The Great Beauty (Paolo Sorrentino) stars Toni Servillo as 60-something journalist Jep, who wrote a bestselling novel in his 20s but hasn’t written a thing that matters since. Instead, he’s immersed himself in all things shallow: the party circuit, pseudo-intellectual confabs with the rich and famous, meaningless sex. Shades of La Dolce Vita. Jep reflects on his empty life in a series of spectacular vignettes that come tumbling out of cinematographer Luca Bigazzi and writer-director Sorrentino’s vivid imagination: over-the-top bashes, an artist performing beside Roman ruins, a money-grubbing doctor injecting botox in public. Garish party sequences collide with serene images of Rome’s ancient art beautiful inspirational music meets club bangers. Sure, it’s self-indulgent, but Sorrentino is the kind of director you want to indulge. Just let the damn thing wash over you. Subtitled. 142 min.
Rating: NNNNN (SGC)
Opens Jan 31 at TIFF Bell Lightbox, Varsity. See here for times.
12 O’Clock Boys (Lotfy Nathan) plays like a dirt-bike version of the fourth season of The Wire. For two years, documentarian Nathan followed a Baltimore kid named Pug who dreams of joining the packs of stunt riders who dazzle his neighbourhood with sustained wheelies – performed by pointing their bikes upward like the hands of a clock – and total disregard for the police. There’s just one drawback: Pug develops his skills – on a pokey quad bike – to the exclusion of his studies, his family life and pretty much everything else, pitting him against his exhausted mother, his overworked teachers and a whole lot of other obstacles. In Nathan’s gorgeous slow-motion shots of the 12 O’Clock Boys riding for the camera, we see the glory to which Pug aspires in the rest of the movie, we see the life that’s really waiting for him. 76 min.
Rating: NNNN (NW)
Opens Jan 31 at Carlton Cinema. See here for times.
Visitors (Godfrey Reggio) is unlike any of the Koyaanisqatsi director’s previous works. It’s not a documentary exactly, but a kind of essay film, constructed entirely of images of people (and one endlessly watchable primate) and places drifting across the screen in sumptuous black-and-white, all set to an alternately calm and propulsive Philip Glass score. The flow of images is designed to be open to interpretation, but it seemed to me that Reggio is exploring every permutation of his chosen title, including a slow-motion recreation of a roomful of people reacting to some sort of off-screen event – perhaps they’re not rooting for the home team – and a thrilling visual essay on impermanence. None of us is here forever, after all. But that’s just my take you’re free to make of Reggio’s art what you will. That’s what it’s there for. 87 min.
Rating: NNNN (NW)
Opens Jan 31 at TIFF Bell Lightbox. See here for times.
At Middleton (Adam Rodgers) is an innocuous dramedy about two parent-kid combos who get way more than they bargain for when they head to a small Connecticut town for interviews at Middleton College. Buttoned-down heart surgeon George (Andy Garcia) is pushing his son Conrad (Spencer Lofranco) to get excited about the school, while free-spirited Edith (Vera Farmiga) can’t figure out why Audrey (real-life sister Taissa Farmiga) is considering just this one institution. Soon George and Edith have broken away from the official tour – leaving the kids to spark an uneasy friendship – and form an unlikely bond that makes them question everything about their comfortable lives. There are way too many plot holes in director/co-writer Rodgers’s script, and the stakes would be a lot higher if we knew more about these people’s lives. But the performances are very engaging – Vera Farmiga’s especially – and the parent-child tensions feel authentic. Just don’t expect the earth to move. 100 min.
Rating: NNN (SGC)
Opens Jan 31 at Carlton Cinema. See here for times.
First Comes Love (Nina Davenport) is like an unflinching sequel to autobiographical documentarian Davenport’s Always A Bridesmaid. Davenport tackles the anxieties of being a single 41-year-old who has her heart set on being a mother. Concerned about her “rapidly diminishing ovarian reserve,” she begins the complicated journey toward parenthood by wrangling an unenthusiastic gay friend to be a sperm donor and her BFF to be a supportive partner. For at least the first hour, the film diary effectively mines all the issues and distress surrounding such monumental decisions. When the baby comes, the film completely loses direction, reduced to ogling and only briefly addressing the challenges of raising a child. It makes perfect sense, though, since Davenport stopped being a filmmaker and became a parent. 105 min.
Rating: NNN (RS)
Opens Jan 31 at Bloor Hot Docs Cinema. See here for times.
Rhymes for Young Ghouls (Jeff Barnaby) is a genre experiment disguised as a coming-of-age story – a magic-realist drama set on a native reservation in late-70s Quebec, where teenage Aila (Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs) strives to find her own identity as an artist and an individual while her community tries to separate itself from the institutionalized oppression of government overseers. The finished film doesn’t quite live up to writer/director Barnaby’s considerable ambition – a number of the supporting actors don’t seem to understand the tone he’s after, including The Wild Hunt’s Mark Antony Krupa. But when Aila’s dead mother shows up for a casual conversation and the movie simply accepts that these things happen, it feels like a new creative voice is making itself heard for the first time. Some subtitles. 88 min.
Rating: NNN (NW)
Opens Jan 31 at Yonge & Dundas 24. See here for times.
A Story of Children and Film (Mark Cousins) is a smaller, more intimate project than the director’s 15-hour opus The Story Of Film, focusing on the depiction of children in motion pictures from the silent era to the present day. Using home-video footage of his young niece and nephew at play as a contrast, Cousins flips through dozens of film clips from a century of cinema to see how filmmakers have shaped the purer, less filtered performances of child actors for the screen. It’s an intellectual exercise more than an emotional one, and Cousins’s enthusiasm for squeezing in just one more example of a given reaction means he winds up repeating his points more than once. But those points are pretty interesting, and if nothing else you’ll come away having been introduced to two or three movies you’d otherwise never have discovered. Some subtitles. 101 min.
Rating: NNN (NW)
Opens Jan 31 at Bloor Hot Docs Cinema. See here for times.
Labor Day (Jason Reitman) is a ludicrous coming-of-age drama about a teenage boy (Gattlin Griffith) who spends a life-changing holiday weekend in 1987 with his depressed mother (Kate Winslet) sheltering an escaped convict (Josh Brolin) who’s kinda-sorta holding them hostage. Reitman’s not interested in creating a sense of real danger as much as he is in remaking The Bridges Of Madison County, with a lonely woman rediscovering love at the hands of an imposing stranger. (Sure, he’s forced himself into her home, but he’s fixing that squeaky door and teaching her son how to throw a ball! And just taste his peach pie!) Brolin very nearly sells his impossible character as a misunderstood man trying desperately to be decent, and Griffith is appropriately hesitant and watchful. But Winslet settles for another of the mannered, Important Actor performances she’s been giving in movies like The Reader and Revolutionary Road, and Reitman doesn’t do anything to snap her out of it. 111 min.
Rating: NN (NW)
Opens Jan 31 at 401 & Morningside, Carlton Cinema, 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. See here for times.
That Awkward Moment (Tom Gormican) is supposed to be a light, frothy rom-com about three New York bros (Zac Efron, Michael B. Jordan and Miles Teller) who all swear off proper relationships and immediately find themselves bedding women with real romantic potential. And then, well, it shits the bed. At a key moment, writer/director Gormican actually seems to believe that the unforgivably cruel actions of a certain character are not only not that big of a deal, something that can be fixed. He’s so very, very wrong. That’s a shame, because the movie Gormican thinks he’s making seems like it’d be kind of fun, with engaging performances by Jordan, Teller and Mackenzie Davis, some nicely complex work from Imogen Poots and mostly competent work from Efron. Pity it’s all for nothing. 95 min.
Rating: NN (NW)
Opens Jan 31 at 401 & Morningside, Beach Cinemas, Carlton Cinema, Cineplex Cinemas Empress Walk, Coliseum Mississauga, Coliseum Scarborough, Colossus, Courtney Park 16, Eglinton Town Centre, Grande – Steeles, Queensway, Rainbow Market Square, Rainbow Promenade, Rainbow Woodbine, SilverCity Fairview, SilverCity Yonge, SilverCity Yorkdale, Yonge & Dundas 24. See here for times.
Three Night Stand (Pat Kiely) is a messy movie, and for a while that feels like a strength. It’s about emotions and loyalties and longing, and that stuff is nothing if not messy, right? In actor-turned-director Kiely’s follow-up to Who Is KK Downey?, appealing Montreal couple Carl and Sue (Sam Huntington and Meaghan Rath) drive to a chalet in the Laurentians for what’s supposed to be a big romantic weekend. Problem is, their relationship isn’t as sturdy as it first appears. Oh, and the chalet is owned by Carl’s ex (Emmanuelle Chriqui), whom Carl has never quite gotten over. But just when Three Night Stand seems poised to delve into this thorny emotional situation, Kiely starts adding all sorts of unnecessary complications in the form of supporting characters the story doesn’t really need. Though the three leads do their best to stay on point, the film devolves into clutter and noise and pointless distraction, and nothing good comes of it. Some subtitles. 92 min.
Rating: NN (NW)
Opens Feb 1 at Royal. See here for times.
