A dilapidated barn where trapped kids once scrawled messages like “73 days more.” An elderly survivor of a priest’s abuse pinpointing the day during her youth when she first turned toward alcohol. An abandoned baby becoming an abandoning father, whose son won’t allow three generations to suffer in isolation.
“Sugarcane” tells a story — many stories — happening everywhere in Canada, about what is being done, and still going unsaid, regarding the trauma inflicted on Indigenous people by the white-settled country’s residential school system. Begun in the 19th century under the racist notion that Indians were a “problem” to be solved, this network of educational institutions preached assimilation but created lasting misery, from the compulsory separation that shattered families to the untold abuse that marked children’s lives there.
The schools may be closed now — the last federally funded one shuttered in 1997 — but as filmmakers Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie show with compassionate determination, shame and pain are still doing a lot of grim work on First Nations survivors and their descendants, even when their confronting their past occasionally yields answers. That reckoning takes many forms in the documentary’s carefully woven tapestry of lives on the Sugarcane Reserve in British Columbia, where, in 2021, the discovery of unmarked graves at St. Joseph’s, a Catholic Church-run residential school, makes headlines and sparks a vigorous investigation, spearheaded by its young chief Willie Sellars. Alongside the deployment of shovels, ground-penetrating radar and an evidence board of pictures, time lines and index cards, there’s a fresh attempt at healing in the community, through sacred rituals, gatherings and hard conversations.
Ed Archie NoiseCat in the documentary “Sugarcane.”
(Emily Kassie / Sugarcane Film LLC)
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This multipronged filmmaking approach, chronicling the painstaking work of a cold case while documenting what years of whispers and silence have wrought, is what gives “Sugarcane” its raw power. There’s also a palpable tension across time, especially how the haunted present day we’re witnessing belies the facade of normalcy in old class photos, official statements and the occasional glimpse of a black-and-white Canadian TV documentary from 1962 that put a smiling face on residential schools’ religious instruction.
Even the landscape speaks to an emotional duality. It captivates with its natural beauty and sweep at the same time it tragically underscores the remoteness of places like St. Joseph’s, where evil could keep secret. A more heartrending sense of majesty eventually rises, though, from what it takes for people to tell their tales, which involve cruelty, rape, disappearance, murder and suicide.
We follow one survivor — stoic former Williams Lake chief Rick Gilbert, who remained a Christian — to Vatican City as part of a delegation getting a papal apology. Later during that trip, in a visit with a bishop, when the camera sits on his rugged face, a tear emerging as he haltingly speaks of his terrible childhood, you just might believe that, in that moment, he’s the strongest man in the world.
The road has been tougher for co-director NoiseCat’s father, Ed, a soft-spoken artist of sublime woodworking skill who’s long struggled with the reality of being abandoned as a baby. (A not-uncommon fate for unwanted newborns at St. Joseph’s was infanticide in a roaring incinerator.) A near-erasure that’s almost impossible to comprehend, its effect on the filmmaker’s family has been scarring. But as this deeply affecting depiction of inquiry and cultural resilience makes clear, to not talk about it is to give it power still.
Forget the “video game movie” curse;The Mortuary Assistantis a bone-chilling triumph that stands entirely on its own two feet. Starring Willa Holland (Arrow) as Rebecca Owens, the film follows a newly certified mortician whose “overtime shift” quickly devolves into a grueling battle for her soul.
What Makes It Work
The film expertly balances the stomach-churning procedural work of embalming with a spiraling demonic nightmare. Alongside a mysterious mentor played by Paul Sparks (Boardwalk Empire), Rebecca is forced to confront both ancient evils and her own buried traumas. And boy, does she have a lot of them.
Thanks to a full-scale, practical River Fields Mortuary set, the film drips with realism, like you can almost smell the rot and bloat of the bodies through the screen.
The skin effects are hauntingly accurate. The way the flesh moves during surgical scenes is so visceral. I’ve seen a lot of flesh wounds in horror films and in real life, and the bodies, skin, and organs. The Mortuary Assistant (especially in the opening scene) looks so real that I skipped supper after watching it. And that’s saying something. Your girl likes to eat.
Co-written by the game’s creator, Brian Clarke, the movie dives deeper into the demonic mythology. Whether you’ve seen every ending or don’t know a scalpel from a trocar, the story is perfectly self-contained. If you’ve never played the game, or played it a hundred times, the film works equally well, which is hard to do when it comes to game adaptations.
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Nailed It
This film does a lot of things right, but the isolation of the night shift is suffocating. Between the darkness of the hallways and the “residents” that refuse to stay still, the film delivers a relentlessly immersive experience. And thankfully, although this movie is filled with dark rooms and shadows, it’s easy to see every little thing. Don’t you hate it when a movie is so dark that you can’t see what’s happening? It’s one of my pet peeves.
The oh-so-awesome Jeremiah Kipp directs the film and has made something absolutely nightmare-inducing. Kipp recently joined us for an interview, took us inside the film, discussed its details and the game’s lore, and so much more. I urge you to check out our interview. He’s awesome!
The Verdict
This isn’t just a cash-grab; it’s a high-effort adaptation that respects the source material while elevating the horror genre. With incredible special effects and a powerhouse cast, it’s the kind of movie that will make you rethink working late ever again. Dropping on Friday the 13th, this is a must-watch for horror fans. It’s grisly, intelligent, and genuinely terrifying.
A former executive at Live Nation, the world’s largest live entertainment company, is suing the company, alleging that he was wrongfully terminated after he raised concerns about alleged financial misconduct and improper accounting practices.
Nicholas Rumanes alleges he was “fraudulently induced” in 2022 to leave a lucrative position as head of strategic development at a real estate investment trust to create a new role as executive vice president of development and business practice at Beverly Hills-based Live Nation.
In his new position, Rumanes said, he raised “serious and legitimate alarm” over the the company’s business practices.
As a result, he says, he was “unlawfully terminated,” according to the lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
“Rumanes was, simply put, promised one job and forced to accept another. And then he was cut loose for insisting on doing that lesser job with integrity and honesty,” according to the lawsuit.
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He is seeking $35 million in damages.
Representatives for Live Nation were not immediately available for comment.
The lawsuit comes a week after a federal jury in Manhattan found that Live Nation and its Ticketmaster subsidiary had operated a monopoly over major concert venues, controlling 86% of the concert market.
Rumanes’ lawsuit describes a “culture of deception” at Live Nation, saying its “basic business model was to misstate and exaggerate financial figures in efforts to solicit and secure business.”
Such practices “spanned a wide spectrum of projects in what appeared to be a company-wide pattern of financial misrepresentation and misleading disclosures,” the lawsuit states.
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Rumanes says he received materials and documents that showed that the company inflated projected revenues across multiple venue development projects.
Additionally, Rumanes contends that the company violated a federal law that requires independent financial auditing and transparency and instead ran Live Nation “through a centralized, opaque structure” that enables it to “bypass oversight and internal checks and balances.”
In 2010, as a condition of the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger, the newly formed company agreed to a consent decree with the government that prohibited the firm from threatening venues to use Ticketmaster. In 2019 the Justice Department found that the company had repeatedly breached the agreement, and it extended the decree.
Rumanes contends that he brought his concerns to the attention of the company’s management, but his warnings were “repeatedly ignored.”
At the centre of Madhuvidhu directed by Vishnu Aravind is a house where only men reside, three generations of them living in harmony. Unlike the Anjooran household in Godfather, this is not a house where entry is banned to women, but just that women don’t choose to come here. For Amrithraj alias Ammu (Sharafudheen), the protagonist, 28 marriage proposals have already fallen through although he was not lacking in interest.
When a not-so-cordial first meeting with Sneha (Kalyani Panicker) inevitably turns into mutual attraction, things appear about to change. But some unexpected hiccups are waiting for them, their different religions being one of them. Writers Jai Vishnu and Bipin Mohan do not seem to have any major ambitions with Madhuvidhu, but they seem rather content to aim for the middle space of a feel-good entertainer. Only that they end up hitting further lower.
