An early June at the cinemas (à Montréal)

It's been a full couple weeks of movies since I arrived in Montreal earlier this month. Besides sampling films at my fave independent Mtl cinema, Cinema du Parc - in the same building in which I'm staying - I caught a couple of other movies at a great suburban cinema, CineStarz. First off was Wes Anderson's latest The Phoenician Scheme, as ambitious a movie as he's ever made. But it's all bizarre scenes and sets and not much emotional pull. Sure, it's good for a few laughs as Benicio Del Toro (Zsa Korda), a hated world industrialist, tries to secure his fortune to his offspring, Liesl (Mia Threapleton.) There's Anderson's usual mid century

visual twists, sight gags and purposely cliched characters from dorkish professors to urban guerillas. Cute. But the minute after the movie was over I forgot all about it.....Next up was Friendship (Andrew DeYoung), a delicious black comedy starring Detroit native Tim Robinson and ever-on-screen Paul Rudd. It's a surreal take on - what? Personal insecurity, suburban ennui, social awkwardness? Robinson's Craig really is an over the top character, whose almost every move and comment grates on those around him, even his family. And you can see how loneliness and social ostracization can turn

people into psychopaths.....I checked out Bring Her Back (Danny and Michael Philippou), which The Globe and Mail called "a "genuinely evil movie", "exceptional and impressive." The Film Stage went further: "a direct statement on the cheap exploitation of grief, channeling the existential nihilism of French New Extremity." Wow. I'm usually not into horror mainly because it's one dimensional. But with these accolades, I went. Only to conclude that, yawn, it's linear and says nothing much more about anything than what's on the screen, albeit a fantastic performance by Sally Hawkins.....I keep seeing reviews knocking Canadian director Celine Song's Materialists and wonder why. Saffron Maeve in The Globe: "a stiff, reluctant rom-com that cannot square the footloose idealism of its predecessors with the terrifying realities of today’s dating pool." Okay. Johnny Oleksinski in the NY Post: "unnatural and stilted" and "drags viewers out of the film." But but, despite an admittedly cliched storyline I was absorbed and the pacing perfect - even the "stilted" dialogue worked - portraying three characters trying to find the, um, perfect romantic match.....Finally, for a weekend night at the Parc, the "old ultra violence," Stanley Kubrick's 1971 A Clockwork Orange. This was my third viewing and it entertains as much as ever, though wonder if it could have been made in our current puritan and politically correct age, satire or not. Malcolm McDowell's breakout role as Alex, leader of the futuristic "droog" gang, is as searingly comedic as it is menacing. To quote the lad, "we were feeling a bit shagged and fagged and fashed, it being a night of no small expenditure." Outrageously hilarious!

More light-hearted fare at this year's Windsor Jewish Film Fest

It’s a decided break from the past at this year’s Windsor Jewish Film Festival, June 16-19 at The Capitol downtown. For years the fest has featured more serious and often Holocaust related films. That’s partly owing to what inventory was available and it skewed towards the reflective, historical and sad. But while obviously important there’s more to Jewish culture than that and this year’s lineup has much more variety. About half the films are comedies or dramaties led by opening night’s award-winning A Real Pain (Jesse Eisenberg 2024), a poignant yet mis adventurous tale of two cousins who embark on an ancestral pilgrimage to Poland.  Another is Bad Shabbos (Daniel Robbins 2024). What happens when a romantic couple of mixed religions’ parents get together for the first time at a Friday Shabbos meal?  There might be some confusion.  Matchmaking 2 (Erez Tadmor 2024) is a humorous sendup of an older devout Yeshiva student being forced into marriage. Yaniv (Amnon Carmi 2024) delves into the world of a New York Orthodox gambling den – who knew of such a thing? On the more serious side and about subjects we haven’t always seen depicted are The Blond Boy from the Casbah (Alexandre Arcady 2023), a whimsical tale of a boyhood in Algeria’s Jewish community in the early 1960s during that country’s nationalist revolution.  Pink Lady (Nir Bergman 2024) is a nuanced and reflective dive into an Orthodox couple’s relationship.   Torn (Nimrod Shapira 2024) addresses a subject very much in the news, the posting of "Kidnapped" posters following the October 2017 Hamas attacks and the reaction of those who flagrantly tore them down.  All About the Levkoviches (Ádám Breier 2024) is a story of the estrangement of a father and son, set-in present-day Budapest.  One film tangentially deals with the Holocaust but in its aftermath. Soda (Erez Tadmor 2024), is a drama set in postwar Israel where an immigrant is eyed suspiciously as a former Nazi collaborator. Finally, Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire (Oren Rudavsky 2024), closing out the fest, is a documentary about the great writer and Holocaust survivor whose writings transcend Judaism as an enduring witness to injustice. 

In Montreal, two iconic film palaces, each in their own way

Walking around downtown Montreal over the last couple of days – my first extensive trip to the city in more than two years - I happened by two major film complexes. Iconic in their own ways. One is Cinema Imperial, a more than 100-year-old cinema that would be to Montreal what the Fox Theatre is to Detroit. Once a vaudeville house in later years it became the Cinerama theatre in the 1960s (and, as a Montreal native, where I was taken to see How the West was Won (Henry Hathaway 1962 ) and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (Henry Levin and George Pal 1962). In more recent years it became a centerpiece of the city’s late lamented Festival des Films du Monde (World Film Festival) which ended a 42-year run in 2019. It has also played host to the

city’s oldest festival, the Festival du Nouveau Cinema – still kicking – and the upstart Cinemania and Fantasia fests. But I was dismayed to see that the front doors had been papered over as if renovation was taking place...or something worse, such as closed for good. Reading online I found that in fact this “jewel” of Montreal’s entertainment and arts scene has indeed closed, at least temporarily. Various bodies – private and public - have tried to keep it afloat over the last decade, injecting millions of dollars including $3M last year from the federal government for restoration. But the doors are sealed shut.....Meanwhile at the other end of downtown the one time “shrine” of hockey, the Montreal Forum – where more Stanley Cups have been won than in any other venue – continues as a massive multiplex, now run by Cineplex. The Forum closed in the late 1990s, and US-based AMC took it over opening a 30-screen multiplex on different floors. Now Cineplex runs it. It is cavernous - where the former rink and hockey spectator seats used to be – and beautiful if also showcasing a lot of empty space! A few restaurants/bars and stores are on the ground floor.  But very few people were there on a weekday late morning.  When I stopped by to see what was playing, the most interesting film was Friendship (Andrew DeYoung 2024). But I took a pass because I wanted to keep on walking.