Spooky season is nearly here. Halloween decorations are starting to slither up on stores and houses while skeletons of all sizes and sorts are for sale. That means it’s time for Fantastic Fest, the perfect kickoff to the creepiest time of the year! Fantastic Fest is one of the largest genre festivals in the USA, […]
Toronto International Film Festival 2024 – Threading Up The Brutalist
The 2024 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival starts today. This is my ninth year attending TIFF and I wouldn’t even say I am a regular at this point. Film camp is heavy this year in Toronto with the likes of Mike Leigh, Steven Soderbergh, Brady Corbet, Sean Baker and many, many other established […]
Fantastic Fest 2024 Reaction – THE LIFE & DEATHS OF CHRISTOPHER LEE
Though I was not IN Austin for Fantastic Fest, I was able to sit down and watch the official selection THE LIFE & DEATHS OF CHRISTOPHER LEE from the comfort of my own home, so in a way I was attending this year’s Fantastic Fest in spirit. The Fantastic Fest Lowdown: Well educated and raised […]
Fantastic Fest 2024 Reaction – SATURDAY NIGHT
It’s easy to forget how revolutionary the American television show “Saturday Night Live” was when it came on the air in 1975. A live sketch show, made by a flock of twenty –somethings who had never made anything before was a highly risky proposition. It was a huge gamble for flagship network NBC, back when […]
Fantastic Fest 2024 Reaction – DON’T MESS WITH GRANDMA
DON’T MESS WITH GRANDMA is a vivid and fluid black comedy written and directed by Jason Krawczyk. JT (Michael Jai White) works delivering meals to seniors, which is sometimes easier said than done. But a bunch of his time is taken up with elder care: being a dutiful grandson taking care of his Granna (Jackie […]
Fantastic Fest 2024 Reaction – NEVER LET GO
Editor’s Note: It was a busy opening night at Fantastic Fest with many filmmakers, actors and movie buffs all in attendance for the start of eight days of genre mayhem. My gifted writer Anna Hanks was at the premiere of NEVER LET GO, which was also simulatenously released in theatres everywhere at the same time. […]
TIFF 2024 Reaction – VIKTOR
The TIFF Lowdown: Fusing rigorous reportage with innovative cinematic subjectivity, this bold documentary from veteran war photographer Olivier Sarbil is a uniquely intimate portrait of a Deaf person’s experience of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Elegantly fusing rigorous reportage with cinematic subjectivity, this bold documentary from filmmaker and veteran war photographer Olivier Sarbil offers a […]
TIFF 2024 Reaction – YOUR TOMORROW
Another part of TIFF Docs, YOUR TOMORROW is one of the very best documentaries I saw at the Toronto International Film Festival this year, and even though it’s about a cultural landmark in Toronto this doc will work for anyone who loves a place that is going to be shut down. Read on for more! […]
TIFF 2024 Reaction – THE SWEDISH TORPEDO
Part of the Centrepiece section of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, THE SWEDISH TORPEDO hit my radar pretty quickly as I really like female swimmers going on a massive cross-channel journey for some unknown reason! The TIFF Lowdown: Southern Sweden, summer 1939. World War II is looming. 30-year-old single mother Sally Bauer can’t tear […]
TIFF 2024 Reaction – THE SALT PATH
Featuring two favourites in Gillian Anderson & Jason Isaacs, THE SALT PATH was one of the most anticipated pictures at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. About: After losing their home and livelihood, a middle-aged couple impulsively set out on a 630-mile walk along the southwest English coast, a walk complicated to no small degree […]
TIFF 2024 Reaction – VILLAGE KEEPER
One of my favourite Canadian movies at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, VILLAGE KEEPER is a movie to keep on your radar when it eventually gets a release in our country! The TIFF Lowdown: After a massive loss, an overwhelmed Toronto mother discovers a very unusual way to process her grief. With her first […]
TIFF 2024 Reaction – YOU ARE NOT ALONE
The TIFF Lowdown: In Montreal, twentysomething Léo (Pier-Luc Funk) delivers pizza and gets drunk, and that’s pretty much it. He’s alone and he’s sad, and doing nothing about it … until he meets Rita (Marianne Fortier), a sweet-natured musician who thinks he might be a keeper. The thing is, Léo is already taken; he’s just […]
TIFF 2024 Reaction – SO SURREAL: BEHIND THE MASKS
Another solid part of the TIFF Docs lineup, SO SURREAL: BEHIND THE MASKS was one of the most anticipated documentaries of the Festival this year! About: SO SURREAL: BEHIND THE MASKS is a feature documentary that traces the storied journey of Indigenous masks from the far reaches of Turtle Island (North America) into the hands […]
TIFF 2024 Reaction – ANYWHERE, ANYTIME
Another title in the Centrepiece section of the Toronto International Film Festival, this little hidden gem was one of my favourites that I saw at TIFF 2024. Sometimes I call this as part of my own “Throw A Dart & See a Random Movie” series where I go in knowing nothing about what I am […]
TIFF 2024 Reaction – LIVING TOGETHER
Always a fan of the National Film Board of Canada and feeling like more people at TIFF need to see the NFB content, I am always trying to go out of my way to see their latest movies and shorts at the festival, and LIVING TOGETHER did not disappoint. The TIFF Lowdown: Halima Elkhatabi’s disarming […]
TIFF 2024 Reaction – UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE
The TIFF Lowdown: Matthew Rankin’s second feature is a lovingly detailed, charmingly impossible story of a Canada where Persian and French are the two official languages, and loneliness is the common currency. Winner of the inaugural Directors’ Fortnight audience award at Cannes this year, Matthew Rankin’s follow-up to his eccentric, surreal The Twentieth Century (TIFF ’19) is […]