Spinning Reels

Join us on Monday, October 28th for Official Secrets, an American-British docudrama film based on world-shaking true events.

She risked everything to stop an unjust war. Her government called her a traitor. This is the gripping story of Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley), a British intelligence specialist whose job involves routine handling of classified information. One day in 2003, in the lead up to the Iraq War, Gun receives a memo from the NSA with a shocking directive: the United States is enlisting Britain’s help in collecting compromising information on United Nations Security Council members in order to blackmail them into voting in favor of an invasion of Iraq. Unable to stand by and watch the world be rushed into an illegal war, Gun makes the gut-wrenching decision to defy her government and leak the memo to the press. So begins an explosive chain of events that will ignite an international firestorm, expose a vast political conspiracy, and put Gun and her family directly in harm’s way.

“The end result is a professionally made film that is whistle-blowingly relevant, starring an excellent actress who successfully comes in from her Pride & Prejudice past.”
Brad Wheeler, The Globe and Mail

112 minutes

Join us on Monday, October 7th at 7:00 p.m. at the Norwood Theatre for Sometimes, Always, Never. This British comedy-drama stars Bill Nighy, a Spinning Reels favourite.

Alan (Nighy) has spent years searching tirelessly for his missing son Michael who stormed out over a game of Scrabble. With a body to identify and his family torn apart, Alan must repair the relationship with his youngest son Peter (Sam Riley) and solve the mystery of an online player who he thinks could be Michael, so he can finally move on and reunite his family.

Here’s what some of the critics had to say:

Director Carl Hunter deploys a vivid visual style and striking production design to capture the shifting moods of a family who know plenty of words but struggle to communicate.

Screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce, who adapted the film from his own short story, has crafted a joy of a script, which seeds its themes as elegantly as Nighy’s character, a Scrabble-obsessed tailor, wears his suits.

91 minutes

Tickets now available. See right column for details.

Would you like to sponsor one of our films? Find out more by clicking on Sponsors at the top of the page:)

Monday September 23rd at 7:00 pm at the Norwood Theatre, sponsored by Bigwin Realty Inc.

Tel Aviv on Fire is a 2018 Israeli comedy-drama satire film, written and directed by Sameh Zoabi. The film premiered internationally at the 75th Venice International Film Festival where Kais Nashef won the Best Actor award. It also has also received Best Film and Best Screenplay awards.

This is the story of Salam, a charming 30-year-old Palestinian living in Jerusalem, who works as a trainee on the Palestinian popular soap opera “Tel Aviv on Fire.” The show is produced in Ramallah so every day, to reach the TV studios, Salam has to go through a rather difficult Israeli checkpoint. There he meets the commander of the checkpoint, Assi, whose wife is a big fan of the soap opera. In order to please him, Assi puts pressure on Salam to change the end of the show. Salam quickly realizes that Assi’s ideas could be promoted to him as a screenwriter. Salam’s creative career is suddenly boiling, until Assi and the soap opera producers and financiers disagree on how it should end. Stuck between an army colonel and Arab support, Salam can solve his problems with a final master stroke.

“Thoughtful and well-acted, Tel Aviv on Fire highlights the awful absurdity of war — and proves it’s possible to find humor in the midst of cultural conflict.” Rotten Tomatoes

Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love

A story of enduring love between Leonard Cohen and his Norwegian muse, Marianne Ihlen. Filmmaker Nick Broomfield chronicles their relationship, from the early days in Greece to how their love evolved when Leonard became a successful musician.

Their love affair began on the Greek island of Hydra in 1960. Through never-before-seen archival footage and interviews with their friends and former colleagues, a portrait emerges of the woman behind the lyrics and the long-lasting influence she had on Cohen.

Broomfield himself was inspired by Ihlen. After a brief romantic dalliance with Broomfield in 1968, she encouraged him to make his first film. They remained friends until her death in 2016, three months prior to Cohen’s death. Much of Ihlen and Cohen’s story is made up of the time they spent apart, though Cohen continued to write to her after leaving Hydra to pursue his music career. “I was always escaping. I was always trying to get away,” Cohen expressed in an interview. The interviews in Words of Love are a tell-all of Cohen’s concerts and conquests, revealing the women in his life to be the source of many
of his songs.

But Ihlen was his longest-lasting influence. Famously, he wrote to her not long before her death: “Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine.” Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love is a remarkable and rare portrait of a love that lasted a lifetime, from its intoxicating beginning to its poetic end. While the proof of it will live on in Cohen’s songs, this documentary captures the time, place, and circumstance that ignited the heart of a soulful singer-songwriter.

97 minutes

Spinning Reels will return in September with exciting new movies from the Film Circuit. In the meantime, the Norwood will be providing plenty of entertainment all summer long. You can check back here in August to see which film we will open with on Monday, Sept. 9th. The SR team wishes everyone a safe and happy summer!

An all-star cast headlines this historical drama from Kenneth Branagh, including Judi Dench and Ian McKellen.
The year is 1613 and William Shakespeare is acknowledged as the greatest writer of the age. But disaster strikes when his renowned Globe Theatre burns to the ground, and devastated, Shakespeare returns to Stratford, where he must face a troubled past and a neglected family. Haunted by the death of his only son Hamnet, he struggles to mend the broken relationships with his wife and daughters. In so doing, he is ruthlessly forced to examine his own failings as husband and father. His very personal search for the truth uncovers secrets and lies within a family at war.

“The tale of an artist coming to terms with his failings amidst a sea of success, All Is True is satisfying from start to finish. It’s the kind of comforting, intelligent cinema that makes you want to cozy up with a warm cup of tea.” Tiff

101 minutes

A group of 40-something guys, all on the verge of a mid-life crisis, decide to form their local pool’s first ever synchronized swimming team – for men. Braving the skepticism and ridicule of those around them, and trained by a fallen champion trying to pull herself together, the group set out an unlikely adventure, and on the way will rediscover a little self-esteem and a lot about themselves and each other.

Gilles Lellouche’s Le Grand Bain is a hilarious and touching tale about a group of people
finding purpose when all looks to be lost. The balance of humour, drama, and spectacle (the climax is set at a tense world championship) is deftly handled, and the cast is superb. The film, which was nominated for 10 Césars — France’s equivalent of the Oscars — just might have you ready to dive into the water yourself.
Get those swim goggles ready. ~Tiff

“Not quite The Full Monty, but Sink or Swim is no half-baked premise either.”
James Croot, Screen International

122 minutes

Don McKellar and his marquee cast, featuring Graham Greene and Tantoo Cardinal, explore the agony of Canada’s missing and murdered Indigenous women through the story of one family, whose chilling loss forces the survivors to venture into uncomfortable worlds.

The disappearance of a young Cree woman named Suzanne Bird triggers events in two worlds: the remote Northern Ontario town she fled years ago, and the big city where she became a successful model. Up north, her uncle Will (Brandon Oakes) clashes with a local drug dealer who’s looking for Suzanne, and believes Will knows her whereabouts. Meanwhile, her fiercely independent twin sister, Annie (Tanaya Beatty), travels to Toronto to retrace her sibling’s footsteps… and finds herself drawn into the seductively glamorous life Suzanne left behind.

Through Black Spruce is an adaptation of Joseph Boyden’s 2008 Giller Prize winning novel and the film won the 2019 Canadian Screen Award for Best Original Score.

111 minutes

Don McKellar and his marquee cast, featuring Graham Greene and Tantoo Cardinal, explore the agony of Canada’s missing and murdered Indigenous women through the story of one family, whose chilling loss forces the survivors to venture into uncomfortable worlds.

With democracies facing assault around the world from far-right demagogues and foreign meddling, Astra Taylor’s expansive and often chilling What is Democracy? could not have come at a better time. Peppered with observations from Plato, the film casts a wide net, ranging effortlessly through subjects as diverse as ancient Greece, the 1960s civil rights movements, and recent false claims about voter fraud.

The film features a diverse cast—including celebrated philosophers, trauma surgeons, factory workers, refugees, and politicians— and connects past and present, emotion and the intellect, the personal and the political, to provoke and inspire. If we want to live in democracy, we must first ask what the word even means.

“The rousing documentary What is Democracy? asks all the right questions.”
Globe & Mail

“A new film offers a multitude of answers to the question What Is Democracy?”
The New Yorker

107 minutes

Capernaum (“Chaos”) tells the story of Zain (Zain al-Rafeea), a Lebanese boy who sues his parents for the “crime” of giving him life. The film follows Zain as he journeys from gutsy, streetwise child to hardened 12-year-old “adult” fleeing his negligent parents and surviving through his wits on the streets. He meets an Ethiopian migrant worker Rahil, who provides him with shelter and food, and Zain takes care of her baby in return. When he gets jailed for committing a violent crime, Zain finally seeks justice in a court of law.

Capernaum was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
and the film won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Click on image to view the Official Trailer

“The sorrow inherent in this tale would be unbearable without the film’s flashes of humor and performances by a cast of nonprofessionals that are moving beyond measure.”

Peter Travers,  Rolling Stone

120 minutes