Category Archives: International

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

Death of a Ladies’ Man review — In love we disappear

March 12, 2021 flawintheiris

Directed by Matt Bissonnette | Written by Bissonnette, with Bobby Theodore as story consultant | 100 min | On Demand McGill professor Samuel O'Shea (Gabriel Byrne, increasingly grizzled at almost 70) arrives home one afternoon to discover his wife, Linda (Carolina Bartczak), fucking another guy. Upset, he goes back to his first love, whiskey, and…Read More

His House review — Refuge no respite from ghosts

March 4, 2021 flawintheiris

Directed by Remi Weekes | Written by Weekes, Felicity Evans, and Toby Venables | 93 min | Netflix It's a horror, but initially, the horror comes from the way the English system treats a couple, Bol and Rial Majur (Sope Dirisu and Wunmi Mosaku), refugees who've escaped from South Sudan, made the dangerous journey across…Read More

#HBFF review: Shaina

February 27, 2021 flawintheiris

Directed by Beautie Masvaure Alt | Written by Wanisai Chigwendere | 97 min | at the Halifax Black Film Festival 2021, running through Sunday The HBFF opening film is a Zimbabwean YA drama, telling the story of a 16-turning-17-year-old Shine (Wilmah Munemera). She more than bright, she's quietly brilliant, with dreams of going to university…Read More

Supernova (2021) review — Quietly devastating dementia drama

February 16, 2021 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Harry Macqueen | 93 min | On Demand This is a small, intimate drama, a straight-ahead two-hander for most of its running time. It's also a deeply moving film. Sam (Colin Firth) and Tusker (Stanley Tucci) have been together for years. Sam is a famed concert pianist and Tusker is an…Read More

Dear Comrades! review — Red riots and bloody streets

February 12, 2021 flawintheiris

Directed by Andrey Konchalovskiy | Written by Konchalovskiy and Elena Kiseleva | 121 min | Carbon Arc Cinema The Russian submission for the Best International Film at this year's Academy Awards is a black-and-white historical docudrama set in 1962 in Novocherkassk, a factory town in the Soviet Union. It tells the story of a workers…Read More