reviews

TIFF 2014: Wavelengths Shorts Program 2: Something in the Atmosphere

In Wavelengths shorts program 2, Something in the Atmosphere, we have strange encounters with both the past and present through a series of jarring, evocative and visually arresting films. Toronto artist Jean-Paul Kelly channels Truman Capote’s desire in his short film The Innocents. The focus is a shot-by-shot re-enactment of a scene from With Love […]

TIFF 2014: Wavelengths Shorts 1: Open Forms Reviews

In the first Wavelengths short film program, Open Forms, landscape is explored, challenged and assaulted through fascinating experimental work. In Brouillard- Passage 14, experimental filmmaker Alexandre Larose guides us on a path through a forest glade that finishes at a lakeside dock. The surrounding images float freely in the shot, while the viewer’s focal point […]

TIFF 2014: Short Cuts International Program 3 Review

The third program of TIFF’s Short Cuts International focuses on the everyday decisions and words we use and how the impact of those decisions and dialogue, or lack of them, can be just a world shaking as the ones we agonize over. In The Tricycle Thief director Maxim Bessmertnyi takes us to Macau and into […]

TIFF 2014: Short Cuts International Program 2 Review

The second program in the Short Cuts International program features films that revolve around desire and the lengths some will go to fulfil them, from looks at forbidden love to the quest for an elusive ice cream cone. Kaveh Ebrahimpour’s debut short from Iran, A Ceremony for a Friend drops us in the middle of […]

TIFF 2014: Short Cuts International Program 1 Review

The first program for the brand new Short Cuts International program this year at TIFF looks largely at the perceived rules and attitudes that we as humans aspire/adhere to within social contexts and how easily that bond can be manipulated. The Warren deals with a nighttime Israeli Defense Force raid into the titular refugee camp, […]

TIFF 2014: Short Cuts Canada Program 1 Reviews

Considering that the major showpieces of this year’s opening Short Cuts Canada program are a restorations of a pair of iconic national classics, it only stands to reason that the rest of the films should fall in nicely behind them. Recently restored to its 3D glory for the digital age, Norman McLaren’s stereoscopic opus Around […]

TIFF 2014: Short Cuts Canada Program 2 Reviews

The deeper meaning of human interaction and personal relationships seems to be the unifying concept behind the shorts in this year’s second, Quebec filmmaker heavy Short Cuts Canada package. In the best of the shorts, Elizabeth Lazebnik’s Russian language meditation Liompa, an old man on his death bed realizes that not only will be not […]

Interview: Emily Carroll

We chat with Emily Carroll about her first standalone print work, Through the Woods, a beautiful, well-paced read, with more than enough spine-chilling moments for readers 14 and up.

This Week at The Bloor: 8/8/14

Three vastly different, but good films open at The Bloor this week. The entertaining expose An Honest Liar, a look at the stigma of addiction in The Anonymous People, and the emotional, personal, and impressionistic Elena.

The Dork Shelf Video Store

Welcome to the grand opening of the Dork Shelf Video Store, your one stop shop for all reviews of the latest DVDs, Blu-Rays, classic re-releases, box sets, Netflix originals, and VOD debuts that you can watch at home!

Films in Brief: 7/25/14

The low key thriller The Privileged and the food advocacy documentary GMO OMG return to the city after a festival screening and a previous engagement, respectively. One isn't very good, one is unconscionably terrible.