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October 2015

Festival Coverage

Toronto After Dark 2015: ‘The Hollow One’

October 17, 2015Addison Wylie0 Comments

By: Shannon Page Known for directing video games such as Gotham City Impostors and Alien vs. Predator 2, Nathan Hendrickson makes his feature film debut with The Hollow One, a horror about an unstable young woman (Rachel played by Kate Alden) struggling with her memory of a tragic event.  Rachel and her sister Anna (Chelsea Farthing) return to the small farming town of their childhood and reunite with Racheal’s ex-boyfriend (played by Jesse James of Jumper and TMI…

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Festival Coverage

Toronto After Dark 2015: Shorts After Dark

October 16, 2015Addison Wylie0 Comments

Awesome Runaway!! (DIR. Benjamin De Los Santos) By: Addison Wylie Benjamin De Los Santos’ Awesome Runaway!! is…well….awesome…for the most part.  Inspired by video game combat, Looney Tunes, and the ‘Safe Haven’ segment of V/H/S/2, the filmmaker has conceived a stylistic treat that will surely delight Toronto After Dark movie goers. From the opening shot up until a final confrontation with an evil kingpin monologuing about nonsense, Awesome Runaway!! plays towards clichés in a tongue-in-cheek manner.  The…

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Festival Coverage

Toronto After Dark 2015: ‘The Interior’

October 16, 2015Trevor Jeffery0 Comments

By: Trevor Jeffery James (Patrick McFadden) is a typical 20-something living in Toronto facing a quarter-life crisis: he’s got a job he hates along with a boss he hates, a girlfriend towards whom he is apathetic, and he is tired of the city’s drone.  The final straw is a devastating diagnosis, after which he packs up and leaves everything behind for the dense woods of British Columbia.  Camping out and surviving with only packed sundries…

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Reviews

Meet the Patels

October 15, 2015Addison Wylie0 Comments

By: Shannon Page Sibling filmmakers Ravi and Geeta Patel’s Meet the Patels is a feel-good documentary/romantic comedy hybrid that achieves everything that it sets out to do.  The film, which began as a home video of a trip that the Patel family took to India, follows Ravi’s journey to find the woman of his dreams while navigating the expectations of his Indian-American family as well as his own connection to his cultural and heritage.  It…

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Festival Coverage

Toronto After Dark 2015: ‘TAG’

October 15, 2015Addison Wylie0 Comments

By: Mark Barber Those unfamiliar with the intensity and insanity of Sion Sono’s films might be understandably overwhelmed by the excessively violent Tag, one of six films that the Japanese filmmaker has made this year (Love & Peace is also playing at Toronto After Dark, and his fantastic and unconventional sci-fi drama The Whispering Star played at TIFF last month). Others, however, will find Tag to be yet another exhilarating action-packed outing from Sono. Narrative-wise,…

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Festival Coverage

Toronto After Dark 2015: ‘The Hallow’

October 13, 2015Addison Wylie0 Comments

By: Addison Wylie The Hallow is made up of great parts that build towards a fleeting good time.  The adult audience gets as much satisfaction out of it as a toddler does with a mall’s mechanical horse. Within the film’s undistinguished Irish town, the community unanimously agrees that the woods are not necessarily a great place to idle.  Their distain is brought out when a family of out-of-towners move to a secluded millhouse that happens…

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Festival Coverage

Toronto After Dark 2015: ‘Night of the Living Deb’

October 11, 2015Addison Wylie1 Comment

By: Addison Wylie Let’s not beat around the bush: the most comparable film you can mention when talking about Kyle Rankin’s Night of the Living Deb is Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead.  Both Shaun and Deb are underdogs dealing with a zombie outbreak on the fly while trying to figure out their own issues with romance. The strongest thing you can say about Rankin’s horror/comedy is that while Night of the Living Deb is…

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Reviews

Entourage

October 10, 2015Addison Wylie0 Comments

By: Addison Wylie I don’t regret liking HBO’s Entourage even though Doug Ellin’s cinematic continuation of the hit TV series stinks. The television show offered a sleek albeit heightened look into the politics and smooth-talkers behind Hollywood.  Actor Vincent Chase was a lucrative asset to any major motion picture, and his friends witnessed this as they tagged along for the ride.  Frequently vulgar and overtly macho, Entourage was amusing escapism that made filmdom look and…

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Reviews

Mad Women

October 9, 2015Addison Wylie0 Comments

By: Shannon Page Written and directed by Jeff Lipsky (Twelve Thirty, Molly’s Theory of Everything), Mad Women aims to challenge audience’s perceptions of desire and family by fearlessly ripping into taboo territory – but whether it succeeds or not is up for debate. Nevada Smith (Kelsey Lynn Stokes) is an attractive young woman struggling to find her place in a family of over-achievers that include her older sister, a doctor working overseas;  her father (Reed…

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Reviews

The Creeping Garden

October 7, 2015Addison Wylie0 Comments

By: Mark Barber The Creeping Garden – a documentary about the professional and amateur fascination with slime mould in the scientific community – is a film without an argument;  a particularly troublesome direction to take with the documentary genre. The film begins misleadingly with archival news footage detailing the discovery of an unknown, slimy substance found in Texas, suggesting that the direction the film will be a generic blend between documentary and horror;  similar to two…

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