This Friday, Carbon Arc has its third documentary in a row, School Life, “the most adorable documentary that Frederick Wiseman never made,” about the only primary-age boarding school in Ireland.

The Canadian-Irish co-production The Breadwinner, a story of childhood set in Taliban-controlled Kabul—and a 2018 Oscar nominee for Best Animated Feature—has a couple of additional screenings at Cineplex Park Lane today (Monday) and tomorrow, and then on Wednesday at Fundy Cinema in Wolfville. On Sunday, Fundy has Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, featuring Annette Bening in “one of the juiciest roles of her career” as Hollywood legend Gloria Grahame.

The very important and surprisingly good Black Panther arrived and crushed the box office this weekend. Although I don’t typically highlight studio-tentpole films here, I do like to note when there’s particular merit to choosing the IMAX editions of such films. So it pains me a bit to say that the IMAX edition of Panther is a bit of a scam in this regard. As part of the cross-promotional deals that IMAX has signed, quite a large portion of this film (about an hour) has been “specially formatted in IMAX“—but in this case, the footage in question was shot neither with IMAX gear nor with any other larger-format cameras—”it wasn’t feasible, given the hectic post schedule and dealing with last-minute VFX shots.” So those scenes will switch to a taller aspect ratio as we’ve seen with, for example, Chris Nolan’s Dark Knight films, but the higher resolution is produced by algorithmic extrapolation rather than additional detail captured by a camera lens. Disappointing.

• In theatres, seen & recommended:
  • Phantom Thread, Paul Thomas Anderson, USA, 2017, 130 minutes [90] — Halifax showtimes
  • Call Me By Your Name, Luca Guadagnino, Italy/USA/Brazil/France, 2017, 132 minutes [93] — Halifax showtimes
  • The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro, USA, 2017, 123 minutes [86] — Halifax showtimes
• In theatres, new & notable:
  • The Post, Steven Spielberg, USA, 2017, 116 minutes [83] — Halifax showtimes
  • I, Tonya, Craig Gillespie, USA, 2017, 121 minutes [76] — Halifax showtimes
• Halifax screenings this week:
  • Monday (Feb 19) — The Breadwinner, Cineplex Park Lane, 1pm, regular pricing. Nora Twomey, Canada/Ireland/Luxembourg, 2017, 94 minutes.
  • Tuesday (Feb 20) — The Breadwinner, Cineplex Park Lane, 4:40pm, regular pricing. Nora Twomey, Canada/Ireland/Luxembourg, 2017, 94 minutes.
  • Friday (Feb 23) — School Life (aka In Loco Parentis), Carbon Arc Cinema @ the Museum of Natural History, 7pm & 9pm, $8.75. Neasa Ní Chianáin & David Rane, Ireland/Spain, 2016, 99 minutes.
• Wolfville screenings this week:
  • Wednesday (Feb 21) — The Breadwinner, Acadia Cinema’s Al Whittle Theatre (450 Main Street, Wolfville), 7pm, $9. Nora Twomey, Canada/Ireland/Luxembourg, 2017, 94 minutes.
  • Sunday (Feb 25) — Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, Acadia Cinema’s Al Whittle Theatre (450 Main Street, Wolfville), 7pm, $9. Paul McGuigan, UK/USA, 2017, 106 minutes.

Faces Places, the “unexpected—and perhaps final—gift from the visionary eighty-nine-year-old director Agnès Varda,” is the film that has given Varda a chance to claim this year’s Best Documentary Feature Oscar, just months after becoming the first female director to receive an honorary Oscar. Carbon Arc will have two Friday screenings of this gem, which I ranked #2 on my top films of 2017. That makes it the best film released in 2017 (#1 on my 2017 list, Zama, won’t be released until this April), and not just in my opinion, but by at least one measure of critical consensus.

On Saturday, Carbon Arc has a special presentation of The Stairs, “a work with deep compassion for those who’ve made their way back from the depths of addiction.” A documentary shot over several years that examines the lives of habitual drug users in Toronto’s Regent Park, it won Best Canadian Film of 2016 from the Toronto Film Critics Association. This screening features a post-film Q&A with director Hugh Gibson, hosted by Natasha Pace from Global TV and featuring Nova Scotia Chief Medical Officer Dr. Robert Strang.

Fundy Cinema in Wolfville has a great documentary pick as well this Wednesday, with the “instantly recognizable masterpiece” Dawson City: Frozen Time, a film which is partly about the discovery in the Yukon of several hundred reels of nitrate film from the 1910s and ’20s, decades after they were presumed permanently lost, but has much more to tell about those early decades of the 20th century. “You don’t just watch Dawson City,” Owen Gleiberman wrote in Variety, “You step into it to and draw back a magical curtain on the past, entering a world of buried memory that’s the precursor to our own.”

Another film from my 2017 top ten, The Florida Project, also has Wolfville screenings on Sunday.

The Canadian-Irish co-production The Breadwinner, a story of childhood set in Taliban-controlled Kabul “so urgent and far-reaching that it never settles into the comforts of a coming-of-age story“—and a 2018 Oscar nominee for Best Animated Feature—plays this Thursday at Cineplex Park Lane, as well as next Wednesday (the 21st) in Wolfville.

Tuesday the Dal Art Gallery continues its Women Filmmakers 1931-1969 series with a “witty and prescient look at early reality TV in Britain,” Simon and Laura, the Muriel Box directed film that “attempts to expose the myth of democracy that television promises.”

• In theatres, seen & recommended:
  • Phantom Thread, Paul Thomas Anderson, USA, 2017, 130 minutes [90] — Halifax showtimes
  • Call Me By Your Name, Luca Guadagnino, Italy/USA/Brazil/France, 2017, 132 minutes [93] — Halifax showtimes
  • Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig, USA, 2017, 93 minutes [94] — Halifax showtimes
  • The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro, USA, 2017, 123 minutes [86] — Halifax showtimes
• In theatres, new & notable:
  • The Post, Steven Spielberg, USA, 2017, 116 minutes [83] — Halifax showtimes
  • I, Tonya, Craig Gillespie, USA, 2017, 121 minutes [76] — Halifax showtimes
• Halifax screenings this week:
  • Tuesday (Feb 13) — Simon and Laura, Dalhousie Art Gallery, 7pm, free. Muriel Box, UK, 1955, 87 minutes.
  • Thursday (Feb 15) — The Breadwinner, Cineplex Park Lane, 5pm, regular pricing. Nora Twomey, Canada/Ireland/Luxembourg, 2017, 94 minutes.
  • Friday (Feb 16) — The Breadwinner, Cineplex Park Lane, 4:30pm, regular pricing. Nora Twomey, Canada/Ireland/Luxembourg, 2017, 94 minutes.
    — Faces Places, Carbon Arc Cinema @ the Museum of Natural History, 7pm & 9pm, $8.75. Agnes Varda & JR, France, 2017, 89 minutes.
  • Saturday (Feb 17) — The Stairs, Carbon Arc Cinema @ the Museum of Natural History, 7pm & 9pm, $8.75. Hugh Gibson, Canada, 2016, 95 minutes.
    — The Breadwinner, Cineplex Park Lane, 7:30pm, regular pricing. Nora Twomey, Canada/Ireland/Luxembourg, 2017, 94 minutes.
  • Sunday (Feb 18) — The Breadwinner, Cineplex Park Lane, 4:10pm, regular pricing. Nora Twomey, Canada/Ireland/Luxembourg, 2017, 94 minutes.
• Wolfville screenings this week:
  • Wednesday (Feb 14) — Dawson City: Frozen Time, Acadia Cinema’s Al Whittle Theatre (450 Main Street, Wolfville), 7pm, $9. Bill Morrison, USA, 2016, 120 minutes.
  • Sunday (Feb 18) — The Florida Project, Acadia Cinema’s Al Whittle Theatre (450 Main Street, Wolfville), 7pm, $9. Sean Baker, USA, 2017, 115 minutes.

Carbon Arc programs its first feature-length film of its winter-spring season this Friday with the African sensation Fèlicité, Senegal’s nominee for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Feature, and winner of the Berlinale’s Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize, best film at FESPACO 2017 (Africa’s biggest film festival), and six Africa Movie Academy Awards (a new record). Alain Gomis’ cinematic style is “spectacularly multifaceted” (says the New York Times), and its title character’s arc shows a sophisticated understanding of female strength (says TIFF programmer extraordinaire Kiva Reardon).

I haven’t noted any Wolfville screenings for a while, but it is worth singling out this Sunday’s Fundy Cinema screenings of The Other Side of Hope, one of the best reviewed films of 2017, and one that seems to have broadened the appeal of the standout Finnish film director Aki Kaurismäki, a man who in the ongoing crisis of global migration seems to have found his moment. Before that, on Wednesday, Fundy has the Cannes Palme D’Or winner (and a good shout to pick up the Foreign Language Oscar), The Square.

Cineplex’s annual Flashback Film Fest continues through Thursday with more films than I can list here—I’ve included a handful below (nighthawk action fans who haven’t yet checked out the 3D conversion of Terminator 2: Judgment Day—”entirely supervised, frame-by-frame, by [James] Cameron” should definitely consider Tuesday’s late screening). My highest recommendations this week for your trip to the multiplex continue to be Oscar nominees Phantom Thread and Call Me by Your Name.

There is a good crop of free screenings again this week:

• Monday, the successful doc Blackfish, which tells the story of Tilikum, an orca held by SeaWorld, and the controversy over captive killer whales, wraps up a three-part film series with expert-led panel discussions called “Pushing Boundaries: What We Owe Other Animals,” organized by Novel Tech Ethics at the Central Library.
• Yesterday (February 4) was the 100th anniversary of the birth of actress, singer, director, and producer Ida Lupino, and Tuesday the Dal Art Gallery continues its Women Filmmakers 1931-1969 series with The Young Lovers (Never Fear), a “striking social-issue film” in which her directing style brings out “an unusually physical, tactile quality to the way the film’s characters relate to one another.”
• Saturday, the North Memorial Library continues its African History Month screenings with Ava DuVernay’s wide-ranging doc 13th, while the Central Library joins the month’s observance with the well-regarded 2017 film Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary.
• In theatres, seen & recommended:
  • Phantom Thread, Paul Thomas Anderson, USA, 2017, 130 minutes [90] — Halifax showtimes
  • Call Me By Your Name, Luca Guadagnino, Italy/USA/Brazil/France, 2017, 132 minutes [93] — Halifax showtimes
  • Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig, USA, 2017, 93 minutes [94] — Halifax showtimes
  • The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro, USA, 2017, 123 minutes [86] — Halifax showtimes
• In theatres, new & notable:
  • The Post, Steven Spielberg, USA, 2017, 116 minutes [83] — Halifax showtimes
  • I, Tonya, Craig Gillespie, USA, 2017, 121 minutes [76] — Halifax showtimes
• Halifax screenings this week:
  • Monday (Feb 5) — Blackfish, Central Library, 6pm, free. Gabriela Cowperthwaite, USA, 2013, 83 minutes.
  • Tuesday (Feb 6) — The Big Lebowski, Cineplex Park Lane, 3:15pm, $8.99. Joel & Ethan Coen, USA, 1998, 117 minutes.
    — Raising Arizona, Cineplex Park Lane, 5:45pm, $8.99. Joel & Ethan Coen, USA, 1987, 94 minutes.
    — The Young Lovers (Never Fear), Dalhousie Art Gallery, 7pm, free. Ida Lupino, USA, 1949, 82 minutes.
    — The Terminator, Cineplex Park Lane, 8pm, $8.99. James Cameron, USA, 1984, 107 minutes.
    — Terminator 2: Judgment Day 3D, Cineplex Park Lane, 10:20pm, $8.99. James Cameron, USA, 1991, 137 minutes
  • Wednesday (Feb 7) — Drunken Master, Cineplex Park Lane, 5:30pm, $8.99. Yuen Woo-ping, Hong Kong, 1978, 110 minutes.
    — Dune, Cineplex Park Lane, 10:20pm, $8.99. David Lynch, USA, 1984, 136 minutes.
  • Thursday (Feb 8) — The Iron Giant, Cineplex Park Lane, 5:50pm, $8.99. Brad Bird, USA, 1999, 87 minutes.
  • Friday (Feb 9) — Félicité, Carbon Arc Cinema @ the Museum of Natural History, 7pm, $8.75. Alain Gomis, France/Senegal, 2017, 123 minutes.
  • Saturday (Feb 10) — 13th, North Memorial Library, 1:30pm, free. Ava DuVernay, USA, 2016, 100 minutes.
    — Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary, Central Library, 2pm, free. John Scheinfeld, USA, 2016, 99 minutes.
• Wolfville screenings this week:
  • Wednesday (Feb 7) — The Square, Acadia Cinema’s Al Whittle Theatre (450 Main Street, Wolfville), 7pm, $9. Ruben Östlund, Sweden/Germany/France/Denmark, 2017, 142 minutes.
  • Sunday (Feb 11) — The Other Side of Hope, Acadia Cinema’s Al Whittle Theatre (450 Main Street, Wolfville), 7pm, $9. Aki Kaurismäki, Finland/Germany, 2017, 98 minutes.