THE
BAND’S VISIT
(Erin Kolirin, Israel/France/USA 2007) “In this
understated humanist comic fantasy, deadpan humour bridges
the cultural divide when a small Egyptian police orchestra
(immaculate in formal powder blue uniforms) finds itself
in the middle of an Israeli desert outpost far from
the town where they’re supposed to be performing.
The locals, led by a flirtatious, tough-talking café
owner (Ronit Elkabetz), put the band members up for
the night. Veteran Israeli actor Sasson Gabai’s
dignified restraint makes the band leader a perfect
foil for his hostess. They relate in the most charming
ways in this small, quirky feel good film that packs
an unexpected emotional punch when the musicians finally
do perform.”—Paul Ennis, NOW. In Arabic,
Hebrew and English with subtitles. 87 min. (PG) May
12, 13
THE
BANK JOB
(Roger Donaldson, UK 2008) "One of the pleasures
of The Bank Job is that it returns us to the days when
robbing a bank was a gritty, hole-in-the-wall affair.
In this crackling tale of low crooks and highball politics,
set in 1971 (it's based on a true story), the blokes
who break into a vault of safe-deposit boxes are led
by Jason Statham, that sexy scowler who's like Michael
Madsen crossed with Daniel Craig. What they don't realize
is that the crime has been set in motion by the British
government. Watching The Bank Job, you buy the heist,
and you also buy the entertaining layer cake of British
society — the black radicals, smut lords, and
MI5 agents who treat cops like janitors, all fighting
for their piece of the action."—Owen Gleiberman,
Entertainment Weekly. 111 min. (14A) May 1, 2
BLADERUNNER:
THE FINAL CUT
(Ridley Scott, USA 1982) Based on Philip k. Dick’s
novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Shepp?”,
this is probably the most fastidiously detailed and
glorious over-decorated sci-fi vision in the history
of cinema. The first star is a steam, ravaged, claustrophobic
Los Angeles, studded with punk, Oriental and Hispanic
artifacts in an apocalyptic endtime when most of earth’s
ecosystems have broken down. The second star is Rutger
Hauer’s luminous doomed android, seeking a reprieve
from termination with a poignancy equal to that of HAL
in 2001: A Space Odyssey. This is the latest restoration
of one of the best movies ever made. With Harrison Ford,
Sean Young, Daryl Hannah. 115 min. (14A) May 25, 26
BLUE
VELVET
(David Lynch, USA 1986) “The last real earthquake
to hit cinema was David Lynch’s Blue Velvet –
I’m sure directors throughout the film world felt
the earth move beneath their feet and couldn’t
sleep the night of their first encounter with it back
in 1986 – and screens trembled with diminishing
aftershocks over their own exhilarating psychic cataclysms.
But no one could quite match the traumatizing combination
of horrific comedic, aural and subliminal effects Lynch
rumbled out in this masterpiece.” –Guy Maddin,
Village Voice. Recently restored 35mm Print. 120 min.
(R) May 21, 22
CARAMEL
(Nadine Labaki, Lebanon 2007) “The Beirut beauty
salon where most of Caramel takes place is likely to
be a familiar type of establishment, even to viewers
who have never been to the Lebanese capital. What the
shop lacks in sleekness and chic it makes up for in
the kind of friendly, sisterly warmth that could be
found, for instance, in “Beauty Shop,” the
distaff installation in the Barbershop franchise. Women
of various shapes, sizes, ages and backgrounds gather
to bond and gossip. Their camaraderie is occasionally
disrupted by a crisis, but you are likely to remember
this charming film, directed by Nadine Labaki, less
for its gently comic, mildly melodramatic plot than
for its friendly and inviting atmosphere. Ms. Labaki,
who also wrote the screenplay with Jihad Hojeily and
Rodney Al Haddad, plays Layale, owner of the shop, which
is called Si Belle. Like many unmarried women in the
Middle East, Layale, in spite of her professional independence,
lives with her parents. She is also having an affair
with a married man and spends anxious hours waiting
for him to call, ignoring the attentions of a handsome
traffic policeman who is obviously smitten with her.
Layale’s friends and co-workers are supportive
and tolerant of her, and also have troubles of their
own. Caramel has an optimism born not of dreamy romanticism
but of resilience and a degree of hard-headedness. Life
for these women is not easy or especially fair, and
each of them faces moments of humiliation, loneliness
and potential heartbreak. But in the best melodramatic
tradition, their toughness, good humor and loyalty see
them through. Those qualities, and Ms. Labaki’s
evident affection for the battered panache of her native
city, make Caramel hard to resist.”— A.
O. Scott, The New York Times. In Arabic with subtitles.
95 min. (PG) May 12, 13
CASABLANCA
(Michael Curtiz, USA 1941) Recently voted the Best Screenplay
Ever by the American Film Institute, Casablanca is a
film that just gets better and better as time goes by.
It’s proof that the whole is greater than the
sum of the parts – and what parts! Arguably the
most romantic movie ever made. When love and honour
really meant something, particularly in the midst of
WWII. With Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Sydney Greenstreet,
Peter Lorre, Paul Henreid, Claude Raines, Conrad Veidt.
102 min. (PG) May 30
A
CLOCKWORK ORANGE
(Stanley Kubrick, UK 1971) “A Clockwork Orange
is Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Anthony Burgess’
perversely moral, essentially Christian novel about
the value of free will, even if the choice exercised
is to tear through the night robbing, raping and battering
the citizens until they lie helpless, covered with what
Alex describes happily as “the real red vino,”
or krovvy. In both English and Nadsat, the combination
of Anglicized Russian, Gypsy, rhyming slang and associative
words spoken by Alex and his teenage friends in what
seems to be 1983, A Clockwork Orange is a great deal
more than merely horror show – that is, Nadsat
for good. It is brilliant, a tour de force of extraordinary
images, music, words and feelings. A Clockwork Orange
is so beautiful to look at and to hear that it dazzles
the senses and the mind, even as it turns the old real
red vino to ice.”—Vincent Canby, The New
York Times. 137 min. (R) May 18
THE
COUNTERFEITERS
(Stefan Rozowitzky, Austria 2007) “Adapted from
Adolf Burger's memoir The Devil's Workshop, this skillful,
absorbing, Oscar-winning Austrian feature involves a
Russian-Jewish counterfeiter (expertly played by Karl
Markovics) who gets arrested in Berlin, winds up in
a German concentration camp in 1944, and is put in charge
of a secret forgery unit. Staffed by prisoners who've
been granted special privileges, the unit counterfeits
pounds and dollars in a plan to wreck the British and
American economies, and one of the prisoners, a member
of the communist resistance, attempts to sabotage the
effort. Written and directed by the able Stefan Ruzowitzky,
this poses some tricky moral questions, and its troubling
ambiguities rank a cut above the dubious uplift of Schindler's
List.”—Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader.
In German with subtitles. 99 min. (14A) May 17-20
IN
BRUGES
(Martin McDonagh, UK/Belgium 2008) "In Bruges is
literate, lively cinema. The setup is simple: Two Irish
hitmen, the seasoned Ken (Brendan Gleeson) and the caffeinated
Ray (Colin Farrell), have been sent to Bruges by their
hotheaded boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes) to cool off from
a job gone wrong in London. Ken finds the medieval town
and its tourists serene. Ray finds it a shithole, though
a meeting with sexy Chloe (Clémence Poésy)
sparks things up. That's all I'm telling you. Get ready
to have the rug pulled out from under you. Farrell gives
a performance of ferocity and feeling. And Gleeson is
a pleasure to watch, his face a road map to his character's
soul. In Bruges is a haunting and hypnotic movie."—Peter
Travers, Rolling Stone. 107 min. (18A) May 1
KENNY
(Clayton Jacobson, Australia 2006) “Kenny is a
modest Australian charmer that puts a new spin on the
phrase "Down Under." Melbourne everyman Kenny
Smyth (Shane Jacobson) works at a rent-a-loo company
called Splashdown Portaloos, where he cleans out the
crap in the toilets and confronts worse from the people
around him, who judge him by his job. The Jacobson brothers
collaborated on the script, fleshing out Kenny's personal
life with nicely observed details about his bitchy ex-wife,
misfit son and judgmental father (played by the Jacobsons'
real-life dad). Filmed faux-documentary-style and shot
during real events like the Melbourne Cup and the too-odd-to-be-made-up
International Cleaner And Pumper Expo, the film delivers
laughs and sentiment in equal measure.”—Glenn
Sumi, NOW.
*************************************************************
“Funny enough to give scatology a good name, Aussie
mockumentary Kenny is a consistently amusing and surprisingly
touching portrait of a loveable lug who installs toilet
blocks at public events. Spearheaded by Shane Jacobson's
ace central performance, the picture transcends the
yecch factor to emerge as the funniest local laffer
in years.”—Richard Kuipers, Variety. 99
min. (14A) May 26, 27
MANHATTAN
(Woody Allen, USA 1979) “The New York City that
Woody so tediously defended in Annie Hall was in crisis.
And so he imagined an improved version. More than that,
he cast this shining city in the form of those movies
that he might have seen as a child in Coney Island—freeing
the visions that he sensed to be locked up in the silver
screen. In a way, Manhattan is Allen's personal Purple
Rose of Cairo—the movie in which he successfully
projects himself into Hollywood make-believe. It's his
version of an Astaire and Rogers musical, as romantic
as Casablanca, as slickly metropolitan as Sweet Smell
of Success. It's also as haunting a celebration of the
transitory as a Lumiére actualité.”—J.Hoberman,
Village Voice. 98 min. (R) May 26, 28
MISS
PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY
(Bharat Nalluri, UK/USA 2008) “After Junebug and
Enchanted, Amy Adams is in danger of becoming typecast
as a ditzy life force, but as she’s peerless at
essaying this particular type, it’s nothing to
get too broken up about. In Miss Pettrigrew Lives For
a Day, she plays Delysia (sounds like “delicious”)
La Fosse, an American actress juggling three men (a
rotter, a runt and the inevitable rascally piano player)
in late-30s London; absent-minded, effusive and sweetly
exhibitionistic, she’s both headache and salvation
to the titular protagonist (played by Frances McDormand),
a dour, down-on-her-luck governess living about two
centimetres above the poverty line. The plot goes like
this: Miss Pettigrew fakes her way into Delysia’s
household and becomes her instant BFF, helping her through
an eventful day of fashion shows, nightclub dust-ups,
declarations of love and scarily real air-raid drills.
Lies are told and forgiven, social classes are straddled
and skewered and everyone gets what they deserve. But
the film, directed by British TV vet Bharat Nalluri,
is more than the sum of its facile narrative parts.
Miss Pettigrew has moments of sparkling farce (mostly
courtesy of Adams) but it achieves a certain tingle
of seriousness, especially in the scenes between McDormand
and Ciaran Hinds as a sly-eyed lingerie designer unimpressed
by the high life. And, with memories of World War I
still squarely in his mind’s eye, it’s all
too certain that the blithe souls living it up are in
for a rude awakening once those air-raid drills become
the real thing.”—Adam Nayman, EYE Weekly.
91min. (PG) May 27, 28
THE
ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW
(Jim Sharman, USA 1975) Let’s Do The Time Warp
Again! After Janet accepts Brad’s marriage proposal,
the happy couple drive away from Denton, Ohio, only
to get lost in the rain. They stumble upon the castle
of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a transvestite who is holding
the annual convention of visitors from the planet Transsexual.
Frank-N-Furter announces that he is returning to the
galaxy Transylvania. Riff Raff the butler and Magenta
the maid declare that they have plans of their own.
(An audience participation with live cast “Excited
Mental state” Warning: Cast uses foul language)
100 min. (14A) May 30
SHINE
A LIGHT
(Martin Scorsese, USA 2008) Martin Scorsese is a besotted
rock ’n’ roll fan who wholeheartedly embraces
its mythology. Its scruffy guitar heroes and roustabout
rebel-prophets are the musical equivalents of the hotheads
and outlaws who populate so many of his films. Almost
every shot of Shine a Light conveys his excitement.
As you scrutinize the aging bodies of the Rolling Stones
in Mr. Scorsese’s rip-roaring concert documentary,
there is ample evidence that rock ’n’ roll
may hold the secret of eternal vitality, if not eternal
beauty. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood,
the quartet’s three skinny members, certainly
look their ages. But there is nothing stodgy about them.
The strenuous rock ’n’ roll life has left
them sinewy and lean, like longtime marathon runners.
(The staid, above-it-all drummer, Charlie Watts, is
the exception.) Mr. Jagger’s lined face, with
its deflated balloon lips, suggests a double exposure
of Dorian Gray and his infamous portrait, at once defiantly
youthful and creepily gaunt. The simian Mr. Richards,
whose upper arm flesh has shriveled, resembles an old
madam chewing over her secrets. As he plays, his lips
dangling a cigarette, he leans back into his snarling
guitar and a joyful grin spreads across his face. He
could be the world’s happiest young older man:
Peter Pan as a wizened Gypsy fortuneteller. For the
Rolling Stones appear supremely alive inside their giant,
self-created rock ’n’ roll machine. The
sheer pleasure of making music that keens and growls
like a pack of ravenous alley cats is obviously what
keeps them going. Why should they ever stop? —
Stephen Holden, The New York Times. 121 min. (PG) May
28, 30, 31
21
(Robert Kuketic, USA 2008) Jim Sturgess (Across The
Universe) plays a math nerd at MIT who's recruited,
by a wry Mephistopheles of a faculty member (Kevin Spacey),
to join a secret team of student blackjack wizards who
head to Las Vegas on weekends to rake in hundreds of
thousands of dollars by counting cards. Sturgess wears
his hair in a longish, haphazard cut that's like a floppy
helmet. It's the armour of a kid who's shy about everything
but his intelligence. As Ben, he's passive and slightly
dorky, a gummy collegiate tangle of sweetness, IQ, and
loser psychology. Ben hangs out with a couple of geeks
(together they're building a robot), and he takes it
as a fact that girls, or at least the hot ones, aren't
interested in him. But when he sits down at the blackjack
tables, that very hesitancy — his reluctance to
reveal himself — works for him. His brainy reserve
becomes cool, a way of negotiating risk. He's a Will
Hunting who turns into James Bond. The fun of 21 is
the way that this sharp, hyperaware star in the making,
his face as readable as a mood ring, pours us into an
adrenalized cocktail of fear, desire, and mental buzz.”—Owen
Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly. 123 min. (14A) May
17, 19-21
UP
THE YANGTZE
(Yung Chang, Canada 2008) “Watching Up the Yangtze
is one of those experiences that reinvigorates and restores
your faith in the documentary film medium. Full of stunning
images of contemporary China, it shows us the unsettling
pace at which the nation’s cultures are shifting,
and the manner in which the country’s newfound
economic super-powerhouse status is bulldozing all other
concerns. Written and directed by Concordia film school
grad Yung Chang, this NFB/EyeSteelFilm co-production
takes us on a feature-length journey through the personal
upheaval brought to one young woman’s family.
Yu Shui lives along the Yangtze River with her poor
family, but this is all about to change. The Three Gorges
Dam—touted by Chinese authorities as symbolic
of the nation’s burgeoning growth and new prosperity—has
meant that the Yangtze is rising. Over two million people
will have to be relocated, and Shui’s family is
among them. Shui’s plight is contrasted with that
of another cruise-ship employee, Chen Bo Yu, who hails
from a much wealthier family and who serves as a strong
example of Little Emperor Syndrome—that as an
only child (the national standard by law) he is quite
spoiled and self-absorbed. Never maudlin, Up the Yangtze
is a perfect balance of personal impressions, gorgeous
cinematography and frank interviews about what is happening
to the Chinese people. Chang intersperses the proceedings
with images of the tourists and one particularly hilarious
sequence where the young Chinese are told what not to
say to tourists. “Whatever you do,” they’re
told sternly, “don’t compare America with
Canada when talking to American tourists.”—Matthew
Hays, Montreal Mirror. In Mandarin with subtitles. 93
min. (14A) May 12-14, 16
THE
YEAR MY PARENTS WENT ON VACATION
(Cao Hamburger, Brazil 2007) "This absorbing 1970-set
tale of a 12-year-old shaped by three driving forces—his
country's brutal dictatorship, his left-wing parents'
disappearance and a nation's obsession with the World
Cup—pulls you into a well-observed world and its
characters. The film begins with a scene that feels
just right, chaotic but not melodramatic. The boy is
Mauro, played by Michel
Joelsas. His mother waits for his chronically late father
to arrive home, so that the parents can pile into their
VW with a suspicious number of belongings. They drop
Mauro at the curb of his grandfather's house. "Don't
forget, we're on vacation," Mauro's father says
to Mauro. They promise to return in time to enjoy the
World Cup together. The story's one narrative whopper
arrives early: Mauro's grandfather, it turns out, has
just died. There is no one to meet the boy. The deceased
grandfather's neighbor is a stoic, isolated Orthodox
Jew (played by Germano Haiut) who wonders, who is this
apparent goy (Mauro's half-Jewish, we learn) wandering
the dark halls of the Sao Paulo apartment complex, kicking
his soccer ball against the walls? Thus begins a rickety,
makeshift relationship between reluctant guardian and
a boy whose parents have suddenly, in fear of their
dissident lives, gone on vacation. The Year My Parents
Went on Vacation takes place in Bom Retiro district
of Sao Paulo, home to a large Jewish community as well
as a melange of other religions, ethnicities and cultures,
all of whom were nuts about Pele. Young Mauro, the girl
upstairs (Daniela Piepszyk) and the dishy waitress around
the corner (Liliana Castro) share a dream: to see Brazil
win a third World Cup."—Michael Phillips,
Chicago Tribune. In Portuguese and Yiddish with subtitles.
104 min. (PG) May 23, 25-27 |
