Noticias

Stars: Antonio da Luz, Luís Aleluia, Tania Bento, Paulo Espírito Santo, Marlon Fontes, Sara Fernandes Fontes | Written and Directed by Fabio Powers

This one from this year’s Fantasia Festival had me at its title. How could you not want to watch a film called The Old Man and the Demon Sword!? Thankfully, it delivers, pretty much, what I’d expect given the title.

Initially we see a monk wielding the demon sword, and he’s actually good at using it to kill off various odd-looking enemies. But, unfortunately, the sword finds its way to the local drunk Antonio da Luz, who needs to learn how to use it – with help from the sword itself – to defeat the evil that is upon his village.

As you might expect this is a low-budget genre affair with cheap CGI and cheap practical effects, amateur actors, poor music and lots of humour. It might sound like it,...

Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival has unveiled its second wave of titles, which includes the world premiere of Ant Timpson’s “Bookworm” as the opening night film. This year’s edition, the 28th for the festival, will run from July 18 to August 4. More titles will be announced July 3.

Other world premieres included in the line-up are “The Beast Within” starring Kit Harington (“Game of Thrones”), which follows a young girl as she starts to question her atypical life in her family’s compound in England, and makes a shocking discovering about her dad; and “Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain,” with director Kenji Nakamura reviving the thrills of the original anime.

“Bookworm” stars Elijah Wood (“Yellowjackets”) and Nell Fisher (“Evil Dead Rise”). The official logline reads, “Mildred (Fisher), a precocious eleven-year-old bookworm, escapes her humdrum existence by immersing herself in novels where literary adventures abound, with a...