Spinning Reels invites you to come and meet the ‘The Boys’

THE BOYS. Bracebridge’s Norwood Theatre is showing The Boys Are Back, a film by director Scott Hicks. Clive Owen stars in a tale of a single man trying to raise his sons who comes up with a simple rule: the answer is always ‘yes.’ The film is being shown Jan 25. Submitted photo

BRACEBRIDGE — Step in from the cold and warm yourself with the poignant fatherhood tale The Boys Are Back, screening for one night only at Bracebridge’s Norwood Theatre on Jan. 25.

Fresh from the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival, The Boys Are Back marks the return of director Scott Hicks following his Academy Award-winning Shine. Based on the memoir by Simon Carr, The Boys Are Back stars Clive Owen (Children of Men, Elizabeth: The Golden Age) as Joe Warr, a roguish sportswriter living in Australia who unexpectedly becomes a single parent.

After his wife’s sudden death, Joe finds himself responsible for raising Artie (Nicholas McAnulty) and Harry (George MacKay), his sons from different marriages. Both boys desperately need their father.

Artie struggles to cope with the loss of his mother, while Harry, who’s visiting from England, yearns to understand why his dad left him and his mother in London. Joe devises a Peter Pan-like strategy of no rules whatsoever, only to find he has a lot to learn about fatherhood and about himself.

Spinning Reels is a Bracebridge-based non-profit organization affiliated with the Film Circuit, a division of The Toronto International Film Festival dedicated to bringing alternative films to smaller communities across Canada and around the world. Spinning Reels movies screen on the second and fourth Monday of the month from September to May, with some exceptions.

The group’s next film is the Darwin tale Creation, starring Clive Owen, Feb. 8.

Spinning Reels tickets are $7 and can be purchased at the door, in advance at Readers’ World, or reserved at spinningreelsbb@gmail.com.