To read previous VIFF coverage, click here. The opening few moments of Michael Haneke’s newest button-pusher Happy End leaves a few open-ended questions—the one I’m most eager to talk about involves a possible animal rights violation. Of course, animal torture…
VIFF 2017: “Western”, “Bad Genius” & “Sami Blood”
To read previous VIFF coverage, click here. One quick scroll through any news site is enough to tell you how engrossed the human species is in conflict—this is also reflected in popular entertainment, whether its the fiction portrayed on screens or…
VIFF Review: BPM (Beats Per Minute)
To read previous VIFF coverage, click here. In the electric first half of BPM (Beats Per Minute) the film charts the movement of a group of HIV/AIDS activists in France in the early 1990s, just as the virus became a…
VIFF Review: A Fantastic Woman
To read previous VIFF coverage, click here. In the ever growing yet still somewhat scanty representation of LGBTQ in today’s cinema, films like A Fantastic Woman (featuring Chile’s first and only openly transgender actor as its star) are crucial in…
VIFF 2017: “A Yangtze Landscape”, “Claire’s Camera”, & “Maison du bonheur”
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,…