February - April 2008

***Please note: MATINEES FOR KIDS listings are at the end of this document.***


FEB 17 (2:30 matinee & 7:00 & 9:15)
ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE
Shekhar Kapur (UK/France, 2007, 115 minutes; PG) Starring Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush, Clive Owen, Samantha Morton,
NOMINATED FOR 2 ACADEMY AWARDS!
BEST ACTRESS – Cate Blanchett & BEST COSTUME DESIGN!
“Cate Blanchett returns to the role that made her a star, and though this sequel to Elizabeth is less defensible as history, as florid costume drama it's just as entertaining.” –Chicago Reader “In The Golden Age the toughest thing for its title character to hang onto is her much-vaunted virginity. And for good reason: This latest enticingly risqué saga of the 16th century monarch provides her with her most virile suitor yet, adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh, played by the dashing Clive Owen….Spectacular to look at, from the pageantry that goes on nightly in the palace to the layered, luxurious fabrics.” –San Francisco Chronicle


FEB 18 & 19 (6:45 & 9:40)
AMERICAN GANGSTER
Ridley Scott (USA, 2007, 156 minutes; 18A)
Starring Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Cuba Gooding Jr., Josh Brolin. Ruby Dee
NOMINATED FOR 2 OSCARS!
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS – Ruby Dee & BEST ART DIRECTION
“AN EPIC OF CRIME AND PUNISHMENT…SUPERB.” –Washington Post
“Call it the black ‘Scarface’ or ‘the Harlem Godfather’ or just one hell of an exciting movie, but the fact-based, 1970s-era Gangster is looking like an awards contender. Denzel Washington looms like a colossus as notorious drug lord Frank Lucas, and in the still, watchful center of his volcanic performance you'll find the measure of a dangerous man. There's more good news: A combustible Russell Crowe channels Serpico as Richie Roberts, the honest Jersey cop who aches to take Frank down. Steven Zaillian brings scrappy life to a script that spans more than a decade. Camera legend Harris Savides shoots on the fly, as if he'd sneaked into a Seventies time capsule. And Ridley Scott (Blade Runner), at the top of his game, directs like a man possessed.” –Rolling Stone


FEB 20 (6:45 & 9:45)
LUST, CAUTION
Ang Lee (China/Taiwan, 2007, 158 minutes; Mandarin/Japanese with subtitles; 18A)
“Based on an Eileen Chang short story, the film unspools during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai; a young Chinese radical (Tang Wei) impersonates a society lady in order to seduce and assassinate a collaborator (Tony Leung) who sniffs out the resistance for the Japanese. Their first sex scene moves quickly into bondage—mirroring the power relations of the occupation. She’s terrified that she will be found out, and he’s afraid of being duped—and the fear is a turn-on.” -–New York Magazine


FEB 21 (6:45 & 9:45) back by popular demand!
THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD
Andrew Dominik (USA, 2007, 160 min; 14A)
“STUNNING! A RED-RAW CLASSIC!” –Time Out London
ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATION! BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR – Casey Afflek
“A haunting retelling of one of the enduring outlaw sagas in American culture, shot in a wide-open geography of moody skies and bent light and shadow. This masterful Western dips into the influences from the late '60s and '70s for its elegiacally fatalistic tone. Brad Pitt plays James with a tired-eyed, authoritative understanding of fame's traps (he won the acting prize at the Venice Film Festival), and a revelatory Casey Affleck brings Robert Ford to life with a mature sense of an underling's fawning petulance. The sterling cast includes a fine Sam Rockwell as Ford's brother, Sam Shepard as Jesse's older brother, and Mary-Louise Parker as Jesse's wife.” --Entertainment Weekly “A ravishing, magisterial, poetic epic.” –Variety


FEB 22 & 23 (2:30 matinee & 6:45 & 9:45) back by popular demand!
INTO THE WILD
Directed by Sean Penn (USA, 2007, 148 min; rated PG) Starring Emile Hirsch, Vince Vaughn, Marcia Gay Harden, William Hurt, Catherine Keener, Hal Holbrook.
“SPELLBINDING!” –Roger Ebert
“AN UNUSUALLY SOULFUL AND POETIC MOVIE.” –The Village Voice
“SHARP & INTUITIVE, FULL OF MASTERFUL TOUCHES.” –Seattle Post-Intelligencer
ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE – BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR – Hal Holbrook
“The pure ardor of first love is what 23-year-old university graduate Christopher McCandless brings, not to a woman, but to the natural world in the remarkable, energizing new movie from Jon Krakauer's book about McCandless' attempt to forge an original relationship with the universe. The movie sees his struggle in the round, as something foolish, stirring and funny - and also, ultimately, devastatingly sad. What makes the film so satisfying is that, in the hands of Sean Penn (who both wrote and directed it), McCandless' ramblings through the American West and then north to Alaska become a genuine odyssey: a journey to self-knowledge. This is a movie that turns a brief, eccentric life into a robust work of art.”—Baltimore Sun


FEB 24 (2:30 matinee & 7:00 & 9:10) back by popular demand!
THE DARJEELING LIMITED
and the short film HOTEL CHEVALIER
Directed by Wes Anderson (USA, 2007, 104 min; both rated PG)
“A RIOTOUSLY COLORFUL JOURNEY ACROSS INDIA!” –Premiere
“Brothers and other strangers ride The Darjeeling Limited, Wes Anderson's captivating road movie that views life as a Great Train of Being. A year after their father has passed on, Francis (Owen Wilson) organizes a railway trip across India so that he, middle brother Peter (Adrien Brody), and baby Jack (Jason Schwartzman) can get to know one another as adults. The more Francis micromanages their spiritual quest, the more the heavens (and the audience) laugh. Darjeeling is a movie about people who carry a lot of emotional baggage, metaphorically unpack it, and spiritually lighten their loads.” –Philadelphia Inquirer


FEB 25 & FEB 26 (7:00 & 9:25) back by popular demand!
MICHAEL CLAYTON
NOMINATED FOR 7 ACADEMY AWARDS! BEST PICTURE, DIRECTION, ACTOR – George Clooney, SUPPORTING ACTRESS – Tilda Swinton, SUPPORTING ACTOR – Tom Wilkinson, SCREENPLAY, MUSIC SCORE!
Directed by Terry Gilroy (USA, 2007, 119 min; PG)
“An excellent legal thriller elevated to superb drama by Clooney’s performance.”
–Miami Herald
“FOUR STARS!” –Victoria Times-Colonist “FOUR STARS!” –Monday Magazine
“A throwback to the conspiracy films of the seventies, down to the shooting style and theme of high-up corruption. Using a flash-back structure, the film comes to life through a trio of terrific performances from George Clooney as a low-level fixer for a law firm, Tilda Swinton as a panicky corporate counsel for a chemical company and Tom Wilkinson as a senior lawyer who goes mad on the verge of a big class-action settlement.”–The Globe and Mail “When critics complain about the dumbing down of movies, what we're really doing is yearning for a terrifically engrossing drama like Michael Clayton. It's better than good; it's such a crackling and mature and accomplished movie that it just about restores your faith. This is a tale of greed, lies, and under-the-table violence — an exposé of what corporations do, and the way corporate law firms help them get away with it — yet if that all sounds familiar from a hundred other dramas, Michael Clayton makes you feel as if you've never seen any of it before.” –Entertainment Weekly


FEB 27 & 28 (7:00 only)
NORMAL
Carl Bessai (Canada, 2007, 102 min; 18A) Cast: Carrie-Anne Moss, Kevin Zegers, Callum Keith Rennie, Tygh Runyan. From the director of Unnatural and Accidental, Emile, and Lola. “Three strangers are struggling for control, having failed to confront their roles in a tragic accident two years earlier. Catherine is a suburban mother who has lost the ability to connect with her surgeon husband and twelve-year-old son after the loss of her elder son. Walt is a failed writer and philandering university professor. And Jordie is a sensitive teenager who made a wrong choice one night…” –Mongrel Media

FEB 27 & 28 (9:00 only) separate admission
HOW SHE MOVE
Ian Iqbal Rashid (Canada, 2008, 92 min; PG) Cast: Tracey Armstrong, Clé Bennett, Nina Dobrey, Romina D'Ugo “A bright young woman from a tough urban neighborhood joins an all-male step troupe. The film feels urgent and convincing and alive. Mainly it’s a very solid dance picture, which is the point. The choreography, by hip-hop veteran Hi-Hat, finds surprising variations on kinetic dance vocabulary derived largely from the South African ‘gumboot’ tradition. The film generates goodwill the old-fashioned way: It earns it.” –Chicago Tribune



FEB 29 & MAR 1 (2:30 matinee & 7:00 & 9:15)
THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY
Julian Schnabel (France/USA, 2007, 112 min; French with subtitles; PG)
WINNER! BEST DIRECTOR & BEST FOREIGN FILM! –The Golden Globes
NOMINATED FOR 4 ACADEMY AWARDS! BEST DIRECTION, SCREENPLAY, CINEMATOGRAPHY and SCREENPLAY!
“A MASTERPIECE!” –New York Magazine
“THIS IS WHAT MOVIES, AT THEIR BEST, CAN BE.” –Salon.com
“Based on the memoir of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the movie tells a story of a fashion magazine editor who was suddenly paralyzed by a stroke at 43, yet somehow managed to dictate a book by moving just one eyelid. Julian Schnabel's drama may recall the similarly themed The Sea Inside, but the painter-turned-director (Basquiat, Before Night Falls) isn't just making an inspirational movie. He uses Bauby's condition for a stylized tour-de-force, as the film brings us inside Bauby's narrow physical world and the unlimited world of his dreams, fantasies and memories.” –The Globe and Mail “It is wonderful: a rhapsodic adaptation of a memoir, a visual marvel that wraps its subject in screen romanticism without romanticizing his affliction. It left me feeling euphoric.” –Chicago Tribune


MAR 2 (2:30 matinee & 7:10 & 9:00)
MAR 3 (7:10 & 9:00)
STEEP
Mark Obenhaus (USA, 2007, 90 minutes; rated G)
Featuring Andrew McIean, Glen Plake, Seth Morrison
"GORGEOUS." -- - New York Magazine
“EXTRAORDINARY!” –San Francisco Chronicle
"AN UNDENIABLE IMPRESSIVE VISUAL SPECTACLE!" -- New York Times
“Steep takes us inside the world of big-mountain skiing. From its beginnings in the 1970s in the mountains above Chamonix, France, to its future in remote Alaskan and Icelandic peaks. Highlighting the best of the best of this rare breed of men and women who attempt ski descents where the slightest mistake can mean death, Steep tells a tale of bold adventure, exquisite athleticism and the pursuit of a perfect moment on skis.” –Mongrel Media "Steep pushes human endurance and achievement to the limit with indescribable eye-popping crazy feats of Big Mountain glory." -- Maxim


MAR 4 (7:00 & 9:20)
BLADE RUNNER: THE FINAL CUT
Ridley Scott (USA, 1982/2007, 117 minutes; 14A) Starring Harrison Ford, Sean Young, Rutger Hauer, Daryl Hannah, Edward James Olmos
Includes extended scenes and never-before-seen special effects. “Not to be confused with the mislabeled ‘director's cut’ that's been around for years, this seventh edition of Ridley Scott's SF masterpiece is arguably the first to get it all right, finally telling the whole story comprehensibly. This visionary look at Los Angeles in 2019--a singular blend of grime and glitter--was a commercial flop when it first appeared. Loosely adapted from Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, it follows the hero (Harrison Ford) as he tracks down ‘replicants.’ Much of the film's erotic charge and moral ambiguity stem from the fact that these characters are very nearly the only ones we care about.” –Chicago Reader


MAR 5 & 6 (7:15 & 9:00)
THE TRACEY FRAGMENTS
Bruce McDonald (Canada, 2007, 78 minutes; 14A) Starring Ellen Page; Music by Broken Social Scene.
A smash it at the Victoria Film Festival! “Tracey (Ellen Page, Juno) is a normal 15-year-old girl. While out for a walk she loses her little brother Sonny. Separate moments of Tracey's hysterical search unfold in fragments through a series of scenes on a split screen. The film has style to burn and the tough and tender, tragicomic and disarming Ellen Page in the leading role. Director Bruce McDonald (Hard Core Logo) succeeds in getting into the fractured thoughts of a 15-year-old. As Tracey races through the barren plains of Canadian suburbia, a cover of Patti Smith's ‘Horses’ plays on the soundtrack; images are stutter-cut into the framework of the film that bring the tone of the scene and the song to thrilling life.” –Vancouver International Film Festival


MAR 7 & 8 (2:45 matinee & 7:00 & 9:20)
THE GOLDEN COMPASS
Chris Weitz (USA/UK, 2007, 114 min; PG) Starring Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Dakota Blue Richards, Eva Green, Sam Elliott, Simon McBurney, Clare Higgins, and Ian McKellen
NOMINATED FOR 2 ACADEMY AWARDS!
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS & BEST ART DIRECTION
Based on author Philip Pullman's bestselling and award-winning novel, the first story in Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. “This is an epic reworking of the myth of the Fall of Adam and Eve with a perspective more friendly to feminism and sexuality. Newcomer Dakota Blue Richards stars as the 13-year-old heroine, Lyra, who follows her adventurer uncle (Daniel Craig) to the north. She has encounters with the beautiful Mrs. Coulter (a shimmering Nicole Kidman), a cowboy airship pilot (Sam Elliott) and the displaced king of the polar bears (voiced by Ian McKellen), and saves children from experiments performed by agents of the church.” –The Globe and Mail



MAR 9 (2:45 matinee & 6:45 & 9:15)
MAR 10 (6:45 & 9:15)
THE KITE RUNNER
Marc Forster (USA, 2007, 128 minutes; 18A)
ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE – BEST ORIGINAL MUSIC SCORE!
“A ripping good yarn spanning the last three decades in Afghanistan's troubled history.” --The Globe and Mail
“In the Afghan capital circa 1978 - before the Soviet invaders and Taliban fundamentalists - kites soar high and crash hard. Marc Forster's wrenching and exhilarating adaptation of Khaled Hosseini's beloved best seller is a heartfelt saga of cruelty redeemed by belated love. The narrative pivots on a fateful day when innocents experience an event too intimidating to talk about. Until that day, Amir, son of a well-to-do intellectual, and Hassan, son of the household servant, are best friends. Forster gets a splendid performance from Homayoun Ershadi as Amir's father, or Baba. As the secular man who has no use for the communists or the mullahs who will alter the political landscape of his country, Baba flees to the United States, Amir in tow. In San Francisco, the cultured gentleman scrabbles for work in a gas station, the natural aristocrat who maintains pride and poise no matter his context. In the film's final third, Amir, a published author, is summoned to Pakistan and smuggled into Afghanistan, by now under Taliban tyranny. While this final act feels rushed, its redemptive spirit is undeniably moving.” --Philadelphia Inquirer


MAR 11 & 12 & 13 (7:00 & 9:15)
4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS & 2 DAYS
Cristian Mungiu (Romania, 2007, 114 min; Romanian with subtitles; 14A)
WINNER of the PALME D’OR at the CANNES FILM FESTIVAL!
“A MASTERWORK!” –Rolling Stone
“EXPERTLY RENDERED!” –The Globe and Mail
“MASTERFUL, MOVING, GRIPPING!” –Chicago Reader
“PITCH PERFECT…A STUNNING ACHIEVEMENT!” –Variety
“TENSE, KINETIC, INTELLIGENT AND REAL.” –Empire
“ONE OF THE VERY BEST MOVIES OF 2007!” –Entertainment Weekly
“Even with hype generating high expectations, Cristian Mungiu's drama set during Romania's communist regime is startlingly good viewing. 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days takes place over one day in 1987 when Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) helps her university roommate Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) seek an illegal abortion. Risking prison under Ceausescu's dictatorship, Gabita seems to be falling apart, so it's up to Otilia to facilitate the doctor and hotel room - but quite how far she's willing to go to help her friend is yet to be tested. Playing out in what seems like real time, and taking Otilia's point of view, the mobile camerawork and static shots combine with great discipline to give space for brilliant performances and to ratchet up the tension. Take for instance the scene where Otilia endures a dinner party whilst worrying about Gabita lying alone in the hotel room. Part of a planned trilogy on Romania's communist years, 4 Months doesn't talk directly about politics but shows how the constricting laws can dehumanise those living under them. Seemingly their saviour, the doctor’s manner is chilling but his motivation is the fact that, should they get caught, he faces the longest prison sentence. What results is shocking but never asks for pity. Brilliant.” –BBCi


MAR 14 & 15 & 16 (2:45 matinee & 7:00 & 9:30)
MAR 17 (7:00 & 9:30)
ATONEMENT
Joe Wright (UK, 2007, 123 minutes; 14A)
NOMINATED FOR 7 ACADEMY AWARDS! BEST PICTURE, SCREENPLAY, SUPPORTING ACTRESS, CINEMATOGRAPHY, ART DIRECTION, COSTUME DESIGN and ORIGINAL MUSIC SCORE.
“Ian McEwan's novel Atonement —and Joe Wright's mesmerizing, remarkably faithful screen version—pivots on a series of fatal misperceptions. A bright, privileged, overly imaginative 13-year-old girl, Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan), aroused and frightened by a passion she doesn't understand between her older sister, Cecilia (Keira Knightley), and Robbie Turner (James McAvoy), the dashing son of the family's housekeeper, tells a lie that destroys the lives of many people. How she makes up for it—how she atones —is at the heart of McEwan's brilliant, intricately structured metafiction, a novel that ruminates on the morality of turning fact into fiction while telling a spellbinding love story that starts in 1930s England, takes us through the battle-scarred landscape of France in World War II and ends, with a rug-pulling twist, in the present.
The densely detailed Atonement is a movie that rewards a second viewing. There's a purpose to its artifice. The chemistry between Keira Knightley and James McAvoy is white-hot: her brittle, chilly Cecilia comes to life in his presence. His charming, virile Robbie, bears no resemblance to the McAvoy of The Last King of Scotland; it's a marvelous performance, and the movie's emotional anchor. No two-hour film could ever capture all the riches of Ian McEwan's masterly novel. But Atonement comes tantalizingly close, while adding sensual delights all its own.”—Newsweek
“Rarely has a book sprung so vividly to life, but also worked so enthrallingly in pure movie terms!” –Variety
“ONE OF THE YEAR’S BEST FILMS!” –Roger Ebert



MAR 18, 19, 20 & 22, 23 (12:30)
THE WATER HORSE all seats: $3.75
(USA/UK, 2007, 111 minutes; rated PG) Cast: Alex Etel, Emily Watson, Ben Chaplin, David Morrissey
Angus, a young Scottish boy, finds an enchanted egg which soon becomes an amazing creature: the mythical “water horse” of Scottish lore.
“The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep is based on a book by the author of Babe, stars the hero of Millions. The movie, set in Scotland, tells the story of a 12-year-old named Angus (Alex Etel) who finds a curious egg on the beach, brings it home and is astonished to see it hatch a cute little creature with a big appetite. He names it Crusoe and conceals his new pet in the work shed, where it doesn't remain a secret for long, particularly since it seems to double in size every day or so. There is nothing to be done but move it to the nearest large body of water, which is, you guessed it, Loch Ness…
We learn the legend of the Water Horse. As it reaches maturity, it looks like a jolly sea serpent with certain characteristics that remind us of Shrek and E.T., especially in its playful nature, human-like expressions and inadvertent gift for comedy.
Like most British family films, Water Horse doesn't dumb down its young characters or insult the intelligence of the audience. It has a lot of sly humor about what we know, or have heard, about the Loch Ness monster and various frauds associated with it, and fills the edges of the screen with first-rate supporting performance.
Will younger kids be a little scared as Crusoe approaches the dimensions of a whale? Maybe, maybe not. What kids will love is Angus' thrilling bareback ride on Crusoe. And viewers of all ages will appreciate that Water Horse, despite its fantasy, digs in with a real story about complex people.” –Roger Ebert



MAR 18, 19, 20 (7:00 & 9:00)
PERSEPOLIS
Directed by Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Paronnaud
(France, 2007, 96 minutes; French/Persian with English subtitles; PG) Featuring the voices of Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve and Danielle Darrieux
ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE – BEST ANIMATED FILM!
JURY PRIZE WINNER! -- CANNES FILM FESTIVAL!
“As modern as tomorrow's headlines and as classic as an ancient myth.”
–The Globe and Mail
“A wonderful spirit—defiant, funny, tender, self-mocking—suffuses Persepolis, the entrancing animated film that Marjane Satrapi and codirector Vincent Paronnaud have made from Satrapi's autobiographical graphic novels.
Persepolis isn't like any animated film you've ever seen. Hand-drawn in bold black-and-white images (with a splash of color here and there), it takes us on a very personal journey through the political upheavals of modern Iran. Marjane (voiced by Gabrielle Lopes and Chiara Mastroianni) is a Bruce-Lee-loving 9-year-old when the story starts in 1978, just as the shah is about to be overthrown. The horrors of his regime have oppressed her leftist intellectual family, but their hopes for a free society are dealt an even crueler blow when the Islamic Revolution's theological police state comes to power.
Marjane's story takes her into exile in Vienna, where, as a teenager, she discovers first love (hilariously), betrayed love (even funnier) and the loneliness of exile. Returning to Tehran in the 1980s, where holding hands in public is penalized with a fine or a whipping, the chain-smoking rebel falls into a depression, then rouses herself and goes into permanent exile in Paris (where Satrapi now lives and works).
This bare synopsis doesn't begin to convey the imaginative breadth of Persepolis, the richness of its characters, the wit with which it encapsulates a huge amount of historical detail or its breezy flights of fancy. Through all her adolescent torments, Marjane is counseled by her earthy, beloved grandmother (the great Danielle Darrieux), a wise, sophisticated and foul-mouthed mentor…Persepolis is not to be missed.” –Newsweek


MAR 21 (7:00 & 9:15)
MAR 22 (2:45 matinee & 7:00 & 9:15)
THE SAVAGES
Tamara Jenkins (USA, 2007, 114 minutes; PG)
ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATIONS!
BEST ACTRESS – Laura Linney, BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY!
“ONE OF THE BEST FILMS OF THE YEAR! A delightful movie. The funny bubbles up from the sad, and the sad gives weight to the funny. IT WILL SEND YOU HOME SMILING.” –New York Magazine
“The Savages is terrific — a perfectly calibrated drama both compassionate and unsentimental. Because as brother and sister Jon and Wendy Savage, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney — two of the most focused, natural actors working today — are in peak form, and together they play off each other with the unfettered, joyous collaboration of great chamber musicians. And also because The Savages is bruisingly funny in the damnedest places, the way life is. Yes, it's okay to laugh. This is a story of stunted adult children and dying elders. Tamara Jenkins, who wrote and directed has a sense of the everyday absurd.” --Entertainment Weekly


MAR 23 (2:45 matinee & 6:45 & 9:10)
MAR 24 (6:45 & 9:10)
THE GREAT DEBATERS
Denzel Washington (USA, 2007, 125 minutes; PG)
“FOUR STARS! An affirming and inspiring film!” –Roger Ebert
Set in the 1930s, “Denzel Washington's inspired and inspiring account - of a professor from an academic backwater who took his students to the rhetoric equivalent of the Super Bowl - is a triumph. Unapologetically old-school, Debaters overlays the story of social underdogs onto the familiar template of stand-and-deliver sagas like Rocky, Invincible and The Karate Kid. Washington takes this threadbare form and reweaves it with rich, vintage strands. He plays Melvin B. Tolson, real-life poet, professor and activist. Tolson pursued all three vocations in the South, when African Americans were called coloreds. By night Tolson hopes to unionize black and white sharecroppers. By day, he teaches at Wiley, in Texas, where he coaches the debate team. Tolson believes that the best weapons he can give students in the struggle for racial equality are logic and persuasion. By helping them refine their arguments, Tolson helps them articulate their values, effectively preparing these students of the 1930s to lead the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Washington succeeds in making debating as enthralling as contact sports, persuading us that the word is indeed mightier than the sword.” --Philadelphia Inquirer


MAR 25 (7:00 & 9:25)
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
Joel & Ethan Coen (USA, 2007, 121 min; 14A) Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin.
“FOUR STARS! IMPECCABLE! ” –The Globe and Mail
“FOUR STARS! THE BEST FILM OF THE YEAR!” –National Post
NOMINATED FOR 8 ACADEMY AWARDS including BEST PICTURE, DIRECTON, SCREENPLAY, SUPPORTING ACTOR – Javier Bardem. “Joel and Ethan Coen's adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel is an indisputably great movie. Set in Texas, where the chase is on for stolen drug money, the film is a literate meditation on America's bloodlust for the easy fix. It's also as entertaining as hell. Representing besieged law and order is Sheriff Bell, played by Tommy Lee Jones. Javier Bardem plays an assassin who rivals Hannibal Lecter for dispatching his victims without breaking a sweat….The Coens squeeze us without mercy in a vise of tension and suspense.” –Rolling Stone


MAR 26 & 27 (7:00 & 9:25)
YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH
Francis Ford Coppola (USA/Germany/Italy, 2007, 125 minutes; PG)
Starring Tim Roth, Alexandra Maria Lana and Bruno Ganz.
“Francis Ford Coppola convinces you that lightning can strike twice in his first film in a decade. For a film whose ingredients include the transmigration of souls, the synchronicity of past, present and future, and the merger of dreams and reality, Youth Without Youth is surprisingly absorbing and romantic. Coppola's fidelity to the novella by Mircea Eliade can make sections of the film appear rushed, but by the end you feel immersed in a rejuvenating spring. Set from 1938 to 1969, mostly in Romania and Switzerland, Youth tells the story of a 70-year-old professor of linguistics and religion, Dominic Matei (Tim Roth), who wins a second chance at life. A lightning strike leaves him young again. At a clinic in Bucharest, he regains the physique of a 40-year-old. And he learns that it has also brought out his selfish, ruthless side in an alter ego. This double of Matei sees any advance in knowledge, including the splitting of the atom, as a great leap forward for mankind. But Matei's most intimate challenge comes on a Swiss mountain road, when he meets Veronica (Alexandra Maria Lara). After a lightning storm hits the mountain, Matei returns and finds her cowering in a cave, speaking Sanskrit. She has taken on the identity of a seventh-century Indian woman, and Matei learns that she can help him record the dawn of language…To Coppola, there's one key line in Eliade's writings, and it's the movie's ultimate question: ‘What do we do with time, the supreme ambiguity of the human condition?’” –Baltimore Sun


MAR 28 & 29 (2:30 matinee & 7:00 & 9:20)
SWEENEY TODD: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Tim Burton (USA, 2007, 117 minutes; 18A)
NOMINATED FOR 3 ACADEMY AWARDS!
BEST ACTOR – Johnny Depp, BEST ART DIRECTON, BEST COSTUME DESIGN!
“HYPNOTIC!” –Baltimore Sun “BLOODY WONDERFUL!” –Newsweek
“FOUR STARS ! BRILLIANT!” –Roger Ebert
“Wit meets macabre beauty in Tim Burton adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's hit stage musical. Victorian London looks like a live-action version of Burton's animated film, The Corpse Bride, with deep black and blues, occasionally illuminated by streamers of vivid blood. Johnny Depp plays the brooding, wronged barber, wielding his razors while seeking revenge on the judge (Alan Rickman) who stole his family. Helena Bonham Carter is the meat-pie seller, Mrs. Lovett, with Sacha Baron Cohen in a scene-stealing turn.” --The Globe and Mail


MAR 30 (2:30 matinee & 7:00 & 9:00)
MAR 31 (7:00 & 9:00)
CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR
Mike Nichols (USA, 2007, 101 minutes; 14A)
ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR – Philip Seymour Hoffman
“Based on a true story. Tom Hanks as a hard-drinking Texas congressman who, at the urging of a Houston socialite (Julia Roberts), uses his congressional subcommittee to arrange a secret $1 billion arms deal between Israel and Afghan freedom fighters, with Pakistan as the intermediary. That results in the defeat of the Russians, and the beginning of the end of the cold war. Philip Seymour Hoffman is droll and funny as a rogue CIA man who becomes Charlie's partner in deception. A smart, funny, wicked political comedy by Mike Nichols, written by Aaron (West Wing) Sorkin.” –Roger Ebert
“THE YEAR’S FUNNIEST SMART MOVIE!” --Time
“Mike Nichols takes a kernel of truth and roasts it into a popcorn movie.” –The Globe and Mail


APR 1 (7:15 & 9:10)
ONCE
John Carney (Ireland, 2006, 87 min; PG)
“FOUR STARS! Once not only reinvents the musical, but also gives romance films a much-needed lift. While busking on the streets of Dublin, the film's nameless male lead (the Irish band The Frames' Glen Hansard) meets cute with a Czech piano player (Markéta Irglová). They strike up a friendship before making it to a studio where they hope to record the guy's big break. Director Carney's subtle production is more satisfying than any big-budget romance in recent memory.” –Now Magazine
“It doesn’t get much sweeter than this!”--The New Yorker
“Warm and lovely and tender and priceless!” –Roger Ebert


APR 2 & 3 (7:00 & 9:25)
HONEYDRIPPER
John Sayles (USA, 2007, 125 minutes; PG) Starring Danny Glover, Charles S. Dutton, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Stacy Keach, Mary Steenburgen, Sean Patrick Thomas, and Gary Clark Jr.
“ONE OF JOHN SAYLES’ BEST FILMS! “—Variety
“RICH WITH CHARACTERS AND FLOWING WITH MUSIC!” –Roger Ebert
From the writer-director of Return of the Secaucus Seven, Lone Star, Sunshine State.
“John Sayles' new film is set in 1950 at the intersection of the civil rights movement and rhythm and blues. Danny Glover, desperate for cash to save his failing Honeydripper Lounge, books the famous Guitar Sam. But when Sam doesn't turn up, he appeals to a kid who drifted into town: ‘Tonight, you'll be Guitar Sam.’ After all, no one knows what Sam looks like. Gary Clark Jr., the rising young real-life guitar star out of Austin, plays the role and fills the movie with music. With Charles S. Dutton, blues singer Mabel John, Stacy Keach.” –Roger Ebert


APR 4 & 5 (2:45 matinee & 6:45 & 9:45)
THERE WILL BE BLOOD
Paul Thomas Anderson (USA, 2007, 158 min; PG)
“THE BEST MOVIE OF THE YEAR!”
–New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, National Society of Film Critics
“PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON’S MASTERPIECE!” –Associated Press
NOMINATED FOR 8 ACADEMY AWARDS! BEST PICTURE, ACTOR – Daniel Day-Lewis, DIRECTION, SCREENPLAY, CINEMATOGRAPHY, EDITING, ART DIRECTION, SOUND EDITING
GOLDEN GLOBE WINNER! BEST ACTOR – Daniel Day-Lewis
“This enthralling and powerfully eccentric epic. Paul Thomas Anderson (adapting Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel “Oil!”), covers a thirty-year span in the life of Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), who begins as a lonely silver miner in 1898 and winds up as one of the richest, and craziest, tycoons in early-twentieth-century California. Blood is about the driving force of capitalism as it both creates and destroys the future. Plainview’s great antagonist is a young man, Eli Sunday (Paul Dano, Little Miss Sunshine), who thinks he has the word of God within him. Anderson has set up a kind of allegory of development, in which capitalism and evangelism build Southern California together and then, inevitably, fall into combat. The music is by Jonny Greenwood, of Radiohead. The magnificent cinematography is by Robert Elswit.” –The New Yorker “Daniel Day-Lewis's performance is hair-raising in its intensity.” –The Globe and Mail


***


MATINEES FOR KIDS
Saturdays & Sundays at 12:30
All seats: $3.75

FEB 23 & 24
MR. MAGORIUM’S WONDER EMPORIUM
94 minutes; rated G
Natalie Portman is the manager of Dustin Hoffman’s magical toy store.

MAR 1 & 2
ENCHANTED
107 minutes; rated G
A classic fairy tale collides with modern day New York in this comedy.

MAR 8 & 9
THE GOLDEN COMPASS
114 minutes; PG – violence
Nicole Kidman stars in this version of Philip Pullman's bestselling novel

MAR 15 & 16
AUGUST RUSH
112 minutes; rated G
Freddie Highmore believes that through his own music he can find his long-lost parents.

MAR 22 & 23
THE WATER HORSE
111 minutes; PG
12-year old Angus finds an enchanted egg which grows into the mythical creature of Scottish lore.

MAR 29 & 30
ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS
90 minutes; rated G
Jason Lee is a songwriter who discovers 3 singing chipmunks.

APR 5 & 6
NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS
125 minutes; PG
Nicolas Cage stars as a treasure hunting adventurer.