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National Observer

MOVIES: The Weeknd parks his stage name and turns to film acting. Plus two other debuts and a classic

The Cannes Film Festival is on and we'll be getting reviews and more reviews about films that won't be here for quite a while. But we'll get a good indication of what will come. Like Left-Handed Girl for instance made by Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou. They first collaborated 20 years ago but this time he's not the director, she is. Baker won big at the Oscars this year, so I'm looking forward to this film. Tom Cruise's latest Mission Impossible is there too. We'll get it here next week. And there's some progress at Cannes. Seven women directors have films in the main competition this year. That number ties one year and beats all the rest in the festival's 78 year history. And for us this week, these are new ... Hurry Up Tomorrow: 3 stars Final Destination Bloodlines: 3 ½ The Unrestricted War: 2 Killer of Sheep: 4 ½ HURRY UP TOMORROW: The Weeknd, real name Abel Tesfaye, is one of the world's top music stars ($75 million in record sales, Grammy awards, etc.) and now a movie star. For his ardent fans, for sure. For people not familiar with his music or his life story, maybe not so much. This film draws on both. There are songs from a new album and a story of a singer losing his voice, an experience he says he has had. Since he co-wrote the story you have to ask how much else is true. As the character he plays (or is) in the film, he is forced to transform, admit past mistakes in how he treated people, especially a woman who we only hear on the telephone saying he ruined her life. She says he never connected. He does connect with a young fan (Jenna Ortega) after making eye contact in a huge concert performance and meeting her when she sneaks backstage. She may be a symbolic figure only, a figment of his need to reform, but she does lecture him and even ties him to a bed until he changes. She may represent the hold he feels the fans have over him, which his manager (Barry Keoghan) discounts. 'They need you,' he says. 'You make them travel at a different level.' The film mulls over the concerns of an artist with a huge following and may be a personal statement by Testfaye. That makes it more than a vanity project, of which it does bear some signs. With its symbolism and dreamy sequences, the film, directed by Trey Edward Shults, has an art-film look and mood. At times also, a slow pace. Not your usual movie about a popular entertainer. Testfaye, now living in Los Angeles as much as Toronto, is pretty convincing as an actor, but then he's playing himself. Ortega is the life of this film. (In theaters) 3 out of 5 FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES: This is predicted to be the biggest movie this weekend and another hit for Warner Brothers, adding to their other current hits Sinners and The Minecraft Movie. Remarkable that, considering that this is the 6 th entry in this series and that the last one came out 14 years ago. But sudden-death movies are back, this one with a more realistic concept than the common slasher movie. There's not one killer. It's death itself. It arrives suddenly when you're least expecting it. A massive memorial collection of flowers at a street corner in Vancouver attests to that by reminding of one recent tragedy there. Ironically the film was also made in Vancouver and directed by two Americans who now live there: Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein. Bloodlines has a double meaning here: not only the grisly visions of the deaths that happen, like that crushed head late in the film, but also the family connections in the story. They help make this film resonate more than usual; you get to care about some of these people. They include a girl having nightmares and needing to find answers from her grandmother. That's Iris (played by Gabrielle Rose, when old, and Brec Bassinger, when as a young woman she was taken to the grand opening of a restaurant high up a space-needle like tower. She had a premonition about a catastrophe and that helped save lives. Death was cheated and years later was intent on getting her, her relatives and everybody else who survived that night. Cue the fatalities that happen one by one, imaginatively staged, often part of a progression of little events, some, as in the original restaurant catastrophe, triggered by a single penny. They're engaging to watch develop, absurd at times and usually played for laughs. That's a large part of the attraction of these films—for some people. Take that as a content advisory. (In many theaters) 3 ½ out of 5. THE UNRESTRICTED WAR: There are bits of actual history woven into this thriller which says it is fiction inspired by actual events. Remember the Chinese executive arrested by Canada on orders of the US? Or the rumors of Chinese interference in a Winnipeg laboratory? And allegations that China created the COVID-19 virus? They're all, for real or by allusion, in this lengthy thriller directed by Yan Ma in Markham and Hamilton Ontario and partially funded by The Epoch Times the China-hating, Falung Gong praising, newspaper. The film has a loathsome view of the Chinese Communist Party and its agents. Deserved maybe, but we haven't seen it this strong in years. As one character says: 'There is no privacy in China when the government is involved, which is pretty well all the time.' Agents in Beijing burst into the lab of a Canadian virologist (Dylan Bruce) and arrest him and his wife. Leaflets and conversations caught on monitors point to these horrors: Chinese labs had messed up creating a new virus and instead of cremating the animals they tested them on, sold them as food. That's an extreme allegation and was covered up to prevent 'unnecessary panic.' Three officials (played by Uni Park, Russell Yuen and Terry Chen) offer the Canadian a way out of his detention. He's to go to his old lab in Winnipeg and bring back a sample of a new virus created there. 'Why waste a good pandemic, right General?' is a line we hear later. You can speculate on what the film is alleging but its logic escapes me. (In theaters) 2 out of 5 KILLER OF SHEEP: This milestone of American filmmaking is back, finally. It was made in 1975 but has hardly been seen outside of film festivals and the Library of Congress which called it a national treasure and "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". A critics' group put it on its 100 Essential Films list. Now it's been restored to modern 4K standards; the sound too, the music rights paid for several recordings heard on the soundtrack and is in theaters interested in motion picture history. Like the TIFF Lightbox in Toronto, the ByTowne in Ottawa and The Cinematheque in Vancouver. Charles Burnett made it in 16-millimeter as a thesis for a film course. Now it's considered a masterpiece. That's largely because it depicts real life in a poor Black neighborhood in Los Angeles with empathy, understanding and compassion. The 'killer' is Stan who works in an abattoir slaughtering sheep. He hates the work, has done it all his life but has nothing. Two buddies try to recruit him for some unspecified crime and when his wife intercedes one justifies like this: 'That's the way Nature is. An animal has its teeth. Man has his fist.' People around him are presented respectfully. A man says he 'ain't poor'. He donates to the Salvation Army. Boys play in the street, occasionally fight. A couple dance to a record. A man holds a teacup to his cheek because it feels like a woman making love. Details add up to a vibrant portrait of a society that back then wasn't given much attention in the movies. It's still an engaging watch, and with a song list from Paul Robeson to Dinah Washington and Elmore James, to hear. 4 ½ out of 5