Blood, Sand and Gold is touted as a low-budget blockbuster. The globetrotting adventure was made for $258,000 in less than two months, and it doesn’t show. The film isn’t modest (lavish scenery and accessories hog the screen), but the production does a commendable job disguising itself. In spite of cutting costs, Blood, Sand and Gold is still 24 karat schlock.
Window Horses, Ann Marie Fleming’s feature adaptation of her graphic novel, is an evocative stream of consciousness through history, art, and culture.
By: Nick Ferwerda To my surprise, Bitter Harvest – a film that was supposed to be about the Holodomor Genocide in the early 1930’s – is actually a mediocre love story. I didn’t say it was a good surprise.
The team behind last year’s efficient horror anthology Minutes Past Midnight return to bring similar chills and thrills with Galaxy of Horrors, another feature-length anthology hand-picked by Torontonian film programmer Justin McConnell. This time, he’s showcasing horror shorts with a sci-fi twist.
After a tragedy, a countdown subtly begins as to when a filmmaker will try to document the event’s emotions and peril in a movie. The act of making a movie about Aurora, Colorado’s massacre during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises never occurred to me. Then again, I also didn’t expect Patriot’s Day, a film about the Boston Marathon bombing released four years after the attack.
In Frank D’Angelo’s The Red Maple Leaf, special agent Alfonso Palermo (D’Angelo) asks potential suspects to “indulge him” during interrogations. I’ve heard some describe D’Angelo’s filmmaking as indulgent, which is why I smirked whenever Palermo asked this. Whether this was a cheeky wink toward critics is a mystery, and will probably remain unanswered.
