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Movie Mondays: Movies Never Sleep
As a means of rounding up Toronto’s various cinematic goings-on each week, Movie Mondays compiles the best rep cinema and art house screenings, special presentations, lectures, and limited engagements.
As we move closer to the spookiest month of the calendar year, your local cinemas are dishing out some sillier spookers, as well as a comic-to-film classic and—’cos why the hell not?—a sequel to Wall Street.
Released in 1974, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre will likely remain American filmmaker Tobe Hooper’s most accomplished film, (though 1986’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 pulls in at a close second). And though he’s never made another film quite as disturbing as the original TCM, he has done, well, some other stuff. Like in the 1980s, he signed a deal with financially troubled Cannon Films to churn out three low-budget features, including 1985’s Lifeforce (a.k.a. Space Vampires). In fairly typical Cannon Films fashion, Lifeforce tries to capitalize on a whole bunch of popular trends in genre cinema by jumbling them all together. Here, a group of English and American astronauts happen upon an alien craft tucked away inside Halley’s comet. Inside, they find a bunch of bat-like succubus extraterrestrials (obviously) that drain them of their “lifeforce.” When the shuttle makes it back to Earth, the shambling space-vampire-zombie-aliens proceed to suck the “lifeforce” from anyone who gets in their way.
Lifeforce is a fairly solid example of the kind of 1980s genre movies that were cooked up to be realized direct-to-video. It features a post-Dune, pre-Star Trek: TNG Patrick Stewart. Now’s your chance to see this VHS classic on the big screen, as The Fox (2236 Queen Street East) is screening Lifeforce at 9:15 p.m. on Monday.
When the The Dark Knight came out a while back, everyone wet their pants about it, considering it one of the best superhero movies or comic book adaptations or whatever because it offered a “gritty” and “real” take on people who fly around in capes. But if you want a comic adaptation that’s really real (like, really), you can’t do much better than Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini’s American Splendor. An adaptation of Harvey Pekar’s autobiographical comics of the same name, Splendor is one the most persuasively esoteric meta-narratives released on this side of the new millennium. Helped by Berman and Pulcini’s experience as documentary filmmakers, American Splendor combines adaptation, autobiography, and actuality in convincing proportions. And Paul Giamatti (who plays Pekar, except for when Pekar himself pops in to play Pekar) offers an equally credible performance, indulging his capacity to play slumped literary schlubs that has been exploited right through to Barney’s Version. The Revue is screening American Splendor Tuesday at 6:45 p.m. as part of their on-going Book Revue series.
There are few Halloween movies better than Sam Raimi’s Army of Darkness. Sure it doesn’t deal explicitly with the holiday (like, say, Trick ‘r Treat or Halloween III: Season of the Witch) but it’s high-fantasy, occult horror, and screwball comedy elements make it smack distinctly of the fun of dressing up in a costume, hanging up cheap plastic skeletons, and getting scared (but not too scared). Another film liable to be worn out on VHS, Army of Darkness stars the ruggedly chinned Bruce Campbell as Ash, an everyguy tossed back to medieval times after the events of the two preceding Evil Dead films. It’s got blood, marching Claymation skeletons, stupid Three Stooges–styled gags, and a trunkful of snappy one-liners. So if you want to feel like you’re eleven again, go see Army of Darkness at The Bloor at 9:30 p.m. on Thursday.
When Oliver Stone’s Wall Street came out in 1987, it was widely praised as a scathing portrayal of the morally-bankrupt cash-grab culture of America in the 1980s. It also brought Michael Douglas’s Gordon Gekko into the lexicon as a stand-in for any slimy, unapologetically greedy business type keen on well-tailored suits and a slicked-back hairdo. Given that character spawned a whole new generation of self-styled Gordon Gekkos who eventually ran American finance into the ground, it kind of makes sense that that Stone would want to revisit the Gordon Gekko character circa 2010. But the more likely reason seems, circa 2010, Stone wants another box office hit and hopes he can redouble on the success of the original Wall Street (“greed is good” and all that). In any event, here we are, faced with the improbable sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.
Judging by the trailer, it looks a lot like the first Wall Street, albeit with a ninja bike–riding Shia LaBeouf in the Charlie Sheen’s Bud Fox role. Shia LaBeouf kind of sucks, but Josh Brolin is also in it, so it can’t be all bad. And anyways, it’s a sequel to Wall Street. You know you want to see it. So see it! Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is playing throughout the week at the Rainbow Market Square
Photos by Eugen Sakhnenko/Torontoist.