Your Weekend Roundup: What to See (And Skip) In The Theatres

By Original-Cin Staff

Autumn is here, chilly and bright, and something in the air smells good. We are about to enter the awards season, the fine dining portion of the film year, when movies are less expensive, more ambitious, and strange in a good way, with three A-rated films this week.

A scene from completely bonkers The Lighthouse.

We start with writer/director Taika Waititi’s satirical black comedy, JoJo Rabbit (Rating: A+), which won the Grolsh People’s Choice Award at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival. The Nazi-era film follows a 10-year-old Hitler Youth member whose imaginary friend is the führer himself, while his mother (Scarlett Johansson) is hiding a Jewish girl in the attic. The film was divisive even before its release, but our reviewer Karen Gordon found it “beautifully crafted,” managing to convey sweetness and light without flinching in the face of horror.

More strangeness to be found in The Lighthouse (Rating: A), from writer/director Robert Eggers (The Witch). This black-and-white psychodrama, set in the 19th century, stars Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe in matching tour-de-force performances, along with a hallucinatory mermaid and a mocking seagull. Reviewer Karen Gordon describes it as “bonkers and a hell of a film.”

Spain’s Pedro Almodóvar broke through in the eighties with his genre-twisting comedies like Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown starring the hot young star, Antonio Banderas. Now the director and actor reunite in Pain and Glory (Rating: A), Almodóvar’s semi-autobiographical film about a director facing his waning health and creative powers, reconnecting with his former leading man. Reviewer Jim Slotek says the film is a resonant exploration of “how we get where we are and what holds us back from what we dream of becoming.”

But wait… there’s more! Jim also has an interview with Banderas, who talks about how his own heart attack and decades in Hollywood away from Almodóvar shaped the semi-fictional portrait of his long-time friend.

Also this week we have Black and Blue (Rating: B) with Naomie Harris as a rookie cop who gets on the wrong side of some crooked ones in an action-drama reviewer Kim Hughes says is a solid if simplified exploration of race and policing in post-Katrina New Orleans.

Also, this week marks the 20th anniversary of the ImagiNATIVE Film Festival at Toronto’s TIFF Bell Lightbox, with more than 100 features, docs, shorts, and music videos by Indigenous filmmakers from around the world, three quarters of them by female directors.

Have a great weekend and a happy haunted Halloween.