BY ANNE BRODIE
Jackie Shane was a Black trans singer from the American South whose remarkable personal and musical legacy is revived in the NFB documentary Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story. She found refuge in Toronto’s Yonge Street club scene that she loved and that loved back; her glamourous image, and easy yet riveting stage presence coupled with That Voice gave her heartstopping style; she was a pioneer and a knockout. Born Jimmy in 1940 in Nashville, his adoptive mother allowed him to be who he was, a boy in dresses with feminine characteristics in their local conservative culture. Producer Elliot Page and directors Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee follow Shane’s pioneering journey from anonymity to sudden, intense fame, to her 40-year disappearance and death in 2019. Because she became a recluse, her nieces who lived down the street from her in Nashville in her final years had no clue who she was, or that they had an Aunt Jackie. On her death, they inherited her complete wardrobe of glamourous outfits, jewelry, and memorabilia and embraced her legacy. Shane started out singing in a traveling circus, then crossed the border to Montreal then Toronto becoming toasts of the towns. She noticed five Greyhound busses one night with Michigan plates parked outside The Saphire(sic) Club, located at Victoria and Adelaide Streets, of her fans. Sadly, only one piece of film exists of her singing live, and one live album, also recorded at the Saphire, and she toured small venues like Newmarket’s Teen Town. Shane told the CBC “The Canadian people have been so good to me. At first, some people were ignorant … They were curious, but when they got to know me and we grew to love one another — I loved them first. We became real lovers. I love Toronto.” It didn’t last and ultimately, she returned to Nashville to care for her parents then retreated. What a story, what a woman, and this brilliantly conceived, beautiful doc with input from those who knew her, pulls the heartstrings in a big way. In select theatres.
Nathan Silver’s Between the Temples is an hilarious meditation on death, mourning, iffy relationships, and our danged families, centred on Cantor Ben; he’s in a jam. His wife has died and he can’t get out of bed, or sing in the synagogue. He flubs a chant and runs away, helpless. Ben, played with sensitivity, wit, and muscle by Jason Schwartzman, is mourning, but has a supportive group around him, particularly the synagogue mothers who’d love to set him up with their daughters. Even the rabbi offers his daughter. Ben’s two mothers (Caroline Aaron and Dolly de Leon) encourage him to snap out of it, but Ben wants to be fired. No one understands. Even so, Ben’s humour remains intact: his observations, frets; his audacious asides are comedy gold. He says what others dare not say out loud, a risky way for him to heal. He doesn’t drink but goes to a bar one night and orders several mudslides and meets Carla (Carol Kane), his school music teacher. They hit it off; she helps him recover his voice and he helps guide her through the Bat Mitzvah she never had. She’s mourning too. Kane is glorious, finally in a major film role to remind us how gifted she is as a theatrically trained actor/comedian. The pair of them are comedy magic. Even the camera angles are funny at times as when Ben goes into a Roman Catholic church and is dwarfed by its gilded magnificence. The priest, halting and snooty is whimsically funny as he tries to make out what Ben, a Jewish cantor wants with his opinion. Silver wastes no opportunity to laugh at life and includes dietary humour, a Yiddish rock video, and the Jewish convert finding fault with everyone else’s Jewish-ness. This is a big feast of a comedy open to all faiths. Toronto (TIFF Lightbox), Vancouver, Montreal and wide later.
A new look at the pitfalls of immigration in Ian Harnarine’s Doubles, starring Rashaana Cumberbatch, and David Fraserung. The film’s opening sequence features Dhani (Sanjiv Boodhu) explaining to us that he is 104th generation Brahmin, the highest caste in Indian tradition. But he lives in Trinidad with his mother where such things have no meaning, and scrapes by on their earnings as street food vendors. By chance, they discover his father Ragbir (Errol Sitahal in a marvel of a performance) who left them decades earlier, is now a chef in Toronto, and when his mother Sumintra (Leela Sitahal) is robbed they hatch a plan to shake him down for money he owes them “for leaving us”- he owns a tract of land in Trinidad. Dhani finds Ragbir in Toronto, not a chef but a dishwasher in a Scarborough diner. Dhani agrees to stay in his basement flat but rejects his father’s efforts to bond. He feels just disgust lingers for his father who is alone, poor, and has a debilitating illness. But he has a friend. A waitress at the diner keeps a close eye on him and makes sure he has what he needs. Instead of sympathy and offers of help, Dhani offers only repudiation, snark, and demands for non-existent money or title to the land in Trinidad. Ragbir gives Dhani a tour of Toronto in full Christmas mode, shows him his first fragrant, real Christmas tree; and he almost smiles. Ragbir is hospitalised and needs a bone marrow transplant and Dhani won’t donate, and decides to return to Trinidad; he has tried our patience; he feels he’s owed and won’t let go. And then a Christmas miracle. Beautifully written and executed, even if we are wary of our guide. Sitahal’s quietly stunning is the centrepiece of the film. Theatres.
Where is Zass? That’s the question as Only Murders In the Building S4 opens. Steve Martin’s Charles is awakened by whistling, the sound of a train in Once Upon a Time in the West on his TV. It will become a niggling omen to him shortly. But first – the podcasters are offered a meeting in Hollywood. Paramount wants to make their true crime cast a movie! Charles and Oliver (Martin Short) are foaming at the bit but not Mabel (Selena Gomez) who doesn’t want to give herself away. Paramount exec (Molly Shannon) seems vaguely threatening with all that power and fails to understand Mabel’s reluctance. That night at a party in their honour, Oliver’s friend Loretta (Meryl Streep) tells him she loves him and he returns the sentiment. Without any solid agreement, the trio races back to New York to settle Charles’ concerns over Zass (Jane Lynch) who has disappeared. He’s deeply worried about his movie stunt double; her apartments are empty and she hasn’t communicated in four days. And he’s sure the train whistle was a sign from her; she whistled a lot. She needed him. They find her, now ash, in the Arconia’s furnace; Charles IDs her from a bronze joint replacement made in Bulgaria where she got them after each work accident. Rather than report to police, they cross the property to the West Tower after finding a bullet hole in Charles’ kitchen window that came from that direction. Which raises another question – was he the intended target? Did the women who always watched them while cooking do it? Was it their “friends”? The trio had enemies – they unmasked murders and murderers in the building. The trio has some soul-searching and career moves to consider. They’re philosophical, witty, in tune with their intuition, and able to read signs that come from beyond their way. It’s a recipe for a gripping fourth season of this brilliantly, darkly funny series, a real gem in contemporary entertainment. And then there are those Big Names who constantly appear onscreen without warning! Aren’t we lucky? Disney+ August 27.
The supernatural Nordic Noir series Veronika starring Alexandra Rapaport is a kind of mashup of police procedural, ghost story, thriller and character study. Not entirely sure it works given the surprising combo and it’s also extraordinarily dark in appearance as well as subject matter. Sometimes it’s impossible to see who’s speaking. The dark palette would seem to be a serviceable framework to support the show’s spirit but when you can’t see where or who the actors are, it’s just not helpful. Dark corners offer up hallucinations. But my eyes! Rapaport’s Veronika, a police officer, wife and mother of two is given to visions, and cinematic jump scares, so she’s out of sorts, tired and rundown. She’s distancing herself from her family, nearly completely disengages. Her husband takes her to therapy but she’s not saying anything meaningful; her doctor orders time off work or suffer a relapse of an earlier episode. And she has a prescription pill addiction. The horrific visions keep happening. She recognises the wraiths – they are victims of accidents or unsolved murders, so she ditches bed rest to grab her files and investigate what happened to little Oskar Lidman. And another, a teenaged girl, then an old woman. Veronika feels people walking by her but sees no one. Her young son begins acting out, growling, beating a schoolmate, subject to odd uncontrolled movements; he seems to be part of what is happening, or what’s being revealed to her. But what is the purpose of all this unhappiness? Eight parts now on Viaplay Streaming Service.
The British closed village murder trope is reworked as seafaring in BritBox’s new original series Good Ship Murder starring Shayne Ward as former police detective Jack Grayling. He’s fulfilling his dream of singing cabaret on a cruise ship! Each to his own! And as fate would have it, he encounters bad actors, murder and up to 6,300 guests/ suspects per case, per episode, each one set docked in a new port around the Mediterranean. The backdrops are exotic, mini-tours for us couch potatoes, eight episodes, eight sun-soaked destinations. Catherine Tyldesley and Coronation Street’s Claire Sweeney play First Officer Kate and Operations Manager Beverly (a far cry from Cassie Plummer). We meet cruise devotees to set the stage for future mayhem. In La Rochelle, they spy a passenger they suspect of being a “mystery shopper” to rate the ship, and a couple, oft-married Brenda, with her brand-new catch Tom, a birdwatcher. He receives an anonymous note to go to a spot on land where the supposed shopper is found murdered. Jack and Kate team up to investigate, she’s surprisingly good at it and there is a spark between them. In Barcelona, another case – the murder of a Russian roller skate dancer hired to perform with his partner who falls under suspicion after they argue loudly in front of others. Kate and Jack wonder if it was a Russian gangland hit or someone on board. Good Ship Murder’s fun, lighthearted, not exactly Shakespeare or Agatha Christie, and boasts eight glorious locations and a ship full of dodgy types.