Matthew

It would be easy to write Survival Skills off as a cheap nostalgia bid or a wacky experiment, and it would have been easy just to be that. Still, writer and director Quinn Armstrong’s script takes the story to some uncomfortably dark places and pits Jim’s desire to help against our society and all the ways…

Opening with a gang of thieves storming a jewellery store only to be cornered by the police as they finish filling their bags, some quick thinking leads to the thieves escape but arrange in their wake. Then, three months later, a gang member is murdered, and the only witness to the crime is a…

To reiterate, this movie is deeply weird. It’s also shallow. Climate of the Hunter features several monologues from Wesley, stories of his travel, and his devotion to his wife, but nothing of any real substance is discussed in all his talk. Oh, sure, it sounds like there is, but it only sounds like it.  The…

The remote setting of the story exacerbates all of this; the tiny family cabin set deep in the woods, further isolated by the winter’s snow, traps Rowan in an environment that is altogether warm and welcoming as well as unfamiliar and foreboding. Moses does an admirable job of letting the tension in the situation…

Katja Herbers (probably best known for her recurring role on HBO’s Westworld) is fantastic as Femke, particularly in the scenes where she confronts the trolls she has managed to track down and asks them to their faces about the things they say online. Herbers navigates the changes in Femke’s demeanour as she moves from timid but…

Perdida will likely draw comparisons to Hitchcock, Fincher, and Bong Joon-ho, which are rightly deserved. The story will keep you on your toes; the framing and architecture are gorgeous, and the cast is magnetic. What more could you ask for? Link: https://awesomefriday.ca/2020/08/fantasia-review-perdida-is-a-satisfying-thriller/

Spielberg and Cuarón use them frequently. Martin Scorsese probably produced the most famous long-take scenes in Goodfellas, and Park Chan-wook produced one of Oldboy’s most famous action long takes. One of the more ambitious examples is the historical epic Russian Ark, which runs 96 minutes and is entirely one take.  The envelope is constantly being pushed in filmmaking,…

Imagine being an aspiring actor and suffering an anxiety affliction so severe that you collapse every time you are nervous or confronted. This is the plight of Kazuto (Kazuto Osawa) in Special Actors, the new film by Shinichiro Ueda. Of course, that’s not the movie’s plot, and honestly, I am loathed to tell you much about…

The sad truth is that when you upload something to the internet, you effectively lose control of that thing. This is not a fact I agree with or like; we here at Awesome Friday have had articles plagiarized. The question is not whether or not we can stop it from happening but whether we…

Set in the 1600s, Charlotte Kirk plays Grace, a woman who has just lost her husband to the plague currently going around the shire she lives in. Her landlord, the amoral and self-centred Squire (Steve Waddington), still demands rent be paid even though she can’t work the land and has a newborn and tries…

McConnell speaks to other indie filmmakers and producers, some well-known and some not so much, and they all have one thing in common: they all say the business is a slog. Following McConnell’s personal journey also makes this clear. Does that journey make an interesting documentary, though? Well, mostly.  Link: https://awesomefriday.ca/2020/08/fantasia-review-clapboard-jungle-takes-a-personal-journey-through-the-indie-film-business/

If you like Kaiju movies, particularly the Shōwa Era Godzilla films, then you should give Monster Seafood Wars a try. If you like Saturday morning cartoons, you should probably give it a try, too. It’s big, silly, weird, has a few things to say—everything you need in a Kaiju movie.  Except for space aliens. Link: https://awesomefriday.ca/2020/08/fantasia-review-monster-seafood-wars-is-an-homage-to-the-silliest-of-kaiju-movies-but-its-not-totally-silly/