FILM / Captain Canada's Movie Rodeo / October 2021 / Gabriel Ricard
Image © Warner Bros. | Malpaso Productions
I should try to be more self-aware, when I insist people try to keep an open mind. It probably doesn’t speak well for me that I must remind myself, again and again, that most things in film are not an all-or-nothing argument. One of the many deep character flaws I possess that I’ve tried to work on is making definitive statements. Looking dumb isn’t fun, but there shouldn’t really be anything particularly shameful about having to change an opinion on something.
Where I seem to go wrong is refusing to admit when two sides of something can be equally true. This doesn’t work for everything, but it does cover topics like English Remakes of international films. Or the idea that you can only choose one type of storytelling going forward. There’s an uptick in gritty or utterly hopeless dystopian future stories right now. Fair enough, but it’s not going to be the only type of movie or show that gets made. Nor should it be.
It’s okay to ask for a balance or admit that you don’t know how you might feel from one moment to the next. Things are pretty grim right now, I’ll grant you, so I get why those stories proliferate. I just also want films which, if only occasionally, suggest a glimmer of hope. No one has to definitively choose one over the other. Including me.
The same applies to English remakes. They aren’t going anywhere. Their very existence can hit my notes of frustration with people with people who refuse to engage them in any way. Many of them don’t really do anything for me, but some do. I can accept the potential of remakes in general, and simultaneously hope that someday maybe we’ll make less of them.
Or that eventually the people who can read subtitles will also take the next step, and actually want to watch and engage with films from different cultures and languages. I can certainly be wrong about something in the confines of this column. After nine years of writing Captain Canada’s Movie Rodeo, I should be used to it. Probably won’t change my mind about being tired of Disney and/or Marvel anytime soon though. I’m on a long sabbatical from most of their particular brand of escapism.
Cry Macho (2021): B-
Image © Warner Bros. | Malpaso Productions
Although not nearly as ambitious as many of his most recent films, 91-year-old Clint Eastwood has still directed a satisfying character study in Cry Macho. The story of an aging horse breeder and rodeo star traveling to Mexico to pick up his friend’s young son (Eduardo Minett, who plays his character with grounded enthusiasm and very charming energy) is pretty straightforward. Some may feel it is too straightforward, to the point of being simplistic.
While I don’t disagree with that, I suppose I do just have smaller expectations with something like this. The fact that Eastwood is directing at all at this point, let alone starring and producing, is impressive enough to at least make this movie interesting.
Where it becomes more than that is in how Eastwood focuses sweetly and without pretension on the relationship between himself and Minett. It creates a space for a pleasing road movie, with some interesting mediations on aging, regret, and even masculinity. Cry Macho is nonetheless fairly lightweight. However, sometimes, there really isn’t anything wrong with that.
Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat (1989): B-
Image © Lionsgate | Vestron Pictures
I really shouldn’t be surprised that this was directed by the same guy who did Waxwork and Waxwork II: Lost in Time. The same strange storytelling tone, as well as the same bizarre sense of humor. Sundown like those films also benefits from an enthusiastic cast, capable of moving in perfect harmony to the many bizarre twists this movie likes to throw around.
Or the fact that sometimes, Sundown will just drop something, change gears, and compel us to feel like we’re watching a completely different movie. The journey from the beginning of this film, when we meet an isolated community of vampires (led by a steadily bemused David Carradine) in the middle of nowhere in Utah, to the film’s freewheeling shootout finale, is a lot. It might be a little too much for some, but this is exactly the kind of fun I suspect a lot of us could use right now.
The Green Knight (2021): A-
Image © A24
The Green Knight is exactly what you would expect from A24 at this point. That alone, if you know the company, will be enough to give you any indication of whether or not this movie will leave up to its promise to be one of the darkest and wildest medieval fantasy movies released in quite some time.
For me, strengthened by performances that understand the various threads of this surreal, sometimes hellish dive into the 14-century poem source material, and how to approach this material in a way that keeps it impressively human, The Green Knight is a marvel. It is one of the most creative fantasy films made for any sort of budget in quite some time.
It stands up to repeat viewings. It exists as a haunting cerebral experience, or just the story of a guy (an absolute powerhouse of a performance by Dev Patel) who goes on the worst adventure ever. However you approach this film, I’m confident you’re not going to be bored.
Auntie Lee’s Meat Pies (1992): B+
Image © Vinegar Syndrome
Karen Black leads a small army of beautiful, sexual, and impressively creative young women in the operation of a meat pie company. Where do those delicious ingredients come from? This deranged, cheerful combination of Steel Magnolias and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with a hefty serving of completely unnecessary-but-nonetheless-delightful nudity thrown in for the sheer hell of it, doesn’t really surprise you with that answer.
However, Auntie Lee’s Meat Pies will definitely surprise you in its bizarre creative choices, softcore porn elements, and genuinely unsettling moments of what I guess is comedy between Pat Morita and the great Michael Berryman.
The film, available from Vinegar Syndrome, proved to be far more interesting than I ever would have guessed. That doesn’t necessarily translate to a good movie but calling this bad shortchanges just how entertaining I found it to be.
Of Time and the City (2008): B-
Image © BFI
The 1950s/’60s Liverpool childhood of filmmaker Terence Davies is explored by the director and writer (among other talents) himself in one of the most compelling documentaries I’ve ever seen. Careering through a variety of different types of footage, including old newsreels and documentary footage, the film is an assault of music, memories, and the visuals of a life that has sped through extraordinary-yet-casual circumstances.
Something about Of Time and the City feels more to me like the actual sensation of life flashing before your eyes than almost anything else I can consider offhand. It is also just a great timepiece, offering a unique glimpse into a long-gone period of modern history. Yet without much else that I can really tell you about this movie, it appeals to me more as an instrument of understanding mortality.
Life is absurd, as well as painful, but it’s all we’ve got, and there’s at least something about this thought which grounds me. Of Time and the City isn’t really meant to be an overly optimistic work, but it at least functions in that way for me.
Gabriel Ricard writes, edits, and occasionally acts. His books Love and Quarters and Bondage Night are available through Moran Press, in addition to A Ludicrous Split (Alien Buddha Press) and Clouds of Hungry Dogs (Kleft Jaw Press). He is also a writer, performer, and producer with Belligerent Prom Queen Productions. He lives on a horrible place called Long Island.