Canadian Film Review: Hard Core Logo (1996)

* * * 1/2
Director: Bruce McDonald
Starring: Hugh Dillon, Callum Keith Rennie

It's a sad truth about the Canadian film industry that, unless you're in Toronto or Quebec, it's incredibly difficult for Canadian viewers to get hold of Canadian films. I don't just mean during their theatrical runs (though it is rare, at least where I live, for a Canadian film to play in any of the local theaters), but on video as well (even before all the video stores started shutting down). In that kind of climate, it's a minor miracle when a Canadian film ends up being as widely seen as Bruce McDonald's Hard Core Logo, which has attained status as a Canadian classic (voted in multiple polls as one of the best Canadian films ever made) and a cult following outside of Canada. It's easy to understand why, too. A mockumentary about the ill-fated reunion of the titular punk band, Hard Core Logo is an incredibly entertaining film and Canadian to its core.

Canadian Film Review: Gunless (2010)

* * *
Director: William Phillips
Starring: Paul Gross

For some reason, Canadian cinema doesn't have much in the way of a tradition of Westerns. Maybe it's because the genre was already out of vogue with audiences by the time Canadian cinema really started to come to prominence, but it's too bad since the genre is such fertile ground for storytelling. William Phillips' Gunless doesn't really make the most of the possibilities of a Canadian western, but in its broad, genteel way, it's a fairly amusing and certainly very watchable western comedy.

So, "once upon a time in the North..." an American gunslinger rides into a small Canadian frontier town, bound and bleeding from his last confrontation. He's The Montana Kid (Paul Gross) and there's a bounty on his head which means that he has no time to lose, a fact which doesn't seem to deter the townspeople from delaying him at every turn. The local doctor, while removing a bullet from him, rips up his pants, which means he's got to wait for them to come back from the local seamstress or ride out in the clothes he's borrowed from one of local Chinese workers. The blacksmith, after taking it upon himself to tend to The Kid's horse, makes the mistake of calling him "common," which means that as far as The Kid is concerned, they've got to shoot it out. Unfortunately the blacksmith doesn't have a gun. Fortunately Jane Taylor (Sienna Guillory), a local widow, does have a gun but it's in need of major repair before it can be used in a duel. Oh, and she wants him to help her build a windmill before she'll let him have the gun.

The longer he stays, the more involved he gets in local life and, of course, the more involved he becomes with Jane. But when the bounty hunters who have been chasing him - lead by Ben Cutler (Callum Keith Rennie) - finally catch up, he rides off into the sunset, only to have to turn around again when the locals refuse to bow down to Cutler and his gang and enter into a stand-off with them.

If I had to describe Gunless in one word, I'd go with "sitcom-y." The overall atmosphere of the film and the way that the characters interact with each other is very much like something you might see in a traditional three camera sitcom. From the fish out of water premise to the broad, easy humor to the wacky supporting cast (following the big climactic scene one of the locals runs onto the scene and has a tantrum over the fact that they had the shoot-out before he got there), it definitely feels more akin to a TV show than a film.

However, in spite of this, I quite enjoyed Gunless. It isn't challenging in any way, but it's a compentently made film and Paul Gross always makes for an engaging and enjoyable lead. Plus, Callum Keith Rennie is great in the relatively small role of Cutler - and it is small; most of the film's 86 minute running time is dedicated to town hijinks rather than the inherently more intense story of hunters and hunted - even if the film wastes Graham Greene in an even smaller, one-joke role as a liaison to the local RCMP. Gunless is nothing deep, but it's a nice, light entertainment nevertheless.

Canadian Film Review: Normal (2007)

* *
Director: Carl Bassai
Starring: Carrie-Anne Moss, Callum Keith Rennie

Carl Bassai’s Normal is your standard issue multiple storylines, all somehow connected, kind of story. Fortunately what it lacks in originality, it makes up for where the performances are concerned. At its heart, the film is about three families paralyzed by a shared grief and how they escape from this stasis to begin the process of moving on. It is sometimes plodding, sometimes beautiful, a real mixed bag of a film.

We’re first introduced to Catherine (Carrie-Anne Moss), still intensely mourning the loss of her 16-year-old son two years previously. In her grief she has isolated herself from her husband and their younger son (Cameron Bright), who is like a magnet for his mother’s barely repressed anger. The house is like a tomb to the lost member’s memory, his room kept exactly as it was the last time he was in it, with the exception that his clothes have been sealed in plastic in order to preserve his scent.

In another part of the neighborhood, Jordie (Kevin Zegers) has just been released from juvenile detention and returns to the home he shares with his psychiatrist father (Michael Riley) and stepmother, Elise (Camille Sullivan). Jordie has always had an uneasy relationship with Elise, whom he treats with open and aggressive hostility, which we come to learn has less to do with the fact that she’s “replaced” his mother and more to do with the fact that he would like to replace his father. They begin an affair which, unsurprisingly, leads only to more unhappiness and more complications, particularly when he reconnects with a girl he used to go to school with.

The final piece of the story puzzle involves Walt (Callum Keith Rennie), a University professor and failed novelist whose marriage is ending and whose brother, Dennis (Tygh Runyan), hasn’t left his apartment in two years. Dennis is autistic and has been afraid of the outside world ever since being involved in a car accident in which Walt, while drunk, was driving. This is the same accident that killed Catherine’s son, who was a passenger in the car Jordie had stolen and was driving.

The screenplay by Travis McDonald takes a long time to get to where it wants to go. So long, in fact, that you almost lose interest in finding out exactly how everyone is connected. Further, with the plot spread out among so many stories, the characters are fairly thin and we never really get to know them beyond the personal tics that make the narrative move forward. Luckily, the acting is good enough to make up for this shortcoming and there are a couple of quite compelling performances here. Rennie, who won the Genie for Best Supporting Actor for this performance, plays Walt as a man sinking under the weight on his own despair, seemingly powerless to help himself. His marriage to a former student is crumbling and he takes up with a current student (Lauren Lee Smith), whose refusal to adhere to the script that he has in mind causes problems. She's put out when he takes her to visit Dennis, uninterested in being included in that part of his life. Later she informs him that they met once before she was his student, just after he'd been acquitted for his role in the accident. This time it's his turn to be put off as she casually congratulates him on having had a great lawyer. Jail time might actually have been preferable, since it may have given him closure and a sense that he's made his amends. As it is, he just walks through life as if he's already dead, unable to find the sense of peace that is granted to the other characters.

Moss makes a similarly strong impression. Catherine is consumed by her grief, overcompensating for the fact that she wasn't very attentive to her son when he was alive by having him define her life from now on. Her marriage is also falling apart, as her husband's anger at having to bear the burden of moving on all by himself comes closer and closer to the surface. Of course, Catherine has anger, too, and lashes out at him for never having cried over their son. In her mind, she's mourning for both of them and so she takes it to extremes. As she comes to realize how damaging it is to suspend her life this way, she takes things to the extreme again by obliterating all those items she had been cherishing and preserving. To Moss' credit, Catherine never seems "crazy," just deeply in pain and she conveys that in a tightly controlled performance, never afraid to let her character he unlikable.

The performances really make the movie but also make you wish that instead of cramming all three narrative threads into one film, each had been given it's own so that the relationships and family dynamics could be explored more deeply. As it is, the film is somewhat clunky and not particularly resonant, the loose ends tied up too fast and too easily. There's nothing about Normal that really makes it stand out from all the other movies like it.

Canadian Film Review: Flower and Garnet (2002)

* * * 1/2
Director: Keith Behrman
Starring: Callum Keith Rennie, Jane McGregor, Colin Roberts

Flower and Garnet is one of those rare movies that has the confidence to move at a slow and thoughtful pace, and the content to back up that choice. It presents us with three troubled and damaged characters – a father, his daughter, and his son – and uses its running time simply to observe them, to examine the wounds they share and the wounds they inflict on each other, and watches them as they struggle to put themselves back together. Nothing about this movie feels false or forced. It’s a great achievement.

The son, Garnet, is born into unfortunate circumstances, as complications from the birth end his mother’s life. The loss of his wife is too much for Ed (Callum Keith Rennie), who can’t deal with the baby and leaves him to be cared for by friends until his daughter, Flower, marches over there and claims responsibility for him herself. The film then flashes forward about six years and we see that little has changed. Ed is still distanced from his son and Flower (now played by Jane McGregor) is still the one taking care of him. Garnet (Colin Robberts) is attached to Flower the way that he would be to his mother but, being a teenager, she often runs hot and cold with him, wanting sometimes to have him near and at others to be left alone. Ed has a girlfriend who might step in to take the mother role with Garnet, if only Ed were willing to admit to his kids that they’re dating. He insists that his kids don’t suspect, though she points out that Flower is more than old enough to understand what’s going on, and Garnet later surprises him by asking him a question that makes it clear that he knows that there's more to the relationship than Ed would like to admit.

Garnet’s question, which is equal parts vague and direct and is, specifically, “does what you do when she spends the night hurt?” is prompted by his growing knowledge of Flower’s sexual life and his feeling that he’s losing her to this other and private life which, indeed, he is. Flower becomes pregnant, which has a profound effect on all of the relationships in the family. Ed wants her to have an abortion, which prompts her to move out and in with his now ex-girlfriend. He doesn’t think she’s ready to raise a child, though she quite correctly points out that the burden of raising Garnet has been largely on her and from an earlier scene we know that Ed can’t even be bothered to get Garnet birthday gifts himself. The baby, for Flower, is a means of escape, of forcing Ed to take responsibility for his son. For his part, Garnet feels an incredible sense of loss which he can’t quite put words to, knowing that he’s losing the person who is, arguably, the most important in his life and also scared about what will happen to her when the baby is born. This fear, of course, runs through all three as each is terrified of the idea that Flower will succumb to the same fate as her mother.

The film is really unflinching in its observation of these three people. Ed, prompted by Flower, finally steps up a bit and actually buys Garnet a birthday present himself, horrifying Flower in the process because he buys a BB gun. For the first time, Ed bonds with Garnet as he teaches him how to shoot and Garnet, in his emotional confusion, takes this newfound pride Ed has in him and combines it with the vague sense of helplessness and anger he feels from the rift with Flower to use the BB gun to hurt animals, first killing a bird and then shooting a dog. The performance by young Colin Robberts is really astounding, conveying a great deal simply through facial expressions and body language. I expect that as he grows older, assuming he continues to act, that he’ll be a force to be reckoned with as an actor.

I went into this movie not really knowing much about it beyond the synopsis on the back of the DVD cover, and found myself incredibly moved. It seems like most films about families lately rely heavily on quirk, but the characters in this movie are very real and so are their problems. I strongly recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys quiet little character films.

Canadian Film Review: Last Night (1998)

Director: Don McKellar
Starring: Don McKellar, Sandra Oh, Sarah Polley, Callum Keith Rennie

How do you know this is a Canadian film? Well, for one thing, there aren’t any characters running around, trying to defeat the insurmountable threat. For another, look at the scene where Sandra (Oh) goes to the supermarket to pick a bottle of wine. The store is a mess, having already been looted and ransacked but she finds two bottles. She considers both then, deciding on one, puts the other back on the shelf.

Most apocalypse movies are about the threat (the asteroid in Armageddon is far and away more interesting that any of the film’s characters), but this is about how people cope with the knowledge that the threat is imminent and can’t be stopped. The film doesn’t explain to us why the world is going to end – the narrative starts after everyone in the film already knows about it, has panicked over it, and has ultimately begun to make peace with the knowledge. This isn’t a film that explores what the end of the world will be like as much as it explores the things we value as human beings, the traditions and experiences that we wish to hold on to even when we know it’s pointless. A woman makes Christmas dinner for her family, even though it isn’t Christmas, because they’ll never experience it again. A DJ counts down his top 500 songs of all time (“Don’t bother calling in. This time it’s my choice”). A woman runs through the streets, keeping time for anyone who will listen. Craig (Rennie) is going to have as much sex as he can with as many people as he can. Sandra wants to be in love. And Patrick (McKellar) seems to wander from one person’s last night to another.

This is a film full of small, poignant moments. Sandra and Patrick, whom circumstances have essentially stuck together, try to know each other and make whatever relationship they can create matter for whatever time is left. Sandra has spent the day trying to get across town to be with her husband, but as it becomes increasingly apparent that she won’t make it on time, she begins to focus her attention on Patrick. She cautions him to hurry up and make her fall in love with him. To face the end without someone you love, and who loves you, seems tragic. They make the best of it and, when the end does come, they face it kissing each other.

The scenes of the Christmas dinner are the ones that have always stuck with me. Patrick and his sister (Polley) are given as presents the toys they cherished most as children. Later, one character begins to lament on behalf of the children of the world, who are going to miss out on so much. Another replies that she shouldn’t feel bad for the children – they don’t know what they’re missing. It’s the older people, those who know all that is about to be lost and swept away, for whom she should feel sorry.

The film finds a nice balance between drama and comedy, with most of the comedy surrounding the character Craig. Patrick goes to Craig to borrow one of his cars so that Sandra can get across town. Craig refuses because his cars are antique, still clinging apparently to the idea that life goes on even though he’s been engaging in an end of the world marathon of sex. After refusing the car, he offers Patrick a chance to be his gay experience. When Patrick expresses reluctance, Craig tries to reassure him by explaining that he’s already had anal sex so it could come in some other variety. There is sadness in Craig’s scenes, but for the most part they add levity to the film.

To really appreciate this film, you must know that it was made and released as the millennium loomed over our heads. It might seem silly now, but at the time there was a sense of unease about what would happen when the clock struck twelve and ushered in the year 2000. The more extreme end saw people readying bunkers and preparing for nothing short of the complete breakdown of civilized society. Of course, nothing happened. The clock struck, one millennium passed and another began and life went on. The film itself isn’t about the millennium, but it is very much about how we feared it and what we were afraid might happen at midnight. In the film, the clock strikes. “It’s over,” declares the marathon woman and then… fade to light.