I’m writing this on March 12 during the Oscars. But rather than try to sync my reviews with the results (which you will know by the time this is published), I’ll just let you know where you can see the four Oscar nominees still playing at the ByTowne and the Mayfair. I’ll also recommend several recent films that deserve your attention, then finish with a long list of classics from the vault.
My favourite film of 2022 was Everything Everywhere All at Once. I think it’s the first film I’ve ever seen three times in one year—I loved it! So did a bunch of awards bodies and audiences at the box office. See what all the fuss is about at the Mayfair.
The Irish film The Quiet Girl tells the story of Cáit, a young girl sent away from her neglectful family to live with “her mother’s people,” a middle-aged couple whose house seems strangely empty. Cáit is quiet and withdrawn, but begins to blossom under the care of her new temporary parents. All the actors are superb, especially young Catherine Clinch as Cáit. At the ByTowne.
Living is a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s beloved classic Ikiru. Bill Nighy is exceptional as a senior civil servant who has spent his entire life being a perfect bureaucrat. When he finds out he has incurable cancer, he decides to use his remaining time to learn how to live. At the Mayfair.
The ByTowne is beginning a long run of a film I’m really eager to see—Women Talking. One of Canada’s best novelists, Miriam Toews, based the novel on an actual crime. Script and direction by Sarah Polley; acting by a stellar ensemble including Frances McDormand, Rooney Mara and Claire Foy. Women Talking follows a group of illiterate women in a strict Mennonite colony in Bolivia as they struggle to reconcile their faith with how to react to a vicious series of sexual assaults. Should they stay and fight, or should they leave?
Of course, there are good films that didn’t receive any Oscar nominations. Let’s start with two Canadian films.
I Like Movies was on The Globe and Mail’s Top Ten at TIFF 2022 list. Since then, it’s garnered excellent reviews. An obnoxious teenage wannabe film director in Burlington dreams of going to film school in NYC. To raise the massive tuition, he works at a video store (remember them?)—his idea of the perfect job. At the ByTowne.
The documentary The Colour of Ink is also about a “creative,” but this guy really is a genius. He creates beautiful inks with all sorts of materials, then sends them to people he admires—artists, calligraphers, cartoonists. Somehow, he makes his living doing this. At the ByTowne.
Return to Seoul is a story about a sophisticated young woman who, on impulse, returns to South Korea. She was born there but knows virtually nothing of the country—she was adopted as an infant and raised in France. At the ByTowne.
The Lost King, also at the ByTowne, is based on the true story of an amateur historian who instigated the discovery of the bones of King Richard III under a Leicester car park. The charming Sally Hawkins (The Shape of Water, Maudie) plays the historian whose dogged determination/obsession resulted in the historic find.
Both the Mayfair and the ByTowne are hosting some of the Canadian Film Institute’s International Film Festival of Ottawa (IFFO).
The Iranian film Until Tomorrow tells the dramatic story of an unwed young woman who has recently given birth. Her parents unexpectedly announce they are visiting her in Tehran that evening, not knowing she has had a child out of wedlock. At the ByTowne.
Cinema’s First Nasty Women: Gender Adventures is a selection of early silent shorts that include a gun-toting ranch owner in leopard-print chaps and a futuristic film when women dominate society and men have become “the weaker sex.” It’s part of Kino Lorber’s 4-DVD series Cinema’s First Nasty Women, which features 98 feminist silent films. The series’ co-curators and organizers included several Carleton University academics. At the Mayfair.
Guy Maddin’s 1988 first feature, Tales from the Gimli Hospital, can easily compete for the title of weirdest film ever made in Canada. To quote Mayfair’s writeup: the film “blends silent cinema conventions, Icelandic sagas, Buñuelian surrealism and taboo-busting, and fish guts hair gel! Not to mention buttock grappling contests.” Maddin will attend the screening.
More films from the vault at both cinemas, including a 4K restoration of Orson Welles’ 1962 film The Trial, based on Franz Kafka’s nightmarish story. It stars Anthony Perkins, Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider and Welles himself. Don’t miss the opportunity to see this as intended—on a big screen at the ByTowne.
Next is The Conformist, a 4K restoration of Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1971 gorgeous film, which stars Jean-Louis Trintignant as a repressed young man who joins the Italian Fascists in the 1930s, attempting to fit in. He’s sent to Paris to eliminate an old professor who fled Italy when the Fascists came to power. At the ByTowne.
The 50th-anniversary release of Nicholas Roe’s masterpiece, Don’t Look Now, is also at the ByTowne. A gripping supernatural thriller about grief, it follows a recently bereaved couple (Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland) as they travel to Venice. Christie encounters a pair of weird sisters, one claiming to be a psychic in touch with their dead daughter. Meanwhile, Sutherland glimpses a small red-clothed figure resembling their daughter. Chilling! Also steamy, with one of the sexiest erotic scenes ever.
Too serious for you? Not a problem: both cinemas have some great entertainment!
During March Break, The ByTowne will show E.T. the Extra Terrestrial at a matinee. What a treat for a kid to see this magical tale on a big screen!
Finally, one of my all-time favourites—The Big Lebowski, on its 25th anniversary, is (probably) screening at the Mayfair on March 31. (Or maybe the following weekend.) One of the Coen brothers’ best films, and undoubtedly their most quoted, it stars Jeff Bridges as The Dude, AKA Jeffrey Lebowski, a laid-back middle-aged slacker who shares a surname with a billionaire Republican who has a trophy wife, Bunny, who…. No, I’m not going to explain the plot. Just see it—or see it again!
Dates, times and tickets for the ByTowne are at www.bytowne.ca. Dates, times and tickets for the Mayfair are at www.mayfairtheatre.ca.
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