Screen Anarchy

Western Canada’s ever-expanding genre extravaganza, the Calgary Underground Film Festival (or CUFF for short) has put out its key art in anticipation of its April 16th launch. In keeping with its maximalist underground comix design ethos, and always using a local artist, the key art leans heavily into shades of purple, with a wispy hint of ghost-blue and warm orange.  Designer Nick Johnson (also the director and producer of the animated feature film Sunburnt Unicorn) prominently features CUFF’s home, the double-decker movie-house Globe Cinema. With a host of beasties taking over the place, one of them is even offering up the theatre’s iconic hotdogs, along with double passes and popcorn. Friendly monsters, these. Given the energy of the CUFF crowd and festival organizers, that these horror fiends…

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Directors Janay Boulos and Abd Alkader Habak are also the film’s protagonists, following a 13-year collaboration that unfolds from professional exchange into personal involvement amid the realities of reporting on the Syrian war.

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Alexander Skarsgard and Harry Melling star in writer-director Harry Lighton’s romantic drama.

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Michael Shannon is set to star in a new horror film, Doctor Caligari’s Cabinet of Wonders, a contemporary take on the original German film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, by Rober Weine from 1920. The original is considered to be the first ever feature length horror film.     The new film will be directed by John Erick Dowdle from his own screenplay. He will co-direct with his brother Drew Dowdle. The Dowdle Brothers have worked with the actor before, on the mini-series Waco, in which Shannon co-starred.    Anton, a company we talked about the other day, is fully financing the film and they currently hold the worldwide rights. They will be going to Berlinale/EFM to off-load some of those rights in pre-sales to get back…

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Lukasz Simlat and Agnieszka Duleba-Kasza star in director Michał Grzybowski’s rousing, piercing drama (with shots of comedy).

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In the pilot of Soft Boil, director Alec Goldberg and lead actress and co-writer Camille Wormser sketch a tightly observed portrait of early adulthood that channels contemporary American indie comedy through anxiety, volatility, and low-stakes personal collapse.

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Thales Banzai’s feature-length debut, TONY ODYSSEY, is an ode to the “more provocative Brazilian films of the ’60s and ’70s”. Its world premiere is happening at Slamdance, and we have an exclusive look at the trailer.

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When ultra-posh, Brit high-schoolers Flic (Marni Duggan) and Minna (Galaxie Clear), supposed best friends (forever) at the center of Extra Geography, BAFTA Award-winning director Molly Manners’s (One Day, Lazy Susan, In My Skin) splendid feature-length debut, decide to undetake a summer project, they cheekily decide on “love,” as in “falling in love,” new, uncharted territory for them both.   It sets them on an unexpected path of self- and other-discovery typical of coming-of-age stories, albeit in a quirkily delivered, sometimes droll, sometimes dry, always seriocomic fashion.    Ultimately, their decision, born out of a combination of hubris, naivete, and an overwhelming eagerness to exchange book knowledge with real-world experience, proves semi-disastrous, but before we get to that particular development, Manners, working from Rose Tremain’s adaptation…

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Early this week NEON announced the release date for Genki Kawamura’s horror flick, Exit 8. For those of you left wondering what a movie about a man wandering the same halls, over and over again, looks like, we have good news for you. The official trailer has arrived.    A man trapped in an endless sterile subway passage sets out to find EXIT 8. The rules of his quest are simple: do not overlook anything out of the ordinary. If you discover an anomaly, turn back immediately. If you don’t, carry on. Then leave from Exit 8. But even a single oversights will send him back to the beginning. Will he ever reach his goal and escape this infinite corridor?   Exit 8 is coming…

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Thunderlips revives New Zealand splatstick with a gleefully vulgar sci-fi comedy that channels early Peter Jackson.

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