Spinning Reels

The Relationship between Nature and humans is ‘animated’

In The Red Turtle, award–winning Dutch animator Michaël Dudok de Wit has made his first feature-length film, a tale told with a classic simplicity that belies its emotional power.

Shipwrecked on a deserted island, a lone man struggles to find his place in this new world. The basics for survival are abundant yet frustratingly out of reach, and danger lurks in the smallest of crevices; every isolated grotto is also a potential grave. The man cleverly uses the forest’s resources to support his raft-making efforts, but his every escape attempt is thwarted by an enormous sea turtle that seems intent on having him stay. Enraged, he attacks the turtle, intent on killing it. What happens next is the beginning of a new chapter in the man’s life, one that will instruct him in the ways of companionship and lead him to understand that nature must take its course.

80 minutes

For more about tonight’s movie, click on the image.

Many THANKS to this Movie’s Sponsor:

  Catherine Nasmith Architect is a sole proprietorship specializing in heritage rehabilitation, planning, advocacy and research. She also enjoys working with clients on private residences and other small scale projects. Catherine works from offices in Toronto and Muskoka.

For more info click on Catherine’s logo

A Search for Understanding

As our movie opens, we see a young black boy running, and he’s running for his life. Moonlight  is an exceptional film based on the play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue and is likely one of the best films you will see not just this year but any year.

Following the development of young Chiron from a boy to a man in the drug- and violence- riddled streets of Miami Beach, we see a movie that deals beautifully not only with characters but also the big issues of life like family, responsibility, sexuality, and the politics of power. There are no clichés or stereotypes here though, simply raw truth told in a moving, emotional and incredibly well-acted way.

Moonlight was been nominated for seven Oscars, winning three, including Best Picture.

110 minutes

Click on the photo for more about Moonlight

Our THANKS to this movie’s sponsor:

Toll Free: 1-888-742-6742 Phone: 1-705-763177 shamrock@shamrocklodge.com www.shamrocklodge.com P.O. Box 160, 1090 Shamrock Rd. Port Carling, ON P0B 1J0

A search for humanity?

Spinning Reels presents the latest epic from Inuk filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk: Maliglutit (Searchers)

Inspired by the classic John Ford western The Searchers, in which a vengeful husband sets off in pursuit of the men who kidnapped his wife, Maliglutit sticks closely to the basic scenario of the Ford original — wherein a white girl is abducted by members of the Comanche nation, sparking a seven-year search by her obsessed uncle — but this is a film that is very different in tone and feel. During the arduous journey across the tundra, Kunuk slowly transforms his theme from justified retribution to self-examination, as the film questions whether these hunters, ostensibly the heroes, have begun to act like those who have violated their family.

94 minutes

Click on the photo for more about Maliglutit

Our THANKS to this movie’s sponsor:

Carol Howrucha 

You Can’t Handle the Truth!

Academy Award winner Rachel Weisz (Youth, The Lobster), Timothy Spall (Mr. Turner, The King’s Speech), and Tom Wilkinson (Belle, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) star in this riveting courtroom drama about a real-life legal battle that cut to the heart of the 20th century: the showdown between historian Deborah Lipstadt and notorious Holocaust denier David Irving. This film is an absorbing account of a woman’s fight for the truth.

David Irving (Spall), once a well-regarded military historian, courted controversy when he began citing the pseudoscientific Leuchter report as proof that the Holocaust was a hoax. Lipstadt (Weisz) explicitly labelled him a denier in her 1993 book Denying the Holocaust, leading him to sue her for libel. However, because the burden of proof in British libel law lies with the accused rather than with the accuser, it bizarrely fell to Lipstadt and her legal team to demonstrate that one of the defining events of the century did actually happen.

Weisz brings a ferocious tenacity to her portrayal of Lipstadt, while Spall epitomizes the banality of evil, playing an iconoclast goaded by newfound media attention. Sound familiar? Denial is an especially timely and gripping reminder that history should never be taken for granted.

110 minutes

Many THANKS to this movie’s sponsor

Dr. Stuart Robson, Dentist

Committed to Dental Excellence

149 Manitoba Street, Bracebridge

(705) 645-4151

The Eagle Huntress is a visually stunning documentary that follows Aisholpan Nurgaiv, a 13-year-old girl who becomes the first female in twelve generations of her Kazakh family to become an eagle hunter, and rises to the pinnacle of a longstanding patrilineal tradition. Perched precariously on the side of a mountain, with a gigantic mother eagle circling overhead, the brave girl perseveres in the face of danger and manages to capture her own baby eagle. And this is only the beginning of her adventure: under her father’s tutelage, she remains tenaciously committed to the intense training necessary to her eaglet’s development.

Aisholpan’s natural gifts for understanding and communication allow her to form a lasting bond with the bird, and with her parents’support, she becomes the first girl ever to take part in the Golden Eagle Festival, competing against 70 seasoned eagle hunters. But it is only after, when she goes on a hunt, that Aisholpan will seek her true rite of passage as an eagle huntress.

For more information on The Eagle Huntress click on the photo.

87 minutes

Thank you to this movie’s sponsor

SABR

support for administration, bookkeeping, recordkeeping

Thanks for supporting Muskoka’s Movie culture!

Who and what forms us in our lives?

Spinning Reels examined an aspect of that question when we screen Little Men, a story of two boys who meet during their formative years. The two boys are quite different when they are thrown together: Jake is a quite, introspective artistic child, while Tony epitomizes the slick, fast-talking, charismatic New York kid of stereotype. The boys become fast friends until their parents have a falling out over a piece of shared real estate.

With stunning photography of New York as backdrop, this is a sensitive, engaging, nuanced look at society and how we all interrelate-both the good and the bad- through the metaphor of the two boys and their parents.
85 minutes

Many THANKS to this movie’s sponsor

Roy De Haan Carpentry

705.644.2031 roy.dehaan5@hotmail.com 

Our Fall Line-up

Life is a Song!

It’s always hard to start over, and for youngsters it’s even harder when they are ‘coming of age’. What would you do if  you were forced to change schools and leave all your friends behind- why, start a band of course! This is a movie that offers a look into the process of moving music from the  creator’s heart to the public’s ears all the while capturing the energy and enthusiasm of youth, a love story, and all backed by a great soundtrack.

106 minutes

Many THANKS to this movie’s sponsor

Hutchinson Environmental Sciences

specializes in aquatic and environmental science, technical facilitation and peer review services. They provide consulting services to government, industry, and non-governmental organizations across Canada.

Bracebridge Office

3-1 Taylor Road
Bracebridge ON, P1L 1S6
(705) 645-0021
bracebridge@environmentalsciences.ca

The More Things Change….

Love & Friendship

Love & Friendship revolves around the beautiful and cunning Lady Susan Vernon(Kate Beckinsale), a recent widow who engineers all manner of wonderfully devious plots to bend the world to her will and land herself a wealthy new husband. Taking up residence at Churchill, her in-laws’ estate, she sets her sights on the dashing Reginald De Courcy, and soon has him wrapped around her little finger. However, her plans are derailed when her beautiful daughter Frederica turns up at  after being dismissed from boarding school. Fearing that Frederica will turn Reginald’s head, Lady Susan sets out to obtain her daughter a suitor of her own. Brilliantly played by Beckinsale, Lady Susan possesses a confidence, audacity, and unapologetic dishonesty (“Facts are horrid things,” she laments after being caught in a lie) that paradoxically endow her with a winning charm, and make her an Austen heroine to rival Elizabeth Bennett and Emma Woodhouse.

92 minutes;   click on photo for more about the movie

HUGE Thanks to our movie sponsor

Muskoka Arts and Crafts

Muskoka Arts & Crafts is the true heart of visual arts in the province’s favourite vacation area. One of Ontario’s oldest and most well established arts organizations, MAC has grown since its inception in 1963 to include nearly 400 artists and arts supporters, and has become an innovative force in the community at large. For artists, it is one of the benefits of living in Muskoka, a source of support through like-minded people that fosters creative growth and a feeling of community. In turn, the promotion of the arts has made Muskoka a vibrant and culturally engaged destination for visitors, local residents and summer residents alike. Muskoka Arts & Crafts is a non-profit organization that is financially self-supporting.

Its annual Christmas, Spring Members’ and Who Art Thou events feature the work of its many members, and the Chapel Gallery in Bracebridge, Muskoka Arts & Crafts’ home, hosts an ongoing cycle of juried exhibitions by local and visiting artists. The Summer Show, a feature in the community for 47 years, attracts hundreds of artists from across the country, and is visited each year by over 20,000 people. In April of 2008, an initiative launched by Muskoka Arts & Crafts culminated in the Muskoka District Council declaring the District Municipality of Muskoka as a Designated Arts Community, a testament to the vitality of the area’s arts scene and its potential as a fundamental building block for year-round art tourism in Muskoka. MAC also produce the annual Muskoka Arts & Crafts’ Guidebook, a beautiful full colour publication that will be the definitive guide to visual arts in the area.

How DO you understand genius?

Colin Firth and Jude Law star in “Genius”

Genius takes a journey back in time to the vital New York literary scene of the Roaring Twenties and stars Colin Firth (The King’s Speech, The Railway Man) as Max Perkins, the legendary literary editor who discovered such magnificent talents as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The movie follows the burgeoning friendship of Perkins and Thomas Wolfe (Jude Law) as they work to prepare the manuscript for Look Homeward Angel.

104 min

Click on the photo for more….

Many THANKS to this movie’s sponsor: 

229 Manitoba Street

Bracebridge, ON

P1L 1S2

705.645.5471 

“There are lovely things in the world; Lovely that do not endure … and all the lovelier for it.”

Chronicling the joys and sorrows of Chris Guthrie (Agyness Deyn), the daughter of a farming family in northeast Scotland, Sunset Song is an exquisitely shot meditation on a way of life that has disappeared into the mists of the past. Scratching a livelihood out of the harsh terrain, the Guthrie family cowers in obedient fear of its patriarch, a man prone to sudden and ferocious bursts of anger. Along with her brother Will, the beautiful and intelligent Chris dreams of freedom and escape.

Applying a lyrical “memory realism” style to the simultaneously stunning and forbidding rural landscape, Sunset Song makes every scene like something out of an Old Masters canvas.

Many THANKS to this movie’s sponsor:

(705) 765-0340