The Wild Hunt

The 2000s and early 2010s have been a good time to be a nerd, with “nerd culture” becoming seemingly more prevalent in the pop-cultural landscape every day, especially where movies are concerned. Genre movies are …

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernnon

Even before the Scream franchise came along, the “slasher” sub-genre of horror had been wallowing in the pit of self-parody for quite some time. The Friday the 13th films had become toned-down camp and A Nightmare on Elm Street’s headliner Freddy Krueger had made the (admittedly small) leap from figure of menace to sweater-clad punchline. In lieu of innovation…

CinemaSpace: A haven for Montreal cinephiles

Running from January until May, CinemaSpace is a screening venue dedicated to showcasing independent film and video. Co-directed by Daichi Saito and Malena Szlam, the emphasis of the programming at CinemaSpace is experimental and avant-guard in an intimate theatre at the SegalCenter. By listening to them eagerly share the 2012 CinemaSpace line up, experimental film is clearly a deep passion for both Saito and Szlam…

Hesher

The 90s was a strange decade, known for producing two things in particular (where America is concerned anyway). The first is some of the finest Saturday morning cartoons ever conceived by man (I mean Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, need I say more) and Angry Young Men. The young men (and women) who were coming into adulthood in the 90s were best described by Tyler Durden as the middle children of history. The roles of those who came before them seemed so clear. Their grandparents were the hero-gods of WW2. Hard to live up to that, and while some of their parents tried to replicate that glory with disastrous results, many others spent their time spreading peace, love and LSD…

Classic Porn Reviews – Deep Throat

Recently, it came up over drinks with fellow FTBer Steph Laughlin that I hadn’t seen any of the seminal 70s porn films including the notorious Deep Throat. I decided it would be a double feature, paired with the 2005 documentary Inside Deep Throat for insight into the background and social climate of the time…

Gantz

Whaaa, Thomas is writing about some weird, obscure Japanese movie? What strange universe have we stumbled into. Yes, Captain Sarcasm, the review today is Gantz, a strange Japanese film based of a strange Japanese comic that was also made into a strange Japanese cartoon and I really should just move on from this joke shouldn’t I? In a stra….bizarre way, Gantz reminds me of the recent film Drive, in that it takes a premise that sounds like a cut-and-dry action film and approaches it with more of a quiet, subdued atmosphere than you would really expect given the setup…

Hugo

It seems Martin Scorsese has put me in an awkward position, the ingenious little man that he is. His new film Hugo is indeed very good but sadly it’s not great. And the reason why it isn’t great is hard to explain without spoiling what is basically the big middle-of-the-movie twist. I could always write my review dancing a merry jig around the issue and end up not actually telling you why this is an enjoyable piece of film making and not much more…

Cults, death and poop jokes: 2011 in Film

Recently I had dinner with my friend Alex and as we were enjoying some Korean BBQ the conversation turned, as it often does with Alex and I, to film.

“So, you gonna do a best of the year review for your column?” Alex asked.

“I always do,” I replied, watching with childish glee as my salmon cooked on the grill in front of me.

“So what’s on your best of list for 2011?” Alex responded in between bites of his bibm bahb…

Reality Bites? More like Reality Rocks

As I get older, certain films remain just as meaningful to me as when I first saw them. Others, well, not so much. I always find it fascinating…

Depictions of Marilyn

Watch out Forget the Box because I’m about to reveal something shocking: I’m a white girl, and I like Marilyn Monroe. Ok, so MAYBE I’m not totally original in my favorite star of yesteryear… but in a world where trashy movie stars come and go, there’s a reason why us cinephiles worship those who manage to transcend time and continue to live onscreen long past their expiration date. Was Marilyn Monroe the world’s greatest actress…

Raindance Montreal Booze n’ Shmooze Tonight

I’m no cinematographer, but I’m pretty stoked about this. Strarted by a Canadian in London 19 years ago, Raindance is an indepnedent film festival, but from the looks of things it’s way more than that. With 55 000 members worldwide and offices in six cities (including Montreal, woohoo!) they hold courses, learn from each other and make collective art. When you think about all the creative people it takes to put on a movie (which I never really considered) you start to realize,,,

Viva La Femme Fatale

This week Friday Film Review explores one of the most interesting female archetypes in the history of cinema; the sexual and mysterious Femme Fatale. Seemingly out of nowhere she appears, standing seductively in the doorway. Sometimes she has a veil, always she has a cigarette. As the cigarette either hovers close to or dangles from her lips, she entrances the hero with her story of woe. You want to believe she’s telling a straight story, but then again what kind of fun would that be? Who is this beautiful, dangerous woman of mystery…

Choose Life, Choose Trainspotting

Hello, my name is Steph and I am a junkie… a film junkie. While I may not go head first into the worst toilet in Scotland to watch a film, I have most definitely devoted an unhealthy amount of hours to staring at screens in darkened rooms, wrapped up in a fantasy world I will never be part of. This is the brilliance of director Danny Boyle’s (127 Hours, Slumdog Millionaire) second-ever feature; while any reasonable person would never watch Trainspotting and say to themselves “Hey! Let’s all go do some heroin!” it’s damn near impossible not to be affected by this story of a gang of junkies in 90′s Edinburgh…

As your attorney, I advize you to immediately swallow this blog post!

Hunter S. Thompson (a.k.a. Dr. Gonzo) was one of the most influential political and social writers of this past century, but there’s more to him than his excellent sense of humor and run-on style of a life teetering off the edge.

Nobody would cover a story quite like Hunter Thompson. His personal involvement in his stories made him an outsider scoping the outer frontier of journalism and he would become the leading figure in the movement known as new journalism. That said, because of his fame there are many incarnations of characters based on Hunter Thompson in pop culture…

Tales from the G20: A Few Questions for Justin Saunders and Joseph Cami

It’s been over a year and people are still talking about the mass mobilization of protest and the repressive tactics used by authorities at the Toronto G20 Summit. Justin Saunders was there with a film crew and his documentary Tales from the G20 screens tonight in Montreal at Cinema Politica at Concordia. FTB’s Stephanie Laughlin interviewed Saunders about the film, what happened at the G20, what it means for the future of activism, the Occupy movement and upcoming projects….

Welcome to Grey Gardens

Grey Gardens, voted number 9# on the list of best documentaries of all time by the International Documentary Association, came about by accident. The original project was a documentary about Lee Radziwill and her sister, a lady you might know from the history books as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. But as the filmmakers began working on the project they realized a much more interesting film lay in the lives of Jackie’s aunt and first cousin, “Little” and “Big” Edith Beale. The Beale’s enjoyed an extremely priviledged and lavish early life…