Foreign Movies
Foreign movie reviews of arthouse world cinema from an indie film perspective.
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Hard to Be a God
'Hard to Be a God' is a masterpiece 40 years in the making that's both revolutionary and revolting.
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Two Days, One Night
The Dardenne brothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc, are worshiped filmmakers in the art-house community. They have been impressing audiences since 1996’s The Promise and are among the distinguished few who have two Palme D’Ors to their name (for 1999’s Rosetta...
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Mr. Turner
It's hard to imagine Leigh, Spall, and their team improving upon what they put forth in this transcendental masterpiece.
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Winter Sleep
A genuine experience that will leave you completely nourished. A cat’s whisker away from being a masterpiece.
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Pioneer
There are two movies playing out in the Norwegian film Pioneer. The first is a gritty procedural of a deep-sea dive, and the second, and more dominant, is a tense thriller. While at first glance these two separate stories...
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Force Majeure
The absurdity of familial archetypes are underscored to hilarious effect in Ruben Östlund's provocative new film.
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Still the Water (TIFF Review)
At one point during Still the Water, a character says one has to “keep a humble attitude towards nature; it’s impossible to resist it.” That line might be the most succinct summary of what writer/director Naomi Kawase shows throughout...
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Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait (TIFF Review)
As Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait opens, a title card claims “1,001 Syrians” helped make the film. The reason for such a bold and unconfirmed claim is because of co-director Ossama Mohammed’s reliance on footage from online sources. Mohammed, a...
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They Have Escaped (TIFF Review)
Finnish filmmaker J.-P. Valkeapää comes up with a wild take on a boy-meets-girl story in They Have Escaped, which appropriately premieres in the offbeat Vanguard section of the Toronto International Film Festival. Using intriguing camera techniques, the film expends...
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Bird People (TIFF Review)
Bird People begins with a montage of people coming and going on subway trains throughout Paris. It’s a bit of an odd start until the perspective changes: suddenly everyone’s thoughts on the train can he heard, the camera profiling...
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The New Girlfriend (TIFF Review)
If there’s anything we’ve learned from François Ozon‘s past work it’s this: The man is unafraid to explore boundaries of sexuality. And he does it extremely well (see: Young & Beautiful, 8 Women, In the House, Swimming Pool). While...
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Episode of the Sea (TIFF Review)
Directors Lonnie van Brummelen & Siebren de Haan profile the small, unique town of Urk in Episode of the Sea, a playful documentary premiering in the Wavelengths programme at TIFF this year. Urk used to be an island in...
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Life in a Fishbowl (TIFF Review)
Iceland takes a stab at the multiple narrative structure with Life in a Fishbowl, a film that’s become a hit in its home country. The film follows three different people living in the same town, and as these stories usually...
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The Strange Little Cat
Want to know the definition of beguiling? Look no further than The Strange Little Cat. Ramon Zürcher’s debut feature definitely lives up to both of its title’s adjectives. At 69 minutes in length, it’s so brief it barely even qualifies...
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Abuse of Weakness
In 2004, Catherine Breillat suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage, triggering a stroke that paralyzed half of her body. She eventually recovered, and after getting back to filmmaking she met Christophe Rocancourt, a notorious con artist. Breillat wanted Rocancourt to...
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Miss Violence
The term Greek New Wave (sometimes called Weird Wave) has been floating around ever since Giorgos Lanthimos’s Dogtooth screened at Cannes in 2009. The film instantly won over critics with its unique and absurd style, winning the Un Certain...
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A Five Star Life
I don’t subscribe to the notion that a film must have a destination – that it must arrive at a conclusion – but I do believe that some form of progress is necessary. Leaving a film with its characters...
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Mood Indigo
No filmmaker could pull off adapting Boris Vian’s “unfilmable” novel better than the inventive Michel Gondry. Before the opening titles finish Gondry demonstrates his trademark whimsy and wacky production style; a chef receives ingredients through a television set, sunlight...
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Honour
Honour, the 2014 British thriller and directorial debut of Shan Khan, tells the story of Anglo-Pakistani woman Mona (played by Aiysha Hart), who becomes the target of a family honor killing after backing out of an arranged marriage. When...
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Borgman
The unpredictable mechanics of evil have rarely been as captivating as they are in Alex Van Warmerdam’s Borgman. Premiering last year at Cannes, our very own Dustin Jansick saw it during his coverage of the festival (read his initial...
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Me and You
Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci hadn’t made a film in about a decade before his latest movie Me and You screened out of competition at 2012 Cannes Film Festival; however, the new film is far more contained than the sweeping...
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Nothing Bad Can Happen
In Nothing Bad Can Happen, a “provocative” film without anything truly provoking, Tore (Julius Feldmeier) is a homeless teen who, in the film’s opening, gets baptised in a lake. He’s a new member of the Jesus Freaks, a group...
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Norte, the End of History
First thing’s first: Lav Diaz’s epic Norte, the End of History is 250 minutes in length, a relatively short running time for the Philippine director (2008’s Melancholia runs 450 minutes, while 2004’s Evolution of a Filipino Family is a...
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Miss Lovely
At its debut at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, Ashim Ahluwalia’s chameleonic Miss Lovely was declared a new type of anti-Bollywood cinema aimed squarely at providing an antidote to the mass-produced, broadly-appealing entertainment that is such a lucrative and...
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Heli
From the start, Heli establishes the brutality and transparency of its setting. Opening with two men lying in the back of a truck, one dead and one barely alive, the drivers hang the corpse over a bridge in the...
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We Are The Best!
“Punk is dead” is a phrase heard several times throughout We Are the Best!, but it’s certainly not true for pre-teen girls Bobo (Mira Barkhammar) and Klara (Mira Grosin). The film takes place during 1982 in Stockholm, a time...
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Mommy (Cannes Review)
When discussing a new Xavier Dolan, it’s his age and not his movie that takes center stage. After all, he’s only 25-years-old He started his film making career at the same time most...
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The Dance of Reality
It’s hard to believe Alejandro Jodorowsky hasn’t released a film in almost 25 years. The cult director, whose surreal hit El Topo made him the father of midnight movies, is only increasing in popularity over the years. Now, with...
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Ida
Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) is an 18 year old orphan about to become a nun in 1960s Poland. At the insistence of her superior, Anna visits her only known family before taking her vows. Her aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza), a...
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Ilo Ilo
Singapore born director Anthony Chen makes an impressive feature debut with Ilo Ilo, which not only received the Camera d’Or award at Cannes, but it was also Singapore’s official Foreign Language submission to the Oscars. Set during the late-90s...