Let’s see what films we have as we swing into a beautiful autumn.
The ByTowne is closed from Sept. 14 to 19 for maintenance, but there’s still plenty to see there including five jam-packed days of Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF) screenings. You can read about the OIAF here and here. I’ll publish a list of the films I particularly liked midway through the festival.
After the ByTowne reopens and before the OIAF, I recommend three British films: Paddington, The Critic, and The Duchess.
Paddington is the wildly popular film about the comic misadventures of a young and adorable Peruvian bear who travels to London to find a new home after his Peruvian home is destroyed. He finds a haven with the kindly Brown family. Even though the bear is a CGI creation voiced by Ben Whishaw, the rest of the characters are flesh-and-blood actors. And what a cast! Hugh Bonneville and Sally Hawkins are Mr. and Mrs. Brown, Pat Capaldi is their dyspeptic bear-hating neighbour, Jim Broadbent is the proprietor of a phantasmagoria of a curio store where Paddington finds work, and Nicole Kidman is an evil taxidermist who wants to put Paddington on display in a museum. The sets are a treat; they’re so beautiful that you’ll want to book a flight to London, stat. Paddington is a chocolate box of a movie that the whole family will enjoy.
The Critic stars Sir Ian McKellen as a powerful London theatre critic Jimmy Erskine, who delights in his power to elevate or destroy actors’ careers. One of his victims is the mediocre actress Nina Land (Gemma Atherton). But when Erskine’s new boss at the newspaper threatens to sack him for “not enough beauty, too much beast” in his theatre reviews, not to mention his illegal behaviour (Erskine is gay at a time when homosexuality was a criminal offence), Erskine plots revenge. He convinces Land to seduce his married boss. Things do not go as planned.
The ByTowne’s High Tea Cinema this month is The Duchess. As the name implies, High Tea Cinema offers an afternoon of tea from The Tea Store, scones (sweet or savoury) from The Scone Witch, and historical romance. But this romance isn’t fiction—it’s based on the life of an ancestor of Diana Spencer (a.k.a. Princess Diana), the 18th century’s Georgiana Spencer, Duchess of Devonshire. She’s played by Keira Knightley, the older but still very attractive Duke is played by Ralph Fiennes, and Georgiana’s political compatriot, Lord Grey (immortalized in the name of tea!) is played by Dominic Cooper. Georgiana didn’t fit the mould of a proper aristocratic wife because she became publicly involved in liberal politics, even championing unpopular causes. Sound familiar?
Over at the Mayfair, you’ll find Whiplash, the film that was voted best film ever at the Sundance Film Festival, that received five Academy nominations including Best Picture, and that won three Oscars, including the well-deserved Best Supporting Actor Oscar for J.K. Simmons. Simmons is Fletcher, a demanding and sadistic instructor at an elite jazz conservatory. Fletcher will stop at nothing to realize a student’s potential. Miles Teller is Andrew Neimann, a 19-year-old aspiring jazz drummer. He’s so driven to become the next Buddy Rich that he breaks up with his sweet girlfriend to concentrate on his music. The drama—and the music—are explosive. Metacritic gave it an “89” rating—a must-see.
The Mayfair advertises 1984 as “a double-plus-good prolefeed plucked from the memory hole of the eighties.” It’s Michael Radford’s excellent interpretation of George Orwell’s most famous novel and as terrifyingly credible as everything Orwell described—an impoverished totalitarian society rife with oppression and surveillance. As Roger Ebert wrote, “the movie looks, feels, and almost tastes and smells like Orwell’s bleak and angry vision. John Hurt, with his scrawny body and lined and weary face, makes the perfect Winston Smith, and Richard Burton … is the immensely cynical O’Brien, a man who feels close to people only while he is torturing them.” The mise-en-scène of bombed-out cityscapes, decrepit housing, and grim offices adds much to the film’s forbidding atmosphere. 1984 is perhaps difficult to watch, but it’s an essential film, especially in our time of totalitarian dictators and would-be dictators… those who demand not only absolute obedience, but also absolute love from their subjects.
Those of you who love foreign films probably noticed that in 2023 one German actress—Sandra Hüller—was the lead actress in two much-awarded films: Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest. The third 2023 film she starred in was Sisi & I. It’s a historical drama based on the memoirs of the Hungarian Countess Irma Sztáray, the last lady-in-waiting of Empress Elizabeth (Sisi) of Austria. Beginning in the late 19th century, the Countess (played by Hüller) dedicated her life to Sisi and the Austrian court. Sisi (played by Suzanne Wolff) was a headstrong unconventional royal who chaffed at the strictures of court life. Rather like a certain People’s Princess all of us were familiar with a few decades ago.
Enjoy the rest of September!
Dates, times, and tickets for the ByTowne are available at www.bytowne.ca. The ByTowne publishes its calendar at least three weeks in advance.
Dates, times, and tickets for the Mayfair are at www.mayfairtheatre.ca. The Mayfair usually publishes the coming week’s schedule midweek and adds it to its “coming soon” list, so check their website and emails for the latest updates.
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