Closing out the Toronto After dark film festival tonight at Scotibank Theater is the latest film from the Pierce Brothers as they have the Toronto Premiere of The Wretched. With overtones of 80s classics, like The Evil Dead and Fright Night (and going a little further back to the 70s with Jaws – I may…
Tag: engaging
Toronto After Dark 2019: The Furies (2019) – Tony D’Aquino
Australia brings their horror game to the Toronto After Dark film festival tonight with their bloody and violent The Furies. A riff on the Final Girl trope as well as a mash-up of Battle Royale and Halloween the film is deliciously gory and excitingly paced. When Kayla (Airlie Dodds) is abducted and wakes up in…
Disney Pixar Character Encyclopedia: New Edition (2019) – Steve Bynghall,Jo Casey, Glenn Dokin, Clare Hibbert, Julia March, Helen Murray, and Catherine Saunders
DK Canda has a knack for creating beautiful coffee table books, whether they are aimed at younger readers, or older fans. Their works are always filled with details and brilliant pictures and illustrations. Their new edition of the Disney Pixar Character Encyclopedia continues this trend. Broken into sections that guide us through each franchise and…
Carrion Comfort (1989) – Dan Simmons
I’ve been enjoying the Dan Simmons’ books I’ve been reading, and finally had time to dig into his epic, and much hailed horror novel, Carrion Comfort. A massive read, the book is actually horrifying in the traditional sense. I’ve always enjoyed horror novels, and the like, but this novel is truly frightening, and it is…
Soul of the Border (2019) – Matteo Righetto
Releasing this week from House of Anansi Press is the English translation of Matteo Righetto’s Soul of the Border. Released in Italy in 2017, the novel became a bestseller and is now getting it’s English release. A brisk, cinematic tale; it’s short chapters deliver a story that sees a young woman in search of her…
Raise the Red Lantern (1991) – Yimou Zhang
The next film in DK Canada’s informative and entertaining The Movie Book is this beautifully shot Chinese film starring Li Gong. Set in the 1920s, Songlian (Li) elects to become the fourth mistress of a wealthy lord, Chen Zuoqian (Jingwu Ma). She soon finds herself enmeshed in the rules of the household, and the scheming…
NOS4A2 (2013) – Joe Hill
So I wanted something spooky and creepy, but needed a quick respite from revisting King’s work. I kept it in the family and dug into his son’s novel, NOS4A2. This one feels almost epic in size as we follow the horrors committed by Charlie Talent Manx and the life of a woman, Victoria McQueen who…
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1997) – The Darkness and the Light, and The Begotten
Station log; stardate 50416.2 Ronald D. Moore pens the teleplay for this episode from a story by Bryan Fuller. It first aired on 6 January, 1997. Someone has Kira (Nana Visitor) in their crosshairs, and not just Kira, someone is systematically assassinating all the members of her Bajoran resistance cell. Playing as a bit of…
The Shark is Still Working (2007) -Erik Hollander
Oh Jaws. There’s never not a good time for me to watch this movie, so I was delighted when it showed up in DK Canada’s The Movie Book. But having reviewed it for the blog previous to this I moved onto the What Else to Watch list, and there were only a couple of titles…
Little Caesar (1931) – Mervyn LeRoy
The next big title from DK Canada’s The Movie Book is the classic crime drama, The Godfather. Having covered that one previously, I moved onto the What Else to Watch list and dived into classic crime films that I had often heard of, but never seen, including the 1931 film, Little Caesar. Before his voice…
Zero Dark Thirty (2012) – Kathyrn Bigelow
The multi-Oscar nominated Zero Dark Thirty (out of six nominations, it only took home Best Sound Editing) is the next title on the What Else to Watch list following my screening of The Battle of Algiers for DK Canada’s highly enjoyable The Movie Book. Kathryn Bigelow puts Jessica Chastain front and center as Maya, in…
The Battle of Algiers (1966) – Gillo Pontecorvo
The next big title in DK Canada’s The Movie Book is a film that, perhaps, resonates with even more importance now than it did when it was first released. Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers is a fascinating, brutal, and dark watch that shows us the true face of war and it’s effect on all sides…
