Issues: Exclusive
Slamdance Film Review: The Children Send Their Regards
The Children Send Their Regards is relentlessly eye-opening and excruciatingly detailed in its examination of the corruption that pervades throughout the clergy—and throughout a society with a legal system and statue of limitations that protects the abusers over the abused. … read more
Slamdance Film Review: Strad Style
Danny Houck is a 32-year-old eccentric. He wears a long scarf around his head at almost all times, and he has a mania for violins. In particular, he’s obsessed with the two greatest violinmakers in musical history, the Masters of Cremona: Antonio Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesu. Director Stefan Avalos’ “Strad Style” has us cheering for Danny from beginning to end. … read more
Slamdance Film Review: Dim the Fluorescents
Fitted with long scenes, on-point characters and justly over-the-top dialogue, Dim the Fluorescents is as imaginative and entertaining as are Audrey and Lillian’s sensational corporate demonstrations. … read more
Slamdance Film Review: Hotel Coolgardie
Pete Gleeson’s documentary, “Coolgardie,” is about a remote town in Western Australia. After getting their credit cards stolen and travel savings drained in Bali, Finnish travellers Lina and Steph decide to work in the town’s pub, hoping to replenish their funds. Coolgardie, however, isn’t anything close to what Lina and Steph were prepared for. … read more
Slamdance Film Review: Aerotropolis
“Aerotropolis” follows Allen, a young, middle-class man who invested everything he owned into a beautiful apartment and unused aerotropolis land. Lulled in by the aerotropolis’ “promised land,” Allen is instead ensnared by the pitfall of financial pressures and an existence stripped of meaning. … read more
Cold Cave: Pomp and Discontent @ Urban Lounge 01.13 with...
Friday the 13th: an ominous and seemingly perfect date to watch Wesley Eisold and friends rattle the cage of discontent with a sound that takes the electro-punk aesthetic of Suicide and merges it with the songsmith of New Order—a discordant pop that references the past, but feels comfortably progressive. Everything that is old resurrected for future use. … read more
Slamdance Film Review: Wexford Plaza
Toronto-based Joyce Wong’s first feature film, Wexford Plaza, is an at-times painfully real-life comedy about suburbia, isolation and ennui. The film follows the lives of 19-year-old, late-night security guard, Betty (Reid Asselstine) and the well-meaning, deadbeat bartender, Danny (Darrel Gamotin), as they find their lives unraveling. … read more
Slamdance Film Review: Who is Arthur Chu?
Yu Gu and Scott Drucker’s aptly titled documentary, Who is Arthur Chu?, chronologically follows Chu’s rise to fame, using Chu’s number of Twitter followers at any given time to mark different chapters of Chu’s life during and after Jeopardy! … read more
Slamdance Film Review: Weather House
“Weather House” depicts a post-apocalyptic world where humans are driven to the brink of extinction via extreme and sudden temperature shifts. While the film does not give us many clues as to how the world came to be this way, it does show what a certain, cult-like group does in order to ensure its survival. … read more
Slamdance Film Review: The Modern Jungle
“The Modern Jungle,” directed by Charles Fairbanks and Saul Kak, depicts life in an area of Oaxaca, Mexico, known as La Selva Negra (The Black Jungle), and follows local Zoque shaman, Juan Juarez Rodriguez and his neighbor and friend, Carmen Echavarría Gomez. … read more