Niagara Falls’ Clifton Hill has no shortage of haunted houses. In exchange for a few dollars the “World Famous Street of Fun” offers up scary attractions like Frankenstein’s Haunted House, but a new film, “Disappearance at Clifton Hill,” now on VOD, isn’t content with a cheap scare or two, it’s looking to make a deeper, psychological impact. “The haunted houses aren’t actually haunted,” jokes Abby (Tuppence Middleton).
“Downton Abbey’s” Middleton is a woman troubled by a childhood incident. As a little girl on a fishing trip with her parents, she witnessed the kidnapping of a one-eyed boy. Years later, after the death of her mother she returns home to sell the family’s run-down motel, the Rainbow Inn. Sifting through some old photos she comes across some old photos that dredge up memories of the terrible event.
Instead of packing up and leaving town she opens an investigation. “I’m someone who saw it,” she says. “Saw them take him. I was seven. I was there when it happened and I have proof.” When she uncovers the story of some local performers, the Magnificent Moulins, and their missing and presumed dead son she wonders if he could be the one-eyed boy. Her sister Laure (Mindhunter’s Hannah Gross) doesn’t believe her story—Abby is a pathological liar—but local historian and podcaster Walter (David Cronenberg) does. “Do you know what happens when a body hits the bottom of the gorge?” he asks. “Think swallowing a live grenade.” That would explain why no body was ever found, but it opens the door to a conspiracy that leaves Abby questioning her sanity. “There’s a lot of history round these parts,” Walter says, ominously.
With the soft underbelly of Niagara Falls as a backdrop “Disappearance at Clifton Hill” effectively creates an eccentric atmosphere that hangs in the air; never forced, never obvious.
Director Albert Shin allows the city’s offbeat setting, including haunted houses and the uber-kitschy Flying Saucer Restaurant, to infuse itself into the offbeat nature of Abby’s story. Like the city itself, her tale isn’t exactly what it seems on the surface.
Middleton subtly reveals Abby’s complexity. She approaches her investigation with a certain amount of naïve zeal, quickly realizing that her obsession is leading her down some very dark paths. Looking for answers, she is fearless in her search for the truth amid the ambiguity of her memory. Supporting her, in a terrific turn is Cronenberg as the only person who believe she is on to something. It could have been stunt casting to bring in a master of the macabre to play a man who specializes in cataloguing the dark side of life but Cronenberg finds humour in the character while still helping move the story forward.
As a mystery “Disappearance at Clifton Hill” doesn’t have quite enough intrigue but as a character study of a person troubled by long ago events it roars like the waterfall that sits at the heart of its story.
What to watch when you’ve already watched everything Part Eight! Binge worthy, not cringe worthy recommendations from Isolation Studios in the eerily quiet downtown Toronto. Three movies to stream, rent or buy from the comfort of home isolation. Today, wrestling, murder, aliens and keeping time. #Foxcatcher#AttackTheBlock#Whiplash
At the bar Tammy (Felicity Huffman) is what’s known as a character. “I’m not a good person,” she says. “I’m a good time.” She’s always the life of the party, with a drink in her hand and a quip on her lips. When she’s too broke to afford booze she’s making her daughter Kathy’s (Anastasia Phillips) life miserable. Every month, when the money from her welfare cheque has run dry, Tammy goes through the same charade of marching down to the local bridge with the intention of ending it all. Kathy inevitably comes to the rescue and life goes on, repeating the cycle day in and out.
Kathy’s only respite from her mother’s lifestyle is a game of make believe she plays with her boss and old family friend, Doug (Clark Johnson). The two get dolled up, head to a fancy city bar and role play, pretending to be other, happier people. Their friendly bartender Jamie (Kristian Bruun) is in on the joke, and always goes along for the ride.
Just when it seems that Kathy is able to step away from the shadow of her mother’s influence, Tammy is diagnosed with terminal cancer. As a caregiver she’s drawn back into Tammy’s chaotic orbit but salvation may be around the corner. Television host Gordon Baker (Ali Hassan), a mix-and-match of Jerry Springer and Dr. Phil, is interested in the trashy aspects of Kathy’s story, and if she tells it well enough—with tears and all—he’s willing to make it worth her while.
“Tammy’s Always Dying” is a compelling character study anchored by remarkable performances. Huffman, almost unrecognizable as the narcissistic title character, makes sure that Tammy isn’t just a drunken spectacle, staggering through the film with a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other. She brings humanity to a character who could have been a foul-mouthed Foster Brooks style caricature. As Kathy, Phillips finds the balance between heartfelt love for her mother and hatred for the way she has been treated. It’s a tricky balance but Phillips finds it in a carefully calibrated performance that generates much sympathy as Kathy carves a future for herself despite dire circumstances.
It’s not all doom and gloom. Bruun and Johnson provide a respite from the misery, giving the film two characters who try and improve Kathy’s life without controlling her.
In the hands of actor-turned-director Amy Jo Johnson (working from a script by Joanne Sarazen) “Tammy’s Always Dying” transcends poverty porn by presenting characters whose struggles feel real and fully realized. It’s a tough talking movie—“Killing herself would be the least selfish thing she’s ever done!”—that, underneath its bluster, has a tender beating heart.
The very best zombie movies are never simply about the dead coming back to life. Sure, the good ones smear the screen with buckets of blood but just as important as the gore are the brains, and not just the kind the undead use as entrees. The memorable ones use the flesh-hungry creatures as metaphors for societal ills. George A. Romero knew this and infused his movies with allegories to social justice and consumerism, among other issues. Director Jeff Barnaby knows this as well. His exciting new zombie film, “Blood Quantum,” new to VOD this week, contains a powerful central premise: Indigenous people put in danger by allowing white folks on their land.
The film begins with an ancient settler’s proverb. “Take heed to thyself, make no treaty with the inhabitants of the land you are entering.” It’s a portentous warning that foreshadows “Blood Quantum” action. Set on an isolated Mi’gmaq reserve called Red Crow, it takes place before, during and after a plague that has turned most of the world into bloodthirsty zombies. The Red Crow, however, are immune, placing tribal sheriff Traylor (“Fear the Walking Dead’s” Michael Greyeyes) in the position of having to protect the reserve, including ex-wife Joss (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers), sons Lysol (Kiowa Gordon) and Joseph (Forrest Goodluck), Joseph’s pregnant girlfriend Charlie (Olivia Scriven) and father Gisigu (Stonehorse Lone Goeman), from hordes of undead outsiders.
“Blood Quantum” offers up the blood and guts you expects from a movie like this but director Barnaby also infuses every frame with a vivid sense of indigenous heritage. From the title—which refers to a much-despised colonial blood measurement system used to establish a person’s Indigenous status—to using a zombie apocalypse as metaphor for the fight against annihilation by colonial settlers, it drips with social awareness and gore.
A new take on the zombie apocalypse tale, it brings a fresh perspective to a much-examined genre. The characters are well defined and have emotional arcs amid the madness and skull crushing. The use of occasional animation sections adds visual interest to an already cool looking film—Barnaby has a deadly eye for composition—and will even make you laugh from time to time. A broken narrative timeline doesn’t work as well it should but Barnaby and Co. deliver on entertainment and intellectual levels.
Come for the entrail eating, stay for the cultural observations… and more entrail eating.
The Toronto restaurant helmed by Chef Daniel (Aaron Abrams) in the movie “Nose to Tail” is a lovely, high end bistro that promises good service and even better food. It looks effortless, like a swan drifting elegantly on a lake. It may feel calm in the front of house but the restaurant, like the swan, is paddling like hell to stay afloat.
Written and directed by first-timer Jesse Zigelstein, “Nose to Tail,” which debuts on VOD this week, takes place over the course of one crisis filled day. Waking up hung-over in his cramped downstairs office, Daniel begins planning a special meal for a VIP table of investors who, if impressed, might provide the financial lifeline the restaurant needs to survive. Before dinner service begins, however, he must deal with an unhappy landlord, a disappointed ex-wife and the loss of a sous-chef. Also, like flies buzzing around a rotten piece of meat, there’s a food truck across the street that may be siphoning Daniel’s customers and an annoying food blogger who seems to know more about the state of Daniel’s restaurant than Daniel does.
“Nose to Tail’s” isn’t likely to debut on the Food Network’s Movie Night. A portrait of a narcissistic chef, driven by ego, alcohol and pure rage, it shows more of the reality of restaurant life than any celebrity chef reality show. He’s an anti-hero, a person who wields his talent and reputation like a sword, to sleep with his hostess or treat his proteges in the kitchen like servants, but he’s also compelling. He may be the architect of his own demise but Abrams keeps the audience on side. He incorrigible but there is always a lingering sense that his often-irredeemable behavior is born out of a sense of failure, not power. He was once a hotshot, an up-and-comer, but now is being left behind and it has crushed him. Abrams gives him layers. He’s not likable but he’s also not simply a self-loathing Gordon Ramsey “Hell’s Kitchen” stereotype either.
“Nose to Tail” occasionally feels overstuffed with complications—Daniel is having a VERY bad day—but its determination to not smooth out Daniel’s rough edges makers it worth a look.
A remake of David Cronenberg’s lurid, low-budget 1977 body-horror chiller, “Rabid” comes to VOD in the middle of a pandemic with the story of a disease spread by human contact.
Laura Vandervoort is Rose, an “ugly duckling” fashion designer working for the Zoolander-esque Gunter (Mackenzie Gray). When he isn’t belittling her work, her cocaine-snorting colleagues Bev and Ellie (played co-writers and directors Bev and Ellie Soska) treat her with disdain. Even her BFF, a model named Chelsea (Hanneke Talbot) barely rises to the real definition of the word friend. One night, after an incident at a nightclub Rose is involved in a terrible motorcycle accident. In the hospital she is covered in bandages, suffering from internal trauma and disfiguring damage to her face. Her only hope at returning to normal life is an experimental treatment from Dr. William Burroughs (Ted Atherton), a megalomaniacal surgeon whose stem-cell procedures are just slightly outside the boundaries of accepted science.
The surgery is a success and this time when she takes off the bandages she is met with an idealized version of her face. She is no longer an ugly duckling and with her new image comes a new, highly confident attitude. The people at the design studio now take her work seriously and the velvet ropes of nightclubs, barricades that once kept her on the outside, suddenly disappear.
On the downside, the procedure has left her with a vampiric lust for blood and soon she is feasting on the innards of nightclubber Billy (CM Punk) and soap opera star Dominic (Stephen Huszar). Each time she feeds, she also spreads a deadly strain of rabies, raising fears of a widespread outbreak of virus villainy.
The new “Rabid” takes some liberties with the source material. Through his star, former porn star Marilyn Chambers, Cronenberg examined large social issues like consumerism, gender equality and political impropriety. The Soska Sisters retain the bones of the story but shift their focus to Rose’s inner life as she transmutes into a form she doesn’t understand. Vandervoort effectively portrays Rose’s quandry, bringing out an emotional core to the story missing from the 1977 original.
“Rabid” works best when it lets itself go. There are some outrageous and gruesome special effects—a fight between an aging soap opera star and a younger rival is ferocious, fearless and bloody good fun—but that sense of unpredictability and savagery doesn’t translate to the rest of the film. It’s a shame because a sharper edge would have helped “Rabid” become its own thing and not simply a remake of an older, much-loved horror movie.
What to watch when you’ve already watched everything Part Eight! Binge worthy, not cringe worthy recommendations from Isolation Studios in the eerily quiet downtown Toronto. Three movies to stream, rent or buy from the comfort of home isolation. Today, newsrooms, vigilantes and a twelve-year-old vampire. #Christine#HarryBrown#LetMeIn
“We’ve always belonged to a synagogue,” says Karen Mason. “Although the synagogues never knew what we were doing.” In fact, Mason kept her business a secret from almost everyone, including her kids Rachel, Micah and Josh. For thirty-five years, with husband Barry, she ran Circus of Books, a gay porn store that served as the Los Angeles epicenter of LGBT culture. “At one point,” Karen says, “we were probably the biggest distributor of hardcore gay films in the United States.” Now, with the store shuttered, filmmaker daughter Rachel tells their story in the Netflix documentary “Circus of Books.”
At the center of the film are odd couple Karen and Barry. Married for decades, she is devoutly religious; he shakes his head no when asked if he’s a believer. She harbors reservations about selling pornography, treating the raunchy magazines and sex toys they sell as a product, nothing more. For Karen their wares are a means to an end. One former employee sums up Karen’s attitude toward the merchandise as “like selling apples in an apple cart.” Barry is more supportive of both the business and the community it served. Both, according to porn star Jeff Stryker, are “good, honest, trustworthy people,” a rarity in the adult film biz.
Using old family home movies, archival footage and loads of new interviews with everyone from LGBT activists, porn icons like Larry Flynt and former employees (including Alaska, who later became a “RuPaul’s Drag Race” all-star) Mason’s movie is not simply a tribute to an influential institution like the Tower Records doc “All Things Must Pass.” Instead she uses the book store, and the safe space it provided for LGBT people, to provide an intimate look into her unusual family. When they aren’t being pressured to plead guilty to a federal obscenity charge or ordering sex toys at a porn convention—“I don’t particularly like looking at it,” Karen says as she passes a sex toy display, “I notice it without ever really looking at it.”—they lead a life that is more “Leave it to Beaver” than “Boogie Nights.”
That dichotomy provides and interesting narrative push and pull that is deepened by the history of the store’s thirty five year run. The devastation of AIDS, the persecution by religious groups and conservative politicians are all handled with care but it is the personal story of Karen’s crisis of acceptance when her son Josh comes out as gay that provides the biggest emotional moments.
“Circus of Books” details the “aging, ailing business’” last days. The legendary store (and its second location in Silverlake) closed in 2019, victim of changing times, Pornhub and Grindr. Mason’s camera details the last gasps of the once powerful place, right up to Karen taping a closed sign to the door. The store may be long gone but its ethos of embracing who you are, is well represented in this charming documentary.
Based on a book by Lois Lowry, “The Willoughbys,” a new animated film now available on Netflix, is a parody of “old fashioned” classic children’s stories where terrible things happen, babies are abandoned, long-lost relatives show up and nannies look after the kids. Yet somehow, a happy ending and a lesson or two always emerge from the chaos.
Narrated by Ricky Gervais—”I’m the narrator. And a cat. Get over it, yeah.”—the story takes place at the Willoughby mansion, a home tucked away between two skyscrapers, hidden from the modern world. The family has a long and distinguished legacy of tradition, invention creativity and courage. “Their greatness passed down from generation to generation like their magnificent facial hair,” says the narrator, “until this one.” Enter the youngest son (Martin Short) and his new bride (Jane Krakowski). Madly in love, they only have eyes for one another. They don’t even care for their kids. “I am your father and that woman in there you insulted with your rude burp is your mother,” father says to eldest son Tim (Will Forte). “If you need love, I beg of you, find it elsewhere. Thank you.”
All they gave Tim was their name, and siblings Jane (Alessia Cara) and twins, both named Barnaby (Sean Cullen). “Let’s face it this Willoughby family isn’t great,” says the narrator, “and by the looks of it, they never will be. Not without a little help.”
So the kids hatch a plan to create a better life for themselves. “We can send them away!” says Tim. “What if we orphaned ourselves? We shall craft a murderous adventure that gives our insidious parents exactly what they want.” “To be left alone with their love!” says Jane.
Tim concocts a “a romantic get-a-way hiding deadly orphaning opportunities. If they do not melt in the hottest places on earth, they shall drown in the wettest. Cannibals will feast on them unless they freeze in glacial ice.” They create a travel brochure from the Reprehensible Travel Agency—No Children Allowed!—and make sure the folks see it. They love the plan but fear the children will destroy the house. The solution? Get a nanny. “But aren’t good nannies expensive?” wonders mom. “Yes, so we’ll hire a not good nanny! For cheap!” says father.
Thus, begins a wild adventure for mom, dad and the kids.
“The Willoughbys” It’s not as dark as “A Series of Unfortunate Events” or as magical as “Mary Poppins.” Instead it finds its own tone, deriving much humour from the dire circumstances. “If you like stories about families that stick together and love each other through thick and thin,” says the cat narrator, “and it all ends up happily ever after, this isn’t the film for you OK?” Director and co-writer Kris “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2” Pearn energizes the story with characters that look like they’re shaped out of bubble gum; colourful and highly stylized. Then he puts them in constant motion. It’s frenetic and fun, even when the kids are plotting to kill their parents.
There’s strong voice work from Will Forte, Alessia Cara, Jane Krakowski, Martin Short and Terry Crews but Gervais and his droll narration steals the show. “It’s hard to leave home for the first time,” he says, “although I was six days old when I left. All my folks ever did for me was lick my eyeballs open and sent me packing.”
“The Willoughbys” isn’t remarkably original story wise. It mixes and matches from a variety of sources. There’s a taste of Roald Dahl, a hint of “Despicable Me” and a dollop of “Mary Poppins,” but, all spun together, they form a delightfully dark (but not too dark) story about finding the true value of family.
