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Some weeks are heavy with new titles. The studios bunch up their offerings on the same date, and we’ve got choices galore. Add in the Whistler Film Festival, which is streaming everything this year, and look at what’s available.
Funny Boy: 3 stars
Yes, God, Yes: 3½
(WFF) Underground: 4
(WFF) American Thief: 3½
(WFF) Québexit: 2½
Black Bear: 3½
Come Away: 3
The Legend of Baron To’a: 2½
FUNNY BOY: It’s Canada’s Academy Awards submission, it’s by Deepa Mehta who has directed “emotionally resonating” films, and there you have two good reasons to see it. However, don’t expect anything as powerful as her earlier films, like Water, which also competed at the Oscars. The issues are just as strong, but they don’t affect you as much. That’s partly because it starts slow, gets you involved with one story and then brings on a bigger one without giving much background.
A Tamil boy in Sri Lanka in the 1980s grows up gay while his country descends into racial violence against his people. Personal shunning and then a whole community rioting. There’s enough there for two movies. Putting them together may have worked in the novel by Shyam Selvadurai. Here it feels like a manufactured comparison. Early scenes are touching as young Arjie dresses like a bride in a game and asks his disapproving dad what do people mean by “funny boy.” As he grows up, he’s bullied and gets slurs from the majority Sinhalese people but falls in love with one. There are arguments at home and in the neighbourhood, but until the sudden rioting breaks out, not a great deal of intensity. (playing Thursday, Dec. 4 on CBC TV and then CBC Gem) 3 out of 5
YES, GOD, YES: This is bound to be nostalgic for Catholic girls (I imagine because I’m not one, but I’m married to one). A young woman, played by Natalia Dyer, is at that stage in her life when she’s learning about sex. In class, a teacher delineates precisely what is part of God’s plan and what is sin. A wrong click on a computer gets her something else: Info on masturbation and new terms she has never heard of, like “salad dressing.” Getting that defined is an ongoing goal through the film. The other subject is intriguing to her, but taboo, and she’s too scared to mention it in confession before Father Murphy (Timothy Simons).
She goes to a retreat for more instruction and words of warning, which mostly generate a fear in her: Being relegated to hell. She also meets a cute guy, the most popular football player in town, played by a smiling hunk named Wolfgang Novogratz, who I’ve never seen before but is wonderful in the role. He, too, is a moral voice, so nothing untoward comes of it. There are consequences, though, when she sneaks a session on the teacher’s computer, implicates another student and later discovers genuine hypocrisy. Writer-director Karen Maine recalls a lot from her youth and made a nicely droll film out of it. (available EST and VOD starting Tuesday) 3½ out of 5
THREE FROM WHISTLER: The film festival that bills itself as the “coolest” is all online this year, and that means it is much more accessible. Check this link to find out what, and how, you can watch. The organizers want you to know that half of all the money they charge goes to the filmmakers.
Individual titles start on a specific day and stay available right until the end of the month. Here are three coming early:
UNDERGROUND: This is what film festivals are valuable for: To get attention for small films that should be better known. This one is from Quebec and builds an intense momentum depicting a fictional mining accident. An explosion traps five men, and the film flips to two months earlier to give us the lead up to it.
We get to meet the men, learn about their characters and the connections between them. Very good acting and writing give us full pictures, so when we get back to the accident, we have a deep understanding of what’s going on. Particularly about one miner with a tragedy in his history that gives him an extra reason to go down on a rescue mission. It’s a strong film created by Sophie Dupuis, who is from the Val-d’Or region it is set in. (starts Saturday) 4 out of 5
QUÉBEXIT: This one is also set in Quebec, but not filmed or written there. Director Joshua Demers is based in Alberta, and he filmed it in Pickering, Ont. No matter, it all takes place on one road, a border between Quebec and New Brunswick, and imagines the difficulties that would happen if the province ever did separate. It’s not on our minds these days, but does come back as an issue now and then.
In this film, a referendum against a pipeline is taken as pro-sovereignty by the provincial government. Borders go up, and soldiers from the province and from Canada face off at a checkpoint on that road. Journalists watch and film, world newscasts carry the story and UN peacekeepers arrive. The politics aren’t very astute in this script, but the practical parts are, and often quite funny. The sheer inanity of what separation would bring, a tight border, two armies, individual soldiers insulting each other, disputes over who has power over what, those are all well-portrayed. Also, the objections of Indigenous people who claim the land and insist it can’t be divided. The actors vary, but some are very strong, like Gail Maurice, who plays the Indigenous leader and also helped write the script. (starts Sunday) 2½ out of 5
AMERICAN THIEF: Yes, it’s from the U.S. and, with a kinetic pace and energy, dramatizes something that has been in the air for four years now. As one person says: “Yes, elections can be rigged. Very easily.” Computers, cellphones, social media, data gathering and all those things can do it. We suspect that, and this film does a lively job of exploring the issue. But it’s hard to tell what its conclusions are. Did it happen? Did Trump win that way? The recent election would have reversed it then. Is it just something that could happen, and the film is just a warning? Whatever it is, the film presents the speculation with an unsettling tone and a neat procedure. Two young activists (played by actors Xisko Maximo Monroe and Khadim Diop) are sent to (and filmed in) real demonstrations actually going on. It adds realism to the message it speaks so fervently about. (Starts Thursday, Dec. 4.) 3½ out of 5
BLACK BEAR: I’m always delighted when a filmmaker does something out of the norm. Most movies are so formula-driven that anything different is a treat. Here we’ve got a tension-filled story that will surprise you with a startling switch in the middle and have you mulling over the result ever after. How do the two parts fit together? Or do they? Maybe it’s all somebody’s fantasy. Maybe we’ve just pivoted and been given a different angle in the second part.
The story (initially) is of a visit by a young woman (Aubrey Plaza) to a lakeside B&B run by a couple of artists (Christopher Abbott and Sarah Gadon) who’ve escaped the city and their stalled careers for a simpler life. Plaza plays a screenwriter in need of inspiration to clear her writer’s block. In a conversation over dinner and wine, they start to disagree about the status of women, feminism and his view of the world. Gadon tries a joke, only to provoke a noisy confrontation and a rush of jealousy. Then suddenly we get Part 2, actually labelled as such. As in the first, it starts with Plaza sitting on a dock, but now she’s being filmed from a boat offshore. She’s in a movie. We see the entire set, chaotic with people on the film. The three characters have been reconfigured. Abbott is the director, Gadon is a needy actor, and Plaza is temperamental and neurotic. She is startling in a scene where she has to act hysterical. Director Lawrence Michael Levine, who also wrote the script, has perfectly captured the look and the mood of creating these independent movies. There is a bear, but I’m not sure why. (Playing in three theatres in Ontario and Alberta, video on demand everywhere else.) 3½ out of 5
COME AWAY: Two beloved characters from children’s literature get a new life in this fantasy, though it is in aid of appreciating, not disrupting, the works they come from. If that sounds obscure or distorted, never mind. Just go with this whimsical trip. It has plenty of charm despite the liberties it takes. You see, here, Peter Pan and Alice of Wonderland are siblings in a family headed by David Oyelowo, as father, and Angelina Jolie, as mother. Peter (Jordan A. Nash), Alice (Keira Chansa) and their older brother David (Reece Yates) let their imaginations shape their playing out in the woods and down by the lake. An abandoned boat becomes a pirate ship. There are Lost Boys. Sword fights happen. A toy (a white rabbit) is taken hostage.
Also, there’s a tragedy and a sudden trip to London because mom is drinking and dad is back to his gambling addiction. Peter and Alice go to sell a watch to raise money and encounter (briefly) a character played by Michael Caine, a Red Queen played by Anna Chancellor and a Mad Hatter played by Clarke Peters. The film is full of allusions to the two books, and they’re fun to identify. More importantly, it espouses strongly how you must let your imagination run free. It’s smartly directed by Brenda Chapman, a veteran of major animated films. (Available EST and VOD starting Tuesday.) 3 out of 5
THE LEGEND OF BARON TO’A: This is new. It’s a film set in Tonga, an archipelago in the South Pacific, but with apparent ambitions to play like an American or Hong Kong action film. By the end, you’ll have a big dose of violence and even brutality, but it’ll feel like you’ve been watching extreme wrestling. It was financed in New Zealand and stars a man you’ll be hearing more about. Uli Latukefu is about to play The Rock in an upcoming TV series about Dwayne Johnson. Here, he’s much like him. Brawny, tough and agile. He plays the son of a celebrated wrestler who everybody remembers (and we get to see in flashbacks) and whose legacy motivates punks to come challenging and even attacking.
When the son returns to where he grew up, the street has changed. A compound of hoods controls it. Somebody steals the Baron’s championship belt and the son has to find it. While the Baron is seen in a video expounding “synergy of respect and love” for self, for people and “for other people,” the son faces the gang in the compound, its leader sitting like a king on a throne, and then the real leader. That’s right there in the street and notable for the brutal punching and kicking and smashing of bodies on the asphalt. A tough film. (Now available from all on-demand platforms.) 2½ out of 5
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