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.
We’re halfway through the year, which means it’s time for Wylie Writes’ recap of the best and the worst films of 2017. Don’t forget to click the coloured titles to read a more detailed write-up about the film!
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…
A racially-diverse group of children cause havoc until a teacher comes along and sets them straight. No, this isn’t about Stand and Deliver or Dangerous Minds. This is about Urban Hymn, yet another film which takes the familiar plotline and runs nowhere with it.
78/52 (DIR. Alexandre Philippe) It’s a testament to Alfred Hitchcock’s talent as a filmmaker that he directed the shower scene from Psycho and he is still known for things other than that; any other director would have simply become known by that singular sequence. Even though, that particular scene may well be the single most studied, analyzed and deconstructed scene in the history of cinema and, as a part of this tradition, there is Alexandre…
There is a horror renaissance going on right now that everyone should be excited about. The genre has struggled to keep up with the horrors of the real world and has returned to top form; with many of the best films of the last few years coming from the auteurs of screams. One of these films, a film which made this critic’s top ten list last year, is Julia Ducournau’s Raw, which is finally getting…
Spookers (DIR. Florian Habicht) Spookers focuses on the Watsons, a New Zealand family who has run one of the most successful scare attractions out of an old psychiatric ward.
My Enemy, My Brother (DIR. Ann Shin) In 2015, Ann Shin documented a rather unusual event: an Iranian child soldier, Zahed, had recently had a chance encounter with an Iraqi soldier, Najah, whom he had saved during the Iran-Iraq war, at a Vancouver institution for survivors of torture. This chance encounter had made the two men friends. This anomaly had led to the short film My Enemy, My Brother. Now, Hot Docs is home to the…