BLOOD SISTERS
Natasha Lyonne and Judy Greer play murderous siblings in Fresno, part of the the 25th Inside Out film fest,
As Toronto’s third largest film festival after TIFF and Hot Docs, Inside Out is already a pretty big deal. This week, it gets even bigger as it celebrates its 25th anniversary with a generously stuffed program of screenings and events.
Equally abundant are the muchanticipated titles included in the bounty of world, Canadian and Toronto premieres playing TIFF Bell Lightbox. Fresno (Saturday at 7 p.m.) is a new movie about murderous sisters by director Jamie Babbit ( But I’m a Cheerleader) whose cast of comedy MVPs includes Judy Greer, Parks and Recreation’s Aubrey Plaza and Portlandia’s Fred Armisen. Armisen’s former SNL castmate Kristen Wiig stars as a single Brooklynite hoping to start a family with her best pal and his boyfriend in another new American indie comedy, Nasty Baby (Saturday at 10 p.m.). Chilean writerdirector Sebastian Silva and TV on the Radio singer Tunde Adebimpe play the couple in a story that begins genially enough but soon demonstrates Silva’s eagerness to strip away his characters’ veneer of civility.
Former arthouse-cinema staple Peter Greenaway also exhibits considerable brio with Eisenstein in Guanajuato (Saturday at 7:15 p.m.), a formally audacious and gleefully raunchy reimagining of the famous Soviet director’s journey to Mexico in the early 1930s. In another blast from the past at Inside Out, 54: The Director’s Cut (May 31 at 5:30 p.m.) reveals the better, queerer film that it might’ve been upon its original release in 1998. Instead, Mark Christopher’s stylish disco drama — which starred Ryan Phillippe as a young bartender and Mike Myers as impresario Steve Rubell during the heyday of Studio 54 — was badly marred by cuts and reshoots ordered by Miramax’s Harvey Weinstein.
New documentaries making Canadian premieres at Inside Out include To Russia With Love (May 31 at 3 p.m.), Winnipeg director Noam Gonick’s look at skater turned activist Johnny Weir amid the LGBT protests at the Sochi Olympics, and Seed Money: The Chuck Holmes Story (Thursday at 9:45 p.m.), a fascinating yet suitably beefcake-heavy study of the man who became the Hugh Hefner of gay porn.
A queer rom-com by the Toronto team of John Mitchell and Christina Zeidler that makes its world premiere before a hometown crowd, Portrait of a Serial Monogamist serves as the closing gala for Inside Out on May 31 at 8 p.m. Also on Toronto screens this week:
L for Leisure
A delightfully absurd satire that follows the misadventures of a loquacious and very idle group of graduate students in the early ’90s, L for Leisure has won much acclaim for directors Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn since it debuted at Rotterdam last year. Eager to let Toronto viewers enjoy the movie’s cocktail of faux-highbrow conversation and ’90s kitsch, MDFF and the Seventh Art present its first Toronto screening on Saturday at 8 p.m. at Camera with Kalman in town for a Q&A.
Toronto Korean Film Festival
Now in its fourth year, the TKFF celebrates one of the world’s most energetic film scenes. Presented at Innis Town Hall, the latest program begins on Tuesday at 7 p.m. with the North American premiere of Social
phobia, a social-media-themed mystery thriller that’s been one of the year’s most successful independent films in South Korea. An archival screening of Shin Sang-ok’s 1961 drama Evergreen Tree plays Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. followed by a talk by the U of T’s Janet Poole. A major award-winner at fests in Busan, Rotterdam and Deauville, Lee Sujin’s youth drama Han Gong-ju also makes its Toronto premiere on May 30 at 4 p.m. The TKFF continues to May 31.
Toronto International Deaf Film and Arts Festival
A showcase for films that defy the usual cinematic conventions and expectations when it comes to sounds and images, the TIDFAF returns for its fifth annual program of new works by hearing-impaired filmmakers as well as those working in close collaboration with the deaf community.
The TIDFAF launches with The Wall, a German documentary about the impact of the fall of the Berlin Wall on deaf people in both halves of the city — it plays the Royal on Thursday at 7:30 p.m. Perhaps the strongest recent example of this emergent category known as “deaf cinema,” The Tribe is a near-silent Ukrainian drama about vicious battles between students at a boarding school. Myroslav Slaboshpvtskiy’s festival hit plays the Royal on May 29 at 8:30 p.m. before returning for a run at the Lightbox in June.
The TIDFAF runs to May 31.
Satan Place
A monthly series of VHS-era curiosities yet to earn the cult audiences they deserve, Laser Blast returns to the Royal this week with yet another movie that defies description but needs one anyway.
An ultracheap production shot and released on video in 1990, Satan Place: A Soap Opera from Hell combines gory horror and clumsy comedy gags to utterly mystifying and cringe-inducing effect.
Few viewers noticed it at the time but it’s yours to discover on Wednesday at 9 p.m. jandersonesque@gmail.com