Tag: tiff
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...
Toronto 2023 Review: WORKING CLASS GOES TO HELL, Serbian Justice Served Slow And Absurd
Early in Mladen Djordjevic’s tragicomic satire, Working Class Goes To Hell, a young girl eats her lunch in the husk of a dead factory. A faded mural “Long Live Labour Day” peels off the burnt out walls above her. She...
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: THE BOY AND THE HERON, Sumptuous Miyazaki-San, Studio Ghibli Career Retrospective
From the opening air raid sirens and fiery infernos of World War II Tokyo bombings to the bucolic countryside house and its magical surroundings, Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli has come full circle in its 40 year history animated mastery....
Friday One Sheet: RIDDLE OF FIRE
The "Coolest debut from Cannes," according to AnOther Magazine, the poster for American indie cult-film-to-be, Riddle Of Fire, exudes rural middleschool cool. The key art is awash in warm peachy tones and early 70s pre-Amblin 'latch-key kids' vibes. Note the mushrooms and...
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...
Toronto 2021 Review: SALOUM, A Spirited Tale of Revenge on the Senegal Delta
The Saloum Delta in Senegal is a land of cannibal myths and cursed kings. Nowhere is this more true than in Congolese director Jean Luc Herbulot's supernatural skinwalker of a film that brings West African mythology to the criminal getaway...
Friday One Sheet: SALOUM
Forget the old Godardian nugget that all you need is a Girl and a Gun. How about just a big ass gun? The poster for Senegalese supernatural revenge thriller, Saloum, goes for that Sergio Leone western vibe, with a modern,...
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...
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...
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...
Teaser: NOMADLAND's Quiet, Beautiful Pitch
Searchlight Pictures just dropped a short, single-shot teaser trailer for Chloe Zhao's (The Rider) new feature, Nomadland. And it is beautiful, measured, and melancholic, with Frances McDormand at her understated best. Adapting Jessica Bruder's journalism-novel of the same name, the...
Toronto 2019 Interview: SYNCHRONIC Directors Moorhead & Benson's Favorite Cinematic Representations of Altered States
Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson have wowed audiences with their mind-bending (and genre-bending) films Resolution, Spring, and The Endless. All of these films share the similarity of slyly tackling complex philosophical and/or metaphysical subject matter in an entertaining package. The...
Toronto 2019 Review: DISCO Doubts Your Commitment To Sparkle Motion
Disco is a juxtaposition of cults. One is the intense dance competition circuit. Here, girls in skimpy, sparkling outfits, a deluge of rhinestones and sequins, with face paint to match, perform intensely choreographed contortions to thumping electronica as an expression of...
Toronto 2019 Review: THE PLATFORM Is a Dystopian Feast of Social Inequality
A man wakes up in a spartan concrete room, with a copy of Don Quixote, and a composed, elderly roommate. The number 48 is stencilled on the wall, and there is an open elevator shaft that divides the space. The...
Toronto 2019 Preview: World Premiere Awards Hopefuls
The massive feast of cinematic goodness that is the Toronto International Film Festival is all set to kick off on Thursday. We will be taking a quick tour of the lineup over the next few days to get your appetite...
Friday One Sheet: A HIDDEN LIFE
You are always guaranteed a great poster for the films of Terrence Malick. A Hidden Life premiered at Cannes in May, but here is a teaser poster for its Toronto International Film Festival screening. Set in World War II, and...
THE PAINTED BIRD Trailer: Controversial, Atrocities-Ridden Holocaust Novel Adaptation Heads to Venice
An adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski's controversial novel is set for Venice and Toronto.
