Writer/director Brian Duffield delivers a lot to unpack thematically with his alien thriller No One Will Save You, which is delivered virtually silently with almost no dialogue at all. With obvious nods to films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Invasion of the Body Snatcher, the film is a tense, white-knuckle thriller that…
Tag: director
Atomic Blonde (2017) – David Leitch
Charlize Theron is here to kick ass in Atomic Blonde and she does, and does it well. Based on the graphic novel The Coldest City, Atomic Blonde is a spy-thriller that features some solid stunt and fight work, the majority of which Theron, much like Keanu Reeves for John Wick did as much of as…
TIFF ’23: 100 Yards
Xu Haofeng, an accomplished fight choreographer, writer and director and first-time director Xu Junfeng delivers a period piece set in 1920s China, specifically, Tianjin, where the master of a wushu academy has just died and has passed on its leadership to his apprentice, Quan Qi (Andy On) instead of his son, Shen An (Jacky Heung)…
TIFF ’23: Sleep
Midnight Madness at TIFF is always a lot of fun, and some great genre films get scheduled that are designed to deliver to the late-night audience. Sleep hopes to do that this week. A Korean entry to the film festival from writer/director Jason Yu. It’s his first feature film, and Yu creates a tense, moody…
TIFF ’23: Hell of a Summer
Long-time friends Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk share directing, producing, writing and starring credits in their enjoyable and goofy riff on camp slasher films. It’s summer, and Camp Pineaway is gearing up for another round of campers and counsellors. In fact, the counsellors gather the weekend before camp opens to prepare, get reacquainted, drunk, high,…
TIFF ’23: Poolman
Chris Pine stars, directs and co-wrote Poolman, a sun-baked film noir that never quite finds its tone in spite of its best efforts, and feels like the love child of Chinatown and The Big Lewbowski. A pastiche of the eccentricities and lifestyles of LA, Pine populates his film with characters you could only find in…
TIFF’23: Knox Goes Away
I’ve said it before, and I know I’ll say it again. I love a good noir, and Knox Goes Away directed by and starring, Micheal Keaton may be one of my new favourites. making fantastic use of his framing, lighting, score and production, Knox Goes Away, despite its modern trappings, feels like a throwback to…
TIFF ’23: The Holdovers
Director Alexander Payne reunites with his Sideways star, Paul Giamatti in this earnest and laugh-out-loud dramedy that takes us back to the winter of 1970 and Barton, a boy’s prep school where Paul Hunham (Giamatti) teaches Ancient Civilizations and often finds himself clashing with not only his fellow teachers but his students as well, particularly…
TIFF ’23: The Dead Don’t Hurt
Viggo Mortensen wrote and directed this Western drama that is filled with recognizable Western tropes but Moternsen neither completely rejects them nor subverts them, he simply uses them to fill out his story about an immigrant couple that finds themselves living and loving on the edge of a corrupt Nevada town in the 1860s. The…
TIFF ’23: Reptile
I love a good film noir, and Reptile, having its World Premiere at TIFF, definitely falls into that category. Being released by Netflix (which means if you can’t see it on the silver screen you;ll be able to see it on your big screen at home in October) the film is a tightly wound spring…
The Mind Reels 