After 11 years of bringing you local reporting, the team behind the Vancouver Observer has moved on to Canada's National Observer. You can follow Vancouver culture reporting over there from now on. Thank you for all your support over the years!

Volkmar Richter

Volkmar Richter reviews new movies opening in Vancouver on Fridays.

Tarantino’s Hollywood vision, one President who was stopped and women who demand to sail

Also: how propaganda really works, an old man’s dreams of space travel and this year’s film noir opener

Super-realistic The Lion King, real acting from Awkwafina and Eisenberg’s Self-Defense target

Also why our housing crisis is not unique, why English democracy protesters were attacked 200 years ago and moral decline in Argentina just before a coup

Candid scenes with Leonard Cohen and his muse, housing problems much like ours in Frisco and what we learned about life from the starfish

Also: loud comedy from an Uber car, grim living in an English family and Jews eluding the Nazis in wartime Berlin

More action from Spider-Man, a pagan cult in Midsommar and Wild Rose hurting to sing country

Also: Because We Are Girls, a stunning real story from here in BC, and Too Late To Die Young, a Chilean film that hides its politics

Conflicting toy movies and two films to mark National Indigenous Peoples Day

Also: Anna, the assassin with a slight feminist bent and a Fakir’s international wanderings

Two comedies about women at work and a stunning documentary about an Aboriginal artist lead this week

And they’re joined by a musical look back, a fashion industry success story that didn’t last and the hipster zombie film that opened Cannes this year

Two giant sequels and several worthy smaller films reviewed

Including new appreciations of Emily Dickinson and Pavarotti, the real story of auto builder John DeLorean, a British filmmaker inspired to draw on her own life and two oddball seniors falling in love

Doing it like Elton John, looking for justice in Canada, defying convention in Bollywood

Also Denys Arcand’s rant about the evils of money, a compassionate court dealing with sex trade workers and a series coming soon to showcase a celebrated woman filmmaker from France

Aladdin drops in again, the Booksmart girls wonder what they missed and Shakespeare retires sad

Also: a refreshing love story from India and Christo has you Walking on Water