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By this time next week, we'll know what films will be contenders at the Academy Awards this year. The nominations announcement has been delayed twice because of the horrendous fires in Los Angeles but is now scheduled for Thursday. At least two films I review today could very well be on that list, in some capacity. The line up today is that strong.
September 5: 3 ½ stars
Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat: 4
Nickel Boys: 4
Close Your Eyes 4 ½
The Last Showgirl: 3
Unstoppable: 3 ½
The Heirloom: 3
SEPTEMBER 5: Terrorists take Israeli athletes hostage at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. It’s been told before in the movies, in an Academy Award-winning documentary and a multi-nominated film by Stephen Spielberg. Maybe that’s why this version is light on political issues and is concentrated instead on the work of journalism. As that it’s a crackling good thriller as sports reporters are suddenly forced to cover a story way out of their experience and deal with ethical questions they haven’t confronted before. Is it right to call the attackers terrorists? Or are they guerrillas? Are you aiding their cause by reporting on it? A young producer (John Magaro) whose main experience has been covering volleyball has to decide. He’s in charge for a time filling in for his boss the legendary ABC-TV sports producer Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard). When Arledge returns he refuses to let the news department take over and has his team cover the story.
They have to improvise to get a good view of the athletes’ village (where they caught that iconic film of a terrorist in a black hood), send a staffer out posing as an athlete and to listen to German radio for information. A local hire (Leonie Benesch, who was so good in The Teachers' Lounge last year) translates what she hears and laments that Germany’s work to put its history behind it has been foiled. It’s a rare mention of geo-political matters.
Mostly this is a control-room drama and a hectic search to find out what’s going on. It’s made exciting by the Swiss director Tim Fehlbaum, who also co-wrote it with Munich-born Moritz Binder. You'll get a good idea of what a news operation is like and you won't be able to avoid comparing this incident to the Hamas-Israeli fight. FYI: ABC Sports anchor Jim McKay appears several times in archival footage and an actor voices Peter Jennings in telephone reports. (In theaters) 3 ½ out of 5
SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP d'ETAT: This is a cool and novel way of covering history. And of an obscure subject at that: the assassination in 1961 of Patrice Lumumba. How many of us are interested in the ousted Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo? Well, tune in; this is a gripping story and even prompted jazz musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach to crash the United Nations Security Council in protest. Interesting revelations like that keep coming in this film directed by Johan Grimonprez who is Belgian but spends half his time teaching in New York. Both countries are big players in the documentary.
The Cold War going on in the 1960s provides the backdrop. Control of uranium, plentiful in the Congo, was in play. The US feared that Lumumba who was an independence and pan-Africa leader was getting too chummy with Russia. What happened then is widely debated. Did the CIA in the US support assassination? Did Belgium agree and hire mercenaries? The film pretty well says yes and also details what led up to it. The rich province Katanga had broken away. Civil war broke out. A rival politician and an army colonel staged a coup. Lumumba was arrested and later killed.
That history is accompanied by a great deal of music, fittingly because Louis Armstrong was sent to the Congo as a goodwill ambassador. So, he, his band and his singing are prominent. You also get the afore mentioned Lincoln and Roach, plus Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Nina Simone. Their music supports the factual content; Nina Simone's singing especially, was an anti-colonialist demand.
And there's more: a nostalgic re-visit with historical characters we're familiar with including Eisenhower, Allen Dulles of the CIA, Fidel Castro, Malcolm X and a surprisingly charming Nikita Khrushchev. (In theaters: Ottawa and Toronto now; Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, soon). 4 out of 5
NICKEL BOYS: This is a superb film dramatizing the harsh treatment that many young Black men in the US get from the legal system. It’s set only in a reform school but represents much more. What at least one character has to say indicates it’s a representation of society as a whole. It comes from a Pulitzer Prizewinning novel by Colson Whitehead about two young black men who become friends in a reformatory known as The Nickel Academy which the author patterned on a real school in Florida. It’s now closed after being exposed for brutality and corruption. This fictional version has an extra bit of interest for us in Canada, evidence of unmarked graves discovered by ground-penetrating radar.
Brutality isn’t shown, heard occasionally but revealed mostly in conversations between two young men, idealistic Elwood, played by Ethan Herisse, and realistic and cynical Turner, played by Brandon Wilson. Elwood was only hitchhiking and was taken in too when the driver who gave him a ride was arrested for car theft. He’s got a lawyer and a grandmother fighting for him. Turner knows that’s useless and says so. An administrator (Hamish Linklater) mocks them both cruelly and offers a multi-level plan by which they can improve themselves and maybe get out. Turner says that’s useless too. The only way out is to escape. They devise a way … and that’s all I’ll say right now. More important is a technique that director and co-writer RaMell Ross came up with. He tells the story through the boys’ perspective, and switches back and forth between them. It’s respectful and lets us see the story entirely through their view. (In theaters) 4 out of 5
CLOSE YOUR EYES: This one isn’t history but it plays like that kind of investigation. It’s a drama about a film actor in Spain who disappears before his last movie is finished and his director’s efforts years later to find out what happened. For us it starts like a classic movie, possibly from a novel, and suddenly switches to show that we had been watching the surviving footage and are now in present time. The film’s director (played by Manolo Solo) is trying to solve the 20-year-old mystery for a TV show about unsolved cases.
The actor (played by Jose Coronado) was a long-time friend of his and known to have been a “skirt chaser” who couldn’t handle the big issue in his life: “getting old.” But did he commit suicide as the police surmised? The director doubts it and sets off on a long search. An archivist friend lets him watch the surviving part of the film, which we saw earlier (and will again). He meets the actor’s daughter (Ana Torrent ) and then tracks down Lola (Soledad Villamil), an Argentinian beauty who both he and the actor had affairs with. He’s told that maybe the actor just wanted to disappear.
Or is that him in a recent photo? The film pulls us along to a retirement home where an old man works as a caretaker. He doesn’t recognize the director. How could they have been friends? A psychologist explains a concept called “retrograde amnesia” as a possible factor. But is that at play here? We’re so firmly grabbed by the director’s search for answers that the almost three-hour film just rolls along. The main themes—memory, aging—are apt for the director of Close Your Eyes. He’s 83 years old; has a strong reputation among the art-house crowd and this is his first film in 31 years. It’s a gem. (Streaming on MUBI) 4 ½ out of 5
THE LAST SHOWGIRL: You best know Pamela Anderson for running around the beach in Baywatch wearing a red bathing suit. Or maybe from a documentary I wrote of some time ago about her as a resident of Vancouver Island. Well, now meet her as a celebrated actor. She had a Golden Globe nomination for this role. It’s not that far from her usual; she plays a dancer in a review called Razzle Dazzle, billed as “the last true showgirls show in Last Vegas.”
It’s suddenly shut down. She’s 41 years old. What can she do? Display her acting chops for one thing. Anderson is completely believable as a woman dealing with the disappointment, the rejection, the ageism that she encounters. The screenplay by Kate Gersten deftly works in those issues that are so common for women in the entertainment industry.
Jamie Lee Curtis, made to look old and worn out, almost steals the show as a victim of those same issues. She’s survived by moving on from showgirl to serving drinks to casino customers. Pamela’s Shelly might have to do the same and has two other characters to deal with. Her daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd) berates her for neglecting her as a child for “just a stupid nudie show.” The show’s stage director offers a warm, supporting friendship. He’s played with a surprise dose of compassion by Dave Bautista, who we generally see in Marvel movies. This film is directed by Gia Coppola, Francis Ford’s granddaughter. Other members of the clan are involved too making this a family affair of sorts. A welcome one. (In theaters) 3 out of 5
UNSTOPPABLE: True sports stories are regularly told to be inspiring and this is one of the strongest I’ve seen. Imagine the challenge: a young man who was born with only one leg wants to be a wrestler. And more than that: to compete for a national championship. Pretty unlikely but Anthony Robles gives it a try. He’s the champ at his highschool but higher up, university, is a bigger problem. And he’ll have to deal with some problems at home before he even gets there. Mom, played by Jennifer Lopez, says anything is possible but dad, played by Bobby Cannavale, is abusive. They clash over what university to choose, money being the issue, a wrestling program vs a scholarship.
Robles is played by Jharrel Jerome, who won an Emmy five years ago. His best coach is played by Don Cheadle, who tells him to make his one leg “as strong as two.” Then there’s a guy who has never lost a match. He’ll have to wrestle him now and again at the film’s climax. It’s what you expect in a film like this. Robles even runs up the Rocky steps in Philadelphia a couple of times and steps into the concrete footprints there. But along with the familiar there are the wrestling scenes filmed with spirit and imagination. This is William Goldenberg’s debut as a director. His background is as an editor and it shows very well. (Streaming on PRIME) 3 ½ out of 5
THE HEIRLOOM: This small film has been around for a while in Toronto and Montreal and is likely to get wider attention now, after Barry Hertz in the Globe and Mail put it on his list of the best Canadian films of last year. It’ll be showing in Halifax soon and is playing today and on the 19th and 29th at the VIFF Centre in Vancouver. It’s funny and quirky and easy to recommend. Especially if you’ve ever owned a pet or had differing ideas about one with your partner. In the film a couple’s relationship is tested by those differences. Because of this …
Milly is a whippet, a breed known to be calm and sensitive. Her owners are not as much. Eric (Ben Petrie) is a controlling type and a filmmaker. Allie (Grace Glowicki) is an anxious type who lobbies to get a dog. They won’t buy from a breeder (puppy mill, unethical, they say) but adopt a rescue dog brought in from the Dominican Republic. The two actors are actually a couple in real life and the film is based on their experiences. Milly retreats into a closet much of the time, has to be walked in the cold Toronto snow and does some inconvenient peeing and pooping. The couple tries to put her on a vegan diet. The results are messy but with droll humor all the way, the film is enjoyable. Petrie wrote and directed it. (Select theaters) 3 out of 5
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