Tough Films For The Rough Crowd

          STICKFIGHTER (1994/USA) This little seen actioner from director/stuntman BJ Davis (LASER MISSION) feels like the sort of movie aliens who have only ever read about action movies in Black Belt Magazine might put together. Everything about it is a hilarious jumble of cliches, but arranged with such enthusiastic incompetence…

GREEN ROOM (2015/USA) I didn’t get to see GREEN ROOM at TIFF 2015. Because I’m not a legit critic guy, I have to pay regular people prices, and because I’m poor I tend to go for the more economical ticket packages that — for whatever reason — mean you get…

  POCKET NINJAS (1997/USA) I know we’re here to talk about POCKET NINJAS, but first let’s talk about 3 NINJAS. Or, to be more accurate, the 3 NINJAS series. You see, back in the more innocent days of the early 1990s, there were two things that were popular: awful, awful music…

IT’S SLEAZY (2001/USA) From 1993 until 2001 the heavy metal band GWAR released a series of outrageous straight-to-VHS films celebrating their complex mythology, while simultaneously skewering popular culture and reveling in gore. Also, sometimes there was music. When I was but a naive teenager, I recall seeing these videos tucked secretively behind…

        THE GIGGLESNORT HOTEL: Vol. 1 (1975/USA) We accept the children’s entertainment we think we deserve, and in Canada in the early 1990s that usually meant the truly bizarre kids shows aired on our all-youth station YTV. Sure, one could have stuck with the relative safety of Mr. Dressup…

It’s the weekend. It’s late. Let’s talk about some movies. JERUZALEM (2015/ Israel) Recently, I was lucky enough to see an incredibly inventive, deliriously exciting film shot entirely in POV, which was full of inventive visuals and terrific set-pieces. It remains one of the most unique cinema experiences I’ve had in…

  Enough with the preamble. It’s been a heck of a week, so let’s talk about some movies. SUMMIT (2015/USA) February is WOMEN IN HORROR MONTH, which means it’s high time to celebrate some of the (thankfully) increasing number of female directors, writers, cinematographers and producers who are continually perking…

  POP! The VIDEO TOASTER returns with three more strange relics of a bygone age (except for the fact that one of them is from last year). While this column will be generally devoted to covering the width (and depth) of my cinematic collection, I’ll also be using it to…

It’s 2016, and I have too much to watch. Or, to be more accurate, I have too much that I already should have watched: SOV oddities, turkish action movies, Polish science fiction.. There’s so much interesting and strange material out there, but I’ve been so consumed with writing about no-budget films…