Ravage is essentially a campfire story for mature audiences: there’s a lot of build up, an unsettling suggestion of what could happen, and then a freaky follow through. What we learn throughout the film, however, is that writer/director Teddy Grennan and the film’s nincompoop producers are incapable of closing their set-ups. This is demonstrated by some earlier mini murders, making us apprehensive about its grand finale when a ludicrous torture chamber is invented and utterly…
Lisa Langseth’s Euphoria, which premiered at TIFF three years ago, quietly yet poignantly explores the estranged relationship between two sisters amidst news that one of them is dying. Beautifully written and elegantly directed, Euphoria is as emotionally devastating as it is moving.
By: Trevor Chartrand With a title like this, it’s too easy for reviewers like myself to open with something like, “A Perfect Plan is not a perfect movie”, so allow me to go one step further. It would be more accurate to say this film falls monstrously short of perfect. In fact, it’s about as far from perfection as you could possibly get. A mediocre thriller at best, the film is littered with problems in…
Pontypool is one of my favourite movies, even though I really dislike its post-credit sequence. It’s a random bit that looks like a deleted scene from Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City series, featuring obscure characters that we haven’t seen before exchanging hard-boiled dialogue – it’s moody nonsense. It makes as much sense as the entirety of Dreamland, a pseudo-fantasy-noir that has the gall to ride the coattails of Pontypool; squandering the reunion of its filmmakers and…
Kevin Hearn, keyboardist for The Barenaked Ladies and an avid art collector, accidentally opened a can of worms by purchasing a painting by late indigenous artist Norval Morrisseau. During an exhibit of Hearn’s curated pieces at the Art Gallery of Ontario, his Morrisseau was proven to be bogus. This pivotal event (which also led to a lengthy court case) pulled a thread, unravelling conflicting opinions surrounding a remarkable mystery behind Morrisseau’s work.
Hellmington centres on Detective Samantha Woodhouse, distressed over the recent death of her father and tormented by a forgotten yet mysterious case of the disappearance of a former high school classmate. In order to piece together the puzzle of the latter, Samantha reconnects with her past while she’s in town for the funeral; including meeting old acquaintances and people who were close to her late dad.
Acquainted is the type of indie that wants to say something profound about romance. Little does writer/director Natty Zavitz know, dozens of other movies have beat him to the punch.
An Audience of Chairs isn’t just one movie. This new film from Deanne Foley (Relative Happiness) based on Joan Clark’s novel of the same name appears to be a sombre Canadian drama that you prepare for by stuffing your pockets full of tissue. While it is a tear-jerker, it’s also a character drama, a romance, and a message film. And, surprisingly enough, Foley pulls off this trifecta.
After touring the festival circuit and sweeping the hearts of many movie goers, Tulipani – Love, Honour and a Bicycle finally makes its way into theatres to claim more adoration from audiences.
