Catch up season
Most people make various fitness and wellness resolutions around this time but cinephiles are really just too busy slogging through all the great films they missed from the previous calendar year.
With that in mind, the repertory theatres in Toronto still have a substantial number of the must-see films from last year on screens. This way you can sound smart around awards season or look at critics top tens and come up with ‘seen’ scores lower than my marks in first-year chemistry.
The folks at the Revue have runaway hit and critical darling The Martian up for your consideration at 6:30 p.m. You can follow that up with a chance to see Brie Larson’s Oscar front-runner performance in Room at 9:30 p.m.
Out west now, and speaking of those critics lists, a film that placed tops on quite a number of esteemed ones, Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s The Assassin is still playing at The Kingsway Theatre at 5:00 p.m. It’s a beautiful film that you should catch in a cinema if possible. You can also catch a flick that got a little traction at Sundance but didn’t quite breakthrough, James White at 6:00 p.m.
TIFF Bell Lightbox is running the film that will likely take the Best Foreign Language Oscar. That is, if Laszlo Nemes’s holocaust drama Son of Saul doesn’t end up getting a Best Picture and Actor nomination for Géza Röhrig instead. There’s four showings a day, so no excuses.
Finally, good ole Varsity Cinema at Bay and Bloor is really giving you grounds to camp out on their premises. You can still catch the leader of the pack for Best Picture, Spotlight, as well as the lushly photographed retro pics Brooklyn and Carol, the Wall Street meltdown comedy The Big Short and Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight in 70mm.
Screening Roundup
Hurry and cleanse yourself of that festive cheer with Sam Raimi’s crowning achievement tonight at 8:30 p.m. Evil Dead 2 is at TIFF Bell Lightbox and I can’t think of a better way to (almost) ring in the new year.
They do this every year it seems, but you can don your filthy bathrobe and trek over to Bloor Hot Docs Cinema to drink white Russians and watch The Big Lebowski on New Year’s Eve. The event starts at 9:30 p.m.
Speaking of things I’m completely over, there’s another sing/quote/shout-a-long presentation. TIFF Bell Lightbox gives you a chance to belt it out with Julie Andrews — not in person, obviously — in The Sound of Music. Jan. 2 at 7:00 p.m.
The folks at the Revue sold out their last screening of Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbour Totoro so they’re offering another chance to catch the classic Studio Ghilbi children’s film Jan. 4 at 7:00 p.m.
Toronto Screengrab of the Week
Congrats to @Hameslice for nabbing the penultimate screengrab of 2015 by guessing Pushing Tin correctly. This week is a recent remake that I had pretty much forgotten about entirely until I needed a screengrab this week.
