It was eleven years ago that documentary filmmaker Ondi Timoner first came to my attention at VIFF with her audacious and dizzying film Dig! back in 2004. It was a momentous music doc focussing on the love-hate and dog-eat-dog relationship between rival bands, the Brian Jonestown Massacre, and the Dandy Warhols. Timoner’s celebratory and wistful […]
Author: Shane Scott-Travis
The Assassin – VIFF 2015 Review
Legendary Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien (Millennium Mambo) is first and foremost a contemplative stylist, the idea of applying his kind of formalism to the wuxia genre is fascinating, and as ever, Hou’s execution is faultless, but martial arts fans are bound to feel perpetually cold-shouldered. Hou is a critical darling, and his best works – […]
Louder Than Bombs – VIFF 2015 Review
Another subtle, shrewd, and deceivingly simple domestic drama from Joachim Trier (Oslo, August 31st), Louder Than Bombs also marks the Norwegian film director’s English-language debut. Centering on the travails of widower Gene (Gabriel Byrne) and his two grown sons, Jonah (Jesse Eisenberg) and Conrad (Devin Druid), who, three years prior, suffered the loss of their […]
Dheepan – VIFF 2015 Review
Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes 2015, Jacque Audiard’s (Rust and Bone) most recent cinematic foray, Dheepan, is a disconsolate drama with gentle collisions and murderous folds. Starring activist/writer Anthonythasan Jesuthasan in the eponymous role, he’s a refugee from Sri Lanka, where he was a Tamil Tiger in the civil war that saw his […]
No Men Beyond This Point – VIFF 2015 Review
Christopher Guest’s chef d’oeuvres aside (Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, et al.), the mockumentary is to comedy what found footage is to horror; frayed, familiar and ridden with cliché. And so the alarm bells were raised right away for BC filmmaker Mark Sawers latest film, No Men Beyond This Point, but much to his […]
La isla mínima (Marshland) – VIFF 2015 Review
Marshland is the latest neo-noir crime thriller from Spanish filmmaker Alberto Rodríguez (Unit 7) and it’s a gloomily rococo showpiece and a relentless shocker. Set in the autumn of 1980 in the ethereal Guadalquivir Marshes – glimpsed repeatedly and tellingly from impossible heights, suggesting the point of view of a vengeful deity – a series […]