There’s a lot happening in the second half of September at Ottawa’s independent cinemas.
First, take a look at my preliminary recommendations for the Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF). Quite a few of my recommendations are screening at the ByTowne September 20-24, including two showings of Best of OIAF on September 24. Tickets are available through the OIAF, which ByTowne’s website links to.
Wow! The best new film I’ve seen this year, Past Lives is still playing at the Mayfair! See any of my recent Magic in the Dark articles for my reactions to this excellent film.
Wes Anderson fans have two more chances to see Asteroid City at the ByTowne, which I also recommended in my last two Magic in the Dark articles.
The ByTowne is still showing the new British film Scrapper. It won the Grand Jury Prize for the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Georgie is a precocious bold 12-year-old who has (improbably) convinced her school and the Social Services folks that her “uncle” Winston Churchill is taking care of her after her mother’s recent death. She’s living alone, making money by stealing bicycles, larking about with her best friend Ali from the council estate. Then her errant dad Jason shows up, demanding he move in with her. But he’s about as immature as Georgie—a dynamic for disaster, and one you shouldn’t miss.
For those of you who yearn to be famous stars of musical theatre, there’s a high-energy film at the ByTowne called Theater Camp. It’s about a summer camp which is run by some wannabe thespians. They’re striving to teach a bunch of really eager kids the ways of “turning cardboard into gold.”
Speaking of famous, the ByTowne is screening a new biopic Radical Wolfe, about the famous American journalist Tom Wolfe whose writings helped shape the New Journalism movement. One of the definitions of “radical” is “extreme, especially as regards change from accepted or traditional forms,”—a pretty good definition of Wolfe’s approach to journalism. If you’re interested in news media, this is a documentary you’ll want to see.
Both the Mayfair and the ByTowne are continuing their tributes to the recently deceased director William Friedkin. Friedkin is most famous for The Exorcist and The French Connection.
One of his later films, To Live and Die in L.A., is at the Mayfair. It is now recognized as one of Friedkin’s finer films. It’s a gritty story about a pair of Secret Service agents and their violent actions to take down a dangerous counterfeiter (played with vicious intensity by Willem Dafoe). The wrong-way car chase is one of the most thrilling I’ve ever seen.
The ByTowne is showing Friedkin’s Sorcerer, a 1977 adaptation of a 1950 French novel by Georges Arnaud, Le Saltier de la peur (The Wages of Fear). It’s a nail-biting tale about four criminals who wash up in a squalid South American town. To make the money they need to escape this hellhole, they sign on to transport a cargo of aged dynamite that’s so unstable it’s “sweating” nitroglycerin.
The Mayfair is offering us a rare opportunity to see two early Stanley Kubrick films: his first feature, Fear and Desire (1952), and the short The Seafarers (1953). The former is a gritty anti-war film set in a war between two unnamed countries (though one of them seems to be the US) in which a troop of soldiers has crashed behind enemy lines. The film was almost lost, as the negatives and most of the prints were destroyed, but a print resurfaced publicly in 1993. Financially, it did so poorly that Kubrick had to take a for-hire job directing the promotional short The Seafarers (Kubrick’s first film in colour) for the Seafarers International Union (mariners and fishermen working in the US and Canada) to raise funds for his next planned feature.
The ByTowne has a terrific offering for their Sunday High Tea Cinema: Little Women by this year’s hottest director, Greta Gerwig. With a stellar cast, gorgeous cinematography, a gentle feminist message about self-actualization and making your own way in the world, and a Metacritic must-see rating, this is a not-to-be-missed film. Plus, your ticket buys you a cup of tea and a Scone Witch scone!
The Rocky Horror Picture Show is back (again!) at the Mayfair. The only place to experience this terrific cult film is in a real cinema filled with enthusiastic fans. A must-see if you’ve never seen it, or if you’ve seen it a dozen times.
And this month’s ultimate popcorn movie has to be Cat Video Fest 2023. What more can I say—the title speaks for itself! At the ByTowne.
Happy viewing!
Dates, times and tickets for the ByTowne and the Mayfair can be found on their websites.
