The best repertory and art-house screenings, special presentations, lectures, and limited engagements in Toronto.
At rep cinemas this week: A lament for rep theatres, a coming-of-age story set in Toronto, and a genre-crossing thriller.
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The best repertory and art-house screenings, special presentations, lectures, and limited engagements in Toronto.
At rep cinemas this week: A lament for rep theatres, a coming-of-age story set in Toronto, and a genre-crossing thriller.
The Rep
Directed by Morgan White
Big Picture Cinema (1035 Gerrard Street East)
Showtimes
Revue Cinema (400 Roncesvalles Avenue)
Showtimes
“You never see someone walking out saying, ‘That sucked,’” Kevin Smith observes of repertory movie theatres early in Morgan White’s The Rep, an illuminating history of independent theatres that soon turns into a lament for them. Seeing a film one already knows and loves with a rapt audience or viewing a rare print among fellow esoteric types can reduce even the most hardened cinephile to tears, but The Rep hinges on the premise that such euphoric moments are not long for this world, given the sorry state of the industry since the switch to digital projection and home video.
Embedding himself with the programming and managerial team of the recently departed Toronto Underground Cinema, whose very brief rise and subsequent struggle the film chronicles, White considers the strange mix of heart, business acumen, and foolhardiness it takes to run such theatres in an age where repertory programming is endangered on multiple fronts. He does a good job of delineating the personality clashes of the Underground Cinema’s staff, three very different people bound by an all-consuming job that never quite pays off, for all its perks. But White’s greatest coup is his ability to fit his insights into Toronto’s repertory scene within the larger North American context, all without losing sight of how rep programming affects its passionate (if eccentric) audiences, who are as hungry as ever for good films, even as their numbers decline.
Picture Day
Directed by Kate Melville
TIFF Bell Lightbox (350 King Street West)
Showtimes
Before she landed a premiere slot at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2012, Toronto filmmaker Kate Melville cut her teeth on work as diverse as the CBC’s adaptation of Timothy Findley’s play Elizabeth Rex and several episodes of Degrassi: The Next Generation. Odd as it might seem on paper, Melville’s experience with both the high and low ends of the cinematic spectrum pays off nicely in Picture Day. Starring up-and-comer Tatiana Maslany as Claire—a victory-lapping high school senior who befriends her former babysitting charge, moody ninth grader Henry (Degrassi’s Spencer Van Wyck)—the film turns out to be rather more than its familiar tale of coming-of-age growing pains would suggest, thanks to Melville’s ease with young actors and knack for guiding them through tricky, dramatically charged dialogue.
Promising as it is, Picture Day often betrays its humble origins, both as a play that Melville first conceived while she was a teen and as a first feature. It relies too heavily on its wall-to-wall indie soundtrack and clever situations to advance the emotional lives of its characters. Despite that occasional awkwardness, though, this is a tender and surprisingly nuanced portrait of youth. The film is brave enough to let these kids explore their unseemly sides and behave in ugly ways that teen movies usually sanitize. The film is also a star-maker, sure to expose the luminous and very funny Maslany to wider audiences than the handful who noticed her in more standard fare like The Vow.
Side Effects
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Revue Cinema (400 Roncesvalles Avenue)
Showtimes
If Steven Soderbergh’s insistence that Side Effects will be his last theatrical release turns out to be true, he’ll have mustered an impressive filmography by the time he takes his early retirement. His movies make an oddly diverse group, from the heady science fiction of his Solaris remake to the micro-budgeted Bubble, through to his recent spate of experimental star vehicles (for MMA fighter Gina Carano in Haywire, and former adult film star Sasha Grey in The Girlfriend