Door Mouse. Is She Squeaky Clean in this Whodunit?

When this Door Mouse (Hayley Law) is a comic book illustrator whose second job is that of a burlesque performer, she better learn another occupation fast!

door mouseAvailable in select theatres and
digitally starting on January 13th

Elevation Pictures

Door Mouse has plenty of Quinten Tarantino and punk rock vibes in its story about Mouse (Hayley Law), a comic book illustrator whose only real paying job is that of a burlesque performer. But when her colleagues get kidnapped, she becomes a gumshoe with a mission–to protect her sisters from the hood. They either wind up dead or much worse. As a result, the cops dismiss the problem as not worth investigating. Instead of waiting to be a victim, she’d rather be a victor in this quirky indie film smartly written and well directed by Avan Jogia.

This movie’s greatest strength lies in how perfect the neo-noir atmosphere is realised. Not only is it coloured in pastel lights, but also we get an appropriate sound design to make the world feel grungy. Additionally, the illustrations are animated to recognize how this lead looks at the world. This approach works to explain why she’s drawing from her life experience to create her comic book. The grittiness that’s visualised makes me wonder if we’ll ever see a sampler as a booklet when the home video release is ready. The sketches I see makes me think this artist is inspired by Robert Crumb.

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[Fantasia 2019] On Night God and the Auteur–Adikhan Yerzhanov

null 25Additional Screening
Thu Aug 01 5:30 PM
Salle J.A. De Sève

Fantasia 2019
Montreal, Quebec

Adilkhan Yerzhanov‘s Night God (Nochnoy Bog) is more than a trippy meditation about the life found in the outskirts of Russia. It’s hard to describe because the plot meanders. The film opens with a pair of workers, just having a conversation, and they see the red tails of what I feel are rockets being launched into space than falling debris–much less a comet (the latter appear as smudges in one point in the sky than wander the horizon). One individual asks, “What is the meaning of it all?”

The response is simply in the fact neither have seen anything like that in their life. They don’t even hint of knowing military exercises are going on elsewhere (the most plausible explanation of what they saw). They are more concerned about their own self being since they believe the world is ready to self destruct. Curiously, we don’t know who everyone is. They’re nameless.

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The Lightest Darkness, An Exercise in Neo-Noir

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Buy it Now (Amazon)

By Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

To say The Lightest Darkness is inspired by film noir is an understatement. To connect it with the styling of Franz Kafka is perhaps just as surreal. Whichever the case, the neo-modernist stylings of this Russian made film make the feelings of being entrapped certainly notable. Two suspects (or is that three) are eyed; Private Investigator Musin (Rashid Aitouganov) is on a missing person case and believes all can be unveiled on a train going nowhere fast.

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