During the end of the world, billboards begin appearing thanking an accountant for 39 great years in The Life of Chuck. Marty Anderson (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a schoolteacher whose classes begin to dwindle due to seemingly apocalyptic events in the world. Marty begins to see billboards and advertisements congratulating Charles Krantz (Tom Hiddleston) on “39 …
David Dastmalchian
The independent 1970s-set talk show found footage horror film Late Night with the Devil opens in select theatres this weekend. For this extended review, I recruited Jolie Featherstone of Toronto Film Files to join the discussion on the film, as we were both in attendance last summer at the film’s Canadian premiere during Fantasia. Note: …
This review was originally published as part of my coverage of the 2023 Fantasia Film Festival A Halloween night episode of a late-night talk show goes horribly wrong in Late Night with the Devil. Night Owls with Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian) was a once-thriving 1970s late-night talk show, which begins tanking in the ratings of …
A doomed ship carries deadly cargo in The Last Voyage of the Demeter. Clemens (Corey Hawkins) is a British doctor stranded in Romania, who secures passage aboard the Detetmer helmed by Captain Eliot (Liam Cunningham) and his first mate Wojchek (David Dastmalchian). Part of the Demeter’s cargo on its voyage to London is fifty unmarked …
A Halloween night episode of a late-night talk show goes horribly wrong in Late Night with the Devil. Night Owls with Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian) was a once-thriving 1970s late-night talk show, which begins tanking in the ratings of Delroy’s wife Madeleine’s (Georgina Haig) death from cancer. Hoping to make a mark during sweeps week, …
A family is tormented by a closet-hiding monster in The Boogeyman. Sisters Sadie (Sophie Thatcher) and Sawyer Harper (Vivien Lyra Blair) are in grief after the death of their mother in a car accident, a subject that their therapist father Will (Chris Messina) tries to ignore. One day, will is visited by a highly disturbed …
The black-ops team of supervillains goes on a deadly mission on the South American island of Corto Maltese in The Suicide Squad. Task Force X, nicknamed by many as The Suicide Squad, is a squad of inmates from Belle Reve penitentiary, recruiting by Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), with the promise of a 10-year sentence reduction if …
A young Finnish woman attends LARPing events to escape the traumatic events of her childhood in The Magic Life of V. Veera is a young woman from Finland, who is struggling to cope with childhood memories of her alcoholic father, while also caring for her mentally disabled brother Ville. As a means of escape, Veera …
We return to the conflict between humans and replicants 30 years later in Blade Runner 2049. In the year 2049, replicants developed by Niander Wallace (Jared Leto) have been integrated into society. Officer K (Ryan Gosling) is a replicant blade runner, who is tasked with finding and retiring older model replicants. While on a job, K …
Office workers find themselves part of a deadly social experiment in The Belko Experiment. Shortly after the start of a seemingly average work day, the eighty employees of Belko Industries in Bogotá, Colombia find themselves under lockdown inside their office building. A voice comes on over the PA instructing the workers to kill their fellow employees, …
An ex-con becomes a size changing superhero in Ant-Man. Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is a cat-burglar, who has just been released from prison. Desperate to be reunited with his daughter, Scott accepts a burglary job from his old cellmate Luis (Michael Peña) and ends up stealing a strange suit that causes Scott to shrink down …
Comedian Tig Notaro had the worst few months of her life in 2012 when she was experienced a life-threatening infection, the death of her mother, and a break-up, all before being diagnosed with bilateral breast cancer. Notaro decided to turn her situation into material for a stand-up set on August 3, 2012, at the Largo …
After the combination the Toronto Film Festival and my trip to Calgary, I had a bit of a backlog of movies I wanted to see. As such, this week I decided to see the three-week old Devil, instead of one of the newer releases. For this film M Night Shyamalan moves into the producer’s seat, …