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,…
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.…
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 2016 #3: Life After Life, The Student, Being 17
To read previous VIFF coverage, click here. The Student I like to think of The Student as a total inversion of that pro-Christian blunder God’s Not Dead. Instead of the squeaky wheel Christian as the underdog trying to fight the…