Before I get into last night’s early feature at Toronto After Dark, I want to say a quick blurb about the short film that screened before it. Every year, a Canadian short will screen before each feature film of the festival, and last night’s film was paired with a wicked little short by Adam…
Category: Film Festivals
Toronto After Dark: Solo (2013) – Isaac Cravit
The Toronto After Dark Film Festival screened a couple of winners last night, the enjoyable Odd Thomas and the brilliant camp thriller, Solo. Gillian (Annie Clark) is the newest camp counsellor, and as such must do a solo two night camp out on a lone island. She is driven out by Fred (Richard Clarkin), and…
Toronto After Dark: Silent Retreat (2013) – Tricia Lee
The Sunday afternoon feature at Toronto After Dark was a bit of a mixed bag, with a monster\cabin in the woods tale, that the more I thought about it had more political overtones than one would guess at first blush. Janey (Chelsea Jenish), a ‘troubled youth is sent to a retreat that is meant to…
Toronto After Dark 2013: Stalled – Christian James
I haven’t seen a movie where things go so wrong at Christmas since the days of Gremlins and Die Hard. In Stalled, a custodian-type everyman, W.C. (writer/star Dan Palmer) finds himself trapped in the women’s washroom at a company party on Christmas Eve when the zombie apocalypse suddenly breaks out. Soon he’s barricaded himself…
Toronto After Dark: The Battery (2013) – Jeremy Gardner
Zombie Appreciation Night continues following the UK zom-com Stalled with the character driven undead piece The Battery. Made for a budget of barely $6000, the film focuses on Mickey (Adam Cronheim) and Ben (Jeremy Gardner), a pair of former ball players, paired together as survivors, constantly on the move as they eke out an…
Toronto After Dark Shorts Program
On a Saturday afternoon, there’s nothing better than curling up and enjoying some cinematic entertainment, and this afternoon, I let those festival programmers at Toronto After Dark pick my entertainment, with 9 specially selected from over 450 entries and there were some strong choices. The collection started with an odd little two-minute computer generated…
Toronto After Dark: Eega (2012) – S.S. Rajamouli
Bug Night at Toronto After Dark continued with this brilliantly colorful, melodramatic Indian revenge flick, with that wonderful Tollywood flavor, with Eega. Nani (Nani) and Bindhu (Samantha Prabhu) have been flirting and chasing one another for two years, as the two finally connect, Sudeep (Kiccha Sudeepa) comes into the picture, a bit of a bad…
Toronto After Dark: Big Ass Spider (2013) – Mike Mendez
The second night of Toronto After Dark got its Bug Night under way in a huge way last night with the arachnophobe’s nightmare Big Ass Spider starring Greg Grunberg. Grunberg is Alex Mathis, an exterminator called in on his day off and into a delightful homage to the atomic creature features of the 1950s,…
Toronto After Dark 2013: We Are What We Are – Jim Mickle
TAD’s opening night gala film had all the makings of a crowd-pleaser – a director with a fresh new voice (Mickle also directed Stakeland, which I saw and loved at TIFF a few years ago), a tension-filled plot, and cannibals. I am very happy to say that this one did not disappoint in the…
Toronto After Dark – Bounty Killer (2013) – Henry Saine
Following in the footsteps of the beautifully American gothic We Are What We Are, the opening night gala presentation for the 8th annual Toronto After Dark Film festival would be difficult for any film. So the programmers went in a completely different direction for the second feature of the night. Using the Kickstarter campaign…
