December 16, 2013

The Lady Assassin (Quang Dung Nguyen, 2013)

The Lady Assassin, a martial arts blockbuster, is my first Vietnamese film. A light Sunday night screening at this year’s Fantasia Festival, it was attended by a notable number of people from Montreal’s Vietnamese community. Billed as a Vietnamese wu xia, in the film, a princess sold in marriage is taken in by a team of high-flying, ass—kicking, thieving assassins […]
March 22, 2010

The Journey (Fernando E. Solanas, 1992)

Argentina has one of the most impressive cinematography in the world. Within that cinema, Fernando E. Solanas is a director of seminal importance. In his essay, Towards a Third cinema, Solanas and his co-writer, Octavio Getino, galvanize the overall revolutionary ideas of the time into the concept of a decolonization cinema, denouncing the weak, liberal arts that have, up until […]
March 26, 2010

Cloverfield (Matt Reeves, 2008)

Marketed as a ground-level monster movie, Cloverfield fails at its every opportunity: a high-concept stretched to the running time.
March 26, 2010

Revolutionary Road (Sam Mendes, 2008)

In Revolutionary Road, DiCaprio and Winslet are well cast as the young couple on opposite journeys and Michael Shannon shines as their neighbour.
April 19, 2010

Once (John Carney, 2006)

WHAT IT IS: An aspiring English songwriter meets a young singer who sparks his desire and ambition. HOW IT IS: There has been a lot of press on how cheap this movie was to make and how much profit and praise it has garnered. It’s true that aesthetically, this movie looks amateurish, with no photography crafting, camera skill or direction. […]