M. Night Shyamalan has created a Signs fiction film about alien invasion, with powerful horror set pieces and comedic touches. An analysis of its dreamlike opening sequence peels away complex layers of motifs and echoes.
TIFF 2015: Gabe Polsky’s documentary Red Army casts new light on the Soviet conquest of the world – of hockey.
Author, critic, filmmaker and, above all, game-changer, Peter von Bagh is a unique and irreplaceable figure in modern cinema. His final film Socialism is a fitting memorial.
M. Night Shyamalan’s visual style consists of a series of recurring formal devices. Watching Unbreakable feels like participating in a ritual where these devices are applied and reapplied, in new variations and combinations.
Midnight Sun 2014: Like many of its own films, the Midnight Sun Film Festival remains true to perhaps the greatest cinematic – and human – aspiration of them all: to express an understanding of, and solidarity with, all the others washed up with us here on this strange little planet of ours.
M. Night Shyamalan’s enigmatic superhero thriller is a film where everything seems to be connected to everything else. We look at various motifs and colour codings that move in intricate and sometimes very strange patterns.
Our in-depth look at M. Night Shyamalan’s early films continues with Unbreakable: perhaps the only mainstream Hollywood formalist film, a mass-market movie approached with an unrelenting European art film sensibility.
Our taste for McQueen’s earnest – and now Oscar-winning – exposé says a lot about our own liberal complacency. In this respect we’d do well to develop a finer appreciation for the not so discrete charms of an earlier classic.
TIFF 2014: How can master filmmaker Frederick Wiseman scrutinise the body of the University and fail to notice it dying before his eyes?
TIFF 2014: Ida’s black and white imagery and heavy use of static shots might seem a little one-dimensional, but its simplicity is part of its charm.
TIFF 2014: This is a film inspired by the irrepressible spirit of youth, a spirit unbowed by the horrific gas attacks suffered at the hands of Saddam Hussein.
TIFF 2014: The national divide between two very different parts of one city, El Paso and Ciudad Juaréz, is the setting for this provocative documentary about the catastrophic ‘war on drugs’.