To read previous VIFF coverage, click here. Among the numerous delights of attending festivals is catching an early screening of a film already steeped in praise (whether hailing from Sundance, Cannes, Toronto or Venice). As I discovered with last year’s…
VIFF Review: Faces Places
To read previous VIFF coverage, click here. Faces Places (or in French: Visages Villages) comes equipped with so much detailed history and deeply embedded feeling between its characters that the winsomeness and tragedy almost writes itself. Equally the result of…
VIFF Review: Thelma
To read previous VIFF coverage, click here. Coming out of Norway, Joachim Trier’s newest film may be perhaps the most hallucinatory and lecherous romantic vision put to screen this year, and with its genuine sense of character beneath the macabre,…
Movie Review: After the Storm
Many use the words “deceptively simple” to describe a film which makes what it’s trying to do look easy. However, I don’t think the words apply better to any director than Hirokazu Kore-eda and his invariable slice of the Japanese experience.…
Movie Review: Manchester by the Sea
There’s a tragedy at the core of Manchester by the Sea, but you’d never see it behind that emotionless wall separating Casey Affleck from the rest of the world. His eyes are remote and affectionless, but not unreachable—that tiny thread…
VIFF Review: After the Storm
To read previous VIFF coverage, click here. Many use the words “deceptively simple” to describe a film which makes what it’s trying to do look easy. However, I don’t think the words apply better to any director than Hirokazu Kore-eda and…
VIFF Review: Elle
To read previous VIFF coverage, click here. Paul Verhoeven’s ventures into irreverence and topical discussion have always been assigned to lavish psychosexual entertainment, mostly overlooked however are his films’ dramatic undertones, which are always sincere, biting and deeply self-aware. Elle…