SYNOPSIS: In “Level,” a new indie sci-fi thriller starring Peter Mooney and Cara Gee, and now playing in theatres, bookseller Joe (Peter Mooney) falls for Ash (Cara Gee), a woman with a mysterious past… and present.
“I need to tell you something,” she says. “I’m not from here.” “I know,” he replies, “you’re from Bridgewater.” “No,” she clarifies, “I’m not from here.” Emphasis on the word here.
Before she can explain, she is killed, leaving Joe shattered, with just one clue, a book she left behind called “On Being Human.” With his life in pieces, he questions what is real and what is not in his pursuit of Ash’s killer. “I don’t know if I’m real,” he says. “Doesn’t seem like it.”
CAST: Cara Gee, Peter Mooney, Aaron Abrams, Jade Ma, Adam Hurtig and David Hewlett. Directed by Adam Stern.
REVIEW: Big ideas abound in “Level.” Writer/director Adam Stern questions the very fabric of reality, asking if answers to the world’s problems can be found in simulations. “The world is shit,” evil genius Anthony Hunter (Aaron Abrams) says, outlining his plan to use simulations to find out what happens before it happens; before climate change happens, before a fascist can get elected, and before millions of people die because of outdated ideologies and misinformation. With his plan, however, comes an even bigger question, Are his dangerous methods worth the results?
Stern’s sci fi movie is of the mind. There are some cool images and special effects—Stern’s resume features 75 visual effects credits—but “Levels” is Christopher Nolan Lite, with big philosophical notions but without the eye-popping images to accompany them.
It wants to engage the brain more than it wants to dazzle the eye, and it may spark up the synapses, but first you’ll have to wade through a lot of exposition. This is a tell-me, don’t-show-movie, and, as such, frequently gets a bit too wordy for its own good.
Debating the very idea of reality should up the stakes, but the volume of exposition slows down the film’s forward momentum. As a result, Stern’s messages of hope for the future of humankind are heartfelt but come packaged in a movie that lacks urgency.
“Bones of Crows,” a new period drama now playing in theatres, covers decades of history, but is tied to recent, horrifying events.
Jumping through time, from the 1800s to the 2020s, the story of the intergenerational trauma caused by the Canadian residential school system, focusses on the family of Aline Spears (Grace Dove). A Cree woman born to a large, happy family in 1930s Manitoba, everything changes when Aline and her siblings are forcibly taken from their parents who are told they will be thrown in prison if they don’t sign over their children to the residential school system.
Abused, physically and emotionally—“I could kill you and bury you out back and nobody would care,” a priest snarls at the headstrong Aline.—the priests and nuns systematically attempt to strip the siblings of their Indigenous heritage, religion and identity, forcing them to assimilate them into the dominant Canadian culture. It is, as one character says, “a lesson in unrelenting cruelty.”
During World War II Aline escapes the horrors of the school by enlisting in the Canadian Army.
“The only way we can make sure they don’t send you back to that school is to send you to war.” During her raining to become part of an elite squad of code talkers who used the Cree language to disguise military intelligence, she meets and marries Adam (Phillip Lewitski).
Returning home from war to raise their family, Adam suffers PTSD, while Aline is haunted by the abuse she suffered at the hands of her sadistic teachers.
As the movie skips through time, we learn more about the residential school, Aline’s life after the war, her sister’s legal woes and the next generation, the children that carry the trauma in their DNA.
The process of healing is ever present, however, as Aline remembers the words her mother said to her as she enlisted in the army. “You be everything you are meant to be. Don’t let the darkness win. Don’t let them win.”
Métis-Dene writer and director Marie Clements covers a great deal of ground, much of it hard going. The cruelty and attempts to dehumanize Indigenous youth are brought to horrific life, and the depictions of residential schools; child abuse, sexual and psychological abuse and racism may be very unsettling for many viewers.
But even though the film chronicles a century of generational trauma, it is also a celebration of Cree resilience and tradition. There are eye-opening depictions of atrocities, necessary to tell the story, but as Aline confronts the past, there is also a sense of justice.
It is a story of hard truths, told with skill—despite its sprawling nature, it doesn’t feel bloated—and emotion that gets to the heart of how generational trauma forever altered the lives of the characters.
“Orphan Black’s” Kristian Bruun is Damon, a man cut adrift from most of the things that kept him grounded. He’s an unemployed geologist whose former business partner always refers to his achievements in the past tense. “Once, you were an asset to the company.” He shares a home with his ex-wife (Meghan Heffern) and her new, obnoxious boyfriend who treats Damon like a lodger, not the actual owner of the house.
The only thing missing are track marks on his back from everyone walking all over him.
His life is stuck in low gear until he meets Phoebe (Cara Gee), an indie musician and recruiter for a new reality show. Called “Red Rover,” it’s part science experiment, part entertainment, backed by a billionaire who wants to send a manned capsule to Mars. For Damon, it seems like the perfect escape, a way to leave his earthbound problems behind.
“Red Rover” is a portrait of a no-hoper with limited prospects, gilded with a shiny rom com veneer. It’s Bruun’s central performance that keeps the story from becoming too maudlin or too farfetched. Even as he dreams of going to Mars, Bruun keeps Damon terrestrial. In his hands Damon’s aspirations don’t feel like a pipe dream but as a map for a way out of a directionless life. As he slowly regains his mojo it becomes clear that whether his endgame is a new home on Mars or a new life in a new town with a new person, it’s all the same. Bruun humanizes and makes you root for a character who could have been easy to dismiss.
“Red Rover” is a quirky story that could have been overcome by its whimsy but is rescued by actors who make their characters more than caricatures of a man in mid-life crisis or the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.
SYNOPSIS: In “Level,” a new indie sci-fi thriller starring Peter Mooney and Cara Gee, and now playing in theatres, bookseller Joe (Peter Mooney) falls for Ash (Cara Gee), a woman with a mysterious past… and present.
