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Film Friday: Meerkat at the Wedding
Blade Runner is no longer showing at the Regent, which in many ways is lucky, as otherwise it was going to turn into a weekly, Rocky Horror Picture Show-style event for us—well, without all of that tedious audience interaction, which now we think about it, would make it not very like the Rocky Horror Picture Show at all. If you’re still hungry for more vintage Harrison Ford, though, they are showing Raiders of the Lost Ark at the Bloor this weekend. [edit: According to our comments, Blade Runner is apparently still showing at the Regent (we were under the impression it was a two week engagement) which means we may still turn it into a Rocky Horror Picture Show thing. Without all that Rocky Horror Picture Show.]
Although this week you could check out Margot at the Wedding, Noah Baumbach’s latest film about how much he hates his mum. Now, we actually saw this at TIFF, but were so bored and depressed by just how lifeless the film is to write anything about it. We have to echo Eye’s Jason Anderson when he says, “I can only hope that Baumbach has worked something out of his system and that his next film will have more of its predecessor’s relative warmth.”
If you want films full of symbolically evil parent figures, you can’t go wrong with Disney, and so Enchanted, starring the adorable Amy Adams, is our pick this week. You’re probably bored of hearing Amy Adams being described as “adorable” or its synonyms, but she won us over in Junebug with an enthusiasm for Meerkats that couldn’t be just her character’s.
We love Meerkats too, Amy. If you ever want to come round and watch Meerkat Manor with us, let us know. We imagine there are no Meerkat in Enchanted, but there are chipmunks, as seen above. That will do. We love those little guys too.
Hitman stars Timothy Olyphant as an assassin with no parents—and a bald head, so sucks to be that guy. We suppose he’s got all these mad combat skills to make up for it, but who wants to be a baldy orphan? Not us. We’ve got a lot of interest in video game adaptations, usually, but as this one was directed by Xavier Gens we haven’t held out much hope it would be much more than very pretty and utterly forgettable (Frontières, his Midnight Madness entry, must have had a script that was little more than a checklist of horror movie tropes.) The reviews aren’t looking good, either. The Metro’s Norm Wilner claims it looks like something produced by “Eastern European pornographers.” He says it’s “just a feeling,” but we’re interested in Wilner’s knowledge of Eastern European pornography!
Also out this week: This Christmas, The Mist, How to Cook Your Life and August Rush.
In festivals, we’ve got the New Serbian Film Festival, the Spinning Wheel Film Festival and the Reel Awareness Film Festival all running this weekend, and the Images Festival is showing the Sigur Rós documentary Heima tonight and tomorrow night at the Royal.
And finally, we can’t forget to give Cinematheque Ontario a mention. This week we’ve got two double passes for the Tuesday screening of Charles Burnett documentaries Several Friends and Killer of Sheep. Simply e-mail us your name to [email protected] before midnight tonight for a chance to win the tickets. Winners will be notified on Monday.