Best Worst Movie
Michael Stephenson was 12 years old when he starred in the inept low-budget horror movie Troll 2. After years of crossing the film off his resume, he was astonished when Troll 2 saw its fortunes rise, becoming a cult anti-classic through midnight screenings and word-of-mouth. Coming to terms with his undignified debut, Stephenson has gathered together most of the film’s cast and crew for interviews in this entertaining documentary that’s less about the “making of” a classic than the impact its notoriety has had on its participants and society at large.
The most amusing interviewee is Claudio Fragasso, the no-nonsense director of Troll 2 who slams the “actor dogs” who disrespect his work. But the real protagonist is George Hardy, an Alabama dentist whose early acting ambitions are rekindled when he finds himself the subject of cheers and adoration at screenings. We only gradually realize that Hardy’s apparent bemusement hides a burning desire for fame and recognition. Best Worst Movie starts as a zippy tribute to a minor cult movie and becomes something deeper: an examination of how one copes with having participated in “the worst movie ever made.”
—Will Sloan
Rating: VVVV
Clubland
Clubland doesn’t really require 44 minutes to get its main points across about Toronto’s Entertainment District: yes, 905ers and Peter Gatien just want to have a good time during their weekend parties. No, Adam Vaughn and condo residents don’t like drunken street brawls or excessive noise. Each faction waxes on and on about the irredeemability of their opposition, and local director Eric Geringas does little to encourage his subjects to consider alternate viewpoints or even a bit of compromise.
Cinematographer Andrew MacDonald, however, gets past Clubland’s divisiveness by skillfully showing us what truly goes down behind the windowless walls at Peter and John or on the penthouse patios at King and Spadina. Some of these moments play to stereotypes a little too well: one clubgoer notes that his counterparts always seem to be either “rich, or ‘fuck you’ rich.” Overall, though, Clubland provides an engaging picture of the Entertainment District that you won’t see in Tourism Toronto brochures.
—Shoshana Wasser
Rating: VVV
Invisible City
In Invisible City, Toronto-born director Hubert Davis portrays the lives of two teens from Regent Park, Mikey and Kendell. The story follows the young men from grade 10 through grade 12, illustrating what life is like in one of Toronto’s most notorious ghettos. Despite each boy’s drive to make something of himself, the efforts of their two encouraging mothers, and committed local community worker Ainsworth Morgan, both boys run into trouble with the police, the legal system, and in school.
The film provides a well-told, voyeuristic narrative about how difficult it is to better oneself when sequestered in such a community. However, for those who haven’t grown up in Toronto and thus aren’t familiar with the Regent Park area, the film will lack context. Without establishing a frame of reference, many of the film’s nuances and themes (including the immigrant experience, ghettoization, and Regent Park’s new mixed-income development project) can easily go unappreciated.
—Alixandra Gould
Rating: VVV
Rembrandt’s J’Accuse
Words not often used when describing the films of British provocateur and misanthrope Peter Greenaway: fun, accessible, and entertaining. A companion piece to Greenaway’s 2007 Rembrandt biography Nightwatching, Rembrandt’s J’Accuse explores 31 “secrets” of Rembrandt’s famous painting The Night Watch. Greenaway postulates that the work contains hidden elements of satire, social commentary, and, most importantly, suggestion of a murder conspiracy among the pictured militia-men.
Far from a dry academic exercise, Greenaway’s film is a lively and passionate work of art analysis, and makes a strong case for the importance of visual literacy when deciphering paintings. As a companion piece to Nightwatching, it deepens and enriches the previous film while also surpassing it with its own playful charm. Plus, this is one of your few chances to see Greenaway decked out in 17th-century garb, so savour it.
—WS
Rating: VVVV
The Reporter
Though it begins with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof’s investigation into the Second Congo War, The Reporter is less about Kristof’s celebrated career than his personal reporting philosophy—Director Eric Daniel Metzgar positions Kristof’s concerns in terms of the dichotomies that face many modern-day journalists. It’s heartening to see that even Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters struggle to find a balance between focusing on issues or individuals, writing objectively or compassionately, and simply stating the facts of a story or trying to make a difference with it.
Metzgar also includes commentary from the American adolescents that accompanied Kristof on his most recent trip to the Congo, but their characters feel largely extraneous to the film. After all, even medical student and Rhodes Scholar Leana Wen becomes hapless and uninteresting when placed in Kristof’s shadow. Reflective documentaries such as The Reporter do require experienced subjects in order to be authoritative. Kristof’s opinions, however, would look no less valid in the absence of his younger foils. —SW
Rating: VVVV
Those Who Remain
Those Who Remain provides a glimpse into the lives of Mexican families affected by immigration to the United States. As fathers, sons, brothers, and husbands decide to leave for the States in search of a better life, their loved ones remain in Mexico and must somehow cope with their absence.
Directors Carlos Hagerman and Juan Carlos Rulfo focus on a handful of families connected to someone who already has or is about to make the life-threatening journey to America. Through emotionally wrenching stories of loss, absence, and worry, one gains poignant insight into the lives of the people who are often forgotten amid the politics of immigration: a wife and mother of three is pained at the thought of saying goodbye to her husband for the third time. Another mother has watched her hair turn gray as her son lives in another land. Finally, a daughter tries to repair her broken relationship with her father after his seven-year sojourn. Those Who Remain is far from lightweight, but braving the subtitles is well worth it.—AG
Rating: VVVV
Tyson
In James Toback’s Tyson, Mike Tyson is frustratingly difficult to pin down. Is he an intellectual? A narcissist? An animal, disciplinarian, poet, criminal, or fool? For 90 minutes, Mike Tyson addresses the camera in a stream-of-consciousness monologue about his life and career that shifts abruptly from sympathetic to appalling, and then back again. The result is a deeply engrossing self-portrait, one of the few documentary profiles that really gets in its subject’s head.
Toback, another showbiz survivor, is the right man for the material. He displays a deep understanding of his subject and allows Tyson to speak for himself without making any apologies, trusting the audience to draw its own conclusions. My own verdict: Tyson is easier to identify with than we may care to admit. Who among us doesn’t have the capacity for both self-reflection and hubris in equal measure? After years of hype as “the world heavyweight champion,” and even more of scorn as an earlobe-chewing has-been, the real revelation of Tyson is simple: warts and all, Mike Tyson is merely human.—WS
Rating: : VVVVV
