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 […]
Author: Shane Scott-Travis
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 […]
Possessor – VIFF 2020 Review
From its opening frames until the final cut to black at the film’s grisly finish, the second film from Brandon Cronenberg (Anitviral) is a brilliant and brutal body-horror head trip that will leave you reeling and chilled to the bone. Possessor, a film very much of the moment, despite the retro-futurism that haunts its elegantly […]
Undine – VIFF 2020 Review
VIFF favorite, German auteur Christian Petzold (Phoenix) is back with a modest-scaled new film that messes with mythology, fusing magical-reality elements with modern day fairy tale vestments while also adorned in a doomed romance thriller. It’s ultimately something of a mixed bag, but Undine is also never boring and on occasion is quite radiant and […]
Jumbo – VIFF 2020 Review
“One day I’ll fly away from here,” says Jeanne (Noémie Merlant) to her boss, while on one of the most awkward dates in a film that is literally chock full of awkward dates, awful engagements, uncomfortable trysts and slews of cringey social, uhh, intercourse, in Zoé Wittock’s oddball romance, Jumbo. This is a film that […]
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15 Films Not To Miss At VIFF 2020
Now in its 39th year, the 2020 edition of the Vancouver International Film Festival (September 24th – October 7th, 2020) has had to restructure operations this year, as every film festival has due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but remains a bright, eclectic and engaging celebration of cinema from around the world. Among the five largest […]