"We are living in an era that is increasingly cruel, mean, and rigid," says director Matthew Rankin, but "art still has the ...

It’s not unusual for a city to double for another metropolis in movies. New Yorkers have long been able to spot when Toronto ...

Matthew Rankin, though, has gone more than a step, or maybe 85 steps, further. His “Universal Language” takes place in Winnipeg, Manitoba, but the culture is entirely Iranian. Farsi is the spoken ...

I get the feeling Canadian filmmaker Matthew Rankin has some unresolved issues with his homeland. With his 2019 feature film debut The Twentieth Century, he concocted an alt-history psycho-satire ...

Matthew Rankin, though, has gone more than a step, or maybe 85 steps, further. His “Universal Language” takes place in Winnipeg, Manitoba, but the culture is entirely Iranian. Farsi is the ...

The new movie "Universal Language" draws a line between two very different cities - one East and one West. The Eastern city is Tehran - Iran's storied capital with thousands of years of history ...

“Universal Language,” directed by Matthew Rankin, is a gently funny, gently moving, slightly surrealist little comedy that’s aimed at two groups of people: Canadians, specifically but not ...

Take this four-star tour of a Winnipeg that may never exist. The stony, terse comedy “Universal Language” has all the wind, snow and monotony one might envision in Manitoba, especially for ...

It’s these type of oddball flourishes, presented with the straightest of faces, that turn Universal Language into something besides random vignettes corralled together into one free-form goof.