Gracefully charting the delirious highs and heartbreaking lows of the excited love affair between a composer named Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) and a folk singer named Zula (Joanna Kulig) as they conform to the sour vagaries of life in post-war Poland under Communist rule, Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War is an achingly lovely achievement. Like Ida (2013), […]
Reviews
The Favourite – VIFF 2018 Review
Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer) has done it again, adding yet another absurdist gem to a collection that shows no sign of slowing down in quality and fanfare. In The Favourite, he reimagines the reign of Queen Anne and the periodically playful, somewhat sexy competition between her two ladies-in-waiting, Lady […]
Shadow – VIFF 2018 Review
At this stage in the game it feels like Zhang Yimou, the most celebrated of contemporary Chinese directors, who rose to international prominence with his distinctive brand of visually lush romantic melodrama (1987’s Red Sorghum and 1991’s Raise the Red Lantern are amongst his most memorable early works) only to reinvent himself in the early […]
The House That Jack Built – VIFF 2018 Review
At this stage in his prolific and subversive filmmaking career, confrontational provocateur Lars von Trier’s brand is essentially one of polarization. Antichrist (2009) and Nymphomaniac (2013) are two of the Dane’s most recent examples of artful, dark, and indulgent films that managed to cut crowds right down the middle, and with von Trier’s latest detour […]
Climax – VIFF 2018 Review
Argentinian enfant terrible filmmaker Gaspar Noé (Enter the Void [2009]) may now at long last finally have his masterpiece with Climax, an unimaginably beautiful nightmare mixture of ecstatic dance and horror most extreme. An absolutely mindblowing, and occasionally frustrating experience––this is Noé after all, the New French Extremity provocateur behind such tortuous endurance tests as […]
Parallel – VIFF 2018 Review
“They’re so similar you can barely tell them apart,” says a yawning husband about to turn in, to his wife Marissa (Kathleen Quinlan), regarding two images she’s nitpicking over for a photo spread at the beginning of Isaac Ezban’s latest flashy sci-fi thriller, Parallel. For such a prosaic and off-the-cuff remark it’s an incredibly eerie […]