High-Rise – VIFF 2015 Review

English novelist J.G. Ballard broke away from writing science fiction novels with a string of confrontational and controversial novels in the 1970s, which included The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), Crash (1973), and High-Rise (1975). These postmodernist tomes proved auspicious and acclaimed, and, as David Cronenberg would discover with his 1996 adaptation of Crash, despite what backseat […]

14 Movie Directors Who Make The Most Philosophical Films

best KRZYSZTOF KIESLOWSKI films

“Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.” –Ingmar Bergman Filmmakers have, since the invention of the medium, been an elite crew. Often well-educated, they ensure that their films carry multiple meanings, […]

Green Room – VIFF 2015 Review

green room

The teeth-baring ferociousness on sharp-edged display in Jeremy Saulnier‘s intense new film, Green Room, rivals his previous film, 2014’s Blue Ruin, making it catnip for extreme action thriller devotees. Fascinating, forcible, and rough, Saulnier offers a punk rock variant on Rio Bravo – with a likeable rabble impossibly endangered in an under siege scenario – […]