March 29, 2010

The Day The Earth Stood Still (Scott Derrickson, 2008)

In The Day The Earth Stood Still, an alien representative arrives on Earth, setting in motion a plan to save the planet Earth by destroying mankind.
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 […]
October 17, 2013

Shield of Straw (Takashi Miike, 2013) | Lesson of the Evil (Takashi Miike, 2012)

Shield of Straw My first film at Fantasia in 2013 was Takashi Miike’s Shield of Straw, one of the director’s contribution to the festival. Miike is a known workhorse, directing sometimes three films per year, in a myriad of genres and styles. Yet, there seems to be a connecting thread through his films, which feels harder to ascertain for me […]
October 17, 2013

My Fantasia 2013: Preamble

Fantasia 2013 started with a change of venue (the Concordia Hall theater is gone for now, under construction), and we were welcomed back to the Imperial theater on Bleury Street. It’s an old new home since the festival started out showing films at the Imperial way back when. On March 16th at 1PM, the tickets for the festival go on […]
July 24, 2011

The Tree of Life, or how to fail at the impossible

The world is whole beyond human knowing. -Wendell Berry The Tree of Life, by renowned director Terrence Malick, is years in the making. Its history starts even before Malick’s previous film, The New World, was distributed in 2005. After generating a substantial amount of ink in the media, and hot on the heels of the film’s highly publicized win of […]