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Movies & TV

Film Friday: Oz the Great and Powerful, Cloudburst, Neighboring Sounds and more

Neighboring Sounds (Kleber Mendonça Filho) tackles its themes so subtly, you’re mesmerized before you realize you’re watching a commentary on race, class and capitalism. In a wealthy Brazilian complex controlled by sugar cane baron Francisco (W.J. Solha), a security company gets the job of making sure everyone’s property is safe, but its presence on the street creates an eerie tension. The camera wanders into the residents’ homes, spying on a pot-smoking woman (Maeve Jinkings) relating to her children and the help Francisco’s son (Sebastião Formiga), who’s falling in love with a woman whose former home his father is expropriating a security guard (Irandhir Santos) who steals into people’s homes to have sex. Not surprisingly, given the title, the sound, designed by director Filho himself, is astounding. But the film is almost as visually arresting, each shot meticulously constructed, often using the grid-like patterns of gates or bars on the windows. Riveting. Subtitled. 131 min.

Rating: NNNN (SGC)

Opens Mar 8 at TIFF Bell Lightbox. See here for times.


Shepard & Dark (Treva Wurmfeld) looks at the 50-year friendship between actor and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Sam Shepard and the considerably less famous Johnny Dark, who met as young men and maintained their connection through some very complicated times. Director Wurmfeld follows the men over a year or so as they prepare to deliver decades of their correspondence to archivists at Texas State University. There are hundreds of letters and plenty of history to be sorted, not all of it pleasant: Shepard’s first wife was Dark’s step-daughter, and that marriage did not end well, leaving Dark picking up pieces on both sides. It’s a rare friendship that can survive something like that, but of course that’s why Wurmfeld is recording it, and why we’re watching she’s also smart enough to give each of her subjects equal standing rather than frame them as a celebrity and his pal from the sticks. You’d want to hang around with them, too. 92 min.

Rating: NNNN (NW)

Opens Mar 8 at Bloor Hot Docs Cinema. See here for times.


Cloudburst (Thom Fitzgerald) is a considerably more cinematic effort than East Coast-based director Fitzgerald usually produces – despite being an adaptation of his 2010 stage play. Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker star as Stella and Dotty, an aging Maine couple who decide to drive to Nova Scotia and get married in order to gain legal standing in each other’s lives. (Dotty’s granddaughter, played on the shrill side by Kristin Booth, wants to put her in a nursing home, and Stella has no say in the matter.) The couple picks up a hitchhiker (Ryan Doucette, reprising his stage role) along the way, which has led some wags to compare Cloudburst to Thelma & Louise. But that’s an awfully facile comparison. This movie goes in its own direction. 93 min.

Rating: NNN (NW)

Opens Mar 8 at Carlton Cinema. See here for times.


Greenwich Village: Music That Defined a Generation (Laura Archibald) mines a trove of archival footage and interviews with Pete Seeger, Kris Kristofferson, Judy Collins, Tom Paxton and dozens of other gifted musicians whose talent was nurtured in the Village cafés of the 50s and 60s. The interviews sometimes have a predictable feel: the musicians weren’t competitive no one was interested in fame gee, Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ In The Wind is a good song. But occasionally there’s some great content, especially José Feliciano’s Dylan imitation and Buffy Sainte-Marie’s commentary on why politics mattered. And the footage is awesome: Cass Elliot in her first band (she has her hair in a flip!), an incendiary performance of Freedom by Richie Havens and a young Joni Mitchell singing Night In The City. It’s weird that the gay presence in Greenwich Village is mentioned only once, and it’s always irritating to hear New Yorkers refer to themselves as the centre of the universe. Except in this case, they might be right. 121 min.

Rating: NNN (SGC)

Opens Mar 8 at Bloor Hot Docs Cinema. See here for times.


Oz the Great and Powerful (Sam Raimi) is nothing like the classic MGM fantasy. It’s an empty spectacle full of actors racing through green-screen landscapes and battling CG beasties that never seem quite as real as they should. James Franco breezes through the role of Oscar Diggs, a carnival showman in 1905 Kansas who gets blown into the mythical land of Oz Michelle Williams, Mila Kunis and Rachel Weisz are magically inclined citizens with whom he becomes entangled, leading to jealous rivalries and the rise of a certain green-skinned harpy. The ideas come from L. Frank Baum’s novels, but the real inspiration here is Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland – which wasn’t particularly good, but was a global smash that triggered the current wave of fairy-tale blockbusters. Aping Burton’s approach at every turn, director Raimi piles on the elaborate sets and visual effects, burying his own sensibility in the process. 131 min.

Rating: NN (NW)

Opens Mar 8 at 401 & Morningside, Beach Cinemas, Coliseum Mississauga, Coliseum Scarborough, Colossus, Courtney Park 16, Eglinton Town Centre, Grande – Steeles, Grande – Yonge, Queensway, Rainbow Market Square, Rainbow Promenade, Rainbow Woodbine, SilverCity Fairview, SilverCity Mississauga, SilverCity Yonge, SilverCity Yorkdale, Varsity, Yonge & Dundas 24. See here for times.


Trouble in the Peace (Julian T. Pinder) tackles the pressing issue of Encana’s natural-gas pipeline mendacity in rural BC – a topic the NFB previously explored in the affecting and complex Wiebo’s War – by basically running it through a Terrence Malick Instagram filter. Director Pinder tracks long, sweeping takes of Peace River County farmland with thoughtful audio of Karl Mattson, a farmer and artist who’s worried about the long-term health effects of raising his young daughter amidst the natural gas wells that may be poisoning the groundwater. If you’ve seen Gasland or Wiebo’s War, you’ll have a sense of what’s at stake if not, you’re on your own, since Pinder provides very little in the way of hard information, preferring instead to go for sombre insinuation and long, thoughtful silences. 94 min.

Rating: N (NW)

Opens Mar 8 at Bloor Hot Docs Cinema. See here for times.


Dead Man Down (Niels Arden Oplev) is a revenge thriller that deals with weighty issues, directed by the man behind the original Girl With The Dragon Tattoo film. Screened after press time – see review March 8 at nowtoronto.com/movies. 117 min.

Opens Mar 8 at 401 & Morningside, Carlton Cinema, Coliseum Mississauga, Coliseum Scarborough, Colossus, Courtney Park 16, Eglinton Town Centre, Empire Theatres at Empress Walk, Grande – Steeles, Queensway, Scotiabank Theatre, SilverCity Fairview, SilverCity Yonge. See here for times.


The Metropolitan Opera: Les Troyens Encore is a high def broadcast of the Met’s production of the epic Berlioz opera about the Trojan War, starring Deborah Voigt, Susan Graham and Dwayne Croft. 330 min.

Opens Mar 9 at Beach Cinemas, Coliseum Mississauga, Coliseum Scarborough, Grande – Yonge, Queensway, Scotiabank Theatre, SilverCity Yonge. See here for times.

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