Well, the day has finally arrived. The 31st annual Vancouver International Film Festival is underway! While VanRamblings will find ourselves cozying up with a few hundred other enthusiastic filmgoers at Festival venues across Vancouver’s welcoming and autumnal downtown peninsula, as promised earlier in the week — please find 20+ more VIFF films VanRamblings is recommending as worthy film festival film fair. See you at the movies!
Note: The VIFF iPhone app became available yesterday, which for iPhone folks makes life so, so much easier. Just put “VIFF” into your search function in your App Store iPhone app, and you’ll be off to the races.

Tabu: Tim Robey in The Telegraph writes, “We’re lucky if a single Tabu arrives each year: a film that knows cinema inside out, and uses it to work pure magic,” while ViewLondon gives Tabu an unparalleled five-star rating (“beautifully shot, brilliantly directed, superbly written, hugely rewarding, achingly emotional. Unmissable). Do we need to go on? For screening times, click on the title link at the outset of this capsule recommendation.

Helpless: One of the VIFF films to which VanRamblings is most looking forward to (and we’re seeing it back to back on Tuesday, October 2nd with Tabu) this Korean suspense thriller from female Korean director Byun Young Joo has emerged as a Korean box office smash, a critic’s darling, as well as winning Ms. Young Joo the 48th annual Baeksang Arts Festival Best Director award. Russell Edwards, in Variety, writes …

Fear and loaning lead to emotional mayhem and murder in the taut South Korean psychological thriller Helpless. Adapted by Byun Young-joo (Ardor) from a Japanese novel known in English as All She Was Worth, this tale of a man whose fiancée goes missing taps into present-day economic anxiety as well as the terror of emotional commitment.

A haunting, desperate, mystery-thriller addressing the theme of female agency (all too rare in Korean cinema), TwitchFilm’s take on the film: “With great stylistic panache Helpless marries noir with the current zeitgeist of the financial distress suffered by many across the globe. Kim Min-hee, whose knock-out portrayal as the mysterious, seductive, and ultimately ruthless femme fatale is the film’s compelling, and riveting, heart of darkness.”

Continue reading VanRamblings Recommends 20+ (more) VIFF Films, Part 2 →

As promised on Monday, VanRamblings will recommend 20+ of a total of 40 films (20+ more tomorrow) playing at 2012’s Vancouver International Film Festival — based on great reviews available on the web written by critics employed by industry trade magazines Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, as well as IndieWire, Screen Daily, and The Playlist, among other web sources, as well as on the recommendations of friends who’ve seen the films you’ll see covered in today’s post (say, at the recent Toronto or Venice film festivals, or earlier in the year at the Berlin, Los Angeles, Palm Springs, London, Seattle, Locarno or Cannes film festivals), or on the strong recommendation of friends who work within VIFF’s superstructure, in the programming department or elsewhere within the Festival.
Without further ado, then, here goes …

Sister: The buzziest of the buzz films at 2012’s VIFF, yet inexplicably off the radar for most festivalgoers — even given that the film stars the always radiant Léa Seydoux — the film, a winner of the Silver Bear award at the 2012 Berlin International Film Festival, Ursula Meier’s latest outing has been called a tough, tender and compelling Dardennes-style drama by Screen Daily critic Lee Marshall, IndieWire’s Eric Kohn gave the film an A-, and writes “Sister bears the mark of a filmmaker with supreme control over her material,” while The Hollywood Reporter’s Jordan Mintzer calls the film touching, and Variety’s Boyd van Hoeij suggests that “a gentle sprinkling of humor offsets the generally darker material.” Plays late in the Festival, on Thursday, October 11th at 9:15 pm, Empire Granville 2, and on the final day of the Festival, Friday, Oct 12th, at 10:30 am, again in the Granville 2.
Neighbouring Sounds: Vogue magazine and NPR critic John Powers writes, “Written and directed by Kleber Mendonca Filho, this isn’t merely the best new movie I’ve seen this year; it may well be the best Brazilian movie since the 1970s,” while Variety’s Jay Weissberg writes that the film is “superbly constructed, skillfully acted and beautifully lensed … it’s equally clear this exceptionally talented helmer understands exactly what he’s doing & why.” Trailer. Sep 27, 9pm, Gr 7; Oct 1, 3:15pm, Gr 2; Oct 3, 10:30am, Gr 7.

Bay of All Saints (Grade: A-): The winner of SXSW’s Audience Award for best documentary, Annie Eastman’s potent documentary paints an often tragic picture of life in a palafitas slum, just off the coast of Salvador, Brazil, yet manages somehow to offer a profound and moving expression of hope, through the fighting spirit and struggle of the film’s principles, who provide such strong rooting interests for the viewer that you’re just pulled right in (just wait to see how you feel when 9-year-old Rebeca goes missing). Outstanding. Humane. VanRamblings’ favourite documentary thus far. Screens on Friday, September 28th at 10:45am, Pacific Cinémathèque; October 8th at 9:15pm, Gr1; and, for a final time, Oct 9th, 3:30pm, Gr 6.
Amour: Won the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year, will likely emerge as the Oscar’s Best Foreign Film winner next February, has the critics raving (another A- from Indiewire’s Eric Kohn) and has Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman calling Amour, “transfixing and extraordinarily touching, perhaps the most hauntingly honest movie about old age ever made.” Screens: Saturday, October 6th at 6:15pm, Vogue Theatre; Oct. 8th at 3pm, Vogue; and for a final time, Friday, Oct 12th, at 6:20pm, in the Gr3.

Continue reading VanRamblings Recommends 40+ VIFF Films, Part 1 →

The 31st annual Vancouver International Film Festival kicks off Thursday, September 27th and runs through October 12th. This year, the Opening Night Gala features Midnight’s Children, Canadian director Deepa Mehta’s adaptation of the Booker Prize winning Salman Rushdie novel (with script and narration supplied by Rushdie himself), an epic, panoramic look at the history of India and Pakistan over a 50-year period. The Festival concludes with Leos Carax’s hypnotically cinematic Cannes’ award-winner, Holy Motors, closing out the Festival on the aforementioned Friday, October 12.
In between the opening and closing night films, over its 16-day running time, VIFF will unspool 380 features, documentaries and short films from 75 countries across the globe, with 107 Canadian films — making Vancouver the planet’s largest film festival screening Canadian fare.

As always, VIFF will showcase the efforts of a number of local filmmakers, including features by director Mark Sawers, Camera Shy, a black comedy about a corrupt Vancouver city councilor; an independent feature written by Kristine Cofsky, and co-directed by Terry Miles & Cofsky, In No Particular Order, a 20-something portrait of “a quarter-life crisis”; the world première of director Katrin Bowen’s relationship comedy, Random Acts of Romance, featuring local actress Amanda Tapping; and Bruce Sweeney’s new murder mystery / neo-noir police procedural, Crimes of Mike Recket.
On the documentary side of VIFF’s Canadian Images series, you’ll want to catch Julia Ivanova’s High Five: An Adoption Saga, a moving tale of a childless B.C. couple who end up on a rollercoaster ride to adopt five Ukrainian siblings, as well as acclaimed director Velcrow Ripper’s Occupy Love, a journey deep inside the Occupy movement, the global revolution of the heart that continues to erupt around the planet.

In addition to the Canadian Images programme series, many of the Festival’s trademark series will return: Dragons and Tigers: The Cinemas of East Asia , which remains a core component, and highlight, of the 31st annual VIFF; the annual Spotlight on France series; the Nonfiction Features of 2012 series (95 documentary films, 80 of which are feature-length this year), an important component of which is the Arts and Letters series focusing on music from across the globe; and the largest and most looked forward to component of the Festival, Cinema of Our Time — a key can’t miss aspect of which is the International Shorts programme — featuring tremendously moving cinema from every corner of our planet, offering a window on our world and an insight into the lives of others who reside on every continent, and whose concerns, perhaps not so surprisingly, differ not so much from our own. And finally this year, World Wildlife Fund Canada returns to sponsor Garden in the Sea, VIFF’s thought-provoking environmental series, always well-attended and a highlight of the Festival.
Award-winning films screening at this year’s 31st annual Festival include: Michael Haneke’s tender, haunting and brilliant new movie, the Cannes’ Palme D’or winner, Amour; Sundance winner, The Sessions, a frank, funny and immensely touching indie drama that seems headed for Oscar recognition; Berlin Best Film winner La Demora, a powerful and closely observed psychological portrait of an arthritic, forgetful elder and the daughter who cares for him; and director Huang Ji’s remarkable début feature, the Rotterdam Tiger award winning autobiographical drama, Egg and Stone, centering around a fragile-looking 14-year-old girl who becomes the victim of terrible sexual abuse.
Films arriving on our shores which have garnered recognition elsewhere and should be considered worthy of inclusion on your Festival schedule include: Aquí y Allá, writer-director Antonio Mendez Esparza’s beautifully observant exploration of the stresses immigration places on family and self; Barbara, Berlin Best Director winner Christian Petzold’s crisply shot, mesmerizing story of love and subterfuge in 1980 East Germany; Beyond the Hills, Cristian Mungiu’s (4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days) tragic tale of religious and romantic conflict; Helpless, a superior Korean mystery suspense thriller from female Korean director Byun Young Joo that has set domestic box office records in Korea; Hemel, sort of a Dutch female version of Shame, Sacha Polak’s psychologically illuminating début turns Polak into a director to watch; and The Hunt, Thomas Vinterberg’s film stars Cannes Best Actor winner Mads Mikkelsen as a kindergarten teacher accused of child abuse.

Continue reading Are You Ready For Some VIFFAGE? →