If one were to say Mamoru Hosoda’s Mirai is a film about family they wouldn’t be wrong, but at the same time would be doing this tapestry of ancestral lines a disservice. Too many 2018 films are about “family,” but…
The Favourite Movie Review: The farce involved nearly impedes any dramatic empathy gained by Yorgos Lanthimos
Even if you find yourself unable to stomach the overwhelming emotional remove of his films, how can one not to be impressed by the unique constructs of Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos? With each film he seems to find more and…
VIFF 2018: “An Elephant Sitting Still”, “Mangoshake”, “Genesis” & “Wolf Hall”
One inevitably recurring theme in the many films you get see at festivals like VIFF is how the world isn’t going to give you the answers to life’s hard questions. It is often that the filmmakers must make meaning of…
3 Faces Movie Review | VIFF 2018
Jafar Pahani’s 3 Faces escapes the confines of the director’s home (This Is Not a Film) and even Tehran (Taxi) as the recording of a young girl’s apparent suicide spurs him, and celebrated Iranian actress Behnaz Jafari, to take a odyssey…
Transit Movie Review | VIFF 2018
What if purgatory was a Gestapo police state in contemporary Marseilles? Once again, Christian Petzold’s romantic waltz of Hollywood dreamscape and grounded emotional reality is not so much a distracting contrivance in the case of Transit as a compelling abstraction.…
The Image Book Movie Review | VIFF 2018
There’s a moment in Jean-Luc Godard’s The Image Book where the forerunner of Nouvelle Vague (French New Wave) takes home footage of a young girl who—perhaps for the first time in her life—watches an incoming train coming to a station.…
VIFF 2018: “Asako I & II”, “Holiday”, “In My Room” & “Fausto”
The Vancouver International Film Festival comes more than half-a-year after Sundance, months after Cannes, and mere days after Toronto International Film Festival which is good news for us film-dependents in the Pacific Northwest. Living in this corner of the globe…
