Screens at CIFF: 10/12 & 10/13World premiere: 13 February, 2013, Berlin International Film Festival There’s symbolism and there’s SYMBOLISM, and João Viana’s The Battle of Tabatô tends to traffic in the latter: it has characters and a plot in the strictest sense, but even they are functions more of what the film wants to say […]

Screens at CIFF: 10/12 & 10/14 & 10/16World premiere: 31 August, 2013, Montréal World Film Festival There is, at this time, violence and rapine afflicting various countries in Africa and central Asia that goes almost totally unremarked in the news media of the developed world and unnoticed by the inhabitants thereof, and for the most […]

Screens at CIFF: 10/12 & 10/20 & 10/22World premiere: 5 September, 2012, Venice Film Festival The title of Yema, I will begin by pointing out, is the Arabic word for “mother” or at least this is what I intuit from the movie itself. I gather that it has been put on the festival circuit under […]

Screens at CIFF: 10/12 & 10/19 & 10/21 World premiere: 11 September, 2012, Toronto International Film Festival There are so many examples across the years of a culture under-represented in mainstream art forms making itself known through the means of a crime drama set on the mean streets of a poor neighborhood that Burn It […]

Screens at CIFF: 10/11 & 10/16World premiere: 7 July, 2013, Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival Short version: heterosexual sex turns a lesbian into a leprous vampire. I have no idea in which direction the over-the-top alarmism faces in writer-director Eric England’s Contracted, but it’s hilarious either way, and that’s even without the incredibly shallow attempt […]

Screens at CIFF: 10/11 & 10/13 & 10/16World premiere: 23 August, 2013, Montréal World Film Festival The Blinding Sunlight, the directorial debut of Chinese filmmaker Yu Liu, wastes no time in setting up its aesthetics and its themes alike: the opening shot is in the backseat of a cramped vehicle looking through the windshield (soon […]

Screens at CIFF: 10/11 & 10/13 & 10/22World premiere: 26 August, 2013, Santiago International Film Festival It is good to respect bravery in filmmaking, for there is not enough of it; and not much is braver than trying to make something as thoroughly stagebound as a two-hander work onscreen. A two-hander, for those not versed […]

Screens at CIFF: 10/11 & 10/13 & 10/16World premiere: 5 September, 2013, Venice International Film Festival Winner of the Silver Hugo for Best Actor (Robert Więckiewicz) My bona fides in disliking the biopic as a cinematic form can hardly be called into question, so the mere fact that I think Wałęsa: Man of Hope is […]

Screens at CIFF: 10/21 & 10/22 & 10/23World premiere: 21 January, 2012, Sundance Film Festival There are movies that are perfect, or close enough thereto, and that is why we love them; there are also movies that are not remotely perfect at all, and that is why we love them. And in the latter category, […]

Screens at CIFF: 10/13 & 10/16Winner of the Silver Hugo in the After Dark CompetitionWorld premiere: 23 September, 2011, Fantastic Fest The newest film by director Jaume Balagueró, Sleep Tight, starts out with a grandiose gesture desiring, in the gravest way, to make us feel incredibly sorry for his protagonist, César (Luis Tosar), a bald […]

Screens at CIFF: 10/12 & 10/14Winner of the Gold Hugo for Best FilmWinner of the Silver Hugo for Best ActorWinner of the Silver Hugo for Best CinematographyWorld premiere: 23 May, 2012, Cannes Film Festival Several days later, I’m still not certain that I’ve gotten my head all the way around Holy Motors, the fifth feature […]

Screens at CIFF: 10/18 & 10/20World premiere: 9 August, 2012, Locarno International Film Festival One finds that Leviathan is commonly described as a documentary, which is almost certainly for the reason that there’s not anywhere else to put it. And it does, in its fashion, document: the cameras (tiny, unobtrusive digital jobs) are set up […]