Reviews include Emilia Pérez, Here, and Dahomey.
TFCA Friday: Week of July 12
July 12, 2024
Welcome to TFCA Friday, a weekly round-up of film reviews and articles by TFCA members.
In Release this Week
20,000 Species of Bees (dir. Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren)
“While Ane’s dilemmas, which range from romantic to familial but also include the possibility of attaining respectability through a possible job as an art teacher at a French university, form part of Solaguren’s narrative, the focus is on the gorgeous, troubled Coco,” says Marc Glassman at Classical FM. “As played by Sofia Otero, Coco/Aitor is uncomfortable in their own skin. To immerse their body in a river is an unacceptable assertion. Though Coco/Aitor are continually praised for the beauty of their face and hair, nothing can shake the dread they feel about themselves. Ane’s response is to praise her child—but it isn’t enough.”
The Champion (dir. Carlos Theron)
“The film is about two highly different personalities. Though it sounds like a movie with a story to avoid, a story of how two mismatched characters interact and learn from each other – the film ends up quite endearing,” says Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “And the whole thing works, thankfully for the two actors who play the two leads.”
Faye (dir. Laurent Bouzereau)
“Now 83, Dunaway looks back on it all with remarkable candor. She discusses her struggles with bipolar disorder and alcoholism and her acknowledged reputation for being “difficult”, which I can attest to, she kicked out people who were with me for an interview out of the room but was lovely after that. Her adoration for her adopted son Liam, who helps keep her on track and his for her are vivid. Dunaway’s intelligence and hard-won optimism shine forth and our hearts go out to her with empathy and gratitude for all she has achieved as a pioneer, actor, and inspiration,” notes Anne Brodie at What She Said. “But the pieces de resistance are Dunaway’s own unflinchingly honest words, clarity, and grace.”
“Although Dunaway obviously wants a favourable testament, Bouzereau smartly incorporates her notoriety as a perfectionist into Faye’s design,” says Pat Mullen at POV Magazine. “It’s pretty clear from the opening frames of Faye that Dunaway’s really calling the shots…Faye proves especially insightful for all the bits that would usually be left on the cutting room floor. Bouzereau doesn’t go for hard questions, but by letting the cameras roll, he captures Dunaway’s many dimensions.”
Fly Me to the Moon (dir. Greg Berlanti)
“Fly Me to the Moon is tonally all over the place, like a communication satellite knocked out of orbit by a meteor,” writes Peter Howell at the Toronto Star. “One minute, it’s a frothy rom-com of headstrong characters clashing before kissing. The next minute, it’s a cloak-and-dagger drama about an attempt to hoodwink the world by faking footage as the real moon landing is actually happening, to maximize eyeballs and impact.”
“Set as it is at a time of global social upheaval and great change, Fly Me to the Moon is a kind of modern creationist story, with Adam and Eve taking their usual places and Eve once again eating fruit from the tree of knowledge — in this case, Kelly’s understanding that no one ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American public,” writes Liz Braun at Original Cin. “Fly Me to the Moon is, overall, charming and funny. The music by Daniel Pemberton) is terrific. If you intend to look beneath the shiny surface, watch for lovely cameos from Colin Jost, DP Dariusz Wolski and others.”
“While there’s nothing about Fly Me to the Moon that’s terribly original as it tries to give us something that feels like The Right Stuff or Capricorn One by way of Frank Capra as it brings together two insufferable gorgeous people and gives them an excuse to flirt with each other for two hours, it’s kind of hard to argue with it because when done right and never taking itself too seriously, that can actually be pretty fun,” admits Dave Voigt at In the Seats.
“Leadenly paced and not particularly funny, the period piece rom-com Fly Me to the Moon has an eagerness to please that exhausts more than it entertains,” says Andrew Parker at The Gate.
“For a movie about selling the whiz-bang-pow excitement of the space race, there is a distressing lack of visual panache,” writes Barry Hertz at The Globe and Mail. “Berlanti, who has developed a wildly successful career running a mini-television empire that includes Arrow and Riverdale, has limited himself here with a visual palette that can only be described as NASA-sanctioned grey. The television veteran also seems uneasy with feature-film pacing, stretching his story to an interminable 132 minutes – just nine minutes shorter than Chazelle’s epic [First Man] and eight shorter than Ron Howard’s Apollo 13. Houston, you have the night off.”
“Is Fly Me to the Moon a likely blockbuster hit? Sadly, no. Johansson is a true delight and Harrelson can still chew up scenery better than most. But there are no sparks between Johansson and Tatum and the story takes way too long to unfold. In the end, the film feels more confused than clever. No moon dust was scattered over this attempt at a heavenly success,” says Marc Glassman at Classical FM.
The Inheritance (dir. Alejandro Brugués)
“The film was originally commissioned as a Netflix original, so the Vancouver-shot production looks good. The mansion has plenty of character, especially the aforementioned Antiquities room and, later, a red-lit vault where individuals are imprisoned when the siblings start to turn on each other,” says Joe Lipsett at Bloody Disgusting. “Clocking in at a brief 84-minutes helps, as do the actors and several entertaining set pieces, but The Inheritance doesn’t feel substantive enough to heartily recommend.”
Longlegs (dir. Oz Perkins)
“Longlegs is not going to transcend your nightmares, infest your soul, or cast a plague over your household. Especially not for the hardened genre fans who have mainlined far deeper, more perverse horrors than this toe-dip into dark waters from writer-director Osgood Perkins. Which isn’t a knock on the production itself – this is an imaginatively conceived, impressively scaled, and surprisingly funny ride. Just pay as little attention to the promotional scare tactics as possible,” notes Barry Hertz at The Globe and Mail.
“Longlegs is [Perkins’] darkest vision yet, supported by the best viral marketing since The Blair Witch Project, and he’s chosen two of the finest possible leads for it. Monroe is one of the reigning scream queens of modern horror, on the strength of such nail-biters as It Follows, The Guest, and Watcher,” says Peter Howell at the Toronto Star. “Cage is simply the man to call whenever an unhinged character is required, such as in Mandy, Color Out of Space, Pig and the recent Cannes premiere The Surfer (watch for it this fall). He’s in his element as Longlegs, a figure at once menacing and pathetic. It may be his most memorable character yet.
“More unnerving than terrifying, Osgood Perkins (son of Psycho star Anthony Perkins) directs the 1990s-set thriller that oozes Silence of the Lambs,” writes Rachel West at That Shelf. “Maika Monroe is Lee Harker, a junior FBI Agent with an uncanny knack for sniffing out complex crimes that have baffled her more senior FBI colleague, Carter (Blair Underwood). With the Oregon bureau perplexed by a series of family murders spanning three decades, Harker joins the fray, easily solving cryptogram messages reminiscent of the Zodiac killer that have been otherwise indecipherable save for the signature, “Longlegs.” As Harker digs deeper into the Longlegs case, she finds she is more intertwined in the story than appears as occult elements in the crimes begin to surface.”
“Though a good callback to the suspenseful serial-killer mysteries of yore, Longlegs never quite figures out what game it’s playing, or which goal it wants to fulfil. It juggles supernatural horror, neo-noir and hard drama, and director Oz Perkins only seems able to succeed at one of those at a time — before dropping them all in a bizarre and disappointingly underwhelming close,” notes Jackson Weaver at CBC. “But most egregious of all: It’s just not scary.”
“It places a stranglehold on the viewer’s attention, and it hardly ever has to shout to achieve that feeling of captivity,” says Andrew Parker at The Gate. “It’s not always the destination that matters most to a film’s success, but rather the steps that lead towards the anticlimax or place of resolution, and that’s certainly the case here. The ending can be seen coming from quite a ways off, but everything leading up to it is handled in consistently surprising ways.”
“Nicolas Cage as a Satanic serial killer who has the apparent ability to make his victims kill their entire families and themselves for him? Yeah, that casting works. But the interesting thing about the remarkably intense, violent police-procedural/occult-drama Longlegs is that it doesn’t overplay the Cage card,” adds Jim Slotek at Original Cin. “His character is only partially seen for the longest time – like Pennywise in It – and when we do see him, he is so made up as the character that no one would ever know it’s him (but for the opening credits announcing ‘Nicolas Cage as Longlegs’). It’s like being told who’s playing Jason Voorhees.”
“While Monroe easily carries the fragility of being thrust into her task, the real magic here is the man himself, Nicolas Cage,” says Dave Voigt at In the Seats. “Longlegs thrusts us into the perspective of having to confront the unimaginable on so many levels because it’s odd, off putting and even morbidly funny enough at times to make you believe in every single solitary frame of it.”
Sorry/Not Sorry (dir. Caroline Suh, Cara Mones)
“It sparks a debate about power, consent, and second chances. Made in conjunction with The New York Times and the reporters who investigated the story of sexual misconduct and impropriety again Louis C.K., the doc takes a look at not just one of comedy’s worst-kept secrets, but how the once-lauded comedian was able to slough off cancel culture,” notes Rachel West at That Shelf. “The overall crux of the discussion is not about whether Louis C.K. did the things he’s accused of, but why we should care at all that a man of his prestige and power did these things. It’s one of the lasting conversations Sorry/Not Sorry excels at prompting, opening discussion that should extend beyond the film’s end credits.”
At POV Magazine, Pat Mullen speaks with directors Caroline Suh and Cara Mones about sharing the stories of women who came forward with allegations about sexual misconduct by Louis C.K. “The 2017 article was an amazing piece of reporting, but news articles have to focus very closely on the facts. There isn’t a lot of room to really meet each individual and understand their background and who they are,” says Mones. “The film was an opportunity…to really understand and hear at length from these individuals. We didn’t know what backlash the women had faced after that article came out. My relationship to the story ended after I read that article in 2017. I didn’t know anything about what it meant for them to come forward. I hadn’t considered those questions of what does this now mean and I didn’t think about that often when I was reading articles that were breaking the beginning of the #MeToo movement. Understanding the backlash that they faced for coming forward and telling their stories felt new.”
“A major player in Sorry/Not Sorry is the very smart Jen Kirkland, one of many female comics whose careers were derailed thanks to C.K.’s behaviour,” writes Susan G. Cole at POV Magazine. “She met C.K.in the early Oughts and endured constant harassment before realizing she could never work with him without sexual repercussions. Kirkland is the most articulate in explaining the extent to which C.K.’s behaviours were well known.”
Touch (dir. Baltasar Kormákur)
“[S]weet, charming, melancholy and richly characterized. Touch is a film that moves at its own Icelandic pace to savour its own tragic, but ultimately hopeful story,” says Jim Slotek at Original Cin. “Perhaps it has something to do with the author co-scripting the film, but Touch almost seems too faithful to its source material – a specious observation you might think, considering it’s a book I haven’t read. But something happens to the storytelling after the elder Kristófer reaches Japan. But for a scene with a new friend and many drunken shouts of ‘Kampai!,’ what awaits us is a last act loaded with awkward exposition.”
“Touch, because of its theme, pace and characters is a film for old people,” observes Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “And to this effect, Touch succeeds, but it is difficult to see the youth getting excited about a 50-year-old love romantic saga.”
“While it’s certainly not the first COVID-era production to reflect the pandemic, as many movies and series simply adopted masks, etc. as part of the production, it may be the first true COVID-era period drama. Considering that COVID’s touch technically isn’t over, it’s a bit too soon,” writes Pat Mullen at That Shelf. “The dynamic of COVID’s recent trauma provides blips of psychological whiplash throughout Touch. It’s a bit unfortunate because the pandemic-era premise strains the credibility of an otherwise touching and sensitively told story,”
Vanished Into the Night (dir. Renato de Maria)
“The script has a good story but is executed a bit clumsily resulting in a lacklustre mystery thriller without much action or suspense,” writes Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “At best the cinematography around the Bari area in Italy is quite stunning.”
Wild Wild Punjab (dir. Simarpreet Singh)
“The one positive thing about the film is its Punjabi setting which North Americans seldom see,” notes Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “The costumes streets, and celebrations are all quite colourful (while stereotyping to an extent) though the shenanigans of the four are not that different from the youth of the Western countries. The wedding is an excuse for some Bollywood song and dance numbers, the choreography with the four dancing in unison not being too bad.”
Yintah (dir. Brenda Michell, Jennifer Wickam, Michael Toledano 🇨🇦)
“Yintah is the best look at the fight to maintain indigenous land rights and native sovereignty since Alanis Obomsawin’s landmark films Incident at Restigouche and Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance,” notes Andrew Parker at The Gate.
“Certainly no documentarian is obliged to include every single viewpoint on an issue. But the many contextual holes here – which could have been filled by simply, say, having an elected First Nation chief with one of the chronically underfunded B.C. band councils explain exactly why they made the choice to sign with TC – add up to a disappointingly insincere account,” says Barry Hertz at The Globe and Mail. “Ultimately, Yintah wants to leave you with the sourest of tastes in your mouth. Mission accomplished, in a way.”
“In the fashion of Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance and Blockade, Yintah provides a key cinematic record of Indigenous resistance against the settler state in Canada,” writes Pat Mullen at POV Magazine. “It’s an urgent, eye-opening call to action.” Mullen also speaks with Michael Toledano and Jennifer Wickham about bringing the story to screen: “The police tried to repress this story, and I’m very proud of the fact that there is documentation of the majority of the police operations on Witsuwit’en territory,” says Toledano. “But the only way that that was achieved was by anticipating that there would be an absolute effort to censor and repress information coming out of the territory and by the police. We even saw it during the police raid at Coyote Camp.”
File Under Miscellaneous
At What She Said, Anne Brodie picks her favourite teen flicks. On the list are fun times like Barbie, Stand By Me, Twilight, and Clueless: “Alicia Silverstone made history in Clueless as Beverly Hills rich girl Cher, a forward-looking feminist, unafraid to shake up the status quo and work towards her goals. She was a good friend, school leader, inspirational high school officer and fashion leader. Sure, she was kind of shallow in the au courant Valley Girl vein but she was a master of human psychology and naturally effective dealing with people, a role model (what a phrase) whose dignity, humour, and smarts inspired people of all ages in 1995. It was funny, endearing, and inspiring.”
At POV Magazine, Angelo Muredda looks at four recent Canadian films that experiment with the boundaries of non-fiction form: Waves, Mis dos voces, Georgraphies of Solitude, and Feet in Water, Head on Fire. “Recognizable in all of these avant-garde Canadian documentaries is an appreciation for the complexity of networks and collectives, and a desire to invent new cinematic syntaxes to give voice to them where conventional methods aren’t appropriate,” writes Muredda. “It isn’t simply that these films eschew more traditional nonfiction storytelling techniques, from drone photography to talking-head interviews, in favour of novel approaches. These experimental documentaries’ formal novelty comes not strictly out of boredom with aesthetic conventions, but out of an earnest desire to amplify their subjects’ voices and attend to the particular physical terrain they spring from. Beyond that attachment to the polyphonic, what most links these filmmakers’ unique processes is their openness to the possibilities of film as a physical medium, one that affords a hand-made engagement with the documentary evidence of the ground the filmmaker is standing on.”
A Festival of Festival Coverage: Fantasia Strikes Before Opening Night
At The Globe and Mail, Barry Hertz reports of more rocky waters at festivals including the departure of Marie Nelson and the workers’ strike at Fantasia: “If Fantasia does not reach a tentative agreement with the union, whose members work in positions across the organization and who are asking for better pay and working conditions, further labour action could be taken to disrupt the launch of the festival, which runs from July 18 through Aug. 4 in venues across Montreal.”
At What She Said, Anne Brodie looks at Fantasia opener Bookworm: “Their adventures are dramatic, funny, dangerous, and bizarre; they’re having the time of their lives and so are we — the magic is contagious. They share personal info – he’s no longer friends with David Blaine and claims he can levitate. She offers witticisms, wordplay, and wisdom beyond the ken of an 11-year-old. Bookworm is endlessly delightful, a real surprise.”
At That Shelf, Pat Mullen picks a TIFF Wish List ahead of more eyeball emoji announcements. Festival hopefuls include Maria, Piece by Piece, and The Last Showgirl: “Could Pamela Anderson be the comeback kid of TIFF 2024? The Canadian icon stars as a Vegas showgirl who faces the next act of her career when her gig on the strip closes and leaves her wondering what life showbiz can be like for a woman over 50. There’s a great art-imitating-life narrative that’s ripe for a press tour with Anderson, too, as she can build upon the momentum set by last year’s terrific Netflix doc Pamela: A Love Story. The film showed a vulnerable de-glammed Pam who opened up about having her career derailed by an infamous stolen sex tape, but she shared a desire to show the world who she really is as an actress. Directed by Gia Coppola (Palo Alto), The Last Showgirl could be the chance to do just that.”
TV Talk/Series Stuff
At What She Said, Anne Brodie checks out BritBox’s Granite Harbour starring Romario Simpson: “Simpson’s extraordinary, nuanced performance isn’t matched by the material, but it introduces him as a capable actor on the threshold of big things.”
At The Globe and Mail, Johanna Schneller considers the secret feminism of Netflix’s Dallas Cowboys cheerleader series America’s Sweethearts: “America’s Sweethearts demonstrates that the culture of impossible female perfection persists not only because men perpetuate it, but because women do, too. Some things have improved for women since 1972, but much has not. (Back then, to cite a glaring example, abortion rights for U.S. women were about to be enshrined in law; now they’re gone.) By insisting that things – “standards,” “traditions,” even uniforms – stand still, we go backward.”