The deceptively simple premise of a tense weekend in the woods with a small group of headstrong but emphatic characters gets mined for all its worth in this chamber piece from Lawrence Michael Levine (Wild Canaries), and the results are paradoxically satisfying and inconclusive in Black Bear, a film that, when it’s working, plays out […]
Violation – VIFF 2020 Review
Rape revenge is often exploitative of women regardless of their eventual victory. The criminal act and subsequent revenge is shown with equal lurid detail, often compromising the strength and integrity of the story. Violation turns the tables and blinds the male gaze, instead lingering on full-frontal male nudity, allowing the viewer to confront and compare […]
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The 10 Best Black and White Movies of The 21st Century
With the advent of new technologies, it’s perhaps expected that their predecessors will fade into disuse, but not so with black and white films. Despite the vast array of options available to filmmakers today, the monochrome look still holds appeal, with Korea’s Bong Joon-ho recently rereleasing his Oscar-winning film Parasite in black and white. Making […]
Last and First Men – VIFF 2020 Review
Perhaps best known, in North America at least, for his incredibly moving minimalist score for Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (2016), amongst others, Icelandic composer and filmmaker Jóhan Jóhannsson’s Last and First Men, released posthumously, makes for one haunting, honey of a post-apocalyptic parting gift. Jóhannsson, who tragically passed away in 2018 from an accidental overdose at […]
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10 Great Revenge Films You’ve Probably Never Seen
The revenge film, in its fundamental form, has a simple narrative structure and one that often has three distinct acts. Regularly beginning with a base act of violence, our protagonist will undergo a life-changing, traumatic event like that seen at the start of Paul Verhoeven’s Elle (2016. After this event the protagonist will often need […]
Lapsis – VIFF 2020 Review
What will no doubt be one of the most sheerly enjoyable films at this year’s VIFF, writer-director Noah Hutton’s Lapsis is a dazzling and inconspicuous amalgam of science fiction, social commentary and dark comedy that contains a multitude of tiny and refined pleasures. Starring Dean Imperial, who looks like a middle-aged Ryan Reynolds wrestling a […]