This month, the Bloor Cinema and Rue Morgue present the ultimate date movie - that is, if you and your date are into brutal, cruel, insane entertainment. Twenty-four year old Spanish director Martin Garrido Baron (how's that for a cool handle?) will have his debut film shown at the Bloor Cinema (506 Bloor W.) on Thursday, Aug. 17 at 9:30pm.

H6 tells the story of Antonio Frau, a serial killer set free after serving 25 years in jail for the violent murder of his girlfriend. This being a horror movie, it's unlikely that the now free Antonio lives a peaceful existence for the rest of his days tending a flock of sheep. I've read that H6 is as uncomfortable a film as you're likely to see this year so be warned that its realistic verite-style veers awfully close to snuff-film territory.

Also on offer will be evangelical Satanic Faith Healing with Pastor Morgan Wilkes and Victor Marshall of Cloven Path Ministries! All you Toronto Satanists should don your cloaks and cowls, slap on some fresh goat's blood and come out for a cleansing! Yow!

Tickets are $10, doors open at 9 so arrive early!

Recently, I attended an advanced screening for Little Miss Sunshine which will have its wide release next week. The screening was at Canada Square, that enclave of "alternative" film fare. What was unusual, no...surprising about this advance presentation was that the directors attended and what wasn't asked of them.

Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris were available for Q&A after the show and gave the expected insight into the processes and struggles behind the development and production of Little Miss Sunshine. One question went unasked that night, perhaps because Torontonians are really as polite as the stereotype suggests. The question I was waiting to pose was "Why did Dayton and Faris make such an abhorrent movie?"

I'm one of those "purists" who enjoys horror movies most when a crisp autumn moon scrapes cold, bare trees, but tomorrow I will make a mid-summer exception. For this month's "Cinemacabre" presentation at the Bloor Cinema the ghouls at Rue Morgue have brought us The Descent.

From all the buzz, The Descent sounds to be one of those rare horror films that eschews dull, senseless gore in favour of fostering an impression of genuine dread. In other words, this may be an instant horror classic. The film's pedigree is there: writer/director Neil Marshall gave fright-fans the chilling Dog Soldiers which had more scares in a random 10 minute sequence than in all Eli Roth movies combined.

Love film? Delight in innovative cinema? Relish seeing genres turned inside out so that you leave a film wanting to shake a passerby and say "WHOA, MAMMA!!"? If you've answered in the positive to even one of those questions, then get thee to the Cinamatheque! Circle August 9 on your calendar because Harakiri is coming!

July and August, following through with June's Chinese Kung-fu extravaganza, find Cinematheque moving further east to Japan for a celebration of the classic samurai film. Directors Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Gosha and Tanaka are all represented in a fantastic series of bushido-bash ups yet all their films serve as a warm-up for Kobayashi's Harakiri, the ultimate in code-of-honour samurai movies.

Last chance to visit the Festival Cinemas! They close tonight but at least they're going out in style with undeniably classic films.
The Royal (606 College) is showing Monty Python and the Holy Grail at 7pm and 2001: A Space Odyssey at 9pm.
The Revue (400 Roncesvalles) is showing Lean's epic Lawrence of Arabia at 7:30.
The Kingsway (3030 Bloor West) is showing Raiders of the Lost Ark at 7pm and Casablanca (best movie ever!) at 9:20.
Visit these rep theatres one last time so you can say "I was there when..."
[graphic liberated from fullerton.edu]

On a stormy night when a man wearing a red cape and tights blew into town I once again scorned the cineplex and did my best to support the endangered independent rep-theatres by attending the late show at the Bloor. [Ow! Twisted my arm with all that self-congratulatory back patting]. It's the second time I've "lost it" at the cinema, the first being almost 20 years ago when my Rocky Horror cherry was popped; tonight I gave it up to Russ Meyer.

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! flaunted everything my mother had warned me about: Fast cars, knives, violence, and a take-no-prisoners attitude displayed by women built in ways that could have sold zeppelins to Hindenburg survivors.