FILM REVIEWS:
28 YEARS LATER (UK 2025) ****
Directed by Danny Boyle
Scots Danny Boyle has proven a tremendous force in films with critically acclaimed and box office hits like SHALLOW GRAVE, TRAINSPOTTING, THE BEACH, 28 DAYS LATER and SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE. His latest zombie dystopian gore flick, 28 YEARS LATER the third in the series and the second sequel to 28 DAYS LATER (with a sequel already in the making, shot back to back with this film), is already garnering rave reviews.
28 YEARS LATER is an extremely intense, well-shot horror zombie film that combines emotional drama in the coming-of-age experience of a 12-year-old boy as he tries to save his ill mother despite the zombie apocalypse.
The film begins with a very scary incident, the introduction of the film, which sets the tone that this is a different zombie movie - one is is genuinely scary with human elements at the core of the plot. During the initial outbreak of the Rage virus, a young boy named Jimmy is attacked in the Scottish Highlands by his infected family. Running to a nearby church, Jimmy pleads with his father to help him escape. His father gives Jimmy a crucifix necklace before being overwhelmed by the infected, allowing Jimmy to escape.
The film gets its audience quickly, with words splashed on the screen up-to-date with the current setting. Twenty-eight years later, Great Britain has been placed under quarantine and cut off from the rest of the world. One community of survivors lives on Lindisfarne Island, a safe zone separated from the mainland by a single heavily defended tidal causeway. Among them are Jamie, a scavenger, his wife Isla, and their 12-year-old son Spike (Alfie Williams). Isla (Jodie Comer) is afflicted with memory loss, confusion, frequent headaches, and nosebleeds—the cause of which is unknown. As part of Spike's coming-of-age initiation, he and his father journey to the mainland to hunt the infected. They soon encounter an Alpha, an infected individual that has evolved to be larger and smarter than the others, and take refuge in an abandoned cottage. While staying the night, they observe a distant bonfire.
Cillian Murphy is clearly missing in this film, but newcomer and young kid Alfie Williams is quite the scene-stealer. Williams gets the audience to feel for his demise and his love for his mother and despise for his womanizing father is totally believable in the story.
Shades of Boyle’s previous hits can be noticed in this film, like the colonies formed as in THE BEACH, the hectic communities as in SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE and the crazed drug-like mayhem of TRAINSPOTTING,
There are a few laugh-out-loud parts in the otherwise grim and scary film. The best of these is when Eric, a swede survivor, shows Spike a picture of his girlfriend, who can be seen who have undergone plastic surgery, which is not mentioned. Spike remarks that she must have been allergic to shellfish, judging from the plastic surgery lips.
The only complaint is the upended final segment, which makes total sense, though Boyle and his crew can be forgiven for this part after a terrifying otherwise film experience.
28 years later opens in theatres June 20th with a sequel, though not directed by Boyle already made back-to-back with this one.
Trailer:
ASH (USA 2025) **
Directed by Flying Lotus (Steven Ellison)
ASH is a 2025 horror sci-fi space modern thriller. ASH is directed by Flying Lotus (aka Steven Ellison), written by Jonni Remmler, starring Eiza González (as Riya) and Aaron Paul (as Brion) .
Riya regains consciousness aboard a space station on the eponymous planet Ash (from which the film is titled) surrounded by the bodies of her dead crewmates—but she cannot remember what had happened.
A man named Brion arrives, who Riya almost stabs (false scares), claiming to be her rescuer. But as she battles amnesia and terrifying flashbacks, Riya must decide whether he can be trusted—and whether she played a hand in the massacre.
The film plays like a psychological puzzle: part mystery, part body‑horror survival, heavily inspired by video games like Dead Space, Resident Evil, and films like Alien and The Thing.
But ASH is nothing that audiences have not heard or seen before - all of what transpires comes from the many such films in the genre.
Take, for example, the film’s dialogue: System failure! Reboot! Stand by! Abnormal activity detected. Oxygen level compromised. These are words heard on the soundtrack of ASH. These are standard words heard only too often, clichéd in countless space movies, even in TV series like STAR TREK and LOST IN SPACE.
The film also contains flashing lights that can be annoying that hardly reveal what is in the films’ frame, and odd sounds that no-one can decipher where or what they are - all of which could be described as stylish or confusing. There are also too many similar nightmare sequences combined with jump scares.
Nothing much happens in this slow burn of a horror mystery space thriller which suffers mainly from a weak narrative and stylized visuals that make matters all the more confusing. At the time of writing, ASH has 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but it is best to take this rating with a grain of salt.
The best thing about the film is an imagining of what space exploration on another planet is like. Perhaps in the future, when spacecraft take humans to other planets, the same atmosphere could be experienced. The film also shows that with beauty comes the accompanying dangers.
The film’s second half turns into a bit of psychological thriller. Is Riya losing her memory or can she trust herself? She has already lost some of her memory and she gets flashbacks of what had happened to hr crew. She is also faced with he dilemma of whether to abort the mission or to continue it for the sake of mankind.
The film is to be credited with some stunning visual effects, both the exterior of he spaceship as well as the interiors shot largely in red. The soundtrack features a pounding and occasional plunking piano score. Special effects remind one of ALIEN and THE THING.
It is good to note that the director claims that his film is made for gamers.
ASH opens for streaming on Shudder, the horror streaming service June 16th.
Trailer:
LES BARBARES (MEET THE BARBARIANS) (France 2024) ****
Directed by Julie Delpy
Actress Julie Delpy (star of films by Godard, Kieslowski and Linklater) directs her own film, proving herself totally apt and a force to be reckoned with. She centres her sights on comedy with a message with a film that matters that she delivers in style with lots of hilarity, drama and a bit of satire. The story is set in Paimpont, a small town in France, preparing to welcome a Ukrainian refugee family and is surprised when a Syrian family shows up instead. Every town has its patriots, loyalists and racists, all of whom show their influence on the Syrian family, but that is not perfect as well. Delpy shows the good and bad of both sides with a touching romance between the young Syrian teen in the family and a local French boy to bridge the gap of racism. It might be too obvious, but the ploy works. And the town actually exists. Paimpont sits nestled in Brittany, content with its centuries-old heritage, its crêpes (the Brittany people cook everything with lots of butter, which is also incorporated in the script), and its flattering self-image—a marvellous surprise from Delpy.
In LES BARBARES, director Delpy balances the comedy and drama of the film very well. The comedy and drama both derive from the cultural differences of France and Syria. Both are also accomplished in segments, well put together, as in the best one, where the two Syrian children go to the French school for their very first time. They meet the white kids, one of whom says: ‘Do not look them in he eye,' as all of them face downwards and the Syrian girl and her younger brother arrive. The drama is largely derived from the family searching and waiting for news of their missing brother, Farid.
I have seen the film twice, initially when it premiered at TIFF and again currently when it got a commercial release. The film was entirely enjoyable at TIFF, especially when watching a comedy for a change during a week when I watch 5 films a day. I did not find the film that funny the second time, though the film still managed to elicit quite a few laugh-out-loud laughs from me.
A few good jokes here, especially with the village receiving information that they are getting a Syrian instead of a Ukrainian family. “I already learn to make borscht,” says one. Ukrainians are high on the refugee list, and they ran out of Ukrainians.
And what does the Syrian family and the French village talk about? “Isn’t it not too cold here?” the Syrians are asked, who then say to each other: “All they do is ask about the weather.”
But the film’s best is the segment in which Mdm. Joelle’s class of students each talks about what racism is to them. ‘Leading to suicide from non-confidence, fear of the unknown, hatred of people who are different, etc.’ are a few of the responses.
MEET THE BARBARES is a funny and entertaining French comedy, the best of what commercial French films have to offer, while delivering a powerful message about refugees and living together in harmony in a light and effective way.
Trailer:
ELIO (USA 20225) **
Directed by Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi and Adrian Molina
For centuries, people have called out to the universe looking for answers—in Disney and Pixar's all-new feature film ELIO, the universe calls back! Elio is a young boy whose parents recently passed away in a car accident. Orphaned, Elio is being put under the care of his Aunt Olga, a military woman with little experience raising kids. Elio is not that helpful as he is depressed, obviously missing his parents deeply.
Naive Elio believes in a multiverse, that there is another life, and that perhaps his parents are there. He wishes to be abducted to meet other forms of life.
ELIO is the cosmic misadventure that introduces Elio, a space fanatic with an active imagination and a huge alien obsession. So, when he's beamed up to the Communiverse, an interplanetary organisation with representatives from galaxies far and wide, Elio's all in for the epic undertaking. Mistakenly identified as Earth's leader, Elio must form new bonds with eccentric alien lifeforms, navigate a crisis of intergalactic proportions, and somehow discover who and where he is truly meant to be.
As in all Pixar and Disney Studios animated features, the animation is top-notch notch with many of the films winning Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature. For ELIO, the animation is done with psychedelic colours to represent alien worlds, just as Elio would imagine a trio out of this world.
ELIO follows Disney’s formulaic procedure of making films. There is the lonely boy who finds satisfaction and saves the world, in this case, an alien world, in the process. He makes new friends. The creatures-ninths case, the work like aliens are all super cutely animated, the aliens replacing animals.. The adults do everything for the kids, as Aunt Olga does everything for Elio. Elio gets to save the day. A successful formula works and why change a formula that works well? For one variety. ELIO is terribly boring in its storytelling, and this critic is having a really difficult time staying awake. Unlike the TOY STORY Pixar franchise, which is very inventive with humour catered towards the adults, ELIO is more for younger kids. There is hardly anything humorous to laugh at. Needless to say, children should enjoy the film more than adults.
But one thing that can be criticized is Elio’s behaviour. Though one can understand the trauma poor Elio is going through, Elio behaves largely as a spoiled kid who does everything nd anything he wants. He refuses to eat and hides underneath the table. He gives his poor Aunt Olga a hard time. He escapes from home and hopes to be abducted by aliens. This is one spoilt kid if there was ever one. A kid who does not appreciate what Aunt Olga had sacrificed for him. He also mistreats his friends, who end up bullying him. A well-deserved bullying. But the film calls for the three of them to finally become friends to save the alien world. Cliched territory once again, as seen in many films such as MA VIE EN COURGETTE.
ELIO opens in shares on June 20th.
Trailer:
EYE FOR AN EYE (USA 2024) ***
Directed by Colin Tilley
The film EYE FOR AN EYE is about punishment and revenge. The term originates from the Old Testament. Exodus 21:24 – "eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot." The principle behind "eye for an eye" is lex talionis, or the law of retaliation. The idea is that the punishment should fit the crime in a directly reciprocal manner — if someone caused the loss of an eye, the perpetrator would also lose an eye.
The film begins with a cheerleader doing an excellent choreographed routine (Director of he film, Tilley, is a music video director) before she falls to her death, breaking bones in the process. It turns out to be a nightmare, but what happens after is much worse. The film then moves forward to the Present Day.
The story follows Anna (Whitney Peak), grieving the sudden death of her parents. Anna relocates from New York to a small Florida town to live with her grandmother (S. Epatha Merkerson), whom she’s never met. Isolated and in unfamiliar surroundings, she falls in with a couple of local teens (Finn Bennett and Laken Giles), but when she becomes a bystander to an unforgivable act of violence, she finds herself ensnared by Mr. Sandman – the twisted soul of a tormented child, Vincent who haunts bullies’ dreams before feasting on their eyeballs when they finally wake.
The script by Elisa Victoria and Michael Tully contains some scary dialogue. Patty tells the bullied boy who had his arm was broken by Sean, a bully. ‘What I tell you stays between the two of us. There is something you can do. But you would’ve got to go through with it.”
The boy is about to hear about Mr. Sandman. The character inspired by the classic folklore figure who puts people to sleep, Mr. Sandman, is a twisted horror reimagining in a horror film.
Mr. Sandman operates thus:
He targets bullies or those who’ve committed violent acts.
He also punishes bystanders who fail to speak up, like the main character Anna.
Victims wake up blind, their eyeballs removed, sometimes left alive but traumatized.
Horror films have monsters or predators and victims. Usually, the victims are innocent bystanders or good heroes or heroines, but seldom bad people like bullies. In EYE FOR AN EYE, the victims are bullies, so what befalls them, no matter how violent, is somewhat deserved, and the audience would have no qualms about not feeling sorry for them, despite some quite gory violence. But the script also calls for the predator, Mr. Sandman to target Anna, a bystander who is a bystander who says nothing when witnessing a bad bullying deed.
EYE FOR AN EYE is a fast-moving horror feature with interesting enough characters for the audience to like or hate. Gore and violence add to the ‘entertainment’ in what might be deemed a satisfactory excursion for horror fans.
The script is adapted from Victoria’s graphic novel called “Mr. Sandman. The director, Colin Tilley, is an acclaimed video director. Colin Tilley is an American filmmaker, music video director, and television commercial director. Tilley is the CEO and owner of Boy in the Castle Productions. He has directed more than 300 music videos.)
EYE FOR AN EYE opens June 20th in select theatres and on Demand.
Trailer:
GRENFELL UNCOVERED (UK 2025) ***
Directed by Olaide Sadiq
GRENFELL UNCOVERED is a new documentary that reveals decisions by officials and companies before the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire that made it preventable. Survivors, families, and firefighters share their accounts of the tragedy that took 72 lives.
There are two key elements that make this doc stand out. One is that it is a disaster and disaster films are always a hit with film audiences, all the more if the disaster is a real-life one, like the Titanic or the Titan. The other element is a cover-up story, which makes the doc feel like a true crime drama, which in a way it is. As an additional fact that the action takes place in London and what audiences will have is a sure winner.
First of all, a bit about the Grenfell building: Grenfell Tower was part of the Lancaster West Estate, a council housing complex in North Kensington. The 24-storey tower block was designed in 1967 by Clifford Wearden and Associates, and the Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council approved its construction in 1970. The building contained 120 one-bedroom and two-bedroom flats. The upper 20 (of 24) storeys were residential floors, with each having a communal lobby and six dwellings, with ten bedrooms among them. The lower four storeys were originally used for non-residential purposes.[note 2] Later, two lower floors were converted to residential use, bringing the total to 129 apartments, housing up to 600 people.
The next thing to note is the tower fire. It was the deadliest structural fire in the United Kingdom since the 1988 Piper Alpha oil-platform disaster and the worst UK residential fire since the Blitz of World War II. The fire was started by an electrical fault in a refrigerator on the fourth floor.[note 1] As Grenfell was an existing building originally built in concrete to varying tolerances, gaps around window openings following window installation were irregular and these were filled with combustible foam insulation to maintain air-tightness by contractors. The Grenfell Tower Inquiry began on 14 September 2017 to investigate the causes of the fire and other related issues. Findings from the first report of the inquiry were released in October 2019 and addressed the events of the night. It affirmed that the building's exterior did not comply with regulations and was the central reason why the fire spread, and that the fire service was too late in advising residents to evacuate.
As late as 26 February this year (2025), seven organisations are under investigation for professional misconduct.
GRENFELL UNCOVERED is an insightful and absorbing doc that opens both in the U.K. and on Netflix this week on Fridayn20th of June 2025.
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HIS FATHER’S SON (Canada 2025) ***
Directed by Meelad Moaphi
HIS FATHER’S SON is yet another Iranian film set in a Canadian city since the touted UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE set in Winnipeg won accolades, including the Toronto Film Critics Association's much-coveted Best Canadian Feature Award. HIS FATHER’S SON follows an Iranian family living together, two brothers with their parents in Toronto, while the sons figure out their career paths to success. The film has already won two awards at the 2024 Toronto Reel Asian Film Festival (Audience Choice/Feature and Directors Guild of Canada’s Best Director/Feature). In case one is wondering if Iran is in Asia, it is. Iran is in West Asia.
It does not take a Thanksgiving or wedding, or Christmas (as shown in too many awful Hollywood films of the genre) gathering to bring out family dysfunction. This film proves that family dysfunction is always present and can be tackled at any time. The catalyst of the quarrel is the dismantling of immigrant families over the surfacing of truths that were never resolved constructively. According to the director: “Mine was one of them.”
The film is set in Toronto, and shot mostly in downtown Toronto, including La Banane,
which stands in for the restaurant where the protagonist, Amir, works. Chef Amir (a charismatic Alireza Shojaei) works at a French-cuisine restaurant that presents a few challenges, like the customer who wants coq au vin without wine. For argument's sake, De-alcoholized wine is a type of regular wine that has had most or all of its alcohol removed. One may receive many of the same health benefits of regular red wine when one chooses dealcoholized varieties, of which there are more than 300+ varieties. Amir aims to up his profile through social media, although he can’t seem to meet either his own expectations or those of his parents (Gus Tayari, Mitra Lohrasb), especially his father, who wonders: Why doesn’t Amir cook Persian dishes? Meanwhile, Amir’s younger, Canadian-born brother Mahyar (Parham Rownaghi) seems to cruise through life effortlessly.
The film is more serious than comedic drama, though the dialogue can be considered to be light rather than heavy. The film is, as a result, an easy watch without too many feel-bad feelings.
The film is noticeably quite scarce in terms of objects or people in the frames. The use of extras is at a minimum. For example, at the father’s clothes store where he works, there are no other visible customers in the store when the son visits to buy a shirt. Or in a drive to Niagara, there are no other cars on the road.
This otherwise quiet, moving, and insightful film effectively communicates the message: It takes sensitivity, love, and tolerance for a family to stay together. And if there is an argument, one must give in, though both may be at fault.
The film is in English with some Farsi with English subtitles.
HIS FATHER’S SON opens June 20 in Toronto and June 27 in Vancouver, with Q&As following these shows:
Scotiabank – 259 Richmond St. West
Friday – June 20 – 8:05 pm
Saturday – June 21 – 5:50 pm
Trailer:
SEMI-SOUTER (South Africa 2025) **
Directed by Joshua Rous
SEMI-SOUTER is the much-anticipated sequel to the beloved 2012 Afrikaans film Semi-Soet.
Written by Sandra Vaughn, Anel Alexander and Zandré Coetzer and directed by Joshua Rous, SEMI-SOUTER is a South African comedy showman Afrikana about a power couple. Power couple Jaci and JP find themselves in a bumpy predicament when a new work pitch for a baby brand forces them to play the perfect pretend parents.
Jaci (Anel Alexander) and JP (Nico Panagio) are back – this time as a high-flying married couple who previously vowed to remain child-free. In the original. The couple pretended to be married but ended up falling in love and getting married. In this sequel, they pretend to be baby parents in order to secure a huge account.
Director Rous and the actors try to be funny, but they are more all over the place with unfunny attempts than anything else. The film, obviously aiming at situational humor, family chaos, and warm moments, does not deliver the familiar charm it intended. The only redeeming quality of the film is the fumbling shot in South Africa, where the tourist spots are touted and the audience gets to see how the wealthy white people live.
The two films are not that original in concept either. The first had the couple pretending to be a couple, then ending up falling in love and getting married. This one, the married power couple, who insist on having kids, pretend to be parents only to end up, yes, having a baby at the end.
SEMI-SOUTER opens for streaming on Netflix this week, beginning June 20th.
Trailer:
