Wylie Writes @ TAAFI ’19
The Toronto Animation Arts Festival International (February 15-17) is an essential stop for movie goers who indulge in worldwide animation.
Festival Coverage
Wylie Writes @ The 2018 Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival
The Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival (Nov. 8 -16) has ended yet another successful run, continuing to offer filmmakers and storytellers an integral platform to connect with audiences. I was fortunate enough to catch a couple of the feature films programmed at this year’s Reel Asian Film Festival but, unfortunately, I was left feeling underwhelmed by my selections.
Toronto After Dark 2018: ‘Extracurricular’, ‘Lifechanger’, ‘Nightmare Cinema’, and ‘You Might Be the Killer’
Extracurricular (DIR. Ray Xue) As the Canadian pop-punk band Sum 41 once sang, “motivation, such an aggravation.” That seemed to be Ray Xue’s complaint as well when he was directing Extracurricular, which is the only way to explain why anything in this film happened. Long time readers may recognize the number one rule of TAD: if a film is having its world premiere here, it will be terrible. This is not a knock against any of…
Toronto After Dark 2018: Shorts After Dark
One thing that differentiates Toronto After Dark from a lot of other horror festivals is their affinity and respect for short films. In an age of streaming and general new media, short films are the future of genre cinema and it is always important to give them a venue, since most of them will never see the inside of a cinema.
Toronto After Dark 2018: ‘I Am a Hero’ and ‘Satan’s Slaves’
I Am a Hero (DIR. Shinsuke Sato) I Am a Hero is long. That is not often how a review will start, but that may be the most remarkable thing about this new zombie film from Japan – running at over two hours, it is needlessly long. Otherwise, it doesn’t reinvent or make any new addition to the zombie mythos, it doesn’t have anything interesting to say, and it doesn’t really pick up until the third…
Toronto After Dark 2018: ‘Anna and the Apocalypse’
Anna and the Apocalypse (DIR. John McPhail) Another day, another multi-hyphenated genre film.
Toronto After Dark 2018: ‘Prey’ and ‘Robbery’
Prey (DIR. Dick Mass) Sometimes viewers are given the rare pleasure of experiencing a film that, by all intents and purposes, should be awful. Whether because of its genre’s history or just a general sense of ridiculousness, these films need to be dead on arrival, but sometimes a film is way better than it has any right to be. Dick Mass’ Prey, a film about a giant man-eating lion causing carnage in the streets of Amsterdam,…
Toronto After Dark 2018: ‘Overlord’
Overlord (DIR. Julius Avery) American soldiers are dropped into German-occupied France and need to prepare for the D-Day invasion, but they find that the Germans are involved in some messed-up stuff.
Toronto After Dark 2018: ‘Prospect’ and ‘The Ranger’
Prospect (DIR. Chris Caldwell, Zeek Earl) First, we lived through “mumblecore”. Then, we were subjected to “mumblegore”. Now, it seems like the next logical step is to “mumblego” where no man has gone before. Case in point: Chris Caldwell and Zeek Earl’s exercise in furious navel-gazing, Prospect, a film so enamored by its own cleverness that it manages to make its modest runtime seem endless. A film whose total lack of direction in favour of world-building…
Toronto After Dark 2018: ‘I’ll Take Your Dead’ and ‘Mega Time Squad’
I’ll Take Your Dead (DIR. Chad Archibald) The multi-hyphen horror film is just a concept that is here to stay. Despite everything being a hyphenated genre lately, very few films actually know how to do it well. The issue is that these films are often so lost in their own muddled genres, that they forget to specialize in one. Very rarely can someone pull off an actually balanced hyphenated genre film, leading to practical magic when…