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Raining outside. Again. First up on the film schedule tonight was …
The Counterfeiters (Grade: A): Truly one of the strongest films at the 2007 VIFF. Telling the true story of a disparate group of imprisoned artists, financiers and master forger / counterfeiters secretly assembled in a Nazi concentration camp to forge millions of pound and dollar notes to support the German war effort, Stefan Ruzowitzky’s tense, award-winning WWII story of survival and martyrdom offers testament, once again, to the strength of German filmmaking on the world scene, and serves to remind us too of the inhumanity of the German nation state in the 1930s and early 1940s. The Counterfeiters plays again Tuesday, October 9th at 2 p.m. at the Granville 7, and Wednesday, October 10th at 7 p.m. at The Ridge.
And for the second part of Monday night’s double bill …
London to Brighton (Grade: A-): Ordinarily VanRamblings’ memory is pretty good, but somehow we walked into this film thinking it was a gritty, British caper crime drama, sorta like Layer Cake. And we were wrong, way wrong. Instead what London to Brighton offers is a terrifyingly accomplished cinematic roller-coaster ride in which the lives of an abandoned 11-year-old street kid (played with devastating force by newcomer Georgia Groome, in a frighteningly tragic début performance) and Kelly (Lorraine Stanley), a tough Cockney hooker with a swollen left eye, are in peril and on the line.
A big hit in Great Britain, but with no distributor in North America, either you set about to catch the next screening of London to Brighton on Wednesday, October 3rd, 4 p.m. at the Granville 7, or at 7 o’ clock next Monday, October 8th at The Ridge or you’ll miss it, and won’t even be afforded an opportunity to watch it on DVD. Which even if you don’t realize it now, would represent a loss of relatively significant proportion for you. Almost needless to say, this is yet another must-see at the 2007 VIFF.
