SETTING HALLOWEEN MOOD WITH SPOOKY TITLES
Dracula, Frankenstein, Phantom of the Opera and Rocky Horror join terrors already onscreen
Halloween screenings: How much spooky cinema can one city take? That’s a question that will be answered over the next five nights as a Halloween-themed bounty of vintage and modern chillers hit whatever big screens aren’t already playing the likes of It, Happy Death Day, Leather
face, Jigsaw and that Madea movie. Speaking of the diabolical masked killer with a penchant for totally overcomplicated contraptions, the original Saw plays all week at the Carlton. The multiplex’s Halloween slate also includes the Lon Chaney version of The Phantom of the Opera on Sunday and a double feature of the 1932 and 1996 adaptations of The
Island of Dr. Moreau on Monday. On Sunday, select Cineplex locations also reach back in the crypt and haul out two of Universal’s classic monster movies of the 1930s: Dracula and Frankenstein. Released not long before that run of hits, The Unknown is a lesser-known thriller that teamed Chaney and director Tod Browning in 1927. It launches the Revue’s new Silent Revue season on Sunday with live piano accompaniment by Carl Zittrer. The Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema also has three Shadow Cast performances of The Rocky Horror
Picture Show this week on Saturday and Tuesday.
Not to be outdone, the Royal doubles down on scary programming with The Addams Family and John Carpenter’s Christine on Saturday and
Elvira, Mistress of the Dark on Sunday. Then on Tuesday, the theatre hosts a 25th anniversary presentation of
Dead Alive, proof-positive that Peter Jackson’s true métier was not making countless visits to Middle Earth but using lawn mowers to clear a path through a zombie horde — it plays Tuesday. Also on Halloween, TIFF Bell Lightbox opts for recent restorations of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and the 3D Canadian curio The Mask. Enjoy your treats. Deliver Us: A prizewinner at the Venice film festival in 2016, Deliver Us
(Libera Nos) is a documentary that reveals the methods of real-life exorcists working to rid Sicilians of the spirits that plague them. Though
director Federica di Giacomo leaves it up to viewers to decide whether the exorcisms are authentic (even the one that gets done via mobile phone), she doesn’t shy away from including more provocative and discomfiting scenes that may strongly suggest these so-called victims of possession need a mental-health professional far more than they need a priest. Deliver Us opens Friday at the Carlton.
Macedonian Film Festival: Returning this weekend for its 12th-annual edition, the Macedonian Film Festival presents two days and nights of features, docs and shorts at the Carlton Saturday and Sunday. Offerings include Liberation of Skopje, a historical drama set in the Macedonian city during the Nazi occupation, and Balkan Roots, a documentary about the pan-European musical odyssey of the Barcelona Gipsy Klezmer Orchestra. The festival wraps up on with the hour-long doc The Last Macedonian: Road to Extinction. Whose Streets? at Doc Soup: This month’s selection for Hot Docs’ monthly series, Whose Streets? takes a street-level view of the protests in Ferguson, Mo., in the wake of the shooting of Michael Brown by police officers in August of 2014. An event that spurred on many difficult questions about race, law enforcement and social justice in America, the Ferguson backlash was the first page in a new and volatile chapter of history that includes the Black Lives Matter movement and U.S. President Donald Trump’s ongoing feud with NFL players over their right to take a knee. Co-producer Chris Renteria attends post-screening Q&As for all three screenings on Wednesday and Thursday. In Brief: á Hayao Miyazaki’s much-loved
Spirited Away plays Cineplex’s Studio Ghibli series at participating locations on Sunday and Nov. 4.
á An Oscar-winning short doc about the experience of an undocumented immigrant youth in Los Angeles,
Inocente plays a free screening and discussion event at Innis Town Hall on Monday.
á The Toronto Film Society’s Monday
Night Film Buffs program at the Carlton continues Monday with 1951’s The
Medium and 1949’s The Queen of Spades.
á The Royal celebrates the 20th anniversary of Quentin Tarantino’s
Jackie Brown — which, while not his biggest hit, may be the best movie he ever makes — with a screening on Wednesday.
á Widely acclaimed for Kevin Kline’s high-spirited lead performance, the recent Broadway production of Noel Coward’s Present Laughter plays select Cineplex locations on Thursday.