Rise of the Footsoldier: Vengeance
By: Trevor Chartrand For full disclosure, Rise of the Footsoldier: Vengeance, is the sixth film in an action/crime/thriller series that I am, admittedly, unfamiliar with.
2023
Blood in the Snow 2023: ‘My Animal’
My Animal, the feature-length directorial debut from music video cinematographer Jacqueline Castel, is a dramatic horror that offers a unique breath of fresh air to the coming-of-age sub-genre.
Raging Grace
Joy (Max Eigenmann) is a Filipina immigrant living in the UK with her young daughter, Grace (Jaeden Paige Boadilla). Because of her undocumented status, Joy struggles to make ends meet and provide a safe, stable home for Grace — often living secretly in the homes she cleans while the wealthy families who live there are away on vacation. But when the aloof and uptight Katherine (Leanne Best) hires Joy as a live-in care-worker for her…
Family Switch
The only real positive takeaway from Netflix’s dreadful yuletide family comedy Family Switch, other than the odd mild chuckle, is that it acts as a canary in the coal mine for body swap flicks.
Billion Dollar Babies: The True Story of the Cabbage Patch Kids
Andrew Jenks’ documentary Billion Dollar Babies: The True Story of the Cabbage Patch Kids will obviously appeal to fans and collectors of the famous toy brand, but it should also reel in viewers who are obsessed with streamable studies on snowballing catastrophes (Tiger King, Fyre, Pepsi, Where’s My Jet?, Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99). This nichey flick doesn’t boil over with ridiculous, jaw-dropping climaxes, although it is a shock and a hoot to watch ‘80s video footage of…
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;…
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?
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…
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.
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…