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!