The Hangover Part II

Rating: ***

Apparently lightening can strike twice. That’s the way it goes in The Hangover Part II, right down to the film’s opening minutes where Phil (Bradley Cooper) warns Tracy (Sasha Barrese) that a night debauchery went off the tracks and that the wedding party is one man short. This time the wedding is for Stu (Ed Helms), the game board is the Thai city of Bangkok, and the ubiquitous baby is replaced by a smoking monkey in a rhinestoned Rolling Stone denim vest.

Yes, The Hangover sequel unfolds pretty much how you expect it to, although fortunately the writers didn’t make Doug (Justin Bartha) the lost buddy for a second time. Bartha still gets to be part of the show, but not really part of the antics, which is more than can be said for Heather Graham, Stu’s lady love from the first film. Graham seems to have been jettisoned for Jamie Chung (Sucker Punch), if only to make the wedding trip to Thailand go over more plausibly.

But mostly, what works for the first Hangover is held over for part two. Phil, Stu and Alan (Zach Galifianakis) are re-united as the Wolfpack wakes up groggy and in pain in a Bangkok hotel after a night-long binge. Missing is Teddy (Mason Lee, son of Ang) the prodigal brother of Stu’s bride Lauren. Not missing is Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong), for all intents and purposes the villain of part one, and current pen pal of Alan, who it turns out is Alan’s plus one to the wedding. Apparently, meeting girls is hard when you’re a “stay-at-home son.”

The pack sets off to find Teddy, with only a few fragmented memories and a limited number of clues, like Stu’s unfortunate facial tattoo, Teddy’s severed finger, and a date, time and location for a meet written on Alan’s belly in permanent marker. Paul Giamatti pops up briefly as an associate of Mr. Chow’s; he may or may not be holding Teddy as a card till he can get money from Chow. Naturally, it keeps Phil, Stu and Alan’s Oz-like trip through Bangkok going for an extra 45 minutes, as the trio must overcome warnings that they may never get Teddy back. “Bangkok has him now,” people keep telling them, as if “Bangkok” is some kind of mystical force designed to keep outsiders wild, never allowing them to return to their buttoned up, Western lifestyles.

The chemistry between Cooper, Helms and Galifianakis is intact and used well. I enjoyed how director Todd Phillips resisted the urge to beef up the Alan part and expanding it ludicrously, taking advantage of Galifianakis’ breakout status from part one. In fact, Galifianakis’ re-intro was oddly muted. We find him alone, at home, with nothing but the memories (such as they are) and plastered pictures on the wall of the Wolfpack’s wild night in Vegas to sustain him through Phil and Stu’s silence. Galifianakis doesn’t overplay it either. He’s restrained and always stops himself from going to far over the top. Plus we get to go a little deeper into Alan’s dark side.

As for the film’s itself, this reviewer is still unsure what exactly to make of it. On the one hand, as Jimbo once observed, the whole thing smacks of effort. While they don’t go too over the top, Phillips is very calculating in taking some scenes to outrageous new directions; a scene in a Thai strip club is especially revealing, if you get my drift. I don’t remember beginning to end laughs like in the first Hangover, but that might be my memory playing tricks. Basically, if you liked the first movie, there’s really no reason why you wouldn’t enjoy the second.

Hot Docs - Boy Cheerleaders

Rating: ***1/2

The idea of seeing boys on cheerleading squads amongst the girls is hardly new or surprising. At this point, I’m not exactly sure how rare a thing it is to find squads made up entirely of boys. Of course, if boys being cheerleaders was the sole preoccupation of James Newton’s British-made documentary Boy Cheerleaders, it would be a terribly dull affair. What’s interesting is the film’s setting, a council estate in Leeds, and the main characters, a colourful cast of troubled boys, many of whom are being raised by single mothers, and all of whom are finding something challenging and redeeming in the sport of cheerleading.

What’s interesting about the film is not that so many of the boys take it on the chin from their school chums that they’re into cheerleading, or even the fact that they’re working class boys that like to dance while waving pom-poms. What’s interesting is that it seems that cheerleading is one of the only things that can reach them. These boys so often drift into fighting and other forms of acting out, they’re indifferent to authority of any kind, but absolutely live to dance. There’s a great scene where one of the boys is forced to take a time-out from cheerleading after some particularly unruly behaviour. His disappointment, and his penance, eventually allow him back in, but it’s interesting watching him try and deny that he’s really missing something by not being allowed to cheerlead.

The film flows very naturally. It follows Coach Ian Rodley as he tries to galvanize the boys to become the tops in their field, and not just as boy cheerleaders, but for all cheerleaders. There’s a stop on a popular British talk show along the way, and an important audition for one of the boys that could lead to a possible future as a professional dancer. Obviously, the film comes down to the championships and whether or not the boys will rank. Whether they do or do not is superfluous to the fact that you can just lean back and have a good time watching this documentary. It’s like Billy Elliot, but with a bunch of Billys and it’s a documentary. What’s not to love?

Hot Docs - Better This World

Rating: ****

Better this World is a rather disingenuous title. On the one hand, it is about young people trying to make the world a better place, but on the other it’s about how those ideals can be betrayed by a paranoid government, a opportunistic informant, and two young guys from George W. Bush country in Texas who pave their own road to hell with good intentions. Against the background of the madness and protests at the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, MN, David McKay and Bradley Crowder found themselves in a world of trouble, just by following their passion and fighting for what’s right.

The story starts in Texas, where David and Brad meet up in Midland and bond over their shared convictions in social justice and opposition to the war. The meet a charismatic activist named Brandon Darby, who had just come off months of helping survivors of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans keep their homes and rebuild their lives. In the summer of 2008, Darby invited David and Brad to join him in Minneapolis as part of the Republican Welcoming Committee, helping to disrupt the GOP’s activities in the Twin Cities.

What Brad, David, or anyone that was part of their group didn’t realized was that Darby was an FBI informant, who, while helping to organize disruption activities with his group, was actually narcing on them as well. David and Brad were arrested and put on trial in Federal Court. They tried to argue entrapment, and that Darby, while acting as an agent of the government, convinced good people to plan violent acts so that he could report them and have them arrested as terrorists.

Directors Katie Galloway and Kelly Duane de la Vega tell the story in a very straight-forward manner, but with incredible access to family, friends and associates of David and Brad, as well as members of law enforcement that were involved in the case. Everyone tells their story plainly, and what’s interesting is that there is a lot of agreement on the details. Where people disagree is the intent of the investigation. Both David and Brad admit that they probably would have committed to their plan to bomb a jumbotron with Molotov cocktails without being egged on by Darby. But if Darby hadn’t been leading them by the wrists, so to speak, up to that point, would they have taken their activism that far?

Better This World has a lot to say about the legal process, the definition of entrapment, the nature of government obsessed with security and stretching those definitions to near ridiculous degrees. Interestingly, while the convictions of David and Brad seem as strong as ever, Darby has forsaken community organizing for fleeting fame on right-wing radio. Trying to portray himself as a patriot to the very people he was fighting against just a few years ago? I guess the first casualty of war protests, in Darby’s case, is your convictions.

Hot Docs - Highway Gospel

Rating: ***

Skateboarders are well represented at this year’s Hot Docs between the acclaimed Dragonslayer and this effort by co-directors Jaret Belliveau and Craig Jackson. But where as Dragonslayer focuses on a singular subject in a disjointed manner, Highway Gospel focuses on many subjects and the whole thing just seems disjointed. The long board racing scene in B.C. is the stage in this doc, and a colourful cast of characters populate that stage as they race for various levels of legitimacy for their sport.

A lot of the story action is around two important races. Most long board competitions take place along mountain roads and down hill on highways, impromptu races in almost complete disregard for safety and the rules of the road, weaving in and around traffic. Some people like this “fast and furious” method racing, but there is a thirst too to legitimize the sport and get long boarding its proper recognition.

The film talks to a lot of the characters that are part of the scene. Some of them are extreme sports wannabes, some of them are D.I.Y. board creators looking to make faster and more manoeuvrable boards. If there is a star, it’s 52-year-old Claude Regnier, a championship skateboarder who’s still as good as any kid now on the circuit. He suffers from health issues related to his heart, and he’s suffering financial hardships related to an indoor skate park he’s trying to run. Between a rock and a hard place, Regnier works himself ragged for the sport that he loves, while his next race could literally kill him.

Regnier is a wonderful subject, and it’s enough to make you wish that the entire film was built around him. His is a deeply personal story, and one that is completely inspiring; he’s a true iron man because of his endurance and perseverance. It’s just too bad that it’s bogged down with a lot of skaters behaving badly scenes, and a bunch of guys talking about the rebellious, off the grid, be cool lifestyle of skating. The problem is that no one outside Regnier is particularly engaging, and many times the film feels as though it were editing together like someone making a promotional skate video.

Highway Gospel is interesting, but I’m not sure what it’s preaching. Some of the footage captured is amazing, and there’s clearly a passion and an interest translated through the material, but the focus is disorganized and the narrative seems almost non-existent. When the film does find focus, it really engages, but sadly these moments are as plentiful as they should be.

Hot Docs - Dragonslayer

Rating: ****

Although it sounds like an 80s fantasy movie, the documentary Dragonslayer has very little to do with dragons or slaying. At the heart of the film though is a lone hero, always on the move but seemingly lacking in ambition and direction. In California’s Orange County, where the bursting of the housing bubble was created no shortage of abandoned houses with empty pools a perfect ground is created for the opportunistic skater looking for his next challenge. It’s perfect ground for a young man named Josh "Skreech" Sandoval.

Filmed as a kind-of expanded, day-in-the-life-of style film by Tristan Patterson, a friend of Skreech’s making his first movie, Dragonslayer can be a disjointed and unflinching looking at the under-inspired, the under-employed, and the less than passionate. Scratch that, because Skreech is actually very passionate, just about skateboarding, getting high and chilling out with friends. Or in the immortal words of Jeff Spicoli, “All I need are some tasty waves, a cool buzz, and I'm fine.”

To most of the audience, I imagine it’s hard to see yourself in the shoes of Skreech. He has no prospects, a son that he has to help care for, and a semi-pro career as a skater. You could say that he’s couch-surfing, but just as often his accommodations are a tent in someone’s backyard. Why would someone want to live like this? How can they? Is there no greater ambition than just to keep skating and doing as little as possible?

Despite that, there is something admirable about Skreech. As much as you can admire someone for living their life without compromise or apologies, you can admire Skreech. And Patterson’s cameras aren’t flattering; the drug abuse, the living conditions, and the ennui are captured for all their glory, if that’s really the turn of phrase you want to use. It’s not that Skreech is not smart, it’s not that he’s not charismatic, but this is the life he’s chosen, and in a society full of people telling you what to do and who to be, you can’t help but admire the one guy that refuses to conform.

There’s something weird about Dragonslayer in that it follows a protagonist who could generously be called a slacker, there doesn’t seem to be any kind of real motivation or goal, but the movie is still rather hypnotic and engrossing in the telling. What happens now to Skreech? Where is he going? What will he do? Those questions almost seem superfluous in the asking. Dragonslayer captures the moment. The moment comes, and the moment goes, and really, isn’t that all there is?

Thor

***1/2

If there’s a fault to Thor it’s that it feels like two different movies smooshed together into one ying-yang narrative. One of these films is a standard superhero origin story, which is, in fact, part of grander tapestry that will be realized next summer in The Avengers, and the other is a dynamic drama about family and duty and the fate of a kingdom. One of these is very paint by numbers; the other is given a relevant gravitas befitting an epic stage tragedy.

It was an unusual choice to select Kenneth Branagh to direct Thor, who along with Iron Man and Captain America makes up the core trinity of the Avengers super-team. Branagh, known predominately for his screen adaptations of Shakespeare plays like Henry V, Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing, brings these considerable resources to bear in painting the God of Thunder’s life on Asgard, a mythical realm where the Norse gods dwell. Thor (played by Chris Hemsworth) believe he is ready to be king, his father Odin (Anthony Hopkins) is not so sure, and his brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) seems unusually shifty.

But when Thor is banished to Earth for jumping the gun to start a war with the Frost Giants, the family psychodrama takes a backseat to the paint-by-numbers superhero origin, and the not-suitable stuffing of Easter egg references of Marvel movies past and future. Clark Gregg reprises his role as Agent Coulson from the Iron Man movies, and is the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent supervising all the other-worldly stuff afoot in the New Mexico desert. Jeremy Renner appears briefly as Clint Barton, better know to the comic book mafia as The Avengers’ archer in residence, Hawkeye.

Aside from all the superhero drama, Thor encounters a lovely human scientist named Jane (Natalie Portman), her sarcastic sidekick Darcy (Kat Dennings) and their mentor Dr. Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård). This aspect of the film is probably the most underdeveloped in an already loaded script that still clocks in at just over two hours. We’re supposed to believe that in two and a half days Thor falls in love with Jane, discovers the value of mortal existence, and learns the lessons of humility and self-sacrifice that his father sent him to Earth to learn. Possible, I guess, but I don’t feel that the film gives this aspect the proper time to develop naturally.

Of course, technically the film is an achievement all its own. Asgard is beautifully realized thanks to master production designer Bo Welch, a seamless mish-mash of futuristic Cloud City and old school medievalism; they’ve got both horses and temporal portholes. After all, Thor reminds us that Asgard is a place where magic and science are the exact same thing. The effects are outstanding and the worlds that Thor explores beyond our mortal realm blend very well with the real world we know. The film is vivid and colourful and jumps off the screen, but it doesn’t overwhelm the humans in their make-up and costumes.

The cast is very solid. Hemswroth makes a convincing Thor in both physicality and personality. He has a commanding presence, but is able to show some humanity, but I’m not sure that the film tests him as much as it could have. Thor lacks the same kind of personality crutch as say Tony Stark, or a pessimistic you lose when you win fate like Peter Parker. Hiddleston does snivelling well, but I have a feeling that the Loki’s true villain potential has been left to be explored in The Avengers. Hopkins, meanwhile, finds a descent balance between scenery chewing and the hyper-reality of playing an old world god.

The DVD includes some simple features, like the barebones “Road to the Avengers,” which doesn’t tell you anything that you couldn’t have gotten from a movie spoiler site three months ago. A commentary by Branagh offers some interesting insight into the filmmaking process and there are a couple of gems in the deleted scenes, including a warm, brotherly moment between Loki and Thor that I wish had stayed in the film. It might have made Loki’s later machinations much more impacting to see the brothers in a rare friendly moment.

As a film franchise, Thor definitely has potential. It would have been nice had in this first outing the film hadn’t been weighed down with all this Avengers preamble, but in this respect it’s a crutch that Thor shares with Iron Man 2. I will say that I warmed more to Thor in its second viewing. Perhaps the characters were more familiar now, or I was able to appreciate it on its own merits. Still, as superhero movies go, Thor demonstrates above average achievement and dedication. Hopefully when the eventual sequel rolls around, Thor might be able to stand on his own.

Hot Docs - If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front

Rating: ***1/2

The Earth Liberation Front was a proactive organization that cost millions in property damage from several arson incidents across the United States to protest corporate treatment of the environment. In the months before 9/11, calling the ELF a terrorist group, was almost quaint given the fact that in 1,200 incidents there hasn’t been one fatality. Part of that could be luck, but can anyone be that lucky?

That’s one of the many questions asked by co-directors Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman, which follows the government’s prosecution of several members of the ELF, with particular emphasis on the mild-mannered Daniel McGowan. McGowen was a typical middle-class college kid that fell into the environmental movement on a lark. He became disillusioned with the political process and grassroots, non-violent civil action. When his ELF cell set fire to a lumber company under the mistaken belief that they were growing genetically engineered trees, McGowan again reconsidered his involvement with the cause. He moved back to New York from Oregon, but it was too late because the FBI already has his scent.

Curry and Cullman have rare access to both sides: the ELF members and law enforcement. The history of the group and their activism is very well covered, but it’s grounded in the personal story of McGowan and a couple of his fellow activists, and how they’re seemingly stuck in a cycle of disillusionment. There may even be some regret for their actions, although I’m not sure I’d be that presumptuous. There definitely seems to be lamentation about what happened though, and that’s one of the more interesting things about the movie, how this passion, once unrestrained, has turned almost bitter in the long run.

On a political level though, the government and mainstream media bid to label these people “terrorists” is also a bit of a stretch. If any case should help prove how politicized the word “terrorist” has become, it should be the case of the ELF. How can someone be a terrorist is there’s no loss of life? Considering that fine line, the filmmakers ask people on the street their feelings. One woman, after commenting that she was disgusted with the ELF’s actions, admitted that she was an admirer of the Boston Tea Party, an historical, yet still potent form of direct action against a corrupt system.

If a Tree Falls is a fascinating look at one case of whether the definition of terrorist is being stretched beyond its proportions, and whether the government is really the pawn of corporate interests that people like the ELF think it is. At the same time though, the filmmakers seem like they don’t want to take sides. As a result, the film doesn’t have that powerful a voice, and kind of feels like an educational film or news report. The subject matter is very interesting, the film is well made, but I think it could have been more assertive. Still, it can be recommended for tackling subject matter with no easy answers.

Hot Docs - Open Secret

Rating: ***1/2

Open Secret plays like something out of Dickens, or Melrose Place. A gapping family wound is put on display in this documentary, and its then poked and prodded with all the subtlety of a medical school lecture. And all the while I was wondering how filmmaker Steve Lickteig was able to wade through the murky waters of his own past, let alone get the whole thing caught on film, edited, and put on display for audiences worldwide to see.

Lickteig was told as a child that he was adopted. This part is true. His adopted family was large. He had many older brothers and sisters, loving parents, a good home, and a comfortable life in America’s heartland. On the eve of his high school graduation though, Lickteig was told the truth: his adoptive parents were really his grandparents, and his eldest sister Joanie was, in fact, his birth mother. Adding insult to injury, it seemed that this fact was the worst kept secret in town. Only young Steve was in the dark as to his true heritage, and now, with video camera in hand, he tries to get to the bottom as to the reasons why everyone in his life lied straight to his face for so long.

Shot in a simple, straightforward manner with an HD camera and his own perseverance, Lickteig attacks his own past like a 60 Minutes reporter weeding out corruption at the highest levels of corporate America. The film is terribly uncomfortable to watch in places, not to mention brutally honest in a way that would be difficult to achieve for most families when there are no cameras around. From Steve Lickteig’s perspective there are answer he needs, from his family’s perspective there’s a need for a full accounting, and finally letting Steve in on the full secret, especially for the parents who might not be around too much longer, or properly have their faculties, in order to explain themselves.

Open Secret is a fascinating look at family dynamics and the difficulties in coming back to a place of openness after years of obsessive secret keeping. The drama is palpable, and Lickteig’s personal, simple, and in your face approach to dissecting his own life is extreme effective. It’s squeamish, it’s fascinating, and it’s emotional. The Lickteig family should be in a psychology textbook somewhere, but failing that, take this stunning, and emotionally complex documentary, and revel in the somewhat muted in comparison normality of your own life.

Hot Docs - Melissa-mom & Me

Rating: ****

What’s interesting about Melissa-mom & Me is that you don’t know quite what to make of it in those opening minutes. We open with old camcorder film of a woman that calls herself “Jenny” saying that she’s about to begin her last day of work at a Tokyo strip club. Her friend Melissa is there too and they exchange the normal best wishes and goodbyes that two friends share when they’re parting ways. But what’s there to regret about being a confused and lost Israeli girl, high on coke and stripping nightly for Japanese businessmen?

The answer is the people, or more specifically in this case Melissa. Fast-forward years later, and “Jenny”, whose real name is Yael Shachar, lives in Israel, is a successful artist, is married to a good man and is contemplating having children of her own. Still, she can’t get Melissa off her mind after all these years, and wonders what her friend from Tokyo might make of her maternal desires. Before you can say road trip, Yael has her bags packed and she’s off to North Carolina to find her lost friend and kindred spirit.

The film isn’t so much about Yael’s search for her friend as it is about what led two smart, attractive young women, who surely must have had prospect and opportunities, to find themselves halfway around the world, taking their clothes off for money and getting high afterward. Melissa, with brutal honesty, describes some of the things that led her down that path, including a father that was sexually abusive. She had a tougher time getting out of the life than Yael, who says that despite going back to Israel, it took forever to shake the demons that haunted her in Tokyo.

Despite the inner darkness plumbed by these two women, the documentary is surprisingly hopeful. It says that you can be more than the sum of your rotten experiences and can attain some level of comfort and happiness with yourself. There’s a great deal of joy in seeing these women, who shared so much negativity, bring the positive things about their time in Tokyo, their mutual love and friendship, and talk freely and openly about how they came out of the dark. It’s actually quite beautiful.

Director Limor Pinhasov shoots in a very in-your-face style that’s immediate and honest. It’s very complementary to Yael’s own Tokyo footage, which is mostly dark and grainy and filled with a lot of red tint. Held up against Pinhasov’s footage, which is very warm and bright thanks to the North Carolina sun, there’s a nice balance of visuals to suit the thematic balance that’s achieved. Melissa-mom & Me was a very interesting and surprising documentary about how the bonds of friendship can endure the most terrible of circumstances, even thousands of miles away and years later.

Hot Docs - Poster Girl

Rating: ****

There have been a lot of movies made about the disenfranchisement of the typical recruiting poster type of soldier in the U.S. Army in the fallout of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Robynn Murray’s story is not that much different, except she was literally on the poster. The army put her and two of her friends on the cover of their magazine, representing women in combat. But just a year after the photo was taken, Robynn came home injured, with a litany of psychological traumas and a shattered view of herself and her role in Iraq.

But Poster Girl isn’t about government policy (well, kind of), but it is really about how one young woman struggles to put her life back together after having all her perceptions about service collapse under the violent reality of what she saw everyday for a year in Iraq. Robynn struggles to get her veteran’s benefits, as she’s required to jump through red-taped hoops to prove that she is disabled. Robyn’s frustration is palpable and the camera unflinching at capturing the ugly side of suffering post-traumatic stress disorder.

Robynn turns a lot of that frustration into art work. She and other veterans cut up their uniforms and turn them into paper, which is then used to make a variety of pieces like paintings and collages and other media. Robyn creates a mould of her bust, and turns her old army manuals into papier-mâché to make a series of sculptures chronicling her service and recovery. Despite the subject matter, director Sara Nesson finds great positivity in this, the idea that someone can turn their pain around through art, and surely what must be a sense of catharsis turning the tools of war into works of art.

Although its only 32 minutes long, Nesson squeezes almost every once of emotion out of the running time of the film. Scenes where Robyn hits the wall in her room wearing boxing gloves and punching a hole through the drywall is powerful enough for its quiet frustration. But then after looking at the hole in the wall, Robynn starts to break down and cry. It’s a heartbreaking moment, but one that perfectly sums up in visuals the emotional core of the story.

Above all else, one has to admire Robynn Murray for opening herself up to Nesson and her camera, showing all the emotion, all the politics and all the turmoil for what they are. It can be unflattering, it can be almost ugly, but there’s also something beautiful and inspiring in Poster Girl. Like a good anti-war movie, this documentary is about the people. Or in this case the person. Someone burned when the best of intentions didn’t line-up with realities on the ground. Hopefully, by making this film, Robynn Murray has found some piece, but something tells me she’s not there yet.

Hot Docs - Matchmaking Mayor

Rating: ***

In the village of Zemplínske Hámre in Eastern Slovakia, the Mayor there, a former military general, has built new facilities, ensured quality infrastructure, and speaks out publicly about incidents of public drunkenness in his town. Sounds like paradise, right? But if this small-town mayor has one goal he’d like to achieve before leaving office, it’s his vision to see the numerous 30-something singles in his village married off and starting families of their own. What follows is the kind of state interference that would make social libertarians on this side of the Atlantic want to hit a wall.

Erika Hnikova’s film is as much about a mayor taking the unusual step of playing cupid, as it is about the curious case of the people in this small town, many of whom live with their elderly parents, most of whom seem neither interested or encouraged in going out to seek a mate. One of the most interesting scenes in the documentary juxtaposes a night out in Zemplínske Hámre as the men hang out with other men at the pub, and all the ladies hitting the dance floor at the disco.

The climax takes place at a dinner and dance put together by the mayor, who sends his assistant out into the village to personally invite singles to the event. Many of the single villagers are rather insulted by the mayor’s insistence, but on the night in question, many local singles come out, though the men number the women.

Interestingly, it seems that the men have more of an interest in marrying than the women, who when asked about marriage simply say that they are happy and if they really wanted to find a man, they would find one handily. Perhaps this has something to do with the Old World traditionalism of these people, like how the mayor talks about old-fashioned gender roles, like how the women take care of the men, while the men win the bread and do other manly things like home repair. Perhaps, the women just enjoy their independence and genuinely don’t think they need a man in their lives.

I wish that the film had been more about that aspect, less about the cutesy, romantic-comedy-like quality of an ambitious mayor trying to put people together in the bond of holy matrimony, more about the psychology and sociology of the good people of Zemplínske Hámre. To me, the one would have followed the other, but the more esoteric concerns never seemed to be a consideration in the finished film.

Much like the man himself, Matchmaking Mayor is ambitious, but light on the in-depth story details. It’s light and enjoyable, but a little more substance would have made for a more compelling effort on screen.

Hot Docs - Superheroes

Rating: ***

The conceit of the graphic novel and film Kick Ass is the idea that no one before in real life has had the thought of putting on a costume and fight crime as a superhero, and if they did, and they took it seriously, then they would have to be insane. There’s a fine line between genius and inspiration, and the people profiled in Michael Barnett’s documentary Superheroes definitely mark that line as their own.

To anyone that’s ever read a comic or seen a superhero movie, the language and the iconography used by the so-called superheroes featured in Barnett’s doc are all too familiar. From the streets of Orlando, to the borough of Brooklyn, a nationwide fraternity of costumed avengers are striving to make a difference in their towns in the flamboyant and chivalrous traditions of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Joe Shuster and Bob Kane. Real life superheroes are alive and well and patrolling down sidewalks and back alleys in a town near you.

Barnett maintains a difficult tone with his movie. On the one hand, many of these “superheroes” describe terrible, painful and downright abusive backgrounds that spurn them to make the leap to costumed crime fighting. On the other hand, one has to admire these people. In their communities, despite the jeers and despite the looks, they are delivering a kind of hope to people in precious need of some. It’s not all about beating up bank robbers or rescuing orphans from fires. It’s also about giving a helping hand, assisting a drunk man home, giving a man whose foot is run over medical assistance, and handing out needed essentials to homeless people.

But despite their good intentions, it’s hard to deny that some of these people suffer from some kind of mental malady. Mr. Extreme, a California-based hero, gives up his apartment and lives in his van in order to free up more money for the cause, plus this way he can remain mobile lest unscrupulous characters find out where he lives. In Orlando, Master Legend happily takes a break from patrolling to either grab a pint from the bar, or out of the back of his van. It doesn’t do much to brace the confidence in these heroes, but hearing them talk about their personal abuse stories, you’re glad that their emotional turbulence found a rather benign outlet like playing superhero.

The final scene of the documentary takes us to San Diego in July, the setting for the biggest annual gathering of all things geeky and superheroish, the San Diego Comic Con. But a few blocks away from the convention centre where fans dress up as comic book strong men and Hollywood studios preview superhero films, a gathering of so-called real life superheroes are helping San Diego’s homeless. These two things juxtaposed, it becomes really hard trying to figure out just who the crazy people are in this scenario. Who are the real pretenders here, and do these people truly understand the idea of superheroes better than the thousands than honour them as fans? That’s for the audience to decide.