By: Henry J. Fromage –
This week I caught up with some of the more star-studded fare I missed at TIFF, plus documentaries of course.
666. Roofman
Channing Tatum stars as a lovable stickup man who escapes prison and holes up in a Toys R Us while he’s waiting for the heat to dissipate. Based on a surprisingly accurate true story (we see footage of folks he robbed only having nice things to say about how considerate and apologetic he was during this crimes in the credits), it’s a vehicle for Tatum to charm the socks of the audience and single mom Kirsten Dunst and her two teen daughters. Derek Cianfrance doesn’t bring the grit like he usually does, but engineers some heartbreak all the same due to how invested you become in these characters. Two Beers.
667. Good Fortune
This affable comedy sees Aziz Ansari return both behind and in front of the camera, playing a gig economy worker in Los Angeles who can never catch a break. That is until angel tasked with preventing texting and driving accidents decides he wants to try out the “redeem a lost soul” big leagues (played in full beatific idiot mode by Keanu Reeves) and switches his life with the venture capitalist who fired him as his assistant (a smarmy Seth Rogen). That costs him his job when Ansari unsurprisingly has no interest in switching back after a week. “Has money solved all of his problems?” “It seems to have solved most of them”. Amusing more than laugh out loud funny, and oddly wishy-washy about the toll of economic struggle, this feels like it was a few tweaks away from what it was really aspiring to be. Three Beers.
668. Good News
South Korea gets its own Dr. Strangelove in this deeply satirical retelling of the 1970 hijacking of a Japanese passenger plane by a group of Japanese Marxists, who then demand the pilots fly them to North Korea. One doesn’t just fly into a heavily militarized nation cut off from the world unannounced, leaving an opening for a mysterious fixer (Sul Kyung-gu) and the idealistic military air traffic controller he recruits (Hong Kyung) to trick them into landing in South Korea. Full of puffed up bureaucrats from four different countries (both Koreas, Japan, and the U.S.) doing their damndest to fuck it all up in their own selfish ways, this is masterfully deployed dark comedy from Kill Boksoon‘s Byun Sung-hyun. Two Beers.
669. The Alabama Solution
Master documentarians Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman train their cameras on a uniquely dangerous environment cut off from the outside world- Alabama’s state prisons, where less contraband cell phone video than gets out of North Korea emerges, and the circumstances seem as violent, arbitrary, and oppressive. This is a damning portrait of an institution rife with corruption and free of consequences for jailers and enabling politicians alike. Two Beers.
670. My Father the BTK Killer
This Netflix documentary recounts the crimes and capture of the long uncaught BTK Killer Dennis Rader from the perspective of his daughter Kerri Rawson, who only knew the seemingly square normcore dad he appeared to be to so many for so many years. Now she’s coming to terms with what it was to be raised by this man, discover his true nature, and help in any way she can with the victims of his crimes, especially the families of those with missing daughters, sisters, and mothers who seek the closure his admitting to crimes he still likely hasn’t may bring. Two Beers.
671. Tales from the Organ Trade
David Cronenberg narrates this eye-opening documentary about the illicit organ transplant trade- not the horrors stories of being abducted and butchered for them, but the much more mundane horrors of living in places so impoverished that selling a kidney on the black market for a couple thousand dollars seems like the only way out. A documentary that explores all facets of a trade driven by necessity and institution failure on many levels. Two Beers.
672. Emergent City
This documentary on PBS follows the evolution of Brooklyn’s Industry City (really Sunset Park) as its proudly working class residents fight the increasing gentrification surrounding them even as developers salivate at the prospect of rezoning the industrial zone that provides work for them into the kind of yuppie paradise so many other neighborhoods of the borough have turned into. It’s a long, slow, losing fight, but one that shines a light on the challenges facing city-dwellers across the nation. The rents really are too damn high. Two Beers.
