November 2023

Reviews

Dream Scenario

By: Jeff Ching The idea of a random Joe Schmoe appearing in everyone’s dreams is an intriguing premise, but could Dream Scenario’s writer/director Kristoffer Borgli (Sick of Myself) have ever imagined a better set-up than Nicolas Cage portraying this ubiquitous dream character?  The answer to my rhetorical question is a resounding “hell no!”. In fact, at the post-screening Q&A at this year’s TIFF, Cage explained how he easily relates to this character and brought up the meme about himself;…

Reviews

Leo

Leo, an animated family film from Adam Sandler’s production company Happy Madison, hits Netflix at an ideal time: the holiday season is approaching, family time is becoming more frequent, and the weather is becoming chillier and chillier.  What better time to cozy up with a crowd-pleaser?

Reviews

Blood in the Snow 2023: ‘ROMI’

ROMI is the artificial intelligence system that assists a fancy-schmancy smart home in Robert Cuffley’s horror-thriller of the same name.  Young hit-and-run fugitive Maddie (Alexa Barajas of TV’s Yellowjackets) has been assigned to stay at the exclusive house to maintain her cover while her politician mother runs for election without any controversies.  Maddie’s getaway is also assisted by the home owner Hertig (Pavel Kriz of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol) and programmer extraordinaire Barkley (Juan…

Festival Coverage

Blood in the Snow 2023: ‘The Hyperborean’

The Hyperborean has been written and directed by filmmakers who have been serving a 10-year sentence in my personal “movie jail” since being responsible for the gross-out body horror Septic Man.  After missing their recent collaborations, director Jesse Thomas Cook and screenwriter Tony Burgess have appeared on my radar with their latest sci-fi mashup The Hyperborean and, thankfully, it’s pretty good.

Reviews

Pig Killer

In 2002, Robert Wiliam Pickton was arrested for a series of shocking murders that took place on the rural property he owned with his brother, just a few kilometers east of Vancouver, British Columbia.  For years, Pickton had been hunting women in the city’s notorious Downtown East Side.  He chose sex workers, many of whom were Indigenous women and other women of colour, as his victims.  The nature and details of Pickton’s crimes, which included…

Reviews

Testament

Instead of strictly focusing on the negative aspects of “cancel culture” or “self-assured woke-ness”, with his latest film Testament, Quebecois filmmaker Denys Arcand (The Barbarian Invasions) is curious to find if a heartwarming lede is ever being buried by self-righteousness and political correctness.  And by doing so, the filmmaker has created a monster.

Reviews

Who’s Yer Father?

By: Trevor Chartrand Who’s Yer Father?, from writer/director Jeremy Larter (Pogey Beach), is a quirky dark comedy with an Eastern Canadian twist.  Funny and fast-paced, this movie has a stylized bluntness to it;  almost as if it’s Prince Edward Island’s own Napoleon Dynamite – but with a much more sinister tone.