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What to watch in theatres and online this weekend: July 13-15

SOLID BETS

Filmworker: Leon Vitali worked more closely with Stanley Kubrick over the last two decades of the revered director’s life than anyone else – and he’s spent two more decades protecting the Kubrick’s legacy. Norm Wilner has some issues with Tony Zierra’s portrait of Vitali, but it’s still essential viewing. See listing.

Sorry To Bother You: Lakeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson and Armie Hammer star in Boots Riley’s brilliant new comedy about an Oakland telemarketer whose meteoric rise to success comes with some very strange strings attached. This is one of the year’s best films, and Norm Wilner thinks you need to see it. (Check out our interview with director Boots Riley here.) See listing.

Three Identical Strangers: After months on the festival circuit, Tim Wardle’s documentary about triplets separated at birth and reunited by chance as 19-year-olds in 1980 opens in Toronto. José Teodoro finds it a little on the busy side, but still worth a look. See listing.

STREAMING

The Epic Tales Of Captain Underpants: Kids love him! Adults tolerate him! The DreamWorks movie made money! So now Dav Pikey’s unclad avenger gets an animated small-screen spinoff, featuring the voices of Nat Faxon, Sean Astin, Stephen Root and David Koechner. (Netflix, July 13)

How It Ends: As the world collapses, a man (Divergent’s Theo James) and his father-in-law (Forest Whitaker) set out across America to reunite their family. Because it’s been a minute since the last apocalypse drama. (Netflix, July 13)

Jim Jefferies: This Is Me Now Aussie stand-up Jefferies debuts his latest comedy special – his third for Netflix. There’s something about his dry sense of humour and finely honed BS-detection skills that appeals to us, as he showed at a sold-out JFL42 crowd a couple of years ago. (Netflix, July 13)

Who Is America?: Sacha Baron Cohen aims to reclaim his throne as the king of all prank media with this new Showtime series, carried in Canada on CraveTV. The only thing we know is that it seems he managed to piss off Sarah Palin while making it, which justifies the project’s existence all on its own. (CraveTV, July 15)

LifeAndDeathOfCarlNaardlinger.jpg

Toronto-set existential comedy The Death (And Life) Of Carl Naardlinger opens in theatres July 13.

THEATRICAL

The Death (And Life) Of Carl Naardlinger: Katherine Schlemmer’s mildly existential comedy stars Shoot The Messenger’s Matt Baram and Mary Kills People’s Grace Lynn Kung as a Toronto couple shocked out of their mundane lives when he’s momentarily mistaken for a missing person. See listing.

Gauguin: Vincent Cassel stars in Edouard Deluc’s dramatization of the post-impressionist’s sojourn in Tahiti. The film has come under critical fire for its softening of certain unpleasant realities, like colonialism and Gauguin’s use of very young girls as both models and bedmates. Which, ugh. See listing.

Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation: Dracula and his monster pals return for a third one of these, this time set on an ocean cruise where the vampire lord (voiced, as always, by Adam Sandler) falls in love with a human woman (Kathryn Hahn) with a murderous secret. Look, if your kids like this you’re going to see it sooner or later. See listing.

The King: Why We Fight’s Eugene Jarecki uses Elvis Presley’s 1963 Rolls-Royce as a literal vehicle to investigate the very essence of America – its culture, its racism, its past, present and future – in this ambitious documentary. See listing.

Luk’Luk’I: A handful of people in the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood of Vancouver try to find peace as the 2010 Winter Olympics takes over the city in Wayne Wapeemukwa’s first feature, which was named best Canadian first feature at TIFF. Norm Wilner was not a fan. See listing.

Mary Shelley: Susan G. Cole was not impressed with Haifaa Al-Mansour’s biopic about the woman who wrote Frankenstein (and arguably invented science fiction) Elle Fanning plays the eponymous author alongside Douglas Booth as Percy Shelley, Tom Sturridge as Lord Byron and Maisie Williams as Isabel Baxter. See listing.

Skyscraper: Dwayne Johnson gets his Die Hard movie, playing a security expert trying to save his family from a criminal assault on the world’s largest building. But as Norm Wilner explains, Die Hard is a masterpiece, and Rawson Marshall Thurber’s knockoff, however well made, is not. See listing.

Whitney: Kevin Macdonald’s documentary distinguishes itself from last year’s Whitney: Can I Be Me by having been produced with the cooperation of the Houston family. However, Chris Rattan wonders if that might not be its biggest problem. See listing.

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