Whatever happened to that weird kid from high school? In My Friend Dahmer, the weird kid grew up to be one of the most notorious serial killers in American history. This film adaptation of Derf Backderf’s graphic novel of the same name looks at the life of Jeffrey Dahmer in his last few years of high school, where he acts like a fool to get attention and drinks heavily to keep the voices at bay. This…
Throughout my years of attending the Toronto After Dark Film Festival, I have come to learn a few truisms: 1) if a film is a world premiere, steer clear, 2) the international shorts program usually contains some of the best work at the festival, and 3) the Canadian shorts usually contain a handful of brilliant selections surrounded by others that are…less so. Being unable to speak to the first (as of now), I am glad…
What happens when Andrey Zvyagintsev makes a political film with a female lead? A disappointing monstrosity that could’ve been a masterpiece with forty-percent discarded.
Michael Haneke’s Happy End looks at modern technology’s ability to capture atrocities, through a sort-of-sequel to Amour, again following the Laurents through a series of misfortunes.
The Reagan Show is about Hollywood B-list actor-turned-conservative dream president Ronald Reagan, told entirely through found footage, but the timing and certain elements betray its true intentions.
Despite all the less-than-stellar changes made to TIFF this year, the festival continues to excel in giving a voice to Canadian filmmakers and video artists. Representatives of TIFF, once again, gathered in the Fairmont Royal York hotel to announce Canadian films which will play at the festival this year and then – presumably – disappear into Canadian cinemas, where a few of them will compete with the latest Oscar bait and Hollywood slop.
The documentary form of filmmaking has been around since the very beginning of the moving image. In well over a century, it has been transformed in a variety of ways, leading to some of the most innovative cinema. This is exactly why it is always so frustrating when someone takes an interesting individual or event and makes a documentary that takes nothing from this history, instead opting to utilize the same old cookie-cutter style of…
It’s that time of the year again, when people in suits infest the city and everyone becomes a cinephile for a week-and-a-half. It’s TIFF time, as the 42nd annual event gets ready to come down upon us.
Film, as a physical material medium, is an unusual object: film reels can often survive in strange settings, remaining undiscovered for decades, and yet these same reels can suddenly go up in a blaze, often taking their surroundings with them. This is an underplayed theme in Dawson City: Frozen Time, the newest work of filmmaker Bill Morrison. Film is at once destructive and salvageable, destroyed and saved.
There is a tradition in American horror cinema of making a short film with a lot of effects and minimal plot to be eventually used as a calling card. It seems like this practice has found its way into the feature length semi-mainstream. At least, that’s the only explanation for the existence of Trey Edward Shults’ It Comes at Night, a film which shows the director’s abilities as a horror filmmaker – including his great gift for…