Toronto Top 5 (Week of 1/11/13-1/17/13)

Toronto is a vibrant city for cinema, and as such there’s always lots to see. These weekly posts will cut through the mainstream releases to highlight the Top 5 cinematic events to check out each week.

1. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (TIFF Lightbox)

Considered one of the best silent films (and one of the best films, period), F.W. Murnau’s classic romance is as stylistically innovative as it is emotionally compelling, a mixture of German Expressionism, French Impressionism and American storytelling that showcases the cinematic potential of silent film art. Sunrise is essentially a semi-tragedy of remarriage, about the The Man’s slippery descent into insanity under the bewitching spells of an evil siren who almost convinces him to kill his Wife. This is a must-see classic playing at the Lightbox this week, as part of its Hollywood Classics programming. (Tues January 15 at 6:30 p.m.)

2. Hiroshima mon amour (TIFF Lightbox)

One of the watershed moments of the bubbling French New Wave movement in the late 1950s was—well yes, certainly, the famous screening of Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows—but just as importantly, Alain Resnais’ compelling and experimental Hiroshima mon amour. Taking its emotional cues from the trauma of the eponymous bombing, the film juxtaposes the historical event with the characters’ painful memories of lost love. Resnais disrupts the flow of linear time to underscore the film’s thematic preoccupation of memory in ways unparalleled for its time and marking its rightly status as a classic. Do not miss this special 35mm screening—part of the A Man and a Woman: Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva series. (Sat January 12 at 4:45 p.m.)

3. Up The River/Steamboat Round The Bend (The Carlton Cinema)

The Toronto Film Society starts off the new year with two classic John Ford gems. Up The River is a Pre-Code comedy featuring Spencer Tracy and Humphrey Bogart in their debut film roles (!) about two convicts who help a fellow criminal nab his dream girl—who just so happens to be an inmate in a woman’s prison. Steamboat is also a comedy starring Will Rogers and Anne Shirley, and follows a con man who enters a steamboat competition and tries to help his nephew escape wrongful conviction of a murder. If you’re not a TFS member, you can still attend by purchasing a $15 trial membership at the door. (Mon January 14 at 7:30 p.m.)

4. The Looking Glass War (TIFF Lightbox)

If 2011’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy gave you a hankering for the British espionage works of one mighty John le Carré, the 1969 film adaptation of Carré’s The Looking-Glass War will definitely be up your proverbial wheelhouse. The film concerns a British spy mission in East Germany. Who else to help British intelligence operatives cross the dangerous border into East Germany but a young Anthony Hopkins (in one of his first roles and playing the British agent Avery)? The screening of this much-neglected classic is part of TIFF’s Beyond Bond: The Other Secret Agents series. (Tues January 15 at 9 p.m.)

5. Searching for Sugarman (The Regent)

The abundance of documentaries and biopics about rock legends released since the genre’s own creation has made it difficult to break new ground. Yet this discounts the conclusive fact that many more music legends are out there waiting to be documented, whose fan base are simply located elsewhere in the world. One illustrative example is South Africa’s devotion to Rodriguez, a ‘70s rock star who never made it and disappeared mysteriously after his record failed to make waves in the States. Searching for Sugarman follows two South African fans as they attempt to track down the elusive Rodriguez. (Fri-Wed, January 11-16)