Reel Movie Mondays: Spring 2024

Uproar

Directed by Paul Middleditch and Hamish Bennett | New Zealand | 2023 | 110 mins | NYR | English, Maori | Photon Films

Content advisory: bullying

Julian Dennison delivers another charismatic performance in a witty and wise story about a young student trying to find his place among New Zealand’s fight for its national identity in the ’80s.

In 1981 the South African rugby team toured New Zealand, sparking protests across the country about the government’s decision to let them play, given South Africa’s apartheid policy. While this battle for the nation’s identity rages, 17-year old Josh Waaka (Julian Dennison) has to figure out his own place in the world.

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Josh is content to let life happen around him. Since the death of his father, things haven’t exactly been bright at home. His older brother Jamie (James Rolleston) is in a numb stasis after an injury has kept him from continuing his rugby career. Their mom Shirley (Minnie Driver) spends most of her time working to keep the family afloat.

While rugby is on everyone’s mind at home and in school, one of his teachers (Rhys Darby) pushes Josh to audition for drama school. This opens up new ways of looking at the world, and soon he starts to see the activism in his community differently.

Dennison, whom audiences will remember from Deadpool 2 and Taika Waititi’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople, gives another charismatic performance that has you rooting for him from the start. Along with co-writer Sonia Whiteman, directors Hamish Bennett and Paul Middleditch intelligently frame his character’s coming of age through the country’s own growing pains and acknowledgement of racial identities.

With wit and wisdom, UPROAR offers a cheering call to action and a reminder to live as your true self, even if it sometimes gets in the way.

Reel Movie Mondays: Spring 2024

500 Days in the Wild

Directed by Dianne Whelan | Canada | 2023 | 124 mins | PG | English | Elevation Pictures

Beginning on July 1, 2015, in St. John’s, Newfoundland, award-winning director and cinematographer Dianne Whelan set out on an epic journey of discovery: hiking, biking, paddling, snowshoeing, and skiing across Canada.

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For a woman in her 50s who is not an extreme athlete, it was sometimes gruelling, occasionally harrowing, often exhilarating and always surprising. She started out alone, disillusioned with the state of the world and worried about climate change, to look for different ways of caring for the land and each other. She ended the journey a bit wiser, more hopeful, in love and with a passion to share this story.

500 DAYS IN THE WILD is a feature documentary that weaves intimate moments of reflection with adventure and stories of the people and communities that she encountered along the way.

Reel Movie Mondays: Spring 2024

Io Capitano

Directed by Matteo Garrone | Italy | 2023 | 121 mins | 14A | Wolof, French | Immina Films

Content advisory: explicit violence, scenes of surgery, crude content, frightening scenes, mature themes.

Two teenagers, Seydou and Moussa, leave their home in Dakar for a hellish odyssey through hazardous seas, arid deserts, and a Libyan detention centre, all in pursuit of the dream of living in Europe.

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In this acclaimed film which won top directing and acting prizes at the Venice Film Festival, writer-director Garrone presents a “reverse shot” of the immigration experience while unfurling an epic, cinematographically magnificent odyssey from West Africa to Italy.

The story is told through the mind’s eye and experiences of two Senegalese teenagers living in Dakar who yearn for a brighter future in Europe. Yet between their dreams and reality lies a treacherous journey through a labyrinth of checkpoints, the scorched Saharan desert, a fetid North African prison and the vast waters of the Mediterranean where thousands have died packed inside vessels barely fit for passage.

Reel Movie Mondays: Spring 2024

Perfect Days

Directed by Wim Wenders | Japan | 2023 | 124 mins | PG | Japanese, English | Elevation Pictures

Wim Wenders returns with a poignant character study and a deeply moving, poetic reflection on finding beauty in the everyday world around us.

After several years away from the silver screen, Wim Wenders is back with PERFECT DAYS, a poignant character study and emotionally charged journey into the soul of Tokyo. Radiating charm and embracing all his best work, this unique mix of fiction and ordinary life finds an unusual, poetic angle to guide us: the architectural marvels of some of Tokyo’s public toilets.

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Kôji Yakusho, in one of his best performances to date, plays Hirayama, a cleaner of these toilets. (He is named after the protagonist of Yasujiro Ozu’s last film, AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON — a quiet tribute to the great master of Japanese cinema, an auteur beloved by Wenders.) Hirayama lives alone in a small house full of plants, his days going by according to quiet rhythms that never seem to change. His is a neighbourhood of tiny cafés frequented by the same people, of bookshops that sell works by Patricia Highsmith or young, contemporary Japanese writers.

Hirayama speaks very little and has a great passion for music, books, and the trees he loves to photograph. He drives to work in his minivan, fully equipped with his cleaning gear, while The Rolling Stones, Patti Smith, or Lou Reed ring in ageless, husky hums from a tape player.

As if in search of a new cinema on the road, Wenders follows his protagonist and instead discovers new places of the heart. Through Yakusho/Hirayama, Wenders captures the poetry of the everyday with intimacy and stunning simplicity.

Reel Movie Mondays: Spring 2024

The Peasants

Directed by DK Welchman and Hugh Welchman | Poland, Serbia, Lithuania | 2023 | 114 min | 14A | Polish | Mongrel Media

Content advisory: sexual violence, nudity

From the directors of Loving Vincent, THE PEASANTS is a cinematic pageant about a 19th-century Polish village where a beautiful maiden marries a widowed landowner while nursing a burning love for his son.

Yearning for a world beyond the fertile yet arduous one known to her, a maiden resides with her mother in the picturesque Polish countryside of the 19th century, where the homespun traditions of peasantry date back to antiquity. Full of ornamental song and rapturous dance, and meticulously painted frame after frame, THE PEASANTS, from DK and Hugh Welchman, is a comic, tragic, and reflective tableau resembling an ancient epic.

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Told through seasons that honour the cyclical rituals of ploughing, plantation, and harvest, this adaptation of Władysław Reymont’s Nobel Prize–winning novel of the same title (written in four volumes between 1904 and 1909 and translated into 27 languages) recounts the tale of a charming and voluptuous woman named Jagna (Kamila Urzedowska) hungering for love and lacking in cunning.

Her home of Lipce, a God-fearing village, is full of characters, including a lecherous mayor, a snooty church organist, and a razor-tongued gossip, and hundreds of storks that, according to lore, foretell the arrival of new life. Here, Jagna creates havoc by marrying a wealthy widower named Boryna (Mirosław Baka), whose children and their families — including the apple of her eye, his brawny son, Antek (Robert Gulaczyk) — work the land and expect inheritance. Jagna’s fate is all but sealed when she breaks one of the few societal taboos.

Naturalistic in the best of times and brutal in the worst, THE PEASANTS is a love song to the memories of our ancestors and to timeless matters of the heart.

Why the 10-Year Odyssey of Making Hand-Painted Feature ‘Loving Vincent’ Was “Nothing” Compared to the Directors’ Follow-Up ‘The Peasants’ (Hollywood Reporter, September 2023) >

Reel Movie Mondays: Winter 2024

Flora and Son

Directed by John Carney | Ireland, USA | 2023 | 94 mins | R | English | Cineplex Pictures

With Flora and Son, Irish writer-director John Carney has crafted his most soulful song cycle yet, setting a young single mother on a journey of self-discovery.

Flora is something of a hot mess. She’s feisty, charismatic, and a trouble magnet. She loves to party — but she loves her 14-year-old son Max more, even if it seems like all they do is quarrel. In an effort to bridge the gulf between them, Flora gives Max a guitar, but Max’s ideal musical instrument is his computer, which he uses to construct infectious dance tracks.

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Rather than let the guitar collect dust, Flora opts to develop her own musical chops, taking online lessons from Jeff, a handsome troubadour who shows Flora how to form basic chords and introduces her to the genius of Joni Mitchell. Flora falls for Jeff, despite the fact that she’s in Dublin and he’s in Los Angeles. But as Jeff pierces Flora’s heart, he also inspires in her a creative urge that might lead to a whole new way of connecting with Max.

In films like the beloved Oscar winner Once and Sing Street, Carney has reinvented the musical. Carney’s films convey a profound understanding of how music lifts us out of life’s dead-end distractions and carries us to a place where we can be our best selves. Flora and Son is a soaring realization of this idea.

“Heart and soul — those two concepts beaten to death by lyricists — suffuse every scene of this modest, perfect picture.” –Kyle Smith, Wall Street Journal

Reel Movie Mondays: Winter 2024

My Mother’s Men

Directed by Anik Jean | Canada | 2023 | 126 mins | NYR | French | Immina Films

Content advisory: drug and alcohol use, coarse language

My Mother’s Men, Anik Jean’s heartening feature film debut, delves into the curious and poignant world of familial eccentricity, personal growth, and unorthodox last wishes.

At its core lies the story of Elsie (Léane Labrèche-Dor), a 30-something young woman navigating the peculiar legacy left by her mother, Anne, a whimsical soul with an affinity for romance. Anne’s final request of Elsie is far from ordinary: she tasks her daughter with tracking down her five ex-husbands to help scatter her ashes.

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Elsie is determined to honour her mother’s memory, even if it means confronting her personal feelings and issues head on. Elsie embarks on a remarkable journey that unravels the intricacies of her family’s past and reshapes her life’s course. What ensues is a touching exploration of love, connection, and the indelible impact of the relationships that define us.

Anik Jean, who was moved to make the film after the death of her father, masterfully navigates the emotional terrain of Elsie’s story and her unconventional family. Bolstered by a fantastic ensemble cast, featuring Quebecois legend Marc Messier and Bon Cop, Bad Cop co-stars Patrick Huard and Colm Feore, Elsie’s transformative journey is a testament to the profound influence of the people we encounter in life — a poignant tale told with a lot of heart and tenderness.

Reel Movie Mondays: Winter 2024

The Persian Version

Directed by Maryam Keshavarz | USA | 2022 | 107 mins | NYR | English, Persian | Mongrel Media

Writer-director Maryam Keshavarz, who previously won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival for her debut film, Circumstance, returns with this uproarious, genre-blurring crowd pleaser about identity, belonging, and secrets — those that tie families together and pull them apart, perhaps at the same time.

Just as brash as she is introspective, Leila (Layla Mohammadi, The Sex Lives of College Girls) defies expectation at every turn: those of her parents, and in particular her mother, Shireen (Niousha Noor, Kaleidoscope), who disapproves of Leila’s disregard for tradition and cultural norms; and those of her romantic partners, who are perplexed by the fondness that Leila has for her family (and Iranian heritage) despite their differences, simmering just beneath the surface of her feigned nonchalance. But it becomes harder for Leila to keep her opposing lives separate when she discovers she is pregnant just as her family convenes in New York for her father’s heart transplant surgery.

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It’s here that the film takes a beautiful and unexpected turn, as we are transported back in time to Shireen’s childhood in Iran through to her initial experiences in America, understanding the level of loss and personal sacrifice that has come to inform her rocky relationship with Leila.

As past and present continue to collide, the film balances the somber weight of its generations-spanning ambition with a quirky dynamism in the form of Fleabag-esque, fourth-wall-breaking monologues and intricately choreographed dance sequences as Leila’s love for retro pop music bleeds onto the screen. The Persian Version is undeniably full of heart (and with it, heartache) — one that beats to its own drum and will bring audiences to their feet.

“Braids comedy and tragedy, vibrant aplomb and thoughtful soberness.” –Lisa Kennedy, Variety

Reel Movie Mondays: Winter 2024

Someone Lives Here

Directed by Zack Russell | Canada | 2023 | 75 mins | NYR | English | LaRue Entertainment

Someone Lives Here is a modern-day David and Goliath story, set against the backdrop of North America’s housing crisis. Carpenter Khaleel Seivwright builds small, life-saving shelters for unhoused people living outside in Toronto during the winter of the pandemic. His actions attract international attention, but also staunch opposition from city officials.

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North America’s housing crisis is felt in our own community. Red Deer’s Safe Harbour Society will be joining us at the box office prior to the film with information and resources relating to what Safe Harbour does in our community. We will have a box for warm-wear items (toques, mitts, gloves, socks etc) for Safe Harbour set up for you to donate to if you wish.

Pre-order your theatre snacks! As a special offer for RMM movie goers, you can now purchase your snacks for each film in advance. Click here to order your theatre snacks 

Reel Movie Mondays: Winter 2024

Anatomy of a Fall

Directed by Justine Triet | France | 2023 | 151 min | R | French, English, German | Elevation Pictures

The much-lauded winner of this year’s Palme d’Or, Justine Triet’s fourth feature has cemented her status as one of today’s great filmmaking talents. Unfolding over two-and-a-half hours like a compulsively readable novel, the riveting Anatomy of a Fall is both a dissection of an intimate relationship and of the judiciary process.

Sandra (a ferocious, magnetic, and edgy Sandra Hüller; Toni Erdmann, The Zone of Interest) is a successful German writer who lives in the French Alps with her husband Samuel (Samuel Theis) and their visually-impaired son Daniel (Milo Machado Graner). A brilliant, decibel-bursting opening scene suggests tensions in their isolated chalet, so when Samuel is discovered dead in the snow beneath one of their windows, suspicion is quickly aroused. Did he take his own life, or was he pushed to his death?

When the investigation proves to be inconclusive — its varying angles hinting at the microscopic examination to come — Sandra is ultimately indicted and put on trial.

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A captivating and sharply directed, written, and acted courtroom procedural, Anatomy of a Fall functions like a trenchant autopsy of confirmation bias and ambiguity itself, with the court an operatic arena in which every gesture, word, and past interaction are ripe for judgment.

As scrutiny turns to Sandra’s complex character and her tumultuous relationship with Samuel — their artistic rivalries, romantic jealousies, and contempt — the couple’s young son becomes the key witness. Taut, suspenseful, and thrilling until the final moment, Anatomy of a Fall progresses like a heady puzzle that tackles the messiness of existence and the often-elusive nature of truth itself.

“Part true crime legal thriller and part family drama, Triet’s Palme d’Or winner is a thrilling story about perception, truth, and ambition.” –Therese Lacson, Collider

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