Festivals: Toronto Film Festival
Friday One Sheet: HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE
Let there be no criticism of clarity on the key art for Daniel Goldhaber's eco-thriller, How To Blow Up A Pipeline. Large fire-engine red stencil letters, overlaid onto black smoke, foreground the title of the film that tells any prospective...
Friday One Sheet: MANTICORE
The manticore is a creature from Persian mythology with the head of a lion and the tail of a scorpion. It is capable of shooting poisonous spines at its enemies and prey. I like this minimalist and old school poster...
Friday One Sheet: CORSAGE
Due to the hubbub of TIFF last week, this one slipped under the radar, so I am circling back around to it now. Marie Kreutzer's fictional account of the 40th birthday of Empress Elisabeth of Austria grapples with notions of...
Toronto 2022 Review: DE HUMANI CORPORIS FABRICA
Hospitals are places of miracles and horrors. They are also places of office politics, temporary domestic spaces, and a kind of body-repair shop. The reason why there are so many television medical dramas, is that everything about these places is...
Toronto 2022 Review: MANTICORE, The Brutality of Aching Loneliness
Spanish filmmaker Carlos Vermut (Magical Girl, Quien Te Cantara) has never been one to shy away from difficult subjects or characters, whether it be cruel kidnappings or heartbreaking suicides, his methodical and considerate touch gives more insight and power to...
Toronto 2022 Review: VENUS, Balagueró's Latest Keeps the Blood and Cosmic Action Coming
Don't you hate it when you're trying to pull off the perfect crime under the noses of a local drug lord and you end up having to confront supernatural forces bent on subjugating the earth instead, all the while trying...
Toronto 2022 Review: UNREST, A Most Unconventional Biopic
A man with one watch always knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure. Cyril Schäublin’s deep dive into nineteenth century Swiss watchmaking, the business and the labour, alongside the nascent political movement that was...
Toronto 2022 Review: VIKING, Mars In Absurdia
If you follow the arc of Mars in the last hundred years of cinema, it’s representation evolves from a dreamscape utopian fantasy of early silent cinema, a place where anything was possible, to a swamp of horrors and creatures during...
Toronto 2022 Review: THE FABELMANS, Spielberg on Spielberg
Dreams are scary. In The Fabelmans, Steven Spielberg puts his own childhood up on the big screen, through the Dream Factory, with the help many of his regular collaborators, screenwriter Tony Kushner (Munich, Lincoln), John Williams (Jaws, Indiana Jones, Jurassic...
Toronto 2022 Review: THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER, Mirrors and Memories
It might be something bred into us when we're in the womb, a need to please our parents. Or at least, to have some kind of effect on them. The memory of how we either succeeded or failed can haunt...
Toronto 2022 Review: THE WOMAN KING, A Grand Epic of Women in Action
Viola Davis and Lashana Lynch star in Gina Prince-Bythewood's action epic.
Toronto 2022 Review: SISU, Really Really Really Loves Blowing Up Nazis
With its wide-screen sky and endlessly empty tundra, Lapland makes a surprisingly able analogue for the American West. Finnish director Jalmari Helander is not exactly interested in making Once Upon in Time in Lapland here, but he certainly enjoys the...
Toronto 2022 Review: PACIFICTION, Paranoia and Politics Play in Polynesia
“This is my office, and it is always trying to kill me,” pontificates the High Commissioner, a man named De Roller, as he grandstands, slinks, and politics though his duties in Albert Serra’s paranoid, sun dappled enigma. If only our...
Shudder Acquires Senegalese Genre Bender SALOUM
Well now. This is fantastic news. This is amazing news. Shudder has announced that they have acquired the Senegalese film, Saloum. A verifiable kitchen sink of genres, Saloum is equal parts a horror filim, an action film, a revenge...
YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER Trailer: If It's Not Her Mom, Then What is She?
In a North Dublin housing estate Char's mother goes missing. When she returns Char is determined to uncover the truth of her disappearance and unearth the dark secrets of her family. Kate Dolan's debut horror flick, You Are Not...
GOOD MADAM (MLUNGU WAM): Shudder Acquires South African Horror
Tsidi, a single mother, is forced to move in with her estranged mother Mavis, a live-in domestic worker caring obsessively for her catatonic white ‘Madam’ in an affluent Cape Town suburb. As Tsidi tries to heal her family however, a...
Short Film: Seth Smith's existential-animation DUST BATH is on Vimeo
This is public service announcement that Canadian auteur of the surreal and strange, Seth Smith (The Crescent, Tin Can), made a 2 minute animated short about poultry and death and the circle of life, called Dust Bath, which is now...
Friday One Sheet: SUNDOWN
We posted the superb trailer earlier this week, and now this excellent poster for Michel Franco's Sundown. I have said, time and time again, that I am a sucker for orange and pink posters, and this is no exception. I...
SUNDOWN Trailer Is a Masterclass in How to Cut a Preview
If you want a brilliant example on how to edit a trailer and artistically present the premise of a film, focusing on mood rather than spoilers, then Sundown has you covered. Superbly so. It is only 4 days into the new...
Friday One Sheet: SPENCER (Also, Full Trailer)
We are looping back around to the detailed fabric and negative space of the key art for Spencer, as it is also an opportunity to embed the full trailer for the film (see below). I do love when key art...
