It's an interesting week for film, with direct competition between two kinds of films—one that wants to make you feel like a kid again by bludgeoning you with special effects and nostalgic licence, and another that wants to make you feel like a kid again by simply recalling, well, what it was to be a kid. We refer to the big-screen adaptation of the lets-be-honest-it-was-pretty-terrible-but-now-amusing-in-a-kitsch-way Speed Racer (phew) and the release, finally, of the... [continue]

Yes, we're being very obvious by leading with Iron Man this week, considering that it's everywhere anyway as this year's first big "summer" blockbuster. However, and we have a feeling we might have mentioned this before, we're sold on any film that recognizes that a trademark way to make your hero look as awesome as possible is to have him walk towards the camera with his back to an explosion—like they don't even care!... [continue]

The Over The Top film festival opens tonight, and for many, the draw is going to be Crispin Glover, who is bringing the two completed films from his It trilogy to the Royal, starting on Friday night with What Is It? at 7:00 p.m. (followed by It is Fine! Everything is Fine on Saturday at 7:00 p.m.). They're $20 each, but it's particularly worth noting that the rest of the festival is far more... [continue]

Like everyone else, we’ve been completely distracted with the TTC strike (and considering we can’t really get anywhere in the city as a result, we don’t have much else to do) so this unfortunately final Hot Docs update was a little delayed. Now that legislation is passed, however, maybe we might actually be able to get downtown tonight to see some of the final screenings! Here's hoping. Tonight: 4:30 p.m. – Jesus Loves You... [continue]

Now, we’d love to pointedly go on strike from this Hot Docs update, but, you know, there are possibly a few people out there who are reading it to help them pick what they’re going to see at Hot Docs, because they live downtown and within easy walking distance of one of the theatres. Or they’re willing to try and drive down (not that we’d brave it). As far as we know, everything's still... [continue]

Harold & Kumar are back! Oh glorious day—how on earth could we not lead with the return of this generation's most important stoners? Their original quest for White Castle burgers (which we've never tried, and still wonder about) was maybe a little patchy but (for some reason) completely rewatchable in the way the best quick-fire comedies are, and the results for Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay seem to promise a similar experience,... [continue]

Well, it’s Hot Docs' closing weekend, and we’re all running out of time to pack in some documentaries! So without furthur ado, here are today’s picks: 4:30 p.m. – Full Battle Rattle (ROM) 6:45 p.m. – The Fallen (Al Green) – Coverage of the Pasta de Conchos disaster (which cost 63 miners their lives) and the resulting fallout. 7:00 p.m. – Milošević on Trial (Royal) 7:15 p.m. – Bloody Cartoons (Innis Town Hall) 9:15... [continue]

Vesterbro (11:55 p.m., Bloor). A sort of cinéma vérité film that concentrates on the difficult relationship between two young Danes, this is another film that makes us think about the place of fiction in films today—not because it’s fictional in any way (other than the usual documentary contrivances), but because if someone asked us to see a film about two young people in Denmark falling in and out of love that had a script... [continue]

We're now over half-way through the festival, and the quality continues with today's picks: 1:30 p.m. – Second Skin (Isabel Bader) – Pictured above. 4:00 p.m. – The English Surgeon (Isabel Bader) 7:00 p.m. – FlicKeR (Royal) – A look at the life of Brion Gysin (friend of William S. Burroughs), who created the Dream Machine, a device intended to make you dream but that might just cause an epileptic fit. So! Caution if... [continue]

Shadow Of The Holy Book (4:00 p.m., Cumberland). So here's the deal. There's a weird dictatorship in central Asia called Turkmenistan. It was run until recently by Saparmurat Niyazov, who wrote a sort of religious text/propaganda piece called the Ruhnama that everyone in the country has to learn. And if you want to trade in the (oil and gas rich) country, translating the book into your own language guarantees big contracts, something the new... [continue]

Strike averted, so there’s no excuse to not get downtown and check out some of the offerings from Hot Docs tonight: 4:00 p.m. – Shot in Bombay (Cumberland) 7:00 p.m. – Carts Of Darkness (Royal) – The homeless teach us how to enjoy extreme sports on a budget—by chucking themselves down hills in grocery carts (pictured above). 7:15 p.m. – Be Like Others (Isabel Bader) – Sex change operations are legal in Iran? 7:15... [continue]

It might be your last day to get downtown on the TTC today (check our strike status!) so better make the most of it! Our picks from today’s Hot Docs flicks: 12:00 p.m. – Shock Waves (ROM) 1:30 p.m. – Recycle (Cumberland) 5:00 p.m. – Stepya (Innis Town Hall) – pictured above. 6:30 p.m. – Tiger Spirit ( Bloor) – Min Sook Lee returns to Korea to examine the continuing influence 50 years of... [continue]

It's Saturday, the weekend, and we're all basking in not only our free time but also our ability to get downtown on the TTC before it's stripped away from us (even though it's a last resort etc. etc.). So this weekend is obviously the best time to try and check out anything at Hot Docs, because who knows if you'll have any opportunity to for the rest of the festival if the strike drags... [continue]

Even with all the Hot Docs talk there's a good chance that you just don't like documentaries, preferring instead to stick to fiction. (Which is interesting, really. We were just reading a piece that was, er, reviewing the last season of Doctor Who, which discussed how long it took people to warm to the idea of "made-up stories.") So you'd probably be better served by some of the other films on offer this week... [continue]

Our (truncated) picks from this evening's Hot Docs delectables: 4:15 p.m. – Anvil! The Story of Anvil (Isabel Bader) 6:45 p.m. – Shock Waves (Al Green) – The fortunes of a radio station in the Democratic Republic of Congo. 7:00 p.m. – Ex-voto for Three Souls / Second Sight (Alliance Cumberland Cinemas) – Three Mexicans struggle for miracles in Ex-voto; A Scot talks of "ghost cars"(?) in Second Sight. 7:00 p.m. – Steypa (Royal)... [continue]

When we ran our Sprockets preview last week, we tried to give the piece a theme, and we couldn’t stick to it. In all honesty, we probably overstretched ourselves in trying to give a post on a children’s film festival a theme any grander than "children’s films," and when you get down to it, why bother? Trying to theme our introductory post to this year’s Hot Docs coverage, which will continue throughout the week,... [continue]

Read our Sprockets preview? Don’t have kids—or don’t care? Well, there’s… Not a great deal we can genuinely recommend instead, but there is some stuff. Obviously, the Images Festival continues, ending this Sunday night with the closing night gala Trading the Future at 7 p.m. Cinematheque Ontario is also running The Latest Wave: New Romanian Cinema, a retrospective of the latest hot films to come out of Romania to thundering critical acclaim and absolutely... [continue]

Initially our headline here probably makes absolutely no sense, because the Sprockets Film Festival is the Toronto International Film Festival for Children. In general, "movie theatres filled with children" aren’t anywhere you could take refuge from anything (other than possibly peace and quiet) but we’d like to spotlight some of the films that Sprockets is showing this year that deal with the refugee experience. After all, with over 50% of Toronto a visible "minority"... [continue]

The Over The Top Festival will play Toronto April 30th to May 4th (including special screenings of Crispin Hellion Glover’s What Is It? and It is Fine: Everything Is Fine!, and the musical portion of the event we've previously previewed) but in advance of that, the Over The Top Fest and The Royal Cinema are showing a special retrospective, The Films of John Paizs, this week. The retrospective features Paizs’s 1999 50s science fiction spoof... [continue]

As we may have mentioned before, here at Torontoist we’re terrified of zombies—terrified! But yet we still love zombie films enough to not run out of the theatre screaming (usually). However, we’re not sure we could deal with the the Rolling Stones in IMAX, as seen in Martin Scorsese's concert film Shine a Light, released this week. A giant Mick Jagger looming over us, ready to eat our brains for sustenance! Horrifying! (We’ve been... [continue]