By Anne Brodie
Universal Language, Canada’s 2025 Best International Academy Award entry, a TIFF hit, is a hoot! A brilliantly whimsical and highly original outrider taking us into a snowbound world of the surreal and bizarre. Director Matthew Rankin and writers Ila Firouzabadi, Pirouz Nemati and Rankin look at Canada with a cooked eye, from the POV of Persian immigrants. Interwoven stories bring together two schoolgirls, a tour guide and a man who’s fed up in the most unexpected, delightful ways as they trudge in different directions through knee-deep snow in Winnipeg. The city doesn’t come off well, blocky, anonymous, prone to blizzards and seemingly inescapable. But maybe it’s better than Montreal described by a character as “the most neutral experience of my life”. An abusive teacher quits his job and sets out for work, as the girls find a 2019 “Riel” bill worth a buck, embedded in ice and begin a frustrating journey to find something to cut the ice. They’re competing with a grown man who ultimately takes it (ok spoiler, you know he will). And a family reunites. Everyday conversation is heightened by the film’s distinctly original dialogue, set pieces and oddities. Prepare for the passing parade, a donkey swaddled in gaudy robes, being led through the blizzard, a walking, lit Christmas tree, a thieving turkey, and tourists hoping to see Winnipeg’s interesting tourist traps. They include Louis Riel’s grave at the convergence of two busy highways, a briefcase left for decades on a city bench, a memorial to the 1953 parking incident at the Centennial Parking Pavilion and fast-food restaurants. Along the way people cry their hearts out; Kleenex is big business. Throughout, the sound of howling winter winds acts as an uncomfortable score. While we shiver we laugh and ponder, awestruck, the leaping imagination of this wonderful piece. In theatres now. In December the Academy shortlist of 15 titles will be selected to move forward, the ceremony takes place in Los Angeles on March 2, 2025.
Andrew Currie’s The Invisibles, a metaphysical fable of love and loss gets under the skin fast. Tim Blake Nelson is Charlie and he’s stuck; his relationship with his wife Hannah (Gretchen Moll) suffers. She’s busy with her job, he can barely drag himself to his and then he’s overlooked for a big promotion (“You have to evolve”). On top of which, they’ve suffered a devastating loss. Charlie begins to fade. Hannah and everyone else sweeps through him, oblivious to his shock and “physical” pain. He’s meant to go to Phoenix for business so Hannah’s ok with him being absent. He isn’t though, he’s right there, she just can’t see or sense him and is alarmed when he doesn’t text her. He’s helpless to explain. Then he meets a group of fellow invisibles living in an abandoned bowling alley who like him have been through trauma. Bruce Greenwood is Carl, the group leader and Jimmy (Bob Ramsay) is its heart and soul. None believe they can return to life, but Charlie’s determined to get home and help them. Heartbreaking, and magical, with shades of Dante’s Inferno, Currie’s crafted a comforting powerful meditation on death and dealing with great perfs by Nelson and Ramsay. In theatres in Toronto and Vancouver Sept. 20. Shot in Hamilton!
Will Ferrell is close friends with Harper Steele, whom he met as Andrew, head writer at Saturday Night Live thirty years ago. Steele wrote some of Ferrell’s best-loved routines and they’ve stayed fast friends. When Andrew comes out as Harper, they decide to go on a cross-country tour of the US together. Steele routinely drove herself on that trip many times but as a woman and trans woman, she feared for her safety. They decided to make a documentary along the way, Will & Harper with the help of documentarian Josh Greenbaum. It would be a celebration of Harper’s new chapter and a bonding experience. Steele noted that she would no longer be an a-hole but a b*tch. A goodbye breakfast with Steele’s daughters was revealing, one describing the transition as gradual, the other saying she’d idolised her father’s “maleness” and a friend says her reaction was sorrow that Harper’d suffered so much before the change. A reunion with co-stars and staff at the Saturday Night Live offices rejuvenated them so they set off, as Kristen Wiig began work on a theme song for them. Their eye-opening journey revealed a kinder America than they’d expected, as people of all stripes leaned in to learn more. They never encountered danger. Steele says she’s learned as a woman, and as a trans person to expect anything so she was ultra-cautious, but the trip seemed to settle her. A nice tribute to a long friendship and acceptance l but I would have liked it to be more varied and balanced. And maybe learn a little about Ferrell. Theatres now and streaming on Netflix Sept 27
Azazel Jacob’s Netflix film His Three Daughters concerns three estranged daughters (Natasha Lyonne, Elizabeth Olsen, and Carrie Coon) who gather to watch over their dying, beloved father Vinny (Jay O. Sanders). Coon’s Katie, the eldest daughter is always angry, and Olsen’s Christina, is her handmaiden. And their stepsister Rachel (Lyonne) is the black sheep who smokes a lot of drugs. She has been caring for their father for a long while, the sisters don’t give her any credit, come into the apartment she shares with Vinny and take over, handing out orders and taking charge and neither had bothered to visit Vinny when he became ill. I was deeply moved, enlightened, intellectually and psychologically stimulated, and glad to have seen it. Jacob created a magical blend of realism and an unexpected, heightened human fantasy co-existing as they naturally do in life. The drama fantasy unfolds beautifully, elegantly, and in a lifelike manner with performances that are rich, outstanding, award-worthy and unforgettable. “Death is absence, everything else is fantasy…”. Close to perfection. Sept. 20
All Happy Families is a challenging, heartwarming and ultimately loving portrait of the Landrys an older family facing issues ranging from job loss, inertia, booze, and buried issues and that unbreakable family bond of love that gets us through the most contentious events. Co-writer and director Haroula Rose has a light touch and subtlety matched by the actors and their fine performances. Josh Radnor leads the cast as Graham, stuck in his brother’s house, unable to move out of a self-made pity pit. Meanwhile, his mother Sue, played with mastery by Becky Ann Baker, retires from her long-term job; during the send-off party a close friend and coworker cop a feel; she flees. She doesn’t tell her husband who prefers to spend his time in the pub. Out of the blue their eldest son, Graham’s brother Will shows up from Los Angeles where he plays a father in a popular sitcom. They band together to fix up a portion of Graham’s house so he can rent it out to a girl – not just any girl – his college crush Dana (Chandra Russell). The close confines and work lead to a series of flashpoints that shake things up – confessions, secrets revealed, tabloid headlines and readjustment. Despite considerable Sturm und Drang, this is a film with a warm heart, an all-seeing eye and deep respect for family. Theatres Sept. 20 and TVOD Oct 18th.
We don’t cover horror here at What She Said, life is hard enough. But I watched what amounted to a horror, the HBO Original documentary Stopping the Steal. It starred the proudly amoral, villainous fraudster and Hannibal Lecter fan Donald J. Trump. The horror ramps up as filmmaker Dan Reed interviews politicians, Trump friends and foes (so many), participants in the Capitol riots of January 6, 2021, journalists, academics, and politicians including former Attorney General William Barr, and elected Republican officials in Arizona and Georgia. We know because we heard the telephone call, shortly after he lost the election to Joe Biden, that he ordered Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find me 11 thousand votes. Gimme a break.” These are things we know. What we don’t know and what is laid out in hard news style chronologically is the ways Trump and his non-official advisors like Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon tried to step over the US Constitution and steal the election. It wasn’t Biden who stole the election; it was a plot put in place by Trump months earlier. He and his cohorts telephoned loyalist common folk to come to the “rally”, he planted seeds of hate against his VP Mike Pence who refused to cooperate. Rioters displayed a noose intended for Pence but he managed to escape via an underground tunnel before the Trumpist hordes broke through looking for him. Reed’s masterclass on the steal is intense viewing loaded with new information and a deep, factual look inside the mind of that man. The horror. Now on HBO and streaming on Max.
FX continues its gripping New York Times Presents documentary series with a new episode Lie to Fly an alarming look behind the scenes into a growing concern plaguing passenger airliners. Joe Emerson, a lifelong plane fanatic and pilot, faced an insoluble, systemic problem that’s more common than we might think. He finally realised his dream of flying planes professionally as a pilot for Alaska Airways out of Seattle. He’d had some mental health challenges, depression and anxiety but did not disclose them when asked. And all pilots are asked if they are being treated for psychological problems. If they answer yes, they cannot fly. If they lie and are caught, they lose their job but if they go untreated, their mental health issues potentially put hundreds of passengers at risk each time they fly. In Emerson’s case, a series of events led him to a dark place. His best friend died suddenly and he was inconsolable. He’d had prior issues and one weekend, on a boys’ trip, he consumed magic mushrooms. He was still feeling the effects days later, wondering if he was alive or dead and in total panic. Then he got on a plane for his shift. He felt boxed in and lunged for the lever to turn off the engines 30k feet up. He was forcibly stopped but sat in an apparent breakdown state until the plane was diverted. Police swarmed the plane, he was handcuffed and charged with 83 counts of attempted murderamong other charges. We know of incidents of mentally ill, suicidal or distressed airline staff steering straight into the ocean or purposely crashing a plane, taking hundreds of lives. The policy of no mental health treatment has become a plague. Emerson’s lawyer, wife, fellow fliers and Emerson himself address the problem and call for more equitable, humane regulations within the airline industry. Yikes. Streaming now.
Nobody Wants This Kristen Bell and Adam Brody go head-to-head as a loudmouth non-believer podcaster and a rabbi in a jam who meet at a party. She’s Joanne, mindlessly dissing the partygoers with her funny friend Ashley with the gravelly voice. Sherry Cola is a hoot as Cupid. She suggests Joanne meet rabbi Noah (Adam Brody); she tells a random guy she’s supposed to meet a man of the cloth. The rabbi says to the podcaster “I’m the rabbi” and that’s how two people with little in common find themselves on the romcom train. They couldn’t be more different but he launches into his dilemma. His ex-girlfriend found a ring in his locked drawer and said “Yes!” before he had the chance to ask why she was going through his locked things and speaking out of turn to his mother. There’s some attraction between unlikely partygoers. They discuss God and his Jewish easygoing nature, her edgy self-confessional nature and his “Torah bad boy vibe”. Meanwhile, Joanne and her sister operate a popular podcast primarily focused on sex and badmouthing people who cry when their grandmothers die. We immediately feel protective of Noah. Joanne’s intrigued and bold and won’t be put off; she finds him at his synagogue after services. Her presence as a Shiksa raises the eyebrows of mothers trying to unload their daughters on him for marriage as he and Joanne make their escape to spend time together. His family stage an intervention against dating a Shiksa, and are horrified by her sex-obsessed podcast. So, what are a rabbi and a podcaster to do? Does no one want this? Netflix – Sept 26