Saturday afternoon at Toronto After Dark gives Canadian filmmakers a chance to showcase their genre shorts, and this time around, there are nine shorts for your spine-tingling enjoyment. There is Bird Hostage written and directed by Lauren Andrews and features her and fan favourite Jay Baruchel in this eccentric little tale that sees Lauren (Andrews)…
Tag: character
Death on the Nile (2022) – Kenneth Branagh
Kenneth Branagh continues his exploration of the Agatha Christie creation, the world’s greatest detective, Hercule Poirot and his little grey cells with Death on the Nile. It follows on the tail of Murder on the Orient Express, which Branagh also directed and starred in. I do like the fact that Branagh seems to have taken…
Dave Made a Maze (2017) – Bill Watterson
I was delightfully surprised when I came across Dave Made a Maze. It’s a film that is so quirky, charming and off-beat while remembering to keep characters you care about at is heart. Featuring some fantastic puppetry, animation, and just a sense of fun, I was completely taken in by this one. Dave (Nich Thune)…
Rush Hour 3 (2007) – Brett Ratner
So the racism is a little toned down (not much), but the sexism is still on display as Lee (Jackie Chan) and Carter (Chris Tucker) return for a third (and final?) go-round. Things get underway when Lee finds himself back in Los Angeles, serving as security for his old friend Ambassador Han (Tzi Ma). Han…
The Witch: Part 2 – The Other One (2022) – Park Hoon-jung
The Korean actioner, The Witch: Part 1 – The Subversion was very engaging and I loved how it built a world and introduced the viewer to genetic manipulation, enhancing the human state, the variety of parties involved and a hint of the plan at its heart. The first film ended with some interesting reveals about…
The Equalizer (1989) – Endgame, and Suicide Squad
Endgame is a tale of manipulation, and revenge, and seems to almost sneak up on the fringes of Saw territory, as the episode finds two sisters pitted against one another. Written by Coleman Luck, the penultimate episode of The Equalizer aired on 10 August, 1989, well after the season should have finished in May. McCall…
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds – Season 1 Blu-Ray
Anybody who has even visited this blog knows how I feel about Star Trek. And as much as I love Lower Decks, Discovery, Prodigy and Picard (though don’t even get me started on how much season three is blowing my mind!!) Star Trek: Stange New Worlds – Season 1 had me completely enraptured. While the…
The Expanse (2018) – It Reaches Out, and Intransigence
The mystery of the protomolecule and the Ring is augmented with the introduction of the Investigator (Thomas Jane) who only Holden (Steven Strait) can see, and who is trying to impart important information to him in the only way he knows how, but will Holden realize what he’s being told before things escalate to greater…
Episode Thirteen (2023) – Craig DiLouie
Orbit Books brings me my first real creepy novel of 2023, Episode Thirteen. Using the familiar structure of the found footage genre, something that has been co-opted successfully for all of the ghost-hunting shows that seem to plague reality television, DiLouie compiles a literary found footage film, offering up video transcripts, EVP recordings, text messages,…
The Brothers McMullen (1995) Edward Burns
In the mid-90s it seemed every studio was trying to find the next big little indie title, so there were lots of smaller character-driven films being foisted upon the audience, and while a lot of the studios have eschewed that for sure-things and tentpoles, some studios still take chances. But in the 90s it seemed…
