Classics do a lot of good, but that good is typically exhausted in one fell swoop. Plus that bit of good is usually exclusive to the classic itself. This reigns especially true in horror, where one good thing leads to endless, terrible others. The Exorcist is regarded as one of the most effective and poignant […]
British artist Philip Ridley has only directed three feature films in his career. I must confess that I am not familiar with his first two films, The Reflecting Skin and The Passion of Darkly Noon , but everyone I’ve talked to says they are strange and disturbing experiences. With that in mind, I went into […]
Midnight Madness has always been a favourite refuge for dorks at the Toronto International Film Festival . Free from the stuffy attitude that plagues the rest of the festival, Midnight Madness is just about the movies. Awesome, weird and insane movies. The programme is a showcase for the best in sci-fi, fantasy, action, horror, animation […]
The 2010 Toronto After Dark Film Festival has just announced their lineup of films for this year. The fest runs from August 13 – 20 and features the best horror, sci-fi, action and cult films from around the world. They have some truly awesome, strange and ridiculous films playing this year, so don’t miss it! […]
It seems that cinephiles worldwide can’t get enough of zombies these days. Vampires too, but I’ve always been a bit puzzled by the attraction to zombies. After all, they are undead creatures who have no cognitive functions and eat brains. There is no romance there. As such, the vast majority of zombie movies these days […]
There is a moment near the end of Splice when you see the creature in all its frightening glory, this odd hybrid with just enough human to have won your empathy for the majority of the film, and it is about to exact its revenge for mistreatment, when you finally understand what Mary Shelley was […]
Alan Jones joins us for a guest spot review of A Nightmare on Elm Street . Alan is president of the University of Toronto Cinema Studies Students Union (CINSSU). This review and many others can be read on the official CINSSU blog . Walking into the new Platinum Dunes horror remake of A Nightmare on […]
Breck Eisner’s The Crazies is a film that makes no bones about what it is. I had expected another run-of-the-mill horror film going in, but left the theatre pleasantly surprised. The Crazies is a tightly wound ball of suspense that will manage to unsettle and entertain you. The film is loosely based on George Romero’s […]
To slightly skew Marshall MacLuhan’s famous saying “the medium is the message”, I think it’s also fair to say that art should be designed for the medium for which it was intended. For example, a film like Where the Wild Things Are is meant to be seen on a big screen, where it is arguable […]
It seems that I slept through all those timely Halloween horror film recommendations last month. However, this double feature is just is applicable now as it was then, which is why I’m making these my Yanksgiving (what us Canadians call American Thanksgiving, or at least should start) family viewing picks. Because nothing says ‘Thank You’ […]
This past Thursday night I was treated to a very special surprise: last minute tickets to an evening with Stephen King . I estimate that no one has written a larger portion of my lifetime’s reading than this man. And as an added bonus, he was interviewed by my favourite Canadian filmmaker, David Cronenberg . […]
To see Shelagh’s first batch of reviews from the 2009 Sitges Film Festival, including Splice , Amer , Cargo and TiMER be sure to click here . Probably the best night I had at Sitges was not at a film, but at a party (like all good festivals, the parties are great). This one was […]
Last February when on holiday in Spain, I was fortunate enough to meet Mike Hostench, co-director of Sitges Festival Internacional de Cinema Fantà stic de Catalunya , the largest fantastic film festival of Europe and one of the largest and most important in the world. His enthusiasm convinced me to attend the festival last month. Believe […]
The past few years have seen Spanish horror burst onto screens around the world thanks to some fairly high-profile Spanish directors making films in Hollywood, and Spanish films being remade for US audiences. [REC] was remade into Quarantine , though there is no news on whether Quarantine 2 will be made (I haven’t seen it, […]
The Forbidden Door ‘s protagonist is not a starving artist, but a prosperous one learning that success can be just as torturous. The film opens on him sipping champagne while denying an art collector one of his gallery pieces, as it has already sold. The first few shots inside the art gallery give an initial […]
