Repeat performers
The release of a new 4K digital restoration of The Godfather: Part II inspires TIFF Cinematheque to launch one last summer series: Second Coming: Cinema’s Greatest Sequels, screening great films and their equally respected follow-ups over the course of the month.
Selections include Frankenstein and The Bride Of Frankenstein, Yojimbo and Sanjuro, Batman and Batman Returns, Evil Dead and Evil Dead II, A Fistful Of Dollars and For A Few Dollars More, Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, and The Hustler and The Color Of Money, the only double bill not directed by a single filmmaker.
The logic is flawed since half of these pairings are but two-thirds of a trilogy, but this way we can all pretend The Godfather: Part III doesn’t exist, and that’s fine by me.
A special engagement of The Godfather: Part II starts August 7 Second Coming starts August 8.
Tripping again
Four years ago in The Trip, Michael Winterbottom convinced Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon to reprise the slightly skewed versions of themselves they’d played in his brilliant Tristram Shandy: A Cock And Bull Story and squabble their way through a fine-dining tour of the north of England.
All three reassembled for The Trip To Italy, which Winterbottom once again shot as a six-part BBC series and whittled down into a feature film for global distribution.
If you loved the first, you’re as stoked for this as I am.
Opens August 15.
Toronto love
It’s taken nearly a year for The F Word to make it to theatres after its TIFF 2013 debut, but that just means Michael Dowse’s locally sourced romantic comedy – in which Daniel Radcliffe’s heartbroken technical writer falls for Zoe Kazan’s charming animator but has to settle for friendship because she’s already in a relationship – arrives as the perfect way to close out the summer.
See it on a date, see it with a friend, see it by yourself and try to identify all the east-end locations. Just see it. It’s swell.
Opens August 22.
