TIFF 25: Retreat dir. Ted Evans

Ted Evans wrote and directed this engaging thriller that takes us inside the lives of Eva (Anne Zander) and Matt (James Joseph Boyle) when Eva joins Matt and a collection of deaf people living at a residence they know as Chilmark. Under the watchful eye, and guidance of Mia (Sophie Stone), the residents are establishing…

The Hobby: Tales from the Tabletop (2024) – Simon Ennis

The Hobby rolls a D20 for charm! Filmmaker Simon Ennis shows us the connections, the obsessions, and the passions that have sprung up around modern board games, and the people who play them. Traveling across Canada and the United States The Hobby introduces a cross-section of society and the way they can be their best…

I Was a Teenage Slasher (2024) – Stephen Graham Jones

Simon & Schuster have been delivering a lot of great summer reads my way and Stephen Graham Jones’ latest tale, I Was a Teenage Slasher is wonderful fun. Tolly and Amber are best of friends in high school. It’s the 80s, with the best music, best movies, and best clothes, and they are content to…

When Evil Lurks (2023) – Demian Rugna

The Spanish language film, When Evil Lurks, from Argentina, has found its way into my favourite horror films along with Late Night with the Devil. It’s creepy, has some legitimate scares, and a real sense of menace. Two brothers, Pedro (Ezequiel Rodriguez) and Jimi (Demian Salomon), find themselves confronting true evil when they encounter a…

Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016) – Mike Flanagan

Mike Flanagan has quickly become one of my favorite writer/directors and I realized that there were still a number of his titles that I hadn’t written about for the blog. So color me happy as I dig into some other examples of his work. Ouija: Origin of Evil is, in fact, a sequel to a…

Scream 3 (2000) – Wes Craven

Wes Craven delivered a third entry into the Scream franchise in 2000, and while it’s interesting to see how characters have changed (or not) since the second film, the film itself lacks the self-referential meta nature that made the first to so enjoyable. Even by transposing the bulk of the story to the making of…

Murder By Contract (1958) – Irving Lerner

I’ve been checking out some noir titles over the past few weeks, checking in with one of my favorite genres. This was perhaps my least favorite of the bunch. I think it could have been a little better constructed, and perhaps delved into the issues that plagued the film’s lead character, Claude (Vince Edwards). Claude…

The X-Files (1999) – Arcadia, and Alpha

Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) take on their first case now that they have been reassigned to the X-files in Arcadia. Written by Daniel Arkin, this episode was first broadcast on 7 March, 1999. The pair go undercover into a gated, rule-abiding community to investigate some mysterious disappearances. Posing as a married couple,…

Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991) – Peter Hewitt

Two years after their Excellent Adventure, Bill S. Preston, esquire (Alex Winter) and Ted Theodore Logan (Keanu Reeves) went on a Bogus Journey, the next title up in DK Canada’s Monsters in the Movies, because of a little character by the name of Death (William Sadler). Though the climax of the film rewrites some of…