VIFF 2024 | Eiko Ishibashi Live x A 'Gift' Does Exist x Rio Theatre

"Water always flows downhill."

Vancouver International Film Festival

Commercial Drive—(October 1, 2024) Talented Japanese singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist composer Eiko Ishibashi performed her affecting live soundtrack score for VIFF Live's special presentation of Oscar-winning auteur Ryûsuke Hamaguchi's wordless Evil Does Not Exist companion film Gift at the Rio Theatre earlier this month.

VIFF 2024 | Cementing 'Pavements' – A Pavement Musical Retrospective

"They're like the slacker Rolling Stones of the '90s."

Vancouver International Film Festival

VIFF 2024—Her Smell writer/director Alex Ross Perry helms the meta rock documentary hybrid of a fake musical biopic, Pavements, about "the most important and influential band" of our time, Pavement. It's a complex but hilariously multifaceted riff on the typical kinds of music vanity projects we usually get, including artist-sanctioned documentaries, jukebox stage musicals, or self-important biographical dramas like Bohemian Rhapsody.

VIFF 2024 | 'Emilia Pérez' Finds A Musical Crime Odyssey

"I want a new skin."

Vancouver International Film Festival

VIFF 2024—No one can accuse Emilia Pérez, French filmmaker Jacques Audiard's Spanish-language transgender musical crime thriller based on his opera libretto of the same name and loosely adapted from Boris Razon's 2018 novel Écoute, of not taking bold risks. His film collects different genres, from its Mexican gangster setup to some telenovela melodrama crisscrossing with a surreal queer family tragedy and full-on choreographed musical odyssey, for mostly triumphant results thanks to its talented female lead cast that commits to the strange tone.

CABLE | Colin Farrell Steals A 'Batman' Crime Saga – 'The Penguin'

"I always thought you were capable of more."

Warner Bros. Television / DC Studios

Produced by The Batman director Matt Reeves, his The Penguin television spin-off miniseries once again stars an unrecognizable Colin Farrell (heavily made-up with extensive prosthetics) as the eponymous comic book supervillain named pejoratively after the aquatic flightless bird. Set in the immediate aftermath of the events of Reeves' 2022 film, we follow Farrell's Oz Cobb (renamed from "Oswald Cobblepot" in the comics) as he takes advantage of Gotham City's criminal power vacuum.

SCREEN | Anna Kendrick Courts 'Woman of the Hour'

"I felt looked at."

AGC Studios / VVS Films

Based on actual events, Woman of the Hour depicts an incident from an episode of The Dating Game in 1978 where a bachelor contestant looking for a date turned out to be a notorious serial killer (Daniel Zovatto as Rodney Alcala). Actress Anna Kendrick, who plays the (un)lucky bachelorette date, also makes her directorial debut in the sharp but straightforward true crime thriller that zeroes in on the rampant casual misogyny that allowed a hundred women and girls to be raped and murdered despite numerous reports.

VIFF 2024 | Artistic Trespassing – How to Build A 'Secret Mall Apartment'

"When I come back, you better be out!"

Vancouver International Film Festival

VIFF 2024—Brooklyn-based documentary filmmaker Jeremy Workman chronicles artist Michael Townsend's hilarious early-2000s experiment taking control of an unknown space in the Providence Place Mall in Rhode Island. As its title straightforwardly implies, Secret Mall Apartment provides all the side-splitting details about how eight friends (all working artists) dared to build a makeshift home in a four-year-long act of trespassing.

VIFF 2024 | Barry Keoghan Lets 'Bird' Fly Away

"I don't care about your dream."

Vancouver International Film Festival

VIFF 2024—Bird may not be the British filmmaker's best film, but it is certainly the most Andrea Arnold film she has ever made. Known for a trademark sense of social realism to her naturalistic cinematic style exploring otherwise unseen working-class subcultures of the impoverished, Arnold's latest continues to explore a young person's coming-of-age point-of-view to their bleak world.

VIFF 2024 | Sebastian Stan Becomes 'A Different Man'

"All unhappiness in life comes from not accepting what is."

Vancouver International Film Festival

VIFF 2024—A Different Man, written and directed by Aaron Schimberg, is a mind-bending film about a disfigured man (a powerhouse Sebastian Stan) coming to terms with his non-physical scars done in the satirical style of an indie Tropic Thunder—but if an actual Black war veteran showed up to play the white Robert Downey Jr. actor character (who was secretly really Black along?) in the dramatization of the making of the film-within-a-film… or maybe not, after all.

VIFF 2024 | (Not) Ready for Primetime – 'Saturday Night' Lives

"Your kids aren't ready for primetime."

Vancouver International Film Festival

VIFF 2024—Canadian-American writer/director Jason Reitman tackles the chaotic ninety minutes before the first episode of Saturday Night Live (originally known as just NBC's Saturday Night as referenced by the title) in 1975. He takes the Aaron Sorkin approach in the vein of Steve Jobs meets Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip to dialling up the pressure cooker tension, both real and fictionalized, by compiling years of television lore and anecdotes into a hundred minutes of pure nostalgic adrenaline.