November is a month that can mean very different things to different people. It can signal the end of autumn and the early beginning of winter; grey skies, cold wind, the calm before the storm, and Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D). If you’re from the United States it might be associated with Thanksgiving (or on the flip side acknowledging the innate colonialism of said holiday). If you’re born in November it can mean good wishes and fond memories.
Yet no matter the month, one should always make time for good film. Plus, if you live in Ottawa at least, this November promises to be especially cold, and with lockdown measures preventing the usual winter activities, spending a night in with a movie sounds like the perfect thing.
To help you figure out what to watch this month, we start off with two 2020 releases, and in total have seven films and one series for you to enjoy.
So without further fanfare, if you want to see what members of the Carleton community have been watching lately, please read on.
Our first recommendation is from one of Carleton’s own associate film professors, Dr. Malini Guha! Each month we will now be featuring a different recommendation from a film studies staff member, and we hope you will be looking forward to it as much as we are. Professor Guha’s recommendation for November is Time (2020) directed by Garrett Bradley, which she elaborates on below.
Fox Rich, indomitable matriarch and modern-day abolitionist, strives to keep her family together while fighting for the release of her incarcerated husband. An intimate, epic, and unconventional love story, filmed over two decades.
“The film I’m recommending, for which Bradley won the best director award in the U.S. documentary competition at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, features Sybil ‘Fox’ Richardson who fought to free her husband Rob from the notorious Angola prison in Louisiana. She battled the judicial system for eighteen years.
In interviews, Bradley recalls finishing the first cut of the film when Richardson presented her with a collection of home movies that she made for Rob over the long period of his incarceration. Richardson thought they might be useful but these home videos are so much more than that. They are remarkable and poignant documentations of the everyday lives of the Richardson family, as lived in the absence of a loving husband and father. In the finished film, Bradley interweaves sections of these home videos with the contemporary footage of the family that she shot. As Bradley has said, Rich is essentially the co-director of this film. Time is a powerful indictment of systemic racism and economic inequality, as told through the story of this single family and their community.”
Our next recommendation is from a Carleton film studies alum: Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020) directed by Eliza Hittman, starring Sidney Flanigan, Talia Ryder, and Théodore Pellerin.
A pair of teenage girls in rural Pennsylvania travel to New York City to seek out medical help after an unintended pregnancy.
Expanding on his recommendation this alum says: “the Oscars are gonna be super weird this year so I would recommend Never Rarely Sometimes Always which 100% deserves to be in the awards conversation. Really rare fluency of cinema verité style and one of the most empathetic movies I’ve seen in a long time.”
Here we have a recommendation from one of our Instagram followers: Captain Fantastic (2016) a comedy-drama directed by Matt Ross, starring Viggo Mortensen, Frank Langella, Kathryn Hahn, and Steve Zahn.
A father living in the forests of the Pacific Northwest with his six young kids tries to assimilate back into society.
An interesting and heartwarming family film, if you enjoyed Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016, Taika Waititi) and Little Miss Sunshine (2006, Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris) then it’s worth it to give Captain Fantastic a watch, available to stream on Netflix and Crave or rent through iTunes and Google Play.
Our next recommendation is from a Discord member, the Finnish film The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki (2016) directed by Juho Kuosmanen and also known as Hymyilevä mies. It features Jarkko Lahti, Oona Airola, and Eero Milonoff.
Summer 1962 and Olli Mäki has a shot at the world championship title in featherweight boxing. From the Finnish countryside to the bright lights of Helsinki, everything has been prepared for his fame and fortune. All Olli has to do is lose weight and concentrate. But there is a problem — he has fallen in love with Raija.
Available to rent on Youtube and Google Play, according to the recommender this film is “basically the Finnish Rocky that’s based on a true story, except it’s much cuter and more charming. Very sweet and understated.” Perhaps giving it a watch will help you experience the happiest day of your life?
A recent film with a lot of star power, Knives Out (2019) directed by Rian Johnson is our next recommendation, with leading performances by Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, and Ana de Armas.
When renowned crime novelist Harlan Thrombey is found dead at his estate just after his 85th birthday, the inquisitive and debonair Detective Benoit Blanc is mysteriously enlisted to investigate. From Harlan’s dysfunctional family to his devoted staff, Blanc sifts through a web of red herrings and self-serving lies to uncover the truth behind Harlan’s untimely death.
Winner of Best Original Screenplay at the 92nd Academy Awards, Knives Out is a thrilling tale of mystery and a dysfunctional family. It also features some on-point social commentary, so if you weren’t able to catch it in theatres pre-lockdown, it’s definitely worth a watch now, and is available to stream on Prime Video!
One of my own personal recommendations for this month is Daughters of the Dust (1991) directed by Julie Dash, starring Cora Lee Day and Alva Rogers.
A languid look at the Gullah culture of the sea islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia where African folk-ways were maintained well into the 20th Century and was one of the last bastions of these mores in America.
The first feature-length film directed by an African-American woman to be distributed theatrically in the United States, Daughters of the Dust is available to watch on the Criterion Channel. Everything about this film — from the acting, soundtrack, and costuming — works together to create a strong aesthetic and captivating story, expanding the meaning of cinema to encompass so much more than Hollywood and Westernized media would have you believe it is. I don’t feel fully qualified to speak on this film, but for those interested, there’s this great recent piece from the New York Times T-Magazine by A.O. Scott:
The other thing that distinguishes “Daughters of the Dust” is its perspective. It is not about explaining black history to white people, or making an appeal for recognition. It’s about opening up a space of memory and feeling within a larger history that had been misunderstood, marginalized and erased outright by the dominant culture. — A.O. Scott
Another recommendation from a film major is My Own Private Idaho (1991) directed by Gus Van Sant, starring River Phoenix, Keanu Reeves, and James Russo.
In this loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Henry IV,” Mike Waters is a gay hustler afflicted with narcolepsy. Scott Favor is the rebellious son of a mayor. Together, the two travel from Portland, Oregon to Idaho and finally to the coast of Italy in a quest to find Mike’s estranged mother. Along the way they turn tricks for money and drugs, eventually attracting the attention of a wealthy benefactor and sexual deviant.
Premiering at the 48th Venice International Film Festival, My Own Private Idaho has been described as a “chaotic beauty,” and has situated itself as a cult classic, especially among the LGBTQ+ community. You can rent the film on Google Play, iTunes, or Youtube.
This final recommendation is the Netflix series Dear White People (2017) created by Justin Simien which has three seasons available to stream and stars Logan Browning, Brandon P Bell, and DeRon Horton.
Based on the acclaimed film of the same name, this Netflix-original series follows a group of students of color at Winchester University, a predominantly white Ivy League college. The students are faced with a landscape of cultural bias, social injustice, misguided activism and slippery politics.
Witty, dramatic, and educational, the first two things I noticed about this series was the great writing and killer soundtrack. Songs like I-69 by Roman GianArthur populate the show, giving it a great overall atmosphere, but it also knows when to dial it down for the important topical themes — brought up across episodes — in varying degrees of intensity.
And that concludes CU Film’s November rec list. All the film synopses were taken from Letterboxd, except for Dear White People, which I nabbed from Wikipedia. Many thanks to my fellow Carleton students and alumni for providing the different films on this list, and to Dr. Guha for giving her valuable input and agreeing to be featured.
The theme for December’s list is very unsurprisingly going to be winter and holidays! Whether it’s a short film, movie, or series, if you have a favourite piece of holiday media for whatever you might celebrate, something that takes place in winter, or just something that makes you feel cozy, we would love to hear about it. You can either leave a comment below or message @ mycufilm on Twitter/Instagram.
This blog post was written by Lily Inskip-Shesnicky, a third-year film studies student at Carleton University, and the CU Film social media manager.
