*Updated 9/22/23* Our dedicated writers Shelagh Rowan-Legg, Kurt Halfyard, Andrew Mack and J Hurtado have been busy partaking of the many splendored cinematic banquet that is the Toronto International Film Festival. Now that the festival has officially closed, we wanted to remind you of all our coverage ... so far! As I write this on Monday morning, we have more reviews to come as we return to "normal life," whatever that is. We'll be updating this page with further reviews throughout this week, so we suggest that you bookmark it. For now, though, we provide a list of all our coverage to date, which you'll enjoy reading below. Reviews Fingernails by Kurt Halfyard Sleep by Shelagh Rowan-Legg Close Your Eyes by Shelagh Rowan-Legg Daddio by...
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- 9/18/2023
- Screen Anarchy
Even before I began contributing to this site in 2005, I heard about Fantasia International Film Festival. Founded in Montreal, Canada, in 1996, the sprawling festival is the grandfather of all genre-film festivals in North American, and has unleashed untold joy into the entire movie-loving world. My editorial colleague and True Canadian Andrew Mack has been positively giddy with excitement about the festival's return to in-person screenings, which he has been documenting in a series of articles that I trust you've been reading as they've been published over the past couple months. This year's event gets underway Thursday, July 14. Some of our sterling editors and faithful contributing writers will be attending in person this year, including Kurt Halfyard and J Hurtado, who have kindly...
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- 7/13/2022
- Screen Anarchy
Seth A. Smith's new film, the sci-fi thriller Tin Can, has been acquired by local distributor levelFILM for Canadian distribution in early 2022. Our own Kurt Halfyard saw Tin Can at Fantasia. He liked it so much that he went as far as to draw comparisons with noteble contributions to Canadian and international genre cinema. In Tin Can, the experience is of a piece with classic David Cronenberg joint: Body Horror fused with social anxiety. As Videodrome amplified the pearl-clutching fear of late night violence & sex on the Canadian television of the eighties into bizarro TV snuff network, and shadowy mind control of its protagonist, so does Tin Can take the anxieties of medical procedures and experimental vaccines in our current age,...
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- 8/20/2021
- Screen Anarchy
Updated 5/8/20: Please note that the film will receive a national release in Canada via AppleTV, Bell, Cineplex, Cogeco, Rogers, Shaw, and Telus on May 29, 2020. Also, please enjoy the snazzy Canadian poster! Original post follows ... Our own Kurt Halfyard was quite enamored with Bruce McDonald's Dreamland when he saw it at Fantasia last year, writing in part: "An absurdly hypnotic hodgepodge of violent escapism would never be for everyone's taste, but Dreamland is blazingly, almost foolhardily, committed to what it is, and absent of cynicism or anything to prove." The film is now heading to release on June 5, 2020, via On Demand and Digital platforms. To go with that announcement, check out the...
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- 5/8/2020
- Screen Anarchy
IFC Films is releasing Carlo Mirabella-Davis` dramatic horror thriller Swallow in select cinemas and On Demand on March 6th. The official trailer and poster were released today. Have a look further down for the trailer and see what all the fuss has been about his awarding winning debut feature film. Hunter, a newly pregnant housewife, finds herself increasingly compelled to consume dangerous objects. As her husband and his family tighten their control over her life, she must confront the dark secret behind her new obsession. Swallow stars Haely Bennett, Austin Stowell, Elizabeth Marvel, David Rasche and Denis O'Hare. Speaking of Haely Bennett, our own Kurt Halfyard caught Swallow this past Summer. You will find his complete review here but here is an excerpt where...
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- 1/28/2020
- Screen Anarchy
More catch up for our friends at Epic and Dread are releasing Cameron Macgowan`s Canadian horror flick Red Letter Day in select cinemas on November 1st and then it lands on Blu-Ray/VOD on November 5th. Our own Kurt Halfyard caught Red Letter Day when it played at Calgary Underground Film Festival. Here is an excerpt from his review, Taking place entirely in broad daylight amongst the ticky tacky boxes and perfect-circle cul-de-sacs that circle our cities, most of them less than one hundred kilometers from the USA border, Red Letter Day tells us something about ourselves. While Canadians may not 'gate' their communities, and feel better about ourselves for our diversity and inclusiveness, and certainly consider themselves more or less immune to the...
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- 10/21/2019
- Screen Anarchy
The dust has settled from industry weekend at Fantasia but the good times keep rolling on at the fest through to next week. Yesterday the award winners were announced and Lee Su-Jin's Idol took home the Chevel Noir Award for top feature film. Our own Kurt Halfyard published his review yesterday, and the effects of it are still lingering. ...this South Korean neo-noir was perhaps the first film to ever to leave me reeling to assemble the basic narrative. Not to mention the full motives and who the killer even was. I have my theories after thinking about this film for 48 hours. But the experience, whether this was director Lee Su-jin’s intention or not, in the theatre was exhilarating. Idol is...
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- 7/24/2019
- Screen Anarchy
Canadian filmmaker Seth A Smith has proven before that you can do quite a lot with a few resources and a great idea. His 2017 indie sci-fi film The Crescent impressed audiences on the fstival circuit and its subsequent rollout. Our own Kurt Halfyard caught the film at Tiff and reported back to us, rather eloquently... The Crescent is remarkable realization of an ambitious story on a tiny budget by way of copious amounts of intelligence and talent. I admire its chutzpah, particularly when it tiptoes so quietly. The craft here, put to effective use, creates a kind of a fugue state in the audience, punctuated with moments teasing out the horror. This is a chiller, not a thriller, that traffics in...
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- 3/5/2019
- Screen Anarchy
Desperate and on the run, a young man doesn't know what to do. Then he gets some unexpected advice from an unlikely source: himself. But he's not quite "himself." In our exclusive clip from Mega Time Squad, John (Anton Tennet) is the young man on the run. Here's the official synopsis: "A low-level criminal steals an ancient Chinese time-travel device, but he may not survive the demonic consequences of tampering with time. Mega Time Squad is a wildly entertaining time travel/sci-fi comedy out of New Zealand." Our own Kurt Halfyard saw the film at Fantasia last summer and noted: "This is the type of 'Swiss-Watch crafted silliness' (patent pending) that one thinks of with Joe Dante, or Edgar Wright -- and yes, Mr. Waititi. Welcome...
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- 2/13/2019
- Screen Anarchy
Don't touch the cube! Things are long done at Tiff but we wanted to round up all our reviews and coverage in one place for easy access. We hope you enjoyed the fest, whether on the streets of Toronto, or reading from afar. Preview 10 Hot Titles to Watch from TIFF18 by Ryland Aldrich Reviews The Accused by Kwenton Bellette American Dharma by Kurt Halfyard Climax by Kwenton Bellette Diamantino by J Hurtado Duelles (Mothers' Instinct) by Tristan Zinampan El Angel by Jaime Grijalba Gomez Ever After by Shelagh Rowan-Legg High Life by Shelagh Rowan-Legg If Beale Street Could Talk by Shelagh Rowan-Legg In Fabric by Kurt Halfyard Kingsway by Teresa Nieman Let Me Fall by Kwenton Bellette The Man Who Feels No Pain by...
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- 9/26/2018
- Screen Anarchy
Seth A Smith's The Crescent is returning home to Canada next month with an eight city theatrical run across the country. Screen Anarchy is pleased to help spread the word of this release and debut a new trailer for the film. Raven Banner Releasing, the distribution arm of Raven Banner Entertainment will release The Crescent in seven Cineplex cinemas across the country on August 10th. You will find the list of seven cities and the cinemas listed below. There will also be a one night screening in Ottawa on August 15th. After checking out the new trailer find the link to our own Kurt Halfyard's review from Tiff below. After an immensely successful festival run starting at Tiff (Midnight Madness 2017) The...
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- 7/12/2018
- Screen Anarchy
Seth A Smith's The Crescent is returning home to Canada next month with an eight city theatrical run across the country. Screen Anarchy is pleased to help spread the word of this release and debut a new trailer for the film. Raven Banner Releasing, the distribution arm of Raven Banner Entertainment will release The Crescent in seven Cineplex cinemas across the country on August 10th. You will find the list of seven cities and the cinemas listed below. There will also be a one night screening in Ottawa on August 15th. After checking out the new trailer find the link to our own Kurt Halfyard's review from Tiff below. After an immensely successful festival run starting at Tiff (Midnight Madness 2017) The...
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- 7/12/2018
- Screen Anarchy
Yesterday I saw Alex Garland's new film Annihilation, and loved it. I wasn't the only one either, judging from Kurt Halfyard's review. Frankly, I would have dearly liked to have seen it in a cinema, but alas: Paramount and Netflix had other plans for the Netherlands unfortunately. It's a spectacle of vision and sound, and it would have been even better on the big screen, getting my full attention. It's easy to forget this is only Garland's second film as a director. As a bestselling writer, his books have been adapted by others, and he himself has written the script for a number of genre classics already. I went into his first directed film Ex Machina with some trepidation. Opinions on that one differ, but...
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- 3/14/2018
- Screen Anarchy
Good news comes our way this morning that Cash Only's Nickola Shreli and Malik Bader are getting together again for a new thriller called Killerman. Bader is directing his own script and Shreli has joined the cast, chasing after Liam Hemsworth, of the Brothers Hemsworth. Hemsworth signed on to the project in the Spring. Production begins this week in Savannah, Ga. The story centers on small-time money launderer Moe Diamond (Hemsworth), who is suffering from amnesia after a freak accident during a deal gone wrong. Plus, he's got vicious gangsters hot on his tail and dirty cops not far behind. Cash Only made a big splash on the festival circuit back in 2015. It made an immediate impression on our own Kurt Halfyard...
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- 10/24/2017
- Screen Anarchy
With the release of the superb documentary 78/52, focusing on the construction, and deconstruction, of the shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 masterpiece, Psycho, I had a chance to sit down and chat briefly with Alexandre O. Phillipe regarding that infamous and endlessly discussable scene and how you make a feature documentary about a single few moments. The interview below has been lightly edited for stucture and flow from a longer conversation we managed to have in two parts during the Hot Docs Film Festival back in May. Kurt Halfyard: Psycho is a movie about voyeurism of sorts. Was it always there the idea that each of the interview subjects in the film would sit down and watch the scene, on camera as...
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- 10/12/2017
- Screen Anarchy
Hello, and welcome to Talking Flicks With Pals, a new ScreenAnarchy podcast that aims to capture a bit of good old fashioned screen-related conversation. Should these first few episodes yield quality talks that film pals from around the world consider enjoyable, I'll continue to host a series of roundtables in the hopes of capturing some varying perspectives on screen topics of cultural relevance. Given that I was born and raised in Toronto, as was ScreenAnarchy, I figured what better topic to begin with than our beloved local film festival, Tiff, and who better to join me in this first conversation than two of Sa’s first writers, Andrew Mack and Kurt Halfyard. I’ve also asked Entertainment Tonight’s Rachel West to join us. Rachel is a new...
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- 9/22/2017
- Screen Anarchy
While Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Smoczynska's killer mermaid musical The Lure may be getting all the press, there was another film from Eastern Europe quietly racking up award after award and stunning festival audiences last year. Tomás Weinreb and Petr Kazda's I, Olga Hepnarova is the true story of the last woman executed in Czechoslovakia, a mass murderer responsible for the deaths of eight people in 1973. The film tells the story of her youth, up to and including her well-planned spree and the resulting trial and conviction in stark black and white. Kurt Halfyard saw the film at Montreal's Fantasia last year and had this to say about it's effect on him. Despite coming right out and having the lead character state her thesis on bullying,...
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- 3/9/2017
- Screen Anarchy
Darkly stylish and occasionally moody, Rings mostly lies flat on the screen, daring anyone to pay attention. Featuring not one but two different sequences before the main title appears, the filmmakers tip their hand early, in favor of the loud and obvious. It's an approach that treats the audience with kid gloves, literally: 'Let us explain this concept to you and then let us chop up these supposedly scary things into tiny little bits so it will go down easier.' That approach, it turns out, is at odds with the resolutely gloomy atmosphere that director F. Javier Gutierrez soon establishes. His previous feature, Before the Fall (Tres dias), impressed this site's reviewer Kurt Halfyard back in 2008; he noted, in part: " It certainly does...
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- 2/3/2017
- Screen Anarchy
“Lizzie Borden took an ax and gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one…” because they were zombies?! That’s author C.A. Verstraete’s proposition in the horror novel Lizzie Borden, Zombie Hunter. Also in today’s Highlights: new promos for American Horror Story Season 6, Satanic Panic release details, and info on the world debut of Diani & Devine Meet the Apocalypse.
Lizzie Borden, Zombie Hunter Book Release Details & Cover Art: On September 13th, C.A. Verstraete’s Lizzie Borden, Zombie Hunter will be released in paperback and on Kindle.
“Every family has its secrets…
One hot August morning in 1892, Lizzie Borden picked up an ax and murdered her father and stepmother. Newspapers claim she did it for the oldest of reasons: family conflicts, jealousy, and greed. But what if her parents were already dead? What if Lizzie slaughtered them because they’d become zombies?...
Lizzie Borden, Zombie Hunter Book Release Details & Cover Art: On September 13th, C.A. Verstraete’s Lizzie Borden, Zombie Hunter will be released in paperback and on Kindle.
“Every family has its secrets…
One hot August morning in 1892, Lizzie Borden picked up an ax and murdered her father and stepmother. Newspapers claim she did it for the oldest of reasons: family conflicts, jealousy, and greed. But what if her parents were already dead? What if Lizzie slaughtered them because they’d become zombies?...
- 8/19/2016
- by Tamika Jones
- DailyDead
Fellow TwitchFilm writer Kurt Halfyard knows of my overwhelming fondness for cinematic experiences of unusual length. He and I will often seek out the one ticket in the Toronto International Film Festival's annual program that will see us sitting in the darkened Cinema 4 till our posteriors have gone numb and most normal folks would have long since retreated to the lobby for a snack. As movie run times become more and more templated, there's something appealing about any film that asks a different level of discipline of its audience. One such film is Edward Yang's 1991 epic A Brighter Summer Day, which stretches a bladder-busting 3 hours and 56 minutes without so much as an intermission - making Tarantino's roadshow version of The Hateful...
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- 3/14/2016
- Screen Anarchy
This week, John Hillcoat's dirty cop thriller Triple 9 premieres, and according to Kurt Halfyard's review it is definitely worth your time. And one of the many fine cast members happens to be British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, who for the past two decades has appeared in many a noticeable role, in many a noticeable film. Seriously, the man (or his agent) has a stellar taste, and thankfully he always delivers. So once again I'm going to use eleven pictures of one of my favourite thespians to make a quiz. Click through the images, and guess which movies or shows they're from. No competition, no prizes, just for fun, try to see how far you get without using IMDb! And I'll post the answers next Thursday,...
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- 2/26/2016
- Screen Anarchy
What I love about director Ben Wheatley is that he continues to take on challenges that are new and different than what he's already done. High-Rise is the latest example. Based on a novel by J.G. Ballard, the film stars Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller, Luke Evans, Elisabeth Moss and James Purefoy. Hiddleston moves into a high-rise apartment building that offers a completely insular community for its residents, which is all fine and good until the systems begin to break down and then everything goes to hell. Our own Kurt Halfyard was not terribly enchanted after seeing it at the Toronto fest: "The filmmaking here felt more like a challenge to disengage with the material. Yes, it is very punk and all, but so what? One...
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- 1/7/2016
- Screen Anarchy
Variety is reporting that Ben Wheatley's latest, High-Rise, has been picked up by Magnolia Pictures for distribution in the U.S. The film had its World Premiere here in Toronto during Tiff. Mr. Wheatley approves of this acquisition."I'm very excited about working with Magnet again," said Wheatley. "They have the brains and the balls to handle the crazy beast that is 'High-Rise.'"Magnolia will release High-Rise through its genre arm Magnet Releasing some time in 2016. The film starring Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller and Luke Evans. Our own Kurt Halfyard caught the film when it played here at Tiff. You can read his full review at the link below. Wheatley has never been one to let a lot of empathy get in the way of his comically...
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- 12/7/2015
- Screen Anarchy
Japanese director Nakashima Tetsuya surprised friend and foe last year with his ultra-bleak thriller The World of Kanako. In previous films like Kamikaze Girls, Memories of Matsuko and Confessions, he had proven to have both a wicked sense of visual flair and a mean streak of black humor, but The World of Kanako positively (or negatively) dripped tar. The plot description of "a detective searches for his missing daughter and discovers more than he bargained for" might look normal enough, but few people were prepared for the onslaught of filth, rape, murder, and corruption which follows, especially as seen through the eyes of an increasingly demented, violent and drug-addled protagonist. In his review, Kurt Halfyard even described it as "gloriously irresponsible filmmaking", and also calls...
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[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
- 10/21/2015
- Screen Anarchy
Filipino director Khavn De La Cruz burst onto the radar of avant garde film lovers around the world with his 2010 feature Mondomanila. While far from a debutante with dozens of shorts and features behind him, Khavn's film made an impression, especially on our Kurt Halfyard, who remarked that the film was "gutter poetry at its finest," and "not to be missed." Unfortunately, the film kind of disappeared, so far with only a DVD release in Germany to remind people around the world that Khavn still exists. However, with his latest feature, Ruined Heart, Khavn stands up to be counted, and as long as you can groove to his beat, it's quite a ride.Ruined Heart (subtitled, "Another Love Story Between a Criminal and a Whore") treads...
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- 9/25/2015
- Screen Anarchy
Well Tiff is all wrapped up for another year and what a festival it was. We'll have a few more reviews rolling out over the coming days but already we've outdone ourselves. Here's a comprehensive list of everything written up followed by our thoughts on top picks below. What did you see and love? Tell us below. Features Preview: Galas & Special Presentations Preview: Midnight Madness & Vanguard Preview: Tiff Docs & Contemporary World Cinema Preview: Masters, Discovery, Platform & More The Witch Interview by Kurt Halfyard Reviews Anomalisa by Kurt Halfyard Bang Gang by Kurt Halfyard Baskin by Ryland Aldrich Beasts of No Nation by Kurt Halfyard Black Mass by Jason Gorber Black by Chase Whale Collective Invention by Pierce Conran Demolition by Jason...
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- 9/23/2015
- Screen Anarchy
To psyche ourselves up for Ridley Scott's next film, The Martian, Twitch contributor Kurt Halfyard and I have been putting together a limited-run podcast which works backwards through the history of Mars on film, from 2012 to 1918. It was good level-setting. I caught The Martian at its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this past weekend, and was all primed to appreciate its Wadi Rum exteriors and the fact that, at about five minutes, it has the longest denouement of any Mars movie I've watched - a genre that consistently drops the mic within seconds of the climax. Being made in 2015, The Martian also exists exactly where I'd have expected it to, on the spectrum from the romantic to the rationalist. In...
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- 9/16/2015
- Screen Anarchy
It was a beautiful sunny day on a quiet, out of the way cafe patio in Toronto that I had a chance to sit down with director Tonje Hessen Schei and speak at length about the politics, psychology, and current perception of drone warfare. Tonje is passionate and directly to the point in terms of her views and beliefs, and was able to elaborate on a number of threads and facets in her current documentary on the subject, Drone. Most alarmingly is how far things have come in the past few years, and that remain still in the early days in terms of what the rules and ethics will look like while the technology proliferates at an ever increasing rate.Kurt Halfyard: The simple coincidence that...
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- 4/29/2015
- Screen Anarchy
Prepare for "120 minutes of uncomfortable, aggressive, and rigourously crafted filmmaking" to be unleashed upon us all. Nakashima Tetsuya's The World of Kanako has been acquired for distribution by Drafthouse Films. Nakashima, who previously directed the wildly-acclaimed Kamikaze Girls and Confessions, appears to have outdone himself with this offering. The quote above is from Kurt Halfyard's review at the 2014 Toronto film festival; he concluded: "The filmmakers and actors have no interest in proceeding with caution in The World of Kanako, but my suggestion is that anyone taking this trip to cinematic hell be aware of just how far down the rabbit hole it goes." James Marsh, our Asian Editor, named it one of his favorite Asian films of 2014: "Those who thought Confessions probed...
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- 4/2/2015
- Screen Anarchy
Patty Jenkins, best known as the writer and director of the Charlize Theron-led film Monster, will helm the English-language remake of the Norwegian action-comedy Jackpot. According to THR, the script is being written by David Callaham, who wrote the first Expendables film, as well as Doom and Godzilla. Magnus Martens wrote and directed the original Norwegian film, based on a novel by Jo Nesbø, one of the current darlings of Scandinavian crime fiction. Our own Kurt Halfyard caught it at Fantasia in Montreal back in 2012. Highlights from his review include such praise as..."Jackpot is bloody as hell with no fears of severing body parts and splattering victims and perpetrators alike; a very large bosomed lady falling in slow motion from a shotgun blast is played for laughs."Magnus Martin's Jackpot...
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- 11/18/2014
- Screen Anarchy
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