SCRAPPY, UPSTART FILM FEST FLOURISHES WITH INDIE FLICKS
With Lost Episode Festival Toronto, a Werner Herzog retrospective and outdoor screenings, there’s plenty to see over the next week
Lost Episode Festival Toronto:
A scrappy upstart film fest specializing in new indie genre fare, the Lost Episode Festival Toronto (LEFT) has scored some impressive premieres for its fourth annual edition at the Carlton this weekend. The suitably lurid and action-packed slate of features and shorts begins on Aug. 5 with Toronto premieres for The Barn, a retro-’80s thriller about teens who discover an ancient evil in an abandoned barn, and The Greasy Strangler, a recent Sundance selection coproduced by Elijah Wood about a killer who does indeed leave his victims with a distinctly oily residue.
Should those options not leave you entirely sated, LEFT’s opening night also includes the Canadian premiere of This Papier Mache Boulder is Actually Really Heavy, a New Zealand sci-fi comedy whose makers clearly couldn’t be prouder of their movie’s minuscule budget and non-existent production values.
Further highlights of LEFT include the new American creature feature Bad Blood and Daylight’s End, a postapocalyptic thriller starring Lance Henriksen, an actor who remains a stern-faced staple of genre movies even at the age of 76. If he’s tired of the drill, he doesn’t show it, though that may be because his face reached maximum cragginess back in the 1990s.
In any case, LEFT makes the Carlton an essential destination for the city’s genre-flick devotees Aug. 5 to 7.
Werner Herzog retrospective:
Thanks to the array of Werner Herzog references, cameos and strangebut-true tales that permeate popular culture, the man himself may now be better known than most of his best movies.
That’s too bad, because the work itself is wilder and bolder than even that story about him pulling Joaquin Phoenix out of a car wreck.
From Aug. 6 to 11, the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema presents six great features and docs by the German auteur plus one equally great film about him. That would be Burden of
Dreams, Les Blank’s documentary about the legendarily foolhardy production of Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo — both play Aug. 7.
Outdoor screenings: The Christie Pits Film Festival kicks off the week’s roster of alfresco movie options with
The Truman Show on Aug. 7. Then on Aug. 9, City Cinema at Yonge-Dundas Square doubles up on SNLspawned comedies with Wayne’s
World and The Ladies Man. The steamy erotic drama A Bigger Splash and a musical performance by Chloe Charles enlivens the Open Roof Festival at 99 Sudbury Street on Aug. 10.
The Wednesday-night options also include The Good Lie at the Free Flicks at Harbourfront Centre’s Concert Stage, the classy Merchant/Ivory classic A Room With a View at Union Station and — even classier — Satyajit Ray’s masterpiece Pather Panchali at Regent Park.
Germans & Jews: Almost certainly this week’s release with the most provocative title, Germans & Jews is a documentary that explores the complex dynamic between Jewish and non-Jewish Germans in the decades since the Second World War.
The value of directly confronting the pain and shame of the past is one lesson that many interview subjects want to impart in this film by Janina Quint.
Its run from Aug. 5 to 11 at the Hot Docs Cinema is co-presented by the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre and patrons at the 4 p.m. screenings on Aug. 9 and 10 also receive free entrance to the Charlotte Hale Gallery (588 Markham St.) for the “Interview” show by Harry Tiefenbach, a child of Holocaust survivors.
In brief:
The Lightbox delivers a weekend dose of Divine with a special screening of a newly restored version of John Waters’ Multiple Maniacs on Aug. 5.
The Bloor’s got the fine Tragically Hip doc Bobcaygeon on Aug. 6.
Raiders of the Lost Ark plays Cineplex’s Classic Film Series at participating theatres on Aug. 7.
The Revue’s Marx Brothers festival continues with a matinee of Duck
Soup on Aug. 7. The 8 Fest hosts an “August Blackout” fundraiser with projections and performances at the Cameron House on Aug. 10.