A late dispatch on the 44th Vancouver International Film Festival.
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“[L]ike the best soups, Here is a film that takes its time, lets its components simmer and comingle, develop their depth at a pace that feels natural.”
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“[I]f the placidity of the filmmaking inspires in you any sort of zen-like patience, then it will also disarm and entrance you in profoundly stirring ways.”
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“By emphasizing aesthetics […] Castel ignores the potent emotional currents that her actors work to channel and her script tries to suggest.”
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“[B]y stymying Ben in his narcissism, Park achieves both a less-clichéd depiction of Asian-Americans, and a fertile zone for urgent and reflexive cultural critiques.”
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“[T]his pool is far from a hyper-chlorinated oasis; rather, it is a fetid, acid-laced, and psychosexual stew, one that pulls characters and viewers alike down into the murky depths of amorality and churns them into husks of the humans they once were.”
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“Unless you’re particularly embittered, this film’s commitment to mining pathos from groan-worthy small talk is what will probably make you “come around” to it in the end […]”
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“The Flying Sailor renders the famed explosion as implosion in the mind of this sailor, as a lifetime compressed into a kaleidoscopic “flash” before one’s eyes.”
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“The Locust sees metafictional layer upon metafictional layer folded over a single, confined setting, where family members and crewmembers alike converge to battle for creative control over a filmmaker's personal passion project (and maybe life...?).”
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“Francesco Sossai’s Other Cannibals is a work of horror-realism so mired in its characters’ misguided meandering that it becomes something else entirely, a stark black almost-comedy of errors about two outcasts trying desperately to sink their teeth into life itself.”
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“The big goofy grin you’ll be wearing on your face throughout the runtime, that is pure Spielberg. Scene after scene of this film hits every big emotional beat that you want from a heart-on-its-sleeve, Hollywood production.”
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“Never has the Okanagan looked better—as rich and as lush—as in the frames of Jarvis’ film, Jeremy Cox’s gorgeous 16mm photography giving the area a tactility and a glow that digital simply couldn’t have offered.”
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“[T]he performances encompassed in Aronofsky’s film are deeply felt, vulnerable, and searing; the emotions they lay to waste numerous; the awe they command unquestionable.”
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“Radcliffe commits with panache a whole 108-minutes worth of manic energy and physicality to screen, a performance liable to leave you feeling the effects of a sugar rush.”
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“What truly shines is the film's sound design and score, which create a cavernous aural environ that hits you on a guttural level, and envelops you in feelings of dread and distress.”
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“Stevens has taken this premise and really run with it, turning the female revenge flick into a psycho-supernatural-mythological phantasmagoria.”
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“The desire and the yearning to be more, to do more, and to be seen and accepted by more people, is a condition that affects all us social beings, and Karaoke reminds us that just because we get older, this desire doesn’t leave us.”
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“Machoian and cinematographer Oscar Ignacio Jimnénez work like they have before, relaying their tale via long/medium-wide shots and long takes, their refusal to cut allowing Joe’s follies to go from comical, to tragic, and back again in real time.”
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“The EarthX Film Festival runs in-person from May 12th to the 15th in the Dallas Arts District…A virtual version of the festival happens subsequently from May 16th to May 23rd.”
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“The overall portrait is warmly authentic-feeling, a simultaneously specific- and universal-feeling snapshot of loved ones that wobbles in a lively manner between moments stable, elating, frustrating, and escalated.”
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