Far Out Isn’t Far Enough: The Tomi Ungerer Story (Brad Bernstein) captures the mischievous wit and fierce intelligence of a subject who’s hard to pin down. Alsatian-born artist Ungerer lived through Nazi rule (childhood drawings chronicled early atrocities), emigrated to Manhattan in the 50s to work in advertising and soon became a beloved children’s book author/illustrator. In the 60s, he designed in-your-face political protest posters that still have a visceral power. After the American literary community shunned him because of erotic works like the ahead-of-its time Fornicon, he moved to Nova Scotia and then to Cork, Ireland. Talking heads include fellow writer/artists Maurice Sendak and Jules Feiffer, but the real treat is the highly articulate and amusing Ungerer himself, whose outsider status gives him a fascinating perspective on social and political changes. Bernstein’s imaginative visual touches enhance rather than detract from the film, a must-see for anyone involved in art and design. Some subtitles. 98 min.
Rating: NNNN (GS)
Opens Aug 30 at Bloor Hot Docs Cinema. See here for times.
How to Make a Book With Steidl (Jörg Adolph, Gereon Wetzel) will be cherished by bibliophiles, art lovers and those who own the Blu-ray of Helvetica. It concerns Gerhard Steidl, the brilliant publisher whose lovingly crafted art books have made his tiny independent publishing house in a small German town world-renowned. Directors Adolph and Wetzel follow the fastidious, dryly humorous Steidl as he visits his clients, who range from art superstars Robert Frank and Ed Ruscha to designer Karl Lagerfeld and Nobel laureate Günter Grass. We learn little about the eccentric man himself, however. A rare moment of comedy comes when one of his pens leaks in his shirt pocket. But watching him go from the beginning of a project to the end with photographer Joel Sternfeld teaches us everything about his aesthetic and philosophy, which, in this digital age, comes across as old-fashioned but refreshing. 90 min.
Rating: NNNN (GS)
Opens Aug 30 at Bloor Hot Docs Cinema. See here for times.
Évocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie (Seth Kramer, Daniel Miller, Jeremy Newberger) shows that chain-smoking motormouth Downey Jr. was being obnoxious and right-wing on TV long before Glenn Beck, Jerry Springer and Fox News. This workmanlike doc takes us through Downey’s (no relation to Robert) rapid rise and spectacular fall, assembling an eclectic crew of talking heads, including (on the right) Pat Buchanan and (on the left) Stanley Crouch, who at one point compares his bullying tactics to Joe McCarthy’s. Coming up the middle is comic Chris Elliott, a fan who later parodied Downey savagely on the Letterman show. The main commenters are a number of producers from Downey’s show, who reveal details about his bizarre behaviour on and off set – including a massive lie he manufactured about being assaulted by skinheads. Interviews with Downey’s daughter and footage of the man in the final stages of cancer fail to humanize him. He was ahead of his time, but is that really something to celebrate? 91 min.
Rating: NNN (GS)
Opens Aug 30 at Carlton Cinema. See here for times.
Getaway (Courtney Solomon) feels like the opposite of the increasingly over-complicated Fast & Furious features. It’s nothing but essential parts, barrelling from one chase sequence to another with no time for distractions. Ethan Hawke stars as Brent Magna, a former race car driver sent speeding around Sofia, Bulgaria, at the behest of the all-seeing villain (Jon Voight) who’s taken his wife hostage. That’s basically the entire story Magna goes where he’s told at high speed, while the entire Sofia police force tries to run him off the road. Director Solomon makes sure the pace never flags and holds our attention with complex multi-camera coverage, and Hawke does just the tiniest bit more acting than necessary for a genre piece. 90 min.
Rating: NNN (NW)
Opens Aug 30 at 401 & Morningside, Carlton Cinema, Coliseum Scarborough, Colossus, Courtney Park 16, Eglinton Town Centre, Queensway, Scotiabank Theatre, SilverCity Fairview, SilverCity Yonge, SilverCity Yorkdale. See here for times.
One Direction: This Is Us (Morgan Spurlock) is a portrait of the manufactured British boy band One Direction that straddles the line between blind endorsement and piss-taking. On a fabricated-for-film camping trip, for example, Louis Tomlinson (or was it Liam Payne?) wonders what would have happened if just one of them hadn’t turned up for his X-Factor audition (where Simon Cowell cleverly plucked them out and grouped them together). His painfully earnest conclusion is that each lad is integral to 1D’s success. Amid concert footage and squeaky-clean behind-the-scenes antics, the only compelling moments involve the boys’ families and a question deserving of its own documentary: Can parents still parent when their children reach a fame and wealth way beyond their own? 90 min.
Rating: NN (Julia LeConte)
Opens Aug 30 at 401 & Morningside, Beach Cinemas, Cineplex Cinemas Empress Walk, Coliseum Mississauga, Coliseum Scarborough, Colossus, Courtney Park 16, Eglinton Town Centre, Grande – Steeles, Queensway, Rainbow Market Square, Rainbow Promenade, Rainbow Woodbine, SilverCity Fairview, SilverCity Yonge, SilverCity Yorkdale, Yonge & Dundas 24. See here for times.
Our Nixon (Penny Lane) taps 400 reels of home movies taken by Richard Nixon’s closest associates – special assistant Dwight Chapin, chief of staff H.R. Haldeman and domestic affairs adviser John Erlichman – during his presidency. Later interviews with the three aides (before Erlichman and Haldeman died) assess events while these movies roll. Unfortunately, not all the material is gold, mainly because the gang couldn’t shoot straight, and there’s a ton of repetition we don’t have to see the White House gardens five times. The White House tapes figure prominently – Nixon’s homophobic rant is especially wild – but I’m not sure why this film mentions neither the Watts and Detroit riots that so powered Nixon’s paranoia nor the 1970 nationwide student strike that followed the Kent State shootings. But it’s great to see current Secretary of State John Kerry as a young Vietnam Veteran Against the War addressing a mammoth peace march in Washington. 84 min.
Rating: NN (SGC)
Opens Aug 30 at Bloor Hot Docs Cinema. See here for times.
National Theatre Live: The Audience Encore is a high-def broadcast of Peter Morgan’s play chronicling Queen Elizabeth II’s (Helen Mirren) private meetings with Britain’s prime ministers over six decades. 180 min.
Opens Sep 1 at Cineplex Cinemas Empress Walk, Coliseum Scarborough, Queensway, Yonge & Dundas 24. See here for times.
