So that's what became of John Harkness

Watching Rio Bravo yesterday on TCM I was reminded of the time that I actually saw director Howard Hawks in person. It had to be 1977, the first year of the Montreal World Film Festival, and only a few months before the famed director’s death. He was walking down the aisle and I was sitting nearby along with someone I knew from college days, John Harkness. Harkness, a large boisterous man with thick beard and wire rimmed glasses, shouted out to the passing director, “Thank you!” to which Hawks turn slightly in acknowledgement. Watching Hawks’s  famed Western Rio Bravo (1959) starring John Wayne, Dean Martin and Angie Dickinson - I must say I was disappointed in the supposedly great movie because of its plodding pace and longevity, and quit halfway through - I couldn't help thinking of Harkness, and whatever became of him. Last time I checked he was staff film critic for Toronto's alternate weekly, Now. So I looked him up and there were a couple of obituaries of him. He died in 2007. We were both born in 1954 and attended Carleton University together. We worked on the same college newspaper, The Charlatan. He of course wrote film reviews. Then I bumped into him a few years later in Montreal. Harkness apparently died of a heart attack. I didn’t know him very well but certainly knew that he was astute, had a scathing wit and had an encyclopedic knowledge of film. After university he attended Columbia University to study expressly under the famed Village Voice film critic, Andrew Sarris, originator of the “auteur” theory of cinema, in which the film is ultimately the sole creation or vision of the director. It must have been Harkness’s dream come true. Returning to Canada he freelanced and then landed the film critic job at the soon to be born Now in 1981, where he worked for 26 years. I’m not sure if he was Canada’s best film critic - I thought the late great Jay Scott at The Globe and Mail working at the same time was probably best  - but Harkness’s deep knowledge of film and fine analytical and critical skills certainly made him top tier. There were a couple of things about him that made him stand out. One would think, given his pedigree, he’d be a sure champion of foreign and independent films. But he wasn't. In fact he championed, much like New Yorker critic Pauline Kael, mainstream Hollywood. As Now co-founder Michael Hollett wrote in tribute, “He could see beauty in a cartoon, a fistfight and a fuck. He knew in his bones why John Ford was certain there was no better image than a man thundering across a screen on a galloping horse, and he could still get goosebumps watching a chopper fly low and fast over a rice paddy, all the while enjoying the classical music exploding on the soundtrack.” And while his sensibilities and bohemian outward appearance might have made him seem open-minded to alternative lifestyles, he was of single mind when it came to film. Asked to contribute to Now’s first gay-themed issue, Harkness, Hollett writes,  “confessed that he just couldn’t watch men kiss on screen sorry, folks, that’s just the way it is.” Would he make such a comment in today’s sharp edged uber politically correct and de-platformed environment? Harkness never compromised in his reviews, regardless of the director, whether old school or independent wunderkind. His refusal to compromise lost Now a huge boatload of advertising from Cineplex, when the company cancelled its ad buy after Harkness criticized in GQ magazine the chain’s inferior programming. I could just picture him, in the face of scathing  backlash, standing there, his huge belly protruding, with a fixed glance on the offended party, thinking the reaction entirely beside the point in wake of an intellectually sound and ethical film review.

Speaking of John Wayne and de-platforming, that was terrible that University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts this month pulled an exhibit dedicated to Duke after caving to student protests over one-time controversial remarks made by Wayne about minorities. If you scratch eight out of 10 people - including the protesters - you would probably find some history of objectionable behavior. Get over it, learn from it, but preserve the legacy.

More violence in the hood, Big Easy style

Okay, I guess this is as good a reason to make a film as any other. Coming up on the 15th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina we have a crime-in-the-hood novella set in the battered and besieged Lower 9^th Ward of New Orleans, during and in the immediate aftermath of the devastating – and highly controversial in terms of emergency response – 2005 tropical storm. Of course, that’s a good hook for the story as well. The film, Cut Throat City by RZA (rapper and producer Robert Fitzgerald Diggs) opens at various (stateside) theatres on Friday. (UPDATE July 23: Now re-scheduled TBA in August.). The set-up is this. An aspiring graphic novelist, Blink (Shameik Moore) has a bright future ahead of him as a legitimate artist. He marries and all appears as if he’ll go on the straight and narrow. However, the fact he and his new wife Demyra (Kat Graham) can’t get FEMA money because their neighborhood wasn’t devastated enough, leads him back to his homies and to a major heist. The story is pretty pro forma, with Blink and his foursome lamenting their lives and how they have been screwed over by the government. “Hurricanes and shit..they’ve been using them for years to kill black people,” the only difference is that hurricanes now are also named after blacks. But Blink’s gang is small fry in the Lower 9th crime hierarchy. Their heist goes sideways and they have to pay, on the run from both the cops and their overlord, a very nasty ‘Cousin’ Bass (Tip ‘Til’ Harris), who sics mean varmints on miscreants’ private parts. Politics aside this is a pretty typical “hood” movie, with script banter of the “N” word de rigueur and all manner of slice ‘em and dice ‘em gang talk. There is redemption, yes, but I’m not sure everyone would want to forage through the tranches of violence to get there. However, the director should be congratulated for a very inventive ending (don’t leave when the credits start!). Ethan Hawke has a small role as ex-police corrupt city councilor Jackson Symms. I think the best performance is by Eiza González as Det. Valencia – no nonsense and unflappable. Given the aftermath of the recent mass protests and holocaust of rioting in the wake of the George Floyd death, I kept looking for film resonances. But, of course, the picture was made before this. Still, the NOPD is portrayed as virtually all white with one racist overture. And, in this Defund the Police moment, one cop informer poignantly tells Valencia, “They let them all go. Day One. Now we’ll get more criminals, more violence, less intelligence, less cops.”

Brando, Taylor electric in Golden Eye

Finally, I got to see, in its entirety, John Huston’s 1967 Reflections in a Golden Eye (TCM). It was by far the best movie I watched over the past week. It stars Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor and Brian Keith. Based on a 1941 novel by Carson McCullers, it’s a film of layers – about masculinity, gender power relations, homosexuality, sexual attraction and voyeurism. Yes - all that. Set on an army base Brando is Maj. Weldon Penderton, a man of exceedingly austere emotions. If you thought Brando did a good Godfather impersonation as Vito Corleone, here he holds in his breath with a diminutive monotone as the uptight Penderton, seemingly on the exterior tough but really a weakling in his personal affairs. Meanwhile, his wife Leonora (Taylor) is a coquettish philandering southern belle, cheating on the straitlaced major and mocking any of his attempts to confront her. Taylor is exquisite in the role, totally lacking self-consciousness with an effervescence, putting one in mind of Vivien Leigh’s Scarlett O’Hara. Meanwhile, lurking below the surface is Pvt. Williams (Robert Forster) who meanders around the Penderton’s house and invades it late at night when all are asleep. On horseback rides the major spots Forster in a field, utterly nude. He becomes obsessed with the private. Meanwhile, Brian Keith as Lt. Col. Langdon carries on an affair with Leonora, essentially in the emotionally (and sexually?) impotent Maj. Penderton’s face. Julie Harris plays Landon’s wife Alison, bedridden and mentally distressed, entranced by the houseboy, Anacleto (Zorro David). Psychologists – maybe Freudians? – would have a field day with this story. I’m no psychologist but the storylines, with their outward shows of hypocrisy and subliminal seething, are enough to keep a viewer transfixed. The film is shot through a gold filter, giving the entire production the resulting “golden” hue, as befits the title. 

Other recent films of note:

François Ozon’s 5 x 2 (Criterion Channel) explores the marriage of Marion (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) and Gilles (Stéphane Freiss) in receding flashbacks from divorce to their first meeting. Every chapter features a transgression by one or the other spouse. The film features an inventive plot technique and good acting by the principles in what, some would say, is an oh-so-French story.

Joan Micklin Silver’s Between the Lines (1977) (Criterion Channel) is an ensemble production that in my opinion presages Lawrence Kasdan’s The Big Chill (1983) six years later. The settings are different but there are a lot of similarities. Enough to make you wonder if this movie sparked Kasdan to take the idea a step further. Set in an alternative newspaper of the era it stars John Heard, Lindsay Crouse and Jeff Goldblum - even the then cult hero Michael J. Pollard - as a kind of communal family with its countercultural highs and lows. The perky soundtrack alone makes you think this could have been turned into a light TV drama. Crouse as Abbie in particular stands out as a very cute yet exceedingly assertive staff photographer.

Michael Caine the droll wit in new family beach movie

Andy De Emmony’s Four Kids and It (available June 30 on digital, Blu-ray, DVD, and on demand, including major digital platforms including iTunes, Amazon Prime and Vudu) is the perfect start-of-summer film for the whole family, even if the kids - ahem - have been on unofficial holiday with schools closed since March because of the pandemic. The whimsical story is a twist on a more than 100-year-old novel by E. Nesbit and based on the more modern children’s writer Jaqueline Wilson’s ‘Four Children and It.”   It stars a few somewhat known entities like Paula Patton (Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol) as mom Alice, Matthew Goode (Downton Abbey, The Crown) as dad David and the venerable for all time Michael Caine as the voice of the beach creature Psammead. And there’s a collection of child actors starring as a soon to be blended family, the one with the highest profile – the movie is a vehicle for her possible stardom - Ashley Aufderheide as Smash. The story begins as two families meet up at a vacation rental on the Cornish coast, just to get acquainted and have a little fun. Of course, the kids immediately hate one another and are sullen and suyly to their parents. Smash personifies her name and is the most precocious. “You ruined my life – again!” she shrieks at her hapless mom. But the kids start to get along and go on hikes together. They land at a beach and see some weird movement in the sand. It turns out to be a beyond-prehistoric creature called a Psammead. Whoever designed this grotesque figure did a more than excellent job. It’s a combination of elf, bunny, shriveled human and planetary alien – both horrific and cute as a button. And with the voice of the inimitable Michael Caine it’s all the more charming. The Psammead has magical powers and can grant wishes. There’s a stipulation. The wish runs out at sunset. “Come back tomorrow, if you survive this one,” Psammead guffaws. Meanwhile a dastardly neighbor (Russell Brand) seeks to capture the elusive creature, adding a secondary plot. The most spectacular of the kids’ wishes is the one, of course, involving Smash. And it indeed shows off the child actor’s voluminous talent. Will your family enjoy the film? Probably.  Parents may be a little bored unless they recognize some of their own, ah, poor parenting skills. But for the kids it's a lock with all the essential elements - fantasy, derring-do, a lovable monster and heroic juvenile personalities they can more than relate to.  

Was I surprised the 16th edition of the Windsor International Film Festival (WIFF) has been cancelled? Not particularly. Though I thought the call might come later than it did last week. After all, WIFF doesn’t run until early November. But it takes a lot of work to plan a festival and I would imagine scheduling films far in advance is part of that. But let’s face it, the organizers were just being prudent. Even though the festival was four months away who can predict the future with this pandemic? As executive director Vincent Georgie told The Windsor Star, what happens if there’s second wave of Covid-19, hitting right around the time of late fall? Last year, the one-time little festival that has grown into an amazing 10 day offering – huge for a midsize Canadian city and IMO the best film festival in either Windsor or Detroit - sold 42,000 tickets. It has the moniker of the #1 Volunteer-run Film Festival by the Toronto International Film Festival Film Circuit.

Revisiting Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto

For a movie featuring the proverbial cast of thousands, with spectacular backdrops, and telling a tumultuous story, check out the Mel Gibson (yes, the actor) film Apocalypto, which Gibson directed in 2006 (on video on demand). The setting is Yucatan Mexico and the subject the Mayan civilization in its literally final days before the Spanish Conquest. This is a harrowing story. A peaceful hunting and gathering tribe are captured by its aggressive neighbors, their village destroyed, and the adults taken prisoners. It’s what happens to the prisoners that is so diabolical. We’ve all seen the Maya pyramids and heard of human sacrifices. Apocalypto immerses into the subject spectacularly, showing this otherworld’s harrowing landscape, figuratively and literally. A surreal feast for the eyes with painstaking sets, costumes, make-up and an astonishing cast of literally thousands. 

Take Me (on Netflix) is a 2017 film directed by Pat Healy in which he also stars as Ray Moody, a wacko businessman who runs a real-life kidnapping service, for clients who, you know, just like to get their kicks that way. These “authentic simulated” experiences are staged and Ray charges a sizable fee for the thrill. One day he gets a call from a woman, Anna St. Clair (Taylor Schilling), who is asking for more than he offers. She’s willing to pay big bucks but he turns her down because it’s against his ethics. She’s persuasive and in the end he can’t resist. All goes as planned. The kidnapping happens but then something takes place – evolve may be the right word - which blurs the line between the fake and the real, or is what’s going on ultimately still fake? The fact the viewer doesn’t know until the very end is the genius of this screwball whodunit with good acting by both Healy and Schilling. There’s a great original score by Heather McIntosh. Only problem? While the storyline keeps you guessing it stretches too long. Chop off 20 minutes and it would be perfect.

Le Beau Serge (Criterion Channel) is the very first film of acclaimed French New Wave director Claude Chabrol. Released in 1958 it’s a very human story about two friends: Serge (Gérard Blain) and François (Jean-Claude Brialy). One day François arrives in his childhood village to spend the winter after recovering from a mild case of TB. He immediately seeks out his old friend Serge, only to find him to be an utterly depraved alcoholic, literally the town drunk. He sets his mind to rehabilitate him despite the scowls of Serge’s abused wife Yvonne (Michèle Méritz). Meanwhile, the town flirt Marie (Bernadette Lafont) provides temporary distraction to the fiercely handsome François. And guess what? She’s also having an affair with Serge. What’s best about the film is the incredibly naturalistic acting, especially by Brialy as François…..After the film you can watch a short documentary, featuring Chabrol, about the film’s making and Chabrol’s early life as critic and then filmmaker.

The Windsor International Film Festival usually screens it’s popular Mark Boscariol 48-Hour FlickFest during the festival’s regular run in the fall. But with Covid-19 who knows what’s in store for the festival this October. Meanwhile the festival has released the FlickFest - the short film efforts of 32 teams of filmmakers - on its YouTube channel. An awards ceremony on WIFF’s Facebook page takes place at 8 pm tonight.

My movie week

The Trip to Greece by Michael Winterbottom, on pay-per-view, (photo left) is the fourth and likely last of Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan’s road movies, in which the two well-known British actors hire a car (usually a Land Rover) and hit an exotic European destination. Over several days they stop at bucolic locations and dine at five-star restaurants, all on a British newspaper’s expense account. Meanwhile we’re treated to breathtaking scenery and the usually great wit and story-telling of the two thespians, who joke, mock one another, and try to outdo each other’s impersonations of people like Brando and Hopkins while philosophizing about anything and everything. The shtick has worked up to now but somehow doesn’t catch hold with this flic. Maybe it’s because the boys are just too familiar with the Greek Myths – and the rest of us aren’t – and that a lot of the joking and chatter is too inside the actor’s studio, if you know what I mean. 

The Painter and The Thief (Toronto Hot Docs festival pay-per-view online) by Norwegian director Benjamin Ree certainly tells an interesting and counterintuitive story, and hence a great topic for a documentary. Barbora Kysilkova, a painter of extraordinary naturalistic images, finds two of her paintings stolen. Eventually the thief is found in the person of Karl-Bertil Nordland, an ex con and drug addict. They meet. And instead of fireworks they develop a warm relationship. It may seem antithetical, but it works though Kysilkova is still puzzled by why Nordland stole, something he has no recollection of. “I was wasted and that’s the truth.” The story may be startling but the filming plods along and doesn’t gel until perhaps the second half, about the time Kysilkova’s boyfriend confronts her about having a relationship with such a potentially dangerous figure.

The Booksellers by D. W. Young (Hot Docs festival online pay-per-view) (photo left) is a film for anyone who loves books. The documentary portrays the world of antiquarian booksellers, a rare and, yes, very eccentric, breed, who will go literally to the ends of the Earth to buy – sometimes mortgaging the house – an exceptionally rare volume. We’re treated to interviews with some of the great if unknown (to the public) ones, whose bookstores vary from their own apartments to exquisite libraries or multi-floor old world Manhattan stores. There are also cultural glitterati like wit Fran Lebowitz, long form journalist and author Susan Orlean and one of the original New Journalists Gay Talese. There are stories of Da Vinci’s The Codex Leicester, the most expensive book ever sold, handwritten Jorge Luis Borges’s manuscripts, of jeweled and polished books, even ones made of human skin. If it all seems too fussy and musty – it’s really not – the film explores the up and coming generational world of early hip hop zines and the increasing voices of women making inroads into the heavily male dominated profession. The flic also surveys the overall book industry, lamenting its diminishing role (New York had almost 500 bookstores in the 1950s and has 80 now) in a digital world. But not to despair. Lebowitz says she sees lots of millennials on the subway reading – hold on – paper books.

Life Itself (Netflix) is a 2018 film directed by Dan Fogelman, which I took a chance on and which proved surprisingly engrossing. The subject is small – a multigenerational family – but the story is sprawling, with certain repeated chronological incidents connecting various players over time in ways you don’t expect, a sure sign of first class directing. The central characters are the couple Will (Oscar Isaac) and Abby (Olivia Wilde), their daughter Dylan (Olivia Cooke) and the Gonzalez family. The movie focuses closely on character, intersecting relationships and, yes, the element of chance. It’s like a detective story, keeping you wondering what’s coming around the next corner in these people’s lives. The cast includes Antonio Banderas, Mandy Patinkin and Annette Bening.

A little of that Northern Michigan horror

Just in time for summer – and in time for the re-emergence of the local drive-in during the Covid crisis – comes The Wretched, a horror flick with a decidedly Michigan feel. (Sorry, Windsorites, the film is only screening at two drive-ins in the Detroit area, the Capri and Ford. However the film is also available on cable and various digital on demand platforms incl iTunes and YouTube. UPDATE: The Ford Drive In was served a cease-and-desist order and expects to reopen June 12 with social distancing guidelines so long as the governor's stay-home order is not extended.) The film is made by Detroit natives Brett and Drew Pierce and set in the northern Michigan town of Northport on Grand Traverse Bay. For every Michigander who loves the summertime feel of Up North this picture will certainly rekindle longing, especially given the slow reopening of the state during the Covid-19 crisis. In the film, our hero is Ben (John-Paul Howard), a 17-year-old who has come to spend the summer with his estranged dad Liam (Jamison Jones) who manages the local marina. Almost from the start Ben notices things are a little strange. The next-door neighbor Abbie (Zarah Mahler) - wearing a tank top with ‘Detroit’ and skull on it - wants to carve up a dead buck (soooo northern Michigan) but is having trouble. That night Ben is disturbed by a figure on the front porch and then is blinded by a light. Later, Abbie checks on her infant only to find a pile of branches. Hands then reach out and yank her under the crib and, well, she’s never the same again. The story’s a spin on the old zombie genre, and another iconic film which will be obvious, but with a woodsy outdoor theme (I can imagine the filmmakers having fun with this). Ben discovers a symbol – a V with a line through it looking like tree branches. On Witchipedia (yes, the site exists) the symbol refers to “mother born from rock, root and tree.” That would explain how, once a person gets infected, they move with crackly sounds like a gnarled tree trunk. I find it hard to get scared from the best of horror films and the same here though some scenes did make me sit up. Otherwise, the ironically  dramatic music is well timed. The photography is good, especially with some oblique shots through open windows late at night. And the creatures have been well designed with a very horrifying look. (As an aside, the “mother” creature at times – also distinctly Michigan – looks like Alice Cooper.) So, sit back and enjoy a teenage Northern Michigan flick with cool rock soundtrack and downhome characters (Ben has the hots for fellow marina worker smart-alecky Mallory (Piper Curda)). For those missing Up North during “The Rona” this might be an early summer stand in, especially at midnight at the good old drive-in.