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Movies & TV

Film Friday: The Fruit Hunters, Ping Pong, Hitchcock and more

The Fruit Hunters (Yung Chang) is a globe-trotting look at exotic fruit enthusiasts who seek to rescue, preserve and cultivate their favourite produce. One of them is the actor Bill Pullman, whose attempts to create a community orchard on unused land in his Hollywood Hills neighbourhood give the documentary its narrative spine. If you’ve ever wondered why people eat the foul-smelling durian, or what drives a person to trek into Borneo in search of a spiky plumlike thing seen only in photographs, you’ll find plenty to like in The Fruit Hunters. Just be warned that it’s a little more whimsical than Chang’s previous projects, and whimsy isn’t something he does terribly well. But as the film demonstrates, there’s no accounting for taste. Some subtitles. 95 min.

Rating: NNN (NW)

Opens Nov 23 at Bloor Hot Docs Cinema. See here for times.


Inch’Allah (Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette) follows Chloé (Evelyne Brochu), a naive Canadian obstetrician who resides on the Israeli side of the West Bank but works in a Ramallah refugee camp. The contrast between the two worlds she slips between with relative ease is striking: in the former she goes nightclubbing with her border guard buddy (Sivan Levy), while the latter is a place of almost ubiquitous hostility and insufficient resources, where impoverished kids amuse themselves by scavenging in refuse heaps. Whether Quebecoise filmmaker Barbeau-Lavalette, whose background is in documentaries, illuminates or merely laments the conflict is hard to say. Chloé attempts to become an ally for a pregnant Palestinian woman but ultimately receives a short education in the impotence of Western interference. Subtitled. 102 min.

Rating: NNN (Jose Teodoro)

Opens Nov 23 at TIFF Bell Lightbox. See here for times.


Ping Pong (Hugh Hartford) may momentarily put a smile on your face as a bunch of 80-year-olds play ping-pong, but this pulse-less doc rides that novelty from start to finish. Eight players from all over the globe ranging in age from 80 to 100 compete in a seniors’ table tennis championship in Inner Mongolia. Their decision to stay active instead of simply waiting to die is certainly inspirational, but it’s hard to care when Hartford doesn’t pay much attention to any one individual. Maybe his scattershot approach is an effort to cover all the contestants, or perhaps none proved interesting enough to warrant further characterization. And it’s not like any of the ping-pong matches are riveting. Instead of wondering who’s going to win a match, you’re waiting for someone to break a hip. Some subtitles. 80 min.

Rating: NN (RS)

Opens Nov 23 at Bloor Hot Docs Cinema. See here for times.


Hitchcock (Sacha Gervasi) is an abomination, reducing one of cinema’s most famously complicated and difficult artists to a fussy gnome with a weight problem. Anthony Hopkins looks like he’s struggling to breathe under several pounds of latex Helen Mirren has an easier time as Hitchcock’s endlessly indulgent wife Alma, whom the film posits not only co-wrote Psycho, but co-directed and produced it, too. There’s artistic licence and Hollywood awards-bait mythologizing, but this is just bullshit from beginning to end – from the dopey idea that Hitchcock was haunted by the spectre of mass murderer Ed Gein during the shoot to the insipid oversimplification of Hitchcock’s obsession with his blond actresses. (Jessica Biel is surprisingly layered as Vera Miles Scarlett Johansson, as Janet Leigh, is not.) Someday, someone may make a great movie about Alfred Hitchcock. This ain’t it. In fact, the only way this could have been worse was if it had been a musical. 97 min.

Rating: N (NW)

Opens Nov 23 at Varsity. See here for times.


Irvine Welsh’s Ecstasy (Rob Heydon) is yet another movie about junkies in Scotland based on the work of Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh. If Trainspotting was like pure MDMA, this film, arriving 16 years later, is more like over-the-counter pharmaceuticals passed off as the real deal. Adam Sinclair stars as Lloyd, a pill-popping raver and part-time drug mule who makes a meagre attempt to turn his life around after falling for Heather (Kristin Kreuk). It fails as a convincing romance or crime picture, less due to the low budget (it has the production values of a student film) than to the aimless screenplay that overdoses on clichés. Heydon pads things out with redundant party scenes that look like the same footage recycled throughout the movie and location shots accelerated by a low frame rate, a gimmick that was exhausted before this movie and should be buried after it. 104 min.

Rating: N (RS)

Opens Nov 23 at Projection Booth. See here for times.


Bon Jovi: Inside Out is a broadcast of highlights and a Q&A from the recent tour of the band’s sold-out concerts. 110 min.

Opens Nov 28 at Coliseum Scarborough, Queensway, SilverCity Fairview, SilverCity Mississauga, SilverCity Yonge, Yonge & Dundas 24. See here for times.


The Metropolitan Opera: Otello Encore is a high-def broadcast of the Met’s production of the dark Verdi opera, starring Johan Botha and Renée Fleming. 201 min.

Opens Nov 24 at Beach Cinemas, Coliseum Mississauga, Coliseum Scarborough, Grande – Yonge, Queensway, Scotiabank Theatre, SilverCity Yonge. See here for times.


The Pharaoh’s Daughter – Bolshoi Ballet Live is a broadcast of a live performance from the Bolshoi of the Egyptian-themed ballet. 175 min.

Opens Nov 25 at Coliseum Mississauga, Coliseum Scarborough, Colossus, Grande – Yonge, Queensway, Scotiabank Theatre, SilverCity Yonge. See here for times.

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