Category Archives: International

Lamb review — Ewe may be surprised

October 14, 2021 flawintheiris

Directed by Valdimar Jóhannsson | Written by Jóhannsson and Sjón | 106 min | In Cinemas Lamb is distributed in North America by A24, the American company that's defined itself in the marketplace with stellar indies and horror films, amongst them Midsommar, Hereditary, The Lighthouse, and Ladybird. The trailer for this picture suggested it leans…Read More

Bergman Island review — Summer sonata times two

October 13, 2021 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Mia Hansen-Løve | 112 min | Two screenings at Carbon Arc Cinema on Friday, October 15 As a FYI for new readers, I help program films at Carbon Arc Cinema in Halifax. The cinema offers tickets and screenings through their website and in person through fall and winter seasons (in non-pandemic…Read More

#FIN2021 Reviews — Wife Of A Spy, The Worst Person In The World

September 19, 2021 flawintheiris

Wife Of A Spy | Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa | Written by Kurosawa, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, and Tadashi Nohara | 115 min Kobe, 1940. The military presence in Japan is cracking down on free thinking merchants and amateur filmmakers like Yusaku Fukuhara (Issey Takahashi), who heads to Manchuria with his nephew on a business trip. Is…Read More

#FIN2021 Review: Memoria

September 18, 2021 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul | 136 min It's been more than a decade since I've seen a film by the revered Thai filmmaker with the challenging-to-pronounce name. It was his Palme d'Or-winning Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, a picture that is delightfully resistant to the tyranny of traditional narrative. His…Read More

Annette review — A delightfully bonkers, original, epic showbiz musical

August 27, 2021 flawintheiris

Directed by Leos Carax | Written by Ron and Russell Mael, music by Sparks | 141 min | Amazon Prime She's the beauty, the opera singer. Ann Defrasnoux. She goes on stage to sing, to die, to save her audience. She's fond of apples. He's the beast, the bastard, a caustic comedian, the Ape of…Read More

Stillwater review — Fish-out-of-water thriller gives Damon career-best role

August 3, 2021 flawintheiris

Directed by Tom McCarthy | Written by McCarthy, Marcus Hinchey, Thomas Bidegain, and Noé Debré | 139 min | In Cinemas Tom McCarthy is a filmmaking wonder. He's responsible for the lovely indies The Station Agent, and The Visitor, the Oscar-winning procedural, Spotlight, and the terrific recent family movie, Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made, and…Read More

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