This is the kind of buzzed-about doc that sends quivers of delight through lineups at the Lightbox. It’s all about the crackpot theories espoused by obsessive fans of Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror classic The Shining. Some believe the movie contains secret messages about Native American genocide, that it proves the lunar landing was faked, that the number 42 is the key to everything. Fair warning: the film goes so far down the rabbit hole that you might find yourself starting to believe.
Room 237, directed by Rodney Ascher (in theatres May 10) Read the rest of this entry »
In Chile’s first-ever Oscar nominee for best foreign language film, Mexican hunk Gael García Bernal stars as a hotshot advertising exec who mounts a cheery campaign against General Pinochet’s dictatorship. Shooting on grainy video stock for added authenticity, director Pablo Larraín turns a goofy historical footnote into the year’s most inspiring, crowd-pleasing political drama.
In this edition of The Weekender, Easter egg hunting, the One of a Kind Show and three more things to do in Toronto.
Derek Cianfrance did the small and intimate thing in his acclaimed 2010 film, Blue Valentine, about a relationship going belly-up in slow motion. He returns with this epic, generation-spanning saga about fathers and sons, sin and redemption. Ryan Gosling, sporting a bleached blond ’do, plays a motorcycle stunt rider who turns to crime to support his girlfriend and their new baby. Bradley Cooper co-stars as the squeaky-clean cop on his tail. What sounds like the set-up for a conventional action thriller is instead the basis of a brooding, gorgeously shot character study.
