Vivid colors and chic camera choreography are beautifully bound together in the initial scenes of Alice Waddington’s feature length directorial debut, the erratic yet always elegant sci-fantasy Paradise Hills. But it’s a film that opens perhaps too big; Waddington playfully presents a richly imagined world that’s part musical, part mystery, and overfull with intrigue and […]
Reviews
Greener Grass – VIFF 2019 Review
A pair of antiseptic and ever-competing soccer moms chitchat on the bleachers as their kids chase and kick balls around the grassy sport’s field when Lisa (Dawn Luebbe) looks closer at her frenemy Jill (Jocelyn DeBoer) and exclaims through thinly veiled contempt: “Oh, my gosh, I didn’t even notice, you have a new baby!” By […]
Parasite – VIFF 2019 Review
Korean filmmaker Bong Joon Ho (The Host [2006], Snowpiercer [2013]) is back and more brilliant than ever with Parasite, his so-very-deserving Palme d’Or-snatching socio-political critique that goes from slapstick comic hijinx to outright angry class rage and back with alacrity and ease. Co-written along with Han Jin-won, Bong presents a full-flavored bravura delicacy about a […]
The Lighthouse – VIFF 2019 Review
“Swab dog!” sputters a dour and drunken Thomas Wake (Willem DaFoe) to a puerile and seriously shook up Epharim Winslow (Robert Pattinson) in one particularly memorable moment in Robert Eggers’ entrancingly controlled psychological horror film, The Lighthouse. Ostensibly a chamber piece set in an isolated lighthouse along the enraged sea off the North American coast […]
First Man Review
Damien Chazelle is just four films old, and he has already carved a niche for himself. First Man is a testament to the fact he is inching towards a bracket of great contemporary film-makers. Damien Chazelle’s previous three films have Jazz and obsessive, introverted lead protagonists, ready to go to any length to realise their […]
Fugue – VIFF 2018 Review
Awash in the familiar blues and greys of Polish cinema, Agnieszka Smoczynska’s Fugue follows up her lyrical fantasy The Lure (2015), with no less attention to the complexities of feminine identity. When Alicja (Gabriela Muskala) seemingly returns from the bowels of the earth with no recollection of her past, it’s up to her family to […]