Halloween Treats: "Red Rooms" is the year's best scare

by Nick Taylor

As you may remember from last week, I made a threat and promise to talk about contemporary horror this October. We’ve arrived. Hands down the best horror film I’ve seen from this year is the Canadian thriller Red Rooms, a 2023 release by Pascal Plante that’s just completed a months-long journey across festivals and art house cinemas before arriving in your hard drives through a menacing mp4 file. It’s a nasty, skin-crawling film, diving into the world of true crime prurience and online torture porn through the vantage of one of the year’s most intimidating performances. Wanna know more? Follow me under the cut...

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Halloween Treats: Argento's "Deep Red"

by Nick Taylor

If a true cinephile has opened their third eye, they know the best time to watch horror movies is whenever they want, without the pretext of a Halloween or some such ritual to pop in a scary story. But we can never take Halloween’s power for granted, and to offer fealty to all the ghosts and ghouls haunting The Film Experience, I come with tales of scary movies past (and present??). Our first offering is Dario Argento’s Deep Red, a paragon of giallo cinema.

If you choose to read on, join me under the cut... just mind the entrance wound on your way in...

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TIFF '24: For the Dead and the Dying and Those Left Behind

by Cláudio Alves

Vincent Cassel and Guy pearce in David Cronenberg's THE SHROUDS.

All of us are on a long journey into death, set on a collision course with the great end that nothing can entirely prevent and no one can avoid forever. Artists are no different, mere mortals like the rest of us. However, the nature of their work means those persons' relationship with our collective finality may take unexpected forms, many of them public. Whether a creator wants it or not, when the finish line comes into conscious sight, their creation shall reflect it. Mortality subsumes the art, even when buried deep within layers of escapism, deflection, and delusion. The brave ones disregard such distractions and stare at the monster head-on. For them, late style is a cinema of death.

Consider the most recent works from two of our greatest masters – David Cronenberg and Paul Schrader. The Shrouds and Oh, Canada are meditations on mortality, made for the dead and dying and, most importantly, those left behind, waiting for their own end…

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TIFF '24: Kiyoshi Kurosawa delivers a new nightmare in "Cloud"

by Cláudio Alves

CLOUD

What if, one day, you realized everyone in the world hates you? What's more, everyone wants you dead. That's the sort of situation you might expect to encounter in the world of dreams and night terrors, one's innermost anxieties synthesized for a restless slumber. It's also the nightmarish scenario Kiyoshi Kurosawa suggests in his latest shocker, a work of stress cinema supreme with many surprises in store, playing like a descent into hell. It's also Japan's official submission for the Best International Film Oscar race, as bizarre as that might seem. It's a bold choice, alright. Maybe not the best from a strategic standpoint, but a true celebration of Japanese film excellence. 

And one thing's for sure – there's no other director like Kiyoshi Kurosawa out there, and no film like Cloud either…

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The first Best International Film submissions are here!

by Cláudio Alves

THE DEVIL'S BATH (2024) Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala
And just like that, we're off to the races. Though the 97th Academy Awards are still half a year away, the deadline for countries to submit titles for the Best International Film category is much closer. Nations have until October 4th to choose their representative feature, which must have enjoyed a minimum seven-day theatrical release before the September 30th deadline. Considering those timeframes, it's expected that the next few months will be full of submission news as the world prepares for a cinematic Olympics of sorts. This year, Ireland and Austria are the first countries to announce their official Oscar contenders…

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