TADD Day 3 Movie 2 Dead Snow

Well, ask most people in line at TADD for first 2 days and all you heard was about Dead Snow the nazi zombie movie, how everyone was there to see it. I am afraid sometimes when the build up to movie is this big that the movie itself can be a let down. Well in this case the build up was totally justified, but more about that below

First as always is the Canadian short film and in this case we have Deadwalkers by director Spencer Estabrooks which basically is a zombie western. This short moved well and had great special effects for such a small film. A Marshall brings 2 criminals back to small town in the west but the town is not what it appears. A great film as a pre-cursor to Dead Snow.

Now on to Tommy Wirkola's second feature after Kill Buljo: The Movie which was a Norwegian parody of Kill Bill and now Tommy has moved on to nazi zombie genre. It should be noted that all of Tommy Wirkola's movies, are co-written by himself and Stig Frode Henriksen who also stars in them. This movie was the first sell out of TADD and was zombie appreciation night and the crowd was full of zombies and hard core horror fans. This was a crowd that would have eaten a bad movie to pieces but they had nothing to worry about, Dead Snow delivered in zombies and gore, plenty of both.

A group of friends fresh from medical school decides to go to one of there parents cabin up in the mountains for some winter fun instead of flying to somewhere warm. Tommy Wirkola has all the horror cliches as we have 2 couples, 1 single extremely hot slutty chick, the overweight movie nerd and the quiet cool guy but that is where the stereo types end.

When they get to the cabin, there host is nowhere to be found so her boyfriend heads out to find her leaving the others on there own. Que the strange man who turns up in the dark to tell them the history of the area and thus we know what we are in for. At this point the movie nerd heads to the outhouse for a crap, have to love outhouses in horror flicks and while he is there, it turns out the slutty chick is a movie nerd after all.

Can anyone say outhouse sex and more and from there the mayhem ensues. In the genre of nazi zombie movies Dead Snow will live on as one of the classics. Where else will you see a person get attacked by a zombie but instead of being bitten he bites the zombie and ends up hanging from a cliff by well you will have to see the movie.

Rest assured this movie has everything from decapitations, liberal use of a chainsaw, and much more. It is obvious that Tommy Wirkola has a great love of horror movies and the zombie genre in particular. The story is simple but effective and for a change the characters understand what they are up against and instead of just admitting defeat they fight back and fight back hardcore.

I don't like giving away too much of the story as I have read far too many reviews that tell you exactly what is going on. This movie grabs you and does not let you go and mixes humor well with horror and gore. I look forward to Tommy Wirkola's next film to see what genre he will tackle next.

So far the high point of TADD and all the fans left feeling like the hype and build up was worth it.

Enjoy you zombie fans and here is the link for the trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkC7HiAlAeE

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TADD Day 3 International Short Films

It is day three of the festival and my daughter and I went to the International short films without our 2 Torontonians in tow as they decided to skip the shorts. I personally love short films because even if they are not very good they are not very long so you don't have much to sit through.

I am going to just a quick review of each as chances of seeing them are slim for most people reading this.

When It Will be Silent (Israel) director Dan Sachar
This short was profoundly affecting and there was not a single word spoken throughout the 7 minutes but the message it conveyed was strangely powerful. A man the body of a woman and what transpires is both riveting and intriguing.

Die Schneider Krankheit (Spain) director Javier Chillon
This was my favorite and for an 11 minute film it was like a mini epic. I love the fact the entire movie was shown as a black & white newsreel vintage from the 50's when people got there news before movies. An epic has encompassed Germany from a space capsule and how humans can cope and adapt and is it worth it.

Welgunzer (USA) director Bradford Schmidt
This was a well made film about time travel and how it can effect ones mental state and sometimes it is better to just live in ones own reality. Is it better to actually know what has happen before from many different perspectives.

The User's Guide to Imaginary Friends (Spain) director Ciro Altabas
This was a hilarious short film about imaginary friends but shot from a self-help seminar point of view. how do you keep your human interested in maintaining is or her imaginary friend as they get older. The seminar is put on by the legendary Captain Kiloton who has been an imaginary friend to Fernando for over 20 years a record.

Little Mouth to Feed (USA) director Jack Daniel Stanely
To what extents will a woman go to have a child and what would she do to keep that child healthy and alive. This little film examines these facts and for a short film was well shot and quite powerful.

The Horribly Slow Murder with the Extremely Inefficent Weapon (USA) director Richard Gale
This movie was hyped as a really cool funny horror satire but I found it really disappointing and boring. The concept was not even that new and seemed to go on and on and had no real ending. Sorry this did nothing for me.

Santa: The Facist Years (USA) director Bill Plympton
Now this was a hilarious animated news reel type short about how Santa was a bad evil monster before he became the Santa we know. Hint, Santa never fight a battle in the summer with your storm troopin snowman :)

X-Mess Detritus (USA) director Voltaire
This was just a messed up short film with no real point in my opinion. It really is not even worth reviewing.

Zombie Zombie (France) director Simon Gesrel and Xavier Ehretsmann
A homage to The Thing using GI-Joe dolls, well made but was too typical and had no special effects to say. It was well made from a technical point of view with the stop motion and GI-Joe dolls but did really over whelm me.

King of Power 4 Billion % (Australia) director Paul Roberston
This was just a video game gone horribly wrong with absolutely no point. This was the last short and everyone left going what the fuck was that. Not a good short to end on.

Overall the shorts were well made and fun to watch, as I have said even if the short is poorly made, it is only 15 - 20 minutes long at most.

I found a couple of trailers of some of the shorts

Here is a trailer for Die Schneider Krankheit

http://aaff.bside.com/2009/films/dieschneiderkrankheit_aaff2009;jsessionid=6B62EBCAB46223D1982EEAA9A6C9312F

And a trailer for When it will be Silent

http://twitchfilm.net/news/2009/06/the-apocalypse-comes-to-israel-in-when-it-will-be-silent.php

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TADD Day 3 Movie 1 The Warlords

I know India makes the most movies of any of the major movie making countries, and I must say quantity is not always the quality, behind India we have good old North America Hollywood with their movies being churned out. Asian makes its share of movies and for a population of over 2 billion people the make very few movies per capita but every once in awhile a movie comes along that you wish everyone would see, "The Warlords" is one of these movies.


First the Canadian short film which in this case is Zero by Jace Junggru Kim which was an entertaining animated film about vengeance and can vengeance ever be stopped and if it can't would this ultimately be the end of the universe. It fit well with the feature we were about to watch.


The Warlords a movie my daughter was less than thrilled about viewing and I told her just watch the first 15 minutes and if she didn't like it then she could leave and shop. Well from the opening scene she was hooked and thoroughly enjoyed the movie. Jet-Li from the "Hero" and "Fearless" teams up with Andy Lau of the "Infernal Affairs" and "House of the Flying Daggers" and Takeshi Kaneshiro of the "House of the Flying Daggers" for an epic movie based on actual historical accounts of Chinese history. This is becoming a trend in Chinese movies, basing movies on actual historical events and in this case it works well.

Jet Li portrays Pang, a Chinese soldier who falls in with 2 brothers who have any army of thieves and after some persuasion Pang convinces them to join the regular Chinese army. Under Pang's leadership they are successful in campaign after campaign until they are becoming somewhat of a political embarrassment to a rival general. The movie does not hold back on the battle scenes and they are shot with graphic violence and grand scale of battle.

It is a nice change to see action stars given the opportunity to stretch their acting skills and all three leads in this movie do that showing a range of talent and that is what makes this movie so much more than just an action movie. In the end it shows how politicians, control countries and how even the most idealistic of people can be corrupted. The violence in this movie is brutal but is only a small part of the movie and the premise of the movie is the strength of bonds between friends and brothers and weighing that against the good of the many.

This is a movie that I highly recommend to everyone and the real shame is it will most likely never get a wide distribution deal. The story goes that shortly after the film was completed the director and producer got into a huge argument and each are blocking the other from a major release of the movie.

A true shame.

Here is the link to the trailer and if you get a chance check out The Warlords

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok_5CKAOch8


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TADD Day 2 Movie 4 Embodiment of Evil

Return of Coffin Joe, these words are all that would be needed to bring most gore hounds around interested and curious. Coffin Joe star of such movies as At Midnight I take Your Soul and Esta Noite Encarnarei no Teu Cadáver is back in a new movie. This is a Brazilian movie and is being screened at the festival for the first time in Toronto. It has been 30 years since the last coffin joe movie and this was due to the director/star being ill and not able to make movies.


But first the Canadian short "The Killer Bra" and in attendance was the director and one of the stars. The Killer Bra was a silly over long short about a bra that was possessed by the dead soul of the girl who died trying to buy it. The only redeeming factor was some naked breasts but even that did not make up for a horrible script and bad filming.


So again I was going into the feature with a bad feeling as the short film had left me with a sallow wanting feeling. The movie opens with coffin joe being released from prison after 30 years and he looks as though he has not aged at all. All coffin joe wants is to find the perfect woman to give birth to the perfect child, and is that so bad well if your coffin joe the way you go about is not the best.

This movie was hyped to be extremely violent and gross and in my opinion did not disappoint. From the moment coffin joe is released from prison and met by his faithful sidekick who has recruited a new legion of followers the movie continues along the same line as the previous coffin joe movies.

The movie moves at a good pace and between torture scenes, mutilations, and coffin joe seeing ghosts of past victims it keeps the viewer entertained. This is a movie for hardcore horror fans and fans of the previous coffin joe movies will enjoy this one.

The ending of this movie was very well done and unlike other movies where you wonder whether there will be a sequel this movie screams for a sequel and I hope the director is well enough to make another movie.

I recommend this to all coffin joe fans.

Here is the trailer for the movie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzW8rO3Iz6k&feature=related



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TADD Day 2 Movie 3 Black

We now move on to the 3rd movie of the day, a french action movie called Black which was preceded by the Canadian short "Becoming". This short film did not belong in this festival as it was did not seem to be in the genre or feel of the festival and the crowd did not enjoy it at all. The ending seemed to be mis-contrived and added just to make it more acceptable for the festival.

With a very poor short film I was looking forward to a good rip roaring action film that promised, lots of action, Russian Mercenaries, voodoo and giant snakes. I should have taken the warning from the short film that this was not my night as this movie started off with a almost comical action sequence that couldn't decide if it was going to be hard core action or action-comedy. Both the Parisian cops and the criminals seemed to be total inept at both hitting anything with there guns and any kind of organization.

The anti-hero of the opening sequence gets away and immediately leaves for Africa after receiving a phone call from a relative he has not seen in years. At this point I knew the movie had miles to go to live up to any expectations I might have. After narrowly escaping a massive shootout with automatic weapons and grenades he just casually leaves the country. In the mean time in Africa the easy score has changed and for some reason a tribe believes a chosen one is coming.

Are we confused yet and then before the heist is to take place his gang falls apart and we throw in an Interpol agent who just happens to be really attracted to our anti-hero. Between corrupt banking officials, the local criminal mastermind who is cohorts with a voodoo witch and some Russian mercenaries the movie just seems to go in many directions and makes no sense.

Just when it was to end you thought all of sudden, there is a tribal ritual and a "joining of the anti-hero and Interpol agent" and then a ridiculous climax and ending that makes even less sense.

Lets just say when it was finished I was like Thank God I made it to the end.

Here is the trailer and it has the best parts

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RBMvzhgKHs

I will leave it up to you but I can't recommend this film in good conscience


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TADD Day 2 Movie 2 Franklyn

The second movie of the day was a British movie by first time director Gerald McMorrow which looked to be a cross between a cop film and V for Vendetta Utopian society gone bad. Prior to the screening of course was the Canadian short and this time we had Hirsute by A.J. Bond.

A quirky little short about time travel and the extents a man goes to have sex with himself. The short was view and and interesting at the same time which is one of the things I expect out of a short film, keep me entertained and also have a little story. A man has invented time travel and seems to be for the sole purpose of having sex with himself only in Canada.

Franklyn was the directorial debut of Gerald Mcmorrow who also wrote the movie and it starts in a fantasy city where not having faith in a religion is a crime. Faith plays a predominant role in this movie and one wonders how much of a role faith plays in the filmmakers life. Our hero Jonthan Preest (Ryan Reynolds) is a man with no faith who lives outside of the law and is seeking to safe a young heroine a story we have heard many times before. He must kill a man to safe a girl but will he get there in time, and without faith to believe will he be able to safe her.

The movie then jumps to modern day London and a another story begins to unfold of a father (Sam Riley) looking for his son and a woman (Eva Green) searching for acceptance by her mother. The movie then switches back and forth between these realities and the two realities are drawn closer and closer together till we know they are going to collide.

The movie is well shot and visually works quite well but as the story unfolds it becomes less and less compelling and more and more predictable. It could have been a brilliantly dark and mysterious movie but instead opted out for a pat ending. It was made with a nice flair and I enjoyed the interaction between the characters and realities that I will be watching for the next movie from Geral McMorrow if he makes another and give it a try.

The link for the trailer is below

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHFCZBKfugg

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TADD Day 2 Movie 1 The Dark Hour

OK I know it has been some time since I posted a movie review but am going to try and be better. Day 2 of the TADD and my daughters first of 2 days with 4 movies in 1 day. The first movie The Dark Hour a Spanish film but first the Canadian short film as always before it.

The Canadian short film Under Pressure: A Story of Microscopic Stakes by Daniel Devita and it was very entertaining. An interesting little piece of film shot in what looks like a video tape feel about a Canadian family where the mother gets accidentally shrunk and this causes a major falling out until many years later when the son goes inside his disease riddled father to look for his mother with some interesting consequences. Remember this film makers name as he has a great eye and I think has a future making films.

The Dark Hour is a Spanish movie that was actually made in 2006 and has seen viewings at film festivals but has not secured a major release. The movie is a hybred of science fiction and horror centering around a group of survivors of a nuclear war living underground, scrounging for food, medication, and weapons. There are other things living below with them that only come out during The Cold Hour which is the time when the survivors have to turn off the heat and take refuge in there rooms.

There is an amusing mix of men, women and children that are thrown together from necessity rather than pre-selection. It is never explained why these people are together and what there background story is and this just adds to the dark and dreary back drop of the story. If the world were to end in a final flash of nuclear destruction lets face any survivors would be a haphazard mix of whoever was able to make to shelter.

The main premise of the movie is can children handle the reality of a harsh situation as well as adults and is it fair to shelter them or is it better to have them face reality. The movie is told from the point of view of Jesus' and his obsession with a camcorder and filming everything. The main group of survivors tries to maintain a normal life, they go about a daily routine including school lessons for Jesus and Anna. The one outcast from the main group is Judas who lives alone and entertains the kids with stories of the surface and movies from times past. The movie is very dark and builds in suspense as the groups supplies start to run out and they have to venture out into the areas of the complex controlled by the creatures.

I recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys the post-apocalyptical movies but ones that are more centered around the suspense and break down of civilization as opposed to the shoot-em up ones. The ending works well with the movie and will not disappoint.

The trailer is located at the link below

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRVs7vIyoso

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TADD Day 1 Black Dynamite

Day 1 consisted of 1 movie "Black Dynamite" which was a spoof on the blacksploitation films of the 70's such as Black Belt Jones and Foxy Brown.

First there was the Canadian Short Captain Coulier (Space Explorer) and I tried to find a link to the short film but was not able. It was directed by Lyndon Casey and was a Canadian take on the Star Trek TV shows. It was able to blend a number of the shows into what can only be described as a short with a Canadian flavor but keeping with the dry wit of the Star Trek franchise, I was entertained which is what I expect from a short film.

Then on to the feature Black Dynamite. The movie was co-written and starred Michael Jai White who was the star of the ill fated Spawn movie. The movie appeared to be set in the 70's and like most blackspoitation films centered around revenge, kung fu and chicks. Black Dynamite's kid brother is murdered and this brings Black Dynamite back into the action to solve his brothers death. Was a he a drug dealer as the cops say and murdered over a drug deal gone bad or is there more here than meets the eye and what role does the social worker have in the whole scheme. The movie never tried to take itself seriously and from the Chili & Donuts stands to the hilarious scene where the black hero's figure out the "master plan" of the enemy the movie moves with a great pace. From car chases with 70's footage cut in to the Chinese to a showdown in the Whitehouse with Tricky Dick this movie never lacks for laughs and action.

I loved the action scenes and there were a number of cameo's from the likes of Arsenio Hall to a Captain Kangaroo look alike. The movie was allot of fun and for an opening night gala really set the tone for the festival. Michael Jai White, besides being a great action and comedic actor has a future as a screen writer. This movie would appeal to most movie goers but unfortunately will never see a wide release. If your looking for a fun movie then check it out.

The link for the preview is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXBIqdOv_9A and it is worth checking out.

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Toronto After Dark Day 1 TADD pre-movies

OK I know the festival is over but am going to post what I think are the best movies what I thought of the movies etc. I will also be posting links to the movie previews for the movie I review.

First a little background, TADD is in its 4th year and this year I went with my daughter and we stayed at a great Hostel called Clarence Castle. The opening night we met a couple of people from Toronto Andy and Ryan who had both attended the festival before. TADD shows, horror, sci-fi and action films as well as Asian films. These are smaller movies that would not normally get wide releases.

Andy was a great help in picking the correct seats for the movies as he had been to the Bloor Cinema before. The theatre looked to be built in the 20's with a main floor and 2 balconies, the main floor did not have much of a slope as Andy had mentioned and the best seats in his opinion were the first row in the first balcony. This gave us a nice view and no one in front of us and plenty of leg room.

Adam Lopez the festival director gave a little speech before the first movie and you could tell he was not only excited but also very much a movie lover. There would be a Canadian short film before each feature movie which I was looking forward to.

OK on the first movie and my first review but I leave you with a believe that as long as people attend movie festival like the TADD then genre movies will never die.

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