The End of Cinema

After several days of festival movies filled with storytelling gimmicks and dazzling displays of artistic virtuosity, I was utterly unpre...

The longest, most unwieldy title of the festival belongs to this film by Korean director Koo Sungzoo.  It opens with a closeup of a man s...

Blind Husbands - 3, 1919 Ali: Fears Eats the Soul - 5, 1974 The Shining - 4, 1980 Skyfall - 2012

The latest film from Olivier Assayas has apparently been retitled After May (a direct translation of its French title,  Après mai ) for...

Here's a preliminary ranking of the 31 movies I saw this year at the Vancouver International Film Festival, with links to the writ...

Flunky, Work Hard - 19, 1931 Murders in the Rue Morgue - 17, 1932 Swordsman 2 - 19, 1992 The Master - 2012 Looper - 2012 Cloud ...

Kleber Mendonça Filho directs the fourth film in what turned out to be a surprisingly strong showing for the Portuguese language at this ...

By nine o'clock on Tuesday, October 5th, my VIFF experience was four days and fifteen movies old.  I trepidatiously settled in for mo...

The third of director Phil Grabsky's biographical documentaries of famous composers is about as good a film about Joseph Haydn as you...

Directed by the Portuguese pair of João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata, The Last Time I Saw Macao is an enveloping blend of...

"She had a farm in Africa.  She had a farm in Africa."  With that refrain echoing the opening lines of Isak Dinesen's Out o...

It wouldn't be a trip to VIFF without a Hong Sangsoo movie, though it'd be tough for him to top the double he pulled at VIFF ...

The second film I saw in the the Dragons & Tigers competition comes from South Korean director Park Hongmin, who used some homemade d...

This is the third documentary I've seen by Thom Andersen, and the first not about the architecture of his hometown Los Angeles.  The ...

This terribly-titled omnibus film collects four shorts from directors from four East Asian countries commissioned by the Hong Kong Film F...

These two shortish films (about an hour long each) from Thailand were paired together here at VIFF, though they don't have a whole lo...

The Vancouver International Film Festival's annual Dragons & Tigers competition has an impressive pedigree, honoring young filmma...

20 directors were commissioned by the Golden Horse Film Festival to each make a five minute film about something Taiwanese and the result...

My two favorite discoveries in four years of festival going are the films of Hong Sangsoo and the team of Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai.  I s...

Brandon Cronenberg's first feature is a slick, darkly comic scifi/horror film that should not be seen by anyone with a fear of needle...