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Stephen Gillespie

Fantasia 2025: OBEX: Beautifully Strange and Strangely Beautiful

Fantasia 2025: OBEX: Beautifully Strange and Strangely Beautiful

For all its overt strangeness and surreality, it is the tenderness of OBEX that stands out. This a tactile yet ethereal film about a lonely man with a computer (not given a time period but evocative of an earlier era of computing, the time of floppy disks, etc.) who makes

Fantasia 2025: Sugar Rot - Punk and Provocative

Fantasia 2025: Sugar Rot - Punk and Provocative

The best and worst thing about Sugar Rot is how punk rock it feels. If we are to be reductive for a bit, punk rock eschews technical expectations in place of energy and relentless shock value. Sugar Rot is certainly a stilted film, feeling rather rough around the edges – especially

Fantasia 2025: Occupy Cannes: Toxically Avenging the Decline of Independent Cinema

Fantasia 2025: Occupy Cannes: Toxically Avenging the Decline of Independent Cinema

When you think of the Cannes Film Festival, you probably think of a certain type of film, and of the event as one linked to competition. It's the arty place for art films to compete over which is the artiest of all. What you probably don't

Fantasia 2025: Blazing Fists: Entertaining, Insightful, and Overstuffed

Fantasia 2025: Blazing Fists: Entertaining, Insightful, and Overstuffed

With well over a hundred films under the belt, Takashi Miike can only ever be described as prolific. He’s also a master, though. His filmography is most charitably called eclectic but can more reasonably be called mixed. However, with that, masterpieces can be found and the one thing tying

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 (Series X): It Looks Just Like Tony Hawk

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 (Series X): It Looks Just Like Tony Hawk

The Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series is nothing short of a sensation. Not only were these four original games critically acclaimed at their time, and hugely popular, they were deeply impactful on wider culture. The soundtracks shaped the musical taste of so many (myself included) and skateboarding itself

VIDEOHEAVEN: DVD Killed the Video Store

VIDEOHEAVEN: DVD Killed the Video Store

Alex Ross Perry has spent a lot of time thinking about video rental stores. More specifically, he’s been thinking about what we can learn from their depictions on film, primarily interrogating the relationship with reality and representation, and what this representation now means that the reality has gone. The

The Alters (Series X): An Existential Survival Game that's as Cerebral as it is Strategic

The Alters (Series X): An Existential Survival Game that's as Cerebral as it is Strategic

Ever wondered how things could have been? What if you had made a different decision, could you have ended up elsewhere? Would your life be better, worse? In The Alters, one of the first things you can do is view the main character's life set out as a