I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk about the new movies coming to theatres including the animated “Zootopia 2,” the existential romance of “Eternity,” the detective story “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” and the touching story of “Meadowlarks.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to make the bed! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the animated “Zootopia 2,” the historical drama “Hamnet” and the touching story of “Meadowlarks.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “Meadowlarks,” a new family drama now playing in theatres, four Cree siblings are reunited in a week-long retreat in Banff fifty years after having been forcibly separated during Canada’s Sixties Scoop. “We were five little birds in one nest,” says Anthony (Michael Greyeyes), “and they scattered us like the wind scatters meadowlarks.”
CAST: Michael Greyeyes, Carmen Moore, Alex Rice, Michelle Thrush, Lorne Duquette. Directed by Tasha Hubbard.
REVIEW: Based on Tasha Hubbard’s 2017 doc “Birth of a Family,” “Meadowlarks” is an intimate, emotional look at the devastating personal effects and loss of cultural identity that came as a result of the Sixties Scoop.
The film reunites siblings Anthony (Michael Greyeyes), Connie (Carmen Moore), Marianne (Alex Rice), and Gwen (Michelle Thrush), a Cree family separated as babies by the Sixties Scoop, placed in the child welfare system and raised by non-Indigenous families.
Apart for fifty years, they are strangers who share DNA and fragmented memories, but little else. Over the course of a week in Banff they share stories of their lives, past and present. Emotions ebb and flow as they get to know one another after a lifetime of estrangement.
Director Tasha Hubbard, herself a Sixties Scoop survivor, keeps the story simple to highlight the complexity of the situation. Although siblings, these four are very different people, and once the initial “get-to-know-ya” small talk fades away, raw memories surface.
As they ride a rollercoaster of emotions they become closer, closing the gap that has separated them for decades. When camaraderie develops so do vulnerabilities as they talk about their lost childhoods in a way that would be impossible with anyone else. Their trauma isn’t erased, but reconnecting and sharing their experiences leads to a certain kind of comfort.
Fueled by terrific performances, “Meadowlarks” is a hopeful, heartfelt movie, one that suggests that the fabric of family can be mended no matter how frayed.
“Rustic Oracle,” a hard-hitting new drama written and directed by Sonia Bonspille Boileau and now on VOD, begins with a trigger warning. “This film contains scenes and themes that may be traumatic or cause anxiety to some individuals.” It is a sobering start to a movie that explores a story experienced by countless Indigenous families who have faced trauma caused by the disappearance of a loved one.
Set in the mid-1990s, the story involves single mother Susan (Carmen Moore) living in a Mohawk community with her two daughters, 8-year-old Ivy (Lake Delisle) and teenager Heather (McKenzie Deer Robinson). The sisters are very close but Heather and her mom regularly bash heads. After one big blow out Heather disappears. She doesn’t pick Ivy up from school and is nowhere to be found. Fearing the worst Susan contacts the police. When they are no help Susan and Ivy begin their own investigation, beginning with an older boy, a suspected drug dealer, Heather was last seen talking to on the schoolground. As they hit the road, following clues throughout Ontario and Quebec, Ivy is plagued by nightmarish visions of her sister’s fate as she tries to make sense of a senseless situation.
There is a naturalism to “Rustic Oracle” which perhaps stems from the origin of the story. Boileau based the film on her teenage experience growing up in Kanehsatake, a settlement on the shore of the Lake of Two Mountains in southwestern Quebec. The realism and heartbreak on display is deeply felt and deeply affecting. The crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women is one of the most important, yet frequently overlooked, social ills in our country. Heather’s story, as seen through the eyes of an innocent, 8-year-old Ivy, is fictional, but it is an important entry into a much larger story. As the film’s end credit sequence tells us, “Although Indigenous women represent only 4% of the Canadian population, they represent one-quarter of the country’s missing and murdered cases and at least half of all sex trafficking victims. It is currently estimated that we have lost close to 4000 of our Indigenous sisters in the last 40 years.”
Written, directed and produced by an Indigenous team, “Rustic Oracle” is a powerful story that with several unforgettable moments. In one heart-wrenching scene, Ivy sees her sister’s missing posters covered by mundane places to let and lost animal flyers. It’s a small moment that brings crystal clear clarity to years of institutional cover-ups and ignorance. It’s in moments like this that the film is most effective.
