Summary: VIFF Week Two

Two weeks, several hundred films, thousands of audience members and the best of Canadian and international cinematography – this is the Vancouver International Film Festival. Following the success of week one of the festival, the closing days have been packed with drama, comedy, action and emotion.

Several Vancouver-made films were honoured at the awards ceremony and are playing for the week following the festival in a series of 24 encore screenings as nominated by audience votes.

Read the best of our reviews below:

The Assassin

At its core, The Assassin is concerned with struggle for transcendence – a theme encapsulated by a stunning durational shot of fog slowly rolling up a mountain that obscures everything but the clifftop.

It's Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong

In the day and age of fast talk and technology, It’s Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong brings in these modern elements of daily life into a story about timing and wandering. This funny, witty and fast pace dialogue film stars real life couple Jamie Chung (Once Upon a Time) and singer-actor Bryan Greenberg (Friends with Benefits, Bride Wars). 

Nina Forever

Although the film plays on horror genre tropes, its undercurrent is serious and reflective. Like a Brother’s Grimm fairytale, Nina Forever is effective because it is both a grisly fantasy and a study on human nature in light of love and death. 

Tricks on the Dead

The film Tricks on the Dead: The Story of the Chinese labour Corps in WWI is a beautiful mixture between hard facts and flowing sentiment invoking just the right emotions for the film to achieve its goal of making a forgotten story memorable.  

Dheepan

Although Dheepan has a slow-moving plot, it is nonetheless an understated and powerful film. The lead roles are superbly acted and the narrative is deliberate and engaging. Above all, it is Dheepan’s timeliness in today’s context that makes it such an affecting film. 

Louder Than Bombs

Less generic than its logline makes it sound, Louder Than Bombs — the English-language debut of Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier — attempts to inject interest into a rather banal story of familial grief.

Jafar Panahi's Taxi

The film opens with an unassuming shot of an intersection seen from the dashboard of a car. The camera captures an argument between two passengers on the problem of car thefts. The man suggests that the government should execute two offenders every other day to reduce crime while the woman protests the notion.

Borealis

The story is executed with such tenderness and charisma that it ensures that this father-daughter drama doesn't take itself too seriously. This film is genuinely charming without resorting to the commercial quirkiness audiences have perhaps become overly familiar with giving Borealis an organic originality.

The Lobster

In The Lobster, the theme of “love is blind” is taken to whole new level. However, as much as The Lobster is about love, at the same time it isn’t. Although hilarious in every moment, the overall message of the film can be interpreted as quite cynical.

Golden Kingdom

Brian Perkins’ film Golden Kingdom is a visual meditation. Calm and simple yet intricate and stimulating, this emotional drama takes the viewer along on the spiritual journey of Ko Yin Witazara. 

High-Rise

Endless cocktails, cigarettes, white shag-carpets, sideburns, orgies, subtly referenced cannibalism and eerie Abba covers are all parts in the kaleidoscope of debauchery and madness that is High-Rise.

Cemetery of Splendour

If Cemetery of Splendour has a flaw, it's that it doesn't chart new territory for Weerasethakul. Needless to say, it remains a uniquely beguiling experience particularly for those already familiar with his films.

Victoria

Exhilarating, terrifying and intoxicating. From its hypnotic nightclub opening scene to its emotionally stirring conclusion, it’s impossible to look away from German director Sebastian Schipper’s Victoria.

London Road

Based on the National Theatre stage musical of the same name, London Road explores a neighbourhood’s reaction to a terrible tragedy with both sensitivity and unedited, shocking frankness provided by the interviewees’ own mouths.

Room

Based on the best-selling novel written by Irish-Canadian author Emma Donoghue (also the film’s screenwriter), Room is a faithful adaption that fans of the book and others new to the material will adore.

Our Loved Ones

There are glimmers of successful sentimentality and emotional impact, but not even they can redeem this ultimately disjointed story. When it’s good, it’s great. But those spots are unfortunately too few and far in between. 

Anton Chekhov – 1890

In the end this becomes more of an academic work than an emotional one, and though all performances are excellent, and there is evidently great thought put into its production, Anton Chekhov—1890, can be no more than an interesting film, which is not quite enough for it to be a memorable one.  

Experimenter

Experimenter brings to life the influential psychological experiments synonymous with its protagonist and narrator, Stanley Milgram.

I Saw the Light

The movie concludes with Williams’ funeral and a spontaneous group rendition of the movie’s namesake song, I Saw the Light. It’s another moment that would be almost unbearably melodramatic if it weren’t for the fact that it actually happened.

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