Look, I have no illusions about this. You’re all going to see the Batman movie this weekend, unless you saw it last night at the midnight shows. And that’s what you should do, if we’re being honest. The Dark Knight Rises is exactly the sort of movie that demands to be seen on a very big screen with a crowd excited beyond all reason. I’m just saying, once you’ve seen it, you’ll probably need something else to do. So here are some suggestions.
The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema is supporting this weekend’s screenings of Neil Young Journeys with matinees of two of director Jonathan Demme’s greatest films. The 1984 Talking Heads concert movie Stop Making Sense plays Saturday at 1 pm, and his revolutionary 1987 treatment of Spalding Gray’s monologue Swimming To Cambodia is in the same slot on Sunday. Swimming To Cambodia is perhaps the more valuable of the two, as it’s fairly hard to come by these days, but they’re both great movies – and, dare I say it, the definitive cinematic representations of their subjects.
Also happening in town this week: TIFF’s Summer In France program serves up some genuine classics, including Marcel Carné’s Port Of Shadows and Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Diabolique (tonight at 6:30 and 8:45 pm, respectively), Carné’s epic Second World War production Children Of Paradise (Saturday, 1 pm) and two François Truffaut masterworks, The 400 Blows (Monday, 6:30 pm) and Small Change (Tuesday, 6:30 pm).
And I know I’ve been beating this drum for a while, but that splendid digital restoration of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws goes into its fourth week at the Lightbox. It’s as good as movies get. You might want to think about catching it.
On the outdoor free-film circuit, there’s the rather ambitiously titled Christie Pits Film Festival. Don’t get too excited, though it’s really just a screening series that stretches three movies over four weekends. Big screens at 9 pm this Sunday Cinema Paradiso plays July 29, and Rebel Without A Cause shows August 12.
But when was the last time you sat down and watched Big from beginning to end? It’s been a while, hasn’t it? And Thom Ernst, the host of TVOntario’s Saturday Night At The Movies, will surely be a gregarious and informed host. So that might be worth a look.
Later into the week, Yonge-Dundas Square’s Tuesday night Cult Classics series is set to show The Big Lebowski at 9 pm on Wednesday, you can choose between watching me introduce Napoleon Dynamite at 9 pm at Harbourfront or settling into David Pecaut Square for TIFF In The Park’s presentation of His Girl Friday at 9:15 pm.
Now, given that Howard Hawks’s gender-flipped remake of The Front Page is the stuff of screwball-comedy legend, featuring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell at their fastest and funniest, I will certainly understand if you choose to see that over Jared Hess’s underdog cult comedy. You have to have priorities.
