VIFF Review: Beauty Water’s message gets lost in a weak narrative

Beauty Water

Beauty Water‘s central premise holds so much promise for shining a light on the dangerous popularity for constructive surgery among young women. Especially in the film’s native South Korea, women are increasingly putting themselves through regular procedures to attain a vision of beauty incessantly targeted at them from both local and foreign media representations. The idol business is booming, further increasing the pressure. So it’s a real shame that Beauty Water elevates this idea with some significant body horror, only to throw it away with a weak script and inability to focus on the issues in any depth.

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VIFF Review: ‘Events Transpiring Before, During, and After a High School Basketball Game’ is a slice of nostalgia

Events Transpiring Before, During, and After a High school Basketball Game

We’ve all seen sports movies. The story of an underdog team that needs to find it in their hearts to work as a team and rally to beat their rivals. Or maybe they play their best but lose at the last moment, only to learn a valuable life lesson about how to define success. Or perhaps they’re playing to give their hometown a boost following an economic downturn or tragedy. These are stories about heart, gumption, and stick-to-itiveness.

These are feel-good movies, with the thrill and emotional highs of the game serving to reinforce some greater point about life. But do they look like real life? Sure, some of the time for some people, but for many high school sports movies are a mundane slog.

Enter Events Transpiring Before, During, and After a High School Basketball Game, in which writer and director Ted Stenson attempts to capture this more mundane, realistic night in the life of a high school basketball team.

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VIFF Review: ‘Special Actors’ will leave you with a feeling of pure, unpretentious, happiness.

Special Actors

It’s not often Matt and I both feel compelled to review the exact same film for the site. In fact, it’s only happened once before, with 2012’s Skyfall prompting two different Bond takes. It takes something truly special for us to feel compelled to both write about it.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Shinichiro Ueda’s Special Actors.

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VIFF Review: ‘Monkey Beach’ offers gorgeous looks at both scenery and culture

Monkey Beach

Monkey Beach is an important Canadian novel. Winner of the Ethel Wilson Prize, it tells the story of a young Haisla woman who returns home to Kitamaat after her brother goes missing under mysterious circumstances. Upon her return, she unravels her past and examines her ancestral supernatural powers to communicate with spirits and the dead.

This premise is ripe for adaptation, and the only surprising thing is that it hasn’t happened sooner. That it has happened now –with an all-First Nations cast and a First Nations director– is for the better, though.

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‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’ Trailer: Aaron Sorkin does courtroom drama

The Trial of the Chicago 7

In 1968 8 men –Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, Lee Weiner, and Bobby Seale– were charged with conspiracy and inciting a riot following the massive anti-Vietnam War protest at the Democratic Convention.

With the government wanting to send a message to protesters following what would later be classified as a police riot, this would become the trial of the year and a big moment in 1960s America. Aaron Sorkin has been working on this screenplay for ever a decade, and now has brought it to screen as director as well. Let’s take a look.

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Disney delays ‘Black Widow’, ‘Death on the Nile’, ‘West Side Story’, ‘Eternals’, and a slew of others

Black Widow / Death on the Nile / West Side Story

Well, I guess we know the outcome of Disney’s “let’s release Mulan to Disney+ for a premium price” experiment now. The House of Mouse has shuffled nearly their entire release slate with most major tentpole films headed into 2021.

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Review: ‘Enola Holmes’ is a joy for the whole family

Enola Holmes

Millie Bobby Brown is already a star. Her role in the Netflix series Stranger Things established her as a young actress to watch and her role in last years Godzilla: King of the Monsters cemented that she can indeed act opposite giant CGI monsters on the big screen as well as the small.

There’s always a danger in an actor taking on iconic roles at an early point in their career that they might be typecast. With the release of Enola Holmes this is, I can firmly say, not a danger that Millie Bobby Brown needs to worry about.

She’s great, and this is a good movie.

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Review: ‘The Devil All The Time’ is a bleak story anchored by great performances

Tom Holland / The Devil All The Time

There are a lot of no good sons of bitches out there. This is the message that Willard Russell (Bill Skarsgård) imparts to his son immediately after brutally beating two men who had made lewd comments about his wife.

Willard teaches his young son Arvin (Michael Banks Repeta) that the world is full of no good sons of bitches, and that using violence against them is not so much a question of if as it is when. Years later, an adult Arvin (Tom Holland) finds himself surrounded by no-good sons of bitches; he remembers his father’s lessons.

The Devil All The Time is a story of generational pain and violence in 1950s Ohio. It is bleak, and unflinching, and also incredibly uneven. If it weren’t anchored by two brilliant performances I’m not sure that I would recommend it. Luckily, it is, so I am.

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Home Video: Three Great Tom Holland Films (That Aren’t Spider-Man) and Where to Buy, Rent, or Stream them

Tom Holland / The Devil All The Time

Tom Holland has a new film debuting on Netflix this week, Antonio Campos adaptation of Donald Ray Pollock’s The Devil All The Time. Holland is a megastar thanks to his role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Peter Parker, the Amazing Spider-Man, but in his 8-year career, he has been in several great films. Let’s talk about three of them.

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Review: ‘Class Action Park’ is a fascinating look back at a piece of 80s Americana

Class Action Park

Amusement parks are thrilling places. The rides create an artifice of danger, one that is scary but never actually scary as thought you might actually be injured or killed. Or, at least, that’s what they are supposed to do.

Action Park, built as a summer season companion to a ski resort by ethically unscrupulous developer Eugene Mulvihill, did not create that artifice; it literally put people in danger. Directors Seth Porges and Chris Charles Scott III new documentary Class Action Park looks back at the story of the park and the scars inflicted on the survivors.

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’Dune’ Trailer: Stop what you’re doing right now and watch this

Dune

If you have been paying attention to cinema these last few years then the name Denis Villeneuve should be an exciting one to you. His particular aesthetic sense for visual narrative has made him one of the most well regarded director of the day.

If you’re a fan of science fiction then the name Dune should also excite you, being that Dune is one of –if not the– most influential and important science fiction novels of all time.

“Denis Villeneuve has been making a Dune movie” is maybe the most exciting sentence I have read or uttered this year.

Here’s a trailer for it.

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