Spencer Le Fou: A film blog of sorts.

Catching up on my reviews from the past few days, I am going to split up the past several days of screenings into a couple of review posts instead of posting individual posts for each review. Starting off with Midnight Madness #2, "The Disaster Artist": "The Disaster Artist" is James Franco's hilarious and seemingly very authentic re-telling of the infamous bad movie, "The Room", adapted from actor Greg Sestero. At first, when I had heard of the film, I thought it would be an interesting experiment at best, but I am happy to say Franco has succeeded in telling Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero's story with the right amounts of humour and heart. Whether you are a fan of "The Room" already like myself or a newcomer to the phenomenon, "The Disaster Artist" serves equally well as either a companion piece or a great starting point to gauge further interest in the original source material. There has been some Oscar talk for James Fr...

Each year at TIFF's Midnight Madness program, I always look for the one film that looks the most gory and brutal hardcore horror film of the bunch. Not every year has one of them, but since my first ever TIFF experience in high school with 2008's "Martyrs", I like to try and find something new each year that pushes boundaries and that successfully freaks out it's audience. French cinema in the past decade has been fairly reliable for me in terms of filmmakers who aren't afraid to go that little bit (or a lot) further in terms of what makes people squirm and scream. I may enjoy these gruesome films, but they still have to have purpose for the violence on display and characters I care for. This year's pick was Coralie Fargeat's "Revenge". I was intrigued by seeing a female perspective on the often exploitative "rape-revenge" genre. The plot is about as simple and straightforward as the title suggests and Fargeat certainly deliv...

Kill Me Three Times , directed by Kriv Stenders, reminded me of the close-knit noir-ish thrillers of the 90's like Red Rock West , U-Turn , or The Last Seduction , with the exception that Stenders' film is set against a lush Australian backdrop and I enjoyed this film much more than the others mentioned. Along with the aforementioned titles, Kill Me Three Times also feels like the works of Guy Ritchie or Quentin Tarantino, with a bit of Stenders' own polished touch as well. The fact that Stenders' film feels like familiar territory in style, that is one of the film's few detractors. James McFarland's script is filled with twists and turns that push his backstabbing and conniving characters in directions you don't always expect. While the performances are all solid, the two standouts are Simon Pegg playing a clumsy, but cool hitman and Teresa Palmer as an irritable and equally evil housewife. To give much in the way of plot details would spoil the fun, but...

While TIFF last night may have opened with a few high-profile films such as The Judge and Clouds of Sils Maria , I doubt any were as fun as Sion Sono's hip-hop musical brawler, Tokyo Tribe . From the opening crane shot to the final brawl, Sono kept the energy up and the bass pounding for much of the film's two-hour runtime. About twenty minutes in, it is clear that Sono is not interested in ever sticking to one character's story for too long nor should we really have to care about anyone involved in the all-out gang war that will inevitably commence in the film's last quarter. I came to accept the madness pretty quickly, but with so many characters popping up left and right, spouting their (sometimes catchy and always exposition heavy) rhymes, the film could get overwhelming or even tiresome for some as it storms forward. Part of the fun of Tokyo Tribe is seeing that all the actors (many of which are real rappers) and crew are game for the entirety of the product...