Part of the 30 countries festival. Canada

Women always know more about the facts of life because most of the facts happen to women - a mother to her daughter in Nanci Kincaid's collection of short stories "Pretending the Bed is a Raft"

My Life Without Me, Isabel Coixet's adaptation of Pretending the Bed is a Raft, is beautiful. There is just enough whimsy in this story of a young mother facing death to prevent it from becoming yet another…

Part of the 30 countries festival. South Korea

Sometimes knowing a film's genre helps the audience to understand what it is seeing, expectations and all that. Other times it just adds to the confusion when expectations aren't met. And then you have films like this one that you can't categorize because it is all over the map.

The Isle has elements of horror, drama, crime and torture porn but it doesn't amount to any of these things really. Set in…

My ticket stub says that I saw Silver Linings Playbook but it can't be the same film everyone else has seen. It just can't be. This one was supposed to be charming, enjoyable, fun even. It won the TIFF Audience Award. It was supposed to have great characters. Cooper and Lawrence were supposed to have given wonderful performances. DeNiro, it was said, was back. Jackie Weaver, wait, was she in this?

The film I saw was bland and boring. I…

I heard people talk about immortality,
but I ain't seen it.
l wondered how it'd be when l died.
What it'd be like to know that this breath now
was the last one you was ever gonna draw.
l just hope l can meet it the same way she did.
With the same... calm.
Cos that's where it's hidden -
the immortality l hadn't seen.

What's it like to be lying in the middle of an unfamiliar jungle with birds…