In what is becoming an annual tradition at Revue Cinema, feel better about the post-holiday blahs by watching the only place more desolate than January in Toronto: WITHNAIL & I. Doors will open at 6:00pm because the first thing we do is have cider. Ice in the cider. With thanks to sponsor Cider House!

ABOUT THE MOVIE

By all the natural laws of science, chemistry and logic, the titular anti-hero of this satirical masterpiece should not make it to the end of the movie. But he is not just anyone. He is out-of-work part-time actor and full-time alcoholic Withnail Richard E. Grant, in his breakout role, who eschews Advil and instead resorts to glugs of lighter fluid to avoid alcohol withdrawal. Along with his roommate Marwood Paul McGann, Withnail escapes for the weekend from the squalor of his London flat to the inhospitable stone cottage in the Lake District belonging to lascivious Uncle Monty Richard Griffiths. Naturally, the bone-chilling English damp follows the pair. It is a rueful coda of friendship and the 1960s, a fitting parallel for post-bacchanal January lamenting the end of another year and the beginning of a new one hilarious, poignant and almost unbearably melancholy.

Withnail & I

England, 1987, 107mins

Directed by Bruce Robinson

Stars Richard E. Grant, Paul McGann, Richard Griffiths

DOORS OPEN AT 6:00PM - FILM AT 7:00PM. Licensed event.

ABOUT THE SERIES

Guest programmed and hosted by freelance culture writer and film critic Nathalie Atkinson, a columnist for The Globe and Mail, Designing the Movies explores production design, art direction, costume and set decoration as a lens for analysis.