More than 500 feature films opened theatrically in Toronto in 2016. Which sounds like an awful lot — until you learn that New York’s cinemas this year housed more than double. This fact represents an astonishing lack, and one I can only hope, by will of some benevolent distributor, is soon remedied.
So consider this not so much a catalogue of complaint as a wish-list. These are the 10 best films of the year — that nobody in __canada has been able to see.
10. The Fits (Dir. Anna Rose Holmer)
Anna Rose Holmer’s singular debut feature The Fits, in which a group of adolescent girls in an inner-city dance troupe find themselves tyrannized one after another by a mysterious illness, played to overwhelming acclaim at nearly every festival of merit across the United States this year — including Sundance, where in January it enjoyed its North American premiere — and has lately been appearing on critics’ best-of lists with a regularity not often accorded to an indie so obscure. Meanwhile in Canada this strange and transfixing coming-of-age drama has yet to once screen.
9. Kate Plays Christine (Dir. Robert Greene)
Robert Greene has a strong claim to being the most interesting documentarian working today, and his latest film, Kate Plays Christine, is representatively rich in intrigue. Working in close collaboration with actress Kate Lyn Sheil — the film seems at times co-directed — Greene sets out to investigate the on-air suicide of TV news anchor Christine Chubbuck, a macabre piece of small-town history that’s slowly mutated into quasi-urban legend. And yet while it was fervently debated and discussed after its world premiere at Sundance earlier this year, the movie leapt from festival to theatrical release in the U.S. while passing over Canada entirely.
8. The Love Witch (Dir. Anna Biller)
Reliable sources assure me that Anna Biller’s exquisite retro comedy The Love Witch, handily among the most beloved films of the year, will make it long-delayed way to Toronto cinemas at some unspecified point in the new year. Local moviegoers are advised to hope that it does: this remarkably authentic homage to 1970s European horror pictures, not only written, edited, produced, and directed by the enterprising Biller, but composed, art-directed, set-decorated, and costume-designed by her as well, all with incredibly exacting detail, begs to be seen in a proper theatre.
7. Evolution (Dir. Lucile Hadzihalilovic)
Few films this year so assuredly earned the honorific “unique” as Evolution, a beguiling, quasi-science-fiction curio by French director Lucile Hadzihalilovic. What is it? A parable, possibly, for parenthood — though one so disturbing, even nauseating, that it may truer to describe the film’s interest in childbearing as nothing less than argument against it. In any case, Canadian audiences were never afforded the opportunity to make up their minds, nor to upset their stomachs, for themselves: Evolution’s aquatic provocations, alas, never made it to our shores.
6. Little Sister (Dir. Zach Clark)
Zach Clark has been making terrific low-budget indies in the United States for many years now, but he’s never had much of an introduction to moviegoers in the north. His latest feature, Little Sister, is moving, intelligent, and totally uproarious, as deserving as any comedy-drama packing multiplexes this season to be widely and enthusiastically seen; typical, then, that it should have to make do with brief rep-house runs in Saskatoon, Edmonton and Ottawa and an under-attended one-night engagement in Toronto before vanishing from sight. (For those inclined, the film is in fact available to rent or buy on iTunes.)
5. Breaking a Monster (Dir. Luke Meyer)
Breaking a Monster boasts an irresistible nonfiction premise: a trio of black seventh-graders form a heavy metal band in Brooklyn, perform on the street for amused passersby, hit YouTube, stumble into viral superstardom, sign a record deal, open for Metallica, and swiftly find themselves steamrolled and bowdlerized by the old white corporate bozos who now control every facet of their music and their lives. The result is a marvellously entertaining documentary, and a widely accessible one, too — all the more reason it should have opened here in some capacity, which of course it never did.
4. Right Now, Wrong Then (Dir. Hong Sang-soo)
Is there a more important director in the world with a less notable profile in Canada than Hong Sang-soo? Doubtful: the prolific Korean master, mainstay of prestigious festivals and practically annual recipient of best-of-the-year awards and plaudits, has directed 18 feature films over the last two decades — lately at a rate of more than one per year — and other than a customary screening or two at TIFF each September, not once by my count has Hong ever graced a cinema in this country.
3. The Invitation (Dir. Karyn Kusama)
Challenging foreign-language fare and micro-budget American dramedies may not appeal to the savvy Canadian distributor’s rapacity, which makes certain absences, if unfortunate, at least understandable. But The Invitation strikes me as the very picture of mainstream: it’s the sort of lean psychological thriller the trades like to call “taut”, part dinner-party mystery and part high-society horror, immaculately made and ever so frightening. Who could resist? How is it possible that in this country the film was just abandoned?
2. Happy Hour (Dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Happy Hour, conversely, is a 317-minute Japanese drama about four middle-aged women and the tribulations which befall their friendship, which is to say a film of markedly less commercial appeal. It’s also one of the very best films I saw this year, and so much a source of pleasure for me as viewing experience that I can’t help but feel Canadian audiences are missing out. In New York City, naturally, Happy Hour enjoyed a week-long theatrical engagement — one busily and delightedly attended. Our cities aren’t New York. But is moviegoing in Vancouver or Toronto really so different that we shouldn’t demand the same?
1. Certain Women (Dir. Kelly Reichardt)
That an indispensable new film by one of the best directors in America could pass Canadian cinemas by is a failure of programming and distribution too galling for any serious cinephile in this country to take it lightly. This is Kelly Reichardt! Back with a radical triptych starring Laura Dern, Michelle Williams and Kristen Stewart! I don’t understand the hesitation. Buy this film, Canadian distributors. Buy it and screen it for weeks nationwide.
No comments:
Post a Comment