Another subtle, shrewd, and deceivingly simple domestic drama from Joachim Trier (Oslo, August 31st), Louder Than Bombs also marks the Norwegian film director’s English-language debut. Centering on the travails of widower Gene (Gabriel Byrne) and his two grown sons, Jonah (Jesse Eisenberg) and Conrad (Devin Druid), who, three years prior, suffered the loss of their […]
VIFF 2015
Dheepan – VIFF 2015 Review
Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes 2015, Jacque Audiard’s (Rust and Bone) most recent cinematic foray, Dheepan, is a disconsolate drama with gentle collisions and murderous folds. Starring activist/writer Anthonythasan Jesuthasan in the eponymous role, he’s a refugee from Sri Lanka, where he was a Tamil Tiger in the civil war that saw his […]
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 […]
Entertainment – VIFF 2015 Review
As he wanders through a dusty, hard-hearted American landscape, mostly the Mojave Desert, a nameless anti-hero and ho-hum stand-up comic played by Gregg Turkington moves like a man thrown down, on a journey somewhere, maybe home. Entertainment is director Rick Alverson’s fourth feature film, following 2012’s The Comedy, and was co-written with Tim Heidecker, and […]