By: Addison Wylie In an attempt to bounce back from mediocre midnight madness with The Visitor, Drafthouse Films returns with another remastered cut of a cult movie. Maybe the third time will be the charm for these cinema aficionados who are desperate to shed light on obscurity. In the meantime, we have this re-release of Abel Ferrara’s robotic Ms. 45. It’s grindhouse exploitation through and through, and maybe movie goers will get some sort of…
By: Addison Wylie Drafthouse Films has taken Giulio Paradisi’s director’s cut to his very strange 1979 sci-fi flick The Visitor and are unleashing it to the public in a newly remastered mode. There are a lot of uncanny compositions of malificent behaviour that especially punch out. These set a tone incredibly fast and have the power to make you immediately feel at unease. Confusion runs rampant throughout The Visitor, and for the most part, it’s…
By: Addison Wylie Antisocial is middle-of-the-road fare, which I’m sure director/co-writer Cody Calahan doesn’t want to hear. He wants his film to act as a commentary for how immersed we are with technology and social media. In order to drive home the social satire, he and co-writer Chad Archibald use networking devices as a means to drag the living to a state of infection. Tech junkies start to hallucinate and graphically bleed out of the…
By: Addison Wylie It’s appropriate that If I Were You’s climax includes a theatrical production because Joan Carr-Wiggin’s film is a full-on farce that would play well on stage. When I say “farce”, I mean a comedy of errors set at Defcon 4. This is the type of film where someone ties a noose around their neck with full intentions to hang themselves, only to forget about the rope until they try and walk to…
By: Addison Wylie Everyone has their own type of vice. Helene’s is her camera. Although she’s able to enthral people with her stunning photography, it’s an interest of hers that she chooses to take up a large portion of her life. The high she gets off of the perfect picture is that of a drug. Like a drug would do, Helene’s talent keeps her in her own world while others are kept out. Her daughter,…
If you’ve been keeping up with my writing at Film Army, you would’ve been more than acquainted with our coverage of this year’s Toronto After Dark Film Festival. The festival which focuses on bringing hardcore genre films (short and feature length) to eager audiences has been stronger than last year but still hit-and-miss. While gems like We Are What We Are and Big Ass Spider! had audiences glued, other horrors like Silent Retreat and Septic…
By: Addison Wylie Alan Zweig won top honours at the Toronto International Film Festival this past September for his documentary filmmaking with When Jews Were Funny – but, I needed more convincing. When Jews Were Funny – a doc on how a Judaic approach to comedy made its way into our funny bones – had appropriate subjects to interview, a proper conversational vibe about it, but its scope was too narrow. Zweig didn’t have enough…
By: Addison Wylie It’s neat to watch a subject take on an evolution people didn’t see coming. In Red Obsession’s case, that subject is wine – and it’s progression isn’t pleasing everybody. Documentary filmmakers David Roach and Warwick Ross capture a timeline that shows how wine went from something that was considered an art, to a product that is more of a business decision than anything. The price of wine keeps on climbing to a…
Well, now that TIFF has come to an end, let’s take a trip back to August. If you can believe it, August was busier than my experience with the Toronto International Film Festival. At Film Army, I was checking out different programmes hosted by Toronto’s TIFF Bell Lightbox, watching smaller independent fare, as well as getting ready for TIFF while setting up IFFFT coverage – the International Fetish Film Festival Toronto. It’s great to cover…
By: Addison Wylie If you can bear with Don Jon’s vulgar vocabulary, you may find yourself swept up in Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s directorial debut. It’s a modern day romance with just the right dash of sweet and salty. Gordon-Levitt plays the title character, a guido with a heart who loves to spend time with his boys, work out, and scope out chicks. At the end of the day, he likes to come home and watch a…