AUTHORS

Michael Hayward

ABOUT

Michael Hayward
Reviews
BELLE ÉPOQUE GOSSIP

Review of "The Man in the Red Coat" by Julian Barnes.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
A Russian Brother and his sister

Review of "A Russian Sister" by Caroline Adderson.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
subterranean mysteries

Review of "Underland" by Robert Macfarlane.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Vanishing Career Paths

Review of "The Last Bookseller: A Life in the Rare Book Trade" by Gary Goodman, and "A Factotum in the Book Trade" by Marius Kociejowski.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Sitting Ducks

Review of "Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands" by Kate Beaton.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Wanda x 3

Review of "Wanda" written and directed by Barbara Loden, "Suite for Barbara Loden" by Nathalie Léger, translated by Natasha Lehrer and Cécile Menon and "Wanda" by Barbara Lambert.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
No Regrets

Review of "Stories I Might Regret Telling You" by Martha Wainwright.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Two Roberts

Review of "Turn Every Page" directed by Lizzie Gottlieb

Michael Hayward
Reviews
A HOLIDAY IN THE MOUNTAINS (WITH PIE)

Review of "Holiday, 1909" by Charles Chapman.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The How and Why of It

Michael Hayward on books that may make you a better writer.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Dead

John Huston's final film, of the James Joyce short story from "Dubliners", was a worthy capstone to his career of nearly fifty years.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
ADVENT (AND OTHERS) IN A BOX

Review of "Short Story Advent Calendar" by Hingston & Olsen Publishing.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Divisadero

“Everything is collage,” a character observes in Divisadero (McClelland & Stewart), Michael Ondaatje’s first novel in seven years.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Frank O’Hara: Selected Poems

This recent collection compiles the very best of the poet's oeuvre.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
From A to X

Michael Hayward reviews John Berger’s From A to X, a tale of anger, displacement and resistance.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
From Beyond the Grave

Michael Hayward on Memoirs from Beyond the Grave by François-René de Chateaubriand

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

Michael Hayward on "The Baker's Wife" by Marcel Pagnol.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Glorious lists

Michael Hayward on "The Glorious Mountains of Vancouver’s North Shore: A Peakbagger’s Guide."

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Guernica Editions’ Writers Series

Guernica Editions’ Writers Series was started in the year 2000, and to date twenty-two Canadian writers have been profiled, P.K. Page, Alistair MacLeod and Don McKay among them.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Happy Talk

Michael Hayward on "Strange Planet" by Nathan W. Pyle.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Half-Blood Blues

Review of Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan. Edugyan's novel was the winner of the 2011 Giller Prize and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Governor General's Literary Award and Roger's Writer's Trust Award.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Havanas in Camelot

Fourteen personal essays by the American novelist William Styron, which he selected just before his death from pneumonia in 2006.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Have You Seen...?

Michael Hayward reviews Have You Seen...? by David Thomson (Knopf.)

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Here is Where We Meet

The eight and a half pieces in John Berger’s new book here is where we meet (Bloomsbury) are described by the publisher as “fictions,” but could equally be read as fragments of autobiography. In “Lisboa,” the narrator, a man named John of Berger’s ag

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Hold Everything Dear

Even at age eighty-one, John Berger has lost none of his fire, which smoulders and flares in the seventeen “Dispatches on Survival and Resistance” in Hold Everything Dear (Pantheon). Berger has an innate empathy for the disadvantaged and the disenfra

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Is It Edible?

Review of "Mushrooms of British Columbia" by Andy MacKinnon and Kem Luther.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Into the Heart of the Landscape

Michael Hayward on the recursive nature of reading and writing inspiration.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Purveyors of Electric Fans

Review of "Clyde Fans" by Seth.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
La Jetée

A hardcover “ciné roman” version of La Jetée has just been republished by Zone Books. The pair—film and book—make a fascinating combination: the duration of each static image in the film highlights the time dimension, while in the book version the im

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Other Colors: Essays and a Story
Michael Hayward
Reviews
Paddle to the Sea

Many boomers like me will remember trooping through school corridors to sit with their classmates in a darkened gymnasium, watching as a small hand-carved canoe survives a full range of watery perils beginning in the snowmelt streams that feed into L

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Americans

The subjects—the ordinary Americans of small towns and cities, factories, sidewalks, parks and backyards—inhabit a territory that seems somewhere outside of time.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Chicagoan

Michael Hayward reviews a new compendium of The Chicagoan, the “Lost Magazine of the Jazz Age.”

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Complete Manual of Things That Might Kill You: A Guide to Self-Diagnosis for Hypochondriacs

Even the healthiest reader can uncover the fatal illness within thanks to The Complete Manual of Things That Might Kill You: A Guide to Self-Diagnosis for Hypochondriacs, reviewed by Michael Hayward.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Michael Hayward reviews The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, directed by David Fincher (Criterion).

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Dam Busters

The Dam Busters (Anchor Bay dvd), Michael Anderson’s 1955 movie version of the attacks, is still considered a classic war movie, and despite special effects that look tame when compared to modern cgi sequences, the pacing of the film and the power of

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Discovery of France

Michael Hayward reviews Graham Robb's The Discovery of France, a scholarly but entertaining history of France’s emergence in the modern era.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Emergence of Memory: Conversations with W.G. Sebald
Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Forger

As an avid long-distance cyclist who also loves to be pulled into a good adventure story, I could not resist Cioma Schönhaus’s book The Forger (Granta), a memoir that describes how Schönhaus lived in hiding in wartime Berlin while working clandestine

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Facts of Winter

Canadian readers may doubt that they can learn anything new about winter from The Facts of Winter (McSweeney’s), a book that is faux in many ways. The afterword is a faux biography by Paul La Farge, an American “translator,” of the book’s purported a

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Hasheesh Eater

Fitz Hugh Ludlow’s The Hasheesh Eater (Rutgers) was first published in 1857, and is now reprinted as another in Rutgers’ Subterranean Lives series. Described as “the first full-length example of American drug literature,” this account is closely mode

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Goshawk

One reality of modern publishing is that this season’s new books are next season’s remainders. This harsh fact is compounded by the inexorable disappearance of good used bookstores everywhere, with the result that many excellent books that have had t

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Life and Breath of the World

Michael Hayward reviews Cascadia: The Life and Breath of the World, co-edited by Trevor Carolan and Frank Stewart.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories

Those who have read Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient (Vintage), and those who have seen the film version, will remember that the sole possession of the eponymous patient, Count László de Almásy, was a battered copy of Herodotus’s Histories, an

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Library of Roguery

Jim Christy and the editors who worked on Rogues, Rascals, and Scalawags Too should be congratulated for their uncanny ability to squeeze every last euphemism out of their thesauri.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Maytrees

For summer I favour books that can withstand the indignities of the season: beat-up paperbacks that can get stained by sunscreen, or library hardcovers in Brodart jackets that can be wiped clean with a damp cloth. But I make exceptions for new books

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Lizard Cage

Karen Connelly has travelled extensively in southeast Asia and described her experiences through non-fiction (Touch the Dragon, a memoir of her year in Thailand, won the Governor General’s Award in 1993) and poetry. Connelly’s first novel, The Lizard

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Muskwa Assemblage

"Poetry is the most personal of the literary arts; laureates notwithstanding, few poets enjoy national stature nowadays, and fewer still are known beyond the boundaries of their native land."

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Narrow Waters

Julien Gracq, one of France’s most senior and respected writers, provides a living bridge to the era of Proust and Alain-Fournier, and in his slim book The Narrow Waters (Turtle Point) Gracq explores a theme favoured by both of those writers: the mys

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Paris Review Interviews, IV

Michael Hayward reviews The Paris Review Interviews, IV (Picador).

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Odyssey

The unabridged audio version of the Odyssey (Penguin) opens with a brief interlude of eerie music, followed by the voice of Gandalf announcing: “The Odyssey, translated by Robert Fagles, read by Ian McKellan,” and with that, one is caught up in an ep

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. III

Michael Hayward reviews The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. III, a collection of discussions with the leading dramatists, poets and novelists of the past fifty years.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Travels in the Scriptorium

Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy was a revelation to me: literary puzzles examining the nature of fiction-writing; an intellectual meta-fiction that turned the hard-boiled detective genre on its head. Those three novels featured characters with cryptic

Michael Hayward
Reviews
To the Moomins! (And Beyond)

Michael Hayward reviews Moomin: The Deluxe Anniversary Edition by Tove Jansson, a collection of comic strips that contain "the poetry of our world: sad, joyful, dangerous, enchanting."

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Tree Lit

Review of "The Overstory" by Richard Powers.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Wild Places

For me and other residents of the North Shore of Greater Vancouver, the wilderness is literally blocks away. A line drawn due north from the peaks of the North Shore mountains to the Yukon border will intersect only four roads other than logging road

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Troia: Mexican Memoirs

Michael Hayward reviews Bonnie Bremser’s gritty memoirs that kick dust in the face of the romanticized Beatnik lifestyle.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Two Fish in a Western Sea

"Cedar, Salmon and Weed is probably not the Great Canadian Novel—but it could be the Great Bamfield Novel; it seems to have few competitors for that distinction."

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Venice and the Islamic World, 828-1797

Venice and the Islamic World, 828—1797, edited by Stefano Carboni (Yale University) provides a comprehensive overview of Venice’s artistic heritage, shown within the context of nine centuries of commerce between La Serenissima and the Islamic empires

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Vinyl Café

I’ve always had mixed feelings about Stuart McLean’s Vinyl Café show on CBC Radio One. Sometimes it seems a bit twee or corny, but if I’m driving around town on a Sunday I’ll always tune in because I know that somewhere along the way, Stuart McLean w

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Venices

Pushkin is one of those admirable small presses with an eclectic list that suggests the proprietors are interested in more than the bottom line; Paul Morand’s Venices, translated by Euan Cameron, would be a perfect choice for reading on the Lido.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Walking, with Writers

Michael Hayward on the journeys documented by writers.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Wildwood

Roger Deakin's Wildwood is a heady romp through the world’s forests and their entangled histories. Reviewed by Michael Hayward.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
World War II Writings

It’s much more fun to read this first-hand account of the war and its aftermath observed from ground level than a professional historian’s account, written decades after the fact.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Writing in Blue

Michael Hayward reviews Blue Nights by Joan Didion (Knopf).

Michael Hayward
Reviews
You’ll Be Okay: My Life With Jack Kerouac

You’ll Be Okay offers a feminine perspective on the Beat Generation from the wife of one of its most celebrated authors.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Seventy-Two Hours to Animal

Review of "Bunker: Building for the End Times" by Bradley Garrett.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Silk Parachute

A new collection of essays from John McPhee, staff writer at the New Yorker.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Small Dose of the Infinite

"A mild, or homeopathic, dose of the infinite is the crucial element in the aesthetic experience known as the sublime." A review of The Shell of the Tortoise.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Smoke and Mirrors

Michael Hayward reviews American Smoke by Iain Sinclair, an account of the author's road trip across North America in search of traces of the Beat Generation.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Strike/Slip

Don McKay’s Strike/Slip (McClelland & Stewart) was awarded the 2007 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and, just as Geist was going to press, this year's Griffin Poetry Prize. It deserves both awards and more: poetry does not get much better than this.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Sweet Spot

Michael Hayward on a selection of Notting Hill Editions' latest releases.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Talking Ducks

Michael Hayward reviews The Old Castle’s Secret by Carl Barks.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Architects Are Here

In The Architects Are Here (Viking), Michael Winter revisits his fictional alter ego Gabriel English, who has previously appeared as a central figure in two short story collections and in This All Happened, Winter’s first novel (published in 2000).

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Big Why

The subject of Michael Winter’s novel The Big Why (Anansi) is Rockwell Kent, who was an accomplished artist and book illustrator during the 1930s and who was fascinated by the far north. The Big Why begins when Kent arrives in the isolated coastal vi

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Bottom of the Harbor

"Old New Yorker writers never die, they just keep being republished in shiny new editions." Michael Hayward reviews collections of New Yorker pieces.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Oxford Companion to Food

The Oxford Companion to Food (2nd edition, Oxford) is an extremely dangerous book.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Paris Review Interviews

While considering the list of writers interviewed for each volume of The Paris Review Interviews (Picador) I couldn’t help thinking: “What an amazing literary gathering that would have been!” For the launch of volume i we can imagine a New York penth

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Red Tenda of Bologna

In a perfect world, the writers we love would have all their stories published as beautifully as The Red Tenda of Bologna has been.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Road

Cormac McCarthy’s new novel The Road (Knopf) presents a vision of unrelenting grimness as two nameless characters, a father and his young son, make their way beneath a sunless sky through a world adrift with ash, trudging across a post-apocalyptic Am

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Tree of Meaning

For many years, the poet, linguist and typographer Robert Bringhurst has immersed himself in studying the Aboriginal cultures and languages of the Pacific northwest coast, studies that culminated in his acclaimed Masterworks of the Classical Haida My

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Surface of Meaning: Books and Book Design in Canada

Every aspect of a book—the page dimensions, paper type, font, length of text line, space between text lines, margin sizes and so on—is the result of a designer’s decision. When these decisions are well made, then reading a book’s text is like reading

Michael Hayward
Reviews
The Winter Vault

Anne Michaels’s second novel, The Winter Vault, was published thirteen years after her debut, Fugitive Pieces. Was it worth the wait?

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Time Was Soft There

Jeremy Mercer’s Time Was Soft There (St. Martin’s Press) is an account of “A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co.” In January 2000, Mercer was staying in a seedy hotel in the north of Paris and running out of money when he dropped in at Shakespeare & C

Michael Hayward
Reviews
To Have or Have Not

Michael Hayward reviews Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids, a collection of essays with a title that speaks for itself.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Trauma Farm

Michael Hayward reviews Trauma Farm by Brian Brett (Greystone).

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Weight

Thirty-three international publishing houses are participating in The Myths, a project in which contemporary writers from all over the world were invited to retell any myth in any way they chose. Trumpeted as “the most ambitious simultaneous world-wi

Michael Hayward
Reviews
When I'm 64

"A door has closed, another door has opened. You have entered the winter of your life." A review of Paul Auster's memoir.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Women at War

Michael Hayward on the newly translated The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Words Are Stones: Impressions of Sicily

Carlo Levi is perhaps best known to North Americans for Christ Stopped at Eboli, a memoir of the time he spent in political exile (for anti-Fascist activities) in the Basilicata region of southern Italy, between 1935 and 1936 (the memoir was made int

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Mythos-Maker

Michael Hayward drove across the country to see Stephen Fry's Mythos.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Neal Cassady: Collected Letters, 1944-1967

As Kerouac later described it, the letter was “a work of literary genius. Neal, he was just telling me what happened one time in Denver, and he had every detail. It was just like Dostoevsky. And I realized that’s the way to tell a story—just tell it!

Michael Hayward
Reviews
No Country for Old Men

Blood flows vigorously in Cormac McCarthy’s new novel No Country for Old Men (Knopf), in which a grim and emotionless gunman methodically sets out to trace and recover the spoils of a drug deal gone wrong in the badlands just north of the Mexican bor

Michael Hayward
Reviews
No One Knows

Unreliable narrator, post-modernist self-reference and contemporary literary references—Michael Hayward on the nature of the autobiography.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Notes from Walnut Tree Farm

A peek inside Roger Deakin’s living, breathing farmhouse in the waning years of his life in Notes from Walnut Tree Farm, reviewed by Michael Hayward.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Notes on the Cinematographer

Michael Hayward reviews Notes on the Cinematographer, a cryptic compendium of notes and quotes from the French filmmaker Robert Bresson.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Novels in Three Lines

Novels in Three Lines is an addictive collection of brief items—“true stories of murder, mayhem, and everyday life”—that were first published anonymously in 1906 in the French newspaper Le Matin; I dare you to eat just one.

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Nothing Doing

Michael Hayward on "How To Do Nothing."

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Nova Scotian Noir

Michael Hayward on the perfect setup for a classic “film noir.”

Michael Hayward
Reviews
Old Cobblers

Michael Hayward on "Autumn" by Karl Ove Knausgaard.

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Michael Hayward
Photography
The Gutenberg Effect: Living a Handmade Life

Crispin and Jan Elsted produce books of extraordinary beauty using techniques and traditions that date from the days of Johannes Gutenberg.

Michael Hayward
Comics
Purveyors of Electric Fans

Review of "Clyde Fans" by Seth.

Michael Hayward
Comics
To the Moomins! (And Beyond)

Michael Hayward reviews Moomin: The Deluxe Anniversary Edition by Tove Jansson, a collection of comic strips that contain "the poetry of our world: sad, joyful, dangerous, enchanting."

Michael Hayward
VIFF 2024: Blink
Blink is a documentary film from National Geographic, which follows a Montreal family with four children, three of whom have retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic condition causing gradual loss of vision and probable blindness. They decide to set out on a trip around the world, in order to fill their children’s visual memories, so that they can at least recall the world and its wonders.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2024: Souleymane's Story
Souleymane’s Story is a social-realist film in the tradition of Mike Leigh or Ken Loach, offering a more personal glimpse behind the headlines into the life of an asylum seeker in France.
Michael Hayward
WFF 2023: "Diving in a Drop"
An expedition to one of several glacier-fed lakes on the upper slopes of the Ojos del Salado volcano in Argentina’s Atacama Desert, by Frédéric Swierczynski, a cave diver, and Sébastien Devrient, a mountain guide and the film’s director.
Michael Hayward
WFF 2022: "Corner Office"
Corner Office is a gentle black comedy about office culture, with the slightly surreal feel of an extended episode of Black Mirror.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2022: "Cesária Évora"
A documentary by Ana Sofia Fonseca, on the life of the beloved Cape Verdean singer, who many knew as the Barefoot Diva.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2022: "Holy Spider"
An extremely dark film directed by Ali Abbasi and starring Zar Amir Ebrahimi, based on actual events: a serial killer who was active in the years 2000 to 2001 in the holy city of Mashhad, Iran.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2022: "Maigret"
Another take on George Simenon's classic French police detective, this film is a slow-paced, melancholic pleasure, directed by Patrice Leconte, with Gérard Depardieu as Jules Maigret.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2022: "The Hermit of Treig"
Ken Smith has lived in isolation for more than 40 years, on the shores of Loch Treig, in the Scottish Highlands.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2021: "The In-Laws (Tesciowie)"
A Vantablack-dark comedy from Poland. A wedding ceremony doesn't go quite as planned, and the wedding reception that follows goes—slowly, but inevitably—off the rails.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2021: "Bergman Island"
Mia Hansen-Løve’s film is a kind of "meta movie." Set on the island of Farö in the Baltic Sea, it takes a playful and affectionate look at the legacy and the enduring influence of Ingmar Bergman and his films.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2021: "Benediction"
Terence Davies' first feature film in five years is a heartbreaking, and heartfelt, portrait of British poet Siegfried Sassoon.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2021: "Taming the Garden"
Since 2016, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili has been buying up and relocating ancient trees to furnish a private park. This mournful and elegiac documentary illustrates how money, and political influence, can literally remake a world.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2021: "Bye Bye Morons (Adieu les cons)"
A quirky comedy from French actor (Avenue Montaigne) and director (9 Month Stretch) Albert Dupontel. A suicidal IT genius and a blind archivist help a dying woman trying to locate the child she gave up for adoption.
Michael Hayward
Review: "Tove" at VIFF
A bio-pic on Tove Jansson: artist, writer, free spirit, and creator of the beloved Moomins.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2020: "Tales of the Lockdown"
Proving that some good can come from a pandemic, this omnibus film from Spain features five delightfully dark tales "directed by five leading Spanish filmmakers under quarantine conditions."
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2020: "The Pencil"
In this forceful critique of contemporary Russia, director Natalya Nazarova shows a young woman's attempt to resist thuggery in an industrial town in northern Russia.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2020: "Uncle"
On a Danish farm, a young woman works alongside her uncle, who has been handicapped by a stroke. Though they rarely talk, and the routine of their days seems unlikely to change, a quiet drama slowly begins to unfold.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2020: "Last and First Men"
Adapted from Olaf Stapledon's early science fiction novel, this stark and striking film from Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson extrapolates us through 2 billion years, into mankind's far future and ultimate fate.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2020: "Super Frenchie"
A profile of Matthias Giraud, a professional "ski-baser" and risk-taker, whose passion is to ski down steep slopes at speed with a parachute on his back, and then launch himself into space.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2020: "My Rembrandt"
A fascinating glimpse into the lives of those few who, driven by "nostalgia, heritage, beauty, obsession and [...] the satisfaction of exclusive ownership", have the desire—and the means—to own a painting by Rembrandt.
Michael Hayward
Review: Christopher Nolan's "Tenet"
Time flows backwards as well as forwards in this intricate new techno-thriller, the first major theatrical release in the COVID-19 era, from the director of Memento and Inception.
Michael Hayward
Review: "The Two Popes"
A two-hour docu-drama that attempts to do for the papacy what The Crown has done, accidentally or deliberately, for the British royal family: humanize an institution that is desperately in need of an image makeover.
Michael Hayward
Review: "The Irishman"
Director Martin Scorsese gets the whole gang back together—Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Harvey Keitel—for an epic 3 1/2 hour long mob film, which has a brief theatrical run before settling into an exclusive Netflix residency.
Michael Hayward
Review: "The King"
In which the first of several Netflix-funded feature films receives a short theatrical release in preparation for this year's awards season.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2019: "The Painted Bird"
Václav Marhoul’s bleak and brutal film version of Jerzy Kosiński’s 1965 novel, about a young boy traveling alone through a landscape in the throes of war.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2019: "Joan of Arc"
Controversial French auteur Bruno Dumont's take on the Joan of Arc story, a sequel to his 2017 film Jeannette, l'enfance de Jeanne d'Arc.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2019: "Sorry We Missed You"
A working class family living in Newcastle-upon-Tyne struggles to stay afloat, in a new film from director Ken Loach.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2019: "Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom"
A young Bhutanese teacher, wrestling with his commitment to that career, is sent to the remote Himalayan village of Lunana, to fulfill the final year of his contract.
Michael Hayward
The Big Books Bailout
Some thoughts on a proposed bailout package for the US publishing industry.
Michael Hayward
All I want for Christmas...
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2012: Gainsbourg by Gainsbourg: An Intimate Self Portrait
The story of the Frog Prince, told in his own words.
Michael Hayward
Review: "The 50 Year Argument"
You could call "The 50 Year Argument" a preemptive eulogy: a tribute to the New York Review of Books, which nowadays would have to be considered a member of a threatened species.
Michael Hayward
VIFF: Patience (After Sebald)
An exploration of author W. G. Sebald and his book "The Rings of Saturn"
Michael Hayward
John Berger in the Bardo
John Berger—Marxist art critic, poet and novelist, screenwriter and essayist—passed away in Paris on January 2nd of this year at the age of 90.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2018: "The Proposal"
A documentary by New York artist Jill Magid, depicting her attempts to gain access to the professional archives of Luis Barragán, Mexico’s most famous architect.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2019: "The Lighthouse"
A new black and white horror from Robert Eggers, filmed in Nova Scotia and starring Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson, which—while not a satire—has a lot of fun playing with the genre's tropes.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2019 preview: "One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk"
The latest feature film from Inuk director Zacharias Kunuk ("Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner") dramatizes a key moment from Inuit oral history: a 1961 encounter on spring sea ice, between Noah Piugattuk, an Inuit camp leader, and an Indian Agent.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2019 preview: "Miel-Emile"
An absorbing portrait of Emile Raaijmakers, also known as Miel, who lives a solitary life in the eastern Pyrenees of France. Miel-Emile, now almost 80 years of age, reflects upon the events of his life, and describes his personal philosophy.
Michael Hayward
Down and Out 1 in Old Paris
An absorbing new book from Luc Santé, documenting the unsavoury underside of old Paris; and a deluxe DVD and Blu-ray box set of Jacques Rivette's "Out 1" (1971), his legendary 12 hour and 53 minute film of the French "nouvelle vague."
Michael Hayward
Review: Ida
A mesmerizing and moving new film from Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski tells the story of a young novitiate nun in 1960s Poland, who learns a troubling secret about her family's past.
Michael Hayward
VIFF: "Mademoiselle de Joncquières"
This French period film from Emmanuel Mouret follows in the footsteps of "Les Liaisons Dangeureuses," as (bachelor) Marquis and (widowed) Marquise engage in a verbal duel of wits and manners.
Michael Hayward
VIFF: "Roma"
Alfonso Cuaron's new film, set in Mexico City in 1970/71, is a rich and complex drama in which the slow unravelling of domestic life takes precedence over larger events.
Michael Hayward
VIFF: "This Mountain Life"
One of the hits of VIFF 2018 returns to the Vancity Theatre.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2018: "14 Apples" and "Grass"
At any film festival there will be hits and misses: films that you'll rate 5 out of 5, and other films which "didn't work for you," which you'll rate 1. Here are brief reviews of two of my 1s from this year's VIFF.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2018: "3 Faces"
Another film from Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who somehow manages to produce fine work, despite being under a 20-year ban prohibiting him from directing movies or writing screenplays.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2018: "Becoming Astrid"
A somewhat routine but enjoyable biopic on the early years of Astrid Lindgren, creator of Pippi Longstocking.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2018: "Hendi and Hormoz"
Hendi and Hormoz is one of those films that VIFF is best at: a human story set in an unfamiliar culture and geography, which draws you in because the dilemmas faced by the characters are, to some extent, universal.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2018: "The Happy Prince"
An interesting, but flawed, film about the last years of Oscar Wilde, who lived (and died) in a kind of self-exile in Paris following his release from prison.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2018: "A Paris Education"
This black-and-white film, about a young student filmmaker learning his craft in Paris, is an affectionate tribute to the French "New Wave" cinema of the late 1950s and 1960s.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2018: "Seder-Masochism"
One of the most dazzling animated features that you're ever likely to see, this one-woman tour-de-force is a very personal, very musical, take on the Exodus story, blended with tales from the Passover Seder tradition.
Michael Hayward
Sisyphus Does the Grind
Another existentialist classic, Vancouverized.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2017: "The Killing of a Sacred Deer"
A perfectly pitched absurdist parable, at once chilling and comic, from Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2017: "At the End of the Tunnel"
A paraplegic engineering technician in Buenos Aires rents rooms to an exotic dancer; bank heist ensues.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2017: "Faces Places"
Veteran filmmaker Agnès Varda and photographer/muralist JR travel the back roads of rural France in a mobile photo booth.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2017: "Loveless"
A loveless marriage in its final throes, with tragic consequences. Another powerful drama from Russian director Andrei Zvyagintsev.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2017: "Lucky"
Harry Dean Stanton's final film, a fitting send-off for one of the great character actors.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2017: "Leaning Into the Wind: Andy Goldsworthy"
A look at the recent work of landscape artist Andy Goldsworthy, whose visually stunning works engage with nature, examining time and timelessness, creativity and decay.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2017: "Shadowman"
A fascinating documentary about pioneering New York City street artist (and former Vancouverite) Richard Hambleton, a contemporary of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2017: "The Other Side of Hope"
The latest from Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki is a gem, his trademark deadpan humor perfectly balanced with a wry compassion.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2016: "Paterson"
A sweet, eccentric, and nearly perfect film about poetry, English bulldogs, Ohio Blue Tip Matches, and Paterson, New Jersey.
Michael Hayward
Jack Kerouac, francophone
Jack Kerouac, that prototypically “all-American” writer, was born to Québécois parents, and raised in the midst of an expatriate French-Canadian community in the mill town of Lowell, Massachusetts.
Michael Hayward
Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart
Shakespeare & Company, Paris, is one of "The World’s Coolest Bookstores," one of "The 20 Most Beautiful Bookstores in the World"—or both at once.
Michael Hayward
Review: “Awake: The Life of Yogananda”
“Awake” is a documentary about the Hindu yogi and guru, author of the classic “Autobiography of a Yogi”—reportedly the only book Steve Jobs had on his iPad.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2016: "Personal Shopper"
Kristen Stewart stars in a new film from French director Olivier Assayas, in a story that genetically recombines elements of both the thriller and horror genres.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2016: "I Called Him Morgan"
Bebop jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan had been resurrected: back from his heroin addiction and playing as good as ever. Until one snowy, fatal night in New York City, 1972.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2016: "The Death of Louis XIV"
Doctors and courtiers hover anxiously in the wings as the Sun King, Louis XIV, suffers through the final stages of gangrene.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2016: "The Trap (Ottaal)"
Kuttappayi, an orphan, lives a life of rural poverty with his grandfather in Kuttanad, south India. When his grandfather falls ill, his future must be decided.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2016: "Weirdos"
It's July of 1976, and 15-year-old Kit is running away from the small Cape Breton town of Antigonish, heading for the big city: Sydney, NS, where his glamorous, artistic mother lives.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2016: "The Last Family"
A fascinating take on the biopic genre, presenting the life—idiosyncratic, oddly charming, and ultimately tragic—of Polish surrealist painter Zdzisław Beksiński, between 1977 and 2005.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2016: "Maliglutit (Searchers)"
A harrowing story of brutality, kidnapping and revenge from the director of "Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner", shot entirely in the Artic and in the Inuktitut language.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2016: "RiverBlue"
A look at the damaging environmental effects on the rivers of the world, caused by the textile and tanning industries, with "fast fashion" and blue jeans the primary culprits.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2016: "Strangers on the Earth"
A professional cellist decides to walk the Camino—a 600-mile journey across northern Spain—carrying his cello on his back.
Michael Hayward
Review: "Paths of the Soul"
A group of Tibetans villagers leave their village to make a 1200 km "bowing pilgrimage" to Lhasa, continuing a further 1000 km to the "holy mountain" of Kailash, laying their bodies flat on the ground every few steps.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2015: "45 Years"
45 Years is a film about things that have been buried and all but forgotten, and what happens when they are brought into the light once again.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2015: "Homme Less"
A fascinating documentary that takes us inside the dual lives of a 52-year-old man who is barely hanging onto his dreams in New York City.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2015: "Palio"
A wonderfully operatic look at one of the world’s oldest sporting events, a horse race which is held twice a year in a medieval square at the heart of the Tuscan town of Siena.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2015: “Tricks on the Dead: The Story of the Chinese Labour Corps in WWI”
This docudrama shines light on a forgotten corner of World War I. It also asks questions about the process of "making" History.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2015: "Room"
The film adaptation of Emma Donoghue's 2010 novel is only partly successful.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2015: "The Daughter"
Emotionally fraught, but powerful Australian drama.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2015: "Brooklyn"
Brooklyn hits many different notes in the scale of emotions and it hits them perfectly, confidently. An excellent choice for the festival’s opening gala screening.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2015: “Very Semi-Serious” and “Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon”
Two documentaries about the rarified and demanding world of magazine publishing provide useful tips for Geist.
Michael Hayward
Review: "Iris"
Iris Apfel is a nonagenarian fashion icon living in New York City, whose life is celebrated in the last film from the legendary Alfred Maysles.
Michael Hayward
The Poetry Deal
Two books of poetry from veteran writers – one new, one a deluxe re-issue with CD – provide proof that poetry is a lifetime occupation.
Michael Hayward
Review: Lars von Trier's "Nymphomaniac"
Lars von Trier’s latest film, Nymphomaniac, confirms his dual role as one of contemporary cinema’s leading auteur/provocateurs.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2012: Amour
This is the way the world ends: not with a bang but a whimper.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2012: Leviathan
If you've been looking for "eye-level sloshing fish viscera", this is your film.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2012: How to Grow a Band
How to go from bluegrass roots to a "concertgrass" string quintet in easy stages.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2012: The Minister
French politicians gliding through the corridors of the Élysée Palace like sharks.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2012: Abu, Son of Adam
Abu and Aisumma prepare to make their pilgrimage to Mecca.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2012: Nuala
A life lived passionately, if not always wisely.
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2012: El Gusto
The Buena Vista Social Club of the Casbah
Michael Hayward
VIFF 2012: Valley of Saints
A look behind the picture-postcard setting of present day Kashmir.
Michael Hayward
VIFF: Certified Copy
Michael Hayward
VIFF: The Tree
Michael Hayward
VIFF notes: “Do I look like Wallace Shawn?”
Michael Hayward
VIFF: Around a Small Mountain
Michael Hayward
VIFF: Rejoice and Shout
Michael Hayward
VIFF: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
Michael Hayward
From our “Great Literary Adaptations That Got Away” department
Michael Hayward
VIFF: Biutiful
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