Toronto After Dark 2021: ‘Nightshooters’
Combining martial arts with survival horror and thrills, Nightshooters may have a few rough patches – but it’s a hell of a good time.
Indiecan
Cup of Cheer
How do you satirize a genre that’s become a spoof of itself? It isn’t an impossible trick but, to pull it off, it takes a keen eye for detail and a filmmaker who can thread the needle between appreciation and cynicism. 2014’s They Came Together, a comedy from the creators of Wet Hot American Summer that hilariously destroyed the rom-com genre, is the bellwether for me, and this year’s clever seasonal spoof Cup of Cheer…
Space & Time
There seems to be an unhealthy trend of shooting and wrapping film productions within a short time frame (A Fall from Grace, Appiness). But for Toronto indie Space & Time, writer/director Shawn Gerrard sees the appeal of a patient process. Space & Time has been shot over the period of 11 months; allowing the film to naturally capture the passage of, well, space and time. This lends a potentially special quality to the film’s story…
The Meaning of Life
The Meaning of Life walks and talks like a conventional weepy melodrama, but it’s much more than a typical tear-jerker. This is a smart and sweet film that reads between the lines. Instead of rattling off a familiar story about a friendly relationship that blooms between a struggling musician (Finn played by Canadian pop artist Tyler Shaw) and a young leukemia patient (Sophie played by Sadie Munroe of CBC’s Workin’ Moms’), The Meaning of Life…
Man Running
Gary Burns’ Man Running, which modestly premiered at the 2018 Whistler Film Festival, follows Jim (Gord Rand) as he participates in a 24-hour marathon. The laborious journey he takes is vertiginously interspersed with flashbacks and hallucinations, suggesting a double struggle for the main character: one physical, one emotional.
Libera Nos (Deliver Us)
Libera Nos (Deliver Us), a documentary chronicling numerous exorcisms, rides an innovative line between being a commentary on the distractions of devout faith and a real-life horror movie. It shook me up like no other film has in years.