JUMP-START YOUR SUMMER FROM ‘THREE’ TO 100
Torontonians have a choice of documentaries, thrillers and film festivals to satisfy their big-screen needs
Johnnie To’s Three
Hong Kong’s Johnnie To has long been one of the world’s most prolific and proficient makers of thrillers, so any new movie with his imprimatur is bound to intrigue genre fans. Opening this weekend in Toronto, the director’s latest also demonstrates his forte for making the most of an unusual location.
In the case of Three — which reunites To with Louis Koo and Wallace Chung, the stars of his masterful 2013 thriller Drug War — it’s the neurosurgery ward in a gleaming white hospital, where a suspect in a series of armed robberies arrives along with a group of police detectives desperate to grill him for more information. Trouble is, the cops already put a bullet in the suspect’s skull, though he’s miraculously well enough to refuse surgery so he can toy with the police long enough for his cohorts to come rescue him.
That may not be the most plausible premise, but it’s enough to generate both the requisite level of suspense (and mayhem) and a surprisingly satirical take on the medical staffers and patients who prove to be just as interesting to To as the cops and robbers.
Three opens Friday at Cineplex’s Yonge-Dundas and Markham VIP locations.
Outdoor screenings
First up in this week’s schedule of outdoor screening events, the Christie Pits Film Festival heads skyward with Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity and Young Galaxy’s new video for “New Summer” on June 26. Over at the Open Roof Festival at 99 Sudbury, Sing Street follows a live set by Fresh Snow on June 28. That same night, City Cinema at Yonge-Dundas Square begins a summer-long series of comedy favourites and NFB shorts with Bridesmaids and The Tender Tale of Cinderella Penguin. Then hosers descend on Harbourfront Centre’s WestJet Stage for the Free Flicks presentation of Strange Brew on Wednesday.
Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party
Though it’s hardly ever easy for a teenager to come out to his or her parents, the situation is especially fraught for the title character in Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party, the latest selection in MDFF’s program of worthy indie flicks that are new to Toronto audiences. Cole Doman plays Henry, a just-turned-17-year-old whose situation is complicated by his family’s religious conservatism and the more charged circumstances that develop over the course of the pool party that marks his big day. A prolific young filmmaker from Chicago, Stephen Cone will be at the Royal to present his latest feature on Monday.
How Not to Watch a Movie
During an artist residency in Berlin in 2009, local artist and filmmaker Daniel Cockburn decided to turn his discerning eye on his own work to date. The result was a performance piece called All the Mistakes I’ve Made, a delightful exercise in autocritique. Now he’s ready to fess up to all his bad habits and wrong-headed assumptions as a viewer of films, too. Titled How Not to Watch a Movie, Cockburn’s latest uses the ’90s meta-horror classics In the Mouth of Madness and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare as springboards for a wider (yet still funny) inquiry into our fraught relationships with the things we see onscreen. The Lightbox hosts the event on Saturday.
The Pulitzer at 100 Founded to recognize the best in newspaper journalism, fiction, and arts and letters, the Pulitzer Prize remains one of America’s most revered awards even if they still haven’t given one to Stephenie Meyer. The Bloor’s Doc Soup Sundays program honours that honour by presenting The Pulitzer at 100, a new doc about the prize’s legacy and continuing impact on American culture. Luminaries such as Toni Morrison, Helen Mirren, Carl Bernstein and Wynton Marsalis all contribute their insights to the film by director Kirk Simon, who will Skype in for a Q&A after the screening on Sunday.
What the Film Festival A riotous celebration of underground and outsider movies that must be seen to be believed, What the Film Festival returns for a three-day extravaganza starting Thursday. The weirdness begins at the Royal with the opening-night screening of Dragon Hunt, a little-known kick-boxing flick that should have made Toronto a hot spot for action cinema in 1990 but is only now gaining a following with the same adrenalin junkies who made a cult film out of Miami Connection.
The movie’s stars — Michael and Martin McNamara, icons of the GTA’s kick-boxing community — will be in attendance to amaze patrons. More picks from the WTFilm Festival in next week’s Projections.
In brief
A Canadian comedy starring Beeba Boys’ Anand Rajaram and Saving Hope’s Christian Potenza, Look Again starts a run at the Kingsway Friday.
Drunk Feminist Films team relishes every moment of Cruel Intentions at the Royal Friday to Saturday.
The director of Election and The Descendants, Alexander Payne introduces William A. Wellman’s 1951 western Westward the Women at the Lightbox on Sunday.
A star-studded favourite of moviegoers circa 1928, Show People plays the Revue’s Silent Revue program on Sunday.
Spirits expert Heather Greene talks about Ken Loach’s whisky-themed The Angels’ Share at TIFF’s Food on Film at the Lightbox on Wednesday. jandersonesque@gmail.com