TAD 2023: Canadian Shorts After Dark

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)…

TIFF ’23: Lee

Before this morning, I had a broad, very generalized knowledge of who Lee Miller was. Now, thanks to this fantastic biopic directed by Ellen Kuras, based on The Lives of Lee Miller by Anthony Penrose and a powerhouse performance (would we expect anything less?) from Kate Winslet as Lee I find my imagination fired, and…

TIFF 2021: Where is Anne Frank? dir. Ari Folman

Waltz with Bashir directot Ar Folman delivers a poignant animated feature, that touches on some important concepts, and ideas. Kitty is the imaginary friend that Anne Frank wrote to in her diary, pouring her thoughts and feelings, while documenting the events of her life, including two years of living in hiding from the Nazis during…

Millennium (1998) – The Time Is Now

Season two of Millennium, and what was to be the series finale, is up this week on the blog, and it raises some questions (not to mention that the retcon that happens at the beginning of the third season to adjust for the series return). Written by Glen Morgan and James Wong, the season came…

Star Trek: Voyager (1996) – False Profits, and Remember

Captain’s log: stardate 50074.3 A bit of a sequel to The Next Generation episode The Price, False Profits was written by Joe Menosky from a story by George Brozak. This episode first debuted on 2 October, 1996. The crew of the Voyager come across a pair of Ferengi, Kol (Leslie Hordan) and Arridor (Dan Shor)…

V – The Final Battle (1984) – Part One

We had to wait a year to see what would happen next in Kenneth Johnson’s V story, but he left the follow-up miniseries due to creative differences. He saw more of a Holocaust-Resistance story and the studio wanted something more gangbusters action adventure in the vein of Star Wars if they could get it. The…

Battlestar Galactica (1978) – Saga of a Star World

  It struck me that I wanted to revisit some television shows, and while I thought about it, I realized there were a couple more names that could stand alongside Spielberg, Lucas and Roddenberry as entertaining me and shaping me as I grew up… Donald P. Bellisario and Stephen J. Cannell. The tv series that…

Room 237 (2012) – Rodney Ascher

When I first heard about this documentary from Rodney Ascher, it was coming to TIFF, and I very much wanted to see it, I love the ideas of secrets and conspiracies hidden in movies. Both the opportunities I had to see it fell through, and I was a little bummed. Then I heard it was returning to…

TIFF 2012: Lore – Cate Shortland

  Bright new talent Saskia Rosendahl stars as Lore, a young girl who has to make her way across war-torn Germany near the end of WWII, with her much younger siblings in tow, including her infant brother, Peter.  They are trying to get safely to their grandmother’s home in Hamburg after their parents have been…

Oma & Bella – Alexa Karolinski, Germany/USA

  Oma & Bella points a camera into the lives of two Holocaust survivors who remained in Germany after WWII.  Living together now in Berlin, their friendship has survived several decades, and has an enviable strength due to their shared memories and love of cooking.  For both women, food – and the preparation of food…