Nebraska

directed by Alexander Payne (2013)

Nebraska was my first VIFF gala and what a great way to start off the 2013 festival. I predict Oscars for both Alexander Payne, and Bruce Dern - at least nominations, if not the actual awards.

It's such a warm, touching flick.  At times hilarious, while others will make your heart all squishy. I liked it so much, when I got an invite to a promo screening, it was a no-brainer to see it again. I enjoyed it just as much the second go round, but I took more notice of the values it both criticized and exalted.

It's a beautifully human film, that visually stuns with Phedon Papamichael's Walker Evans style, B&W cinematography.  He packs it full with long static shots of endless prairie vistas and medium shots of small town, and rural life, that imbue the stark imagery with a retro longing quality for times gone past.  It made me oh so homesick and nostalgic for the prairies. It has a lovely instrumental soundtrack too, produced by Mark Orton and the rest of the Tin Hat Trio rebanded, (as Tin Hat), for the first time since 2005, to create their varied takes on American roots music.

Alexander Payne is known for his relationship tales, and usually they involve more upper and middle class protagonists - this one is a little more down to earth in portraying rural farm folk, and small town people, but it still contains the same acerbic criticism, and upholding of certain values of Payne's other flicks. There's a privileging of the values of the have mores, over the lesser blessed. And although there is much criticism, ultimately, the ideals of patriarchy and it's egoic concerns, are implicit in the content and resolution of conflicts within the plot.

The plot is simple.  The Grants are a small family of 4 living in Billings Montana: David, an electronics salesman, (Will Forte), his older brother Ross, a local news caster (Bob Odenkirk,) their parents, Kate, a former hairdresser, (June Squib), who is a reductive caricature of the foul mouthed, and hostile nagging female, that constantly hectors everyone, especially the silent and stoic alcoholic father, Woody, (Bruce Dern) who suffers from the effects of Alzheimer's. Woody believes that he has won $1,000,000 through a magazine sweepstakes mail out, and wants to collect his winnings in Nebraska, since his family is unable to convince him that the sweepstakes is a scam.  Much of the humour in the film is through the interactions with their extended family. Woody is the youngest of 7 brothers, and his brothers never left the small town of Hawthorne, Nebraska, where they grew up.

What struck me most in the film, was how selfish everyone was regarding their actions with one another.  Everyone kept a ledger that was very unbalanced, noting only where they gave, and not when they benefitted from the generosity of others. This attitude reflects the American ideal of the so called self made man, which in turn gave rise to the disconnected nuclear family, all of which are based on the hierarchical patriarchal mode.  There is criticism of this mode, but acceptance of its primacy is ultimately supported through the actions of the characters.

There is a exploration and dismissal of the value of fairness in the film too.  There is a distinct differentiation between wealth that is perceived as earned or unearned.  The recognition of fairness is something that is innate, and not just to humans - we are born with a moral capacity to judge others for their behaviour around fairness, and William Damon's 1970's studies demonstrated that equality bias in how children would rather something of value be destroyed than see it unfairly divided.  The operational modes that dismiss these values are supported by many factors and over the course of the film the justifications and reasons behind the foibles of the main characters are revealed.

Stacy Keach's character Ed Pegram, reminded me of my father with his aggressive macho posturing.  Pegram was a prime example of the selfish perspective - yeah this is a the nature of being human - we see everything through the lens of our own needs, but in this instance the relative wealth of his old partner became intolerably unfair.  As Ed puts it, the windfall money Woody didn't even earn - it wasn't right that Keach didn't have a stake in it.  From his perspective, he had given more to Woody than he got, so he was the victim!  The fact is, when you look at things from a relative perspective, it's always possible to cast oneself in the poor unfortunate category, vis-a-vis another.  And doing so justifies selfishness.  It's just as easy to see yourself as better off, but that will generally create discomfort, and since the idea of fairness is so ingrained, we come up with reasons to justify inequity - based on merit and personal accomplishment.

When Will punches Ed in the face, I guess we're supposed to cheer at the old bully getting his comeuppance - an eye for an eye and all that.  But the way Ed's face fell when he saw how carefully Woody folded the letter and placed it in his pocket, it was apparent that Ed understood that he'd been being needlessly cruel to an old befuddled man.  Ed looked ashamed.  This could have been a moment for transcendence of the violence as a resolution to conflict model, but no. David's measured and deliberate response plunges us back down into the usual old egoic macho competitive concerns. David defends his dad's honour and decks an old man.  The young bull pushes the old one out of the dominant position.  It doesn't represent any kind of change really, just a change in who's doing the bullying.

What are the roots of the silence and stoicism of the Grant men?  Could it be they are all PTSD traumatised from their war experiences?  Could the very model of masculinity that demands they maintain a dominance over the earth and everyone else in their lives, women and children included, and also a similar control over their devalued "feminine" feelings be the cause? When one of the wives tells Woody that his brother has an injured foot. The brother's response? "It's ok.  It just hurts."  Rigid gender roles do hurt - men and women both. The Grant cousins Bart, (Tim Driscoll) and Cole, (Devin Ratray), delight in showing dominance over their cousin David's leisurely drive to their town from Billings.  They operate out of a competitive, zero-sum, paradigm.  You're either on top, or on the bottom - there's no such thing as equality.  In addition to being of lower consciousness, they're low status too - unemployed, and most troubling, they're also convicted sex offenders doing community service for rape - though they and their mother deny that reality.  And of course the denial of rape culture is very strong everywhere, but especially in this conservative family values community, the acceptance of men hurting women seems to be par for the course.  In fact there is a de-facto acceptance of violence in many forms, though from the females it's more verbal.  Kate is very vicious in her treatment of everyone - she's always been a bitch as Ed flat out tells David. Women who exert any form of power, especially sexually, well they're sluts and bitches ain't they?

The old homestead, that was hand built by the grandfather with the help of his brothers, had been abandoned and left to moulder back into the land.  The value of family helping one another  - these are what Payne seems to be championing throughout the film, that mythical past of living on the land, "salt of the earth" as Kate references one family, is not a lost utopia either.  Here too, there's rot in the foundations of that patriarchal model.  When Woody is in his parent's bedroom, he says "I would get whipped if they found me in here." He seems oddly nonplussed when he says, "There's no one here to whip me now."  The reins of power in the hierarchical patriarchal model are those very same same whip hands that subjugate.

And the satisfying moment in the film where you discover how much Woody wanted to be the provider of THINGS for his sons - sure he wanted a truck and a compressor, but mostly he wanted to leave the money for his boys.  He was ashamed that he had failed to provide for his grown up sons, long out of the house and living their own lives.  David tells him he shouldn't worry about that, they're fine and he turns the tables and provides for his father those totemic objects of desire.  The satisfying resolution of the film is when Woody gets to act as if he won a million dollars; he's driving down his old hometown streets in his prize winner hat, waving to the folk and leaving them with the impression that he's now a rich man.  What does this illusion support?  The idea that what other people think is MORE important that truth.  That it's a pretty great thing to pull a fast one, and have the appearance of relative success, then lord it over the folk and community you abandoned before you take off with all that supposed unearned wealth. Of course it's just a fantasy version of doing that, but there's still something really smug and soulless in taking pleasure in the idea of simultaneously thumbing your nose and humble bragging about wealth.

And what of the road not taken?  Ed tells David he wouldn't have been born if not for his intervention - Ed was the one who convinced Woody to stay with Kate instead of leaving her for the woman he loved - as Ed describes her "a halfbreed from the reservation."

There are only 2 instances of POC in the movie, this off hand and derogatory mention of a Native woman, and a scene where Woody goes to the garage he used to own.  The first reference is a brief example of the NDN standing in for freedom and spiritual truth, which of course patriarchy does not allow.  Hohum.  In the 2nd, there are 2 Hispanic, presumably Mexican immigrant men working in Woody's old garage and Woody's attitude towards them is judgmental.  He dismisses them, saying "They don't know what they are doing."  This is an almost invisible recognition of the racist realities of rural white bread America's hostile reaction to the increase of POC in the population.

One of the most poignant scenes of what could have been, arises near the end when Woody is driving through the town saying goodbye.  He passes by Peg Nagy, (Angela Mcewen), the woman he dated before he met the woman he'd spend the rest of his life with, and the expression on her face at his leaving was one of tender longing and contemplation for that imaginary life of love they could have had.  Made my heart rise in my chest.

There was one scene that I had to ask the writer Bob Nelson about after the gala screening. Towards the beginning of their travels to Nebraska, David and Woody pass by a double locomotive with the engines coupled in opposing directions.  This was such a perfect visual metaphor for the way Woody was at odds with his family, I wondered if Nelson had written it into the script.  He hadn't, and he couldn't tell me whether it had been a deliberately created scene, or just one of opportunistic synchronicity.  I lean towards the latter, but who knows, because there were a lot of visual puns, one which made me chortle aloud, when Woody and David take a leak on the roadside next to an farming irrigation apparatus.

No they aren't peeing here:P

Nebraska is a road trip flick and that style of film always brings to the fore, the issues in the relationships between the folk on the journey.  The strength in Payne's film derives from his understanding of the mysteries of family - how we can fool ourselves into thinking we know and understand our loved ones completely. Especially the roles of family can be barriers that keep us from seeing our family members as wholly unique and complex. We are all many faceted and often present only a slice of ourselves in interactions. With some people we are merely acquaintances, or coworkers, to others life partners, to our parents and our children, we will too often be confined in the dynamic of child or parent.  But really, we are capable of being much more whole in our interactions with all people, not simply presenting an aspect of who they expect us to be.

The movie emphasises the value of love and support for your family, for good or ill, and that can be problematic if that enables selfish or self destructive actions, but honouring the values of acceptance, forgiveness, and above all love, are generally speaking, practices that have the potential to create a better place for everyone.  I think the film overall is more an exploration of problematic values than supportive of the status quo, and it's really such a great flick in terms of the performances that I can't in good faith do anything other than highly recommend it.

Delivery Man

directed by Ken Scott (2013)

I was trepidatious some about going to this, leery that it was going to be awful like all those terrible sitcom like, bumbling man, sexist comedies, Seth Mcfarlane and ilk, like making, so I almost bailed on going, especially since my husband didn't want to see it. I decided to go though, because I was pretty sure it was a remake of Starbuck - a film that got great buzz the year it screened at the VIFF. And yeah, it is a remake and it's even written and directed by the same guy, just transplanted from a Francophone Montreal locale to a more marketable NYC English language setting.

Vince Vaughn is a bumbling man child in this, but he's a doofus with an arc, and yeah it's the usual guy gets serious about shit when he's about to become a parent tale, but this flick adds in the so ripe for hilarity complication of his having to deal with 533 biological children wanting to meet their sperm donor dad, known to them only by the ID "Starbuck".

I liked it. I've always liked Vince Vaughn, even in his asshole roles, since I think he's a cutie-pants sweetheart, but especially that his character in this is a lovable fuckup, is something I can relate to.  I'm really comfortable identifying with the characters who stumble and struggle eh? :P

It's a fun movie with the a sweet message about family values, and doing the right thing. Sure it's got a happy ending, but what's wrong with that? Every movie doesn't have to be all traumatic and dramatic to have some deepness. Yeah, it's a male lens on parenthood too, but I'll overlook its white bread, falsely presented, middle class positioning, in favour of it's over arcing messages on the importance of love, accepting, redemption, and family.

The chubbed up Chris Pratt, is really funny as the best friend lawyer, and I'm pretty sure I saw Patrick Huard, (who played Starbuck in the original), in a small uncredited cameo. And I'd say seek out the original too, if you'd rather hear this story told on a smaller, culturally specific, scale - en Francais.

Ender's Game

written and directed by Gavin Hood (2013)

I read the Orson Scott Card book this movie is based on when I was a teenager, but the only thing I remembered clearly was the arc of the boy becoming a Nietzschean superman soldier, and how he ended up shrugging off that training in the face of his encounters with the supposed enemy bug race.

The movie pays short shrift to that transformative end, and is basically a bunch of Harry Potter kid soldiers in kamikaze training school, who spend most of the flick playing zero g quidditch laser tag.  It's a bombastic pro-military recruitment flick, and its fascist, or would that be speciest?? mentality was way to ugh for me.  I found it specious for sure, and even though the effects are great, it's actually pretty boring.  I liked the portrayals of bullying and social engineering, but the best part for me was seeing all the tough little guys in the movie.  Ben Kingsley has a small role as a Maori with honorific facial tattooing and he looks awesome.



On the way home from the movie, I passed by a launch party for the latest release of Call Of Duty Ghosts.  And it struck me that this is exactly the crowd the movie was made for -  it's bound to appeal to the kids and other folk with childish black and white morality toolsets, who are into playing war games.  It's a natural fit, since I think they buy into the horrible idea of killing being honourable, especially when that murder has been justified through the idea of othering the enemy to be inhuman. Also, through the emphasis on "national defence", which too often is doublespeak for aggressive offense, of course.  Unfortunately, it's a sad truth that a majority of people have been indoctrinated in these terrible beliefs worldwide, and this movie does more to reinforce that mentality than plant the seeds of peace and redress briefly referenced in the coda.

In any case, Orson Scott Card is a raging homophobe so I'm glad he's not getting ANY money from the proceeds of the movie.

Gravity

written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón (2013)

I was born shortly before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, so I grew up steeped in the mystique and glamour of the astronaut. I think every kid of my generation had dreams of being an astronaut, at least until we realized how much talent and work that would entail. This movie is about as close as you can get to the experience of what that would actually be like in terms of the amazing visuals. For sure, it's a gorgeous, spectacular, technical achievement, but I don't know that it's a very accurate portrayal of what those space folk get up to task wise though. In fact I doubt that it is, because it for sure isn't accurate in depicting how I imagine astronauts would behave under the circumstances presented in the flick.

Sandra Bullock commands the most screen time, but she's framed as a doofus in comparison to the mission commander played by George Clooney. It's his last mission and he's channeling his usual charm of the cock of the spacewalk, and has oodles of experience compared to the neophyte startrekker, Bullock. She was recruited to install some kind of medical scanner of her design, that has been repurposed for space use, so she's a genius engineer.  As Clooney says, NASA doesn't waste it's time on uselessness. However she sure doesn't act like she's got any brains in her head for much of the flick. I kept thinking, did she even go to astronaut school? She's mentions that she had 6 months of astronaut training, but whatever for that, because the whole movie she's bumbling her way through one crisis to the next, doing DUMB things. I kept groaning at the way she was written. It was just way too much like misogynistic, WOMAN DRIVER bullshit. Especially since there was no need to have her making stupid mistakes either - the beauty of a space tale, is with the setting being such a hostile environment, things could just HAPPEN without the need for human error.

Bullock's character does have an arc - she's lost a child and since then has been living a very circumscribed life - just working.  Not living to work, or working to live - work is the only thing that keeps her going.  So literally and virtually, she's lost in space. And the way this is resolved I found irksome too, because when she regains her will to live, through a spiritual moment - she gives credit to CLOONEY, for choices she makes on her own. Ok, these are aspects of spirituality that I can get behind - to honour the ineffable and have a sense of awe or transcendence, also a feeling of connection to the people we love who have passed, and it's great too to recognize that we don't do anything on our own, but build on the work of others.  Unfortunately,  I thought that the movie framed these spiritual truths in a very dualistic male/female manner with her being the ignoramus and receiver of edjumacations - the usual humble female role thang eh?  

And there was also the fact that the first guy to die - the red shirt - well he had a brown face. And the bad guys in this could have just been asteroids, or circumstance,  but NO - they're RUSSIANS cluttering up the orbital areas of the earth with their malfunctioning space junk. Too sexist, too white, too Manifestdestiny Pro-American. Still it looked real good, and it's exciting as hell. I think it's going to be especially enjoyable for those not prone to notice its embedded disdain for women.

I just found out about this short film made Alfonso Cuarón's son Jonas - he's also the co-writer of Gravity.

I really liked seeing this mirror perspective to the same scene from Gravity, because in the film, I didn't understand the language of who it was she was talking to when she was undergoing her egoic death. I had assumed he was Chinese, maybe a Laplander. I had an inkling it was somewhere Northern because of the dogs, but that was just guessing. What I did understand was that he was a simple man who had a family. And what's the point of this scene? I think this high tech flick about a women who is not in touch with her needs, contains this portrayal of Native People because the Cuaróns are using them to represent a "natural" life style, where human relations are paramount over ego, and its concerns for achievement.  That's what movie folk tend to use us Indigenous types for anyhow - spiritual shorthand for living in balance with nature. This is something that is a timely and important value, and since it's a concept that is so undervalued in current society, the fact that the NDN's are invisible is actually quite appropriate.

Further thoughts based on a comment I left on  Outlaw Vern's Gravity review :

Spoilers….I had a lot of problems with Gravity and they all related to gender. I really didn’t like how incompetently Bullock was framed in context with Clooney. She was always doing STUPID stuff,  at first being the stumbling, bumbling, screaming, female being rescued and hauled around by Clooney, and then doing her usual flustered lady thang, in reaction to the implacable relentless monster – space. After some thought though, and after seeing the short film Cuaron’s son did – it shows the conversation Bullock has with the guy on Earth from his perspective – I came around to understanding that aspect being a direct result and possible subversion of patriarchal gender values. Yes, the way she was portrayed had too much of the awfulness of gender stereotyping, but she could just as easily have been a male character. I think the choice of casting the role as a woman was deliberate: not because women are incompetent compared to men, but largely because patriarchal values read women as having a higher humanistic capacity BECAUSE of their gender and life giving caregiver roles.  It’s more the norm for women to have feelings, than to repress them, and for them to be vulnerable and grow is also more acceptable. That these aspects of herself were parts she had lost and rejected, set the arc of her character's growth, and framed the moral message of the film - to reify the importance of our connection to others, the earth and the environment. In some ways it might have been more of a push back against gender stereotyping to have a male character transforming this way, but I think having a woman navigate the vacuum of space jockey ego achievement, gave more strength overall to the rejection of the patriarchal systems that puts so much weight on things that have very little to do with the rest of society. True her return could also be read as her failure to get er done up there, and a call out to "get back to the kitchen and make sammiches",  but that's a small mind response, and really what's more important than making sure our kitchen - the earth - is looked after, and each other too.

The Book Thief

directed by Brian Percival (2013)

This was a really well made adaptation of the award winning novel by Markus Zusak. With the great performances and high production values in this WWII coming of age period piece, I wouldn't be surprised if it gets tons of nominations once the award season rolls around.  I enjoyed it while I watched it, and took pleasure in the ways the story was clever with the construction, making note of all its pointed writerly references. What's the title of the rescued banned book read to the Jew hiding in basement? The Invisible Man of course :)  Death as the narrator, voiced by Roger Allam, had some of the most poetic and beautiful lines.  And it's definitely got book loving as its hardcover core value, but its greatest strength is in terms of showing the development of a writerly personality.

The girl, played by Monsier Lazar's Sophie Nélisse, can't read, but she's got a brain and she works hard to learn with the help of her foster father - Geoffrey Rush in one of his sweetest roles ever.  He's not a bastard for a change!  He paints her an alphabet wall in the basement, where she can chalk the words she's learning in one of the best depictions of DIY dictionary use ever.  (The Color Purple and Nettie's homemade post it notes is another good one.) It's the foster mom that's the shrew with the hidden heart of gold that shoulders some of the antagonist work until the real bad guys show up. (Nazis in case you were wondering, duh.) And that stereotypical female role, with Emily Watson wielding the sharp tongue of the witchy wife, paired off with her sadsack husband, that leads me into the area of criticism.
The story is super sentimental with fairly shallow characterisations of most of the supporting roles, and it's trying to be profound, but I didn't buy its using a backdrop of genocide and fascism to dramatise a very personal story.

For starters, I didn't like how it had the mom being all megabitch.  Hohum for positive depictions of female power. But especially the fact that it was another case of whitewashing history is what irked me.

There's a heavy handed metaphorical moment where Mein Kampf gets it's inner pages painted out so the girl can put her words there.

Yes that's such a sweet idea eh?  And of course it's a humanist perspective too - a book of hateful ideology repurposed for creative use - but I also think it's a dangerous one.

It's analogous to the scene where the Nazis are burning the books they see as degenerate - the ideas which the regime figured were dangerous to their ideology.

But you can't and shouldn't try to erase or skew historical truth!  It's such a revisionist view of Nazi Germany too.  Very similar to Life is Beautiful, which I also found offensive in terms of presenting a false view of the reality of the horrors of Italian fascism.  By implication, we're supposed to believe that all those Germans were of the same mind as the protagonists, or that there were sooo many of them with their morals and ethics held hostage by their crazy leaders.  And while there's some truth to that on an individualistic level, for the most part it's a goddamn lie.  And that kind of lie is the most insidious of all, because it allows us to keep on accepting bullshit ideas and excuses for NOT behaving in human ways to one another.  It's the system man!  What can you do against an evil amorphous bureaucracy? Howl at Hitler in the safety of an echo chamber? shrug. The truth is we ARE the system; it's made up of all of us acting in concert in ways that exploit and dehumanize others.  We're all complicit in that we benefit from the suffering and exploitation of many many people.  Just one example: the people who made the technology we're using to read this are, at the very least wage slaves, if not actual slaves!

Yes, there are repressive regimes where it's dangerous to display your opposition, but I prefer stories that showcase the bravery of open resistance.  While I understand the fear that keeps people silent in the face of injustice,  I think it's sad and retro to make heroes of people hiding their beliefs under a bushel because of the hostility of the dominant culture.  Because really,  Silence = Death; the death of the opportunity for a dialectical process that leads to change, and in truth, actual death.  Othering, hatred and genocide didn't end with WWII eh?


The best thing you can take away from this flick is the importance of using your voice to speak out on anything that matters to you.  Just doing that creates space for others to do the same.

The Dirties

directed by Matt Johnson (2013)

Think Columbine but with media savvy film students documenting their process.  That's giving away the story, but the beauty of this found footagey flick, is in how that unwraps. As they say, the devil is in the details, and this flick is devilishly clever in it's construction, but not so much in terms of saying anything new about the bullying and lateral violence that leads up to retaliatory spree killings.

I really enjoyed it though.  It's so very film fannish.  I didn't like how the crazy aspect was addressed, but it was accurate in how that aspect ISN'T addressed in our society too.  Crazy gets short shrift and that's exactly why these kinds of situations happen.  And it's crazy how callous we are in respecting other peoples' needs.  It's distressing to see how violence in so many of our interactions is viewed as normal.  WTF people, why can't we see that the other is our brother?  Our mother? Sister? Father? We're all connected, and when we do things to others that don't honour that fact, it hurt us too.

It's got some good musics too, and style to spare.  I recommend it.

the end credits by Josh Schonblum rock!

Dallas Buyers Club

directed by Jean-Marc Vallée (2013)

This based on a true story flick by the Canadian director of the awesome C.R.A.Z.Y.,  is one of the most entertaining movies I've seen this year.  Dallas Buyers Club is bookended with scenes of Ron Woodroof, as portrayed by a shockingly bone rack thin Matthew McConaughey, rodeo riding massive bulls, and that image so symbolically portrays the tenacious bravery of the man who battles the government, crosses borders , bluffs and bribes his way around international law, and just generally doesn't ever, ever, give up in his pursuit of health.

Ron doesn't take shit from anyone, he's a Texas tough ass scrawny mother fucker,  Rooster Cogburn type, roused up through self interest to battle at the injustices of the parasitical relationship between the FDA and Big Pharma.  The movie is part procedural, and part lionising character study, except Woodroof is an unlikely hero.  He's a homophobic, slutty cowboy; a drug selling, hard drinking, gambling man. Sure he's an ignorant trailer trashy electrician roughneck, but surface first impressions are deceptive.  Don't be so quick to judge because you can never tell how people will respond to crisis, and illness is probably the most common personal crisis around that everyone eventually becomes familiar with, granted they live long enough.

And this guy has an arc too. He has a strong moral and ethical core, but the good ole homophobe gets enlightened around his ignorant prejudice and selfishness.  Suffering can create compassion because it's hard to keep a hate on for people in the same exact situation as yourself.

Jared Leto was awesome, as the gorgeous pre-op transwoman,  Rayon.  She's dressed to the glamourous 9's for much of the film, with fierce style and sass for days.  And she won't tolerate no bullshit when she meets her hospital roommate, Mr Mas Macho, and dishes it right back. She loves Marc Bolan and the glam looks, and so tragically wastes away throughout the film.  Her looks are so important to her identity, and to see her coming to grips with their fading, along with her vitality, was so so heartbreaking to see.

The film pulls no punches in portraying these folk, they're unapologetic hedonists, just they got sick eh? And illness knows no morals - a virus has no agenda.  It's an equal opportunity villain.

Rayon was one of the "lucky" ones,  being among the first of the AIDS patients chosen for a double blind study on the efficacy of AZT, that actually received the drug instead of the placebo given to the control group.  She would have been better off with the sugar pills as AZT had serious side effects - which were suppressed in terms of getting the go ahead for FDA approval for the treatment of AIDS.   And this too is what's messed about drug testing: early days of research for human trials are hell. As Woodroof says when the nature of the study is explained to him, "You're going to give dying people sugar pills?"

Jennifer Garner does a good job as the doctor working inside the medical establishment.  She's privy to the fact that the study patients are NOT doing well on AZT, while the border crossing club patients are faring much better.  "Fuck all y'all!" The doctor echoes Woodruff's dismissal of the medicos,  when she finally bucks the broken system she's been compromising her values to stay within and be the good little doctor just following the orders she knows are immoral.

The AIDS crisis of the 80's was a crucible of fraught circumstances - a disastrous epidemic that snuck up on the populace and was at first ignored because who was it killing?  Folk who challenged the mores of the status quo - the queers and the liberals, the degenerate fucking drug users - fucking being a literal multi use term here.   Of course those with a fundamentalist conservative agenda felt good gloating over god's hand directly intervening in their hateful world view, to strike down and punish the ostensible sinner.  In fact there are conspiracy theorists, who are certain AIDS was deliberately created to eliminate undesirable portions of the population.  That's pretty out there, but in any case the sentiment that this plague was a case of just desserts, was and is very widely held, still.

The biggest problem in the film was not so much AIDS, but rather, how the pharmaceutical industries operate in their pursuit of profits.  The drug companies have an unhealthy relationship with the FDA where the agenda around legitimising some treatments of illness and discrediting others, is entirely suspect due to the incredible amounts of money to be made if a drug gains approval.  The FDA, which is supposed to be an independent body protecting the interests of a populace that has expectations of their health being paramount - that ideal is entirely compromised, when the FDA is made up of former drug company CEOs, with lobby groups and their fat pockets petitioning for laws that favour the companies bottom line interests.  In truth, the FDA function is more lapdog lackey to Big Pharma, and its practical operations are all about restricting access to alternatives to the Big Pharma offerings.  The FDA is the dog in the manger of treatment options barking at the behest of the pill pushers who want to keep their possible markets as far far away as law can mandate, from accessing alternative forms of therapy.

Health is so NOT the primary concern, when you look into the shenanigans the developers of new drugs get up to in search of FDA approval.

Last spring, on a flight back to Van from Montreal,  I sat between two guys who oddly enough ended up being from the same small town in NB, as we discovered in the course of conversation, but I mostly spoke to the one who worked for a Canadian pharmaceutical company.  His specialty was getting contracts for analogue drugs for distribution in Canada.  Mostly this involves tweaking an existing drug so that its patent life and money making window is extended.  It's a fairly complicated legal process, but the most important aspect of our conversation relates to the fact that the profit imperative directly opposes health.  There's a lot of older drugs that may be very effective, but are considered worthless in terms of distributing, because they are longer able to produce the revenue shareholders demand.  He was proud of how his company was continuing to produce some drugs for "orphan diseases", in spite of the fact that they weren't making money off of them, and he explained too how for some of these effective drugs that weren't profitable anymore, they were still viable commodities in terms of dumping them in 3rd World Nations. Probably getting a big tax write off to balance their end of the year bookkeeping too, as it's not cheap disposing of medical waste.  So yeah charity!  And yeah, it's still all about the money eh?

Even more disquieting are the results of a recent sting operation where a bogus cancer study was sent out to a number of peer reviewed scientific journals to test the level of thoroughness in inspecting the veracity of any submission. 70% published the fraudulent study!!!

The game is rigged. Too much authority and power in the hands of too few, and too much money at stake, means peoples' health is sacrificed to the almighty dollar.  Greed is definitely not good in this area, and profit being such an unregulated factor in this industry increases the probability of corruption, and flies in the face of peoples' quest for wellness.

First do no harm is the hippocratic oath, more like hypocritic oath seems like.

In any case it's a good film, and I predict if not Oscar wins for Matt and Jared, at the very least they'll be nominated.

And here's a couple great interviews:  Jean-Marc Vallée talking up Matt and his movie, and McConaughey doing his take on things.

And here's an article about the FDA going after a walnut company because the packaging referenced the omega 3 fats found in the nuts as being beneficial.  Something is nuts there and it sure ain't the walnuts.

VIFF Recap 2012

I got in 7 flicks during the media screenings:

Love In Medina

We Were Children

Little Trips 2 (shorts program)

The D Train

Double Shift

Dunas

Good Karma $1

Home

Never a Shade of Gray

No Where No One

Punched

The Return

Voice Over

Persistence of Vision

The Unlikely Girl

When The Night

Day 1

The first day, I got in Last Friday before my shift, and snatched a section from these 2 documentaries:

Far From Afghanistan

The Flat

After that, went for a Frankenweenie promo

Day 2

Twilight Portrait - great scene where she fucking pierces the hypocrisies of her husband and friends at her birthday party

The Comedy - bleak and hilarious.  kinda deep.

part of Werewolf Boy - sweet and silly

The World Before Her  - feministic!

Day 3

5 movies + 1 short + 1 cartoon = fully entertained. Stellar flicks from around the world: Cuba -Una Noche, HK - McDull: The Pork of Music, Korea - The Blood Seller, Indonesia - Postcards From The Zoo, Spain - As Luck Would Have It, France - Rust and Bone, and New Zealand - Two Little Boys.

 Postcards From The Zoo, dreamy languid, slowwww, the animals were superb, but the footage wasn't as crisp as I thought it would be.  

Una Noche, anti Castro but compelling none the less.  

 McDull: The Pork of Music, sweet and cute and funny, nice message on the importance of music

 The Blood Seller, vampire story that you could see coming

 As Luck Would Have it - funny pointed stick in the face of greed and media fame

 Rust and Bone, I could see this being remade and having a simpler happy ending, not that the ending wasn't happy, just that it was a little too unhollywood happy.

 Two Little Boys, great soundtrack, dude is a sociopath!  It was funny.  He reminded me of Russell Crowe and Brendan Fraser looking, Kenny Powers.

Day 4

The Minister - "Politics is the wound that never heals."

Antiviral - "Celebrity is a consensual hallucination" 

Berberian Sound Stage - "This is not a horror film, it's a Santini film!" 

The Flat - "They want to believe in the one good German." 

Off White Lies - I don't have a good quote from this one, except maybe the sweet scene with the Supertramp song lyrics - give a little bit...but I really enjoyed it. Reminded me of Paper Moon some, and of my father. The father character and my dad were the same kind of affable bullshitter. :)

Day 5

end of Raising Resistance

beginning of Key of Life

First hour or so of Design of Death

Paradise: Love

Day 6

Tabu

first half of Street Dogs of South Central

Nameless Gangster

In Search of Haydn

Bad Weather

Day 7

The Compass is Carried By The Dead Man

Lore

Teen Tales

Zug

Yardbird

No Intoxicants Required

Bad Moon Rising

Cluck

Encounters

Sesame Theory

Skull Punch

Thirst

The Twitch

UFO

Seven Psychopaths - promo

The Hunt

Day 8

Twilight Portrait

metaphorical? woman gets raped and then she's trying to controvert the typical rape revenge plot by having her abruptly abort that process and switching gears to seduce her rapist.  Why does she keep telling him he she loves him?? Is she love in the face of evil?  Essential nurturing womanhood vs brutal male violence?  I thought the Russian cop was hot with his manly gravel voice.  Sexy perpetrator!

Best scene was still the birthday party meltdown

she lays bare the hypocrisies and lies that allow her and her friends to exploit and fuck each other over without too many problems.  

Life and Death (shorts program)

  Unmanned - military drone drama

  Crescendo  no abortion = Ludwig Van Beethoven

Francine

women gets out of jail and becomes a crazy cat lady

she lets people do what they want to her, but she doesn't really connect with them

it's like she can't relate.  It's why she loves animals so much.

Leo does a good job.  Sad story.  Does it treat mental illness with compassion or exploit it?  Not really sure.

Liverpool - missed the beginning and the end, but I enjoyed the plot and romance too.  Sweet funny flick. good soundtrack, esp Liverpool by Renee Martin?

Dom - really great macho manliness.  James Coburn looking Russian gangster goes back to rural homestead for Grandfather's 90 birthday, also to hideout from some hit men.  Things get bloody.  

Angel's Share - whiskey provides a future for a Ken Loach character, a trackie?  Tracksuit wearing thug who wants to turn his life around - his gf is preggars, but there's problems.  I spent most of the movie baffled by the accents, but it was easy enough to follow what was going on.  Missed some jokes though.

Design of Death - watched the beginning for the 3rd time!  Saw the whole thing finally.  I enjoyed it quite a bit.  Weird and visually wonderful.  Reminds me of Visitor Q crossed with the Jeunet Bros. Nie's face totally made me smile when he did, such lovely crinkly eyes!

Somebody Up There Likes Me was the surprise hit of the night.  It's very deadpan humorous, and it silly, but it left me with good feels.  Plus I really liked the soundtrack.  It has a cover of The Car's Double Life, sung by Bob Schneider backed by Quiet Company.  

Day 9

Everybody In Our Family - missed the beginning, but I think that just set up the circumstances of the flick - divorced dad on his way to pick up his daughter for a beach vacation.  It was funny, and it got crazy, but I liked it.  It got ugly and unbelievable too, but I give it license to be unrealistic in order to tell a story.  The actor reminded me of the guy who played The Minister.  Bigger and more virile looking though.

Occupy Love watched about 20 minutes of this.  It's good.  Bolivia has a pluralistic society.  "I want to live well, not better."

Monkey King 3D  - Fun.  I think it was great. But now,  I'd really like to see HIndu gods stories in cartoons.  

Liar's Autobiography - Graham Chapman died when he was 48 of throat cancer, this flick is animated in a variety of styles and was narrated by Chapman, culled from tapes he made a few years before he died.  

Armour - Micheal Haneke does it again.  Great movie about an old couple dealing with the aftermath of an accident.  Dignity is something that can be difficult to maintain as you age.

Ape - a not so great firebug comedian and his low key low rent lifestyle.  Mildly amusing.  I chuckled quite a bit.  The main guy reminds me of the younger brother who cut off his toe in Weeds.

Alternative Anime: The Next Generation

Soldier School - I liked the style - looks like a kid make it sometimes, very naive drawings.  Sorta boring though

Red Colored Bridge - super psychedelic and crazy colourful.  Escheresque at times.

Deep in Reflection - I was bored by this one

Hide and Seek 0 this one was boring too.  Looked nice though

Abbau - a bunch of formulas and such = boring sciencey animations of equations and atoms etc.

The Hunter and The Skeleton - by far my fav. Totally cool style, like a Hindu god's stuff, or Katamari  good story too.  The demon/skeleton was mesmerizing and terrifying too.

Noodle Fish - 2nd love.  Much better use of noodles than just eating them. or making macaroni pictures.

Day 10 

Laurence Anyways - 1/2 hour or so of Laurence coming out as trans at work, and subsequently getting fired.

Grabbers  - holy hella fun!

Consuming Spirits - walked out in part 4 after the mom died.  Reminded me of Twin Peaks.  grotesque animation.

I, Anna - great thriller.  She's guilty of the woman crimes - being old, unmarried and mental.  She kills a kid too.  AND murders, but as one woman commented, she doesn't commit these crimes out of malice, they weren't of her own volition.  Joe noticed that she was distracted with the child when she was asking her ex husband to include her in his weekend with their daughter and granddaughter.  I asked about the music, director said he sent the music to Richard Hawley through a mutual friend and he was sympathetic to the story because his mum had an incident with an odd beau where he'd had to escort the man off the mom's property.  

Late Quartet.  good stuff, kinda white people problems, but still very enjoyable.

end of 237 - fun film theory!!!

Day 11

Camera Shy - end - really funny.  So much better than Ape.

Our Children - end - too sad.  About a woman who kills her kids.  She's struggling with too much responsibility, post partum, 4 little babies and no sympathy.  

Kinshasa Kids - snippet.  Cute kids, lovely musics, crazy poverty

Reality - beginning.  BORING wedding shit.  I couldn't bring myself to watch it.  

Anyday Now - beginning  TRITE!!!  Cummings makes a great drag queen but the dialogue was just so melodramatic bullshit.

Day 12

Leviathan - various parts - very pretty, cinematic artsy shots.  One guy said it's a deconstructed horror film

Museum Hours - various parts -  again pretty, funny, but I missed the beginning so I couldn't follow the dynamics of the narrative aspect.  The observations of the museum guard and the docent were interesting and amusing too.

Shine of Day - didn't see enough to formulate an opinion, looked interesting though - German circus performer!

City Lens, the bits I saw looked cool.

Berberian Sound Studio - the beginning I missed!  I didn't miss much at all, it doesn't establish anything about the main character! It shows the credits for the giallo he's been brought in to work on and moves right on to his observing the watermelon foley work and getting a slice of it shoved in his face.

Come As You Are - missed the beginning to get the Berberian beginning, but I could follow evertyibg.  It was funny. and sweet and even the bit I didn't like, when the two boys were bullying the chubby bus driver, that aspect was addressed and they treated her with dignity after.  Sweet movie!

Day 13

Occupy Love - my fav film of the fest.  Offers hope in desperate times.

Incident in New Baghdad - Wikileaks Collateral Damage short - very well done short on PTSD and how the military uses and exploits soldiers, ultimately sacrificing their mental health.

No Job For  A Woman - doc on women war reporters.  Ernest Hemingway was a fucking douche.  His wife was a correspondent for Collier's and he was pissed that her job kept her away, so he told Collier's he'd write for them.  They could only accredit one writer, so the wife was booted.  She had to take a freighter boat back home, and it took 27 days. or 7 weeks - a long ass time, while Papa too the press plane.  ASSHOLE.  She got hired by another paper and when she got to the hotel, he was shacked up with another woman already.  I skipped out on the end for a loser flick.

Night Across The Street - holy hella pretentious.  Dude is unstuck in time and all the characters are in his mind or some such nonsense.  Absurd magic realism.  I didn't like it, though it was well made and well acted, it just felt so masturbatory and self-satisfied.

We're Not Broke - US company's don't want to pay taxes.  One note documentary, kinda boring.

Facing Animals - first 15 minutes.  SAD and depressing how cruel we are to the animals we eat.

Rebellion - Kanaki?  Uprising in new Caledonia gets put down.  Negotiator is not allowed to do his job because elections mean the politicians, and the army are exploiting the situation for political gain.  Great speech by the leader of the Kanaki? people Alphonse.  It illustrates the principles of neo liberalism, colonialism and injustice.  It's also a great action flick.

Day 14

Come As You Are - beginning I missed

Room 237 Beginning I missed, and the rest again

promo The Sessions

Beyond the Hills - religion and superstition, poverty, queer hatred, mental illness kills a girl in Romania

42

42 (2013) directed by Brian Helgeland

I had to trek all the way out to Richmond to catch this one, but it was worth it.  Baseball season just started this week so it's the perfect time for a baseball flick to come out, and this a good one too.

It's a biopic about Jackie Robinson, played by Chadwick Boseman. 

Spoiler!!!

 In case you didn't know, Jackie Robinson was the first black man to cross the colour barrier and end the segregation of American baseball when he started playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947.

Harrison Ford plays Branch Rickey, the owner of The Brooklyn Dodgers, and he decides he's had enough of the racism in his beloved sport.  He brings in Jackie to try out for the farm team in Montreal and his staff are of course asking him, what the hell, are you out of your mind?  His response is that there are a lot of coloured folk in the bleachers and their money is green. (Incidentally, I liked the use of the word "coloured" in this, it's antiquated and yeah it's no longer an appropriate term, but like Indian for Native Americans it's got an old timey homey quality too.)  Rickey is a business man, and as much as people consider the sport of baseball to be America's national past time, the business end of baseball is all bottom line about the Benjamins.  I guess, show me the money, could be considered America's legit national past time too actually. Rickey figures he can win with black players, and he feels like it's the moral thing to do also.  He's right of course, but is the American public ready to embrace racial integration on the field? Answering that question is where the drama lies eh?

It's a social justice flick that really reminded me of something Spielberg would have made.  It's well done and gave me good feels.  I recommend it.

It comes out on April 12th, but I think the best time to see it would be on the 15th, since that's Jackie Robinson Day, when all the MLB players wear number 42, (the only number retired in the league), to honour Robinson's achievement in smashing the colour barrier.

The Host

The Host (2013) directed by Andrew Niccol

The Host is the most!  If you're a teenage girl that is. It's got a science fiction, post apocalyptic frame work, but it's chock full of naive, romantic idealism, and cute boys (Jeremy Iron's son, Max Irons and Jake Abel) fighting over the main girl.  I appreciated that it has a woman, (Diane Kruger), as the main bad guy, and William Hurt in a supporting rebel leader role.

I didn't expect much, I actually anticipated awfulness since it's based on books written by the same woman who brought us the Twilight series.  This time round Stephanie Meyer created a character I like much more though.  The heroine(s) in this one, played by Saoirse Ronan in a dual role, is much less a victim of circumstance than Bella was in Twilight.  I think Bella got kick ass by the end of the Twilight series, but I since I couldn't bring myself to watch that far or read more than the first novel,  I can't vouch for that fact.

There were identifiable elements of Mormon ideology in the storyline, more in the morals, but nothing too obvious.  Actually the most egregious bit was a self sacrifice moment that I think was supposed to mirror Jesus some.  However, that came across more self indulgent and teenage drama queenie,  since it was a completely unnecessary sacrifice done more for selfish and sad reasons than to save anyone, never mind atone for the sins of the human race.

Perhaps that will resonate for Mormon's though, and the idea of sacrifice in general is universal enough that people can relate, it's just the character's sacrifice was pointless.  Still the book/film were designed for those in the midst of their teenage drama years so I'm betting the flick will play especially well to that crowd. I mean there's a scene where kissing and provoking jealousy is important to the plot!

After the movie, I  overheard an old guy saying it's a soap opera - better acted and with better visuals, but that's all it was.  Yeah, dude!  I guess Invasion of the Boyfriend Snatchers was not for him, but I enjoyed it well enough, in spite of the draggy bits.  It had some good action, scenic desert backdrops, some stellar special effects a here and there, that all added up to some quality imagery.  Mostly though, it's all relationship, all the the time, and that's fine.  That's what's important in life anyhow -  the people we know and love, and how we relate to them.  Teenage drama or not, it's got its priorities straight.

Jack the Giant Slayer

Jack The Giant Slayer (2013) directed by Bryan Singer

I wasn't expecting all that from this one since metacritic only rated it 51, but the effects were good, the 3D put to good use, and the giants were pretty great looking, even if they made me feel like I was watching a video game.

The story was NOT that great though.  Typical hero boringness - boy meets princess and has to rescue her and earn her love through trial and fire.  yadayadayada.  Jack, (Nicholas Hoult who was great in Warm Bodies), Ewan Mcgregor as Elmont, a do gooder knight, and Eleanor Tomlinson as the Princess Isabelle, were all blandness.  As a whole, it was all very fairy tale normal and aside from the vivid scenery and special effects, not spectacular at all.  Serviceable entertainment and not much more. It was such a missed opportunity, because the giants were great,  or rather they had the potential to BE great...but their characterisation was lacking.  They weren't very well developed so they lacked personality and their menace was ultimately wasted.

I thought it was a real shame they didn't delve more into the giant's mythos and world.

For me the best scene and one of the biggest missed opportunities, was when the giants gain their freedom.  It could have been something special,  a Martin Luther King moment of speechifying on freedom, equality, and respect, with the giants and humans coming to an understanding, and living in peace....but naw, this is a hollywood blockbuster wannabe, so all that freedom meant, was the giants were free to make war.


Another moment I got excited and then let down by the plot,  was when the giants got some of those magic beans and the stalks were growing up to the sky...I thought cool! They're going up to the next level!  I did not expect that... are they going to battle God?  Heaven? What is gonna be up there?  But, no, got plunged back to plebian predictable plot lines as the giants clambered down the vines to battle man.


Like I said, the giants even as underwritten as they were, were still the best part.  I liked how the 2nd in command giant Fumm (voiced by Brian Daniels) resembled the 2nd in command to Ewan Mcgregor - the criminally underused Eddie Marsan.

There was a moment when I thought Fumm was going to claim the crown from Fallon, the two headed giant, (voiced by the always awesome Bill Nighy), who had seemingly perished in the moat, but nope, when Fumm said "Get the hooks",  it was to get in the castle, not go crown fishing.  I guess Fumm wasn't ambitious.  Bill Nighy was pretty great in his limited role, did what he could with the material, but like I said, there just wasn't much there for him to work with.

I was surprised how short Ian Mcshane was as the king - he reminded me of the king in Shrek.  Little wee royal man, and the bad guy, Roderick (hammed up by Stanley Tucci) reminded me of Sascha Baron Cohen, probably because yeah, they look a little alike, but mostly because Cohen loves to chew scenery too. Ewen Bremner was pretty over the top too in his sidekick villain role.  He looked like Ichabod Crane to me.

Only worth it in 3D and not at full price.  I saw it on cheap night so I feel like I got my money's worth.