VanRamblings returns today with a continuing look at the Galas & Special Presentations programme at this year’s 44th annual Vancouver International Film Festival. Click on the underlined link for each film title below to be taken to the VIFF web page for the film, which will both provide you with more information on the film, and allow you the opportunity to purchase a ticket for each award winning film (pleasing the VIFF folks no end), if you are of a mind to do so.

Father Mother Sister Brother. Winner of the Golden Lion, the top prize, at the Venice Film Festival this past weekend. Hollywood Elsewhere’s Jeffrey Wells in his review called the film inert and threadbare, also writing, “Jim Jarmusch’s new film is easily his weakest, least nourishing film ever, which is why Cannes Film Festival artistic director Thierry Fremaux declined to début the film four months ago.”

Clearly, American director Alexander Payne (Nebraska, The Descendants, Election, Sideways) who headed up the jury in Venice that chose Jarmusch’s film for the award had an entirely different take from Wells on the worthiness of the film.

The Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney writes of the film, “For a three-part piece, it gains a gorgeous fluidity from the gossamer ribbon of melancholy threaded through it. Like Paterson, it’s a film whose simplicity, sweetness and unvarnished ordinariness make it seem almost a miracle,” while Variety’s Jessica Kiang calls the film “consistently beautiful.’ The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw: “it is a film to savour.”

Are you are Jarmusch fan? Then Father, Mother, Sister Brother is a must-see.

Rental Family. A smash hit at the Toronto International Film Festival, with critics suggesting that Rental Family is a lock for a Best Picture Oscar nomination, and Brendan Fraser a Best Actor Oscar nomination, and maybe even another win.

Writes The Hollywood Reporter’s Frank Scheck …

“Oscar winners, especially those coming from left field, don’t always find worthy successors to their award-winning roles. But Brendan Fraser has come up with a beaut in his first starring part since The Whale. Playing an American actor living in Tokyo who finds a unique way to practice his craft, the actor delivers a superlative performance in Rental Family, a dramedy that proves a charming surprise balancing poignancy and humour with rare delicacy.”

Want a good cry in a darkened movie theatre? Then Rental Family is for you.

The Secret Agent. When far right conspiracy theorist, Trump acolyte and danger to humanity Jair Bolsonaro was President of Brazil (more’s the pity), Kleber Mendonça Filho — Brazil’s most acclaimed film director ever, and one of VanRamblings’ favourite directors dating back to 2012’s Neighbouring Sounds (a film we absolutely loved), Kleber Mendonça Filho was persona non grata, having to leave the country for fear of arrest (that’s what fascists do to prominent members of the arts community), but now that Lula is President (again) Kleber Mendonça Filho is back in the good graces of Brazil’s federal government. Thank goodness.

Allow a few prestigious film critics to weigh in on The Secret Agent …

“Visually and dramatically superb in every way, moving with unhurried confidence across the screen, pausing to savour every bit of bizarre comedy or erotic byway, or note of pathos, on its circuitous path to the violent finale,” says The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw.

Says The Film Stages’ Leonardo Goi, “The Secret Agent doesn’t just exist in conversation with the genre films from the decade in which most of it unfurls; it also testifies, time and again, to the director’s unwavering belief in cinema’s capacity to disquiet and mesmerize.”

Time Out’s Dave Calhoun, “The Secret Agent is vicious and vivid in its sense of place and danger, but also has a streak of weirdness, as it offers a very human take on the political-crime thriller genre.”

Slant Magazine’s Mark Hanson writes: “More broadly appealing than Kleber Mendonça Filho’s past films, The Secret Agent is still unmistakably the work of an artist who’s deeply fascinated with the ways in which cinema, politics, and personal history co-mingle.”

Destined for a Best International Feature Film Oscar nomination. See it now.

For Part One of our VIFF Galas & Special Presentations columns click here.

For Part Two of our VIFF Galas & Special Presentations columns click here.

For Part Three of our VIFF Galas & Special Presentations columns click here.

Raymond Tomlin

Raymond Tomlin is a veteran journalist and educator who has written frequently on the political realm — municipal, provincial and federal — as well as on cinema, mainstream popular culture, the arts, and technology.

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