Ernie Barbarash’s 2015 action film Pound of Flesh is a fascinating artefact. It is not due to its screenplay or production values, which are poor, nor is it due to its star Jean-Claude Van Damme. The film is set in Manila, yet … Continue reading REVIEW: Pound of Flesh (2015)
On 6 December 1989 a 25 year-old man, armed with a semi-automatic rifle, entered Montreal’s École Polytechnique and murdered 14 women and injured an additional 10 women and four men. After 20 harrowing minutes, the shooter turned his rifle on … Continue reading REVIEW: Polytechnique (2009)
On a snowy forest road in Canada, Kharis (Sheena Kaine) – a young indigenous woman – is fatally struck down by a car. While her community mourns, a supernatural force appears to start killing off visitors and locals alike. Police … Continue reading FANTASIA REVIEW: Don’t Say Its Name (2021)
Describing a particularly surreal film as a ‘head trip’ is par for the course, but it feels particularly appropriate for Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor (2020), a science fiction film about a professional killer literally taking a ride inside other people’s minds. … Continue reading REVIEW: Possessor (2020)
I am just going to go out on a limb here and guess that writer/director Steven Konstanski played with Masters of the Universe as a kid. It is not just the strong 1980s vibe of his film Psycho Goreman. It is in … Continue reading REVIEW: Psycho Goreman (2020)
Jodie Foster and Martin Sheen star in The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, a mostly superb little Canadian thriller that sits uncomfortably between character-based drama and exploitation picture. It was released in 1976, and directed by Nicolas Gessner from … Continue reading REVIEW: The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976)
A series of commuters turn up at the lost property office of a Montreal train station. One is looking for a missing binder, another for a beloved hat left in a train carriage. From this modest beginning we follow the … Continue reading REVIEW: Prayer for a Lost Mitten (2020)
Siblings Becky (Laysla De Oliviera) and Cal (Avery Whitted) stop their car beside a thick cornfield, and hear a young boy’s plaintive cries for help. They enter the field to lead the boy out, only to get lost themselves – … Continue reading REVIEW: In the Tall Grass (2019)
Alan Hakman (Robin Williams) is a ‘cutter’: a professional editor of recordings made by implants in the human brain. When the CEO of the company that owns the implant technology dies, Alan accepts the offer to edit the man’s memories … Continue reading REVIEW: The Final Cut (2004)
15 years after escaping from a place of unexplained and unsolved torture, Lucie (Mylène Jampanoï) storms into the home of a suburban family with a shotgun and massacres them in cold blood – believing them to be the people who … Continue reading REVIEW: Martyrs (2008)
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