There are many must-see older films from major directors at Ottawa’s independent cinemas this month, many of them 4K restorations. I’ll also remind you about the new releases I recommended in the last Magic in the Dark.
My all-time favourite comedy, Some Like It Hot, directed by the remarkable Billy Wilder (Sunset Boulevard, The Apartment, Stalag 17) and starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, and Marilyn Monroe, is at the Mayfair in their First Ladies of Film festival. Two jazz musicians witness a mob hit and flee for their lives. They dress as women and join an all-female jazz band that’s headed to a Florida resort. Hilarious complications ensue!
The same Mayfair festival includes two superb screwball comedies directed by George Cukor. The first is The Philadelphia Story starring Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and Jimmy Stewart. A strong-willed society woman is preparing for her marriage to a stodgy captain of industry. She’d divorced her first husband, but he’s still in love with her. They spar verbally. Then a tabloid reporter assigned to cover the nuptials falls for the bride… and she for him. The second Cukor film is Born Yesterday, a delightful twist on Pygmalion. A shady garbage tycoon (Broderick Crawford) hires a reporter (William Holden) to teach his ex-showgirl mistress (Judy Holliday) proper etiquette to better fit in with high society. But things don’t go as planned. Holliday won the Best Lead Actress Oscar for this endearing comedy.
The Mayfair’s PTA PDA (“Paul Thomas Anderson Public Display of Affection”) film fest continues with my favourite Anderson film: Magnolia. It’s an epic of intersecting stories full of love, loss, forgiveness and redemption. The large cast is uniformly excellent, but for me, the outstanding performance is given by Tom Cruise as an incel (involuntarily celibate) motivational speaker. The other PT Anderson film I’m recommending is a historical epic: There Will Be Blood. It stars the superb Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview, a grasping, manipulative schemer who makes his fortune in the early days of the American oil boom. Plainview soon comes into conflict with the community’s charismatic preacher, Eli Sunday (Paul Dano). As the oil money rolls in, those touched by it are corrupted.
The ByTowne’s tribute to film master Akira Kurosawa continues with three of Kurosawa’s best films: Throne of Blood, which I discussed last time, Ikiru, and High and Low. The latter two films are set in post-WWII Japan and deal with personal crises. In Ikiru, a bureaucrat tries to find meaning in his life after he discovers he has terminal cancer. In High and Low, a wealthy company executive becomes a victim of extortion when his chauffeur’s son is kidnapped by mistake and held for ransom.
There’s a solid gold classic in this month’s Golden Age series at the ByTowne: Shanghai Express. An iconic collaboration between director Josef von Sternberg and actress Marlene Dietrich, it mixes danger, scandal, and glamour in an intoxicating elixir.
Speaking of classics, Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now is often considered a classic Vietnam War film. But the making of the film quickly became a chaotic, dangerous nightmare for all concerned, especially for Coppola; it was one of the most fraught film shoots in history. Coppola’s wife Eleanor, Fax Bahr, and George Hickenlooper made a documentary about this mad chaos—Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse. The Guardian called it “The greatest ever making-of documentary.” It’s at the ByTowne.
Director Susan Seidelman’s screwball comedy Desperately Seeking Susan stars Madonna as a wild free spirit and Rosanna Arquette as Roberta, a bored yuppie housewife intrigued by a newspaper want ad titled “Desperately Seeking Susan.” Roberta gets amnesia after an accident and is mistaken for Susan, something she quite enjoys! Unfortunately for her, someone is out to kill Susan. Wear your jammies for this screening—it’s a slumber party at the ByTowne.
One of director James Cameron’s best action movies, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, is at the ByTowne. Instead of being sent to the past to kill young John Connor, Terminator model T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) has been sent back to protect the kid from the shape-shifting Terminator T-1000, whose mission is to kill Connor. This is a 35mm print, so the action should be ramped up to an 11.
The ByTowne staff’s pick for this month, Little Miss Sunshine, is one of those indie films that got a lot of love from reviewers and filmgoers when it was released. Newsweek called it “a sweet, tart and smart satire about a family of losers in a world obsessed with winning… an authentic crowd pleaser.”
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is a treat for those of us who enjoy Wes Anderson’s quirky filmmaking style and his stable of A-list actors. This one is no exception. Bill Murray is Captain Zissou, a flaky Cousteau-wannabe on a quest to kill the shark that ate his buddy. Owen Wilson claims to be Zissou’s son, Cate Blanchett is an earnest reporter, and Anjelica Huston is Zissou’s estranged wife. The cast list goes on! At the ByTowne.
My last pick from the past is Anne of Green Gables. It’s in the ByTowne’s Klassic Kids series. This Emmy Award-winning Canadian film follows the orphan Anne Shirley from her struggles as a sensitive, imaginative adolescent to her triumphs as a young woman.
There’s so much from the vault to see this month that I’ve run out of room to tell you about new films in August. So I’ll just point you to the recommendations in my last Magic in the Dark for new films: Sane Inside Insanity—The Phenomenon of Rocky Horror for Rocky Horror fans, two dramas about refugees (To a Land Unknown and Souleymane’s Story), and the 2025 Cat Video Festival. All of these are at the ByTowne.
So many films, old and new, to see! Aren’t we fortunate to have the ByTowne and the Mayfair!
Dates, times, and tickets for the ByTowne are at www.bytowne.ca. You can also buy tickets at the box office. The ByTowne publishes its calendar several weeks in advance. Dates, times, and tickets for the Mayfair are at www.mayfairtheatre.ca. The Mayfair finalizes its upcoming films’ schedule weekly, which it posts online and advertises via email. Both provide information about the films for future weeks. You can buy tickets via their weekly email and at the box office.
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