Want to escape our heat waves? How about an air-conditioned local cinema, with a cold beverage in your hand? There’s even a Disney classic for the kids. Here are some films I recommend you enjoy in the second half of July at the ByTowne and the Mayfair.
July is a great month for fans of Akira Kurosawa. First, we had his 1956 masterpiece Seven Samurai, and now we can see his remarkable 1950 Rashomon — often credited with being the film that introduced Japanese cinema to the world. It won the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. In a forest, a bandit assaults a woman and murders her samurai husband. A woodcutter witnesses the incident. All of them, with the dead husband speaking through a medium, relate the incident in court after the bandit is captured. But for the one crime, there are four radically different versions of the truth. The word “Rashomon” entered the English language because, like Catch-22, it expresses something for which there is no better substitute. The Guardian reviewer acclaimed the film as “cinematic storytelling at its most daring!” In addition, the cinematography is some of the most gorgeous I have ever seen. Rashomon has a rare Metacritic rating of 98. It’s at the ByTowne in their Restoration series. Don’t miss it!
Early in Richard Linklater’s career, he experimented successfully with interpolated rotoscoping animation in two feature films, one of which – A Scanner Darkly – is in the ByTowne’s Drawn In series. It’s like a graphic novel come to life! Linklater shot and edited the film as a live-action feature, then had rotoscope artists “trace over” individual frames. The result is a distinctive “semi-real” quality that is well-suited to the storyline. A Scanner Darkly is based on the semi-autobiographical novel by Philip K. Dick. In the near future, the undercover cop protagonist (Keanu Reeves) is living in Orange County in a household of drug users. Along with needing to shield his true identity from his housemates and the police, he also becomes addicted to Substance D, a psychoactive drug he’s obtained from Donna (Winona Ryder), with whom he falls in love. His use of Substance D causes the two hemispheres of his brain to “compete” with each other. The reviewer in Premiere wrote, “One doesn’t leave the movie with a mind blown by visual bedazzlement but with a soul shattered by the profound sense of tragedy Linklater… so beautifully put across.”
The new British film from Mark Jenkin, Rose of Nevada, is a haunting time-travel drama. An unmanned fishing boat drifts into the harbour of an economically distressed Cornish village. But this boat – Rose of Nevada – disappeared 30 years ago. Its former skipper wants to take it out to fish, and two young men in dire economic straits agree to come aboard as crew. After they’ve been at sea for a while, they take the boat back to their village… but it’s 30 years earlier, and they’re mistaken for being the original crew. The Daily Beast said Rose of Nevada is “like nothing else in modern movies. Feels unearthed from the deep, dark recesses of the subconscious.” A Metacritic score of 84. At the ByTowne.
The new documentary, Peter Asher: Everywhere Man, is aptly named. Asher’s has been “an extraordinary life lived at the center of modern music history” (Next Best Picture). He was a pop star (one half of the 60s duo Peter and Gordon), a producer, a talent manager, and he seems to know everyone in the music business. Through his sister Jane Asher, he met Paul McCartney (Jane’s boyfriend at the time) and John Lennon. Lennon and McCartney composed “A World Without Love” in the Ashers’ basement; Peter and Gordon then took the song to the top of the charts. He managed both James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt early in their careers, getting them on the road to success by producing their multi-platinum records. He also produced numerous records for an astounding number of famous musicians. The list of people in Asher’s life goes on and on, and he’s still active in the music biz! This delightful documentary “traces a remarkable under-the-radar musical legacy” (The hollywood-likes-it-or-not/” title=”At 82, George Lucas says AI is the future of movies whether Hollywood likes it or not”>Hollywood Reporter). At the ByTowne.
The ByTowne’s Drunken Cinema has a BIG treat for you: Steven Spielberg’s massive blockbuster Jurassic Park! By using prehistoric DNA, an Elon-like billionaire has populated a huge tract of land on a tropical island with dinosaurs from the Jurassic Era. The special effects are stunning. And when the beasts break out of their enclosure, the action scenes are terrifyingly realistic. This is a film to see on a big screen. It’s in the ByTowne’s Drunken Cinema series, which is an interactive movie game with a customized game card and glowstick included in the price of admission.
I’d promised a Disney classic for the kids. It’s Cinderella, and it’s part of the Mayfair’s Out of the Vault: Disney Summer Film Festival. The film is based on a 1697 French fairy tale, though Cinderella’s friendly mice and birds are a Disney addition. On its release in 1950, some critics said it was Disney’s first artistic triumph since 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In 2023, Ben Mankiewicz, the host of Turner Classic Movies, said, “It has everything you want in a princess story, and it’s done in this authentic, beautiful way.”
I recently recommended several films which are still playing at Ottawa’s independent cinemas. The new films are:
- A woolly new breed of murder mystery, The Sheep Detectives, is still at both the ByTowne and the Mayfair. A genuine all-ages crowd-pleaser!
- The marriage/sex/dramedy The Invite is still at the ByTowne. Its Metacritic score is now up to 82.
And my pick for Ottawa’s favourite cult film – The Rocky Horror Picture Show – is back at the Mayfair on July 31. Let’s do the Time Warp again!
Lots of films to choose from! Keep cool!
Dates, times, and tickets for the ByTowne are at www.bytowne.ca. You can also buy tickets at the box office. The ByTowne publishes its calendar several weeks in advance. Dates, times, and tickets for the Mayfair are at www.mayfairtheatre.ca. The Mayfair finalizes its upcoming films’ schedule weekly, which they post online and advertisems. You can buy tickets
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