By Anne Brodie
Willam Shatner says he’s always been alone, all his life, that women were distractions but not part of the full picture. He says he’s had no real friends but doesn’t want to be alone. Shatner’s part of a large family from four marriages with generations of descendants but still. And he’s pondering death. It feels like a performance, but it’s just Bill talking. As he approaches his 93rd birthday this weekend, Shatner lets it all rip for Alexandre O. Philippe’s documentary William Shatner: You Can Call Me Bill and what a ride it is. Eloquent, long-winded, fascinating, maddening, and hypnotic, Shatner keeps nothing back as he ponders life’s mysteries and life itself. This is an intensely Shakespearean showman, a philosopher, a kid at heart (says he takes care of his inner child), and an old man who faces the end with imaginative freedom and apparent fearlessness. Of course, he deconstructs his favourite characters, especially Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise. He talks about going into space in 2022, being homeless, and his losses openly, nothing is off limits. Call Me Bill is raw, scary, wonderful, naked, fast and hypnotic. The doc is Shatner alone, no one else is interviewed, talking for almost two hours. Who else could do such a thing? I wrangled him for an afternoon in the early nineties. He was a handful but oh, so entertaining. Theatres.
Fawzia Mirza’s The Queen Of My Dreams shines a light on the immigrant experience in Canada. Pakistani / Canadian Azra (Amrit Kaur) breaks the traditional cultural mould as a lesbian, and she’s told she’s a bad Muslim. That’s OK with her. Life in Canada where she was born gives her a different perspective her ultra-conservative family doesn’t understand – or try to. Her mother Mariam (Nimra Bucha) was a Bollywood star who grew up in Pakistan and now she leads what Azra sees as a humdrum life in Toronto. She wonders what Maram’s life was like before, and puts herself in an elaborate and ongoing fantasy Bollywood musical, as both herself and her mother. Mariam’s experiences in 1969, as Azra imagines, are lively, glamorous, and colourful in stark contrast to current her life in Toronto. She travels to Pakistan to bury her father where the contrast between the family’s split lives comes into clear focus. And she recognises how wonderful they are in their unique ways. But the film also suggests the upheaval of people who leave their homelands to live far away and the possibilities they missed and gained. The film glows with colour, music, and imagination, and a lively lead character we are delighted to follow. A promising debut feature by a writer-director with flair. Theatres across Canada.
French Girl in theatres now is a harmless rom-com set in rural Quebec. Zack Braff is Gordon, a sweet-natured eighth-grade teacher in Brooklyn, in love with a chef Sophie ( Evelyne Brochu ). They’re at a crossroads. She’s being headhunted by her former lover Ruby (Vanessa Hudgens) a celebrity TV chef and entrepreneur, who would like her to come to Quebec and as executive chef of Ruby’s 3-Michelin star resto. Gordon’s uncomfortable, believing Ruby, a willful and forthright woman who usually gets her way, wants Sophie back. They travel to Sophie’s family’s sheep farm in rural Quebec, and now he’s extra uncomfortable because the family doesn’t seem to like him much. They’re rooting for her to get back with Ruby. And Ruby, a born manipulator sets the stage to get rid of Gordon, install Sophie, and grow her restaurant and empire. Of course, we’re on Gordon’s side because he’s so likable and cute with his eighth graders and ironically, rural Quebeckers prove to be tougher than this native New Yorker. Plenty of side issues include an unfunny grandmother with dementia, a terse, unreachable father, and siblings with their off-putting quirks. Sophie and Gordon seem to have no real say in the way things go. Despite the downer-esque quality of the script, there are moments of wit and light. And then there’s Hudgens’ Ruby who takes women down in terms of supporting other women.
Netflix‘ handout to its new sci thriller series 3 Body Problem states things better than I could. “The Three-Body Problem (Chinese: 三体; lit. ‘Three-Body’) is a novel by Chinese sci-fi author Liu Cixin, the first in the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy … it portrays a fictional past, present, and future wherein Earth encounters an alien civilization from a nearby system of three sun-like stars orbiting one another, in an example of the three-body problem in orbital mechanics”. What I can tell you is that the Problem is that such patterns wreak atmospheric/time/space havoc for which there is no known solution. It’s 1960s China and the Red Guard is at work forcing the Cultural Revolution. Communist officers are killing people on a stage to warn citizens against westernisation. A man and his wife are among them for promoting the Big Bang Theory, the origins of the universe, and the existence of God. Their daughter watches in horror. A classified military attempt to make contact with aliens in space is a success, and an alien civilization in turn makes hostile contact with the Earth. Cut to present-day Oxford University’s particle accelerator lab where our main characters work. One has just killed herself, the latest in a rash of scientist suicides, 32 in recent weeks. A nuclear research facility in Switzerland shuts down its programs as our multi-national scientists seek a solution to the alien / 3 body problem; they’re swept into chaos via a massive video game. Cut to ancient China where Alan Turing and Isaac Newton create a human computer comprised of thousands of soldiers on a vast plain, a stunning sight. This is a high-octane, multi-level AI adventure, as outrageous and stunning as the plots all interconnected to the tiniest details; so it sweeps and hides, crammed with anxiety-provoking but poetic prose warning of end times “Every civilization ends in chaos. Our planet will be ripped in half!! ” as our guides work race to fix things. Stars Jovan Adepo, John Bradley, Rosalind Chao, Liam Cunningham, Eiza González, Jess Hong, Marlo Kelly, Alex Sharp, Sea Shimooka, Zine Tseng, Saamer Usmani, Benedict Wong, and Jonathan Pryce. Eight episodes are available now, some directed by Toronto’s Jeremy Podeswa who is on a heck of a streak. He’s directed episodes of The New Look, The Handmaid’s Tale, Game of Thrones, True Detective, The Walking Dead, and Boardwalk Empire among many more high-profile series, and is currently working on Blade Runner 2099.
The second season of BritBox’ Time is a worthy follow-up to the first season set inside a men’s prison. It’s the women this time, behind bars, coping, trying to stay safe, and focusing on survival mentally, emotionally and physically. New arrivals to Carlingford Prison Orla (played by Jodie Whittaker), Abi (Tamara Lawrance), and young Kelsey (Bella Ramsey) enter the same day. Orla, an impoverished single mother of three begins her sentence for “stealing electricity”, Abi killed her baby, and Kelsey, a heavily pregnant heroin addict, will serve time for drug possession, set up by her abusive boyfriend. The other inmates are merciless, particularly with Abi for her crime, and it’s not safe for them to leave their cells for fear of brutal initiation. We know they’ve done bad things – electricity aside – but we’re given intimate psychological portraits of their suffering and it’s not pretty. Orla gets herself into a difficult situation that becomes life-altering, out of control, brought on by the trauma of being where she is and subsequent losses. Whittaker’s body movements and manner become edgier, uncertain and we’re frightened for her. Kelsey is sent to a special wing of the prison where mothers can raise their babies if they behave. Her boyfriend shows up with drugs and threats; if she tells the truth he faces ten years. And she is just a child herself. Abi’s situation is the most extreme – she reflects on what happened and we see the horror of it and an impossible situation. Superb performances draw us deeply into these characters and their heartbreaking stories. Time is realistic and well made, and despite all the darkness and extremes, it is watchable, humane and teachable. March 27.
Dick Wolf, the creator of the Law & Order franchise launches a new investigation series Homicide: New York on Netflix. It’s a deep documentary dive into five of New York’s most notorious, historic murder cases as told by the original investigators. It starts with the story of the Carnegie Deli murders on May 10, 2001, when five people were tied with duct tape and shot, resulting in three deaths. The top floor apartment belonged to dealer Jennifer Stahl; she and friends gathered to relax when two men broke in, committed the crimes, and left. The Deli appeals to tourists and locals and is a busy place, but no one saw anything. And it was brash, as a detective says “You can’t shoot five people in New York – they’re gonna find you”. Thanks to a single surveillance camera, they were found, but the case was extraordinarily difficult. The second episode concerns the notorious case of two 15-year-olds who gutted and drowned a stranger in Central Park’s pond following a night of drinking. We see the power structure between the kids, Daphne Abdela was the angry out-of-control adopted daughter of well-to-do parents living in the iconic Majestic Apartments on Central Park W. Christopher Vasquez was a mild-mannered follower who appeared to have stabbed the man multiple times in a jealous rage. Victim Michael McMorrow was in his 40s and much bigger than they were. The case perplexed police who rarely saw evil in children, and the investigation was hobbled by serious obstacles. Wolf’s signature style is in full force here, tough, smart, efficient and elegant. The great takeaway is a veteran detective’s remark right off the top – “You can’t do this job unless you really care”; that law enforcement is as much about quelling citizen fears as investigating crimes. And the level of caring we see in the detectives participating in the series is deeply reassuring.
Mae Martin: Fluid Life Beyond The Binary airing March 28 on CBC’s The Nature Of Things educates us on the whys and wherefores of gender declaration. Martin who identifies as they/them is one of Canada’s most popular standup comedians but she doesn’t find anything funny in living a compromised life, i.e. being given a gender at birth imposed until the end. That isn’t the way things go in nature as we discover here. If six-year-old children know they are not their born gender, it seems a clear signal. Scientists in botany, primatology, animal specialty, and trans school children discuss gender in all its forms and reach the same conclusion – that gender is fluid. The science community has studied gender roles for at least a century and people with lived experience confirm it. The findings are that beings live in flux; many species change sex in their lifetimes depending on environmental, social, and other factors. They include lions, many fish species, birds, hyenas, chimpanzees, and an equally vast array of plants. Martin also suggests a fascinating theory that language created the need to define and make things stay defined, and according to the research that just isn’t the way things go.