Monday – sunny and 44°C

Tuesday – sunny and 41°C

Today – sunny and 42°C

Tomorrow – sunny and 40°C

Sounds like Death Valley, California eh, or the Sahara but nope – this would be Toronto these past few days.

H-O-T and humid.

Fourplay
This is a strange 2001 romantic comedy written; directed (and starring) Mike Binder who plays Ben, an American sitcom writer arriving in London to take up work. There he meets Allen (a mis-cast [and obviously desperate] Colin Firth), his wife Carly (Mariel Hemingway) and a French make-up artist who becomes his girlfriend, Fiona (a gorgeous Irene Jacob). The four eventually end up switching partners thanks to the conniving of Carly and Ben. It’s all very odd and the writing is reminiscent of Wood Allen on ecstasy. The characters and their motivations are all superficial and aside from watching the oh-so-beautiful Irene Jacob grace the screen (let’s see more of her please!) the film’s a disaster. Fourplay is one man’s indulgent view of relationships that’s both unbelievable and unwatchable. My rating 2 out of 10.

Cowboys & Angels
This is a good film with just enough comedy, oddness and seriousness to make you want more. Hapless civil servant, Shane (Michael Legge) and gay art student Vincent (Allen Leach) live together in wee Limerick, Ireland. Shane is a shy, geeky artist-wannabe in love with lesbian Gemma (Amy Shields). Vincent is a sensible, fashionable artist with common sense to spare. What evolves are two stories as Vincent helps Shane shed his geekiness only to see him sink into the Irish drug culture as a means to fund his own way into art school. Directed by David Gleeson, Cowboys & Angels treads these two story lines capably – giving us some stock and shock scenes sure – but endearingly so nonetheless; and both leads are great. My rating 7 out of 10.

The Perfect Assistant
Dreadful fun to watch, The Perfect Assistant is just plain awful on every level imaginable. Directed by some hapless dolt named Douglas Jackson, who should have his credentials revoked, it has uber-psychotic executive assistant Rachel Partson (Josie Davis) in uber-fascination mode with her employer David (Chris Potter). With a story rifted from Fatal Attraction, The Perfect Assistant is perfect in nothing save its brutal embarrassment for all involved: bad acting, bad script, bad direction, bad, bad, bad … in fact so bad, it is a film you’ve got to watch. My rating for the fun of all its badness, 1 out of 10.

Being scaredy-cats, we’ve been hunkering down but have continued cooking (thanks to the wonderful, decadent pleasure of air conditioning).