The Vancouver International Film Festival has announced its lineup and is now selling tickets. I’ll have more to say on that below, along with some early personal decisions.
Two new movies this week did not receive a preview. I wonder why? They are the horror movie Evil one and the third in a young adult romance series, After we fell.
However, give these three some thought. I gave everyone a high rating when they were here not long ago for short festival appearances. Two are Canadian: Black conflux is a psychological mystery for young adults and Underground it is a mining accident. I thought it should have been our Academy Award submission. They are both playing at the Vancity Theater.
By David Byrne American Utopia it’s a great concert movie. Cineplex will bring you back for one night, next Thursday.
And we also have …
VIFF: a look to the future
What people are reading
The card counter: 3½ stars
Finding you: 2½
Kate: 2
VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL: Expect some changes this year for 40th edition. Like last year, it’s shorter, October 1-11, and with seating limits caused by COVID and without the two biggest venues (The Center and International Village), it will be a tougher schedule for you.
VIFF has added two new locations: the Hollywood Theater on Broadway (good to see it back in operation) and the Kay Meek Arts Center, which is located at West Vancouver Secondary School in the Hollyburn neighborhood. A very good place, Yelp tipsters say, but far from the other theaters.
However, you have a choice. More than 80 percent of the movies can be streamed online. It will be convenient and you will miss the lineups, but sharing tips and complaints is part of the fun.
There will be some in-person screenings at two theaters in the Interior: Patricia on Powell River and Tillicum Twin on Terrace. Most streaming movies are available anywhere in the province.
And the movies, the more than 200 feature films and short films? We don’t have the giants like Dune, which is at the Toronto Film Festival. But some will play both, like Little mama, Electrical life from Louis Wain (VIFF opener) and The worst person in the world.
I am looking forward to seeing new films from Zhang Yimou, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Terence Davies, Sean Baker (who made The Florida Project) and Kenneth Branagh (on growing up in Belfast just when the “trouble” was starting).
Two Canadian indigenous stories look promising: Wildhood, about a Mi’kmaw family, and Raiders of the night, a thriller starring Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers.
Two films have fun raising the industry: one from Spain with Antonio Banderas and Penélope Cruz, the other from Southeast Asia about a low-cost production.
Homeownership has two different points of view: disaster in Sink and scandal with The fear of the sixty-first, a flat that was once owned by Jeffrey Epstein.
There is more: The six, about the forgotten Chinese who survived the sinking of the Titanic, Queen of Glory, a woman caught between two cultures (Ghana and America), and All my little one Penalties from a novel by Miriam Toews.
Those are some of my options. For yours, consult here to see the full list, prices and details.
THE CARD COUNTER: Paul Schrader relives the moral outrage and much of the intensity that he had in one of his most famous films, Taxi driver, which he wrote for Martin Scorsese. This time he too directs (Scorsese produces) and makes a virulent statement about America, its foreign actions, and its society at home. Abroad, think of the torture in Abu Ghraib prison; how only the perpetrators seen in the photographs were punished while the men giving the orders escaped.
It takes a while to get that background. We are in the America of casinos and greed and the easy ways to feed it. We watch and listen to Oscar Isaac as a player explaining how he had time to learn the intricacies of poker, what percentage of the odds are not on his side in various circumstances, and how he taught himself how to count cards to improve his game. “Great players can see directly into your soul,” he says. Tiffany Haddish, who adds some energy but not much substance, is her endorsement.
He was an interrogator himself, went to prison and is using poker to cover up his self-loathing. Until a young man (Tye Sheridan) asks for his help. He wants to kill someone who was never punished (Willem Dafoe), now a high-powered convention speaker. That sets up the moral dilemma: revenge or redemption? Typical Schrader reflections, well presented in this low-key but highly absorbing film. (Park Theater in Vancouver; also Cineplexes in Langley and Victoria.) 3½ of 5
FINDING YOU: We regularly have these romances set in lovely Ireland and then we hear the naysayers cry. However, this is a bit better than the norm. This is Ireland today, not in some imaginary and timeless way. The dialogue is less of faith and begorra and the people seem almost real. However, that is all. It’s still the same old blarney with a particularly bland couple in the center.
They come from the United States. She (Rose Reid) is a violinist who failed her music school audition and is looking for inspiration. He (Jedidiah Goodacre, a Canadian actor) is an attractive young movie star, in town for a fantasy movie that includes battles with dragons (you know, like that series that was filmed in Ireland). They meet at the airport, are assigned adjoining seats on the plane, and discover that they are staying in the same bed and breakfast. You already know the rest, except for the many complications. It is fodder for the tabloids due to its romance with its protagonist. His father is pressuring him to continue his teenage idol career, which he wants to leave. She gets involved with a grumpy nursing home patient (Vanessa Redgrave, the best actress by far in this movie) and wants to help her fix a long-standing separation with her sister, even though neither woman wants to. Hardcore Patrick Bergin is there to make her play upbeat Irish music while all of this is going on. It’s a nice movie, but you’ve seen it before in other versions. (Rent or buy VOD, EST, DVD or Blu-ray.) 2½ of 5
KATE: Sometimes it seems that the most common profession shown in movies is contract murder. And women have been doing it a lot lately. This Netflix movie gives us both trends and loads of gory violence. More than most movies I’ve seen in some time. Remember the Desire of death movies and have you seen John wick? This is an imitation derived from both and others like them. Japanese gangsters are the target of this bloodshed.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays the killer. We see her carry out a task from the beginning, killing a man and then regretting that her little daughter was there too and saw it all. She complains to the man who hired her and complains, “I want a life.” Repentance of a murderer. That is promising. But a man who talks to her in a bar and buys her a drink ends it. He poisons her and she has a day to get revenge on the gangsters she thinks are the perpetrators. An elegant cast of Japanese actors, Tadanobu Asano, Jun Kunimura and singer Miyavi, play their victims or their accomplices. Woody Harrelson arrives to help her, saying that he is her “handler”, and she is reunited with the young woman we saw in the first murder. She has cleverly played for a newcomer, Miku Martineau from Toronto. The film, made in Tokyo and Thailand, is sleek and fast, and Winstead handles the action well. But the violence becomes too much, like when she stabs a boy’s face under his chin. (Netflix.) 2 of 5
Reference-www.nationalobserver.com