The movie studios have really filled up the schedule this week. Don't they know the Olympics are on and the Super Bowl is Sunday? The list is long today and there are several other new films I didn't have time to watch. Notice, though, that many of the Academy Award nominees are in theatres now, including Drive my Car at The Park and most notably Flee. I write about it below, along with these ...
Death on the Nile: 3 stars
Flee: 4½
Parallel Mothers: 3
The Worst Person in the World: 4
Compartment No. 6: 3½
Kimi: 3½
I Want You Back: 2
Blacklight: 2½
DEATH ON THE NILE: Kenneth Branagh made Oscar history this week. No one else has had nominations in seven different categories. Belfast put him up there. Death on the Nile won't add anything. It's colourful, star-studded and engaging, but slows down as it goes, just like the easy sailing of the boat it's set on. It's a wedding cruise, with lavish parties, great scenery and major conflicts held in check among the guests.
Until the bride (Gal Gadot) is found dead. Who killed her? Luckily Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie's “world's greatest detective”, is aboard. Branagh plays him with a little too much reserve (Peter Ustinov was livelier back in 1978), but he gets the job done. He has to check out the suspects, of which there are many — family and friends, romantic rivals, dodgy rich people and some apparently invited merely to take suspicion off the real killer. Could it be the bride's best friend (Emma Mackey) whose boyfriend (Armie Hammer) she took away? Could it be him? He does, in an unintended echo of Hammer's real-life scandal rumours, say, “How naughty of me.” And there's Russell Brand as the bride's ex, Rose Leslie as her maid, plus a godmother, a nurse and an accountant. It's a shock when Poirot finds the answer, but sluggish going to get there. And a curious opening to the film: black and white scenes in the trenches of the First World War, which establish how observant and logical he is and why he grew that moustache. It's a watchable, but mixed, film. (Scotiabank, Marine Gateway and many suburban theatres.) 3 out of 5
FLEE: Many thought it could, so was it still a surprise when this film made Academy Awards history? It was nominated for best international film, best animated feature and best documentary. First time ever for all three and it has to win one of them at least. It is that good, and unusually accurate about refugees, the trauma they carry with them and the alienation they feel because they learn not to trust anyone. Also, their reluctance to tell the details of what they've gone through and what they feel about it. My wife, a former ESL teacher, has met many and confirms that how they're represented in this film is absolutely authentic.
We get the story of one migrant from Afghanistan who was taken by people smugglers to Denmark. Director Jonas Poher Rasmussen convinced him to talk by never showing him in person, only in animation. It's basic but does allow huge scenes to be depicted. Amin in a crowded street, his family escaping after his father went missing, ending up poor in Moscow and then, with the help of smugglers, taken in shipping containers towards Sweden but finding themselves in Estonia and deported back to Russia. They try again and almost capsize in a small boat. One of the harshest scenes is in a snowy forest where a woman dies and the smugglers want to abandon the body and yet demand more money. There are wrenching stories like that, but not much clarity on how the migrants had the money to pay. There's a final scene in New York where Amin, who is gay (which was part of his outsider status all along), is married. He had never told his story before, not even to his friends, he says. It has humanity and loads of drama. (It's at The Rio, Vancity Theatre and in Victoria at the Capitol 6.) 4½ out of 5
PARALLEL MOTHERS: There's an uncharitable view: this lesbian baby-switching melodrama. Or a kinder one: confront the past, long ago or recent, to set things right. They're both true in Pedro Almodóvar's latest, with Penélope Cruz once again as his star. (She won best actress for this at the Venice Film Festival and has an Oscar nomination, too). There's no doubt the film is a soap opera, but it has substance between the lines. You can decide whether they fit together.
Cruz is a photographer who wants to have her grandfather's remains found and properly buried. He was killed during the Franco years. She sleeps with the man working to arrange a search, gets pregnant and finds herself sharing a hospital room with a teenager (Milena Smit), also about to be a single mom. They become friends, and solidarity between women is a strong theme. It's soon tested. The father thinks Cruz's baby doesn't look like him at all and DNA proves it's not hers, either. The babies were switched at the hospital and putting that right proves wrenching. But thoughtful, too. Babies carry the past in their genes, the attributes of their ancestors. Similarly, a nation is the product of its history. Almodóvar equates the two ideas in this brightly coloured, buoyant escapade. The two women become lovers, which seems like a diversion from the main theme. But enjoy the spirit and the debate along the way. (5th Avenue and four others, from Edmonton to Montreal.) 3 out of 5
KIMI: Here's a terrific film to watch at home these days. It's short and to the point about what we're all going through (in two ways), and exciting. Steven Soderbergh, who's been busy during COVID, mulls over our increasing subservience to technology. In the story he wrote with David Koepp, Kimi is like Alexa and Siri, but more advanced. It's not algorithms that monitor her, but real people, including our protagonist, a “voice-stream interpreter” in Seattle played by Zoë Kravitz. She works at home, won't go out because she's agoraphobic, takes her meds and sometimes watches people in the windows in the next building.
She sits at a leading-edge computer and flings requests at Kimi to bring up data, phone calls or recordings. One data stream seems to have the sound of a violent assault, maybe a murder, buried amid electronic noise. She tries to report it, but the company boss isn't interested (“We are not legally obligated.”) and a woman in charge of security (Rita Wilson) is patronizing but unhelpful (“You're a strong brave woman.”). Two thugs show up and chase her as she tries to get to the FBI office, and the mystery becomes a more violent thriller. A nail gun figures in the final scenes. Up until then, it had highlighted warnings about technology. Cellphones are tracked, secure data isn't at all (“We already have your password.”) and how did they get her retinal scan when she hadn't given it? Very modern concerns, well expressed. (CRAVE.) 3½
THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD: That's not really what she is. It's a popular idiom in Denmark that people say when they've messed something up. Like "me bad" or maybe even just "sorry." She's a young woman who is drifting, not sure of what she wants to do or be or, in a recurring conversation, whether she wants to have children. Not unusual for a woman in her 20s, and here depicted with sensitivity, humour and understanding. It's a romantic comedy, too, but devoid of the clichés and very true to real life. It was nominated for an Oscar in the international category this week.
Julie (Renate Reinsve, who won best actress at Cannes for this) wanted to be a doctor, switched to studying psychology and then to photography and now works in a book store. Her story is told in 12 chapters with an epilogue and a prologue. Her drifting nature takes her from one boyfriend (Anders Danielsen Lie) who is anxious to have children to another (Herbert Nordrum) who she meets at a wedding reception she crashes. He's better for her because he doesn't want children. Discussions about cheating crop up along with chapters like "Julie's Narcissistic Circus" and "Oral Sex in the Age of #Me Too." The film is very contemporary, truthful about modern relationships, bittersweet and even fun. Witness the magic mushroom scene. Reinsve is luminous in the role, always smiling but vulnerable. (5th Avenue.) 4 out of 5
COMPARTMENT NO. 6: Here's another film about a young woman in search of herself. It's from Finland and Russia and partially in both languages to depict a story about first impressions that prove wrong. Seidi Haarla plays the unnamed young Finnish woman who takes a train from Moscow to Murmansk in the Arctic to see the ancient stone carvings. She's an aspiring archeologist. She has to share a compartment with an oafish young man (Yuriy Borisov) heading north to work in a mine.
The two don't get along. He's crude; makes sexual comments and she's an intellectual who has a woman as a lover. She feels more and more alone. Her lover becomes curt and off-putting on the phone. She loses her camera with all the photos of her life. The miner is nationalistic and misogynistic and drinks a lot but tries to be friendly. That pays off when they get to the north and she's told she can't get to the petroglyphs at this time of year. The miner shows his true self and finds a way. They play in the snow, climb an old shipwreck and learn to tolerate each other. The film by Juho Kuosmanen, and from a novel by Rosa Liksom, is familiar in its idealism but warm-hearted. (Vancity Theatre.) 3½ out of 5
I WANT YOU BACK: OK, forget about looking for new twists on romantic comedies, just go with this one, clichés and all. It's a pleasant enough time-waster and kind of bland. The story has caustic possibilities, most of which have eluded the writers and the director Jason Orley, but there's mild fun here.
The story: two couples break up and the two who were dumped (Charlie Day and Jenny Slate) meet in a stairwell (they work in the same building) and hatch a plan. They'll sabotage their exes' new relationships and get the original pairs back together. Jenny must seduce a middle-school drama teacher (played by UBC grad Manny Jacinto) and Charlie must "friendship seduce" a personal trainer played by Scott Eastwood. (Note the last name). That involves a lot of gym workouts and back-slapping. Jenny helps stage a school version of Little Shop of Horrors and when cajoled to sing a song, is praised for "an amazingly powerful interpretation." She also proposes a threesome. The film doesn't get raunchy, though, and reveals the subterfuge during a riverboat cruise without saying much at all about modern relationships. (Now on Amazon Prime Video.) 2 out of 5
BLACKLIGHT: Liam Neeson says he's about to stop doing these action thrillers that he's been in since Taken (2008). People won't believe characters as old as he can punch and kick and do it all. He doesn't have to use his muscles all that much in this one. A lot of driving, yes, figuring out and verbally confronting. So it still works, though the story lets him down.
He's an agent working "off the books" for the head of the FBI (Aidan Quinn), getting other agents out of difficult situations. From one, he hears about an internal conspiracy, called "Operation Unity." It may be an attack on progressive politicians (one is killed in an early scene) and because he was blocked from telling a reporter about it, he declares: "I'm not playing by the bureau's rules anymore." Liam's character has doubts, too. "I'm not sure who the good guys are anymore," he says. Interesting that the story and script are by a former U.S. attorney in the Obama administration. So maybe details are authentic, but the actual plot that's uncovered is close to ludicrous. If you can stand that, you'll find this film energetic and peppy. 2½ out of 5
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