Advertisement

Movies & TV News & Features

Broaden your film horizons this weekend


Okay, it’s still winter out there but Toronto’s cinemas are refusing to abandon their spring plans.

Down at the Lightbox, TIFF Cinematheque is kicking off its Restored! series, which puts acknowledged classics back in front of audiences in recent restorations. It’s a win-win proposition, really: TIFF gets to run a favourite movie, and you get to see that movie in its best possible presentation.

The series starts Saturday (April 9) at 6:30 pm with a new 4K restoration of Otto Preminger’s Bunny Lake Is Missing – a bizarre cult thriller starring Laurence Oliver as a police detective investigating a kidnapping case in which the victim may not even exist – and continues Sunday (April 10) with Lino Brocka’s lost Filipino drama Insiang at 6:30 pm.

Other highlights include Yasujiro Ozu’s Late Spring on Tuesday (April 12) at 6:30 pm John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate April 16 at 6 pm Chantal Akerman’s masterwork Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles April 19 at 6:30 pm and King Hu’s knockout wuxia adventure A Touch Of Zen April 26 at 6:30 pm. Honestly, though, check out the whole program.

Over at The Royal on Sunday afternoon, my friends Sasha James and Matthew Price are launching a new monthly film series. Musicale is dedicated to celebrating the best in music-centric cinema, “from 1950s musicals to hip hop documentaries.” And they’re starting off with a great one: The Commitments, Alan Parker’s infectious, endearing adaptation of Roddy Doyle’s breakout novel, featuring a terrific cast (including Once’s Glen Hansard and Orphan Black’s Maria Doyle Kennedy) and a perfectly curated soundtrack of soul covers.

The show starts at 4 pm, and tickets are just $8 in advance. It’s gonna be a blast.

That’s not the only special series screening at The Royal this week, either. MDFF’s irregular Toronto premiere showcase comes back on Tuesday (April 12) with Mouton, Gilles Deroo and Marianne Pistone’s curious cinema-verité drama centred – at least at first – on a teenage chef (Michael Mormentyn) in a small seaside town in Normandy.

It’s an odd little film, but an absorbing one, shot with a deceptively casual eye and a sense of place that grows more disquieting as the story unfolds. The 16mm cinematography put me in mind of the early films of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne – realist character studies that are as much about the worlds in which their characters live as they are about the characters themselves – but Deroo and Pistone have different goals in mind. Advance tickets are just $8. Go on, take a risk.

Advertisement

Exclusive content and events straight to your inbox

Subscribe to our Newsletter

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

By signing up, I agree to receive emails from Now Toronto and to the Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.

Recently Posted