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Film Friday: Knowing I Love You
Sounded like another week of largely unimpressive films on offer—from the ridiculous Nicolas Cage flick Knowing(called “the silliest apocalyptic pot-boiler of all time, edging out even M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening” by Eye‘s Adam Nayman) through the depressingly formulaic Miss March (absurd, considering it comes from people who made their name on YouTube, of all things)—until we remembered that this week saw the release of I Love You, Man.
We’ve mentioned before the fact that we think Paul Rudd is amazing—even more amazing since we finally saw Role Models a few weeks ago—but we were surprised to learn on watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall Jason Segel had grown on us so much (especially as the writer he had managed to craft such a sweet, rather than cloying, romantic comedy). So I Love You, Man sounds perfect—and if that isn’t enough to sell you on it, the always “game for a laugh” Rush are in it (it is the law that as a Toronto-based outlet we make note of this). The Star‘s Peter Howell finds a lot of truth in the film’s observations of the difficulty of finding deep male friendships, speaking, he claims, as “the only man in history who lost money in his bachelor party poker game.”
If this kind of light fare isn’t your cup of tea, there are far more complex, difficult works on offer—such as the controversial but critically lauded, Polytechnique. Considering the 1989 Montreal Massacre, the film is called a “transcendent historical document” by the Sun‘s Bruce Kirkland, who also reveals something interesting—the film was shot twice, in both French and English. Quite an intriguing decision.
There’s also The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins, also controversial but critically acclaimed in its own right. Heavily discussed during last year’s Hot Docs, the film remains beguiling to local critics—the Globe and Mail‘s Rick Groen finds it “disturbing” and “exploitative” yet clearly intriguing.
Also on release this week—The Magic Flute, Duplicity and 12, while in festivals we have the Queer 2 Fly Film Festival and the upcoming Female Eye Film Festival.