One of the worst habits many film critics partake in at film festivals is firing off a tweet declaring that they need to let a film “marinate” after initially seeing it, so desperate to voice an immediate reaction even if they haven’t found the words to adequately describe their feelings. And yet, while watching Nadav…
Category: Film
In Conversation with Chen Yu-hsun, Director of “My Missing Valentine”
“I have romantic ideas, but [when I make films] I am not really a romantic person,” Chen Yu-hsun admits with a chuckle. The Taiwanese filmmaker came to fame in 1994 with his debut feature, Tropical Fish, a razor-sharp comedy-drama, for which he was awarded the Golden Horse Award for best original screenplay as well as…
“Pray Away” Review
Wandering around a car park, Jeffrey McCall approaches strangers offering to pray with them. With him, he’s holding a placard reading ‘trans 2 Christ’ which shows before-and-after photos of when Jeffrey used to live his life as a trans woman and now where, after discovering Christianity, he lives his life as a straight cisgender man….
“I’m Your Man” Review
Stories about artificial intelligence in cinema are often told from a distinctly male point of view. From recent indie hits like Spike Jonze’s Her and Alex Garland’s Ex_Machina, to a history of more fantastical narratives like John Hughes’ Weird Science, films about AI always seem to posit a relationship between user and machine – the…
74th Cannes Film Festival: “Olga” Review
To this day, Ukraine pays for the Euromaidan protest and the Revolution of Dignity that took place in November of 2013 and February of 2014, respectively. Both ended with blood, lowering the standard of living of Ukrainian citizens and the loss of a part of the country’s territory. The first revolt began when President Viktor…
74th Cannes Film Festival: “La Traviata, My Brothers and I” Review
14-year-old Nour (Maël Rouin-Berrandou) trudges across his council estate, flip-flops smacking against the concrete as he struggles with a hefty laundry bag and a five-litre bottle of water. It’s the height of summer, and while other kids are out playing or attending summer camp, Nour spends his days either completing community service work or looking…
74th Cannes Film Festival: “I Comete – A Corsican Summer” Review
The feature debut of director and writer Pascal Tagnati, I Comete is a lulling but earnest exploration of the small town of Tolla situated in the very heart of the island. Examining romance, friendships, family conflicts, and everyday snippets of life – Tagnati samples cinéma vérité aesthetics and techniques to create a fictional, layered, and…
74th Cannes Film Festival: “Un Monde” Review
There’s no shortage of films that deal with the concept of childhood bullying, but very few document experiences that will ring true to anybody who has been through it. In recent years, bullying has been depicted in film almost exclusively as an online phenomenon, with all attempts to show the harrowing effects of cyberbullying falling…
74th Cannes Film Festival: “The Heroics” Review
In cinema, drug and alcohol addiction is often treated like the darkest iteration of Chekhov’s gun: if someone says they’re in recovery in the first act, expect them to relapse in the second. Because of this narrative cliche, very few films directly grapple with the realities of rehabilitation, and that rather than being an end…
74th Cannes Film Festival: “Bloody Oranges” Review
There’s a reason the “everything is connected” brand of big screen storytelling is widely mocked. Although the likes of Robert Altman’s Short Cuts and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia managed to find profundity in the semi-interlinking lives of vast ensembles, films such as Paul Haggis’ Crash and the collected works of Alejandro González Iñárritu have made…
VIEW OF THE ARTS 