GRUB | Funky Brunch x Rumpus Room x Mount Pleasant

chicken and waffles (with gravy, maple syrup, and green onions)

Mount Pleasant—The reopened Rumpus Room that took over the old Foundation location earlier this year with much of the same decor and welcoming appeal from owners Rachel Zottenberg and David Duprey. Their funky weekend brunch service is just in line with the rest of the homey eatery.

GENRE | Jonah Hill Remembers the 'Mid90s' Fondly

Actor turned first-time filmmaker Jonah Hill really shows his reverence for west coast skateboarding culture of the 1990s. Hill's film is such a carefully constructed time capsule of youth. Full of deeply authentic touches, Mid90s is such a loving portrait of adolescent bonding and a sense of longing to belong.

VIFF 2018 | Marrying 'The Third Wife'

VIFF 2018—First-time filmmaker Nguyễn Phương Anh (aka Ash Mayfair) tells the historical drama of a fourteen-year-old child bride of a wealthy landowner in 19th century rural Vietnam. The Third Wife sorrowfully transports us to the repressive period full of sensuous colours to express a pervasive feeling of melancholy.

VIFF 2018 | Nicole Kidman Solves 'Destroyer'

VIFF 2018—Karyn Kusama's latest film feels like almost a parody of the gritty Los Angeles cop movie genre with all the usual hard-boiled clichés. Destroyer stars a very unconventional and deglamorized Nicole Kidman as both the younger, naïve undercover agent and very dishevelled, damaged older versions of her LAPD Detective Erin Bell.

CINEMA | Ryan Gosling Steps Into 'First Man'

"We need to fail down here so we don’t fail up there."

Academy Award-winning director Damien Chazelle dramatizes astronaut Neil Armstrong using an unconventional, naturalistic docudrama style shot mostly on grainy 16mm film that proves much more immersive and deeply psychological. A very soft-spoken Ryan Gosling seems almost too fitting an understated vessel for the reluctant American hero who was a man of few words and rarely showed his emotions.

VIFF 2018 | Natalie Portman Rocks Out – 'Vox Lux'

VIFF 2018—Actor turned filmmaker Brady Corbet's second feature is easily one of the boldest, most original, and intense films of the year. Essentially two separate musically-tinged stories about one character, Vox Lux is almost an inverse parallel to the conventional Hollywood sheen of A Star is Born in its hyper-stylized, almost sociopathic nature of excess and how artistic messages of hope slowly devolve into pop stardom.

VIFF 2018 | Slow 'Burning' A Mystery

"It's no fun being serious."

VIFF 2018—Korean filmmaker Lee Chang-dong's very slow burn (pun intended) mystery drama loosely based on Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami's short story "Barn Burning" is a grim arthouse treatise on struggling working-class young men. Burning (aka Beoning) tells its story in supremely unnerving ways with more than a few unexpected but sombre turns.