Category Archives: International

Mothering Sunday review — Love and despair in post-war Britain

June 30, 2022 flawintheiris

Directed by Eva Husson | Written by Alice Birch, adapting a novel by Graham Swift | 110 min | ▲▲▲▲△ | VOD An earlier version of this review appeared on Flaw In The Iris in September 2021 during the FIN: Atlantic International Film Festival Mothering Sunday is a lyrical, gorgeous, and deeply melancholy British drama.…Read More

Compartment No. 6 review — An affecting, icy journey north

June 20, 2022 flawintheiris

Directed by Juho Kuosmanen | Written by Kuosmanen and Andris Feldmanis, based on the novel by Rosa Liksom | 107 min | ▲▲▲▲△ | VOD Laura (Seidi Haarla) is a Finnish architecture student taking a long train ride from Moscow to Murmansk — via St. Petersburg and Petrozavodsk and points north — who gets to…Read More

Crimes of the Future review — Long Live the New Sex

June 14, 2022 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by David Cronenberg | 107 min | ▲▲▲▲▲ Can we say now, while he's still with us and making movies at this standard, that David Cronenberg is the greatest filmmaker our national cinema has ever produced? I mean, the mountain of evidence is towering. If you go back more than 50 years…Read More

HIFF is back!

June 9, 2022 flawintheiris

In a town where we're blessed by a number of quality film festivals, the Halifax Independent Filmmakers Festival has earned a reputation for being one of the scrappiest, offering a consistently avant garde and experimental cinematic program. The 2022 edition looks to meet that expectation with a slate of films screening over four days in-person…Read More

Toscana review — Undercooked in Italy

June 3, 2022 flawintheiris

Directed by Mehdi Avaz | Written by Avaz and Nikolaj Scherfig | 90 min | ▲▲△△△ | Netflix 22 years ago Danish dogme director Lone Scherfig brought to the world the charming romantic drama Italian For Beginners, which romanticized Italy all out of proportion from a Scandinavian perspective. It was a charmer, though. Now we…Read More

Downton Abbey: A New Era review — Tied in a bow for fans of the show

May 22, 2022 flawintheiris

Directed by Simon Cutis | Written by Julian Fellowes | 125 min | ▲▲▲▲△| In Cinemas Another visit to the late 1920s estate of the aristocratic Crawley family— made so popular in six seasons on ITV and PBS, and more recently rerun on Netflix — seemed unlikely. I know the first feature from 2019, Downton…Read More

Hit The Road review — Existential road comedy pulls out all the stops

May 11, 2022 flawintheiris

Original title: Jaddeh Khaki | Written and Directed by Panah Panahi | 93 min | ▲▲▲▲△| Carbon Arc Cinema Panah Panahi is the son of legendary Iranian director Jafar Panahi, and evidenced by the younger Panahi's debut the filmmaking reel doesn't fall far from the projector — though there's something wonderfully askew in the mix with…Read More

Atlantis review — Scarily prescient Ukrainian sci-fi envisions life after Russian war

April 15, 2022 flawintheiris

Written and directed by Valentyn Vasyanovych | 108 min | ▲▲▲▲△| Carbon Arc Cinema I'd wager it's impossible for a Ukrainian post-apocalyptic science-fiction drama available to be seen now to not be freighted with significance. This picture was a prize-winner at the Venice Film Festival in 2019, but it's taken awhile to make it to North…Read More

The Souvenir and The Souvenir Part II reviews — Joanna Hogg’s fascinating semi-autobiography

March 2, 2022 flawintheiris

The Souvenir | Written and Directed by Joanna Hogg | 120 min |▲▲▲▲△ | On Demand A version of this review was originally posted as part of a look at Carbon Arc Cinema's fall 2019 season. Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne) is a London film student living in swanky 1980s Knightbridge, but managing expenses with roomies.…Read More

A Cult Of One: Bright Star

February 28, 2022 flawintheiris

Welcome back to a semi-regular feature on FITI, where I highlight an older film that maybe hasn't received the cultural attention it deserves. With Jane Campion very much in the current conversation as Power Of The Dog receives awards attention, here's a film of hers from more than a decade ago that never earned that…Read More