Revue Cinema's reprieve welcome

Toronto’s oldest operating movie theatre carries on neighbourhood legacy of community

- EDWARD KEENAN

Every time my kids and I go by the Revue Cinema on Roncesvalles — fairly often since it’s located within the Greater High Park Area nearish to where we live — we stop to look at the upcoming programming: Drunken Cinema nights, Anime Days, 35 MM prints of Tim Burton’s “Batman” or Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing,” singalong candidates like “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Hairspray,” “Cereal Cartoon Parties” and Date Night flicks, plus lots of schlockey horror.

It always sounds like fun. And leads to good talk. Conversation about what we’d like to see, about the traditional role of repertory cinemas and how they evolved through the home video age and now into the streaming era; how such once-common palaces of film have become endangered species.

It always leads to a note of gratitude that the Revue — Toronto’s oldest operating movie theatre — is still around, still showing movies on a big screen, carrying on a neighbourhood legacy it has carried since the silent film era.