For the past 25 years, one of the best parts of the Toronto International Film Festival has been the accompanying Midnight Madness programming. These are movies that are a bit more spectacular and violent than your average TIFF fair, but most of them are great flicks all the same. On Tuesday, the festival announced this year’s schedule. Below are a couple of the films set to grace the Lightbox screens.
Tusk
Kevin Smith, he of clerks fame, brings his newest comedy to the Lightbox screens with Tusk. Unlike his previous efforts, however, this appears to be a new direction for Smith. The film is about a prominent podcaster’s decent into madness after he makes his way to Canada.
Tokyo Tribe
Have you ever yearned to see Goodfellas recast as a musical set in Japan? No? Well, no matter, because you’re getting such a movie whether you asked for it or not. Tokyo Tribe (pictured above), a film by Midnight Madness favourite Sion Sono, is billed as a “yakuza-street-gang-hip hop-musical epic”. I’l be honest, this movie looks like it will be outrageously awesome.
Big Game
In Big Game, the president of the United States of America—played by Samuel L. Jackson, no less—is forced to rely on the survival skills of a 13-year-old huntsmen when Air Force One is forced to make an emergency landing. And, no, I did not just make up that synopsis. One can only imagine this movie will even be better than Snakes on a Plane, and that’s already about the best movie ever released.
Those are just three of the films the festival is set to show this year. See TIFF’s website for a full schedule of all the weird and wonderful movies Midnight Madness has in store for the city’s movie-lovers.
Tickets to each film can be bought individually. Alternatively, the festival is also selling a Midnight Madness Pack which includes 10 screenings for the price of $180—$115 for students and seniors. Both individual tickets and programme passes are available online, over the phone and in-person at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. Get them while they’re still available.
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Igor Bonifacic is the managing editor of Toronto Standard. Follow him on Twitter.
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