Category Archives: Cinema

VIFF 2020 | Intoxicating, Terrifying, Celebratory & Priceless

Cinema, Vancouver, VIFF 2020

The 2020, 39th annual Vancouver International Film Festival VIFF Connect

One hundred plus award-winning films in 14 days, what’s a person to do?
Today, the first instalment of VanRamblings’ informed insight, into three films set to find their way onto your home screen through VIFF Connect, the celebration of the best in homegrown and international cinema, that will commence just a week this Thursday, on September 24th.

Another Round (Denmark). The Danish title is Druk, a term which is maybe best translated by adding the letter N before the one at the end.
Originally slated to play at Cannes this year, and currently screening at the Toronto International Film Festival, director Thomas Vinterberg reteams with his The Hunt star, the always engaging Mads Mikkelsen, for a darkly comic referendum on intoxication. Compelling, and more than a little sobering, Vinterberg takes aim at his home country’s drinking culture, in a film that resonates far beyond Denmark’s shores. Mikkelsen plays a high-school teacher beginning a reckless experiment with alcohol, in this tragicomic and bittersweet portrait of midlife crisis and alcohol abuse.

Another Round is sweeter, lighter and more conventional than most of Vinterberg’s past work, eschewing the bleak social commentary that underscored films like The Celebration, Submarino and The Hunt. Even so, it makes for an appealing ensemble piece, as well as a great vehicle for Mikkelsen’s vulpine beauty and nimble dance moves. For anyone who has ever craved seeing this former gymnast doing his finest Gene Kelly impersonation to pounding Europop, your dream movie has finally arrived.

Capturing the gleeful, anarchic euphoria of being merrily drunk in the company of good friends, Another Round — although it doesn’t have much profound to say about intoxication and addiction — does offer an engaging tribute to friendship, family and bacchanalian hedonism in moderation.

The Forum (Germany/Switzerland). In his latest documentary, German filmmaker Marcus Vetter takes a look behind the scenes of the World Economic Forum in Davos. As the first independent film director to get such access, Vetter’s fascinating documentary gives rare behind-the-scenes access to the World Economic Forum. Providing an admirably balanced deep dive into the organization that brings together the elite from the worlds of politics, big business and beyond is something to be celebrated, and more than justifies its near two-hour running time.

At the heart of the film is Professor Klaus Schwab, the 81-year-old whose brainchild the WEF was and who displays such incredible diplomatic skills that you wonder what he might have achieved as a head of a country. His aim is to further social cohesion across the globe by creating dialogue between those who might not otherwise listen to one another. There are plenty who are skeptical about how successful the WEF has been at improving the world, however, and they are given a voice here too. That includes Greenpeace International’s executive director Jennifer Morgan, who talks about the “mega group-think” of elites that is “99 per cent status quo” rather than a movement for change. (Screen Daily)

One attendee who insists Schwab, not to mention the 3,000 global figures he gathers annually, must do more, is Greta Thunberg. The young climate activist from Sweden attends with her father and is regarded unseriously as a quaint novelty by many of the other participants until her stark address hits home. “It feels like I’m at a firefighters’ conference, and no-one is allowed to speak about water,” she says of the hypocrisy of a conference that prizes success stories but is unwilling to admit their terrible price.
The final part of the film is focused on the 2019 Davos event, which is very different from the previous one. This time around, there is no May, Trump nor Macron; instead, Bolsonaro and Thunberg are there, and an exchange between the Brazilian president and Al Gore is surely one of the most priceless moments in documentary cinema captured in recent years.

Yalda, A Night for Forgiveness (Iran). Grand Jury Prize winner in the World Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival this year, filmmaker Massoud Bakhshi (A Respectable Family), who wrote and directed this suspenseful exposé of Sharia law, tells the story of a young woman convicted of murder who goes on Iranian TV to try to win a pardon.
The way religious law penetrates every aspect of Iranian life, from a murder case to how a TV show is run, is probably the most striking aspect of the film. The perverse logic of temporary marriage, inheritance laws favouring boys and homicide laws stacked against wives, not to mention the practice of paying one’s way out of a hanging with “blood money” to the victim’s relatives, become casual plot elements in Bakhshi’s well-shot melodrama.
As the story of the “murder” comes out, one outrageous fact follows another. To begin with, the wealthy husband Nasser Zia was 65 and married when he decided to implore innocent young Maryam, his driver’s daughter, convincing her he loved her and getting her to agree to the infamous practice of “temporary marriage,” which avoids sin along with permanent commitment, although not Maryam’s pregnancy, causing the two to fight, resulting fatefully in Zia’s death, for which Maryam is held accountable.
Grippingly paced, opulently shot in muted colour by cinematographer Julian Atanassov, with precise and always fluid editing by Jacques Comets, the film’s bold method of addressing themes of maternal sacrifice, and what determines both legal and religious rights in a country where the Western concept of feminism is inherently offensive, Yalda is timely and terrifying film fare, available only at the 39th Vancouver International Film Festival.

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2020 Vancouver International Film Festival: Contemporary World Cinema

Click here for VanRamblings’ introductory coverage to western Canada’s gloriously west coast, this year largely virtual edition, of our homegrown and keenly spectacular 39th annual Vancouver International Film Festival.

Stories of a Life | Megan, Jude & Me and Movies | 80s and 90s

Cinema, fixin to die rag, Jude and Megan, Pop Culture, Stories of a Life, Vancouver, VanRamblings

Cinema | Megan and Jude Tomlin, and their dad, love cinema, love the movies, stories of a life

Film has always been a central, organizing force in my relationship with both my daughter, Megan, and my son, Jude.
Our collective love of the cinema, attending film festivals and discussing what we saw following the various screenings we attended (usually at the Fresgo Inn on Davie, which was alive no matter the time of night or early morning) was, over the years, a central feature of our relationship — the relationship between son and daughter, and dad — that allowed us to delve deep into discussions of the meaning of life, and our collective responsibility to work towards creating a fairer and more just world for everyone.
Heart and deep caring for humanity was at the centre of our love of film, and at the centre of our loving familial relationship, informing the choices we made about how we would conduct ourselves in the world, and the projects and causes to which we would devote our time and our energies.

In the 1980s, when Cathy and I were going through a rancorous divorce, film brought us together. When in Seattle — which we visited frequently, always staying on the non-smoking 33rd floor of the Weston twin towers — in 1984, we took in a screening of Garry Marshall’s The Flamingo Kid — the story of a working class boy (Matt Dillon) who takes a summer job at a beach resort and learns valuable life lessons. Megan was seven years of age, and Jude 9 — both were uncertain about the efficacy of our trip south (without their mother’s permission — we called her upon arriving at our hotel), but the screening alleviated and, finally, repaired any of their concerns, and all went well that weekend. Fortuitously, too, upon our return, the divorce proceedings inexplicably moved forward into a more reasonable and thoughtful direction, reflective of all our collective concerns.
Whenever there was “trouble” in our relationship — generated, most usually, by their mother — film served to salve the wounds of dysfunction, allowing us to find our collective centre while healing the wounds that rent all of our lives during a decade-long, million dollar custody dispute.
Film spoke to us, made us better, took us out of the drudgery of our too often protean daily and, more often, troubled lives, and engaged us while putting our lives into a broader and more human scale perspective. Never once was there a film that we saw together when we didn’t come out of the screening feeling more whole, and more at one with ourselves & the world.

Such was true, at the screenings of Glenn Close and John Malkovich’s Dangerous Liaisons over the holiday period in 1988, or months later at the screening of Kevin Costner’s Field of Dreams, which we took in at the Oakridge Theatre, a favourite and comforting cinema haunt of ours.
When Megan wanted some “alone time” with me, it almost always revolved around watching a film together, although as Megan matured (and as her love for film matured), Megan made it plain that she was present in the theatre to watch the film, not “share time” with me, choosing always to sit in a whole other section of the theatre (it drove her crazy in the times that we were sitting together in a theatre that I would check in occasionally with her, looking at her to determine how she felt about the film — talking during a film was an unforgivable sin, so that was never going to happen).
Some days, Megan would call and say, “Dad, take me to a film.” And because I was a film critic at the time, and had a pass to attend at any cinema in North America, off the two of us would traipse to see Kathy Bates’ Fried Green Tomatoes (1991) or Johnny Depp’s Benny & Joon (1993) at the old 12-theatre complex downstairs in the Royal Centre mall.
Other times, post dinner and after Megan had finished her homework, I’d say to Megan out of the blue, “I’m heading out to attend a screening of a film. Do you want to come along with me?” Megan would ponder my question for a moment before asking, “Which film?”
In 1991, one very long film screening we attended was Kevin Costner’s directorial début, Dances With Wolves, about which we knew nothing other than it starred one of our favourite actors, and off the two of us went.

At screening’s end (Megan and I actually sat together at this particular screening, which took place in the huge Granville 7 Cinema 7, cuz the preview theatre screening room was just packed), Megan turned to me, and said, “Dad, I knew this was going to be a great film.” And it was. “And, you know what else? It’s going to pick up a raft of Oscars this year, too, and be considered one of the, if not the best, films of the year.”
Jude and Megan also attended film festival screenings with me.
Almost inevitably, Vancouver International Film Festival founder, and co-owner of Festival Cinemas Leonard Schein was present with his wife Barbara, and at a screening’s end, Megan would make her way over to wherever Leonard and Barbara were sitting to enquire of him whether or not he intended to book the film into either the Varsity, Park or Starlight.

Following screenings of Neil Jordan’s 1992 putative multiple Oscar award winner, The Crying Game or, that same year, Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom, Megan marched right over to Leonard, and asked him boldfacedly, “Well, what did you think?” When Leonard indicated that he thought the films were not quite his cup of tea, that both films would have difficulty finding an audience, and that it was unlikely he’d be booking either film into one of his cinemas, Megan lit into Leonard with a passion and an anger that I had rarely observed as coming from her, saying, “Are you out of your mind? Strictly Ballroom (or, The Crying Game) is a wonderful film, and just the sort of film that not only should you book, but that you MUST book — these are both groundbreaking films that will only serve to reinforce your reputation as an arts cinema impresario, but will also make you a tonne of money, and we all know that you’re all about the money. Either you book these films into The Varsity, or believe me when I tell you that there’ll be hell to pay when you see me next.”
And with that, Megan marched off.

At the 1990 Vancouver International Film Festival, I’d caught a screening of Whit Stillman’s directorial début, Metropolitan, in preview, and knew that this would be a film that Megan would just love (and be astounded by, at the revelation of one of the characters, mid-film). I made arrangements to pick Megan up from University Hill Secondary at 3pm sharp on the day of the festival screening, we drove downtown, found a parking spot, and rushed over to The Studio Cinema on Granville to catch the 4pm screening of Metropolitan — which as I had predicted, Megan just loved.
In early December 1993, on a particularly chilly and overcast day, at 10am in Cinema 2 at the Granville 7 theatre complex, I caught a screening of Jonathan Demme’s groundbreaking new film, Philadelphia — a film about which I knew little, and a film that knocked me out (along with the handful of film critics in attendance at the theatre for the screening). Emerging from the theatre just after noon, making my way onto Granville, I looked for the nearest telephone in order that I might call Megan at school.
I called the office at University Hill Secondary, and asked them to find Megan and bring her to the phone. When Megan asked, “Dad, is everything all right?”, I told her about the film I had just seen, and that when it opened in January, I wanted to take her and Jude to a screening at the Granville 7. We talked about the film for a few minutes, with her saying about 10 minutes in, “I’m holding up the school phone, and calls coming in. Let’s get together after school. Come and pick me up, and we can continue our conversation. I’ll see you then, Dad. I love you.”
There are gifts we give our children. From my parents, it was what would emerge as a lifelong love for country music. For Jude and Megan, my gift was a love of music, a love of the ballet, and an abiding love for film.

VIFF 2020 | An Introductory Column To VIFF’s Virtual Film Festival

A & E, Cinema, Pop Culture, Vancouver, VIFF 2020

The 2020, 39th annual Vancouver International Film Festival

As of today, we are less than two weeks away from the glorious start of the 39th annual Vancouver International Film Festival as tremendously engaging, moving, and humane an event as occurs on Vancouver’s arts calendar each year, easily as absorbing, gripping, engrossing and captivating as all of VIFF’s previous festival iterations, representing the culmination of a year’s dedicated and devoted work by VIFF’s utterly humane and talented group of programmers, who working with their formidably talented and hard working support staff once again this year bring you films that will move, fascinate, educate, mesmerize, entreat, bewitch and, in many cases, change you forever for the better, where by festival’s end you will come to see yourself as a citizen of the world, working relentlessly to realize a fairer and a more just world for all of us.
In the midst of our current pandemic, the good folks at VIFF have made some necessary changes to this year’s film festival: for the most part, VIFF 2020 will be a virtual film festival, a festival where you will be afforded the opportunity to watch the more than 100 films on offer in the comfort of your home — no frustrating lineups for tickets this year, no having to wait in the pouring rain as the previous screening to the film you’re waiting in line to see is running late, no having to rush to get the seat you want. Nope, this year, the good folks at VIFF perform the extraordinary, bringing our much cherished international film festival to you, in your comfy home.
And you know what else? Yep, VIFF 2020 is available to British Columbians across the province. So, if you’ve got friends, or children / grandchildren in the far flung towns, cities and villages across our great province, for the very first time, our annual Vancouver International Film Festival will be available to kith and kin, wherever they reside across our belle province.
What’s that I hear? Enough of this palaver? Get down to brass tacks, you say, give us the information we need to engage with VIFF 2020?

The 2020, 39th annual Vancouver International Film Festival, tickets and subscriptions

First up, you’re going to want to buy tickets for individual films, or — and this is a much, much better deal — you’re going to want to purchase a subscription, so that you can see as many films as you can squeeze into the two-week running time of VIFF 2020.
Individual tickets for screenings go for $9, but the much, much better deal is to purchase either a VIFF Connect Festival Subscription, for the low, low price of $50, which will afford you the opportunity to watch any VIFF film on offer, as well as take part in any online Creator Talk, while the VIFF Connect Gold Subscription, at $95, allows you to watch any VIFF 2020 film, as well as offering you a free VIFF+ Gold Membership valid for one year (worth $240), and a free year-round subscription to VIFF Connect (worth $60), cuz let’s face it, folks, this pandemic thing ain’t ending any time soon, so if you want to catch the best in international cinema over the course of the next 12 months, the VIFF Connect Gold Subscription is the way to go.
Now, about this streaming thing. All your questions are answered here.
That said, here’s the bit of info you’re really going to need.
As the good folks at VIFF suggest, you’re gonna need a streaming platform.

  • Apple TV (4th Generation or newer)

  • Roku
  • Amazon FireStick
  • Chromecast (where you can stream films thru the Chrome browser).

As above, your laptop or desktop computer, via your preferred web browser, when you log onto the VIFF site with your account will allow you to stream any of the VIFF 2020 films, may / will be necessary. Yes, yes, we know, it all sounds sort of intimidating. It’s not. Rather, you’ll find — once you get over your initial jitters — that it’s easy peasy, nice and easy.
As an experiment, VanRamblings logged onto the VIFF site, and played a couple of VIFF trailers through our iPhone’s Chromecast app. Soon, the VIFF Connect app will be available. For the festival, we’re probably going to “cast” VIFF films on the Chrome browser through our Chromecast “dongle” right onto our 4K TV, as we did during the recent DOXA film festival, after the National Film Board’s Katja De Bock (we just love that name!) cajoled us into purchasing Chromecast (which we picked up at Best Buy for $35). Chances are, though, that we may also use one of our iPads or the iPhone to stream VIFF 2020 films through our iOS Chromecast app.

The 2020, 39th annual Vancouver International Film Festival, Panorama

What about the films, we hear you ask? Not to worry, we’ve got you covered. Beginning next week, three (or perhaps more) times a week, VanRamblings will publish “previews” of three or more films each day, replete with the trailers for the films, as well as a round-up of the over-the-moon reviews the films garnered when these films screened at Sundance, Berlin, Tribeca, Taipei, Locarno, Hong Kong, Venice, Toronto or New York.
As is VanRamblings usual practice, we will identify 20 films that are worthy of your time, so that by the time the festival commences on Thursday, September 24th — when you can start streaming films at home — you’ll have some idea as to what the more recommendable films are that are set to screen at VIFF 2020, films such as Viggo Mortenson’s directorial début.

The 2020, 39th annual Vancouver International Film Festival logo

In 2020, VanRamblings find ourselves able to bring you VIFF’s annual press conference, where board chair Lucille Pacey and (interim) executive director Kyle Fostner introduce you to VIFF’s fine programming staff, names you may have heard but this year with faces that you can put to those names, including VIFF’s winsome associate director of programming, Curtis Woloschuk who, along with Tammy Banister and Rylan Friday, provide insight into the twenty-four acclaimed Canadian films VIFF has on offer this year, as well as VIFF’s director of creative engagement and live programming, Ken Tsui, who introduces this year’s Talks and Masterclasses series (there’s so much more available than you’ll find in the previous link that you’ll simply just have to set about to explore), and Totally Indie Day, a day of online panels dedicated to the next generation of filmmakers.
And saving the best for last, VIFF programme manager and senior programmer, PoChu AuYeung, and the heart of the festival since it’s inception in 1981, director of international programming, Alan Franey, who at the outset of his address speaks about a Belgian film he saw earlier in the year, My Voice Will Be With You, before moving on to introduce another Belgian film, this time a documentary titled I Am Not a Hero, the first film made about COVID-19. Alan then talks about the winner of this year’s top prize (the Golden Bear) at February’s Berlin Film Festival, There Is No Evil, while PoChu introduces films by three emerging female filmmakers from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Korea — you’ll just have to watch the press conference to discover the titles of those award-winning Asian films.
Other buzz films set to screen digitally at this year’s festival: Ecuador’s Yellow Sunglasses, Danish master Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round, Sundance Grand Jury and Audience Award winner The Reason I Jump, the B.C. première of The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel by Joel Bakan and Jennifer Abbott, the international première of Japan’s The Town of Headcounts, the North American première of Anerca, Breath of Life, and the Annecy International Animation Film Festival official selection Beauty Water, from South Korea.
Christian Petzold’s Undine also arrives at VIFF with good buzz, as is the case with VIFF favourite François Ozon’s look back at the mid-80s, Summer of 85, a romantic, sexy, and ultimately tragic coming-of-age tale.
VIFF’s opening film — which will screen in 50 cinemas across B.C. on September 24th — Monkey Beach, Loretta Sarah Todd adaptation of Eden Robinson’s beloved novel also arrives at VIFF to much acclaim.
As in past years, VIFF will offer full programmes of shorts, including animated gems and the female-focused Tell Us About Her Life compilation, which will be available beginning September 24th.
For those willing to take the risk, VIFF 2020 has planned 54 in-cinema screenings at the Vancity and the Cinematheque, providing the only opportunity for patrons to see two of the year’s most buzzed about films: The Father, starring Anthony Hopkins, and Ammonite, a 19th century set film starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan, both of which films will be Oscar bound early next year.
Here, for your edification and enjoyment, the one, the only, the official …
VIFF 2020 Press Conference

The 2020 | 39th annual Vancouver International Film Festival Press Launch, on Vimeo.

Arts Friday | Vancity Theatre To Screen the Best Films of 2019

A & E, Arts Friday, Cinema, Vancouver, VIFF 2019

The Best Films of 2019 will screen at Vancouver's Vancity Theatre over the holiday season

VanRamblings absolutely loves lists. As the year nears its end, we are in list heaven — best albums, best books, best tech and, most important of all and much to our delight, best films, for which lists galore may be found.
Just this week, the National Board of Review critics association released their list of the best films of 2019, awarding several films of distinction in the process. The very next day, the prestigious New York Film Critics Circle — comprised of most of the continent’s finest film critics — released their list of 2019’s best films, conferring awards on actors, directors and films. In both instances, Martin Scorsese’s epic film The Irishman won Best Picture.

The Vancouver International Film Festival's Vancity Theatre, in the evening

With the above in mind, Vancouver International Film Festival programmer Tom Charity put his list of the year’s best together — and, fortunate for us, all of those films will get a screening at the comfiest, most welcoming cinema venue in town, VIFF’s year ’round home, the cozy Vancity Theatre.
VIFF’s Best of 2019 gets underway on Friday, December 20th with …

Once Upon a Time in … Hollywood. Friday, December 20th, 7:45pm, Vancity Theatre.

Jordan Peele’s Us, starring NYFCC Best Actress winner, Lupita Nyong’o. Screens only once, on Saturday night, December 21st, 7:45pm, at the Vancity Theatre, on Seymour Street.

nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up. Sunday, December 22nd, 8pm, Vancity Theatre.

Clicking on any of the title links above and below, will take you to the film title’s VIFF page, where you will see a full description of the film, and where you may purchase tickets for the screening. Individual tickets, $11 (VIFF membership required). A discount three-ticket pack is available for $30.

Multiple award winner Monos will screen Monday, Dec. 23rd, 7:45pm, Vancity Theatre.

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Next up, VanRamblings’ nominee as the best film of 2019, urgent, intimate, subtle, moving, the only truly wrenching, punch in the gut film of the year we’ve seen, an absolute must-see, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn’s tour-de-force The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open — set in and around Stamps Place (once called the Raymur Housing Project), on Vancouver’s eastside. As Sarah-Tai Black writes in the Globe and Mail, The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open is “transforming, striking, gentle, impactful, world-affirming, utterly remarkable, essential, heartrending, tender … and wholly authentic.”

The Body Remembers. Boxing Day, Thursday, December 26th, 7:45pm, Vancity Theatre.

The Farewell will screen on Friday, December 27th, 7:20pm, at the Vancity Theatre.

Honeyland will screen on Saturday, December 28th, 7:20pm, at the Vancity Theatre.

And screening immediately following the luminous & utterly unforgettable, award-winning documentary Honeyland, Australian director Jennifer Kent’s controversial follow-up to The Babadook, the unrelenting horror pic …

The Nightingale screens on Saturday, December 28th, 9pm, at the Vancity Theatre.

And on Sunday, December 29th, 7pm at the Vancity Theatre an international film feature double bill that will knock your socks off: Spain’s auteur filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar’s best film in years, with a Cannes Best Actor award-winning performance by Antonio Banderas at its centre, Pain and Glory — which will screen at the Vancity Theatre on Sunday, December 29th at 7pm — offers mature, understated and evocative filmmaking of the first order, combining a deep sense of humanity with a touch of erotic beauty, an emotional rendering of a person that is at once gentle and naked, hushed, agonizing and dazzling, full of life, electric, heart-wrenching and as piercing and deeply intimate a reflection on what it means to grow old as you’ll ever see on film, Pain and Glory is the filmmaker’s best and most personal movie in years, a cinematic momento full of indelible moments, redolent with a meditative force that will knock you sideways, a tragicomic swirl of heartbreak and joy, and an utter triumph. A must-see.

And at 9pm, following the screening of Pain and Glory, Mati Diop’s stunner Atlantics, about which at one time lead Globe and Mail film critic Liam Lacey wrote, “A magic realist fantasy, a ghost story, a love story and political allegory, a film of tactile intimacy and teeming energy, about women’s autonomy, migration and corruption, vital and realist, a world-shattering film about unspeakable tragedy, Atlantics packs a deceptive amount of complexity into its 104 minute running time, offering a narrative perspective about class and post-imperialism that is touching, romantic, impressively nuanced and an expertly rendered tour-de-force.”

A World Cinema Dramatic prize winner at Sundance earlier this year, director Joanna Hogg’s best film yet, The Souvenir, is an instant British classic. The New York Times’ A. O. Scott writes, “The Souvenir feels like a whispered confidence, an intimate disclosure that shouldn’t be betrayed because it isn’t really yours,” while Guy Lodge writes in Variety, “Achingly well-observed in its study of a young artist inspired, derailed and finally strengthened by a toxic relationship, it is at once the coming-of-age story of many women and a specific creative manifesto for one of modern British cinema’s most singular writer-directors.”

The Souvenir screens on Monday, December 30th, 7:45pm, at the Vancity Theatre.

There are four more films that are screening as part of the Vancouver International Film Festival’s Best of 2019 film series — at least two of which will vye for a Best Picture win at the Oscars on February 9th, but you’ll just have to click here for the titles of those films, and the date and time that each will screen at the Vancity Theatre. Enjoy your film-going holidays.

Best of 2019 | Video created by Cindy Shi for the Vancouver International Film Festival.