Film Review: Unfriended (2014)

Copyright: Universal Pictures

Horror and technology always work well together, especially when the technology in question is something that is all consuming when it comes to the masses. There is probably related to some deep fear that is skeptical about any new tool that any primate species develops and humanity is no different.

As science progressed, the number of these tools multiplied and our fears followed. Interestingly enough, in the 20th century, the focus of the horror genre for the first time moved away from things like weapons (atom bomb) and poisons, which were tropes even in the previous eras and started to get interested in tools of communications.

Killer VHS tapes, haunted cell phones and death music records were just some of them, but now, the age of the internet provided new locations where the horror hooks can land. Unfriended is a film about VoIP technology which becomes possessed by a restless spirit.

Crowdfunding Push: Let's get Kevin Smith to Amsterdam!

If you like independent films, you most probably like Kevin Smith. As a director, Smith has had his hits and misses, but always tries to produce something fresh and exciting, even when it goes horribly wrong. 

But, aside from making some incredible films that shaped many excellent directors that started out, like Smith, with a camcorder and a lot of guts, the man is a genius speaker. It’s enough to experience his Giant Spider Producer story and see that his gift to inform and entertain large groups of people rivals that of his cinematographic skill.

Crowdfunding Push: Kill Pill - PHASE 1

When a horror crowdfunding campaign describes itself as It Follows meets The Walking Dead you have no choice but to take notice. Here's the additional info provided by the film creators:

Film Review: Zootopia (2016)

Copyright: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Here’s the key selling point to the entire Zootopia shtick – let’s imagine all animals are anthropomorphic and that they live in a single location. Sure, why not, but many kids’ animated movies already did those assemble animal casts, for example, Madagascar.

But, Zootopia smartly spun the same concept and upgraded it with a simple idea of keeping the animals in their relatively accurate scales.  For example, mice use small doors; giraffes use doors many times larger, standing side by side.

This is the main thing working for the film and the generator of 70% of the jokes. The rest come from the notion of animal affiliation, which divides all members of Zootopia, a place where all animals live in harmony, to predators and everyone else. Here, the film and its director duo of Byron Howard and Rich Moore tried to play the tolerance&animosity card, but unlike the scales thing, it didn’t really stick well to the root plot.

Film Review: Hyena Road (2015)

Copyright: Elevation Pictures

It’s not often that the international audience gets to see anything from a Canadian perspective, apart from how it is to live in a trailer park. But with Hyena Road, the film provides this and places it in the setting that is most un-Canadian: the war-torn Kandahar province in Afghanistan. The film follows a mixture of Canadian military personnel in the heart of this Asian land, looking to build a road through one of its most dangerous provinces and the heartbeat of the Taliban insurgency for decades.

As the joint work of a unit of special operators, a command & control team and an unorthodox intelligence officer begins to unravel, the audience is shown how treacherous this conflict is. Here, there is always a chance for a bullet to a head or an IED going off, while the Canadians possess their own versions of deadly deliveries that can be dispensed to the local insurgents (and other Afghans as well).