Posts Tagged ‘Canadian’
Monday, February 3rd, 2025
There’s a point in Brandon Cronenberg’s first movie ANTIVIRAL (2012) where a TV interviewer asks a CEO if our fascination with celebrities has become unhealthy. Generally I hate when a dystopian satire has to have characters point out that it’s a dystopia (see ROBOCOP 3), but I understand why Cronenberg couldn’t resist – in his world fans are paying to be infected with celebrity illnesses. Their obsession is literally unhealthy!
Syd March (Caleb Landry Jones, THE DEAD DON’T DIE) is a creepy man-bunned sales associate for the Lucas Clinic, industry leader in celebrity pathogens due to their exclusive line with Hannah Geist (Sarah Gadon, DRACULA UNTOLD, FERRARI). One of Syd’s colleagues, Derek (Reid Morgan, CASINO JACK) gets samples directly from Geist, and the lab alters it to be non-contagious. Copy protection. Then Syd sits down with clients and lustily describes how something that touched their idol’s lungs will touch theirs, an ultimate form of intimacy.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brandon Cronenberg, Caleb Landry Jones, Canadian, Joe Pingue, Malcolm McDowell, Reid Morgan, Sarah Gadon, Wendy Crewson
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, January 21st, 2025
I watched the 2023 Canadian film RED ROOMS (Les chambres rouges) on Shudder, but come to think of it it’s not exactly a horror movie. It’s kind of more harsh than that. It’ an extremely unsettling character drama, maybe a thriller, about the trial of a man accused of horrific child murders live on webcam. We thankfully don’t have to see any of the violence, but the images created in our mind are worse, described with a true crime bluntness rather than genre flair. I would not say this is a fun movie.
It takes its sweet time rolling out what it will be about, or even what form it will take. One of the first scenes is a long unbroken shot of the judge’s introduction and the opening statements from both sides. It goes on long enough that I genuinely started to think the whole movie would be the trial – a new gimmicky format to put alongside mockumentary, found footage and screen time. A story told through testimony.
That’s not actually what it is, and even before it breaks we can see that the focus is on one of the court room observers, Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy, BOOST). The camera rotates around but keeps coming back to her reactions, and what she’s looking at in the room. Later we learn that she sleeps on the street every morning to get a good place in line, like it’s the first showing of THE PHANTOM MENACE, or a Taylor Swift concert. When reporters try to interview her leaving she shoos them away, though another observer, Clémentine (Laurie Babin, THE LITTLE GIRL WHO WAS TOO FOND OF MATCHES) is happy to tell them about all the conspiracies and injustices against poor Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos, LAND OF THE DEAD), who has kind eyes, she says. (To me he looks like a creep, but I only know him in the context of wearing an orange jumpsuit behind plexiglass examining his fingernails while people accuse him of atrocities.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Canadian, Juliette Gariepy, Laurie Babin, Maxwell McCabe-Lokos, Pascal Plante
Posted in Reviews, Drama, Thriller | 16 Comments »
Wednesday, October 9th, 2024
IN A VIOLENT NATURE was one of this year’s most hyped and intriguing indie horror movies. It’s a slasher hailing from the land of Canada (see also: BLACK CHRISTMAS, PROM NIGHT, MY BLOODY VALENTINE), but it it takes an unusual approach that made some describe it as an “ambient slasher” or “slow cinema” after its midnight Sundance premiere. Writer/director Chris Nash cited Gus Van Sant’s camera-following-people-walking-around trilogy and Terrence Malick as inspirations, while many reviews compare the style to the Dardenne Brothers and Bela Tarr. So when I finally saw it on Shudder I was surprised that it’s much closer to a normal slasher movie than the arty deconstruction or reinvention I’d pictured from all that.
Yes, the approach is inspired by the above-named filmmakers, but this is not some self-serious, nihilistic chiller. It winkingly repurposes arthouse techniques for pulpy purposes. Alex Nino Gheciu of the Globe and Mail wrote that the film “has no protagonists. Everything is shown from [the killer’s] perspective,” which puts in mind the opening of THE TOOLBOX MURDERS, but it’s not that either. You have your usual characters, they’re just not at center frame the whole time. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andrea Pavlovic, Canadian, Chris Nash, Lauren-Marie Taylor, Ry Barrett, slashers, Steven Kostanski
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 48 Comments »
Wednesday, February 1st, 2023
WOMEN TALKING is the new best picture nominated film from writer/director Sarah Polley, who is minor-key beloved as an actress for people around my age (THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN, GO, EXISTENZ, DAWN OF THE DEAD, SPLICE), but these days is more known as an acclaimed filmmaker (she directed AWAY FROM HER, TAKE THIS WALTZ and STORIES WE TELL). Now I’ve finally seen one of the ones she directed, and it lives up to her reputation. It’s based on a novel, but I would’ve guessed it was based on a play, because it’s one of those stories with a really concise but heavy-duty set up to put a top shelf ensemble of actors into a limited location (in this case a hay loft) with much to discuss, debate, and decide. Kind of a 12 ANGRY MEN deal, except there’s very intentionally only one man with a speaking part in the whole movie. And he’s way more sad than angry.
Canadian author Miriam Toews wrote the novel as a “reaction through fiction” to a real thing that happened in a Mennonite colony in Bolivia. So bear with me – this is awful. In an isolated religious colony (here seemingly in the U.S.) women and even young girls have, for some time, been waking up bruised and covered in blood as they have been repeatedly knocked unconscious by cow tranquilizer and then raped. For years they’ve been told by the elders that they imagined it or it was the Devil or a ghost or a punishment from God or all that kind of bullshit. But before the movie begins our young narrator Autje (Kate Hallett) and her friend Neitje (Liv McNeil) caught one of them running away, they got him to name the others, they were arrested and taken to jail. The men of the colony have gone to the city to bail them out, and given the women 48 hours to forgive them, or they will be excommunicated. Can you believe that shit? (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: August Winter, Ben Wishaw, best picture nominees, Canadian, Claire Foy, Frances McDormand, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, Kate Hallett, Liv McNeil, Michelle McLeod, Miriam Toews, Rooney Mara, Sarah Polley, Sheila McCarthy
Posted in Reviews, Drama | 12 Comments »
Tuesday, November 29th, 2022
RHYMES FOR YOUNG GHOULS (2013) was the first of two features by writer/director Jeff Barnaby. I didn’t know about him until I saw his really good 2019 zombie movie BLOOD QUANTUM, at which point I was excited to follow this new director who was around my age and seemed real interesting in interviews. Tragically that was his last film – he died of cancer last month. That’s a real damn shame, but I encourage you to check out his small body of work. He’s got a real interesting perspective as a guy whose politics grew from seeing some shit growing up in the Mi’kmaq reserve in Quebec, but his genre influences taught him to make movies from that point-of-view that are entertaining, not strident.
While BLOOD QUANTUM is straight forwardly Barnaby’s take on the zombie post-apocalypse genre, this one is something more distinct. It’s kind of a small time crime tale, set (like BLOOD QUANTUM) in a fictional reservation called Red Crow, but in 1976 (the year Barnaby was born). Reservation Dogs star Devery Jacobs (credited here as Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs) plays Aila, a teenager who has been running the family weed business since a drunk driving accident killed her brother and mother and put her father in prison. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brandon Oakes, Canadian, Cody Bird, Devery Jacobs, Glen Gould, Jeff Barnaby, mark Antony Krupa
Posted in Reviews, Crime, Drama | No Comments »
Thursday, July 29th, 2021
SIEGE (previously released in the U.S. as SELF DEFENSE) is a 1983 Canadian exploitation film brought to my attention thanks to the new release on Blu-Ray and DVD from Severin Films. It seems more inspired by ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 than any other movie, and it’s not a wall-to-wall scorcher like that, but I liked it because it’s quick and raw and has some really unique elements.
Down south in the U.S that year, heroic movie cops were being forced to break the rules to stop perverted rapists (10 TO MIDNIGHT, SUDDEN IMPACT) and kids were turning into serial killers because they witnessed gay sex (SLEEPAWAY CAMP). By contrast, SIEGE paints a picture of a Halifax gay bar and their low income neighbors being terrorized by the violent bigots in a right wing militia. The chaos starts with a police strike, where officers on the picket line egg on onlookers as they roar around in their cars whoo-hooing and doing donuts. Reporters speculate that the rowdiness will snowball from there. Sure enough a group of thugs choose this time to enter the club and announce a “New Order” they want to impose on Nova Scotia. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brenda Bazinet, Canadian, Doug Lennox, fascists, Halifax, Jack Blum, Keith Knight, Paul Donovan, Salter Street Films, siege movies, Tom Nardini
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 43 Comments »
Friday, March 5th, 2021
Somehow HEAVY METAL was not Canada’s only rock-soundtrack-animated-fantasy-feature of the early ‘80s. ROCK & RULE (1983) combines the sci-fi/fantasy genre with a story about rock music, as the main characters are a band and the villain is (at least according to the opening text on the American version) a “legendary superocker.” The opening credits list all the bands on the soundtrack before the cast.
This was the first feature film from Toronto-based animation studio Nelvana Limited, who actually turned down an offer to animate HEAVY METAL because they’d been developing this since the late ‘70s. Previously they’d done TV specials like A Cosmic Christmas and The Devil and Daniel Mouse, but I know them for their weird, rubber animation on the Star Wars Holiday Special, which led to them doing the Ewoks and Droids cartoons.
ROCK & RULE takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where (again, according to the text in the American version, unexplained in the original) “The War was over” leaving only dogs, cats and rats alive, and “a long time ago” those evolved into “a new race of mutants.” In other words, it’s a “funny animal” cartoon, where humanoid animals rule the earth and either humans don’t exist or maybe they’re being milked on a dairy farm or something off camera. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Canadian, Catherine O'Hara, Clive Smith, Debbie Harry, Don Francks, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Nelvana, Paul Le Mat, Susan Roman
Posted in Cartoons and Shit, Music, Reviews | 25 Comments »
Thursday, April 30th, 2020
I keep having to write this same exact preamble, so here’s the short version: yes, we all think we’re sick of zombie movies, but here’s another really good one. (See also: TRAIN TO BUSAN, THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS.) The fresh spin on BLOOD QUANTUM – a Canadian one that opened the Midnight Madness portion of the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival and got a surprise release on Shudder this week – starts with it taking place on a First Nations reserve (or Indian reservation as people here call it).
It has a vivid weird-day-unfolding feel, like a serious THE DEAD DON’T DIE, rolling out the odd characters in town through the point of view of Red Crow reserve chief of police Traylor (Michael Greyeyes, DANCE ME OUTSIDE, FIRESTORM, Fear the Walking Dead, True Detective). But it starts on his dad, Gisigu (Stonehorse Lone Goeman, a sturdy, bald old badass with no other acting credits) gutting a bunch of salmon he caught. The fucking things won’t stop flipping around like they’re in that Faith No More video. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brandon Oakes, Canadian, Devery Jacobs, Elle-Maija Tailfeathers, Forrest Goodluck, Gary Farmer, Jeff Barnaby, Kiowa Gordon, Michael Greyeyes, Olivia Scriven, Shudder, Stonehorse Lone Goeman, zombies
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 7 Comments »
Tuesday, February 11th, 2020
Maybe it’s sacrilege to remake a David Cronenberg movie, but if somebody’s gonna do it it’s fitting that it’s weird Canadian twins. I really liked Jen and Sylvia Soska’s extreme-surgery underworld tale AMERICAN MARY, and kind of liked their SEE NO EVIL 2. And it’s been a long time since I’ve seen Cronenberg’s 1977 RABID, so I don’t remember it well enough to have any specific expectations for a redo.
This RABID is about Rose (Laura Vandervoort, THE LOOKOUT, INTO THE BLUE 2: THE REEF), a lowly employee for a pretentious, obnoxious, and on-the-nose-German-accented fashion designer named Gunter (Mackenzie Gray, JOY RIDE 2: DEAD AHEAD, Legion, WARCRAFT, MAN OF STEEL, True Justice). In tribute to the original’s motorcycle she rides a scooter.
It’s one of those things where they cast an unusually beautiful TV star to play an awkward misfit who everybody picks on, the excuse I guess being that her co-workers are supposed to be mostly models. I had a hard time watching adults act out these teen movie tropes such as the ol’ ’getting mad when she finds out the cute boy only asked her out as a favor to someone who feels sorry for her’ and of course the ‘overhearing the mean girls talk shit about her when they don’t know she’s in the bathroom stall.’ Maybe it’s meant as a satirical statement about the fashion industry to make them this petty and childish, but it feels phony to me. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ben Hollingsworth, C.M. Punk, Canadian, Hanneke Talbot, Laura Vandervoort, Mackenzie Gray, remakes, Soska Sisters
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 8 Comments »
Thursday, November 21st, 2019
AMERICAN MARY (2012) is a unique horror movie that’s arguably more of a seedy-underbelly crime movie. The protagonist, broke medical student Mary Mason (Katharine Isabelle, DISTURBING BEHAVIOR, GINGER SNAPS, CARRIE [2002], FREDDY VS. JASON), definitely follows more of a noir arc than a normal horror heroine one. She falls into a strange subculture, finds herself doing things she never could’ve imagined, crosses lines she shouldn’t, gets deeper and deeper into trouble. And she’s crazy and scary and you sort of root for her. Or at least you like her.
It’s all a big accident. She’s running low on tuition money and too ashamed to let her grandma give her money. Out of desperation she applies for a stripper job. The boss, Billy Barker (Antonio Cupo, A CHRISTMAS TAIL), teases her about bringing a normal resume, amused at her medical background. But when his guys interrupt the interview about something nasty going on in the basement and their usual underworld doctor is unavailable he pays her $5,000 to go down (still in her audition lingerie) and sew up some guy’s slashed neck. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Antonio Cupo, body modification, Canadian, David Lovgren, Katharine Isabelle, Paula Lindberg, Soska Sisters, Tristan Risk, Twan Holliday
Posted in Crime, Horror, Reviews | 8 Comments »
