Category Archives: International

Dead Pigs review — Cathy Yan’s pre-Birds Of Prey movie shows how she got the superhero gig

July 12, 2021 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Cathy Yan | 122 min | On Demand/Mubi A deliberate drama of overlapping character arcs that serves to reveal a harder sign of life in urban China than we often get to see. It's got Altman in its DNA, but Dead Pigs is a 21st Century flick, deeply critical of late…Read More

Tove review — A complex and affecting love story

July 2, 2021 flawintheiris

Directed by Zaida Bergroth | Written by Eeva Putro and Jarno Elonen | 100 min | Carbon Arc Cinema If you were like me and you weren't familiar with Tove Jansson, creator of the comic strip Moomins, this biopic will be eye-opening on a sheer information delivery level. It may surprise even more for what…Read More

Censor review — VHS nostalgia for hardcore horror-heads only

June 18, 2021 flawintheiris

Directed by Prano Bailey-Bond | Written by Bailey-Bond and Anthony Fletcher | 84 min | On Demand A movie about movies, Censor will likely appeal to anyone who has nostalgia for the Video Nasty era — the VHS-enabled glut of low-budget exploitation thrillers and horror in the 1980s. That's the world Censor lives in, telling…Read More

Undine review — A somewhat larger mermaid

June 11, 2021 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Christian Petzold | 91 min | Carbon Arc Cinema Here's a genuine puzzle of a film, one that sets off as a straight ahead romantic melodrama, more the type I'd expect to see in French movies than German, but then reveals itself to be something entirely different, a fantastic parable. The…Read More

Riders of Justice review — The anti-revenge, revenge comedy thriller

May 21, 2021 flawintheiris

Directed by Anders Thomas Jensen | Written by Jensen and Nikolaj Arcel | 116 min | On Demand Veteran Danish filmmaker and screenwriter Jensen delivers a darkly comic movie that also serves as a kind of offhand repost to Hollywood's middle-aged lead revenge thrillers of recent years starring Liam Neeson, Keanu Reeves, and even Bob…Read More

About Endlessness review — Droll, melancholy anthology concludes Swedish filmmaker’s career

May 17, 2021 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Roy Andersson | 78 min | Carbon Arc Cinema Before watching About Endlessness I knew about the work of this Swedish auteur mostly by his festival features like Songs From The Second Floor and A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting on Existence, films that never got theatrical distribution here and…Read More

The Disciple review — A life in art, its glory and disappointment

May 13, 2021 flawintheiris

The Disciple | Written and Directed by Chaitanya Tamhane | 130 min | Netflix An earlier version of this review was posted on FITI in September 2020 as part of my coverage of the Toronto International Film Festival. Back in 2015, Carbon Arc Cinema screened Chaitanya Tamhane’s first feature, Court, the delightfully droll satire of the Indian criminal…Read More

The AFX Animation Festival of Halifax is on now!

May 7, 2021 flawintheiris

In its 10th year, the AFX brings short and feature animation to Haligonian audiences in the spirit of Helen Hill, the beloved animator who lived in Nova Scotia for years. The program runs through Friday and Saturday online — with material for all ages and just for adults — and it's all free. Amongst the…Read More

Perfumes aka Les Parfums review — A rose by any other name

April 30, 2021 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Grégory Magne | 100 min | Carbon Arc Cinema A sweet, if slight, French dramedy about Anne Walberg (Emmanuelle Devos), who is a "nose" — she's a former perfume maker with a gifted schnoz — and Guillaume Favre (writer-director Magne), a chauffeur desperate to hang on to his job so he…Read More

Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time review

April 29, 2021 flawintheiris

Written and Directed at Lili Horvát | 95 min | On Demand, TIFF Digital Lightbox The central question the film, with its clumsily long title, is this: "Is what we perceive as real... real?" It's a question of confidence in our own version of reality. This is an entirely compelling question, one that seems especially…Read More