Posts Tagged ‘Tzi Ma’

THE FAREWELL: 3 ½ STARS. “brims with heart and humour.”

“Based on an actual lie,” reads the opening title credit of “The Farewell,” a new dramedy with “Crazy Rich Asians” breakout star Awkwafina. It’s a funny reminder that the story is actually taken from director Lulu Wang’s life experience of visiting her terminally ill grandmother under false pretenses.

Bad news keeps coming Billi’s (Awkwafina) way. She can’t pay her pricey New York City rent, a Guggenheim Fellowship she hoped to land was denied and worse, she learns her beloved grandmother Nai Nai (Shuzhen Zhou) in Northeast China has terminal cancer. The family, lead by Billi’s stern mother Jian (Diana Lin), have decided to shield the older woman from the news so she can enjoy her whatever time she has left. “Chinese people have a saying,” she says. “It’s not the cancer that kills them, it’s the fear.” Instead the family plans a ruse, an elaborate wedding for Billi’s cousin in Changchun, to serve as an excuse for the family to gather and pay their last respects. Billi hates keeping the truth from her grandmother, but with few reasons to stay in New York she shows up at the “wedding” unannounced to say her goodbyes and confront traditions that seem foreign to her.

“The Farewell” is a lo-fi family drama that brims with heart and humour. Wang maintains focus, never veering from the central premise of a family taking on the burden of pain, sparing their much-loved Nai Nai any feelings of distress. There isn’t much actual drama, no screaming matches, very little interpersonal conflict; just nicely observed naturalistic behaviour.

Holding the film’s center are Billie and Nai Nai. As a young woman grappling with a tradition she doesn’t completely agree with or understand Awkwafina does nice, understated work. It’s a far cry from her more flamboyant supporting performances in “Crazy Rich Asians,” “Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising” and “Ocean’s Eight” that heartbreakingly illustrates the push-and-pull she feels between the two belief systems that have shaped her life.

“The Farewell’s” beating heart is Nai Nai. Her love for her family is unconditional and, as the family’s matriarch, she is the hub that these very different people orbit around. Zhou brings a sprightly charisma to the role that steals every scene in which she appears. Her light touch brings with it a great deal of humour but the smaller, more intimate moments between Nai Nai and her family are packed with emotion.

“The Farewell” is a slow burn, a movie that builds to a poignant climax that not only feels earned but deserved.

MEDITATION PARK: 3 ½ STARS. “universal story of the immigrant experience.”

Mina Shum’s “Meditation Park” takes place within a few blocks in East Vancouver but tells an emotional and universal story of the immigrant experience in Canada.

Cheng Pei Pei is Maria, the wife of workaholic Bing (Tzi Ma). A stay-at-home wife and mother, she doesn’t feel confident with her grasp of English and is dependent on Bing for almost everything. When she discovers he is having an affair with a much younger woman and is planning a trip to Japan she, along with the help of her family and neighbours, she asserts her independence and comes out from underneath her overbearing husband’s shadow. “First we obey our fathers,” her friend says. “Then our husbands. When they are gone we obey ourselves.”

“Meditation Park” sees Maria break free of the conservative constraints of her upbringing and family life to assimilate into the wider community. The story of her personal journey is told with a mix of comedy—occasionally bordering on slapstick— and heartfelt emotion but it is the performances, particularly from Cheng Pei Pei, that breathes life into the movie. Her broken heart is palpable but so is the joy on her face as she dances to music only she can hear at a block party.

Strong supporting work from Sandra Oh and Don McKellar highlights the strong support system that helps prop Maria up in her time of need but it is the personal story of awakening that lingers.

Metro: Denis Villeneuve’s new film Arrival delivers science fiction with a brain

screen-shot-2016-11-07-at-8-54-00-amBy Richard Crouse – Metro Canada

In Arrival, a new humanistic sci fi film from future Blade Runner director Denis Villeneuve, Amy Adams plays a woman who sees life on a fractured timeline, like a Tarantino movie where the beginning is the end and the end is the start.

She plays Dr. Louise Banks, a linguist recruited by the U.S. Military to communicate with giant alien heptapods—think Kang and Kodos from The Simpsons— who have landed in Montana and eleven other sites worldwide. Are the ETs scientists, tourists or warriors?

“Most science fiction movies are about a display of technology or weaponry,” says Villeneuve, “and Arrival is not that at all. It is an intimate story about a linguist who is confronted by a huge challenge. In a way Arrival has some elements of a sci fi movie but it is closer to a strange cultural exchange.”

War of the Worlds this is not. Based on the short story Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang, this is an alien invasion film with more in common with the heady sci fi of Andrei Tarkovsky and the crowd-pleasing emotionalism of Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It’s more about the importance of communication—“Language is the first weapon drawn in conflict.”—than alien technology or Independence Day style Martian marauding.

The story is an exploration of the unknown, exactly the thing that sparked Villeneuve’s interest in the script and to the genre in general.

“The vertigo that is created by the unknown,” he says, “that is what attracted me to sci fi.”

The director, who is currently putting the finishing touches on Blade Runner 2049 starring Ryan Gosling, says he was a bit of a Walter Mitty type while growing up in Quebec.

“I was really a dreamer and was surrounded by science fiction coming out of Europe. There is a moment I remember vividly. At a very young age one of my aunts came home one night and she had brought two or three big cardboard boxes filled with magazines. Those magazines were all about sci fi. Those boxes changed my life because the amount of the poetry and creativity among the guys that were drawing those comic strips. They were very strong storytellers. They were all like mad scientists playing with our brains. They really influenced me big time as a youngster and then came the wave of sci fi movies coming out of the US that were so strong at the end of the seventies.”

He cites a Stanley Kubrick masterpiece as a potent example of the kind of sci fi that lit his imagination on fire.

“The biggest impact was 2001: A Space Odyssey,” he says. “The first time I saw it was on television. I remember vividly the vertigo that movie created. Even though I saw it on TV I still think it is one of the most significant cinematic experiences I have had.”

In Arrival Villeneuve takes a page from Kubrick’s playbook and by the time the end credits roll he presents the audience with a climax that is both spacey and grounded.

“It is a privilege when you can take a camera and ask people to sit for two hours in a theatre,” says Villeneuve. “It is nice if you take that privilege to explore something out of our reality, to bring some poetry to it.”

ARRIVAL: 3 ½ STARS. “offered the audience a story that is both spacey and grounded.”

In “Arrival,” a new humanistic sci fi film from future “Blade Runner” director Denis Villeneuve, Amy Adams plays a woman who sees life on a fractured timeline, like a Tarantino movie where the beginning is the end and the end is the start.

Adams is Dr. Louise Banks, a linguist recruited by the U.S. Military to communicate with giant alien heptapods—think Kang and Kodos from “The Simpsons”— who have landed in Montana and eleven other sites worldwide. Are they scientists, tourists or warriors?

“What do they want?” asks Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker). “Where are they from?”

With voices that sound like a Didgeridoo mixed with an out-of-tune electronic tuba and a written language that resembles “The Ring” logo, no answers are immediately forthcoming. Working with theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) Banks slowly forms a bond with the multi-legged ETs. In return she receives a gift from them that changes everything.

“War of the Worlds” this is not. Based on the short story “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, this is an alien invasion film with more in common with the heady sci fi of Andrei Tarkovsky and the crowd-pleasing emotionalism of Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” It’s more about the importance of communication—“Language is the first weapon drawn in conflict.”—than alien technology or “Independence Day” style Martian marauding. It’s a deliberately paced, contemplative film that suggests an alternative to the old ethos of shooting first and asking questions later. Questions are asked, few are answered but the result is an intelligent but dreamy story that never lets the scene get in the way of the film’s emotional core.

That core is supplied by Adams. As Dr. Louise Banks she dominates the movie. Everyone else, including Renner and Whitaker, are basically window dressing for a performance that bristles with wonder, sadness and yes, even scientific method. Banks may be methodical but Adams isn’t. She wrings every bit of sentiment from a script that tries to balance its cool social accountability with a story that delves into the soul of its main character.

I can’t reveal more about how or why Banks goes about deciphering the alien intentions. The film plays with timelines and by the time the end credits roll “Arrival” has offered the audience an explanation that is both spacey and grounded.