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.
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