celluloid consommé

  An apparent Fantasia darling, Brock Bodell’s debut feature confounds instead. Claustrophobia can be a wonderful tool in film. When a character is boxed in we can decorate that and show it in so many different ways. Custom framing around what is or becomes important to the moment exhibits artistic flair and clues the audience into a particular psyche or way of thinking in a situation without uttering a word. By boxing yourself in, new worlds open up completely; filmmakers can bend or break rules, disregard order of events, dress and bathe sets in light or decorations that can convey internal battles, rough patches they got through, better days. This isn’t exclusive to claustrophobia in cinema but when there isn’t much externally to focus on the camera can create things for us to see within a set perspective. Hellcat sets out to try this in its first act but ultimately pulls away from this constraint, ripping out and ruining what it set to develop like a sawtooth blade rending a n...

  Micro Budget   is less a comedic mockumentary than it is a thoroughly demented behind-the-scenes special feature for a disaster movie that doesn’t exist. Directed by Morgan Evans and written by himself and Patrick Noth (who also stars as the director), the comedy film uses conventions from Christopher Guest’s brand of filmmaking and workplace sitcoms with a hint of Tim Robinson-esque humor to propel it. Evans and Noth weave in plenty of jokes throughout the film, assuring that if this one doesn’t work, the next one will. Terry (Noth) directs a dream movie of his about a meteor cratering the earth in a deadly impact on Toronto. The behind-the-scenes feature chronicles every single thing that goes on behind the camera, for better or worse. There’s a few things going on here: the surface-level  Office -type verité shooting style and delivery, the character study of each member of the film’s talent and production crew, and the movie-within-a-movie itself. The former’s effec...

Yuen Woo-Ping has had a chokehold on audiences since his first film credit. He started his career on Ng See-Yuen’s  The Bloody Fists  blocking fight choreography in 1972. Woo-Ping’s work stood out against an otherwise ordinary period martial arts from the 2nd unit director of  The Chinese Boxer , See-Yuen himself marking his debut on  Fists.  But Woo-Ping’s career catapulted from there. His style of staging fights on camera evolved over time, incorporating more balletic movements and wire work to combine with what some call “shapes” in fight choreography, particularly the use of animal styles and some exaggerated movements designed for the screen. Working closely with the physical portion of martial arts in filmmaking has put Woo-Ping in a critical position to direct them. His name has become synonymous with the genre for this reason. With his first feature since 2018’s  Master Z: Ip Man Legacy , Woo-Ping has brought back his signature fluid style in a new ...