Best International Film: Pakistan's "In Flames" & India's "2018"

by Cláudio Alves

Considering the Academy's general disinclination to honor horror cinema, it's always surprising when the genre pops up amid Best International Film submissions. This year, Pakistan is one of the brave countries that didn't let genre bias stop them from selecting a scary movie for the Oscar race. Zarrar Kahn's In Flames is the lucky flick, a Canadian-produced meditation on grief, trauma, and poisonous patriarchy bound to unnerve viewers. Neighboring nation India didn't dip their toes into nightmare cinema but sent a disaster picture that's horrifying in its own way. Juan Anthany Joseph's 2018 dramatizes a real-life catastrophe that befell the state of Kerala…

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TIFF '23: Jodie Comer astounds in "The End We Start From"

by Matt St Clair

The first glance of the title The End We Start From, immediately brough the past few years to mind. Once the COVID pandemic turned the world upside down, we all lived in physical and mental isolation, fearing what the coming days would bring. While the virus hasn’t disappeared, we have found ways to move forward and start anew during uncertain times. This film's nameless protagonist (a sublime Jodie Comer) experiences a cataclysmic crisis and does the same thing.

Just as the heroine has given birth to a newborn, a catastrophic flood strikes England...

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TIFF '23: "Concrete Utopia" is an earth-shaking blockbuster parable

by Cláudio Alves

Genre cinema has long been the home of social critique through allegory. Think back to Godzilla's reflection on Japan's atomic trauma or Night of the Living Dead's invention of the zombie movie as the place to study civilization's collapse. South Korea's new Oscar submission, Concrete Utopia, follows the tradition. Though, here, you'll find no Romero undead or radioactive kaiju to distract and reflect human folly at the viewer. Instead, Tae-hwa Eom's latest tackles the precepts of the disaster flick with a dash of post-apocalyptic dystopia, showing Humanity's self-made ruin in the aftermath of a massive earthquake that renders Seoul a wasteland…

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Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Titanic (1997)

by Nathaniel R and other Best Shot participants

As our season finale (series finale, too, at least in this format) we thought 'Why not go down with the ship!!!' The RMS Titanic to be specific. Twenty-five years on James Cameron's Oscar-winning prestige disaster film Titanic (1997) is still giant with audiences and one of those rare movies that "plays" for everyone.

After the jump the choices from the Best Shot club...

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Smackdown '37 - The Podcast Companion

by Nathaniel R

150 years ago on this very day the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 began. It raged for three days (October 8th-10th), ravaging most of the city and killing hundreds. In the blockbuster movie In Old Chicago (1937), which we discuss on this Podcast, the cause of the fire is pinned firmly on careless Mrs O'Leary (Alice Brady) and her cow. A new report from the AP for the fire's anniversary says  that there's no evidence to suggest they were the culprits; the widely believed and Hollywood-endorsed story may have sprung from the virulent anti-Irish prejudice of the time. That's just a little anecdote to share since we're finally publishing the podcast portion of the 1937 Smackdown which is now officially the season finale (the other years we had planned to do will have to wait a few months)

Thanks to our guests Chelsea whose letterbox review of Stage Door is "hot girls unite", Pamela who has a hot take on the sexworker trope in Dead End, Tim who makes his case as the world's biggest Stella Dallas fan, and Boyd who shares a possibly apocryphal but amazing stunt double story from In Old Chicago. Hope you enjoy the conversation! 

SMACKDOWN 1937