ByTowne Cinema - The ByTowne Cinema is Ottawa’s home of international and indie movies since 1988

Habemus Papam

bruce — Thu, 10 May 2012 18:34:08 +0000

(We Have A Pope)

Nanni Moretti commits a cardinal cinema

Like the classic runaway bride, the skittish lead character in Nanni Moretti’s emotionally generous and moving tragicomedy Habemus Papam wears a sumptuous gown, has the air of the unsullied and suffers from severe commitment issues.

The runaway, Melville (Michel Piccoli), a French cleric who’s just been elected Pope, dons ceremonial white, sits in the Vatican forcing smiles and rapidly sags under the weight of the billion souls he’s charged with leading. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown and so too the miter. What haunts Melville is whether he can embrace his role as pontiff.

Habemus Papam is the story of a specific crisis of conscience with larger reverberations, if not necessarily those you might expect from Mr. Moretti. (The English title, We Have A Pope, suggests auctions and game shows, while the Latin comes wreathed in incense-perfumed mystery.)

Despite its director being an Italian leftist best known for films like Caro Diario and The Son’s Room, politics initially appears to have gone on hiatus in Habemus Papam, which opens with the funeral of Pope John Paul II. The ceremony and the sight of thousands of bodies pressing into St. Peter’s Square instantly shifts the movie into a serious register that continues when Mr. Moretti cuts to lines of chanting old men in red, presumably the College of Cardinals, entering what looks like the Vatican.

It’s all very exotic and solemn, or would be if the cardinals didn’t then pass a scrum of reporters who, separated from the clerics by ropes and stanchions, look as if they were covering the red carpet at the Oscars. ‘Cardinal,’ demands one tv journalist, thrusting a microphone at the clerics, ‘could we have a statement?’

None of the cardinals dignify the question with a response, but with this scene Mr. Moretti, with characteristic efficiency, makes his own quiet statement about the connections among religion, spectacle and the media. These associations have already been implied in the opening funeral images, but Mr. Moretti’s touch is so light here that it feels as if he’s making an offhand observation about the church instead of building an argument. (He’s doing both.)

And so it goes as the cardinals gather in the Sistine Chapel and, after a few ballot rounds, select Melville. As the faithful wait for him publicly to acknowledge his new role, an openly uneasy, increasingly unsure Melville hesitates and then abruptly runs off, seemingly leaving his flock hanging.

Except that Melville, wearing civilian clothing and still an unknown to the outside world, doesn’t abandon the faithful but walks among their numbers, at first with some confusion and then with mounting confidence and openness. In Rome stores and on buses he discovers people whose humanity helps awaken something human in him. Mr. Piccoli, a giant of European cinema, brings dignity to the role and an innocence that’s less childlike than unworldly.

There’s something so unforced about Habemus Papam that its assertion of papal humility and humanity rather than infallibility might be easy to miss. But it’s there, tucked in a story about a pope who describes himself with bittersweet self-knowing as an actor and meets a troupe rehearsing Chekhov’s "Seagull".

The Chekhov underscores Melville’s disappointment in his life and also works as a melancholic counterpoint to the volleyball matches at the Vatican arranged by a psychiatrist (Mr. Moretti) who’s been hired to guide the pope through his crisis. Mr. Moretti finds broad comedy in the antics of some clerics, who can seem as sweet as children, but in Melville there is pathos and there is tragedy, and not his alone.

– Manolha Dargis, The New York Times

40 Days At Base Camp on May 14! Tickets on sale now!

bytowne — Wed, 09 May 2012 18:18:41 +0000

For one night only, we're presenting the breathtaking documentary 40 Days At Base Camp.

40 Days At Base Camp is a feature length documentary that puts a knife through the heart of the Everest myth with stories of climbers being interwoven with daily life at Base Camp, the history of the mountain and the devastating effect climate change has had on the mountains ecology. The film provides a modern take on the transformation of Everest from what was once a revered sacred space to the mountain theme park it is sadly becoming.

Director Dianne Whelan will be introduce the film and stay on for a Q&A at its conclusion.

Tickets for this special event are on sale any time the box office is open and are $12 (sorry, no member or senior discounts). We hope to see you there!

All About Eve

bytowne — Mon, 07 May 2012 22:08:58 +0000

Must-See Cinema! Have celebrities always been this nasty?

In 1950, the movies recognised stardom as a pathological disorder. Exhibit A was Sunset Blvd, Exhibit B was All About Eve.

Set in the Broadway jungle rather than among the ‘sun-burnt eager beavers’ of Hollywood, Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s film dissects the narcissism and hypocrisy of the spotlight , but pays equal attention to the challenges of enacting womanhood. All About My Mother (not to mention Showgirls) would be unimaginable without it.

Anne Baxter is Eve Harrington, the wide-eyed stage-door hanger-on who insinuates her way into the world of Bette Davis’ sacred monster, Margo Channing; butter-might-just-melt meets gin-hold-the-tonic. The fan who makes an audience of the stars, Eve is soon attracting her own admirers, as well as barbs worthy of Mankiewicz’s ’30s newsroom pedigree.

Edith Head’s costumes stress the antagonism: Eve enters in a sexy-modest trenchcoat-and-trilby combo, and could anyone but Davis pull off a ball gown with pockets? Meanwhile, the real threat – Marilyn Monroe – sits at the party’s edge, shining, angling for another drink.

– Ben Walters, Time Out

Gerhard Richter Painting

bytowne — Mon, 07 May 2012 22:01:50 +0000

A world-famous artist reveals his methods

Countless documentaries have feebly attempted to probe and illuminate the creative process (the phrase ‘dancing about architecture’ springs to mind), and even Dresden-born visual artist Gerhard Richter—an 80-year-old master of many brush styles and ideas, from photorealistic portraiture to abstract expressionism—believes his work can’t be described with words. ‘Painting is another form of thinking,’ the soft-spoken but no-bullshit iconoclast tells director Corinna Belz, whose magnificent and evocative observances of him labouring in his studio come as close as cinema gets to tracking the impulses and paradoxes of a gifted imagination.

Alone with his enormous canvases, Richter studies his own vibrant-hued strokes and patterns, disappoints himself in the moment, then destroys and creates anew with a giant squeegee pulled across the would-be work of art, aided by Belz’s deeply satisfying attention to the tactile sounds of paint slapped on or scraped away. New and vintage interviews with curators, historians, and collaborators help contextualize Richter’s five-decade career, but who even needs talking heads when you have panning shots of exhibition-layout thumbnails – rich works of art on their own at 1:50 scale. Gerhard Richter Painting artfully and convincingly immerses us into the world of one of the greatest, painting.

– Aaron Hills, The Village Voice

The Salt Of Life

bytowne — Mon, 07 May 2012 21:52:01 +0000

(Gianni e le donne)

From the director and star of "Mid-August Lunch"

Gianni, the gentle mama’s boy and alter ego of Gianni Di Gregorio, the 63-year-old director and star of the wistful Italian comedy The Salt Of Life, is every man who reaches a certain age and feels his vitality waning. Gazing into the mirror, he notices the heavy bags under his eyes and his sagging chin and is seized with a longing for his lost youth.

Everywhere he goes Gianni passes beautiful, younger women to whom he is next to invisible. Gogò Bianchi’s cinematography, which observes the women through Gianni’s adoring eyes, portrays them as voluptuous, carefree goddesses tossing their hair and flashing confident smiles as they strut in low-cut dresses. While watching The Salt Of Life you may be as intoxicated with them as Gianni and decide that there is no creature on earth more alluring than a Roman woman in her prime.

This movie is a richer variation of his small, exquisite 2010 film, Mid-August Lunch. The extraordinary Valeria de Franciscis Bendoni (now 96), who played his mother in that film returns here as an even more imposing matriarch.

Elegantly coiffed and attired in flowing, brightly colored silks, she is a sight to behold. A fragile but still commanding diva, whether playing poker with her friends on the lawn of her luxurious home or ordering a meal, she insists on getting her imperious way. Her deeply tanned, weathered face with its thousand little creases is a contour map of a long life.

Gianni, who retired at 50, lives in an apartment with an extended family that includes his wife (Elisabetta Piccolomini), with whom he has a platonic friendship; his daughter (played by Teresa Di Gregorio, the director’s real-life daughter); and her unemployed slacker boyfriend Michelangelo (Michelangelo Ciminale), who happily tools around Rome on his motorbike and doesn’t lift a finger.

Gianni’s mother, a heedless spendthrift, squanders money on designer clothes for her full-time caretaker, Cristina (Kristina Cepraga) – one of the many women Gianni discreetly ogles – and stocks her refrigerator with expensive Champagne. She has nearly bankrupted her dutiful son and pesters him on the telephone at all hours.

Gianni is too polite and inhibited to put the moves on women, which his coarser best friend, Alfonso (Alfonso Santagata), a lawyer, does without compunction. Alfonso points out a neighborhood acquaintance Gianni’s age who has a younger lover, forces medication on Gianni to treat erectile dysfunction, and even gives him the name and address of a brothel. But when pushed into action Gianni is foiled by comic mishaps, one of which involves drinking an aperitif spiked with a psychedelic drug that sends him reeling. In the most touching scene he visits Valeria (Valeria Cavalli), a long-ago lover who sweetly suggests that his ties to his mother are the reason they never married.

Most of all you are thankful for what The Salt Of Life is not: another farce in which a lecherous codger makes a fool of himself over a babe. Only in the final minute does it succumb to sentimentality. Until then the movie sympathetically bears out the observation in Yeats’s poem 'After Long Silence' that ‘bodily decrepitude is wisdom.’

– Steven Holden, The New York Times

The Story Of Film: An Odyssey

bruce — Sat, 05 May 2012 20:14:40 +0000

An 8-part documentary series

The Story Of Film is a feast for cinema lovers. Mark Cousins adapts his celebrated book of the same title into this audacious fifteen-hour project, screening in eight weekly installments.

He traces the entire history of film, concentrating on artistic vision (rather than business or celebrities) from the silent era to the digital age. Unlike historians who place an emphasis on Western cinema, Cousins takes a more global approach. He showcases iconic film clips from Asia, Africa, India, the Middle East and South America – woven into the more familiar legacy of Europe and North America. His treatment succeeds at being both erudite and accessible.

Often this kind of ambitious project requires the backing of an institution, which can result in a bland sensibility. But Cousins’ approach is more individualistic. Based in Scotland, he earned his expertise from an eclectic background of festival programming, filmmaking and teaching. For his popular BBC program and eponymous book Scene by Scene, he interviewed the likes of Martin Scorsese, Roman Polanski and Bernardo Bertolucci. Now he marshalls that wealth of knowledge to narrate The Story of Film in his endearing brogue. He supplements his commentary by interviewing cinematic history makers such as Wim Wenders, Claire Denis and Alexander Sokurov. The conversations are shot with the idiosyncratic style of a one-person crew in locales around the world.

By taking a DIY approach, Cousins preserves an editorial independence that normally gets lost with a bigger budget and committee decision-making. His achievement represents a breakthrough for the multi-part documentary. After experiencing this history from such a distinctive viewpoint, you may crave similar treatments for music, literature, politics or whatever compels you. Of course, Cousins has the advantage of drawing upon image makers who take our breath away: Buster Keaton, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Fritz Lang, Yasujiro Ozu, Satyajit Ray, Orson Welles, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Youssef Chahine, Agnes Varda, Nicholas Roeg, Ousmane Sembene, Abbas Kiarostami – to name only a sampling.

In The Story of Film, you’ll drink their visions and walk away thirsty for more.

– Toronto International Film Festival

Regular admission prices apply for each installment, but Members may buy a Pass valid for all 8 episodes for $30

The Story Of Film is divided into 8 weekly installments, each about 2 hours long. Each installment will screen twice, on Thursday night and Saturday afternoon.

Part 1 (Thursday June 21 @ 9:10 pm, Saturday June 23 @ 1:30 pm)
covers the birth of the great new artform of movie-making, by looking at the very first movie stars, close ups and special effects and creation of the Hollywood myth. Hollywood became a glittering entertainment industry with star directors like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. But the gloss and fantasy were challenged by filmmakers like Robert Flaherty, Eric Von Stroheim and Carl Theodor Dreyer, who wanted films to be more serious and mature.

Part 2 (Thursday June 28 @ 8:55 pm, Saturday June 30 @ 1:45 pm)
looks at changes in the world of film in the 1920s, a golden age within and outside of Hollywood. German Expressionism, Soviet montage, French impressionism pushed the boundaries of the medium. In the late 20s, ‘talkies’ changed everything, spawning new genres: screwball comedies, gangster pictures, horror films, westerns and musicals.

Part 3 (Thursday July 5 @ 9:20 pm, Saturday July 7 @ time to be announced)
starts in Italy during the Second World War, then heads back to Hollywood to ‘discover’ Orson Welles and chart the darkening of American film during the drama of the McCarthy era. The filmmaker then travels to Egypt, India, China, Mexico, Britain and Japan to find that movies there were also full of rage and passion.

The Gold Rush

bruce — Sat, 05 May 2012 19:47:02 +0000

Charlie Chaplin's most memorable feature! Newly restored print!

Chaplin called The Gold Rush ‘the picture I want to be remembered by.’ It may be his most celebrated film, and is the masterpiece with more memorable Chaplin moments than any other. Most of us know it from Chaplin’s 1942 reissue, which added music and narration, but trimmed some 15 minutes from the 1925 original.

Now, for the first time, Chaplin’s complete 1925 version is available on 35mm prints with a musical score. The Gold Rush has Chaplin’s beloved Tramp trekking to the Klondike of 1898 in search of fortune, only to wind up snowbound in a hilariously unbalanced cabin, fending off attacks by bears and ferocious fellow prospectors, and – in one of the cinema’s most famed sequences – staving off starvation by eating his own shoe. The film’s ‘dance of the dinner rolls’ routine is nearly as famous. A 1952 survey of international experts selected The Gold Rush as the second greatest film of all time, after Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin.

– Pacific Cinematheque

It manages to make high comedy out of hardship, starvation, and greed... In the subtlety of its characterization, the brilliance of its mime, and its blending of comic and tragic themes, The Gold Rush is Chaplin’s most characteristic work.

–David A. Cook

Headhunters

bruce — Sat, 05 May 2012 19:33:01 +0000

Based on Jo Nesbø's comic thriller

What’s the worst thing that can happen to a movie character? Shot, stabbed, beaten, tortured? How about exiled, chased, shot, impaled, betrayed, sacked, savaged by a pitbull, involved in a tractor crash, chucked off a cliff and forced to hide under six feet of human shit?

Luckily, it couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy. Director Morten Tyldum’s juggernaut thriller, based on Norwegian author Jo Nesbø’s bestselling novel, stems from a simple but hugely satisfying idea: serve up an eminently hissable central character, in this case part-time art thief and full-time corporate douchebag Roger (Aksel Hennie, who looks like the love child of Steve Buscemi and Rupert Grint). Then sit back and smile as he tangles with the wrong folks and is subjected to the most humiliating indignities this smart, streamlined script can invent.

When we meet Roger, he’s happily married to a gorgeous woman (Synnøve Macody Lund), having a fling on the side and preparing to help himself to the priceless Munch lithograph owned by high-flying Swedish executive and former elite soldier Clas Greve (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). Of course, we know it’s all a ploy – that Greve is luring Roger in for his own devious reasons, and that things are about to go horribly wrong – but it’s how Nesbø and Tyldum spring the trap that’s so enjoyable to watch.

It’s a timely film, too: while Nesbø and Tyldum’s prime directive is to give their audience a good bracing shake, they also find time to throw in a few witty, thoughtful asides about personal responsibility and the ways in which the relentless pursuit of wealth conflict with the achievement of true happiness. Bankers and business types may prickle at their blanket portrayal as greedy, self-serving misanthropes, but it serves to slot the film neatly within the current anti-capitalist zeitgeist.

But none of this would matter a jot if Tyldum didn’t have such a firm grasp of his material. The plot moves like a rocket, the despicable characters are marvellously sketched, and if Headhunters is not always entirely convincing (a few twists take a bit of swallowing), it’s always deliriously entertaining. Anyone tired of the surly, leather-jacketed seriousness of the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo trilogy and looking for more spark and spice in their Scandinavian crime sagas need seek no further. Pure joy.

– Tom Huddleston, Time Out London

Intouchables

bytowne — Tue, 01 May 2012 17:40:24 +0000

Based on a true story

There is lots to laugh at in Intouchables, the smash hit comedy (based on a true story) that has taken France and the rest of Europe by storm. And while the humour never strays far from the obvious and often clichéd cultural differences between its two main characters, it's a testament to the film's giddy energy that the fun shines through, regardless.

Driss (rising star Omar Sy, who won best actor at the Césars, beating out The Artist's Jean Dujardin) is a strapping black man from the banlieues. Fresh out of jail on a robbery charge, he applies for a job as a personal caregiver to a rich white paraplegic man, Philippe (François Cluzet), solely in order to fulfill requirements for his welfare payments. He doesn't actually think he'll get the gig.

But tired of the barrage of deadly dull applicants, Philippe is drawn to something in Driss. He decides to give him a shot, and before long the young man goes from living in the slums with his aunt and cousins to having his own presidential suite-style bedroom in Philippe's mansion.

The catch? He has to wait on Philippe hand and foot. Much of the humour revolves around Driss's discomfort with the less glamorous aspects of his work; his unfamiliarity with the lifestyles of the rich and refined; and his irrepressibly gregarious demeanour. He hits on Philippe's comely assistant Magalie (Audrey Fleurot) and jokes around constantly with his boss, dismantling traditional notions of hierarchy and the stuffy pretension that comes with money.

Philippe gives his employee – who is fast becoming his best buddy – a sense of culture, including an appreciation for opera, classical music and modern art. Again, the laughs here are predictable, but the chemistry between Sy and Cluzet makes the formula work.

At the heart of this film is the friendship between two very different men from radically different backgrounds. Based on a true story, the premise has solid roots (remain seated during the credits to see the real duo, Philippe and Abdel).

– T’Cha Dunlevy, The Montreal Gazette

Un acteur, c'est un bon partenaire. Quel duo ! Sans aucun doute une des meilleures comédies de la rentrée. Philippe (François Cluzet) est un riche aristocrate tétraplégique depuis un accident de parapente. A priori, rien de bien amusant. Et pourtant, et pourtant. Bien longtemps qu'on n'avait pas vu une comédie française de cette qualité. Philippe revendique son droit à la gaieté, à la joie. Ne veut qu'une chose : qu'on le laisse vivre. Débarque Driss (formidable Omar Sy), un jeune homme black qui sort de prison et ne désire qu'une seule chose : une simple signature afin de toucher ses Assedic. Il deviendra presque malgré lui l'auxiliaire de vie de Philippe, chien dans un jeu de quilles. Naîtra entre eux une belle et émouvante complicité.

Tiré d'une histoire vraie, celle de Philippe Pozzo di Borgo, Intouchables est un film hilarant. Ici, pas question de pleurnicher sur les déboires d'un type en fauteuil roulant. Philippe ne demande qu'à rire de son handicap. N'a pas besoin de la compassion de l'autre. Ce qu'il veut ? Qu'on le laisse vivre, c'est tout. Il profite de ce qui lui reste : sa tête. François Cluzet joue de ses yeux doux, tout passe par son sourire. Subtilité de cet acteur magique. Philippe est une victime physique quand Driss est une victime sociale. Omar Sy se révèle un acteur comique hors du commun. Ce film, un vrai bol d'air. Une leçon de choses. Quelques scènes d'anthologie qu'on se plaira à visionner en boucle. On se souviendra longtemps de cette vanne : « Pas de bras, pas de chocolat ! » Humour très noir jouissif.

– Anthony Palou, Le Figaro

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

bytowne — Tue, 01 May 2012 17:13:14 +0000

Must-See Cinema! Milos Forman and Jack Nicholson: neither was ever better!

With an insane asylum standing in for everyday society, Milos Forman’s 1975 film adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel is a comically sharp indictment of the Establishment urge to conform. Playing crazy to avoid prison work detail, manic free spirit Randle P. McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) is sent to the state mental hospital for evaluation.

There he encounters a motley crew of mostly voluntary inmates, including cowed mama’s boy Billy (Brad Dourif) and silent Native American Chief Bromden (Will Sampson), presided over by the icy Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher). Ratched and McMurphy recognize that each is the other’s worst enemy: an authority figure who equates sanity with correct behavior, and a misfit who is charismatic enough to dismantle the system simply by living as he pleases.

McMurphy proceeds to instigate group insurrections large and small, ranging from a restorative basketball game to an unfettered afternoon boat trip and a tragic after-hours party with hookers and booze. Nurse Ratched, however, has the machinery of power on her side to ensure that McMurphy will not defeat her. Still, McMurphy’s message to live free or die is ultimately not lost on one inmate, revealing that escape is still possible even from the most oppressive conditions.

– Lucia Bozzola, Rovi