Kurt Halfyard
Toronto, Canada

Scientist by day, cinema aficionado by night. Film festival addict and family man. Kurt has been writing for Twitch since pretty much the inception of the site and can often be found in rep-houses around Toronto taking his kids to films that are rather inappropriate for their age.

Review: I DECLARE WAR Goes To Battle With Boys And Bullying
One weekend day a number of the nerdier kids from the local middle school gather their sticks and twine and balloons filled with red dye, and head into the local woods to play capture-the-flag. Oh, those tweens today with their... More »
  

ENDER'S GAME Trailer Offers Nothing New in Blockbuster Landscape
I understand that there is some Hollywood rule out there that all Hero-Journey Blockbuster (tm) trailers have to look alike.  I understand that if you have Harrison Ford in your movie that you might as well use his voice to... More »
  

Fantasia Frontières' Tantalizing International Development Slate Includes New Joe Dante, Andrej Zulawski
With Tribeca and HotDocs wrapped, and Cannes gearing up, is it too early to start thinking of Montreal's Fantasia Film Festival?  I say, "Hell no!"  While we are well away from any programming announcements from the July-August festival, consider 2013's Frontières... More »
  

Hot Docs 2013 Review: THE EXPEDITION TO THE END OF THE WORLD Asks Big Questions in Wide Open Spaces
Specifically, the eponymous End of the World is a place: The northern shores of Greenland that have been inaccessible due to ice-locked waterways, which now, due to changing climes, are open for a mere few weeks a year to such... More »
  

Hot Docs 2013 Review: WILLIAM AND THE WINDMILL Subverts the Expected TEDtalk Narrative
What exactly is William and The Windmill about?  Is it the story of a resourceful and ingenious young Malawi boy who builds a windmill from available detritus using diagrams in a book so his parents have a way to... More »
  

Hot Docs 2013 Review: THE LIFE AND CRIMES OF DORIS PAYNE is Glamorous and Mundane
It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to walk into a jewelry store and pull a pure short-con swindle. Doris Payne, now in her early eighties, remains as wiry and razor sharp as she ever was, pulling one jewel... More »
  

BYZANTIUM Trailer Beautifully Depicts the Flow of Blood and Time
In a post-Twilight movie landscape, where zombies seem to own the pop cultural zeitgeist for the moment, Neil Jordan's Byzantium is a bit of a curious creature out of time. The film, which played to a muted, somewhat baffled, response... More »
  

Twitch Talks UPSTREAM COLOR
Shane Carruth's followup to his stunning debut Primer expands to additional theatres this week (and will be available for download and streaming May 7). Our own Eric Snider reviewed the film at Sundance, suggesting that "Upstream Color is interesting; it just... More »
  

DECEPTIVE PRACTICE Trailer Showcases Ricky Jay
"Was I ever tempted to become a con-man or a card shark. [pause] Yes." Why oh why isn't this playing HotDocs this year?  Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries & Mentors of Ricky Jay played the New York Film Festival last year, and... More »
  

Review: TO THE WONDER Swirls With Grace
"Pourqoi pas Toujours?" (Why not always?) is the question on the mind of Terrence Malick in his latest emotive cinematic meditation -- it could have easily been the title. Here the elusive auteur is less overtly concerned with the connections... More »
  

Counterpoint Review: EVIL DEAD is Torture
There is a moment in Fede Alvarez's article-less remake of The Evil Dead that offers a hint of the condescension to come; an utter lack of faith in the audience or a confidence crisis in storytelling.  After a mishandled prologue... More »
  

Wachowski's Original Science Fiction Series Coming to Netflix
After successfully squeezing the mega-sized Cloud Atlas into a single sitting offering (which audiences more or less ignored), the Wachowski siblings are going to work in long form science fiction on a project called Sense8.  They are teaming up with Babylon... More »
  

Jewel Thiefs! Reindeer Herding! Sex for Trees! HotDocs Celebrates Its 20th In Style
One of the world's largest documentary film festivals, Toronto's HotDocs turns 20 this year.  To celebrate, they are screening a whopping 205 films from 43 countries from April 25th to May 5th at their dedicated cinema, The Bloor-Hotdocs Cinema, as... More »
  

Cue the Wagner, Cue The War! Trailer for MILIUS Documentary
Writer.  Filmmaker. Gun-owner.  And all around bad-ass, John Milius, is the man who is responsible in part for the Dirty Harry franchise, Apocalypse Now, The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, 1941, Conan The Barbarian, Red Dawn and HBO's... More »
  

Review: THE BRASS TEAPOT Somehow Succeeds in Spite of Itself
Alice (rising star, Juno Temple) and John (Michael Angarano, that kid from Sky High) are a cute, if callow, young couple caught in the cogs of the economic downturn. His business degree has only landed him a telemarketer job and her... More »
  

Trailer for THE CONJURING Aims To Scare You By Clapping
I applaude the framing of the above image taken from James Wan's new horror film, The Conjuring.  Yet the trailer also has the unfortunate side effect of reminding me how much more emotionally attached I was to the children's games... More »
  

The McConnaissence Continues with this Trailer for MUD
Wither has Jeff Nicols' Mud been since Nicols' well-received third feature debuted last year at the Cannes film festival?  Well, it has popped up on the docket at Sundance and to celebrate (or remind us) of what the film is,... More »
  

New RESOLUTION One Sheet Emphasizes Cabin In the Woods
There are a number of us in these parts who fell in love with Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead's indie mind-bender Resolution on the festival circuit. Regular Twitch readers will recall the festival promo video series which they clearly had a... More »
  

Review: AMOUR, What's Not to Love?
Michael Haneke wants to remind us all that we are going to die someday, and that the long day's journey into night is probably not going to be a pleasant one. He accomplishes this mightily in the heartbreaking, occasionally shocking,... More »
  

Review: THE IMPOSSIBLE is Too Soggy and Too Staged to Warrant Consequence
"Just close your eyes and think of something nice" is a refrain repeated several times during J.A. Bayona's Tsunami disaster film that sees Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts - and their three children - attempt to re-unite after a tidal wave... More »
  
 
  Next »
Page 1 of 50
Leading Voices in Global Cinema
More »
Featured Videos
1.
Watch The International Trailer For Mark Hartley's PATRICK
2.
Watch The First Trailer For Jeunet's THE YOUNG AND PRODIGIOUS SPIVET
3.
Watch The Stellar Cannes Teaser For Jeremy Saulnier's BLUE RUIN
Featured Articles

China Beat: What did China See in IRON MAN 3?

Much has already been written, both on these pages and many others, about the landmark Hollywood-China co-production that is Marvel and DMG Entertainment's Iron Man 3. The film, directed by Shane Black, is the third solo outing for Robert Downey Jr's Tony Stark, and has proved a phenomenal success around... More »

FEAR & LOATHING AT CANNES, PART 2: I'M IN LOVE WITH EVERYBODY'S GIRL

CHAPTER 4: THE PHILOSOPHY OF ANNA KARINA AND BUTT PLUGSI'm sitting outside at a small Café that my editor told me to meet him at. I'm a 10 minute walk from the Marche Du Film convention hall and I'm still waiting for my editor to arrive so he take guide... More »

CINEMA HOLOCAUST ON THE FRENCH RIVIERA, PART 1: THOSE GOD DAMN FILM BLOGGERS

MIKE'S JOURNAL. MAY 13. MORNINGI wake up sometime around five AM. My flight to France doesn't leave until five PM. I should be there for security check in sometime around 3PM. There is no reason for me to be up this early but I'm feeling anxious. I have an itch... More »

FEAR & LOATHING AT CANNES, PART 1: A MAN'S HANDSHAKE SAYS EVERYTHING

CHAPTER ONE: THE BIGGER THE SIDEBURNS, THE BIGGER THE ASSHOLE. I've hit the big time now. I've finally made it. I'm in like Flint from here on out. I'm boarding a plane to France where I'll be attending the Cannes Film Festival for the first time.No more unpaid blogging from... More »

Destroy All Monsters: Leo DiCaprio and the Myth of the Chick Flick

I have a running argument about whether or not movie box office is a zero-sum game. I tend to attack film earning potential from the "mother of two" perspective - which is that while yes, it's nice to believe that if a film is good it has a theoretically unlimited... More »
Most Popular
Follow Twitch

Never miss a thing! Headlines delivered daily.
E-mail address:

Recent Comments
More »
​​