Eleven years ago at VIFF 2008 (where does the time go?) there was a fair bit of praise falling like confetti on writer-director Doris Dörrie’s plaintive and heartfelt drama Cherry Blossoms. An East-West culture clash story with a lackadaisical pace, sumptuous visuals and a peculiar poetry to it all as Dörrie rendered a slow goodbye […]
Scarborough – VIFF 2019 Review
Adapted for the screen by director Barnaby Soutcombe (I, Anna [2012]) from Fiona Shaw’s 2008 play, Scarborough is a smart and slippery inquiry into two problematical student-teacher romances over three days in the eponymous coastal town of Scarborough, North Yorkshire. As the film opens we are greeted, along with Liz (Jodhi May) by a chatty […]
Paradise Hills – VIFF 2019 Review
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 […]
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10 Movies That Mark The Decline of Great Directors
There’s no doubt about it, all of the directors I’m highlighting today have at one point been the standard bearers of filmmaking. Each director spoken of today are among the greats of their eras, and arguably of all time. So why am I going to criticize them? Well, like the law of gravity, what goes […]
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 […]