**/****
screenplay by Kevin Cockle, Michael Peterson
directed by Michael Peterson
by Bill Chambers In the wintry Knuckleball, 12-year-old Henry (Luca Villacis) is sent to stay with his maternal grandfather, Jacob (Michael Ironside, looking huskier these days), while his parents (Kathleen Munroe and Chenier Hundal) attend a funeral. I don’t entirely understand why Henry can’t go with them, but it’s an opportunity for him to spend time with Jacob, who hasn’t, up ’til now, met the boy, owing to his mother’s estrangement from her father. Ironside is as imposing as ever, and if you’ve followed his career at all the first third of the movie mines a lot of tension–and tense laughs–from his screen persona. But there’s a gruff tenderness to his interactions with Villacis, as chores give way to impromptu pitching lessons (hence the title), that I was sad to see replaced by the mechanics of a cat-and-mouse thriller, even if the Shining-esque drone shots following the family car and dirge-like soundtrack never promised a rose garden. When Jacob dies in the night, Henry calls on next-door neighbour Dixon (a scuzzed-up Munro Chambers, of “Degrassi” fame) for help, but quickly deduces that the young man can’t be trusted; so begin the Home Alone shenanigans. Chambers just has one of those faces that is satisfying to watch become ensnared in barbed wire, while the unaffected Villacis inspires the protective feelings a little brother would. That Henry exhibiting the same preternatural gift for engineering as Kevin McCallister–early scenes of Henry with his face and thumbs buried in a portable console seem to credit his ingenuity to gaming, which is actually a refreshing take–and Dixon the same invincibility as a Wet Bandit is of a piece with an increasingly risible backstory doesn’t, however, change the fact that this cheapens a film that had been portraying itself as rather measured and grief-struck. Disappointing, too, that Knuckleball introduces a lady cop so charmingly and progressively–in the midst of forcing two much larger men with bloodied noses to call a truce over breakfast at a coffee shop–only to reduce her to collateral damage in her very next scene. (And you thought Scatman Crothers got a raw deal.) Fortunately, DP Jon Thomas works wonders with the desolate Saskatchewan snowscapes and Ironside’s newfound Dennehy proportions. Fantasia Fest 2018 – Programme: Selection 2018
