Festivals: Toronto Film Festival
Friday One Sheet: WHEN EVIL LURKS
No point beating around the bush on this one, California's Mocean design house goes full on distressed red sky and deep black shadows for slow burn Argentinian possession horror, When Evil Lurks. The tagline, "There is no point in praying" is...
Toronto 2023 Review: FINGERNAILS, Love (And Cinema) Fails By Playing It Safe
It is a solid time-wasting (and futile) exercise looking at couples and making a judgement call if they are ‘right for one another.’ Or to guess if they will ‘last.’ In my family, it is kind of a sport. Well...
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WHEN EVIL LURKS: Official Trailer And Poster Are Here, Watch at Your Own Peril
This is a public service announcement, I implore you to try and go into a screening of Demian Rugna's When Evil Lurks as blind as possible. Do not watch this trailer. Do not scroll down and look at the poster. Both...
Toronto 2023 Review: SLEEP, On the Merits of Insomnia
Soo-jin (Jung Yu-mi) and Hyun-su (Lee Sun-kyun) are the sweetest young couple, full of promise and hope. Soo-jin works in business, hoping to make her way to the executive branch. Hyun-su is an actor; while he's only had small roles,...
Toronto 2023 Review: CLOSE YOUR EYES, Time Enough To Remember
It's not a stretch to understand why films are often conflated with dreams (or nightmares); as with how our brains operate when we're asleep, films allow the creator to piece together images and sounds in a way that they hope...
Toronto 2023 Review: DADDIO, The Art of Good Conversation Is Alive and Kicking
Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn star in a new film by writer/director Christy Hall.
Toronto 2023 Review: THE TEACHERS LOUNGE, A Dazzling Lesson In How Society Crumbles
I took no notes while watching The Teachers’ Lounge. This is rare for me in a festival environment, where I am seeing a lot of films in a short period of time. Yea, I am *that guy* who brings a...
Toronto 2023 Review: SHAME ON DRY LAND, A Sweaty And Oblique Euro-Noir
Around midway through this unique Swedish-Maltese co-production, Shame On Dry Land, a question is asked of the main character, “Been a long day?” Dimman, the uncertain, never in control, anti-hero responds, “Yea, it never ends.” This is not a bug...
Toronto 2023 Review: LAST SUMMER, Sex and Power in the Heat of the Season
While it's unusual for an auteur like Catherine Breillat to remake another, recent film, it's not a surprise, in this case, given the subject: sex and power. The filmmaker behind daring works (to say the least) such as Anatomy of...
Toronto 2023 Review: RIDDLE OF FIRE, These Three Kids Will Do Anything To Do Nothing All Summer
There’s something ethereal about Weston Razooli’s Toronto Midnight Madness closer, Riddle of Fire. It’s whimsical, but in a rough-hewn sort of way that puts it somewhere in the aesthetic neighborhood of Avalon Fast’s 2022 Slamdance discovery, Honeycomb. Both films exist...
Friday One Sheet: LIMBO
The pull quotes filling the open sky here say as much about the film as they do about Australian Carnival Studio's design ethos for the film's key art. Ivan Sen's striking, monochrome new cold case, outback noir Limbo is a...
Toronto 2023 Review: WOMAN OF THE HOUR, Going Head-to-Head with a Killer
Women are not believed. This has been true for decades (if not centuries) and it has allowed men to perpetrate terrible crimes, almost in plain sight, without remorse or consequences. I realise this is something of a blanket statement (yes,...
Toronto 2023 Review: WHEN EVIL LURKS, Absolutely No One Is Safe
Gun shots ring out late at night, somewhere in the middle of rural Argentina. Brothers Pedro and Jimi head out the end of their property the next morning to investigate and discover a body, or, parts of a body. Further...
Toronto 2023 Review: THE END WE START FROM, Motherhood at the End of the World
As we begin to see, it feels almost weekly, 'natural' (i.e. created by human activity) disasters happening around the world - floods, fires, you name it - you would be hard-pressed not think about what you would do with you...
Toronto 2023 Review: IN FLAMES, the Supernatural Meets Patriarchal Conditioning
The term 'gaslighting' is now quite ubiquitous, and one which still remains scoffed at by many (usually those who hold power). But if you're a member of a marginalized group, that gaslighting could come not just from one person, but...
Toronto 2023 Review: POOLMAN, An Earnest if Misguided Comedy-Neo-Noir
A few years ago, I was taking an Uber back to my airbnb in Los Angeles; the driver, it turns out, was something of a conspiracy theorist. At first he was just telling me about the politics of the city,...
Toronto 2023 Review: HELL OF A SUMMER Lacks the Necessary Bite
Long a favoured location for slasher films, summer camp provides plenty of proverbial fodder for a serial killer's cannon: plenty of nubile, horny, often unaware bodies in an isolated place, waiting to be, well, slashed by whatever preferred method. It...
Toronto 2023 Review: NAGA, Drug-Infused Race Against the Clock
Sara is in the middle of the desert, a fair drive from her city of Riyadh. She's been taking drugs. The police raided the event she was at, scattering everyone. She can't find her boyfriend. She doesn't have the keys...
Toronto 2023 Review: LA CHIMERA, Some Precious Things Left to Bury
Arthur (Josh O'Connor) is not having a good day. He's just got out of prison with nothing but the clothes on his back. His former criminal gang is eager to recruit him; the person to whom he plied his trade...
Toronto 2023 Review: QUIZ LADY, Sister Bonding on the Road
The opposite-people-coming-together-in-a-crisis comedy has a good tradition in Hollywood cinema (and perhaps there is a more succinct term for it that I can't think of). Certainly with siblings especially, it provides relatable complex relationships for a broad audience to connect...
