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All films at the Avalon Mall Cinemas - 2:00 pm showtime
Prices were: Full season pass: $55.00/50.00 students and seniors; 6-film pass: $30.00/25.00 students and seniors; Singles: $6:00/5.50 students and seniors.
January 12
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
(FR/GER 1964) 92 mins. English subtitles.
Directed by Jacques Demy.
With Catherine Deneuve, Nino
Castelnuovo, Anne Vernon, Ellen Farner, Marc Michel, Mereille Perry, Jean
Champion.
The perfect opportunity to keep that New Year's resolution to pay more
attention to your French, especially your musical French. This is the
sing-along movie that launched a million Chanel ads for Catherine
Deneuve, the symbol of France Herself, arguably the most glamorous
woman ever to face us from the screen. This is also the classic debut
performance in which Deneuve showed the world she could transform the
most mundane tale into a delightful form of Gallic entertainment. Rest
assured that this current re-issue of Les parapluies de Cherbourg is in
glorious 35 mm colour, the reprint itself an homage to one of the most
popular movies ever made. She would later go on to play fated
seductresses or irresistible women of the suburbs, but here Deneuve
acted her premier role as a humble shopgirl in love with an Esso
mechanic who leaves her pregnant and barefoot and harassed by a nervous
mother. The moral of the film might be that marrying the wrong person
gets you a lifetime of unhappiness, but the lush imagery and the
acrobatic cinematography of this sixties hymn to life and love
transcend the banalities of the obvious.
January 19
American Buffalo
(US 1996) 88 mins.
Directed by Michael Corrente.
With Dustin Hoffman, Dennis Franz, Sean Nelson.
Based on David Mamet's
screenplay, American Buffalo is another fine adaptation of the best in
American theatre. A perfect vehicle for the Dustin Hoffman who defined
sleazy pitifulness as the Midnight Cowboy's companion Ratso, the play
offers
a variation on that singularly bravado performance. A transparently
opportunistic leader of a trio of ambitious burglars, Hoffman as Teach
pushes the other two guys around like spaghetti strings on his shoes. Dennis
Franz, who is so brilliant as NYPD's
squarely complex Sipowicz, here plays junk-shop dealer Donny, a generally
well-meaning guy who accidentally undersells a valuable buffalo-head nickel.
Enlisting the help of a younger man (Nelson as Bobby) to help him steal it
back, Donny ends up being manipulated by the calculating Teach. The result
is a series of man-testing manoeuvres, typical of Mamet's dark inquiries
into the nature of male behaviour. The dialogue is rapid and witty and full
of street-talk that will curl your brain cells, while the seamless direction
of such outstanding performances ensures that you'll lose yourself in one of
the most mesmerizing films in this series.
January 26
Basquiat
(US 1995) 106 mins.
Directed by Julian Schnabel.
With Jeffrey Wright, Michael Wincott, Benecio Del Toro, Claire Forlani, David
Bowie, Dennis Hopper, Gary Oldman, Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe, Parker
Posey, Courtney Love.
Check out the cast, will ya? A veritable Who's Who of
the gang who eat in Tribeca and own Andy Warhol originals [sic]. In some
ways the male counterpart to last season's I Shot Andy Warhol, Basquiat is
the docudramatic recreation of one of most provocative young artists of his
generation, Jean-Michel Basquiat. It's been said that artist Schnabel is in
many ways making a film about himself, but so what else is new? Basquiat
catches --and largely through Wright's astonishingly convincing
performance--the early eighties meteoric rise of a homeless genius.
Ambitious and brilliant, a graffiti specialist named Samo essentially
advances from making art out of maple syrup to hanging Great Black Expensive
Art in Soho galleries. By then he was known as Basquiat, of course, and with
the help of drugs and booze and the other accessories of fame, soon dead at
27. Ah, those were the good old eighties, well before both art ceased to
matter and Courtney Love was taken seriously. As much about the commodifying
banality of the art market as about the stridently gutsy talent of a
compelling black artist, Basquiat marks an amazing slice of hi-low pop-art
convergence, intimately explored by Schnabel who pieces it all together like
bits of broken dishes.
February 2
Hard Core Logo
(Canada 1996) 98 mins.
Directed By Bruce McDonald.
With Hugh Dillon, Billy Talent, Bruce McDonald.
A provocative
title from an always inspired filmmaker, Hard Core Logo returns Canadian
McDonald to another of his favourite subjects, the rock music scene. Sharing
with Highway 61 its episodic road-movie vigour, Logo travels east-west this
time, tracking a (fake) band's tour across the prairies to B.C. as a (fake)
documentary. Comparisons with Rob Reiner's satiric This is Spinal Tap have
been copious, but McDonald insists that his film is much more of a (real)
documentary about the plight of
rock musicians, and especially Canadian ones, for whom life can be pretty
miserable at forty below on the bald prairies. McDonald plays a filmmaker
attempting to record the group on film as it reunites in a surprising
paydirt concert and propels itself from venue to venue thereafter. The
shaggy quality of life on the road suits McDonald's independent creativity
perfectly, and not surprising Logo rocks with the kind of authenticity that
undermines all
those phony public images of Canada (see Canadian Bacon) as a
genteel-friendly nation of do-gooders. Lead vocalist Joe Dick is (really)
played by Dillon, actually a (real) singer of a (real) band called the
Headstones, what one reviewer referred to as Canuck Punk. Maybe. Whatever.
It sure is animated anarchy with a heavy beat, and it's darkly funny to the
bone.
February 9
The Funeral
(US 1996) 99 mins.
Directed by Abel Ferrara.
With Christopher Walken, Chris Penn, Vincent Gallo, Benicio Del Toro, Annabella
Sciorra, Isabella Rossellini, Gretchen Mol.
One of the most skilled NY filmmakers around (The Bad Lieutenant, Miami
Vice, Crime Story) Ferrara chisels his tools here on the shadow world
of the urban thirties, a New York gripped by depression angst and
labour clashes. Vengeance is the way of the gangster world, as we've
seen before, but this new spin on an old morality tale takes some
pretty startling turns. The Tempio family gathers to mourn the murder
of young Johnny (Gallo); it's also an opportunity to reminisce about
the family's history of bloodshed and honour, or is it the other way
around? Brothers Ray (Walken) and Chez (Penn) want to get even, but
their nervous, albeit loyal, wives, shudder to think about what the
boys will be up to next time they get itchy. Fascinating is the way
that this world intersects with that of the union movement, as Johnny
(in flashback) find himself enamoured of the noble communist principles
that underpin its foundation. When he refuses to ease up on a local
businessman because doing so would be an enormous affront to the
working man, we know we're in no run-of-the-mill underworld. Full of
the sorts of startling cinematic surprises for which he has become
famous, The Funeral is Ferrara's thinking person's Godfather, as
comfortable with corruption and violence as with a good Italian suit.
February 16
Secrets and Lies
(UK 1996) 140 mins.
Directed by Mike Leigh.
With Timothy Spall, Brenda Blethyn, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Phyllis Logan,
Claire Rushbrook.
Is anyone better, more pointed, human, incisive, socially
current, political than Mike Leigh? Did anyone see Naked and not think
Genius At Work? This fabulously lauded follow-up feature sets up a young,
middle-class optometrist, Hortense, as a curiously adopted child in search
of her true
parents. The hunt leads to Cynthia, not the sort of lucky sweepstakes find
you'd idealize Mom as being, but there she is nonetheless--boozy and made
miserable by her doleful daughter Roxanne, and supported financially by her
brother Maurice, a suburbanoid photographer. Secrets and Lies is alternately
funny and moving, but above all it's spell bindingly naturalistic. Hortense
is black, Cynthia is white, so how could one issue from the other? Well,
that's one of the film's more obvious dramatic questions. See the whole film
and understand why everything counts for something in a Mike Leigh film,
even the most abject
and miserable creatures whose lives are just one bloody lousy phone call
after another.
February 23
Swingers
(US 1996) 96 mins.
Directed by Doug Liman.
With Jon Favreau, Vince Vaughn, Ron Livingston, Patrick Van Horn, Ale Desert,
Heather Graham, Deena Martin.
Here's a film that ought to have played mainstream but
for mysterious marketing reasons didn't. Fortunately you can now catch its
buoyant spiritedness at a theatre near you. A thinking jock film, Swingers
details the anarchic nature of current male-identity crises and gender
relations. Mike, played brilliantly by newcomer Favreau, has just been
dumped by his girlfriend so he moves from NY to Hollywood to seek acting
fortune. After much whining
and indulgent moping, Mike's buddies decide enough already and determine to
show him the old-new rules of the make-out artist. Hilarious banter,
bonding, and bar-hopping follow, all in the manner of today's retro
trends.
Director Liman is obviously filming out of personal experience of the world
as a minefield for young guys, a place rigged to suck the hair gel right off
the top of your head. Swingers is really a lot of fun, and if you think
you've seen all the buddy pictures you'll ever need, it honestly is a
lively and smart addition to a well tested genre. Guaranteed pleaser.
March 2
Lilies
(Canada 1996) 95 mins.
Directed by John Greyson.
With Brent Carver, Marcel Sabourin, Aubert Pallascio, Jason Cadieux,
Danny Gillmore, Matthew Ferguson, Alexander Chapman, Rémy Girard, Gary Farmer.
If you've
seen or heard about Urinal or Zero Patience then you know a little something
about director Greyson's award-winning queer cinema. Brechtian in their
theatrics and Pasoliniesque in their subjects, Greyson's films mark a
radical departure from mainstream art, focussing as they do on the ways time
and space, fact and fiction, warp our characters. Like Robert Lepage's
Confessionnal, Lilies
establishes its time frame as 1952, the moment of Catholic Quebec's
emergence into modernity. An aging bishop agrees to hear a condemned man's
confession inside a penitentiary, but when he enters the chapel he finds
himself imprisoned, forced to watch a reenactment --through a keyhole-- of
events of forty years ago that led to the present moment. The play that
catches the conscience of the priest dramatizes a love triangle involving
the prisoner and the priest and the beautiful boy Vallier, once all young
Catholic sons growing up in the idyllic pastoralism of northern Quebec. The
all-male prison cast perform all the adult roles, Genet-style, illuminating
the sumptuous image-choked screen with totally persuasive gestures, and
adding to the ironically layered texture of this tale within a tale. Lilies,
adapted
from Marc Bouchard's stage play Les fluettes, is a tour de force of the
kind of cinema we have come to expect from the cinematic visionary brow of
Greyson. Complemented by the glorious choral work of The Hilliard Ensemble,
Lilies ought to be heard as well as seen.
March 9
Breaking the Waves
(Denmark/France 1996) 159 mins.
Directed by Lars von Trier.
With Emily Watson, Stellan Skarsgård, Katrin Cartlidge, Jean-Marc
Barr, Adrian Rawlins, Udo Kier.
Come early: this is the epic story of a
female-fool-saint you've heard so much about, the one that carried home all
the festival prizes for von Trier (Europa, The Kingdom), and the one not to
be missed, told about, reminded you forgot, or ignored if you honestly call
yourself a film fan. Breaking the Waves is --REALLY-- like no other film you
have ever seen, and nothing said here can prepare you for its reaching sweep
of the landscape of the human heart. Mesmerizingly wide-eyed Emily Watson
plays the central role of the passionately naive and life-affirming Bess, a
tiny woman in a world of fiercely Calvinistic Scots, a world where men wear
white pointy beards, look like the backs of coughdrop packages, and forbid
music because it leads to dancing. The women aren't much better, of course,
but then they have to look at those men all day. Into this world arrive the
foreign
music-loving oil riggers, and especially the tall worldly Jan who falls in
love with pretty Bess. Bliss after marriage is followed by tragedy on the
rigs, however, but the film only begins there. Where, then, the films asks,
does martyrdom become sainthood, and how do you know a saint when you have
sex with one? Even by proxy. There is nothing more to say in this blurb
because there is nothing to substitute for the sheer amazement of watching
this Best of All Possible Films.
March 16
Small Faces
(UK 1996) 102 mins.
Directed by Gillies Mackinnon.
With Kevin McKidd, Laura Fraser, Joe McFadden, Claire Higgins,
Stephen Duffy.
It's Glasgow 1968, the year that launched a thousand new hairdos. The
three Maclean brothers are growing up rough and tumbling, caught between the
street codes of gang violence and the lure of establishment success.
Focussing on the youngest of the trio, thirteen-year old Lex, Small Faces
structures these choices as difficult and contradictory. One older brother,
Bobby (Duffy), is almost psycho in his addiction to macho rebelliousness.
The other, Alan (McFadden) dreams of
being an artist. Overseeing her brood is their weary den mother (Higgins),
struggling wisely to keep some order on a pop-culturally exploding universe
and her sons' raging hormonal urges. Remember Gregory's Girl? Well think of
that film's off-centre charm up against the aggressive grittiness of
Trainspotting and you have an idea of why Small Faces has been so successful
on the rep-house circuit. The film doesn't provide subtitles so clean the
wax out of your ears before viewing and quiz a local Scot after the show as
to what you think you heard.
March 23
Ridicule
(FR 1996) 102 mins.
Directed by Patrice Leconte.
With Fanny Ardant, Charles Berling, Bernard Giraudeau, Judith Godreche, Jean
Rochefort.
A yummily delicious screenplay involving eighteenth-century wit,
all dressed up and ready for deadly play. It's the court of Louis XIV, bien
sûr, and who needs weapons when men's (and women's) minds are as sharp as
rapiers? Before MTV and Bravo, the Versailles courtiers attempted to
out-ridicule each other for entertainment. And very few of them actually
gained the king's attention without stepping over one another. Naive
Gregoire Ponceludon enters into this nest
of vipers, anxious to ask the king to help him dam a river and thereby cut
down on the malaria epidemic affecting the peasants in his home province.
Soon he realizes what it takes to `win' at court, and under the tutelage of
the Marquis de Bellegarde, an unfavoured physician, Gregoire manages to leap
over the heads of the pompous powdered pedants around him. Director Leconte
(Monsieur Hire) creates the most marvellously sardonic period piece ever,
seedy around the elegant edges, full of back-stabbing glee, and always
capering dangerously around the edges of ridicule.
March 30
Beautiful Thing
(UK 1996) 89 mins.
Directed by Hettie Macdonald.
With Glen Barry, Linda Henry, Scott Neal, Ben Daniels, Tameka Empson.
The title comes not from Martha Stewart's Christmas recipes but from the
possibilities of a good life on the way-outside. Powerfully praised last
summer upon release, Beautiful Thing is a bravura first feature from
director Macdonald who turns her polished lens to working-class
homosexuality, not the world of Tom Hanks opera lovers, but the one of two
poor English boys who fall in love over a long hot summer. This may sound
like drearier-than-thou subject matter but Beautiful Thing is actually a
comic film about life on the margins of Everything. Jamie is
smart and thoughtful, pushed around at school, and resolved finally to play
hooky and watch tv rather than endure such humiliations. Next door is Ste, a
handsome in-crowd at-the-centre guy who loves sports as much as being
popular. The love that dares not speak its name grows gradually and in spite
of crazy neighbours, depraved parents and siblings, and the usual pressures
on children to get ahead, get a job, and get laid. Never sentimental but
always sweet, and never condescending but always humorous, Beautiful Thing
remints the genre of
the working-class drama into something quite new and refreshing. The real
shame would be missing this surprisingly feel-good-gay movie.
April 6
Grace of My Heart
(US 1996) 115 mins.
Directed by Allison Anders.
With Illeana Douglas, John Turturro, Matt Dillon, Eric Stoltz, Bruce
Davidson, Patsy Kensit, Jennifer Leigh Warren.
Boasting an incredible score
of popular music, Grace of My Heart describes the unwritten story of how
America's greatest stars made it big through the music of anonymously
toiling writers. Few got the fame they deserved, and in this bright and
candid story about the Brill Building/House where these writers struggled,
one such dreamer emerges
at the centre. Denise Waverley (Douglas, so great as the skating sister in
To Die For) arrives in NY City longing for the spotlight herself, but her
manager (Turturro) encourages her to write the hits that keep on coming
instead. Valiantly loyal to her dream, however, Denise continues to keep her
principles intact, even while the trends shift and sixties bop turns wildly
to psychedelics. The really amazing thing about Grace of My Heart is that
Anders (Gas Food and Lodging) managed to convince such renowned composers as
Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello to write original songs in the manner of
the period. The result is rhythmically authentic and fresh at the same time,
a truly rivetting look and sound of a small and vital piece of the
historical 45 hit-record.