Festivals: Calgary Underground
Calgary Underground 2025 Review: BROKEN BIRD, A Beautiful And Muddled Provocation
We meet Sybil confidently applying for a new job as undertaker’s assistant with the sharpest of black bangs, and a fashion sense that is both vintage and arthouse-modern. She is a seasoned pro with several references, and a balm for...
Calgary Underground 2025 Review: TWO WOMEN, A Modern Remake of Quebec Sex Comedy
A tiny camera move during a scene at a Montreal Canadiens hockey game demonstrates what good direction can do: the storytelling happens via the camera itself, revealing the gag (which I will not) and surprising the audience with something possible...
Calgary Underground 2025 Review: EEPHUS, Where Baseball Contains Multitudes
Eephus, Carson Lund’s wonderful ode to small stakes baseball and gruff Americana, needs its odd title explained: The Eephus pitch is a throw that is so unnaturally slow that it confuses the batter. It makes him swing too early, or...
Calgary Underground 2025 Review: REVERIES: THE MIND PRISON, One Story Ends, Another Story Must Begin
You know that dream where you are running, to nowhere in particular, for no reason, and you trip, fall, and wake up? Reveries: The Mind Prison is the movie version of that dream. Only here, you are walking, and thus...
Calgary Underground 2025: Curtain Raiser
Part fan-festival, with quietly subversive programming, and a gateway to oddness and offbeat cinema for Canada’s mid-west, the Calgary Underground Film Festival (CUFF) showcases a sampler of the highlights of indie, documentary and genre cinema from the festival circuit that...
Calgary Underground Film Festival Announces 22nd Edition Lineup and Events!
Like Calgary in April, you never quite know what you are going to get at the Calgary Underground Film Festival (CUFF). It could be sunny T-shirt weather one day, and a punishing snow storm the next, the Northern Lights peeking...
Friday One Sheet: Calgary Underground 2025
"Lowbrow maximalist illustrations brimming with thoughtful puns, juicy buns, and innuendo." This is how illustrator Hamburger Hands (aka Kyle Schneider) describes his work, here for the 22nd Calgary Underground Film Festival, and its key art. It is an ode to Underground Comix...
Friday One Sheet: IN A VIOLENT NATURE
This gritty poster for Chris Nash's original and disturbing slasher film was designed by The Boland Design Company, and unironically features the word "gnarly" in the top pull quote. When designing a poster for a slasher (or for that matter,...
Calgary Underground 2024 Review: CUCKOO, Delightfully Analog Sensory Overload
Two characters, having barely survived a traumatic and violent ordeal at a hospital, try to leave, only to find the doors locked. But wait, it is one of those situations where one door is locked but the other one works...
Friday One Sheet: THE LAST STOP IN YUMA COUNTY
This cream-coloured, coffee focused, exercise in minimalism and symbolism is for the tight, one location 'bag of money' suspense thriller The Last Stop in Yuma County. I have no idea why, but i wish more designers would put the title...
Calgary Underground 2024 Review: HUMANE, The Family That Slays Together Stays Together
Apocalypses in Canadian cinema tend to occur in slow motion, and have a subversive touch of quiet absurdity. The two undisputed classics of the genre are Don McKellar’s Last Night, and Bruce McDonald’s Pontypool. Caitlin Cronenberg aims for that lofty...
Calgary Underground 2024: Curtain Raiser
The Calgary Underground Film Festival (CUFF) opens its 21st edition today, and runs until April 28th. Western Canada's largest showcase of genre film, offbeat documentaries, and industry events is housed in the two-screen (stacked on top of one another) Globe Cinema in the...
(Good) Friday One Sheet: HUMANE
Curious timing on the Christian calendar for today’s column. We are not at the resurrection yet on Good Friday, only the sacrifice, and the death-heavy poster for Humane shows that. Perfect ordered body bags, in an neutral grey setting, suggest...
Calgary Underground Film Festival: Films and Events Announced
The Calgary Underground Film Festival (CUFF) is Western Canada’s largest genre film festival which showcases everything from horror and sci-fi to indie comedies and music and fan docs. The 21st Edition of CUFF runs from April 18-28 and will open...
SATAN WANTS YOU Interview: Sean Horlor and Steve J. Adams Talk Moral Panics
Moral panics have been with us as a species since time immemorial. From the persecution of European pagans at the end of the Roman empire in the Fourth Century, to the Salem witch trials in New England in the 17th...
Calgary Underground 2023 Review: CASH COW, Educational Deadpan with a Dash of Self Absorption
Is there such a thing as charming narcissism? Inclusive self-absorption? Apparently, yes, it can be a thing. Matt Barats’ one-man-show pandemic documentary, where he draws parallels between his situation to the prophet of Mormonism, is a black swan. The film...
Calgary Underground 2023 Review: DAD & STEP-DAD Barbeques The Male Ego To A Crisp
Not since wandering into Kevin Smith’s Clerks in an Oshawa multiplex in 1994 have I immediately glommed on to a micro-budget comedy as something that can be watched over and over again. Tynan DeLong’s Dad & Step-Dad is a small,...
Calgary Underground 2023: BLACKBERRY Review
In the wild west days of nascent “smart phone” technology, the phrase convergence was tossed around a lot, where your computer, your phone and your personal digital assistant, would merge into one device. A small company, whose building was located...
Calgary Underground 2023: MISTER ORGAN Review
David Farrier does not like bullies. He cannot abide liars. And I dare guess that he is not a fan of litigious revenge either. The New Zealand journalist turned filmmaker has a particular knack for sussing out the strange people...
Calgary Underground 2023: ONYX THE FORTUITOUS AND THE TALISMAN OF SOULS Review
There are many flavours of hubris. An over inflated or confident self image we attempt to project out to the world. What we think we know or what we think we deserve deserve. The faith we place in our idols,...
