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…except for Joyful Noise. I really wanted to try to build my themed list around my love for the uber-cheesy, so-terrible-it’s-wonderful musical starring Dolly Parton, Queen Latifah and zombie Kris Kristofferson, but aside from that and my other favourite movie of the year, Moonrise Kingdom, there weren’t any fiction-based films that elicited much more than a “that was was pretty good” from me as I was walking out of the theatre. Looking back, it seems as though 2012 was the year of the documentary for me because as much as I liked The Avengers or Cabin in the Woods or...
A film is usually only as strong as its villain. Can you imagine James Bond facing off against Mr. Lazy, the only villain in the world who can’t get off the couch? Of course not! To make a great hero, they need a great nemesis, but there are some villains who manage to outshine their good counterpart. This is my list of the bad guys who made me leave the theatre laughing like a lunatic while I planned my next attempt at world domination. Please be aware that there are some extreme spoilers here. If you haven’t watched any of...
I’m a sucker for trailers. I’ve recently become very fascinated by them as pieces separate from the movies they’re showing. Some might call it a cheap thrill. I call it a simple pleasure. Using things like hip music, quotes of critical acclaim, and accumulated hype from a brilliantly executed marketing campaign might all seem like gimmicks, but they do serve a purpose, and if they make you say “ooo I want to see that!” (and don’t act like that hasn’t happened to you) then they’ve done their job. There can be some terrible movies that have fantastic trailers, and there...
While I am perfectly happy being 23, I don’t always like the movies that are targeted to my demographic. In lieu of that, here are five of my favourite films released in 2012 that were meant for people a lot younger or a lot older than I am, but I loved them anyway. ParaNorman I love anything on the spooky side, and I love animated films. Put these two together and I’ll have a great time (unless of course it is the terrible Hotel Transylvania). I loved the animation, I loved the message, and I loved the characters. This...
Continuing our recap of some of the best cover stories that TFS has featured this year, we move from articles that dealt with “The History of Stuff” to those that look to the future of the industry. Predicting future fashion trends: costume design in futuristic films In this cover that ran as part of our August “fashion in film” month, Katarina Gligorijevic takes a thoughtful look at the way films interpret how people in the future dress. How do costume designers avoid making their futuristic vision look dated while still making them aesthetically interesting? Is a film better to go...
Every job has ups and downs and in the world of online film journalism, there are very few “downs”, which is to say, I have few complaints. If there was only one major issue with my job it would be that I often have to see movies that are outside of my tastes (and sometimes downright offensive to me). Everyone has genres or film subject matter that doesn’t always sit right with them, but in my case, it’s not a good enough excuse to skip out on seeing a movie since it’s my job to do exactly that. This year,...
I’ve had to hold my face in my hands for several reasons while watching a movie; grief, fear, happiness, disgust. Usually an overflowing of one or all of the above. Despite the many good releases this year, I found myself feeling just okay after watching. My top 3 for 2012 are films I felt like watching several times after seeing them in theatre. I remembered them afterwards and I was engaged to the point of holding my face. That’s a good movie for me. A Werewolf Boy Making its Canadian debut at Toronto International Film Festival, A Werewolf Boy was...
Life, employment, and a need for 7 hours of sleep every night tend to interfere with my ability to see every movie I really want to. It didn’t help that I was living overseas from 2005 to 2009, so had unreliable access to movies for a few years. With alarming frequency, I stumble across films I have never heard of, that should have been on my radar. I am constantly reaching into the world cinema back catalogue to catch up on those movies I haven’t been able to get around to, for one reason or another. So, here’s my...
As we learned in this week’s cover story, the holidays are the time to stay in your pyjamas all day, settling in for a long winter’s movie marathon. Over the last twelve months, the team here at TFS put in a lot of time researching and watching an endless litany of the best and worst that cinema has to offer and as a result, has put together a whole host of suggestions that you’d do well to consider when programming your own personal mini-film festival. Here are a few of our favourite themed lists – feel free to pick and...
Although the Canadian master’s new film Cosmopolis has been released to mixed reviews (see our take here), it still exhibits a fair few of the characteristics we expect from a Cronenberg picture, to wit: body horror, weird sex, psychological trickery and very black comedy. To mark this new release, we’ve taken a look over the charismatic director’s long career and picked our 10 favourites. Care to disagree? 1. Videodrome, 1982 “Death to Videodrome. Long live the new flesh”. Cronenberg’s masterpiece is a gruelling, complex and alarmingly prescient look at the relationship between man, media and machine, starring a never-better James...
What the Dickens! It’s Christmas time, which means that cheesy and beloved Christmas film classics will be commandeering basic cable for the next few weeks. If you still have a TV, you might find yourself plopped in front of the boob tube with a glass of hot Nesquik cocoa, mindlessly guffawing to National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. You might spill that cocoa as your muscles atrophy, or fall into a coma from too much Chevy Chase chin. But it doesn’t have to be this way. This holiday season, TIFF Bell Lightbox offers us Dickens on Screen, a classy alternative to the...
If there’s one movie that’s truly taken the film world by storm recently (pun intended), it’s Benh Zeitlin’s extraordinary, uplifting indie hit Beasts of the Southern Wild. And, not that you need any more persuading, but word on the street is that President Obama and Oprah Winfrey are fans! A great storm indeed. We caught up with the director and his leading actress, the 9-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis, while they were in town for the London Film Festival....
