Based on a Spanish-language film from Mexico of the same-name “Miss Bala” is an updated, feminist take on the original movie. “In the end,” says Gloria (“Jane the Virgin’s” Gina Rodriguez), “the bullet settles everything.”
Rodriguez plays a young American woman who goes to Tijuana to help her best friend Suzu (Cristina Rodlo) prepare to enter the Miss Baja California beauty pageant. After witnessing a brutal gangland nightclub slaying Suzu disappears and Gloria kidnapped by a drug cartel. In exchange for her safety and help in finding Suzu, Gloria reluctantly agrees to smuggle cartel drug money through the Mexico-USA border. “I can help you find your friend,” says charismatic drug boss Lino (Ismael Cruz Cordova), but first you have to do something for me. Mess around and I will kill you.”
As she’s learning the ropes—which includes blowing up a DEA safe house—she is intercepted by the DEA. “You have to believe me,” she says. “They made me do it.” Trapped between two fierce opponents she finds herself acting as a double agent, utilizing the skills she learned from the cartel to earn her freedom from both the drug lords and the DEA. “Sometimes you have to do terrible things to survive.”
“Miss Bala” features frequent action sequences and mucho gunplay but is, at best, a by-the-book potboiler that rarely gets above a simmer. There is the tease of real danger in the interactions between Gloria and Lino but nothing that feels authentic. He’s a sensitive psycho who falls for Gloria because she reminds him of an ex-girlfriend and she’s a mild mannered make-up artist whose blood suddenly runs cold. He’s like the Dale Carnegie of drug lords doling out advice—“You need to believe in yourself.” “You need to feel confident.” “Play your part.”—that wouldn’t be out of place in any self help book. She’s a quick learner with a gun and, all of a sudden, an ace shot. In short, the characters are what they need to be in the moment not what they need to be to be well rounded or interesting.
Coming hot on the heels of female led revenge films like Coralie Fargeat’s “Revenge” or Park Chan-wook’s “Lady Vengeance,“ “Miss Bala” feels tame. Worse, its sequel-friendly ending promises more of the same.
At the beginning of the “Wonders of the Sea 3D,” a new documentary featuring underwater adventurers Jean Michel Cousteau and his children Celine and Fabien, narrator Arnold Schwarzenegger says the reason he signed on was because this “is an important film with an important message.” The message is actually twofold. First he cites the aesthetic, calling the doc a “declaration of love for the beauty of the ocean.” Later the movie’s secondary, but more serious message of how the future of humanity is inextricably connected to the health of the ocean.
From Fiji to the Bahamas, with a pit stop in California “Wonders of the Sea 3D” takes us to the final frontier. More people have walked on the moon than on the bottom of the deep ocean, and indeed many of the creatures we are introduced to look ripped from the pages of a sci fi comic book. From the familiar—like the octopus; “We may never get closer to alien intelligence than this,” says Jean Michel.—to more exotic undersea life like the bizarre Christmas Tree Worm and a flatworm that looks like it could be a multi-coloured scarf in a Fashion Week runway show, the images are striking and surreal. There’s even a fish who looks like Steve Buscemi.
The photography is beautiful, the 3D effective but as eye-catching as these images are they rarely provide a sense of scale. Life on the documented reefs reveals “nature’s masterful design” but it’s hard to tell if these creatures are ten feet tall or microscopic.
“Wonders of the Sea 3D” is aimed at kids whose imaginations may be sparked by the unusual watery beasts on display. The narration, courtesy of the Cousteau family and Schwarzenegger, is simple and direct, often with the feel of an educational classroom film. The narration may not be nearly as compelling as the images but the messages are memorable. “The ocean survives without us. We don’t survive without the ocean.”
Self help author John Tarnoff says, “In order to create your future, you have to reconcile your past.” It’s good advice for his boomer audience, the over 50s who may be looking to reconnect and restart their lives. It’s also a theme that runs through “Into Invisible Light,” a new film starring Jenifer Dale.
Dale, who co-wrote the script with director Shelagh Carter, plays Helena Grayson a recently widowed woman who can only claim the inheritance if she heads a foundation for young artists. Sitting in the big chair, she has to figure out who gets support and who doesn’t. She’s thrust into the world of artists despite having given up her artistic objectives years ago. This leads to her to explore her own ambition, to write again. Writing allows her to find her voice again, to examine a life that felt inconsequential and repressed without an artistic outlet. Helping her spark joy is Michael (Peter Keleghan), a Samuel-Beckett-quoting former flame, now a writing professor. Examining her past, just as Tarnoff suggests, leads the way to her future.
“Into Invisible Light” is a movie for adults; a film for people who have lived a life and are in process, looking to start over again. It’s a finely tuned story of second chances that eloquently essays a reawakening.
Densely written, this thoughtful examination of Helena’s new phase of life is supported by elegant cinematography courtesy of Ousama Rawi and a moody, stark score by Shawn Pierce. It occasionally takes itself a bit too seriously, leaning on minor chord drama for effect, but the lingering effect is one of hopeful rebirth.
Grabbing Audience Favourite at the Sundance Film Festival, Smoke Signals was written, directed and acted by Indigenous creators. Director Chris Eyre captures the experience of living in the late 90s, through Thomas’ (Evan Adams) love of storytelling.
Adam Beach stars as Victor Joseph, a young man who has been estranged from his father for more than a decade. He lives on the Coeur d’Alene Indian Reservation in Idaho – ostensibly the middle of nowhere.
But life for Victor Joseph is anything but empty. A handsome, strapping guy, he is sullen, silent and angry over his dad’s desertion of the family. The father, Arnold (Gary Farmer, Dead Man), was a good-hearted but moody drunk. When his wife, Arlene (Tantoo Cardinal), couldn’t take the booze and the beatings anymore, Arnold climbed into his pickup truck and drove away forever.
Years before Arnold’s departure, a fire swept through the house of Victor’s friend Thomas when an all-night party left most of the reservation – including Arnold – falling-down drunk. Arnold saved young Thomas, but the boy’s parents died, and since then Thomas has become the reservation outcast of sorts, grinning, bespectacled, socially inept, but with a mystical gift for telling wildly improbable stories, some of them true, to anyone who will listen.
A delightfully lighthearted look at the Indigenous psyche with expected moments of tugging sadness. Unpretentious, funny and soulful, Eyre created a standout first feature.
Smoke Signals was a seminal film for the Victoria Film Festival. It opened our mind to the community need and gave us a direction in which to strive. It is fitting that we now celebrate in our 25th year this wonderful film. Join us as we bring you another opportunity to see this mind-opening tale on the big screen. The film screens at 6:30 PM followed by a conversation with some of Smoke Signals’ principals. Richard Crouse of CTV’s Pop Life hosts.
Guests expected:
CHRIS EYRE, the nation’s most celebrated Native American film director, was born in Oregon. A member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, he gained national attention in 1998 with the movie Smoke Signals, winning the Sundance Film Festival Filmmakers Trophy and the Audience Award. The Film also took Best Film honours at the American Indian Film Festival. He is a director and producer, also known for Edge of America (2003) and Skins (2002), and was honoured with the HatcH Native Spirit Award for his achievements in filmmaking. Chris Eyre was appointed as chairman of the film department at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design as of January 2012.
EVAN ADAMS is from Tla’amin Nation, near the town of Powell River, B.C. He has starred in the Emmy-winning TV-movie Lost in the Barrens and its nominated sequel Curse of the Viking Grave, and numerous episodics like The Beachcombers and Black Stallion. Evan stars as Thomas Builds-The-Fire in Smoke Signals, written by Sherman Alexie. He won Best Actor awards from the American Indian Film Festival, and from First Americans in the Arts, and a 1999 Independent Spirit Award for Best Debut Performance. He continues to work on intermittent, high-profile projects, and is also a medical doctor in Vancouver, Canada.
TANTOO CARDINAL is arguably the most widely recognized Indigenous actress of her generation. Tantoo has appeared in numerous plays, television programs, and films, including Legends of the Fall, Dances With Wolves, Black Robe, Loyalties, Luna, Spirit of the Whale, Unnatural & Accidental, Marie-Anne, Sioux City, Silent Tongue, Mothers and Daughters and Smoke Signals. Recent work includes the films Eden, Maina, Angelique’s Isle and Falls Around Her (the latter two both playing at VFF 2019).
For her filmmaking contributions to the First Nations artistic community, Cardinal won the Eagle Spirit Award. She has also been honoured with the Macleans’ magazine Honour Roll as Actress of the Year; the Outstanding Achievement Award from Toronto Women in Film and Television; an International Women in Film Award for her lasting contribution to the arts, and induction to the CBC/Playback Hall of Fame. Cardinal is a Member of the Order of Canada, recognizing her contributions to the growth and development of Indigenous performing arts in Canada.
RICHARD CROUSE is the host of the CTV talk show Pop Life, and the regular lm critic for the 24 hour news source CTV’s News Channel and CP24. He is also the author of nine books on pop culture history including Who Wrote the Book of Love, the best-selling The 100 Best Movies You’ve Never Seen, and its sequel. Crouse was the host of Reel to Real, Canada’s longest running television show about movies, from 1998 to 2008 and is a frequent guest on many national Canadian radio and television shows.
“The Kid Who Would Be King” looks to two stories for inspiration. The fantasy film from director Joe Cornish finds its framework in the legend of King Arthur and the goofy camaraderie of “The Goonies.”
The story begins in the fifth century with Arthur proving his status as “the true king” of Britain by pulling the sword Excalibur from a stone. A warrior and creator of the Knights of the Round Table he is brave and popular with everyone except his sister Morgana. The powerful enchantress wanted power for herself and was summarily banished to the underworld where she could do no harm. Vowing to return, “when hearts are empty and the world is lost” and take back control of Excalibur, she languishes for hundreds of years, ineffective and lost. “Soon darkness will dawn and my time will come,” she says, optimistically.
Cut to today’s London. The world is a mess, “as unstable as it has ever been.” Things are so bad the headline of the Daily Star simply reads, ”GLOOMY.” In this world Alex (Louis Ashbourne Serkis), a young lad just “twelve winters old,” and his best friend Bedders (Dean Chaumoo) try and do the right thing at school, mainly stand up to bullies like the mean spirited Lance (Tom Taylor) and Kaye (Rhianna Doris). Alex is a sweet and sensitive kid. So much so that even his teacher pushes him to get a little more cynical. “It’s a tough world out there and it is getting tougher all the time. It’s not the world that has to change, it’s you.”
Chased to a construction site by some bullies a terrified Alex finds Excalibur embedded in an old chunk of concrete. Pulling the sword from the stone he defends himself from Lance and Kaye and awakens Morgana from her slumber. “Find the new King,” she commands. “The sword must be mine. The new king must die.”
A fight is a foot but Alex will not enter the battle with Morgana and her army of undead soldiers alone. At his side are Bedders, some school friends and Merlin the Magician, an ancient entity who appears in the form of a classmate. “I am a perfectly normal, contemporary British schoolboy,” he announces before morphing into an owl and flying away. Together they have just four days until a solar eclipse plunges the world into darkness and welcomes the return of Morgana. “This is the best and worst, the most excellent and frightening thing that has ever happened to me,” squeals Bedders.
Just as Lord Tennyson modified the Arthurian legends to comment on the issues of his day “The Kid Who Would Be King” places the story in a topsy-turvy world where the spectre of Brexit and Trump dominate the news. Like the old school retellings of the tale it values good over evil. It brims with important messages for kids—the most worthwhile path is rarely the easiest, embrace the things that are important to you—and offers an optimistic view of the future. “A land is only as good as its leaders,” says Merlin (played as an older magician by Patrick Stewart), and you’ll make excellent leaders.”
“The Kid Who Would Be King” is a good-natured, if puffed-up adventure for kids but at two hours and ten minutes it feels long and occasionally repetitive. Kids may enjoy the imaginative battle scenes—trees come to life as sparring partners for the wannabe warriors, etc—and the charming “Goonies” chemistry between the heroes but Rebecca Ferguson is wasted as the underwritten villainess Morgana and the CGI looks like a relic from another time.
People who complain trailers give away too much or that movies have become predictable may find something to keep them guessing in “Serenity,” the strange new Matthew McConaughey thriller. Or is it a metaphysical drama? Or should I call it a new age noir? I honestly don’t know what to file this under. However you classify it, this weird film will keep you guessing for better and for worse. Strange days indeed.
McConaughey is Baker Dill, the broke, headstrong owner of a boat for hire in the crystal clear waters surrounding the remote Plymouth Island. “In Plymouth everyone knows everything,” says Reid Miller (Jeremy Strong). “Except what’s going on,” drawls Dill.
He’s a Captain Ahab type, minus the prosthetic leg made out of whalebone, and obsessed with hooking and reeling in a giant tuna he calls Justice. Everyone on the tiny island knows of his obsession. Even the local radio announcer broadcasts, “It’s a perfect day to go out and catch that damn fish,“ during his weather update.
He’s a haunted man, troubled by the carnage he witnessed in Iraq and the family, wife Karen (Anne Hathaway) and son Patrick (Rafael Sayegh), he lost to divorce. When Karen reappears with a job offer it sends him into a tailspin. “I’m here to tell you that you were right and I was wrong about Frank,” she says about her new husband, a wealthy but abusive man played by Jason Clarke. Her deal is simple. “Take him out on your boat, let him get drunk and dump him in the ocean. Do it and I’ll give you $10 million.” Divorce is not an option she adds. “He’ll find a hole for me in one of his construction sites.“ Dill is conflicted until he hears that Frank has been violent with Patrick. Now all bets are off.
There’s more but you won’t read it here because this is about the time in “Serenity” where the story takes a left turn that would make M. Night” Shyamalan green with envy. Does it work? Not really but you have to give credit to writer-director Steven Knight for swinging for the fences. That it’s a foul ball is unfortunate because the gears shift from neo-noir to existential treatise on the fundamentals of life is the kind of risky move that we don’t see much of these days.
You don’t just see a movie like “Serenity,” you witness it.
It is one of the most baffling movies to come along in years. McConaughey is in full-blown “are-we-all-just-pawns-in-a-great-big-game?” mode while Hathaway convincing channels femme-fatale Veronica Lake. Both give heightened performances but the tone of the piece is so off kilter I can’t decide whether they are sleepwalking through this toward a paycheque or doing some edgy work.
If nothing else “Serenity” takes chances, not the kind of chances that are likely to please an audience but at least you can’t guess how it will end. Intrigued?
“Cold War,” the Polish entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at this year’s Academy Awards, is loosely based on the relationship of the director Pawel Pawlikowski’s parents. Shot in crisp, beautiful black and white, it feels like watching old family snapshots come to vivid life.
Set in 1950’s Poland, we first meet Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) as he toils to document traditional songs and dances. At an audition he meets Zula (Joanna Kulig), a charismatic singer with a dark past. She murdered her father after he sexually assaulted her and is on parole. “He mistook me for my mother, “ she says, “so I showed him the difference with a knife.” The two are irresistibly attracted to one another and become involved on and off stage.
When Wiktor makes a run to Paris to make it as a jazz musician and escape the Soviet government he begs her to accompany him. She stays behind, singing with her old troupe despite their new, ideological Stalinist slant.
The star-crossed lovers aren’t separated forever, however. Over the next fifteen years they meet sporadically in various locations in Europe, discovering that while they can’t be together they also can’t stay apart.
At a quick 88 minutes “Cold War” is a treat for the eyes and the ears. Łukasz Żal’s photography, presented in boxy 4:3 aspect ratio, focuses the eye, revelling in the emotional performances of Kot and Kulig. Stark, yet sizzling, these two embody a love that was meant to be but perhaps can never be. Add to that a carefully chosen soundtrack of jazz and folk songs and you get a movie that hits all available senses.
Fragmented though the story may be it is also a deeply romantic story of love in a dangerous time.
“I’m like a player in this film about my strange son who figured out his life so early.” So says Meg McGarry, mother of Flynn McGarry, a.k.a. the Teen Chef. A new film, “Chef Flynn,” details his rise from home-style supper club chef who plates his food with tweezers at age twelve to media sensation by the time he was fifteen. He’s the kind of youngster a word like ‘wunderkind’ was coined to describe.
Flynn’s well-documented life in and out of the kitchen comes courtesy of Meg, a filmmaker and artist who supplied hours of cinéma vérité footage taken at home. “Hi,” says a twelve year old Flynn., “Welcome to my kitchen slash bedroom slash workspace.” She describes how he began cooking for her after a divorce that left her depressed and uninterested in food. To help out he tooled around the kitchen and found his passion. “I have an incredible obsession with beets ,” he says. At an age when most kids are ordering chicken fingers off the happy menu he has a “signature dish” of sous vide short ribs with a shitake mushroom polenta with a blackberry reduction.
A shift or two at a tony restaurant reinforces his love of food and natural talent but it is a piece in the New Yorker when he was thirteen that changed things. The home supper club started charging—up to $160 a head—and strangers requested photos of the wunderkind (there’s that word again) in his bedroom kitchen.
With sudden success come the sharp knives, people who suggest he’s missed out on his childhood—“I had ten years of childhood,” he says. “I think that’s enough.”—while social media wonders whether or not he bought his kitchen career. Does he really deserve to be called ‘chef’? One writer details the “Controversy of Chef Flynn,” another nicknames him Chef Doogie Howser and a reporter asks if this is all just a gimmick. “Everyone else is calling me chef,” he says. “I cook food. I don’t know why it’s such a big deal. It’s just a single word.”
It’s hard not to see privilege at work—the bedroom kitchen and elaborate dinners must have cost some bank—but there is no denying his talent. “None of the press I’ve asked for. The press kind of happened and from there opportunities arise.”
Ultimately “Chef Flynn” is like a Food Network version of “Boyhood.” We see Flynn grow up on camera, from reluctant subject—“Turn the camera off. I can’t find my chef coat.”—to a NYC pop up chef obsessed with perfection. His mother Meg features heavily, perhaps too much so. The helicopter mom comments throughout, often putting words into the prodigy’s mouth.
We’re told having an alcoholic father led Flynn to find some control in his life. The kitchen offered that. However, we find that through Meg, not Flynn, who says relatively little about his rise to fame. Because of that “Chef Flynn” often feels like a meal where the waiter forgot to bring the main course.
I’ll start this review with a spoiler to a movie that came out almost three years ago. This will be the last spoiler you’ll see here. Here we go, the twist at the end of M. Night “Let’s Twist Again” Shyamalan’s “Split” revealed that his story of serial killer with twenty-three established personalities also had a twenty-fourth, a superhuman character known as The Beast. What’s more—because why settle for one twist when you can have two?—The Beast lives in the same universe as the 2000 film “Unbreakable.”
Shyamalan’s new film “Glass” acts as a sequel for both films, bringing together James McAvoy as “Split’s” Kevin Wendell Crumb and “Unbreakable” stars Bruce Willis as the heroic David Dunn and Samuel L. Jackson’s mass murderer Elijah Price, a.k.a. Mr. Glass.
Here’s the spoiler free synopsis: Dunn, the invulnerable security guard with the extrasensory ability to sense the crimes people have done by touching them, is hot on the heels of Crumb’s collection known as The Horde, looking to end his killing spree. “When I find the Horde,” Dunn says, “I’ll take a mental health day.”
Following a confrontation Crumb and Dunn psychiatrist Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson) captures them, placing them in Ravenhill Memorial Pyschiatric Research Hospital, the same institution as Price. “It’s a place for people who think they are comic book characters,” says Hedwig, one of Crumb’s personalities. Convinced they all suffer from delusions of grandeur, her treatment involves convincing them that they are human, not superanything.
That’s all you get from me. Cue the plot twists.
I like a twist as much as the next person. I still remember having my head knocked back by movies like “The Crying Game” and Shyamalan’s “The Sixth Sense” but can we now call a moratorium on multiple twists? Shyamalan has made a career out of subverting people’s expectations but there are more twists in the last twenty minutes of “Glass” than you can shake a Syd Field book at. In this case more is not more.
Leading up to the twist-o-rama is an examination of what would happen if we learned that superheroes are real. To accomplish this Shyamalan has Paulson’s good doctor spend a good portion of the running time trying to convince the superhero that there is nothing special about them. It’s less than dramatic. Worse, the film’s ideas on the existence of extraordinary beings (AGAIN, NO SPOILERS HERE) have been beaten to death in everything from the “X-Men” films to “Watchmen” and “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.”
Despite a bit of fun from McAvoy’s ever shifting characters and Willis’s Gandalf / action hero robe “Glass” is a slog. Talky and meta, it’s being billed as a “film that took 19 years to make,” but doesn’t feel worth the wait.
