After firmly establishing themselves as impressive innovators in the low-budget but high-concept realm of mumblecore sci-fi/horror films with meta-movements and Lovecraftian leanings (2013’s Resolution and 2014’s Spring are must-see movies for genre junkies), the writer-director duo of Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson present their most ambitious and riskiest gambit yet with The Endless. Earnestly but […]
Author: Shane Scott-Travis
The Florida Project – VIFF 2017 Review
New Jersey-born filmmaker Sean Baker follows up his candy-colored transgender screwball comedy Tangerine (2015)––also his highly lauded cinematic breakthrough––with another vivid tour-de-force film, which brings with it an illustrious new joie de vivre to the essentia of youth, The Florida Project. Set in a superannuated, very tacky and pastel colored corner of Orlando interstate, which […]
In The Fade – VIFF 2017 Reviews
German-American actress Diane Kruger (Inglourious Basterds) gives a bold, bravura performance in writer-director Fatih Akins’ occasionally conventional but always compelling revenge-rattled new film, In the Fade. Broken down into three chapters (titled; Family, Justice, and the Sea), Akin’s film moves with ferocity from a heart-crushing tragedy to a gaunt, sweeping, teeth-bared revenge thriller with only […]
Happy End – VIFF 2017 Review
Austrian writer-director Michael Haneke (Funny Games, Amour) revisits familiar intellective terrain in his most recent rigidly composed treatise on haute-bourgeois prerogative, Happy End. In fact, so recognizable are Haneke’s pet themes of old-line disaffection amidst the intersection separating media estrangement and bubbling-just-below-the-surface violence, that the sadistic streaks and elegant arcs are all too easy to […]
The Divine Order – VIFF 2017 Review
“There is a tiger between my legs, Hans, and I’ve never had an orgasm!” says an empowered Nora (Marie Leuenberger) to her thunderstruck husband (Max Simonischek), in Swiss director Petra Volpe’s wonderful new film about the women’s suffrage movement and struggle for voting rights in 1970s Switzerland, The Divine Order. Punctuated by comedic flourishes and […]
The Killing of a Sacred Deer – VIFF 2017 Review
As unforgettable as it is unshakable, the fifth film from Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth, The Lobster), The Killing of a Sacred Deer, is an unsettling and transgressive domestic odyssey that astounds with its unrelenting menace and imaginative fluency. Equal parts garish and gorgeous, this incendiary psychodrama tells the undone tale of renowned cardiovascular surgeon […]