“People who achieve any eminence whatever are driven to do so; and there is always something terribly vulnerable about such people. They very soon discover that their eminence makes them an incitement and a target-it does not cause them to be loved. They are trapped on their hill. They cannot come down. They cannot bear obscurity as some organisms cannot bear light-death is what awaits then when they come down from the hill.”
James Baldwin, “Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone”, 1968.
The film commences with crackling and staticky news reports and desperate human cries. The world is running out of clean water. Special blue zones are established where water is available but access is largely denied. Mass migrations occur. Refugee “camps” are established. Chaos in the streets. Much of the water supply is contaminated with a deadly virus. Post apocalypse film awaits!
The Devine family, Ma (Joanne Boland), Pa (Arnold Pinnock) and daughter Sarah (Shailyn Pierre-Dixon) live in the deep woods and most importantly have a well with clean water. But what is a post apocalypse film without a little hardship! The well’s filter is cracked. The water is muddy. Get clean water or die!
A family member, Jamie (Idrissa Sanogo), stumbles into the Devine compound. Sarah and Jamie trundle off in search of metal to enable the well filter to be repaired. Jaimie knows of a place with “people” that might help.
Sarah and Jamie arrive at what appears to be an abandoned smelting facility with a handful of people led by Gabriel (Sheila McCarthy). Grandmotherly but ruthless perhaps for the greater good? She’s not afraid to gun down strangers for fear they have the deadly contagious virus.
Some decent tension in the film here as no one trusts anyone. What are these people up to? Is Gabriel a dangerous lunatic with her references to Greek mythology?
With a repaired well filter in hand they all head to The Devine’s compound in search of this clean water Sarah has told them about. Why would they travel for clean water when they already have potable water?
The group makes it to the trip wire outside the Devine compound. It is then discovered Jamie and Gabriel have the virus which means all the group must be infected but it doesn’t seem that way?
A simple plot that has no real edge to it. No epic struggles. No attacks by mutants. The film is about as exciting as a bag of Cheesies the day after the Gey Cup. If there is any virus it is boredom. Even the cast seems totally unenthusiastic. “The Well” is bone dry instead of the gush the initial moments of the movie promised me.
Think of “The Well” as a post apocalyptic “The Waltons” all best enjoyed with a glass of hot milk.
Directed by Hubert Davis.
Played at the recent Fantasia film festival in Montreal.
RKS 2025 CANADIAN Film Rating: 63/100.
The grapes for this cool climate wine were sourced from 15- to 20-year-old trellised vines in rich, deep and decomposed granite soils. Hand harvested from selected vineyard blocks and destemmed and crushed to stainless steel tanks. Maturation in French oak barrels (20% first fill and the balance in second and third fill). The wine matured for 14 months before blending.
Aroma: Heavy duty blackberry complimented by black currant, cassis, blueberry and dark chocolate. Well integrated oak.
Palate: Smooth, supple and a tad pepperish. Vibrant and lively midweight wine with a hint of spice. Black fruit. Short perky finish.
Food Match: BBQ beef or pork ribs. Smoked meat sandwich. Bobotie.
Cellarbility: Consume by end of 2025.
Price: $20 CDN.
RKS 2025 Wine Rating: 88/100. 90 jamessuckling.com.
(Seaward 2022 Shiraz, W.O. Coastal Region, Spier Wines, Stellenbosch, South Africa, 750 mL, 14.5%).
What more can I say than best of fortune in your hernia adventure. Unfortunately it is no snip snip and hop off the operating table with your “normal life” rushing up to embrace you. Expect pain of some degree and disruption in your routine. It took me a month before I could bend over and tie my running shoes. It is July and I think golf may be done for the year and so forth and so on. But the hernia is gone and in the near future the whole adventure will be concluded but I will never forget the experience.
My experience might have been a nightmare but it hasn’t been…at least to this point.
Do consult with Dr ChatGPT about what could go wrong. I don’t want to go down that avenue here with you.
Do safeguard your medical records. If there is an “operation report” obtain the same and stick it in your files. If mesh was used ensure you know which one was used. There have been several class actions concerning mesh so as a minimum know what was inserted in your body.
May your adventure be as pleasant as you can make it. Yes you have a role. Follow medical advice and don’t try to be a cowboy. I was in Niagara Falls a couple of weeks ago. I had a great day all perky putting in 7,500 steps. I’m back in the game!!! Next day I was shuffling around like it was a bad day at the retirement home. A golf cart shuttle passed by in the parking lot and its driver said to me I wasn’t looking too good and he’d be happy to give me a lift. I explained my recent hernia experience and he looked at me saying take it easy. When he was a younger man he had the same hernia surgery I had and not listening to his surgeon “like some stupid idiot” lifted heavy objects “busting a gusset” necessitating a second hernia surgery.
The last thing you want dear friends is a bust gusset after your hernia surgery.
In Ontario Cabernet Franc fares at a very high level in comparison to its Cabernet Sauvignon. The secret for Ontario Cabernet Sauvignon would appear to be a heavy compliment of oak to impart more “character”. Oak has garnered a dirty name in much of the wine world perhaps a throwback to earlier days when excessive oak was the rage.
The Reif Estate Winery 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon from Niagara has been fermented and aged in French and Hungarian oak for 2 years. New? Old? Neutral? The winery website fails to disclose.
Aroma: Blueberry and cassis reigns supreme. BlackBerry and cactus pear. The oak is not particularly well integrated into the wine and it is noticeable instead of harmonious.
Palate: Some heat and heft and solid in the background tannins. Peppery burn on the long finish. Despite the oak ageing there is some tartness where one might expect more depth and fullness.
Personality: I am trying to swing with the big boys here and even take advantage of Canadian patriotism shunting aside Yankee Cabernet Sauvignon but sorry I just can’t deliver.
Food Match: The winery website suggests beef or lamb but not enough guts in the wine for that match. I would suggest a pasta sauce using Ontario field tomatoes with a higher degree of acidity than canned Italian San Marzano’s might offer. I say a simple tomato sauce.
Price: $35 CDN.
Cellarbility: The winery website suggests 7-10 years. No way! My thoughts are at this price not to buy.
RKS 2025 CANADIAN Wine Rating: 65/100. Natalie MacLean 91.
(Reif Estate Winery 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve, VQA Niagara Peninsula, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, 750 mL, 13.5%).
What a fantasy film! Could it ascend to the heights of Cinderella, Pinocchio or “Nightmare Alley”?
Eighty-eight generations of a family have produced a bearded girl. Commences as light peach fuzz and by maturity is wild mountain man thickness. Creates audience attraction in a carnival sideshow particularly when the bearded girl is s sword swallower.
Cleo (Anwen O’Driscoll) approaches the big day when as the Bearded Girl she will assume the title of Bearded Woman and the leadership of a sideshow community in Beautiful British Columbia.
A conflict has developed between Cleo and her mother Lady Andre (Jessica Paré). Cleo has novel ideas for the repetitive sideshow her mother has taken the lead on for years. Restless youth rejecting tradition. Inflexible mother and her progeny attempting to assert herself.
A blow up ensues when Bearded Girl Cleo tells her mother Bearded Woman Lady Andre her husband left her due to her nasty behaviour as opposed to that of her husband’s. Cleo flees the sideshow for the city with her hot tempered and domineering mother saying never return.
Cleo does not make it into the “city” taking residence in a nearby small farming town forming a romantic relationship with milk farm heir Leonard. Unfortunately her beard makes itself known to Cleo yet again requiring a daily morning shave but it returns each morning with increasing thickness. Tired of masking her appearance she appears fully bearded before Leonard freaking him out (pardon the expression).
Meanwhile back at the sideshow grounds greedy real estate developer Richard Dick Sutherland (Jeff Gladstone) requires the sideshow lands owned by Lady Andre for a parking lot for his planned 300 room resort-casino-racetrack. Lady Andre isn’t giving an inch and is subject to harassment by Dick and his cronies including an in his pocket sheriff.
Take this movie as an odd British Columbia fairy tale and enjoy the strange plot but fairy tales are allegorical and have a social meaning. This bizarre story delivers clear and simple messages and a question or two.
Be who you really are despite pressure to change from external forces and possibly yourself.
Generational conflict is inevitable but it can be resolved.
Innovation and change are often necessary and if not accepted by the older generation the status quo becomes non-functional leading to bitterness and frustration.
How much is love based on physical as opposed to intellectual attributes?
Corporate greed is not always victorious.
And having some extreme fun here the film is an allegory about Quebec’s struggle to assert itself within Canada!
Clever co- writing and direction by Jody Wilson. Blake Berrie and Thiago Gaddha are co-writers.
Screened 17/18July2025 at Fantasia film festival in Montreal.
RKS 2025 CANADIAN Film Rating 76/100.
Aroma: Lemon, lime, guava, peach, pineapple and mango. Wow this has lots going on!
Palate: Despite all the fruitish bouquet activity there is a certain austerity on the palate and despite 12 months ageing in oak it has a clean stainless-steel backbone, or least that is the way it presents itself. Try and try you might detect in a massively compact and secretive fashion all the fruit described in aroma above. A brackish and dry finish.
Personality: Functional and militaristic Sauvignon Blanc.
Food Match: Fish and chips at the Niagara Golf and Country Club on the outdoor patio on a hot July evening. Pork chops marinated in lemon juice, oregano and olive oil on the grill.
Price: $20 CDN.
Cellarbility: Drink by 2025-year end.
RKS 2025 CANADIAN Wine Rating: 87/100.
(Nomad 2021 Fumé Blanc, VQA Niagara Lakeshore, Hinterbrook Estate Winery, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, 750 mL,12.5%).
Ryosuke Yoshii (Masaki Suda) is an internet reseller of whatever he can bargain cheaply for and hopefully resell at retail or wholesale at an enormous profit. Good freedom of enterprise all legitimate unless the merchandise is counterfeit. Operate in the cloud as Yoshii does under a pseudonym Ratel then the transactions are all anonymous and completed with impunity? As that Kim Mitchell song plays, “grab a soda and nobody gets hurt”.
Yoshii has cultivated enemies in his quest for financial success including driving brutally hard bargains and unloading counterfeit merchandise to other resellers purchasing from Yoshii that paid the additional price of being beaten by angry purchasers realizing they have been duped. In his personal life he has refused a promotion in his day factory job offered numerous times by his boss Mr. Takimoto (Yoshiyoshi Arakawa) grossly offended by Yoshii’s rejection. Then there is Muraoka (Masataka Kubota) a vocational college fellow student who he refuses an offer to join with in a business enterprise. Yoshii terminates Sano (Daken Okudaira) his assistant for snooping on his computer. In fact there are so many aggrieved individuals they band together and hunt down Yoshii seeking revenge.
Yoshii’s sales are sufficient to finance a move from Tokyo to a quiet village living in a large rented lakeside house. His girlfriend Akiko (Kotone Furukawa) joins him. It is clear she is an avid consumer and wants to spend, spend and spend and Yoshii is her golden ticket.
Before moving from Tokyo Yoshii discovers a dead rat on his doorstep and has tripwire set outside his home causing a nasty spill on his motorcycle. In his new home an automotive part is thrown through his window and a Mercedes cruises menacingly outside his home in darkness. The mystery is in full swing!
His enemies unite and hunt down Ratel. The hunt, at times, is somewhat comedic but when Ratel the prey is in their clutch’s matters turn nasty and deadly. In the ensuing gunbattles it is Sano that comes to Yoshii’s rescue becoming Yoshii’s ally. This and Sano’s proficiency with firearms seem odd indeed for an assistant he employed to ally himself with a boss that terminated him.
Who is behind all the commotion and why? For a starter pay very close attention to Sano’s meeting with a “syndicate” member on a train station platform and his sending his best regards to the “chairman”. And the surreal car ride by Sano and Yoshii concluding the film will answer all your questions. Yoshii is an unwitting Jabez Stone and Mr. Scratch is clearly nearby? Sano is Charon?
Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Makes a Canadian theatrical run commencing 18July2025.
Watch the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsU2vNvHwns
RKS 2025 Film Rating 93/100.
“Barbara and I were marooned, alone with our love, and we were discovering that love was not enough-alone we were doomed. We only had each other, and this fact menaced our relation to each other. We had no relief, we had no one to talk to-far behind us were the days when we had played at being lovers and laughed how easily the world was shocked. We were not playing now, and neither was the world.”
Marooned in Love, “Tell Me How Long The Train’s Been Gone”, 1968.
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