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The problem with the Midnight Madness programme at TIFF is that there is only one movie per day, and there are only ten days of the Festival. Now, let's see...carry the six, add four, minus seven....That's only ten films!

Which means that from the truckload of off-the-wall cinema that programmer Colin Geddes has to sift through every year, certainly the vast majority don't make the cut for midnight.

That's, of course, not to say that the ones that don't make it aren't good or even great films. So sometimes Colin will put some of the ones that didn't make the cut into other programmes, ready to be unleashed onto an audience that is sometimes completely unprepared for them! Here are three such selections:

VINYAN – Did you see Calvaire? The batshit, off-the-wall nightmare set in rural France that screened at Midnight Madness in 2004? Well director Fabrice Du Welz is back with an even more surreal thriller set in the dense, menacing jungles of Burma. When Paul (Dark City's Rufus Sewell) and Jeanne (Mission Impossible's Emanuelle Beart) glimpse what they think is their lost son Joshua in a video, they travel to Burma in a desperate search for him. What ensues is one of the most gripping, horrifying cinematic experiences of this year's Festival. The last images will stay with you for a long, long time. I can sum it up in 7 words: someone puked during the screening at Scotia.

SAUNA This movie jumps out at me as being  the only ultraviolent Eli Roth-esque period piece at the Festival this year (if you don't count The Duchess, of course). Director Antti-Jussi Annila creates a dark, foreboding  atmostphere around the Finnish/Russian setting. Expect lots of demons and even more decapitation in this one!


TEARS FOR SALE - To say that this movie is like Pan's Labyrinth on crack might be an understatement. One of Serbia's most expensive productions to date, director Uros Stojanovic brings to brilliant life this tale of a village comprised exclusively of women who travel to the city to kidnap men! Can you spell 'airtight premise'?!

So there you have it. If you can't stay up until the wee hours of the morning this week (wuss), why don't you check out one of these three - each of them playing at a reasonable hour at a theatre near you.
Thanks for the tip about other potential mad movies at TIFF!

I had noticed The Good, The Bad, and The Weird, which looks promising (maybe something like last year's Sukiyaki Western Django?) but I wish I had gotten some pointers about non-midnight movies under other programmes before the balloting and before I scheduled days off work (no, I didn't schedule the whole week off - consider me a cinematic dabbler, if you will.)

I see there are still a couple of evening & weekend screenings available - and I'm guessing advance or same-day tickets are still available?
Comment By DaveBOTN At 09/09/2021 10:14 PM
A friend pointed out to me that there's also an anime feature called Sky Crawlers by former Midnight Madness director Mamoru Oshii (whose movie Ghost in the Shell 2 was featured in the 2004 Midnight Madness programme.)

It's playing on Saturday, September 13th at 12:15pm.
Comment By DaveBOTN At 10/09/2021 10:30 PM
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