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Movies & TV

Film Friday: Gangster Squad, Amour, Zero Dark Thirty and more

Amour (Michael Haneke) is an unforgiving tale of an aging husband and wife (French screen legends Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva) whose lives disintegrate into torment after she’s paralyzed by a stroke and he devotes himself to her care. Turns out there’s no one better to chronicle the tiny, cumulative miseries of old age than an emotional sadist like Haneke, who can turn a simple sequence of a man moving his paralyzed wife from her bed to a chair into a nerve-shredding, heart-in-mouth aria of suspense. The approach is unapologetically manipulative, but Trintignant and Riva invest their every moment with life and history. Harder to shake off than any horror film you can name – and twice as disturbing. Subtitled. 127 min.

Rating: NNNNN (NW)

Opens Jan 11 at TIFF Bell Lightbox, Varsity. See here for times.


Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow) finds Hurt Locker collaborators Bigelow and Mark Boal compressing the CIA’s decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden into a crisp, urgent thriller that manages to feel suspenseful and nervy even when the outcome is a matter of history. Jessica Chastain’s fantastic as the operative who gives the film its centre, rising effortlessly to the challenge of representing America’s damaged post-9/11 soul (and putting a great deal of distance between her driven, confident intelligence expert and the Cassandra-like character Claire Danes plays on Homeland). At its finest, Zero Dark Thirty transcends true-life drama and invites us into the headspace of people who’ve participated in changing the world. Turns out it’s a lot more complicated, and much uglier, than we’d like to believe. (And the torture debate is bullshit, by the way.) 157 min.

Rating: NNNNN (NW)

Opens Jan 11 at 401 & Morningside, Beach Cinemas, Coliseum Mississauga, Coliseum Scarborough, Colossus, Courtney Park 16, Eglinton Town Centre, Empire Theatres at Empress Walk, Grande – Steeles, Humber Cinemas, Queensway, Rainbow Market Square, Rainbow Promenade, Rainbow Woodbine, SilverCity Fairview, SilverCity Mississauga, SilverCity Yonge, SilverCity Yorkdale, Varsity, Yonge & Dundas 24. See here for times.


The House I Live In (Eugene Jarecki) finds the director of Why We Fight exploring another regrettable intersection of political policy and social reality: America’s war on drugs, which has been going on for more than four decades and done absolutely nothing to diminish the demand for illegal narcotics – though it’s succeeded wonderfully in expanding the U.S. prison industry, with mandatory sentencing minimums guaranteeing the nation’s jails are horrifically overcrowded. It’s a sombre and potent investigation. Jarecki doesn’t shy away from the real damage done to families and communities by rampant drug abuse, but he never loses sight of the larger issue: the war on drugs has been an utter failure, which, like most authoritarian efforts, now exists primarily to perpetuate itself by the most draconian means imaginable. 108 min.

Rating: NNNN (NW)

Opens Jan 11 at Bloor Hot Docs Cinema. See here for times.


The Patron Saints (Brian Cassidy, Melanie Shatzky) is a bleak and expressionistic doc that quietly observes the occupants of an unnamed U.S. nursing home for the aged and disabled, many of whom are just waiting to die. The filmmakers find a casual narrator in James, an obese man who is likely the youngest and most sound of mind among the patients, a tragic figure with a wry sense of humour and a laugh that hints at desperation. He’s forced to find amusement, even if it’s in his neighbour’s misery. While there’s no explicit argument being made within the film, health care funding will be a talking point after the fact. The doc verges on exploitative, since many subjects don’t understand who is watching them in moments that are unflattering, to say the least, yet it’s also necessary viewing, forcing us to confront common realities we conveniently ignore. 72 min.

Rating: NNNN (RS)

Opens Jan 11 at Royal. See here for times.


The Ambassador (Mads Brügger) features Danish journalist Brügger in an exposé of just how easily diplomatic accreditation can be purchased in Africa for the purposes of smuggling and illegal trading. From setting up backroom deals with crooked consuls and brokers to creating his own front operation in the Central African Republic, he crafts a coal-black comedy that gets exponentially more dangerous the deeper he goes. He’s almost too straight at times it’s hard to tell what’s genuine, but the up-close look at a blood diamond mine and the wit and chills in hidden-camera interviews carry lots of weight. Some subtitles. 94 min.

Rating: NNN (Andrew Parker)

Opens Jan 11 at Bloor Hot Docs Cinema. See here for times.


Gangster Squad (Ruben Fleischer) is really just a Los Angeles spin on The Untouchables, with Sean Penn’s Mickey Cohen standing in for Robert De Niro’s Al Capone and Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Michael Peña and Giovanni Ribisi as the morally compromised warriors bent on smashing his criminal operations. And much like The Untouchables, it’s a lot more enjoyable once you realize you’re watching an action cartoon that throws historical accuracy out the window about five minutes in. Brolin makes a fine bulldog hero and Penn gobbles scenery as the thuggish Cohen, but Gosling gives a surprisingly subtle performance as a cynical cop hiding a heart of gold, and Emma Stone is charming as always as a good girl caught in the middle. 113 min.

Rating: NNN (NW)

Opens Jan 11 at 401 & Morningside, Beach Cinemas, Carlton Cinema, Coliseum Scarborough, Colossus, Courtney Park 16, Eglinton Town Centre, Grande – Steeles, Grande – Yonge, Humber Cinemas, Queensway, Rainbow Market Square, Rainbow Promenade, Rainbow Woodbine, Scotiabank Theatre, SilverCity Fairview, SilverCity Yonge, SilverCity Yorkdale. See here for times.


A Dark Truth (Damian Lee) is a political thriller set in Ecuador, where a Canadian-owned water purification company has hired its own militia to wage an all-out war against villagers protesting its purchase of their water supply. When she learns of the slaughter of an entire town, guilt-ridden CEO Morgan (Deborah Kara Unger) hires ex-CIA agent Jack (Andy Garcia) to travel to South America to find resistance leader Francisco (Forest Whitaker), who can expose the corruption. To make sure Jack and Morgan don’t succeed, her brother and co-CEO (Kim Coates) hires a hit man. Writer/director Lee’s ham-fisted script alternates between implausible shootouts and philosophical mumblings by Jack, now host of a radio talk show, and Francisco, who’s ready to renounce violence. A Dark Truth has its heart is in the right place, but good intentions unfortunately do not always make for good art. Some subtitles. 88 min.

Rating: NN (SGC)

Opens Jan 11 at Yonge & Dundas 24. See here for times.


The Metropolitan Opera: The Tempest Encore is a repeat high-def broadcast of Thomas Adès’s opera, conducted by the composer and directed by Canada’s Robert Lepage. 180 min.

Opens Jan 12 at Coliseum Scarborough. See here for times.

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