With his latest film, The Ides of March, George Clooney reasserts himself as one of the best actor-directors working today. As a throwback to the political potboilers of the 1970s and 80s, Ides doesn’t break any terribly new ground, but much like Clooney’s previous directorial efforts it is a solidly constructed and tightly paced film with great performances from an all star cast.
It might seem hard to believe that the guy who made the remakes of Cheaper by the Dozen and The Pink Panther got something incredibly right, but he honestly knocks his latest film, Real Steel, out of the park. Shawn Levy gets right what Michael Bay has gotten wrong over the course of three straight Transformers films. Real Steel is a gratifying and visually stylish blend of high end special effects and a lowbrow, meat-headed story. Most importantly, Levy and his team of writers keep things simple by applying the standard sports movie template to a film about robots beating the snot out of each other.
SEPTEMBER 28, 2011: Final 10 Films include Ti West’s INNKEEPERS! Lucky McKee’s WOMAN! Two World Premieres and More! Toronto After Dark Film Festival is THRILLED to officially announce its FINAL WAVE of exciting new Horror, Sci-Fi, Action, and Cult feature film selections that will screen at the festival’s 6th Annual Event this October 20-27, 2011! […]
A couple of weeks ago Walt Disney Studios, Touchstone Pictures, and Dreamworks had the Canadian premiere of their latest film Real Steel at the Scotiabank Theatre in Toronto. The event was attended by Canadian actors Kevin Durand (from Thunder Bay) and Dakota Goyo (from Newmarket) and the film's Canadian director Shawn Levy (from Montreal). It was also attended by a guy best known for playing a really pissed off Canadian (despite being Australian): Hugh Jackman.
Writer and actor Vinay Virmani wasn’t nervous at all during the filming of his feature debut Breakaway a film based around a stand-up act from comedian Russell Peters about an all-Sikh ice hockey team trying to make a name for themselves. Despite the presence of some heavy hitting Hollywood and Bollywood regulars on set, Virmani said he didn't have time to be nervous.
50/50 is that rare breed of film that effortlessly combines comedy and drama, creating a memorable cocktail that tackles friendship and family, while testing how far each can be stretched.
Moreso based on Yasunari Kawabata’s The House of the Sleeping Beauties than the popular fairy tale, Emily Browning, whose butt you may remember from Sucker Punch, is Lucy, a university student who is very comfortable with performing tasks for money.
Pseudo-historical, slightly spooky, but infinitely kung fu (with choreography by the beloved Sammo Hung) do Detective Dee’s massive CGI set pieces and explosively absurd fight scenarios create any competition for our biggest 'busters back home? Namely Sherlock Holmes? Which I’m saying because I guess that’s the easiest reference point for a spectacle detective story?
Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s new horror film Intruders seems to be an attempt to bridge British and Spanish horror motifs: the haunted house of the former, and the significance of children of the latter. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite succeed. The premise is fairly strong: parallel stories are told, one of young Juan in Spain, who invents […]
Yorgos Lanthimos’s film Dogtooth disturbed and impressed a lot of people, and I doubt his new film ALPS will receive a different reaction. Following a similar narrative line, about a strange situation between a group of people that is revealed and observed during the film, it stands as farcical comedy where the previous film was […]
Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights is going to anger a lot of people. Which is a shame, because it is brilliant. As an interpretation, not an adaptation, Arnold take a different route, exploring certain themes and characters within the text from a different perspective. And what a perspective – this is raw, gritty, melancholy and visceral in […]
We Canadians are often stereotyped as nice and polite, and even our bank robbers follow this pattern. Edwin Boyd is a biopic of Canada’s most famous thief, and it is a solid first feature, written and directed by Nathan Morlando.
Director Nicolas Winding Refn has proven that he knows the dark world of crime dramas well. His new film Drive manages to be both an immaculate homage to the seminal crime films of Melville and Mann, and a worthy addition to a genre already full of classics.
The last weekend of TIFF 2011 is upon us. For many, the festival ended when the celebrity circus packed up and left town, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t plenty of great films playing between now and Sunday. Here is a list of ten films (in no particular order) that might have escaped you during the festival proper that are getting encore screenings this weekend.
Everyone, from the most devout Catholic to effusive evangelist, has a concept of Jesus and Satan, and what he or she would look like if they ever manifested in human form. But there is no concept, and the devil, or Jesus, could be a rich man or a strange drifter. Award-winning French director Bruno Dumont ‘s new film Outside Satan is a strange, disquieting and disturbing film about a drifter who could be Jesus or Satan, or perhaps both.
