” of Jewish passivity during WW II is shattered through interviews with former partisan fighters.

 

 

  

The divine Ms H

I regret to this day having not gone to see the great French actress Isabelle Huppert on stage in New York City in 2019 in a production of Bertolt Brecht’s The Mother, when I had the perfect opportunity. It looks like the closest I will now get to her presence is the cinema she owns in Paris, Christine Cinéma Club. I’ve long been a fan of this exceptional actress, whose roles have been highly varied and whose execution in them comes with alarming ease. Acting since 1972 (she’s now 70) she has starred in more than 120 films and worked with France’s greatest post-war and New Wave directors, along with a wide assortment of others including in many American films. I had occasion recently to do a little retrospective of her work on the Criterion Channel. But I was astonished at how much I didn’t know about the personas she adapted and indeed her physical changes as she grew older. While I’ve seen many Huppert films over the years these have mainly been ones from the past two decades when she was fully “matured” as an adult woman, and assumed the personage we now know of her, the high cheek bones and soft sculpted (freckled) face with strawberry blond hair. Her much earlier films showed an image that was entirely different, unrecognizable from today. In Jean-Luc Godard’s Every Man for Himself (1980), she indeed plays a totally unrecognizable schoolgirl, a film I had to turn off because of its pedophile overtones. (Leave it to Godard.) In Joseph Losey’s La Truite (The Trout) from 1982 she still looks childlike, with fleshy face and teenage countenance. Appropriately her character intones, “I never wanted to grow up.” In Bertrand Tavernier’s Coup de Torchon (Clean Slate) (1981), now as an adult she looks entirely different with permed hair, yet playing an irascible character, often a theme in her films. In Diane Kurys's 1983 Entre Nous she is again unrecognizable in look and demeanor as a 1950s conventional housewife in a story about mid-century female friendship.   In films like Hal Hartley’s Amateur (1994) and Claude Chabrol’s La Cérémonie (1995) she again reverts to a younger demeanor as an enfant terrible or even sociopath. In Chabrol’s The Story of Women (1988), the Huppert image we know today starts to emerge, facial chubbiness transformed into slimmed sculpted beauty. In 2009’s The Piano Teacher (Michael Haneke), Huppert plays a transgressive character whose outer shell exudes intellectual coldness. In Claire Denis’s 2009 White Material she’s the fearless matriarch of a coffee plantation caught in the middle of an African civil war. “This is ridiculous!” she yells at her cowed farm hands who abandon the harvest, leaving her almost singlehandedly to bring it in. In Mia Hansen-Løve's 2016 Things to Come, Huppert is in full maturity, now as a grandmother, whose life unspools in several ways yet ultimately finding freedom and serenity. In many of the films I’ve listed Huppert plays assertive outsiders independent of spirit and who can’t be reined in, legally or illegally. But it’s her utter plasticity, the ease by which she transforms from character to character, which makes her an actress a viewer can’t take their eyes off of.      

Not a good night at the movies

Well, that's $5.99 I’ll never get back. Thank god the streaming price was only $5.99. I could have seen this in a theatre and paid well over $10 not to mention gas and mileage. I’m talking about, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the most award-winning movie in history! - Everything Everywhere All at Once (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) - including scooping seven Oscars and Best Picture. This gonzo, unconventional movie is supposed to be about multiple universes where we have separate selves, with various powers and ways to work out similar scenarios, in spectacular – and vengeful (the film has lots of stomach-churning gratuitous violence) - ways. It’s a comedy and has elements of surrealism, magic realism and visually, looks like a video game, with multiple images sometimes flying at you second by second. It’s so fast paced it’s hard to keep up or figure out what’s going on. How the majority of Academy voters did is beyond me. I gave the film my best shot but clocked out at the 42 minute, 40 second mark, ruing the time I lost. For all its hyper intensive moments Everything left me unmoved and utterly bored.

Having just read one of the best novels in ages, a John Williams's 1960 classic, Butcher’s Crossing, I was eager to see if a movie had ever been made of it, since its plot and atmospherics cry out for film treatment. The book is about a buffalo hunting party in 1870s Kansas, who head to Colorado for a major kill. People who don’t like Westerns, like me, shouldn’t be put off. The writing is astounding, the characters deeply imbued, the dialogue and atmospherics so perfect it’s like Williams was there himself. Some of the elements were so realistic, such as the hunting party’s travel though a drought, I found myself gasping for thirst. And during a blinding blizzard scene I looked out the window and there was a snow squall! It’s like the book had magical powers. Sure enough, there is a film (directed by Gabe Polsky). And it premiered just last year at the Toronto International Film Festival. But I couldn’t find it anywhere online to stream nor even a trailer, just a few still shots. Nicholas Cage plays one of the characters. So, perhaps in vain, I will await a release.

While recently in Spain, I went to see the Irish film, The Quiet Girl (Colm Bairéad), nominated for best international picture at the Oscars. I saw several English-language films this winter in Spain, in original dialogue with Spanish subtitles. But this film, ostensibly in English, was anything but. Ninety-five per cent of the picture is in Gaelic! So the joke was on me. Yes, there were Spanish subtitles - and I picked out various words and phrases I understood. But, thankfully, the plot is fairly simple and dialogue limited, so the movie was easy to follow. That’s not to say this is a bad film, quite the contrary.

   

So bad, it's good?

I was expecting Cocaine Bear (Elizabeth Banks) to be bad, real bad, based on a review by a Toronto critic. And we all know how snobby those Toronto critics can be. In fact, the review was so critical it made me want to see it. You know, so bad it’s good! But having seen it I can’t say it’s that bad. It won’t win any Golden Globe awards, that’s for sure, and you won’t see it at your local art house cinema, not even at a midnight So Bad It’s Good screening. The production values are good. The fast-paced soundtrack takes you back to the 1980s beat, when the movie is set. 1985 to be exact. And it’s kind of based on a true story. About cocaine smugglers whose escapade the “Bluegrass Conspiracy” goes bad. Kingpin Anthony Thornton (Matthew Rhys) bumps his head on the aircraft door as he’s about to parachute out with 30 kilos of cocaine falling to his death. But the cocaine falls separately in a remote northern Georgia forest. Where there are bears. Big black ones. One of these discovers the coke and decides to feast on it. Bad things happen. The film stars Keri Russell and the late Ray Liotta, who died after the film was made (it’s dedicated to him). The movie is billed as a horror and comedy, so take your pick - it's really not all that scary and the horror scenes add to the comedy IMO. The special effects bear is done very well. The cast is essentially a bunch of doofuses with the only heroes mom Sari (Russell), daughter Dee Dee (Brooklyn Prince) and her best friend Henry (Christian Convery). The drug smugglers, cops and park rangers are all bumbling idiots but fun bumbling idiots. Ranger Liz (Margo Martindale) squirts on “European” perfume for a big date in the forest. Her date insists on calling animals “biological friends.” One of the bad guys, told what a gazebo is, says indignantly “I know.” His buddy says, “I don’t.” The movie ends with the bear gobbling more cocaine to Depeche Mode's Just Can’t Get Enough. So, the movie is neither really good nor bad but lighthearted Smokey the Bear stuff. It will probably be popular with park rangers everywhere.

Flying through Toronto last week and having more than seven hours to kill between flights – and being close to downtown at Toronto Island airport – I thought I’d go see a movie. The only Oscar-nominated one (it tops nominations with 11 and which could indeed win best pic) that I wanted to see was Everything Everywhere All at Once (Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert). Yet, even in Toronto, Canada’s so-called film capital with several art house cinemas – and only a couple of weeks before the Oscars – it wasn’t showing. Some world class city!

Movie theatres are now doing what the airlines have long done - charging for better seats. AMC is testing “sightline” seats - better seats for increased prices. And yes, cheaper ones too, but for the neck-craning seats in the front row.  Also, it's charging more on opening weekends for blockbusters. That’s in the US. But everything that happens there ends up here.