Movies …
So … so many movies …
Deli Man: Erik Greenberg Anjou’s agreeably shaggy documentary explores the cultural legacy of the Jewish delicatessen in North America. If you aren’t hungry when you it starts, you will be when it ends.
Dope: Rick Famuyiwa whiffs another one, trying to juggle far too many stylistic and tonal balls and eventually scattering all of them to the corners of the screen. But the soundtrack is pretty great.
Inside Out: Pete Docter took six years to follow Up … and every moment of that time was worth it, because this is one goddamn magnificent motion picture. Don’t bother with the 3D if you don’t want to; it works just fine flat.
Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles: Chuck Workman’s Cliff’s Notes version of Welles’ accomplishments never takes the time to revel in the late auteur’s prodigious talent, but I guess that’s what happens when you’re cramming half a century of cinema into an hour and a half.
Mangiacake: Glenn is not in the least enamoured of Nate Estabrook’s indie feature, set in Toronto’s Italian-Canadian community. But I promise you it can’t possibly be as bad as the movie directly below.
No Depo$it: Self-proclaimed auteur Frank D’Angelo would be Toronto’s Tommy Wiseau if his movies were the good kind of bad. Instead, he’s just a guy who makes terrible movies and four-walls them into theatres. Please don’t encourage him.
Porch Stories: Set over the course of one not-that-eventful day in a Toronto neighbourhood, Sarah Goodman’s dramatic debut may be small, but it contains multitudes. And also, Shawn Micallef.
Testament of Youth: Kit Harrington and Alicia Vikander radiate their superstar charisma at one another in James Kent’s WWI drama; Rad is happy to see Vikander dominate the picture, but thinks she deserves a vehicle more worthy of her talents.
Winning: The Racing Life of Paul Newman: Adam Carolla’s hagiographic look at Newman’s other, apparently more fulfilling career feels an awful lot like a vanity project produced to celebrate someone who really didn’t give a shit about being celebrated. Which is too bad, really.
Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead: Australian zombies! Everywhere! Kill ’em as vividly as possible! The rest of the movie will figure itself out, right?
And that, I believe, is everything. I’m heading out to Los Angeles this morning for a thing, but really, I’ll be back before you know it. Go get some sun, would you?
“…and four-walls them into theatres” — what does the verb four-wall mean? I honestly haven’t heard that before….
It’s an industry term for a theater rental by an individual, rather than a distributor. Richard Brody explained it at length (and why it’s generally frowned upon) in this New Yorker piece:
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-cinema-isnt-a-place-its-an-idea