Family Portrait in Black and White (Julia Ivanova) tackles an emotionally absorbing subject filled with layers of complexity. In a modest house in a small Ukrainian town, Olga Nenya raises over 20 children, among them 16 black children who were abandoned by their mothers because of their race. There’s tension with the outside community – ignorant neighbours, tsk-tsking health inspectors – but also bickering within the family, as the hardworking yet hardline Nenya gushes over her no-good biological son while standing in the way of another’s talent for soccer or a daughter’s desire to move to Italy. Is Nenya a saint – or a matriarchal monster? As director Ivanova’s camera captures them over three years, your opinion of the family members will change. Among other things, this powerful doc gives a fascinating glimpse of post-Soviet-era life. A scene in which one of Nenya’s children describes his treatment in a psych institution is so full of horrific details, it could not be made up. Subtitled. 92 min.
Rating: NNNNN (GS)
Opens Mar 2 at Royal. See here for times.
Norwegian Wood (Tran Anh Hung) is simple, spare and beautiful, much like the Beatles song that serves as its melancholy trigger. Writer/director Tran’s adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s 1987 novel is more interested in capturing the delicate alchemy of a young man’s romantic confusion than relating a narrative. You don’t watch it so much as sink into it. It’s the late 1960s, and Watanabe (Kenichi Matsuyama) is a student whose best friend, Kizuki (Kengo Kora), is dating Naoko (Babel’s Rinko Kikuchi). Kizuki’s departure brings Watanabe and Naoko together, sending her into an inconsolable depression and eventually leading Watanabe to the sunny Midori (Kiko Mizuhara). Tran isn’t after big emotional moments revelations come delicately, or even casually, filtered through the older Watanabe’s memory of himself and the others. This is, above all, the tale of a callow young man edging closer and closer to understanding the way the world works – and coming to regret the choices he didn’t make. Subtitled. 133 min.
Rating: NNNN (NW)
Opens Mar 2 at Cumberland 4. See here for times.
Once Upon A Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan) is to police procedurals like Law & Order as Haywire is to a Jason Bourne movie it’s the contemplative, considered alternative to structured genre filmmaking. A brooding, considered examination of the gruelling process by which justice may begin to be served, the film follows a group of men searching for evidence of foul play in the countryside. Like David Fincher’s Zodiac and Corneliu Porumboiu’s Police, Adjective, this is a patient, thoughtful procedural that’s less about the investigation than the investigators. If you’ve been conditioned by years of cookie-cutter television to need a resolution in 45 minutes, it’ll have you climbing the walls. But if you’re open to other possibilities, there’s some great stuff going on here. Subtitled. 157 min.
Rating: NNNN (NW)
Opens Mar 2 at TIFF Bell Lightbox. See here for times.
Project X (Nima Nourizadeh) puts a found-footage spin on the teen-comedy genre, dropping us into the middle of a high school zero’s birthday party that spirals disastrously – and spectacularly – out of control. The long hand-held takes serve to define the characters beyond their cliché origins of Shy One (Thomas Mann), Horndog (Oliver Cooper) and Nerd (Jonathan Daniel Brown), and director Nourizadeh escalates the mayhem in a manner that feels both thrilling and terrifying. It’s not for everybody, but if you ever wondered what Risky Business would have felt like without the glossy cinematography and Tangerine Dream score, you’ll be very pleasantly surprised. 88 min.
Rating: NNNN (NW)
Opens Mar 2 at 401 & Morningside, Carlton Cinema, Coliseum Mississauga, Coliseum Scarborough, Colossus, Courtney Park 16, Eglinton Town Centre, Empire Theatres at Empress Walk, Grande – Steeles, Queensway, Rainbow Market Square, Rainbow Promenade, Rainbow Woodbine, Scotiabank Theatre, SilverCity Fairview, SilverCity Yonge, SilverCity Yorkdale. See here for times.
Dr. Seuss’ the Lorax (Chris Renaud, Kyle Balda) follows a young boy’s attempt to plant trees in a filthy town where even fresh air is for sale. Soon he meets a crusty hermit who ruined the formerly lush forest despite warnings from the Lorax, who speaks for the trees. Yep, this is latest feature-length Dr. Suess adaptation that transforms the masterful author’s succinct writing into souped-up 3-D CGI spectacle. Those who grew up on the book will find the added pop culture references and songs distracting, but the breezy comedy should please kids. Seuss won’t roll over in his grave – maybe just shudder slightly. 94 min.
Rating: NNN (Phil Brown)
Opens Mar 2 at 401 & Morningside, Beach Cinemas, Coliseum Mississauga, Colossus, Courtney Park 16, Eglinton Town Centre, Grande – Steeles, Grande – Yonge, Kennedy Commons 20, Queensway, Rainbow Market Square, Rainbow Promenade, Rainbow Woodbine, SilverCity Fairview, SilverCity Mississauga, SilverCity Yonge, SilverCity Yorkdale, Varsity, Yonge & Dundas 24. See here for times.
Let the Bullets Fly (Jiang Wen) is a witty comedy about a bandit who poses as the new governor of a small town and gets into complicated power games with its resident crime lord. Lots of elaborate lying ensues, along with body doubles, faked kidnappings and deaths and a gang war in the dark with everyone in the same mask. For non-Chinese speakers, the constant, rapid-fire dialogue keeps the eyes glued to the subtitles, which sometimes go by too quickly to read fully and spoil much of the fun. Subtitled. 132 min.
Rating: NNN (AD)
Opens Mar 2 at TIFF Bell Lightbox. See here for times.
Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie (Tim Heidecker, Eric Wareheim) finds the stars of Tim And Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! jumping to the big screen with a comedy that lands the bright-eyed idiots in a rundown shopping mall after blowing a billion dollars on the eponymous disaster. The structure of a feature film works against Heidecker and Wareheim’s episodic sensibility, bogging the midsection down in ideas that don’t quite pay off, like Eric’s crush on a middle-aged shopkeeper (Twink Caplan). But the elements that do work – like the scabby sidekick played by John C. Reilly or a gangster subplot straight out of an 80s movie – will make you laugh so hard you’ll risk convulsions. 93 min.
Rating: NNN (NW)
Opens Mar 2 at TIFF Bell Lightbox. See here for times.
Undefeated (Dan Lindsay, T.J. Martin) is an Oscar-winning football doc that comes across at times like any other crowd-pleasing underdog sports movie. There’s even a subplot that echoes The Blind Side. But these hardened inner-city kids are far more authentic than anything Hollywood can write, giving the film a raw emotional weight that fiction can rarely conjure up. Memphis high school football team the Manassas Tigers has many fatherless players, some who know a bit too much about the prison system. With intimate access, the directors focus on how some of these kids go from careless and rowdy to mature and promising. However, the only covers three players and their coach, whose stories have Oscar gold written all over them. That leaves you wondering whether the more tragic tales were left on the bench for the sake of a winning, feel-good movie. 113 min.
Rating: NNN (RS)
Opens Mar 2 at Cumberland 4. See here for times.
The Odds (Simon Davidson) is a bad knock-off of Rian Johnson’s high school film noir Brick, with all the whodunnit clichés but none of the cool. Tyler Johnston stars as Desson, a 17-year-old smooth operator who still attends classroom detentions and drinks rum and coke instead of the gumshoe’s typical bourbon (among the film’s few nice touches). Desson works among teenage bookies and card sharks to profit from his peers. After a friend ends up dead, he goes on the prowl for the murderer among his classmates. The Odds deals a losing hand because it takes its preposterous premise far too seriously – at least Brick was a bit tongue-in-cheek. Certainly urban high schools have their fair share of enterprising young offenders, but these boys seem like they walked off the set of Degrassi with too much allowance to burn. 92 min.
Rating: N (RS)
Opens Mar 2 at Yonge & Dundas 24. See here for times.
The Metropolitan Opera: The Enchanted Island Encore is a Met broadcast in high-def of the new opera compiled from music by Handel, Vivaldi and Rameau and starring Plácido Domingo and David Daniels. 220 min.
Opens Mar 3 at Beach Cinemas, Coliseum Mississauga, Coliseum Scarborough, Grande – Yonge, Queensway, Scotiabank Theatre, SilverCity Yonge. See here for times.
National Theatre Live: The Comedy of Errors is a broadcast in high-def of the National’s production of the Shakespeare mistaken identity comedy, starring funny guy Lenny Henry. 195 min.
Opens Mar 1 at Coliseum Mississauga, Coliseum Scarborough, Grande – Yonge, Queensway, Scotiabank Theatre, SilverCity Yonge. See here for times.
