This big piggy tries to skip the market
Okja 1/2 (out of 4) Starring Tilda Swinton, Jake Gyllenhaal, Paul Dano and Ahn Seo-Hyun. Directed by Bong Joon Ho. Opens Wednesday at TIFF Bell Lightbox. 120 minutes. STC Okja is a populist enviro-fable that’s part pet-rescue drama, part mad farce, all Bong Joon Ho. But it’s emphatically not for children.
Fresh from its controversial Cannes premiere, and making a bigscreen stop at TIFF while simultaneously going wide on Netflix, it stars South Korean actress Ahn Seo-Hyun as Mija, a farm girl in the mountains outside Seoul. She befriends a “super pig” named Okja, which was raised under contract to a corporate food giant called the Mirando Corporation.
“Mirando” is Spanish for “admirable,” and the irony is undoubtedly intended by genre-blending writer/ director Bong ( Snowpiercer, The Host).
The company talks a virtuous game of feeding the planet, with Tilda Swinton’s CEO Lucy Mirando as captivated with her corporate message as she is with her public image. But in reality the company is a worldwide network of factory butchers. Mirando wants Okja’s plentiful pork on everybody’s fork.
Although Okja is referred to as a pig, she resembles an elephant with the head of a dog and she’s as loyal to Mija as any canine would be. Mija proves herself to be every bit as steadfast as her pet after Okja is “pignapped” and taken to America by Lucy Mirando and her TV-showman accomplice Dr. Johnny Wilcox, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, with both actors seriously chewing the shrubbery in their portrayals.
Mija sets out on a spirited quest to rescue Okja before the humble beast ends up in Mirando’s factory slaughterhouse, a place Bong reveals with no quarter given for sensitive viewers. Humans don’t get off much better: Mija allies with a group of proanimal activists led by Jay (Paul Dano), a smooth-talking but violenceprone individual who is not above administering beatings to anyone who crosses him, be they friend or foe.
Operating as both affecting rescue drama and screwball farce, Okja has some great chase sequences that really benefit from the big screen.
But it’s certainly no E.T. the ExtraTerrestrial, despite its superficial resemblance to Steven Spielberg’s childhood classic. Okja contains a large amount of profanity and visceral brutality, more than frankly seems necessary even for a film aimed at an adult audience.
Bong has never been one for half measures, but audience members at the June 28 screening can ask the man himself. He’ll be available by Skype for a Q&A session immediately after Okja, which will in turn be followed by the filmmaker’s 2000 feature Barking Dogs Never Bite. Peter Howell This isn’t a film likely to appeal to all tastes, gastronomic or otherwise.
But leave it to filmmaker Ana Lily Amirpour to give us a bold, original and grisly (or perhaps gristly) vision of the near future.
The story opens with the exile of newest Bad Batcher Arlen (Suki Waterhouse). As the (possibly Trumpian) wall closes behind her, Arlen faces a desert wasteland south of Texas and a bleak future. Bleak indeed as she’s soon kidnapped by cannibals who begin to harvest her piece by piece.
After a remarkable escape, Arlen finds her way to Comfort, ruled by a drug pusher named the Dream.
When Arlen inadvertently kidnaps his daughter, an angry cannibal named Miami Man (Jason Momoa) comes in hot pursuit. Nothing turns out quite how you expect it to.
Waterhouse is kick-ass good and Momoa brings smouldering menace while and Keanu Reeves is an aptly oily despot. An unrecognizable Jim Carrey has a small but pivotal role as a desert hermit.
Brace yourself for a dark, nasty and surprisingly enjoyable ride. Bruce DeMara So shy she rarely faces the camera, the humble subject of Errol Morris’ new documentary is refreshingly unpretentious about her portrait photography: “I’m totally not interested in capturing their soul.”
But even though the recently retired Elsa Dorfman, 80, claims to seek only the “surface” with her photos, often shooting with a rare largeformat Polaroid camera, she achieves a natural grace that recalls the unschooled charm of artist of Maud Lewis. The frame radiates joy.
Morris encourages the Cambridge, Mass., photog to reminisce about such famous subjects as musicians Bob Dylan and Jonathan Richman and the late Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, the latter a close friend since before she took up photography as a self-described curious “starer” at the age of 28.
The film’s title refers to her practice of keeping the second-best shots, the others being sold or rendered to Polaroid. Her stories are great, especially the one about Dorfman gatecrashing Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975. It would have been nice to hear more of them. PH More than Alfred Hitchcock completists would find value in this 1927 B&W silent film by the master of suspense, restored in a 2K digital release by Criterion that includes a new score by composer Neil Brand.
Hitchcock’s third feature was the first to truly exhibit the traits he’d become famous for, including mistaken identity ( The Wrong Man, North by Northwest) and sexual obsession ( Vertigo, Marnie). There’s the influence of German Expressionism, too, in the dramatic lighting and camera angles.
The Lodger stars Ivor Novello as a man suspected by his landlady of killing women in foggy London. The murderer has a particular yen for blondes, as did the director, whose penchant for cameo appearances also started here.
Novello reprised his role in the1932 remake-with-sound The Phantom Fiend, directed by Maurice Elvey. Hitchcock declined; he’d already said a lot without bowing to “the talkies.”
Blu-ray and DVD editions differ for plentiful extras, which include essays and interviews, among them Hitchcock chats with fellow filmmakers François Truffaut and Peter Bogdanovich. PH No boring Hollywood redemption here. A generation after Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting shocked and amused with the junkie antics of frenemies Renton (Ewan McGregor), Begbie (Robert Carlyle), Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller) and Spud (Ewen Bremner), the lads are still the same screw-ups.
Cunning catalyst Renton (Ewan McGregor), has been hiding out in Amsterdam after stealing that big bag of cash from his erstwhile chums. Flash man Sick Boy is running a sex blackmailing operation with his new girlfriend/combatant Veronika (Anjela Nedyalkova). Head case Begbie (Robert Carlyle) busting out of prison, where he’s been for the past 20 years. Sad sack Spud (Ewen Bremner) is still on the junk, a habit that, along with suicidal depression, could leave him like the group’s lost pal Tommy (RIP).
Events transpire to bring the lads back together in Edinburgh, although Boyle and returning screenwriter John Hodge, once again adapting the prose of Irvine Welsh ( Trainspotting, Porno), tease out the inevitable reckoning.
Extras include deleted scenes and a director/screenwriter commentary. PH