MOVIES: New from Wes Anderson, Al Pacino in an exorcism and an atypical shark tale
Ballerina may be the big film this week but not in here. It wasn't previewed where I am and seems to be riding on its connection with the very popular John Wick series. 'From the world of John Wick' has even been added to the official title. He, you might remember, is trying to stop working as a paid assassin. For some reason, the ballerina is trying to become one.
It arrives a year late after a torturous production history, disastrous test screenings, a director change and re-shoots.
Better bets might be two documentaries: Incandescence, about forest wildfires, extremely timely and free to watch on the NFB website and Fairy Creek about a fight to save an old growth forest from logging. After a festival run it's playing in a few theaters.
And there are other films that didn't get previewed but these did:
The Phoenician Scheme: 3 stars
Dangerous Animals: 3 ½
The Ritual: 2 ½
Dan Da Dan: 3
THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME: Both fans and detractor's of Wes Anderson's films get their bias supported here. The writing is nimble. There are ideas on a lot of modern issues flung about. The performers (including many big names) deliver well. But the film is also glib, overly quirky and ultimately without much to say, except how clever it is. That alone can make it involving but don't expect anything of the class of The Grand Budapest Hotel, Fantastic Mr. Fox or The Royal Tenenbaums. Settle for a tale of international business only lightly observed.
Benicio Del Toro plays a hard-charging businessman (with a strange middle-European accent) who is promoting a huge dam project in his home country called Phoenicia. Two matters distract him. There are repeated assassination attempts, we don't know by whom but suspect rivals, maybe political rivals. At the same time he's trying to repair relations with his daughter (Mia Threapleton) who has become a nun and who he names as the heir to his business. Scarlett Johansson plays the woman he may marry and Benedict Cumberbatch plays a less-than-trustworthy relative. More names show up including Michael Cera as a Norwegian entomologist hired as a tutor, Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston as American businessmen and Bill Murray (in a dream sequence) as God. So, there's a lot going on but it doesn't come together, stir much emotion or make a point. Except: how clever it is. (It's been in select theaters and is now country-wide.) 3 out of 5
DANGEROUS ANIMALS: Here's a twist on the serial killer story. Instead of shooting, choking or the usual method, feed them to the sharks. That happens in this Australian thriller as is gradually revealed to us and to a surfer girl (Hassie Harrison) when she's abducted by a sketchy ship operator (Jai Courtney). He's got a fixation on sharks, speaks of their fighting ability and even defends them against the reputation that's become attached to them. But he uses them; hangs his victims on a fish line out over the water and then dunks them under when a shark comes near.
Why? He's a serial killer. Who needs to know more? Well, there is more. He videotapes those shark attacks to watch later on his TV. He's a tourist boat operator who takes people out on the water where he lowers them under in a cage to watch sharks. That's what attracts a couple early in the film and later torments the surfer for the rest of the way.
She's tied up, lectured about the nobility of sharks and, after an escape attempt, suspended and lowered as expected. There's a party boat blaring music nearby but too far away to hear a scream for help. Can she possibly get out of this? The tension, the danger, the fear are stirred up nicely by director Sean Byrne who doesn't soften anything but firms up the thrills to shake your nerves. No apologies; no reaching for art, except to suggest a question: who is really the dangerous animal? (In theaters) 3 ½ out of 5
THE RITUAL: They come regularly but this season's exorcism movie is disappointing. It tries to depict and explain the procedure properly and respectfully and thereby has the effect of making the film bland and tepid. We're used to sturm and drang, ever since 1973 when The Exorcist gave us screaming, spitting up bile and grossly misusing a crucifix. This film gives us name stars, Al Pacino, Dan Stevens, et al and a true story. It happened in Iowa in 1928 and was written up in a pamphlet called 'Begone Satan!' by the two priests who attended based on notes taken by one of them. It's said to be the most documented case of demonic possession in American history. Still though, unconvincing, I'd say.
Dan Stevens plays the new and young parish priest. Al Pacino is the old priest called in because he has done exorcisms before. He ruefully recalls one that he mishandled and is determined that he won't fail again. The two priests soon show they have different ideas.
When a young woman named Emma Schmidt, played by Abigail Cowen, shows signs of possession by an evil spirit and an exorcism is prescribed do they restrain her, i.e. tie her down on the bed? The old priest insists, yes. And is it really demonic possession? The young priest says it could be a psychological affliction (interesting that because the director and co-writer David Midell worked as a therapist for young people with mental health problems before he became a filmmaker). Here he took a restrained approach. The lurid side is missing. (In theaters) 2 ½ out of 5
DAN DA DAN EVIL EYE: I wasn't previously aware of this hugely popular series which started in print as a manga in Japan, led to an anime series on TV and has reached the movie screens two times now. Actually both times were with re-edited material from TV. This film takes the 'evil eye' story line that emerged near the end of season one, adds three episodes from the up-coming season two and gives us in effect an elaborate preview episode. It's so well animated and delivered with such intense and dreamy feeling that you won't mind that. It'll be thrilling to see it on the big screen.
In the series we follow three characters: Momo, a high school girl, her classmate Okarun and her former boyfriend, Jiji. There's a teenage love story behind the supernatural main show. Momo believes in ghosts and not aliens. Okarun believes in aliens but not ghosts. So, of course, they encounter both, first in a hospital where UFOs have been seen and then in a tunnel said to be haunted.
The three try to clear up a mystery about Jiji's parents and go to his family's now empty house which is said to be controlled by some supernatural force. The parents are in hospital because of that force. The real cause involves the powerful Kito family which protects the town from an even more malevolent force. It appears to them as a giant snake and must be appeased by sacrificing a young person. If not, a volcano will erupt and kill all with lava. The evil eye uses Jiji, we're not sure for what. A Mongolian death worm shows up and a ghost too. It's hokum, sure, but there's power in the story telling and beautiful art in the animation. And adult content: a near rape and talk of suicide. But enough sci-fi horror to appease the fans. (In theaters) 3 out of 5
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Winnipeg Free Press
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Winnipeg Free Press
13-06-2025
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Globe and Mail
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- Globe and Mail
Oscar-winning stop-motion filmmaker devoted his life to storytelling
Canadian animator Jacobus (Co) Hoedeman almost didn't make the short film that won him an Oscar at the 1978 Academy Awards ceremony. As a full-time animator at the National Film Board, Mr. Hoedeman needed the approval of a committee of NFB filmmakers before starting work on his 13-minute stop-motion animated film The Sand Castle. According to his 2021 autobiography Frame by Frame: An Animator's Journey, his whimsical story idea initially received only lukewarm support but after much debate 'the project was accepted, and I would happily play with sand for the next year or so.' After filching a supply of sand from a local farm, Mr. Hoedeman built a set at the NFB's Montreal studio and created a cast of sand characters who frolicked on a dune, dancing and shapeshifting before finally banding together to build a castle. His puppets were sculpted from a foam rubber mattress, given internal wire 'skeletons' and then soaked in latex before being coated with sand. He worked on the film full-time for more than a year and faced several setbacks, including a weekend theft of half his puppets and a pungent assault on his film set by a cat that used it as a litter box. In his autobiography he called it 'my perfect film.' His hard work was rewarded with the Oscar for 1977's best animated short film, 25 years after the NFB's previous Academy Award for Norman McLaren's stop-motion documentary short, Neighbours. (Minutes after The Sand Castle's win, the NFB won another Oscar for I'll Find a Way in the live-action short film category.) Mr. Hoedeman, an internationally renowned animator with 32 short films to his credit, died in hospital on May 26 after an eight-year battle with multiple myeloma. He was 84. Jacobus Willem Hoedeman was born on Aug. 1, 1940, in Amsterdam, less than three months after Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands. Like their neighbours, his parents, Anna-Maria (Holtkamp) and Gosen-Jacobus Hoedeman, a tailor, faced five years of brutal military occupation that included constant threat of forced-labour camps, strict curfews, and near starvation during the Hunger Winter (Hongerwinter) of 1944-45. At age four, young Co was in poor health, so he, his twin brother, Ferry, and older brother, Jos, were taken 85 kilometres east by bicycle to live in the countryside with different relatives. Mr. Hoedeman did not return to his family in Amsterdam until the country was liberated by Canadian troops in May 1945. As a youngster in peacetime, Mr. Hoedeman spent long hours with his grandfather and father at their tailor shops, doing simple jobs and playing with scissors and leftover fabrics. Those sewing chores served him well later as he designed puppets and built props. Uninterested in academics, Mr. Hoedeman left school at 15 and entered the film business as a junior animator in the 'trick-film' department of Multifilm, a multi-faceted movie studio that later grew into Cinecentrum. Here he learned stop-motion animation, where still objects were painstakingly moved infinitesimally and filmed a frame at a time; he used the technique in television commercials and movie title sequences, and as special effects in documentaries. Eager to explore his new trade, Mr. Hoedeman devoted his evenings and weekends to film and photography studies that continued through his obligatory two-year stint in the Dutch army where he was posted to a military film unit. But after returning to his old job, he became restless and dreamed of escaping the constraints of commercial work for the sort of experimental animation being produced in Canada by the NFB, whose films he had studied as a student. With his new wife, Dukke van der Werf, and a 35mm-reel of his animated clips, 25-year-old Mr. Hoedeman sailed to Montreal in November, 1965, to apply for a job at the NFB's sprawling, factorylike headquarters. He was hired within a week and eventually settled into the French-language animation department even though he barely spoke French. The newly formed French unit — which used music and sound effects rather than dialogue to better reach large audiences — attracted many immigrant filmmakers including Mr. Hoedeman's Dutch friend Paul Driessen, a cartoonist from Cinecentrum's puppet department. 'The French unit was full of inventive people who used imagery instead of language,' Mr. Driessen says. 'We never sought advice or connection with the English department. The French [animators] wanted to learn to do things their own way ... [we] were separate worlds.' It was a perfect place for Mr. Hoedeman, who developed new skills as he worked with different materials and camera technology. 'Co was one of the top people who went from one technique to another. He could improvise very well and was passionate about learning new things,' his old friend says. By the 1970s, the young couple had three children and after a few years in Hudson, Que., moved in 1974 to a rundown 100-acre farm near Alexandria, Ont., that nudged the Quebec border. Together they raised their son and two daughters, and tended a menagerie that included pigs, two horses and a cow, learning essential farm skills as the need arose. 'The farm was for fun,' recalls youngest daughter Anouk Hoedeman, now 55, who remembers her father as playful and a joker. 'But the chores started at 6 a.m.' She recalls how her father applied the same skill set on the farm as in the animation studio. 'He had patience and an innate ability to figure things out in almost an instinctive way. ... How to run the farm, the tractor, fix the baler.' Chores did not always go smoothly – a fall during a roof-patching job left Mr. Hoedeman with a broken jaw and several missing teeth. Maintaining a rustic back-to-the-land vibe, the family had no television. Movie nights were courtesy of a borrowed NFB 16-mm projector and his family had to visit a neighbour's house to watch the 1978 Academy Awards ceremony. Ms. Hoedeman chuckles at the memory of seeing her father on the small screen wearing a tux. 'I didn't know what the Oscars were and wondered what was going on the next day at school when all the teachers were very excited about it.' During the 1970s, Mr. Hoedeman became fascinated by Inuit culture and travelled to the Arctic several times to research traditional stories, enlisting Indigenous artists and carvers to craft characters for his stop-action films. They worked with soapstone, skins and paper, and often stayed with his family when they travelled south during production of his four northern films. After his Oscar win, invitations poured in from around the world to attend conferences, give workshops and judge international competitions. His travels included Czechoslovakia, China, Japan, the United States, Mexico and Venezuela as well as across Canada, where he taught master classes and worked with novice filmmakers. In 2003, Cinémathèque québécoise presented a retrospective of his films. After divorcing Ms. van der Werf in the 1980s, Mr. Hoedeman moved back to Montreal and later married artist Joyce Ryckman, who joined him as a writer and artistic consultant for most of the films he made after 1989, including his 2011 passion project 55 Socks. The 55 Socks film, set to a gentle poem about the Hongerwinter in the Netherlands, came at the end of a difficult three-year contract with private producers to turn his successful short films about Ludovic the teddy bear into a 26-episode television series. Convinced that Ludovic was losing his charm to crass commercial considerations, Mr. Hoedeman battled with scriptwriters, producers and broadcasters, giving up his director role early in the three-year process. By contrast, 55 Socks allowed him to work with a new media – black silhouettes inspired by a Dutch tradition of shadow play called schimmenspel. Mr. Hoedeman worked with the NFB for half a century, continuing his relationship with the agency as a freelancer and independent producer after being laid off in 2004. He made his final film, The Cardinal, in 2016, fronting all its costs himself. A cancer diagnosis the following year inspired him finally to retire. Chris Robinson, director of the Ottawa International Animation Festival, notes that 'Co's films exemplified his commitment to pushing the boundaries of animation, ... [balancing] themes that resonated with both children and adults, never shying away from complex topics.' 'His works ... invited viewers into seemingly whimsical worlds that, upon closer inspection, offered deep reflections on the human experience.' Mr. Hoedeman leaves his wife, Joyce; former wife, Ms. van der Werf, and their children, Nienke, Nathan and Anouk; stepdaughter, Jessica; five grandchildren, and five of his eight siblings. You can find more obituaries from The Globe and Mail here. To submit a memory about someone we have recently profiled on the Obituaries page, e-mail us at obit@
