[VIFF 2017] REVIEW: 'Sweet Virginia'

Sweet Virginia has, and will continue to, draw strong comparisons to a Coen brothers film, because it definitely feels like one. Almost everything is shot in the shadows and hidden by walls, doors or corridors, there’s a murder plot gone wrong, and it has a roster of quirky and violent characters.

Film, New ReleasesJason ChenOctober 14, 2017sweet virginia, thriller, 2017, alaska, viff, vancouver, film festival, canada, film, movies, cinema, review, jon bernthal, imogen poots, rosemarie dewittComment

[VIFF 2017] REVIEW: 'The Killing of a Sacred Deer' is mind-bendingly creepy

Where The Lobster becomes a relatively straightforward film about a man looking for love in all the wrong places after adjusting to the absurdity of its characters and the world they inhabit, Sacred Deer is much less so. I think it seeks to visually maim and shock its audience, and that the story leaves a lot to be desired on purpose.

[VIFF 2017] REVIEW: 'Disappearance'

I was wondering why the title was Disappearance until the very end of the film, and when the lights came on I definitely felt a little empty. It’s that feeling you get when films want to say something poignant but can’t quite put it together using sounds and images, but you really want to understand because it must be important.

Film, New ReleasesJason ChenOctober 7, 2017Verdwijnen, disappearance, rifka lodeizen, crime, thriller, norway, denmark, oscars, vancouver, canada, viff, 2017, movies, cinema, review, filmComment

REVIEW: 'Wind River' is more jarring than fluid, but it works

There’s a final Mexican standoff in the finale of Wind River that has become instantly recognizable as director Taylor Sheridan’s work: tense and unflinchingly brutal. These gunfights are nerve-wracking and serve their purpose, such as in Sicario and Hell or High Water, but in the much slower and contemplative Wind River, it suddenly feels slightly out of place.

Set in Wyoming on the Wind River Indian Reservation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner) discovers the frozen corpse of Natalie Hanson (Kelsey Chow), and it’s quickly ruled a homicide by FBI agent Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen). With the help of the local Tribal Police Chief, Ben (Graham Greene), the investigation leads them to the dark corners of the reservation, from broken homes to drug houses to remote oil rigs.

REVIEW: May fortune find 'Logan Lucky', because it's deserved

Steven Soderbergh made a name for himself with clever storytelling and editing with both Ocean’s Eleven and Traffic, for which he won an Oscar for Best Director. He had a gift for snappy dialogue and even snappier editing, which are requisite characteristics for a film with an ensemble cast to be successful. Combined with the end of his self-imposed exile, there was considerable intrigue ahead of Logan Lucky’s release.

It’s a straight-forward and enjoyable film: Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum), a former football star who is now poor, divorced and working blue-collar jobs, is having the worst day of his life. He is fired form his construction job due to liability issues after failing to disclose his injured knee when he was hired, and learns that his ex-wife and daughter are moving out of state with her wealthy new husband. Jimmy visits his brother, Clyde (Adam Driver), an Iraq War veteran with one hand who runs the local bar, and together they hatch a plan to rob the cash deposits from the vault of the Coca-Cola 600 NASCAR event. They recruit their sister Mellie (Riley Keough), eccentric demolitions expert Joe Bang (Daniel Craig), and Bang’s two dimwitted brothers (Brian Gleeson, Jack Quaid) to complete the job, which runs into all sorts of comical complications.

REVIEW: ‘The Dark Tower’ ventures into an entirely generic multiverse

When Nikolaj Arcel’s film is at its best, it does harness this mixture of genres, suggesting that there’s a fascinating world for audiences to explore. The realm of Mid-World contains derelict versions of technology from our world, but with a society that seems more like a 19th-century American frontier settlement, only equipped with electricity and futuristic capabilities like teleportation. Frustratingly, just as viewers are getting interested, the film has its characters travel to Manhattan, where a series of rote story beats plays out: the hero is injured and fortuitously healed before the final fight; the hero has a falling-out with his companion, only to bond over a shared experience; the hero stops a world-destroying space laser with a few well-placed, slow-mo bullets.

REVIEW: ‘Atomic Blonde’ is a neon-lit thermonuclear warhead, with a few frayed wires

A finely engineered watch figures prominently in the plot of Atomic Blonde. It’s loaded with some secret information that everyone in the movie wants to get their hands on. It’s tracked by operatives of MI6, the CIA, the KGB and the French DGSE. Whoever has the watch controls the fates of dozens, if not hundreds of spies in Cold War Europe. As the people of East and West Berlin take the final crucial steps towards reunification, a shadowy battle plays out over a single deadly timepiece.

Like the watch, the film is a collection of beautiful components. The craftsmanship behind every part is on full display: bold, fluorescent cinematography, calibrated performances, and a vicious one-take action scene for the ages. There’s an important flaw, though: Atomic Blonde puts all of this powerful material on display, but can’t seem to put it together correctly. It’s as though the pieces are grinding against each other, resetting the clock when the film should be ticking forward and building tension.

REVIEW: ‘Baby Driver’ is an engine-roaring, music-blaring love story on wheels

The shortcut to describing Baby Driver is to call it a heist film. But the more you think about it, the less that label applies to the new film from Edgar Wright. Movies that truly belong in the heist genre tend to break down the crime, showing us detail-by-detail how the brilliant thieves got away with it. But there’s something more pressing at the heart of Baby Driver - an old-fashioned love story, where the hero is bent on escaping a criminal life he never wanted. He’s got better places to be, and a hell of a way to get there.

REVIEW: ‘Get Out’ embeds social commentary into an eerily plausible horror

Any movie that wades into a complex and divisive political discussion like race relations has to toe a fine line. Play things too safe, and the film will feel like a waste of time. Conversely, take too strident of a position and audiences may rebel. This is why movies like Get Out – the new horror-comedy from Jordan Peele – feels like such an achievement.