A valentine to the movies from 1917 and Skyfall director Sam Mendes (here taking a solo screenplay credit for the first time), set in and around an English seaside cinema in the early 1980s. For Hilary (Olivia Colman), it’s not the most glamorous job in the world, shoveling popcorn and warmed over dogs for a dwindling number of punters, and sordid backroom fumblings with her manager (Colin Firth) don’t make her feel any better about herself. But when young, good-looking Stephen (Micheal Ward) joins the team, her outlook soon brightens. Indeed, the two of them forge an unexpectedly intense bond.
Colman must be odds-on favourite to make it four Academy Award nominations in five years for her deeply affecting and acutely nuanced portrait of an unhappy woman rediscovering her sense of joy. But there is another story going on here: Stephen is Black, and not likely to forget it in the racially entrenched and divisive surroundings of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain. Small wonder the lovers seek refuge in their dreams.
Master cinematographer (and Mendes regular) Roger Deakins conjures all his wizardry here, and the Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross score pulls everything together. Mendes has helmed a transformative movie.
Sam Mendes
Olivia Colman, Micheal Ward, Colin Firth, Toby Jones, Tom Brooke
UK/USA
2022
English
Book Tickets
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Frankenstein
Frankenstein and Guillermo del Toro might have been made for each other. The movie does not disappoint, a ripping yarn of grand adventure, spectacle, hubris, passion and XXL body parts, a tale of the fantastic that rings the imagination. Screening in 35mm.
Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989
Drawing on 30 years of television archives, Göran Hugo Olsson relates the early history of the state of Israel, as reported by Swedish filmmakers, politicians and journalists. "An astonishing, invaluable document." William Mullally, The National
Predators
"Punk'd for pedophiles." That's what Jimmy Kimmel called Chris Hansen's true crime/reality TV show, To Catch a Predator (2004-07). Two decades on, David Osit examines why the show made such an impact, for good or ill, and sits down with Hansen himself.
Credits
Michael Lerman, Julie Pastor
Producer
Pippa Harris, Sam Mendes
Screenwriter
Sam Mendes
Cinematography
Roger Deakins
Editor
Lee Smith
Production Design
Mark Tildesley
Original Music
Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross