After having a Premiere in the city back in 2001, Ichi The Killer returns to Toronto in 4K format this weekend for the start of a new monthly film screening! Get ready to feel the bite of KinoVortex from Colin Geddes. The Shudder curator returns to his Midnight Madness roots for a season of films at TIFF Bell Lightbox. Following Ichi (Feb 3rd 9PM) will be Mon Mon Mon Monsters (March 10, 10PM) and The Great Silence – Restored Digital Presentation (Saturday April 14, 9PM).
Wrap your eyeballs around the trailer for the series and RSVP here.
Saturday, February 3 @ 9pm Ichi the Killer. In the wake of Takashi Miike’s 100th film, Blade of the Immortal, we revisit one of the wildly prolific director’s most notorious works. After a yakuza boss disappears, his soldiers start carving a bloody path through the underworld to find out who was responsible. Headed by the grotesque, torture-loving jester Kakihara (Tadanobu Asano), the investigation points to a reputedly unstoppable killing machine named Ichi. It goes without saying that this hide-your-eyes endurance test is not for the squeamish: TIFF thoughtfully dispensed vomit bags to the first-night audience when Ichi premiered at Midnight Madness in 2001.
Saturday, March 10 @ 10pm Mon Mon Mon Monsters – Toronto Premiere Looking for acceptance, a wimpy high-schooler is drawn into a group of handsome but borderline-sociopathic boys who constantly berate and abuse him. While “helping” seniors in a rundown tenement building, the troublemaking teens and their reluctant tagalong encounter a ravenous she-monster that has been preying on vagrants. Combining moral complexity with show-stopping scenes of bloodshed, the sophomore feature by Taiwanese director Giddens Ko will have you rooting for the sharp-toothed beasts over any of the human characters.
Saturday, April 14 @ 9pm The Great Silence Restored Digital Presentation! This astonishingly transgressive spaghetti western from director Sergio Corbucci (Django) stars Jean-Louis Trintignant (The Conformist, Amour) and gonzo Herzog muse Klaus Kinski, with a score by Ennio Morricone. During Utah’s Great Blizzard of 1899, a greedy land developer hires a group of ruthless bounty hunters, led by “Loco” (Kinski), to kill Mormon settlers in the mountains. The widow of one of the men hires a mute gunslinger known only as “Silence” (Trintignant) to exact vengeance on the killers. Soon, rivers of blood will stain the snow, en route to one of the most stunning endings in genre history.
