Hellboy 2

This Week in Film: July 12th 2008


Everybodys' favourite demon returns to the big screen this week, as art-house hero Guillermo Del Toro reintroduces filmgoers to Ron Perlman as Hellboy in Hellboy 2: The Golden Army. With Del Toro once again at the helm, combined with some of the same Academy Award Winning creative team that won awards for Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy 2 looks unlike any other superhero film we've seen before. The only comment I can add to the negative is... Seth McFarlane? Seriously? But don't worry, we also have copious amounts of teen angst and surreal narratives to see this week at the cinemas.

The free screens are lit up this week with two films about teenage misfits; while one of the films delivers a message that is altogether antiquated as a way to cope with angst and growing pains, the other has a slightly more sunny approach to fitting in. Yonge and Dundas Square's free film on Tuesday is none other than Baz Luhrmann's modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet, featuring Angela Chase and Amsterdam Vallon, while the Harbourfront Fido Free Flicks will be screening Wes Anderson's prep-school film Rushmore. As usual, both films will start approximately at sundown, so get your seats saved around 8pm and bring some sudoku puzzles along.

This weekend at the Cinematheque Ontario, a programme dedicated to post-Nouvelle Vague French director Jean Eustache begins. The programme began last night with The Mother and the Whore, but other interesting selections from this programme would include Santa Claus Has Blue Eyes, a film about a misfit who takes a job playing Santa during the holiday to earn some extra cash, and the touching film Mes Petites Amoureuses, about a rural boy coming of age in a summer when he learns the disappointments of adulthood, combined with knowledge of relationships and sex. Needless to say, much of this retrospective is quite unique and hard to find, so this may be the only time you can see the films of Eustache, particularly the shorter ones.

The Bloor Cinema has some particularly fantastic films programmed for the next week, most of them being a programme dedicated to David Lynch. Whether you're seeing the double bill on Monday of Eraserhead and Blue Velvet, or Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive on Tuesday, be prepared to have your minds blown. Wednesday is another great day for cinema at the Bloor with Independence Day at 4pm and 9:25pm and Jurassic Park at 7pm. What will you choose? Nineties blockbusters or Lynchian dystopias?

And last but not least, the Royal Cinema has a week full of festival favourite, Silent Light. A slow but stunning story following a Mennonite who begins an affair with a woman who isn't his wife, the film wowed audiences at Cannes and the Toronto Film Festival last year and is finally seeing release on the big screen. For those who enjoy films where more is said in visual language than witty dialogue, this is definitely the choice for you.

Image: Hellboy II from I-Am-Bored


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