Category: Movies

Everything to do with films!

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VIFF Review: ‘Time’ is an unforgettable indictment of the American justice system.

Time

There is a saying: if you do the crime, you do time. It’s a popular one in certain circles, but it raises one question for me: who, exactly, determines how much time each crime is worth?

In the first frames of Time, Sibil “Fox Rich” Richardson is a young woman. Fresh out of jail, she reunited with her children and expecting two more. Instead, she has served three and a half years for driving the getaway car for her husband as he robbed a bank, a sentence she received by taking a plea bargain. Her husband, Rob, who did not accept a plea, receives 60 years, or what will most likely be the rest of his natural life.

Who decides that 60 years is an appropriate sentence for a bank robbery? I don’t have an answer to that question. I can tell you that in the absence of any death, 60 years is too much. The fact of the matter is that in many ways, and for many people, the American justice system is centred not around rehabilitation but punishment. Who is being punished with that 60-year sentence, though?

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VIFF Review: ‘The Curse of Willow Song’ highlights the bad side of Vancouver

The Curse of Willow Song

The downtown east side of Vancouver is a ghetto. We don’t like to admit that, but it is. There are many issues, and there’s no easy conversation or solution, but the result is that there is a whole segment of the population that is challenged, exploited, and abandoned.

The Curse of Willow Song takes place in the downtown eastside of Vancouver and follows a recovering addict and ex-con as she tries to navigate life in single room occupancy housing, a difficult job market, and discrimination at every turn. It also follows the journey she takes as the latent supernatural powers within her.

The issue is that while one of these stories feels complete, the other one does not.

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VIFF Review: ‘In the Name of the Land’ is a melancholy tale about life on a modern farm

In the Name of the Land

Farming is hard work. I don’t know that those of us who live in the cities and suburbs really appreciate that all the time. The food we buy at grocery stores often ends up there due to many people doing backbreaking labour seven days a week.

We tend to think of farming as a simple life, but in truth, modern farming is anything but. As corporate interests push further and further into the market, they make it harder and harder for farmers to get ahead, all the while profiting off the sweat of the working man’s brow. That might sound like hyperbole, and it is, but it’s also true.

If you still aren’t convinced, In the Name of the Land is here to set you straight. Édouard Bergeon’s generational family drama tells the story of a man struggling to stay afloat as the world changes around him. It is a melancholy tale, with an excellent central performance, and despite being set in France, it feels like it rings true everywhere that corporate interests are involved in farming.

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VIFF Review: ‘My Salinger Year’ is a fine coming of age tale

Margaret Qualley / My Salinger Year

You have seen this story before. A young, bright-eyed person has to New York City to pursue their artistic dreams and gets waylaid in a job adjacent to their dreams in the meantime. It has been told so many times before that I doubt you could count them, so it takes a lot to stand out.

My Salinger Year, based on the memoir of the same name by Joanna Rakoff, has everything going for it. An up and comer in Margaret Qualley in the lead role. A major star in Sigourney Weaver in the main supporting role. It is set in a nostalgic period, recreated in exquisite detail. What a film like this needs to become truly great is that certain extra something, the Je ne sais quois that can make something add up to more than the sum of its parts.

This film does not have that. But that’s not an indictment because the film is perfectly lovely as it is, adding up to exactly what it is.

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VIFF Review: ‘Women in Blue’ is a good look at why reforming the police may be a lost cause

Women in Blue

It is easy to see what drew documentary filmmaker Deirdre Fishel to the Minneapolis police as a subject. At the time Women in Blue starts chronicling their story, the first female police chief, Janée Harteau, has been sworn in and has made it a point to promote women to positions of leadership. Women, Harteau points out, now occupy a position in every level of the department.

Following the shooting death of Jamar Clark in 2015 by Minneapolis it becomes apparent that something needs to be done. Protesters occupied the local precinct following the Jamar Clark shooting for 18 days; an event that helped Harteau understand the need to detoxify the police beyond her own experience of fighting back against a workplace hostile to women.

What’s incredibly frustrating about this story is that while it’s focussing on the story of Harteau, along with four other female police officers at various ranks in the organization and the misogyny they face, the story of the institutional racism within the police force is playing out in the background seemingly unobserved. Harteau says that the policing needs an update for the 21st century, but she also ended that 18-day protest at 4 am with 10 minutes notice and arrested anyone who didn’t vacate.

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Home Video: 4 Great Mads Mikkelsen Performances and Where to Buy, Rent, or Stream them

Mads Mikkelsen

Mads Mikkelsen is one of our great performers. Whether he’s playing a cannibal serial killer on TV or a James Bond villain, he puts everything he has into his performances, and each one of them feels sincere and true.

This year at the Vancouver International Film Festival, he starred in Another Round, a film about a man who breaks himself out of complacency by way of a heightened blood alcohol content. It is, to date, one of my favourite performances of the year. So, inspired by this, and by the fact that going to the movies is still a bad idea in most places globally, here are four more great performances from Mads Mikkelsen.

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VIFF Review: ‘Another Round’ has Mads Mikkelsen giving one of the best performances of the year

Mads Mikkelsen / Another Round

Most people have had, or will have, a moment like the one Martin (Mads Mikkelsen) is having at the start of Another Round. Coasting through life, disengaged from his work as a school teacher, the parents of his students organise an intervention because they know their children are going to be ill-prepared. Disengaged from his home life, exacerbated by his wife working nights as he is working days, or is that her choice because he is simply not present?

At dinner with four colleagues one night, following a confession that he knows he has lost something but can’t exactly put his finger on what, someone hypothesises that the human body has a 0.05% blood alcohol deficiency; that people are more relaxed, more confident, and better able to achieve when they are just slightly drunk. Martin and his friends decide to put this hypothesis to the test.

The idea of being slightly drunk all the time sounds like an appealing one, empowering even. The fantastic thing about having slightly less than two drinks is that it can feel like anything is possible[1]. The problem with having slightly less than two drinks is it leads to the urge to have slightly more than two drinks.

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James Cameron says that ‘Avatar 2’ is done filming, and ‘Avatar 3’ is nearly done

James Cameron

Avatar, remember Avatar? The movie that was the highest grossing film of all time for a decade?

Anyway, we’re getting four sequels to Avatar and I’ve lost count of how many times they’ve been delayed at this point, but now James Cameron says that two of them are almost ready to go!

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VIFF Review: ‘The Town Of Headcounts’ is a bleak, brutal comment on control

The Town of Headcounts

George Orwell’s 1984 has somehow become even more meaningful in the last few years, as those who clearly think it had a happy ending extend their reach through deception and deceit. Its central message has been updated and traced several times onto the current issues of many places. Yet somehow, Shinji Araki’s The Town Of Headcounts uses this same template in a fresh way to paint a metaphor of life in Japan that is as relevant a statement on Japanese culture as Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite was to Korean. The end result is a brutal, shocking parable that will stick in your mind long after the credits have rolled.

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