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Festival Coverage

Festival Coverage

Hot Docs 2024: ‘My Dad’s Tapes’

Ever since the the death of Leonard Watson in 2006, aspiring filmmaker Kurtis Watson has struggled to find closure and understand his Dad’s decision to commit suicide.  It’s been an upsetting topic for his family, who are either still grieving or are more in the dark than Kurtis about the tragedy.

Festival Coverage

Canadian Film Fest ’24: Daughter of the Sun

When I wrote about Ryan Ward’s directorial feature debut Son of the Sunshine, I was humbled by the filmmaker’s response to my unenthused review.  I had labeled his film as “maple syrup melancholy”, a term I coined to encompass Canada’s ongoing trend of churning out depressing, empty movies.  I thought the term was clever, Ward didn’t think so.  The Canadian writer/director advised that, while disliking a movie and its motives is fine, labelling art can…

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.

Festival Coverage

Toronto After Dark 2023: Shorts After Dark

The short films featured at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival are always worth a watch.  The selections hardly miss, and audiences are usually given a wide collection of different types of horror told from diverse perspectives.  The shorts I did catch at this year’s film festival were consistent with the past, but also included some all-timer scares and laughs.

Festival Coverage

Toronto After Dark 2023: ‘Daniel’s Gotta Die’

Canadian filmmaker Jeremy LaLonde is becoming the go-to guy to find humour in despicable people.  After taking a brief break to make an experimental drama (Ashgrove), LaLonde finds himself easing back into his comedic element with Daniel’s Gotta Die, a dark comedy about an inheritance-hungry, ne’er-do-well family being reigned in by a goodnatured sibling.