Hot Docs 2016: Credit for Murder – Vladi Antonevicz

  In a documentary that plays more like a thriller than a Hot Docs, Antonevicz’s dark entry into this year’s film festival is a stunning ride. Using pacing, framing and structure like a standard Hollywood thriller this one captivatesd as much as it generates hate for it’s ready made villains, Neo-Nazis. When a YouTube video…

The Night of the Hunter (1955) – Charles Laughton

  The Great Movies – 100 Years of Film book brings me back to the Thriller genre, with this classic starring Robert Mitchum as twisted evangelist Harry Powell, a man not afraid to commit evil in the name of the lord. He has just served time for a car theft, and had met a prisoner,…

Magnum, p.i. (1987) – Murder By Night and On The Fly

  It’s time for a classic noir whodunnit in the first episode up this week. Murder By Night originally aired 14 January, 1987 and was written by Robert Hamilton. This episode sees Magnum (Tom Selleck) as a private investigator in the 1940s, nosing around the murder of a newspaper publisher, Maxfield. All the familiar faces…

Cop Car (2015) – Jon Watts

  Releasing today from Anchor Bar on Blu-Ray and DVD is this wonderfully taut, coming of age thriller starring Kevin Bacon, James Freedson-Jackson and Hays Wellford. Two young boys, Travis (Freedson-Jackson) and Harrison (Wellford), are off on an adventure, they’re running away from home, experimenting with swear words, and daring one another as they walk…

Rififi (1955) – Jules Dassin

  I love when the Great Movies – 100 Years of Film brings me a film that I’d never heard of, and then makes me fall in love with it. I dove back into the thriller and crime chapter of the book and was promptly introduced to this brilliant French film that tells of the…

Toronto Youth Shorts 2015

  One of the things I love most about Toronto is that it is rife with Film Festivals, there is always so much creativity and excitement to this town, and filmmakers from all over come to shoot here, and showcase their creations. Well, here’s another cool one to check out! Celebrating it’s 7th year, the…

The Demonologist (2013) – Andrew Pyper

  I was recommended recently to pick up this book, and I was happy to learn he’s yet another Canadian author I had not heard of, but can now add to the list of writers I enjoy. This Demonologist follows Canadian professor David Ullman, who teaches at New York’s Columbia, and is one of the foremost…

Berkshire County (2014) – Audrey Cummings

  Opening theatrically today in Toronto (The Carlton), Ottawa (Landmark Kanata) and Whitby (Landmark Cinemas 24 Whitby) with more to follow in the coming weeks is this horror thriller that wowed them on the festival circuit and took home Best Feature from LA’s Shriekfest. Taking its cues from the John Carpenter classic Halloween, as well as films like…

Hot Docs 2015: (T)error – David Felix Sutcliffe and Lyric R. Cabral 

Screening tonight at the Lightbox at 9:45pm is this thriller of a documentary, that pulls the curtain back from the FBI’s counterterrorism efforts within the continental United States and the revelation that it isn’t all as above-board and by the book as the public would like to believe. Saeed, alias Shariff, an ex-con has been working…