Olivier Assayas’ latest film, Personal Shopper, is an eccentric ghost story, expertly told, and gauging by the up-and-down reception it garnered at Cannes earlier this year (frequent boos followed by a standing ovation) it’s fair to say that this film is also something of a misunderstood masterpiece. Teaming for a second time with with the […]
VIFF 2016 Review
Suntan – VIFF 2016 Review
Suntan is the third feature film after Bank Bag (2008) and Wasted Youth (2011) from Greek director Argyris Papadimitropoulos, and it’s a dark doozy. Kostis (Efthymis Papadimitriou) is a 42-year-old doctor who has just arrived at Antiparos, a Cycladic Greek island with a winter population hovering around 800 folks. Disembarking from the ferry, he’s the […]
Toni Erdmann – VIFF 2016 Review
Awash in humor yet punctuated with pathos, German writer/director Maren Ade’s latest and third film, Toni Erdmann is a pièce de résistance. On the surface this conquering comedy may feel a little garden-variety as we meet one Winfried Conradi (Peter Simonischek), a divorcé and retired music teacher who, following the death of his dear little […]
Elle – VIFF 2016 Review
You’d think by age 78 that firebrand Dutch director Paul Verhoeven would venture less into areas most filmmakers would never dare, but you’d be wrong. With Elle, Verhoeven’s first film in a decade, a rape-revenge fantasy thriller unfolds with generous drops of comedy and subtlety. While many filmmakers have explored and exploited similar transgressive territory, […]
The Girl With All The Gifts – VIFF 2016 Review
Scottish director Colm McCarthy (perhaps best known for his work on Sherlock and Peaky Blinders) offers up a tense, intelligent, and chillingly provocative British horror film in The Girl With All The Gifts. Ably assisted by screenwriter Mike Carey, adapting his own bestseller from 2014, their film takes the elaborately overdone zombie genre and resuscitates […]
The Red Turtle – VIFF 2016 Review
On the strength of his astonishing award-winning animated short film from 2000, Father and Daughter, Dutch animator Michaël Dudok de Wit came to the attention of Japanese animation legend Hayao Miyazaki who not only wanted to meet de Wit, but wanted to get in cahoots with him for a Studio Ghibli project. That project would […]