Toronto 2021 Review: DUNE, A Handsome, But Stoic, Do Over
There is a row of palm trees in front of the outer wall of the capital city of Arrakis, the desert planet also known as Dune. They require massive amounts of resources, and have grown straight & tall, tended by...
Toronto 2021 Review: EARWIG, A Hypnotic Reverie On How We Cope With Adversity
Somewhere, in a small apartment in Europe in the early 1950s, after the War, there was a little girl named Mia, who had no teeth. She had a melancholy caretaker who prepared ice-dentures for her several times a day, which...
Toronto 2021 Short Film, Short Review: DUST BATH
I am cognizant of the fact that it might take you longer to read this review than to watch the one hundred and twenty seconds of this animated short involving chickens searching for scratch, and philosophizing on the circle of...
Toronto 2021 Review: THE MIDDLE MAN, A Deadpan Comedy about Life
The small midwestern town of Karmack is dying. Figuratively, as its principal industry, a rail-yard, have been lost to the vagaries of globalization. Also, quite literally, as there has been a lengthy string of fatal accidents that prompts the town...
Toronto 2021 Review: LAST NIGHT IN SOHO, Where Dreams And Nightmares Mirror One Another
Every film from Edgar Wright is a kind of gift. Especially to audiences who like to unwrap things over and over again, from the Rom-Zom-Com satire of Shaun of the Dead, to the Nintendo-heightened relationship foibles of Scott Pilgrim vs....
Toronto 2021 Review: DUG DUG Offers Lessons In Escalation
The musical montage is alive and well in Dug Dug, a profoundly amusing chronicle of the birth of a new religion in the rural backwater of India. The camera work, framing, whip panning, (crash) zooming, and often lingering for an...
Toronto 2021 Review: AS IN HEAVEN, Where Childbirth Is Dark and Full of Terrors
The opening images of pastoral horror, As In Heaven, sees the almost stock imagery of a young beautiful thing, dressed in white, caressing the golden wheat with her fingertips, as she walks through a field of golden harvest. You know...
Toronto 2021 Review: VENGEANCE IS MINE, ALL OTHERS PAY CASH
Petty gangster and entrepreneur, Ajo Kawir, cannot get it up. He channels his impotence into bravado and risk taking. He meets a girl. She knows kung fu. They fall in love. He goes to prison. She sets out on a...
Friday One Sheet: ENCOUNTER
Design house B O N D's key art for Encounter (currently getting buzz on the festival circuit, before heading to cinemas and Amazon Prime in December), continues a trend I highlighted here, about this relatively recent poster trope: The Vortex....
Trailer for Pablo Larraín's SPENCER
After the stylish and well-received Jackie, Chilean wunderkind director Pablo Larraín tackles the tone and character of another iconic political and deified figure, Princess Diana, in a "what might have happened during those few fateful days" in 1997. Casting a...
Fantasia 2021 Review: SATOSHI KON, THE ILLUSIONIST
Watching Pascal-Alex Vincent's summation of Kon Satoshi's work and life and untimely death made me more than a little bit sad. Not because the film is a poor tribute or account of one of the leading lights of Japanese filmmaking,...
Friday One Sheet: THE MIDDLE MAN
I remain committed to showcasing key art that makes good use of textured wallpaper. In this case, the poster is for a Canadian/Norwegian production from deadpan director Bent Hamer. Hamer's films are difficult to describe, oddball dramas, subtle comedies, ultra-niche...
Friday One Sheet: INTRODUCING, SELMA BLAIR
Perhaps it is because this poster reminds me of the cover art of Nirvana's 1991 Nevermind album, perhaps it due to all the negative space at the bottom, or perhaps I just like the rippling reflection of actress Selma Blair...
Fantasia 2021 Review: BABY, DON'T CRY Plays Rough and Tumble with Youth
Seventeen year old Baby leads a fairly structured life in a leafy, almost rural, Seattle suburb. She cares for her shut-in mother, to the point of weekly sponge-baths, has a domestic cleaning gig with one of her more affluent neighbours,...
Fantasia 2021 Review: TIN CAN, Industrial Grade Medical Nightmare Fuel
For many, a hospital visit is an exhausting house of horrors and bodily function humiliation, a prison on the road to wellness, where consent is as much implied as it is expected. Imagine your choices, and your suffering, at...
Friday One Sheet: DONDE CABEN DOS
Turquoise and pink, lots of skin, and a dash of neon, are all on artful display in Barfutura's design for this Spanish sex-comedy. The stand out here is the casual, but intentional, obfuscation of nipples and crotches. The entire ensemble...
Fantasia 2021 Curtain Raiser: This is What We're Watching, so You Should Watch Them Too
That's a bit of a presumptive title there isn't it? I mean, seriously, there are so many great titles at this year's Fantasia, how do you choose? Another man's junk yadda yadda, right? The great thing is, Fantasia is three...
Friday One Sheet: ARMY OF THIEVES
Bauhaus-inspired clock faces and locks in bold, glorious orange, make for this excellent piece of teaser key art. Taking one of the better characters from the abysmally derivative Army of The Dead, and doing a safe-cracking prequel may salvage (some...
Friday One Sheet: BABY, DON'T CRY
This week, in anticipation of the Fantasia Film Festival coming in August, we have the key art for Jesse Dvorak and Zita Bai's troubled teenager coming-of-age drama, with a dollop of magical realism, Baby, Don't Cry. Be it hand painted, or...
Friday One Sheet: THE INNOCENTS
I have a fondness for upside-down styled posters, and the entire key art campaign for Eskil Vogt's Norwegian supernatural thriller, The Innocents, makes me tingle. While I do not know if the film bears any connection to either the classic...
