Advertisement

Movies & TV

Film Friday: Prisoners, Good Ol’ Freda, My Lucky Star and more

Cutie and the Boxer (Zachary Heinzerling) is a colourful, beautifully directed and touching look at one of the more unusual art couples, Ushio and Noriko Shinohara, Japanese emigrés living in NYC. He’s one of Japan’s leading avant-garde artists, an octogenarian best known for his “boxing” paintings and big sculptures constructed from recycled cardboard she put her own art career on hold to raise their child and become Ushio’s unpaid cook and assistant. They’re struggling to pay the bills, and Noriko’s focusing on her autobiographical drawings – which is where the whimsical title comes from – making the narcissistic Ushio jealous. Director Heinzerling gets great access to the couple, whose arguments are full of buried resentments. He cleverly mixes present-day footage with home movies, old photos and even another doc on then rising star Ushio for maximum emotional effect. What emerges is a complex, feminist look at the act of creation, but also a touching portrait of enduring love. Subtitled. 82 min.

Rating: NNNNN (GS)

Opens Sep 20 at TIFF Bell Lightbox. See here for times.


Good Ol’ Freda (Ryan White) tracks Freda Kelly, the woman who ran the Beatles’ official fan club through the band’s 11-year history while working as a secretary first for manager Brian Epstein and then for the Beatles themselves. Steadfastly loyal, Kelly never flaunted her close connection to the Fab Four, even post breakup, not telling even her children about it until this doc was being made. No surprise she has memorabilia to die for. Kelly’s amazing enough, but what makes the doc essential is its intimate portrait of the band, from their days playing the Cavern – Kelly used to see them there at lunch while she worked in a typing pool – to the point when they came apart. It’s all told from the unique perspective of a woman who never idolized them and basically grew up with them. From our North American viewpoint, the Beatles were major stars, expertly marketed by the savvy Epstein in swinging England. Good Ol’ Freda makes the era look much more innocent. 86 min.

Rating: NNNN (SGC)

Opens Sep 20 at Bloor Hot Docs Cinema. See here for times.


Our Man in Tehran (Larry Weinstein, Drew Taylor) isn’t quite the antithesis of Argo. Instead of focusing primarily on how Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor protected Americans hiding in his embassy during the 1979-81 U.S.-Iranian hostage crisis, this Canadian doc takes a broader, fuller look at the history of the event, exploring the issues in a balanced and honest (if somewhat redundant) manner from the viewpoint of all countries involved. 85 min.

Rating: NNN (Andrew Parker)

Opens Sep 20 at TIFF Bell Lightbox. See here for times.


Prisoners (Denis Villeneuve) stars Hugh Jackman as a Pennsylvania contractor who reacts to his daughter’s abduction by grabbing the most likely suspect (Paul Dano), hidings him away and trying to beat the truth out of him. The first two-thirds of Villeneuve’s Hollywood debut play out like an intimate metaphor for America’s response to 9/11, with Jackman’s contractor standing in for George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and Jake Gyllenhaal’s twitchy but by-the-book detective representing Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty. Jackman’s entirely convincing as a righteous hothead, but Villeneuve’s unable to keep Aaron Guzikowski’s screenplay from collapsing into overwrought, mildly preposterous contrivance when the time comes to wrap things up. And there’s simply no reason this movie needed to be two and a half hours long. 153 min.

Rating: NNN (NW)

Opens Sep 20 at 401 & Morningside, Beach Cinemas, Cineplex Cinemas Empress Walk, Coliseum Scarborough, Colossus, Courtney Park 16, Eglinton Town Centre, Grande – Steeles, Humber Cinemas, Queensway, Rainbow Market Square, Rainbow Promenade, Rainbow Woodbine, Scotiabank Theatre, SilverCity Fairview, SilverCity Mississauga, SilverCity Yonge, SilverCity Yorkdale, Varsity. See here for times.


A Single Shot (David Rosenthal) takes a terrific Sam Rockwell performance and buries it under grimy portent, an insistent musical score and supporting players who are trying way too hard. But Rockwell is so totally convincing as a short-sighted, trouble-prone farmhand who accidentally shoots a young woman, appropriates the box of money she was hiding and then runs afoul of the dangerous criminals looking for said cache that it almost doesn’t matter that the rest of the movie is a heavy-handed cautionary tale about owning up to your mistakes and never taking things that clearly belong to someone else. 116 min.

Rating: NNN (NW)

Opens Sep 20 at Carlton Cinema. See here for times.


The Art of the Steal (Jonathan Sobol) finds writer/director Sobol following 2010’s A Beginner’s Guide To Endings with another half-assed Niagara Falls caper comedy in which an ex-con (Kurt Russell) is pulled back into the world of high-value art theft when his brother (Matt Dillon) and uncle (Kenneth Welsh) happen upon the scam of a lifetime. It’s the most predictable sort of heist picture, made fitfully entertaining by the presence of the unpredictably antic Jay Baruchel as Russell’s nervous protege and the strangely wonderful team of Jason Jones and Terence Stamp as an over-caffeinated Interpol agent and his glum special adviser. If only they were goofing around in a better movie. 90 min.

Rating: NN (NW)

Opens Sep 20 at Cineplex Cinemas Empress Walk, Coliseum Mississauga, Colossus, Courtney Park 16, Eglinton Town Centre, Queensway, SilverCity Mississauga, SilverCity Yonge, Yonge & Dundas 24. See here for times.


Filthy Gorgeous: The Bob Guccione Story (Barry Avrich) uses archival footage and interviews with Guccione’s family, friends and colleagues to tell the life story of the man who built the Penthouse publishing empire and a lavish lifestyle but lost it all through dumb investments and his failure to see the digital age coming. Director Avrich is plainly a fan, appreciating Guccione the artist the magazine mogul always wanted to be a painter and personally shot all those famous nudes. As in his docs about Harvey Weinstein and Garth Drabinsky, Avrich can’t bring himself to talk to anyone who doesn’t flat-out admire his subject, which weakens the film. His failure to interview a smart feminist means the director can’t make the most of the fact that women basically ran the magazine. Skin mag aficionados will love this, and there are some poignant moments, especially from Guccione’s loyal assistant Jane Homlish and Bob Guccione Jr., but Avrich still hasn’t figured out how to create a complete portrait. 96 min.

Rating: NN (SGC)

Opens Sep 20 at TIFF Bell Lightbox. See here for times.


Nothing Left to Fear (Anthony Leonardi III) tries for something other than the shock-and-awe stuff of much contemporary horror of the direct-to-video variety. A pastor (James Tupper) and his family move to the backwater town of Stull, Kansas, where he will lead the church. Strange visions of black-eyed ghouls begin troubling them, and it’s all too obvious that the suspiciously helpful parishioners are less than well intentioned. It may be nobly light on gore, but the film simply swaps out one set of clichés for another. 100 min.

Rating: NN (JS)

Opens Sep 19 at Coliseum Mississauga, Colossus, Eglinton Town Centre, Queensway, SilverCity Fairview, Yonge & Dundas 24. See here for times.


Salinger (Shane Salerno) is less a documentary about the Catcher In The Rye author than a slimy piece of promotion for Salerno’s new book and the five new works by Salinger (he died in 2010) to be published between 2015 and 2020. Some rare photos of Salinger during the Second World War are intriguing, as is the information that his first wife may have had Nazi roots. (Remember, Salinger was half Jewish.) Thankfully, Salerno explores his subject’s creepy fascination with young women through extensive interviews with two of his idealized innocents – Jean Miller, whom he met in his 30s when she was 14, and future novelist Joyce Maynard, who lived with him for a time. Salerno attempts no literary analysis, however, and opts for embarrassing recreations that include pretentious episodes in which a tortured, chain-smoking figure paces the room and taps into a typewriter while scenes from his life play out on a screen behind him. As Catcher’s anti-hero, Holden Caulfield, might say: these are so phony. 129 min.

Rating: NN (GS)

Opens Sep 20 at Cineplex Cinemas Empress Walk, Queensway, Varsity. See here for times.


The Short Game (Josh Greenbaum) draws on the well-worn pleasure of seeing pushy parents drive their kids to success. The doc follows a group of striving seven- and eight-year-olds and their parent-coaches (or “daddy caddies”) as they train and compete at the 2012 Kids Golf World Championships in North Carolina. A French mother reduces her kid to tears on the fairway, an upper-middle class American boy drills with a CrossFit -instructor, and a South African youngster’s parents shoulder him with the responsibility of representing the entire nation. The Short Game’s thin criticism of parents pushing their children to win feels like it’s contributing to the same crummy culture it pretends to condemn. 100 min.

Rating: NN (JS)

Opens Sep 20 at Carlton Cinema, Cineplex Cinemas Empress Walk, Kingsway Theatre. See here for times.


Unclaimed (Michael Jorgensen) follows Tom Faunce, a Vietnam veteran and born-again Christian dedicated to finding American prisoners of war and bringing them home again. His cause is Dang Than Ngoc, an elderly man living in Vietnam who claims to be John Hartley Robertson, an American GI missing in action after a helicopter crash in 1968. Faunce works to confirm Ngoc’s identity, but before too long I noticed that certain essential investigative steps – like fingerprinting and DNA testing, or even researching the history of Ngoc’s claim – were being actively avoided for fear that such evidence might undermine his case, impede Faunce’s need to find the closure for others that he can’t find for himself or deny Unclaimed the upbeat ending it’s determined to have, all evidence to the contrary. Some subtitles. 77 min.

Rating: NN (NW)

Opens Sep 20 at Bloor Hot Docs Cinema. See here for times.


Austenland (Jerusha Hess) gives Jane Austen, Keri Russell and love a bad name. The only person Jane Hayes (Russell) has ever loved is Austen’s Mr. Darcy. Unlucky in the romance department, she empties her bank account and heads to the UK’s Austenland, “the world’s only immersive Austen experience,” and predictably lands in the middle of a Regency-style love triangle. The premise is promising, taking Austen adaptation to the next level as a meta-costume drama, but the idea’s gracelessly executed. The problem lies with director Hess’s script (co-written with novelist Shannon Hale). Hess aims for the offbeat humour of Napoleon Dynamite (which she co-wrote) but constantly misses the mark. It’s not a question of pride or prejudice, it’s just bad. 96 min.

Rating: N (Kiva Reardon)

Opens Sep 20 at Varsity. See here for times.


My Lucky Star (Dennie Gordon) stars Zhang Ziyi, who hunches and preens in a strained effort to be as adorable as a cat licking her paw, a display that’ll make you cringe. Most familiar to us as the firecracker in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the tragic seductress in Wong Kar-Wai’s 2046, Zhang’s now working China’s middling rom-com scene, doing her best impression of Reese Witherspoon and Sex And The City’s Carrie Bradshaw. She plays Sophie, a hopeless romantic who gets caught up with a dapper spy and his hunt for the world’s biggest diamond, which some nefarious types plan to turn into a WMD. Meant to appeal to North American audiences, it plays more like Inspector Gadget than The Spy Who Loved Me, with cartoonish villains and poorly written pratfall comedy. If this dreck is what the Chinese think we like, you can only wonder what kind of impression our movies make on them. Subtitled. 113 min.

Rating: N (RS)

Opens Sep 20 at Yonge & Dundas 24. See here for times.


Battle of the Year (Benson Lee) is another movie about urban dancers involved in an international competition. Screened after press time – see review September 20 at nowtoronto.com/movies. 109 min.

Opens Sep 20 at 401 & Morningside, Coliseum Scarborough, Colossus, Courtney Park 16, Eglinton Town Centre, Queensway, Rainbow Woodbine, SilverCity Fairview, SilverCity Yonge, SilverCity Yorkdale, Yonge & Dundas 24. See here for times.


Exhibition: Munch 150 is a documentary about putting together an exhibit of Edvard Munch’s work at Oslo’s National Museum and Munch Museum to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the artist’s birth, hosted by Tim Marlow. 88 min.

Opens Sep 21 at Coliseum Mississauga, Queensway, SilverCity Fairview, SilverCity Yonge, Yonge & Dundas 24. See here for times.


The Wizard of Oz: An IMAX 3D Experience (Victor Fleming) is a 3D IMAX version of the beloved fantasy movie. 101 min.

Opens Sep 20 at Cineplex Cinemas Empress Walk, Coliseum Mississauga, Colossus, Courtney Park 16, Yonge & Dundas 24. See here for times.

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