Curiosity is a quality that keeps on giving. M. Night Shyamalan, for instance, is a filmmaker who is eager to explore his own craft. And while his back catalogue has included projects that have snowballed out of his own range, he’s at least owning his ambition and finding original stories to tell audiences. His latest collaborations with indie empire Blumhouse Productions have been great vehicles to anchor his passion projects and visual filmmaking. Such is…
There’s been a modest resurgence of oddball, family-friendly fantasies. We were reminded of it with Tim Burton’s Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, and now with Eli Roth’s The House with a Clock in Its Walls. While I’m more of a fan of how the former balanced all of its supernatural factors, I still really liked and admired Roth’s kooky flick about an uncle teaching his nephew the tricks of the trade to sorcery.
Using brilliantly ominous visuals and an amazingly unsettling musical score, Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy serves up a simple story that isn’t on the same level of competence as those technical achievements. Cage and Andrea Riseborough (The Death of Stalin) play Red and Mandy, a soft-spoken bohemian couple who are suddenly captured and tortured by a travelling crew of cultists. When his girlfriend is kidnapped and used as a pawn for a “special” ritual, Red has no other desire…
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.
By: Trevor Chartrand Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water is a masterfully crafted modern-day fairy tale. An incredible, romanticized take on the creature feature, director/co-writer del Toro seamlessly combines genre and visual style to bring us this beautifully bizarre morality tale.
By: Nick van Dinther There are certain directors that have a specific style audiences can always identify – Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, Tim Burton to name a few. Guillermo del Toro (The Devil’s Backbone, Pan’s Labyrinth) is surely a part of that crew. When it comes to The Shape of Water, del Toro’s style is out in full-force to bring us an unforgettable visual spectacle.
I didn’t believe anything in Considering Love & Other Magic. These characters are so disengaged, you could set them on fire and all they would do is shrug. They’re all too busy pondering about death; mostly the long-term existentialism that lingers when a loved one passes away. The press release describes Dave Schultz’s film as a “family movie”. Try explaining that pitch to your kids. You’ll owe them ice cream after the show.
Bill Watterson’s Dave Made a Maze will receive comparisons to Dan Harmon’s TV show Community. Their quirky in similar ways, the characters are alike, and there’s an uncanny connection to pop culture in both. Most importantly, just like in Harmon’s cult hit, Dave Made a Maze is a story of misfits trying to define their self-worth while “adulting” by way of their own arrested development.
