blu-ray current learning to drive documents/onscreen...blu-ray current learning to drive isabel...

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FILM CIRCUIT RELEASE SCHEDULE · WINTER/SPRING 2016

BLU-RAY · current

Learning to DriveIsabel CoixetUSA, 2013English 90 minutes

Principal Cast: Patricia Clarkson, Ben Kingsley

DISTRIBUTOR DETAILS

Distributor: Pacific Northwest PicturesEstimated Availability: CurrentFormats: DCP/Blu-ray

about her problems. In turn, Wendy’s volatile feelings about her changing marital status serve to highlight Darwan’s concerns about his own impending marriage, and the pair’s relationship soon begins to evolve in unex-pected ways.

Reuniting with the two stars of her 2008 film Elegy, director Isabel Coixet allows these brilliant actors to move through a vast emotional range even as they remain confined to the front seat of an automobile. Observant and sweetly funny, Learning to Drive is a reminder that two people from very different backgrounds can achieve communication, understanding and intimacy even in the most unlikely situations.

Touching, insightful and occasionally unpredictable.

—Jordan Hoffman, The Guardian

The runner-up for the People’s Choice Award at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival, this adaptation of Katha Pollitt’s 2002 essay for The New Yorker tells a story about two people who must reconfigure their emotional language in order to embark upon their new lives.

Wendy (Patricia Clarkson, October Gale, Cairo Time), a successful and self-obsessed book editor, comes home to her New York City brownstone one day to find her husband Ted (Jake Weber) leaving her — again. But this time it’s for good, and Wendy’s initial denial turns into grief, anger, and a deter-mination to become self-sufficient — part of which involves finally learning to drive so that she can visit her daughter at college in Vermont. Although Wendy’s resolve wavers when she’s faced with the confusing jumble of an automobile dashboard, she finds a source of strength in her conscientious driv-ing instructor Darwan (Ben Kingsley, Hugo, Shutter Island). As Darwan guides Wendy through her automotive education, his seem-ingly infinite patience invites her to open up

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BLU-RAY · current32

Beeba BoysDeepa MehtaCANADA, 2015English, Punjabi, with English subtitles100 minutes

Principal Cast: Randeep Hooda, Sarah Allen, Waris Ahluwalia, Paul Gross, Ali Momen

DISTRIBUTOR DETAILS

Distributor: Mongrel MediaEstimated Availability: CurrentFormats: DCP/Blu-ray

With masterful assurance, Mehta explores the complex tensions of the male-centric world of the gangs, one that beckons with the promise of glamour and fast money but, in reality, demands more in sacrifice than it delivers in rewards. Provocative and exciting, Beeba Boys tells a tale of violence, racism, discrimination, and marginalization, but at its core is a powerful story about fam-ily that is sure to resonate with any audience.

In Beeba Boys, Deepa Mehta channels her inner Tarantino for a noteworthy change of pace, one that pursues her career-long inquiry into identity and the immigrant experience with explosive results.

—Peter Howell, The Toronto Star

The highly anticipated return of Film Circuit favourite Deepa Mehta (Midnight’s Children, Water), Beeba Boys is a colourful, kinetic gangster drama loosely inspired by notorious B.C. gangster “Bindy” Singh Johal and the Punjabi Mafia gangs of second- and third-generation Indian immigrants operating on Canada’s West Coast in the 1990s.

Jeet Johar (Randeep Hooda, Once Upon a Time in Mumbai) is a devoted family man, an observant member of the Jat Sikh commu-nity, and a merciless gangster who heads a team of suave but ruthless young men known as the Beeba Boys, who are competing with other local Asian gangs for supremacy in the Vancouver drugs- and arms-trafficking racket. Leading his band of brothers into battle to fight for their piece of this lucrative pie and the respect they believe they deserve, Jeet also finds time to mentor volatile new gang member Nep (Ali Momen, The Animal Project) and to romance a beautiful woman serving on the jury at his murder trial (2011 TIFF Rising Star Sarah Allen, The Husband, On the Road).

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BLU-RAY · current

The Second MotherAnna MuylaertBRAZIL, 2015Portuguese, with English subtitles 112 minutes

Principal Cast: Regina Casé, Camila Márdila, Helena Albergaria, Michel Joelsas

DISTRIBUTOR DETAILS

Distributor: Soda PicturesEstimated Availability: CurrentFormats: DCP/Blu-ray

stay in the guest room — an offer that was designed to be politely refused. The unspoken class barriers in the house-hold quickly come to the foreground as Jéssica crashes through them with her candour and unflinching confidence. She speaks her mind, eats the boss’ gourmet ice cream, and even takes a dip in the pool (much to the horror of the lady of the house, who goes so far as to have it drained). Initially, Val is mortified that her daughter doesn’t seem to know her place, but she soon comes around to recon-sidering her own. A rich, complex and delightful comic drama, The Second Mother subverts the absurdity of the familial, generational and class constructs we all subscribe to. Culminating in a touch-ing dénouement, the film underscores the importance of embracing your own inherent sense of self-worth.

All the elements of the story fit impeccably together for a humorous and occasionally wrenching examination of relationships.

—Stephanie Merry, The Washington Post

Director Anna Muylaert (The Year My Parents Went on Vacation, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes) skillfully renders generational, economic and social divides with humour and heart in her latest feature The Second Mother. This class-critiquing charmer is centred on the endlessly endearing Val (Regina Casé, Me You Them, Central da Periferia), a tightly wound, middle-aged live-in house-keeper who works for a wealthy family in São Paulo. She has lovingly raised the fam-ily’s now teenaged son since he was only a toddler, while sending money back home to a small town in northern Brazil where her own estranged daughter, Jéssica, was being raised by relatives. The delicate bal-ance of the household is thrown into chaos when Jéssica (newcomer Camila Márdila) comes to São Paulo to write her college entrance exams, marking the first time that she and Val have seen one another in over ten years. Val makes arrangements for Jéssica to stay on a mattress in the maid quarters, but the young woman instead accepts an offer from the homeowners to

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The Legend of Barney ThomsonRobert CarlyleUNITED KINGDOM, 2015English 90 minutes

Principal Cast: Robert Carlyle, Emma Thompson, Ray Winstone

DISTRIBUTOR DETAILS

Distributor: Pacific Northwest PicturesEstimated Availability: January 2016Formats: DCP/Blu-ray Pre-release

A black, bloody (and bloody hilarious) comedy of errors, The Legend of Barney Thomson brings Lindsay’s long-running series to vivid cinematic life. Outfitted with a ratty fur coat, a hideous wig and remarkable aging makeup, the always won-derful Thompson steals every scene she’s in as Barney’s indomitable mother, while director and star Carlyle demonstrates that he is just as adept behind the camera as he is in front of it. Deliciously dark and savagely funny, The Legend of Barney Thomson is sure to leave audiences in stitches.

This deliciously macabre comedy falls into the fine tradition of what might be called “net-curtain grotesque”: the kind of quarter-true horror stories of city life that get swapped on cigarette breaks and at the backs of buses, and which fall somewhere […] between a particularly gruelling Irvine Welsh short story and a League of Gentlemen TV special.

—Robbie Collin, The Telegraph

Based on the first novel in Douglas Lindsay’s seven-part Barney Thomson series, the directorial debut from renowned Scottish-born actor Robert Carlyle (Stone of Destiny, The Full Monty) is a darkly comic thriller about a downtrodden, mild-man-nered Glaswegian barber whose mundane life is turned upside down when he inadver-tently finds himself embroiled in a rash of serial murders. Carlyle stars as the socially awkward Barney, whose dark fantasies become star-tling reality after an inadvertent murder. Rather than reporting the incident to the police, Barney turns to his hilariously fierce mother Cemolina (Emma Thompson, A Walk in the Woods, The Love Punch) for help — but Cemolina has a secret of her own, which leads to a chain of unexpected events. While the hapless hair-cutter clumsily tries to cover both his and his mother’s tracks, police inspector Holdall (Ray Winstone, Hugo, The Departed) fights his own battles within his inept homicide department as he tries to solve the crime of the century.

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My Internship in Canada Philippe FalardeauCANADA, 2015French, English, Creole, with English subtitles108 minutes

Principal Cast: Patrick Huard, Suzanne Clément, Irdens Exantus, Clémence Dufresne-Deslières, Sonia Cordeau, Paul Doucet, Jules Philip, Robin Aubert, Micheline Lanctôt

DISTRIBUTOR DETAILS

Distributor: eOne FilmsEstimated Availability: CurrentFormats: DCP/Blu-ray Pre-Release

new intern Souverain (newcomer Irdens Exantus), a young Haitian student who knows considerably more about the ins and outs of our parliamentary system than does his boss.

Not only a witty and incisive portrait of wheeling and dealing in Ottawa, My Internship in Canada also exposes Canadians’ tendency to focus on the regional and specific at the expense of the wider picture. As Falardeau’s gently skewering satire demonstrates, some-times it takes a person from another country to explain to us the workings — and the value — of the unique system that makes our democ-racy (sometimes) function.

The performances are lived-in and the tone is refreshingly light. A genuine crowd-pleaser, no matter what colour that sign on your lawn might be.

—Barry Hertz, The Globe and Mail

In this satirical look at the vagaries of Canadian politics from Academy Award nominee and Film Circuit favourite Philippe Falardeau (The Good Lie, Monsieur Lazhar, C’est pas moi, je le jure!), a Member of Parliament finds himself thrust suddenly into the spotlight, and it’s up to his young Haitian intern to help the hapless backbencher navigate the complexi-ties and pitfalls of Parliament Hill.

A Conservative minority government try-ing to pass a bill that will enable them to go to war suffers a setback when one of the Tory MPs falls ill — leaving the key vote for the government’s warmongering initiative in the hands of independent MP Steve Guibord (Patrick Huard, Starbuck, Bon Cop Bad Cop), a former hockey player whose pro career fizzled. Feverishly courted by the Tories and subjected to a moral tug of war at home — his ambitious wife (Suzanne Clément, Mommy, Laurence Anyways) wants him to vote Yes, his peacenik daughter (Clémence Dufresne-Deslières) No — Guibord is unable to decide. As the vote nears and Guibord is beset on all sides, salvation arrives in the form of his

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TrumboJay RoachUSA, 2015English120 minutes

Principal Cast: Bryan Cranston, Helen Mirren, John Goodman, Diane Lane

DISTRIBUTOR DETAILS

Distributor: eOne FilmsEstimated Availability: January 2016Formats: DCP

“fronts” throughout the 1950s — even win-ning the Oscar for Best Story in 1956 for The Brave One — until his public crediting for the epics Exodus and Spartacus in 1960 helped bring the blacklist era to an end. Featuring a brilliant performance by Cranston and a remarkable supporting cast that includes Diane Lane (Under the Tuscan Sun), Elle Fanning (Ginger & Rosa, Somewhere), John Goodman (Inside Llewyn Davis, Argo) and Helen Mirren (Woman in Gold, Eye in the Sky) as notorious gos-sip columnist Hedda Hopper, Trumbo is an insightful and stirring drama about one of the most controversial chapters in Hollywood history.

Bryan Cranston (TV’s Breaking Bad) stars as prolific and embattled screenwriter Dalton Trumbo in this powerful chronicle of the Hollywood blacklist era. One of Hollywood’s highest-paid screen-writers thanks to his scripts for such films as Kitty Foyle, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo and Our Vines Have Tender Grapes, Trumbo was perhaps the most celebrated of the many writers, directors and performers who saw their careers screech to a halt after they were brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947 to answer questions about their suspected communist ties (although unlike many on the black-list, Trumbo was an actual card-carrying member of the American Communist Party until 1948). An outspoken member of the so-called “Hollywood Ten,” Trumbo was cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before HUAC, resulting in a year-long prison sentence and a prominent place on the studios’ blacklist. Unable to obtain film work under his own name, Trumbo did some of his finest work under the names of various

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Mountains May DepartJia Zhang-keCHINA/FRANCE/JAPAN, 2015Mandarin, with English subtitles125 minutes

Principal Cast: Zhao Tao, Zhang Yi, Liang Jin Dong, Dong Zijian, Sylvia Chang, Han Sanming

DISTRIBUTOR DETAILS

Distributor: FilmswelikeEstimated Availability: January 2016Formats: DCP/Blu-ray Pre-release

help of an attractive, older college profes-sor (Sylvia Chang, The Red Violin) who embodies the culture, life, and love he has never truly known.

Shooting each of the film’s three time periods in a different aspect ratio — with the square Academy frame gradually expanding to widescreen — Jia creates a prescient chronicle of his country’s path to the future. Lyrical, moving, and dazzlingly ambitious, Mountains May Depart is one of the year’s most important films.

Jia Zhang-ke’s Mountains May Depart is a mysterious and in its way staggeringly ambitious piece of work from a film-maker whose creativity is evolving before our eyes.

—Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

At once an intimate drama and a decades-spanning epic, the new film from master filmmaker Jia Zhang-ke (A Touch of Sin, The World) jumps from the recent past to the speculative near-future as it examines how China’s economic boom has affected the bonds of family, tradition, and love.

Mountains May Depart opens in 1999 to the strains of the Pet Shop Boys’ “Go West,” a song whose promise of blue skies captures the dreams of affluence that seized so many Chinese youth at the turn of the century. And it’s to the West that small-town dance instructor Shen Tao (Zhao Tao, A Touch of Sin) looks when she spurns the shy, intro-verted labourer Liangzi (Liang Jindong) to marry the slick entrepreneur Zhang (Zhang Yi, The Golden Era). The couple soon wel-comes a son, whom Zhang names Dollar. The chasm between the family’s origins and their new life of Western-style wealth grows ever wider as the film leaps ahead to 2014 and finally to 2025, when Dollar (Zijian Dong) is living in Australia and struggling to relearn the mother tongue he has forgotten with the

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BrooklynJohn CrowleyIRELAND/UNITED KINGDOM/CANADA, 2015English 105 minutes

Principal Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Emory Cohen, Domhnall Gleeson, Jim Broadbent, Julie Walters

DISTRIBUTOR DETAILS

Distributor: Mongrel MediaEstimated Availability: CurrentFormats: DCP

Ronan gives an outstanding performance as her Eilis transforms from a lonely young wallflower to an experienced, confident adult, and you won’t soon forget Cohen as the tough but tender Tony. Expertly directed by John Crowley (Boy A), Brooklyn is a beautiful, exquisitely crafted story about family, mem-ory, and making a new home.

A heartbreaking and poignant story about choices, country, commitments, sacrifice and love, Brooklyn is a superb, luminous and bittersweet portrayal of who we are, where we’ve come from, where we’re going and the places we call home.

—Rodrigo Perez, The Playlist

Scripted by bestselling author Nick Hornby from the acclaimed novel by Colm Tóibín, the poignant and gorgeously realized Brooklyn has elicited a flurry of Oscar buzz following its premiere at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.

On the southeast coast of Ireland in the early 1950s, the soft-spoken young Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Atonement), feeling stifled by the meagre opportunities that her homeland can offer her, makes the hard decision to leave her mother and beloved older sister behind to make the solo journey across the Atlantic to a new life in Brooklyn, New York. Alone in a strange land, Eilis begins to make a place for herself with the help of a kind Irish priest (Jim Broadbent, Le Week-End, The Iron Lady) and her stern but caring landlady (Julie Walters, One Chance, Mamma Mia!), and she even catches the eye of an Italian boy named Tony (Emory Cohen, The Place Beyond the Pines). When a family tragedy compels her to return to Ireland, Eilis surprisingly discovers that the hardships that previously seemed insurmountable inhibit her no longer.

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BLU-RAY · current

GrandmaPaul WeitzUSA, 2015English 92 minutes

Principal Cast: Lily Tomlin, Marcia Gay Harden, Julia Garner, Sam Elliott

DISTRIBUTOR DETAILS

Distributor: Mongrel MediaEstimated Availability: CurrentFormats: DCP/Blu-ray

Elle’s old friends and old flames (one of whom is played by the always wonder ful Sam Elliott, who also stars in this year’s I’ll See You in My Dreams). As this odd couple faces a number of obstacles in the course of their journey and Sage begins to learn about her grandmother’s complex past, the two women are able to achieve a new honesty in their relationship, and begin to chart a way forward together.

It’s no surprise that Tomlin is ideal as Elle, both due to her masterful comic timing and her ability to reveal depths of vulnerabil-ity and emotion beneath a brittle exterior. Mixing laughter and tears to marvellous effect, Grandma addresses such subjects as loss, love and motherhood with both wry humour and refreshing honesty.

An initially breezy family comedy about mothers, daughters and abortions that slowly sneaks up on you and packs a major wallop.

—Scott Foundas, Variety

Comedy legend Lily Tomlin (Netflix’s Grace and Frankie) shines in this spirited and touch-ing film from director Paul Weitz (About a Boy), a sharply observed comedy-drama about intergenerational relationships and how our past is never really left behind. Tomlin stars as aging poet and quick-witted grump Elle, who as the film opens has just ended her relationship with a much younger woman (Judy Greer). Still mourn-ing the death of her long-time partner, Elle is also struggling to make ends meet as interest in her poetry diminishes and academic jobs are few and far between. In the midst of her own troubles, Elle receives a surprise visit from her teenage granddaughter Sage (Julia Garner, Martha Marcy May Marlene), who is pregnant and in dire need of cash for her doctor’s appointment later that same day. Elle is unable to loan Sage the money, and both are unwilling to ask Sage’s uptight and out-of-touch mother (Marcia Gay Harden, Magic in the Moonlight, Elsa & Fred), so the pair set out in Elle’s vintage (i.e., ancient) car to try and cobble together the cash from

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