What's On
Inherent Vice
PTA's most underrated movie is a melancholy stoner comedy set in 1970 about a hippie private detective (Joaquin Phoenix) drawn into multiple conspiracies (which may all be the same one).
Down By Law
In this slowburn comedy from Jim Jarmusch, Tom Waits and John Lurie are surly jailbirds who share a cramped cell with Roberto Benigni's Italian tourist, with transformative results. Jarmusch is back at VIFF this year with Father, Mother, Sister, Brother.
Mystery Train
Three oddball tales centered on a single seedy Memphis hotel, this may be the most accessible and purely enjoyable Jarmusch movie, a bittersweet evocation of crumbling Americana, haunted by the ghosts of rock n roll.
Phantom Thread
Dressmaker Daniel Day-Lewis meets his muse and his match in waitress Vicky Krieps, in this immaculately tailored battle of the sexes black comedy from Paul Thomas Anderson.
There Will Be Blood
Paul Thomas Anderson's lacerating epic about the birth of the oil age: Daniel Day-Lewis is extraordinary as the prospector entirely consumed with his own enterprise, a Trumpian figure of naked self-assertion; Paul Dano the evangelist who may be his nemesis.
21st Century Classics Audience Choice: Parasite
South Korean master filmmaker Bong Joon-ho delivers an unpredictable comic suspense thriller with his Palme d'Or and Academy Award-winning film, Parasite.
Sex
Two chimney sweeps living in heterosexual marriages find their views on sexuality and gender challenged by a series of unexpected events. In a set of sharply scripted conversations, both men confront heretofore unexplored aspects of their identity.
Right Now, Wrong Then
A visiting filmmaker arrives a day early for a festival screening. He meets and courts a painter (Kim Minhee) and spends the evening with her. Halfway through, the movie starts over: Same people, same places, significantly different outcomes.
Love
This warm, thoughtful piece offers shrewd comic observations on modern dating as it trains a quizzical eye on the trysts of a female doctor, Marianne (Andrea Bræin Hovig), and her colleague, a gay male nurse, Tor (Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen).
On the Beach At Night Alone
Kim Minhee (The Handmaiden, Right Now, Wrong Then) plays Younghee, an actress reeling in the aftermath of an affair with a married film director (an echo of her relationship with Hong in real life.)
