“The one minute format is some great thing, because you have only one minute to tell a story. And this needs a lot of discipline. I don’t know any other genre of cinema which requires such discipline.“ says Klaus Eder, the General Secretary of the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI), in welcoming this year’s […]
Month: September 2015
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10 Great Films That Showcase The Effect of Confinement
As the climactic discourse in the trailer for Blackfish touts, “if you we in a bath tub for 25 years, don’t you think you’d get a little psychotic?” Beyond metaphysical questions about whether plants are sentient beings or not, all animals with a brain or central nervous system are assumed to have mobility among their […]
No Men Beyond This Point – VIFF 2015 Review
Christopher Guest’s chef d’oeuvres aside (Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, et al.), the mockumentary is to comedy what found footage is to horror; frayed, familiar and ridden with cliché. And so the alarm bells were raised right away for BC filmmaker Mark Sawers latest film, No Men Beyond This Point, but much to his […]
La isla mínima (Marshland) – VIFF 2015 Review
Marshland is the latest neo-noir crime thriller from Spanish filmmaker Alberto Rodríguez (Unit 7) and it’s a gloomily rococo showpiece and a relentless shocker. Set in the autumn of 1980 in the ethereal Guadalquivir Marshes – glimpsed repeatedly and tellingly from impossible heights, suggesting the point of view of a vengeful deity – a series […]
Room – VIFF 2015 Review
“Are we in another planet?’ asks a five-year-old Jack (an astonishing Jacob Tremblay) in earnest to his mother, having awoke beside her in an unfamiliar hospital room. Only the day before, Jack and his mother, Joy (a superb Brie Larson in her best role since Short Term 12), made a soaring exodus from the one-room […]
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10 Essential Films About America That Start With The Word “American”
Its chiefest export being patriotism, and its greatest commodity being self-assurance, America is known as a proud nation. Indeed, this pride is not without merit in the fields of filmmaking. This economic powerhouse, cultural incubator, and altogether well established nation has been heavily involved in the art of cinema since its inception. Inventor Thomas Edison […]