Neon Dreams Will Bring Your Neo-Noir Fantasies To Life
Published on October 5th, 2015 in: Canadian Content, Culture Shock, Current Faves, Interviews, Movies |
Streets of Fire
If you live in the Toronto area and you love movies, you might already know about The Royal Theatre on College Street. But did you know that every month, programmer Brendan Ross takes over The Royal for one night devoted to the best of neo-noir cinema from the 1970s, 1980s, and beyond? Featuring such classics as Body Double, Risky Business, To Live and Die in L.A., and Streets Of Fire, Ross’s Neon Dreams Cinema Club is one of the city’s best kept cinematic secrets.
Five Faves: Final Girls
Published on October 1st, 2015 in: Feminism, Horror, Listicles, Movies, Top Five Lists |
The Final Girls (review) is a film about… what else? The hallowed halls of heroines in horror movies (how’s that for alliteration?) have many portraits hung on their walls. Here are a few fave Final Girls that you might not have yet considered, but who are still worthy women.
Movie Review: Men & Chicken
Published on September 30th, 2015 in: Culture Shock, Current Faves, Film Festivals, Movie Reviews, Movies, Reviews |
In Men & Chicken, Elias (Mads Mikkelsen) and Gabriel (David Dencik) are brothers whose father has just passed away. He’s left them a videocassette revealing that not only is he not their biological father, but the woman they knew as their mother wasn’t their biological mother. He also reveals that the name of their father is Evelio Thanatos.
DVD Review: A Plague So Pleasant
Published on September 29th, 2015 in: Current Faves, DVD, DVD/Blu-Ray Reviews, Horror, Movie Reviews, Movies, Reviews |
Anyone with a decent camera phone and at least two acquaintances can make a zombie film. It’s that simple. Because of the simplicity of the basic set-up (don’t get eaten), we’ve gotten a lot of zombie flicks that are the same thing over and over. Eat that leg. Yank out those entrails. Cut off those zombie heads and for the love of all that’s profitable, don’t stray from the formula!
Movie Review: Scorpions, Forever And A Day
Published on September 21st, 2015 in: Documentaries, Movie Reviews, Movies, Music, Reviews |
Somewhere around the halfway point of this rockumentary, I came to an odd realization. Here I am, a man who lived through the Eighties, watched the rise and fall of Hair Metal, and yet I have taken the band, Scorpions, completely for granted. After all, has there ever been a world where “Rock You Like a Hurricane” hasn’t existed?
Blu-Ray Review: Immoral Tales
Published on September 15th, 2015 in: Blu-Ray, Culture Shock, Current Faves, DVD/Blu-Ray Reviews, Movie Reviews, Movies, Reissues, Retrovirus, Reviews, Teh Sex |
The 1970s were a time of sexual revolution. Women’s liberation, bra-burning, birth control pills, swingers, orgies, and who knows what else? It’s not like people didn’t know about sex before, but in the ’70s, sex exploded (which sounds gross). Suburban couples were lining up around the block to see Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door, two pornographic films that found both mainstream success and legal troubles, as both films were placed on trial for obscenity.
Obscenity still has an elastic meaning, and at times the line between artistic license and simple prurient leanings is blurry and hard to see. That’s precisely where 1974’s Immoral Tales lives, in that strange tesseract on the corner of Softcore Porn and Arthouse Loophole.
Top Five: TIFF 2015 Picks From Brendan Ross
Published on September 11th, 2015 in: Film Festivals, Listicles, Movies, Top Five Lists |By Brendan Ross
Green Room
As much as I enjoy watching Willem Dafoe movies and crazy 1980s music videos on YouTube, sometimes I need to break out of my comfort zone. Here are my fave choices from this year’s TIFF lineup. P.S. I may or may not have a man-crush on Ben Wheatley.
GREEN ROOM:
Patrick Stewart as the leader of a white supremacist gang. Do you really need to hear more?
THE LOBSTER:
Dogtooth director Yorgos Lanthimos is back with a film that looks set to satisfy all my existential surrealism AND John C. Reilly needs.
ANOMALISA:
It’s an animated Charlie Kaufman movie for Christ’s sake!
YAKUZA APOCALYPSE:
Because I really want to know what goes on in a Yakuza knitting circle
HIGH-RISE:
Anybody have an extra ticket?
Top Five: TIFF 2015 Picks From Less Lee Moore
Published on September 11th, 2015 in: Film Festivals, Listicles, Movies, Top Five Lists |
Men & Chicken
I tried to pick movies that I didn’t think I’d get a chance to see in the multiplexes. Also, I’m a sucker for the Vanguard and Midnight Madness programmes at TIFF.
MEN & CHICKEN:
Writer/director Anders Thomas Jensen hasn’t let me down yet, and neither has Mads Mikkelsen. As great as he is as Hannibal Lecter, he’s equally great in Jensen’s twisted black comedies.
DER NACHTMAHR:
A young woman is haunted by a deformed creature that no one else can see? Sign me up.
THE MIND’S EYE:
Joe Begos’s Almost Human was the movie that 1982’s Xtro should have been, so I know his latest will be a wild ride.
THE GIRL IN THE PHOTOGRAPHS:
Great cast, including Katherine Isabelle and Mitch Pileggi, in a film about serial killers and starfuckers that’s lensed by Dean Cundey. That’s like catnip to a horror junkie.
THE DEVIL’S CANDY:
Satanic possession movies are kind of my thing and Sean Byrne is the kind of director genre fans kill for (but not literally, OK?).
The Five Movies I Would See If I Were Actually Going to TIFF (Which I’m Not)
Published on September 11th, 2015 in: Film Festivals, Listicles, Movies, Top Five Lists |
Baskin
If you’re looking around town and noticing a lack of Beautiful People, don’t be alarmed. This week, they’re all in Canada for the Toronto International Film Festival. They’re hobbing their nobs, going to movies, shaking hands at fancy parties and sleeping in theatre lobbies to make sure they don’t miss an anticipated showing. Obviously, I’m not there. I’m not beautiful enough. I’m sitting on my couch watching wrestling matches from the mid-nineties. But man, if I were there at TIFF, with all of those pretty folks, these are the five movies I would punch Stephen Harper in the balls to see.
BASKIN:
This Turkish movie about police officers who stumble upon a Satanic cult looks dark, unsettling and bloody. The hope is that this one gets truly weird, and early buzz is good.
THE WITCH:
Early American rural homesteaders fall prey to religious frenzy and grimy evil befalls them. The preview plays out like a mud-covered sequel to The Village.
HELLIONS:
A pregnant teen is the victim of a home assault led by creepy trick or treaters. It looks like a great combination of the French movie Ils and living in Detroit.
PORTAL TO HELL!!!
In his final film role, my personal hero, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper fights Cthulhu. If that doesn’t sell you on the movie, nothing else I could possible say will.
THE DEVIL’S CANDY:
An artist moves his family to Texas and gets possessed by Satan. I imagine that’s what happens when you move to Texas, anyway.
Someday, I’ll get to go Toronto and walk around with filmmakers and movie stars, and that will be amazing. In the meantime, oh, look! It’s a ladder match! Time to start drinking.
Retro Review: Dario Argento’s Deep Red
Published on September 9th, 2015 in: Horror, Movie Reviews, Movies, Retrovirus, Reviews |By Tim Murr
In honor of Italian horror master Dario Argento’s 75th birthday this week, I wanted to take a look back at one my favorites of his films, Deep Red a.k.a. Profondo Rosso from 1975.