Film is one of the best artistic mediums because it’s always growing; it speaks every language, and every place in the world has their iteration as to what’s scary, twisted, weird or just downright bizarre. Different countries offer different interpretations of horror, from China where vampires hop to Korean Shaman. They don’t wave crosses, nor do they compel the power of Christ upon anyone, but just don’t fall in love with Isabelle Adjani.
Halloween – the season of ghouls, screams and tricks or treats. It’s the time of year when scares of all kinds are acceptable and even welcomed. We become the creatures of the night, in search for something to satisfy our yearly holiday craving.
Is this any way to sell a board game? Hasbro’s perennial moneymaker “Ouija” is the basis of Universal’s micro-budget horror franchise in the making, and it’s hard to imagine a game manufacturer working any harder to discourage people from buying its product. The 2014 release Ouija opened at number one, and a followup was inevitable.
A comeback is a long road, especially when you’ve burned as many bridges as M. Night Shyamalan. The modest success of 2015’s The Visit got people excited for a return to form, but the near ten year stretch of atrocious films that preceded it hasn’t been forgotten.
Belgian firm Barco recently made a move to present a new large-format viewing experience, alongside theater-chain in-house offerings, like Regal’s RPX premium experience, AMC Prime, Cinemark XD, and industry stalwarts like IMAX and RealD 3D. The Escape format uses three screens, with a center screen flat and straight ahead, like any conventional theater – the twist is the two side screens, angled, creating a viewing experience that gives the appearance of wrapping around the audience – a 270 degree panorama. With VR emerging on the scene right now, exhibitors will be looking for ways to provide new and different immersive viewing experiences.
Six foot plus, Nick DeRuve looks a movie star. And although he’s done some acting, it’s on the other side of camera, as a screenwriter and director, that the young filmmaker is intent on making his mark. It’s been a long road for DeRuve, from Schenectady, in upstate New York, to LA, and longer still to Toronto, where his movie The Runaway was recently screened.
The spy-next-door genre seems to be showing its age. The idea of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances fueled dozens of effective Hitchc*ck movies, several of them classics. There’s no reason, really, why it shouldn’t work as well now.
Man Down was shot in 2014 but has been kept on the shelves since, apart from playing at the 2015 Venice Film Festival and the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. It found its home with Lionsgate, and is getting distribution later this year. Man Down takes place in a post-apocalyptic America though that doesn’t become clear from the trailer.
There is one movement cinephiles can thank for heroin addicts sinking into carpets and rose petals exploding from cheerleader’s chests: Surrealism. Not only has the movement influenced some of the most iconic films to date like Trainspotting and American Beauty, throughout the last century surrealism has completely turned cinema on its head; creating a new wave of film that drags reality into the world of insanity.
When we think about viruses in cinema, we usually think about them in conjunction with turning us into the undead. Indeed, the stunning alacrity and volume at which Hollywood churns out zombie epidemic films begs us to wonder if we have truly exhausted the “what if?” nature of this particular vein of horror.
Every now and then there is a movie or two that’s so bad that you actually find yourself walking away from it halfway through, or having to pep talk yourself into finishing watching – that’s the category that Is That A Gun In Your Pocket? falls into. The film is an attempt at comedy written and directed by Matt Cooper, starring Andrea Anders, Matt Passmore, John Heard and Cloris Leachman.
Toni Erdmann may have left the Cannes Film Festival empty-handed, but it’s on course for a much larger prize. It’s already been selected as Germany’s entry in the Foreign Language Oscar race, taking the early lead thanks to its critically adored festival run. It will have to fight off a record 84 other entries, but at this point, not earning a nomination would be a shock.
Religious figures and various saints have been on film since the birth of the medium. It can be tricky for a director to present the story of a venerated character, as they can mean many things to different people. In both Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc and the Martin Scorsese picture The Last Temptation of Christ, the directors brought their own religious visions to screen, although not without controversy.
Over at our official Facebook page, we are currently posting daily film recommendations with each week being a different theme. This is a collection of those recommendations! This week’s theme is action films directed by women.
I, like a lot of people, don’t like scientology. I think it’s nonsense – nonsense propagated by arrogant people in an effort to coerce the desperate into giving them power and money. When I heard Louis Theroux was making a documentary about it, I was very excited.
