And now for something a little different: A video review! Dork Shelf's own Brandon Bastaldo takes a look at Steve McQueen's slavery drama 12 Years a Slave starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Michael Fassbender.
One third of the Sylvester Stallone/Arnold Schwarzenegger team up Escape Plan is a decent popcorn action flick. The other two thirds are fairly abysmal. Fortunately, the good section is the middle hour of the film, meaning it’s a perfect film to watch on TV right after you missed the opening 30 minutes and right before you have to take off to be somewhere.
Alexis Bledel and Saoirse Ronan are a fine duo in the offbeat teenage hitwoman dramedy Violet & Daisy, but the film will be best remembered for one of the sweetest, most touching performances from the late James Gandolfini.
There's only one new release this week at The Bloor - One Track Heart: The Story of Krishna Das, which really isn't very good - but there are plenty of returning favourites, special events, and special screenings packing the theatre for the rest of the month.
Carrie might be one of the few cases not only of a remake that’s on par with the original, but of one that makes just enough tweaks in style, performance, and theme to warrant its existence.
We talk to International Independent Video Store Day creator and owner of Eyesore Cinema in Toronto Daniel Hanna about the genesis of Video Store Day, what it means to people, how it’s evolved, have a discussion about Netflix and the effect it has had, and the ups and downs of the hard media business.
Here it is! Your guide to this year's eight annual Toronto After Dark Film Festival, bringing Toronto some of the best genre filmmaking from around the world to the Scotabank Theatre this October 17th-25th. Check back daily for new film reviews and updates!
Big Ass Spider! More in step with the loving work of Joe Dante and early Ivan Reitman than the “look at how crappy of a movie we can make” irony of something like Sharknado, Mike Mendez’s aptly named Big Ass Spider! is a welcome surprise. It’s a lovingly cheeseball, genuinely funny man vs. beast creature […]
Bounty Killer It would probably work better as a pilot for a TV series where its characters and world can be fleshed out in greater detail, but Bounty Killer still offers plenty of gory, desolate futuristic fun, silliness, and some astoundingly good low budget action sequences. In a world where all white collar criminals have […]
Although it gets off to a pretty rough start and is a bit overstuffed, Bill Condon’s somewhat fictionalized “inside WikiLeaks” drama The Fifth Estate manages to generate some thrills once it gets the dynamics of the larger than life characters out of the way.
The Canadian black comedy Cottage Country has all the potential elements for success: a beautiful locale, actors who can pull off great comedy, and a story with loads of potential on paper. Unfortunately, it never gels the way it should becoming oddly too sweet for the darkness to play with any real balance.
Recently restored and cut by 20 minutes at late director Chris Marker's request, the 1963 documentary Le Joli Mai helps to solidify Marker's standing as one of the greatest cinematic artists and philosophers to ever pick up a camera.
It might only just be finding a theatrical release now in Canada (after premiering at TIFF in 2012) to capitalize on the relative success of the similarly pitched Don Jon, but as far as looks at sex addiction go writer and director Stuart Blumberg’s Thanks for Sharing is almost infinitely preferable in spite of its own flaws and shortcomings.
There’s no doubt in my mind that 12 Years a Slave will go down in history as a landmark film. Never before, and quite possibly never again, has the issue of African American slavery and the still present pain and anguish been this viscerally and brilliantly realized. Its effect is provocative, much like gazing into an unattended open wound that never quite heals itself, but rather reaches a point of stasis beyond which things couldn’t possibly get any worse no matter how awful a situation may be.
Dork Shelf talk to director Steve McQueen, writer John Ridley, and historical consultant Henry Louis Gates about their work on the powerful drama 12 Years a Slave, the history behind free African American turned forced slave Solomon Northup’s life, how the story came to the filmmakers, if they thought the truth of slavery being depicted on screen would be too much for audiences to handle, what Ridley found most painful about the writing process, and why McQueen believes cinema is the greatest of all art forms.
