Riot Girls
After making a decent impression with her unsettling segment in the horror anthology XX, Canadian filmmaker Jovanka Vuckovic takes a swing at directing a feature-length story with Riot Girls.
2019
TIFF 2019: ‘Tammy’s Always Dying’
By: Trevor Chartrand Former actress Amy Jo Johnson’s second directorial effort is Tammy’s Always Dying, an incredibly painful look at dysfunctional family dynamics. The film explores the dark and unstable relationship between the understandably broken Catherine (Anastasia Phillips) and her suicidal mother Tammy (Felicity Huffman).
Freaks
You don’t so much watch Freaks as you do discover it. As the writers and directors of this terrific flick, Zach Lipovsky (co-producer of Afflicted) and Adam Stein do a good job building anticipation in their sci-fi/thriller. Each scene contains clues, and it’s up to the audience to piece the film’s premise together up until the somewhat typical finale.
TIFF 2019: ‘Coppers’
In his documentary Coppers, Alan Zweig (15 Reasons To Live) interviews Canadian ex-police officers. Occasionally, viewers are given the a ride-along perspective as the subjects drive around their formally patrolled turf and share some unforgettable stories. Most of these interviewees can recall aged confrontations as if it happened hours before Zweig’s camera turned on. For some, these cases have led to current wellness complications. Along with riding shotgun, Zweig has also emulated the atmosphere of…
TIFF 2019: ‘The Last Porno Show’
The Last Porno Show pushes itself to the limit (and then some) to portray a shocking and unshakable character study of an off-kilter actor who loses himself to method acting.
TIFF 2019: ‘The Twentieth Century’
Depending on who you ask, Canadian cinema may well be celebrating its 100th year this year and, despite the general dismay that it continues to attract from some, it is still very much able to be as innovative as any other national cinema. Why the history lesson? Because that may be the best way to introduce Matthew Rankin’s The Twentieth Century, at once a great addition to the Canadian cinematic canon and a bitter poisonous…
TIFF 2019: ‘The Lighthouse’
With The Witch, Robert Eggers showed the world that there were untold, new ways to tell horror stories. So, what can someone who has already reinvented a genre do as a follow up? Eggers decided to tell a new story based on the research of horrific authentic historical documents, and it works.
Wylie Writes’ One-On-One with Wendy Litner
By: Sky Wylie I have been a huge fan of Wendy Litner’s hilarious digital series How to Buy a Baby since the success of the first season. My husband and I were a couple of years into the agony of fertility problems, and I was looking for a bit of an escape. It was so refreshing to watch Jane (played brilliantly by Meghan Heffern) and Charlie (Marc Bendavid) navigate the same crazy world we had found…
This Changes Everything
This Changes Everything comes from a good place. But, the points expressed in this documentary about gender inequality are sometimes muddled by the doc’s filmmaking.