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.
The 2010 installment of the Toronto International Film Festival is still a month away, but in the meantime, there’s After Dark, the horror/sci-fi fest that brings the year’s spookiest, weirdest, and often silliest flicks to Toronto well in advance of TIFF’s cult film–friendly Midnight Madness program.
There’s also a little movie coming out called Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which is bound to bust just about every block in the city. Opening against Pilgrim (and ergo doomed to fail and have brain-dead studio execs scratching their heads wondering “wha happen?”) is Sly Stallone’s The Expendables, which boasts a bulky cast including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Steve Austin, Jet Li, and Stallone himself. It basically is to faded (or fading) action stars what Pilgrim is to the hipster twenty-something comedy set. It will either totally rule, or suck horribly. Regardless, we can’t wait to find out.
TIFF Cinematheque (317 Dundas Street West)
Few people were as influential in the shaping of post-war French New Wave cinema as Éric Rohmer. Sure, Godard and Truffaut may be household names (well, if you grew up in a household where your family talked French cinema at the dinner table, which probably made for a pretty rotten childhood), but Rohmer was championing these young rapscallions early on in the pages of Cahiers du cinéma, where he served as editor from 1957 to 1963.Though his contributions to film culture are inestimable, Rohmer is likely best known for his “Moral Tales” cycle, the sixth and final film of which is 1972’s L’Amour l’après midi (Love in the Afternoon). Besides having probably the French-est French movie title ever, L’Amour casts Bernard Verley as a lawyer and family man who becomes consumed with thoughts of seducing other women. His fidelity is tested when an ex-girlfriend (Algerian model Zouzou) shows up at his door. So if you need a lesson in why you’re probably better off sticking with your wife, or just like great, thoughtful movies about honouring and upholding the vows of marriage, get to the TIFF Cinematheque Thursday at 7 p.m. for a screening of Rohmer’s L’Amour l’après midi.
The Revue (400 Roncesvalles Avenue)
It’s a fact: there are about one hundred thousand lost, abandoned, and feral cats in the GTA. Well, that’s according to Justine Pimlott’s recent doc Cat City, which investigates the truly Malthusian scope of cat overpopulation in the city, and Canada in general. (Apparently real life is nothing like that movie The Aristocats, where orphan cats sing, dance, and play accordion.) Check out Cat City at The Revue on Tuesday at 7 p.m., followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker and other community cat experts.Wide Release
As mentioned up above, this week marks the release of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which is likely the most Toronto-est film you’ll see this summer. (Yeah, we said that about This Movie Is Broken when that came out a while back, but whatever. We’re saying it again.) Yes, Pilgrim’s got more hype surrounding it than early David Bowie. But if you even get that reference, then you’re the kind of hopeless dork who will really dig this movie. Or you think you’re way into obscure music references and too cool for your own good, in which case this movie will chip away at your carefully manicured cynicism. Either way, see it. It’s awesome, and there’s no better city in the world to see it in. So go. Friday. Pretty much everywhere. See it. We won’t tell you again. 
The Bloor (506 Bloor Street West)
And as we also said up above—fun fact: in movies, bringing everything together in a neat little package like this is called “causal coherence”—the Toronto After Dark Film Festival kicks off on Friday.Following a round of shorts at 4:15 p.m., the fest’s Saturday feature, Doghouse, gets things moving at 7 p.m. on Saturday night at The Bloor. This horror flick deals with a matriarchal British hamlet, where women feast on the meat of the men, and a group of waylaid male tourists find themselves fending off their insatiable feminine appetites. Sounds like a pretty thrilling British zom-com, one which inverts the typical role of helpless, stranded women. Hey! You know what movie brought the phrase “zom-com” into the lexicon? Shaun of the Dead, helmed by Scott Pilgrim vs. the World director Edgar Wright. Causal coherence!
Photos by Eugen Sakhnenko/Torontoist.
This article originally said, mistakenly, that the Toronto After Dark Film Festival begins Saturday—in fact, it starts Friday.
The post Movie Mondays: None of These Flicks Is Expend-uh-ble! appeared first on Torontoist.