FILM REVIEWS:
ENDLESS COOKIE (Canada 2025) ***
Directed by Seth Scriver and Peter Scriver
Through a series of vignettes -- some tragic, some funny, all a little bizarre -- this animated feature documentary explores the complex bond between two half brothers, one Indigenous, one white, spanning bustling 1980s Toronto to the present day isolated First Nations community of Shamattawa.
One thing for sure is that the animated feature ENDLESS COOKIE does not feel like a documentary, though it is classified as one. For one, it is animated and goofy, so it has a Looney Tunes characteristic uncommon in a doc. Also, the story about two brothers meeting up in an indigenous country to make a movie sounds like made-up fiction. Truth be told, these two half-brothers did get together to try to make an animated movie after winning a movie grant. So all of it is true and making the film with animation also does not disqualify the film from being a documentary. The result is a weird, very amusing. original indigenous animated documentary that is a one-of-a-kind. The humour is funny with a lot of indigenous slants and the animation is also kooky, making up for Hollywood-style expensive special effects computer animation.
The two half-brothers are Seth from Toronto and Pete from Manitoba. Seth, now 47, says that Pete, 62, is “one of the best storytellers I know.”So he decided to audio-record Pete’s stories and then animate them. This is the birth of the documentary ENDLESS COOKIE, which took an endless time to make, according to Pete’s daughter Cookie, one of Pete’s nine children, owing to too many disruptions, as humorously depicted in the film.
Though the film is amusing for its spontaneity and humour, this trait can also be distracting and annoying. The film lacks a strong narrative, which could be strengthened with fewer distractions. The directors are not balancing this delicate balance.
ENDLESS COOKIE is a fresh, innovative, and indigenous animated documentary with loony and arguably accurate depictions of what it is to live in the Manitoba reservations. Anything can happen with the director’s often amusing distractions that sometimes distract from the main idea at hand, the idea of which is never made clear for the most part.
ENDLESS COOKIE is the Audience Award winner for Best Canadian Documentary at Hot Docs 2025! opens June 13 in Toronto (TIFF Lightbox), Vancouver (VIFF Centre),
Winnipeg (Dave Barber Cinematheque) and Montreal!
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I DON’T UNDERSTAND YOU (USA 2024) **
Directed by David Joseph Craig
“We can’t even get to dinner, how can we raise s child?” Dom is asked by Cole. This is the story of two dads in the process of adopting a baby boy as they face uncertainties.
The title I DON’T UNDERSTAND YOU refers not to language but the understanding of how one feels and reacts- i.e., how one can understand oneself and thus live with one another.
The 2024 dark comedy film, directed and written by David Joseph Craig and Brian Crano. follows Dom (Nick Kroll) and Cole (Andrew Rannells), a married gay couple from Los Angeles, who travel to Italy to celebrate their 10th anniversary and prepare for the adoption of their first child. The mother is played by Amanda Seyfried. Their vacation takes a chaotic turn when they become stranded in rural Italy due to a car mishap and a language barrier.
The comedy in the film belongs to what can be termed an uncomfortable comedy. This comedy genre refers to a premise in which mishaps, one after another, fall on the subject or subjects. One best example is the 1970 Arthur Hiller comedy written by Neil Simon, in which married couple Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis travel to New York City only to have lost their luggage, be mugged, kidnapped, among other mishaps. One wants the best for the couple and it is often difficult to laugh at the troubles faced by the protagonists.
I DON’T UNDERSTAND belongs to the genre of uncomfortable comedy in which one mishap after mishap falls on protagonists Dom and Cole. Invited to a special dinner at a remote farm restaurant arranged by an old friend of Dom's father, the couple gets lost en route and ends up stuck in the mud during a rainstorm. A gruff local farmer with a shotgun initially alarms them but ultimately helps them reach the restaurant, where they are warmly welcomed by the owner, Zia Luciana. However, a tragic accident at the dinner sets off a series of darkly comedic events, as Dom and Cole attempt to navigate the ensuing chaos without derailing their adoption plan. The script adds two more elements to the picture. One is that the couple is gay and the other is the baby adoption.
The film blends elements of horror (there is some killing going on) and comedy. Overall, the comedy is not terribly funny or as black as desired, though the comedy can be described to be amusing at best. Kroll and Rannells do well as the gay couple, with the film taking a generally positive attitude towards LGBT+ issues, despite the story’s setting in rural Italy. But the film has a mean-spirited tone as can be witnessed not only in the characters killed but an innocent Italian arrested for the murders he never committed. This can be compared to films made by Francois Truffaut, the director described as a kind director, in which the innocent characters in his films never get punished unfairly.
I DON’T UNDERSTAND opens at the Bell Lightbox in Toronto on June 6th, just in time for Pride month.
Trailer:
THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME(USA 2025) ***½
Directed by Wes Anderson
Wes Anderson’s latest feature THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME is as exasperating as it is inventive and entertaining, due largely to Anderson’s unique method of storytelling, often with his characters narrating the story to the camera amidst vivid sets, wardrobe, and music, this one again by Academy Award Winner French Alexandre Desplat.
THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME Plays like Anderson’s last two films, ASTEROID CITY and THE FRENCH DISPATCH, so if these two films were too much for you, best avoid this latest effort. Anderson toned down the excesses several notches with his recent spate of Roald Dahl short films, one of which, THE WONDERFUL STORY OF HENRY SUGAR, won him the Oscar last year for Best Short.
The film is a stylized black comedy that only Anderson can best deliver in his own stylized way. Set in the fictional 1950s nation of Greater Independent Phoenicia, the film follows Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro), a flamboyant European tycoon embroiled in financial misconduct and an ambitious infrastructure project, the latest called THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME, the details of which are left to the audience to imagine. Korda is part of an ambitious multi-part attempt to industrialise Phoenicia via a series of gargantuan infrastructure projects and he hopes to pocket 5% of revenue for the next 150 years. Korda has secured the investment to pay for it, but unfortunately, the international bureaucrats manipulate the price of a vital construction component, making everything much more expensive. In essence, the story follows Korda, accompanied by Liesl and Michael Cera’s hapless Norwegian tutor Bjorn, as he tries to extract more money from his investors as he enacts his grandest plan yet to protect his family fortune.
Facing international scrutiny and assassination attempts, Korda appoints his estranged daughter, Sister Liesl (Mia Threapleton), a 21-year-old nun, as his sole heir. Together with her tutor, Bjorn Lund (Michael Cera), they navigate a world of industrial espionage, political intrigue, and personal redemption. These are the three main characters of the story though many others appear, many of whom are played by an impressive cast of cameos that include Benedict Cumberbatch, Willem DeFoe, Scarlett Johansson, F. Murray Abraham, Rupert Friend, Tom Hanks, Richard Ayoade, Riz Ahmed, Jeffrey Wright, Bill Murray among many others.
The film as like his previous two films, boasts meticulously crafted sets and a whimsical visual style that should delight his fans. Needless to say, there is always something at the corner of every scene that will surprise. But Anderson does not care about scientific accuracy. The scene in which a plane in flight has its window smashed open does not result in Korda sucked out of the plane. Another is the quicksand segment in which Korda sinks into the quicksand with only his head above the quicksand. For quicksand, this does not happen as the body never sinks below waste level due to the density of the body and the fact that he pulls himself out is not possible. It takes tremendous strength to achieve this feat,
Filming took place at Babelsberg Studios in Germany (the film being an American and German co-production) with production designer Adam Stockhausen and set decorator Anna Pinnock creating elaborate indoor sets, including a surreal depiction of heaven featuring Willem Dafoe as a moral interrogator. The great amount of effort director Anderson has put into the film can be observed if one stays to the end to read all the closing credits, in which he thanks all those who have donated their craft to the film.
The film premiered at Cannes and opens widely on June 6th.
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THE RITUAL (USA 2025) *
Directed by David Midell
In the classic Bob Hope and Lucille Ball comedy Don Weis’ 1963 CRITIC’S CHOICE, Hope plays a famous theatre critic. Ball, who plays his wife, says that when he returns from a play he totally hates, he is happy as a lark with so much to write about. For the new Al Pacino/ Dan Stevens exorcist horror movie, film critics will have a field day writing about what is not only the worst exorcism film in decades but the worst film for that matter.
The Ritual is a 2025 American horror film directed by David Midell and written by Midell and Enrico Natale. Based on a true story, it follows priests Theophilus Riesinger (Al Pacino) and Joseph Steiger (Dan Stevens) as they attempt to put aside their differences to save an allegedly possessed young woman, Emma Schmidt (Abigail Cowen), through a series of dangerous exorcisms. The film is set to be released by XYZ Films on June 6, 2025.
The are just too many things wrong with the film, that it is hard to list all of them. First and foremost, there is hardly any plot in the film. The whole story involves exorcising this demon from the poor female victim. And success is far from hand. Besides the zero plot, comes zero suspense, zero mystery and zero twists or turns in the plot. This makes matters worse, director Midell is too fond of using hand held camera instead of a steadycam, with the result of an imminent headache for many of the audience. Pacino is so out of shape and scruffy, he is hardly recognizable in the role. Stevens also loses most of his charm in the role of a priest who is brought into an exorcism. Pacino has the Max Von Sydow role while Stevens (Ben Foster was originally hired) plays the Jason Miller’s young priest and Cowen the possessed Linda Blair role. Stevens and Pacino are largely wasted in their terrible roles, performances best forgotten. Cowen’s sweaty performance is the typical clichéd one expected in an exorcism movie, where the actress changes tone in voice and spews out vulgarities. The film is just one large exorcism segment, one exorcism scene after another, increasing in intensity, but not intelligence or coherence. The audience is led to believe that all this is based on true events, with words written on the screen and the start and end of the film, in manuscript writing, which is also almost impossible to decipher, before it disappears from the screen.
Overall, the film has been panned by both critics and audiences alike, and the reason is obvious. THE RITUAL is just an awful film. It opens in theatres on June 6th. The film is supposed to be ‘inspired’ by the 1935 book ‘Begone Satan!’ The film was aimed to be an authentic portrayal of Emma Schmidt, an American woman whose demonic possession culminated in harrowing exorcisms. Her case remains the most thoroughly documented exorcism in American history.
THE RITUAL opens in theatres June 6th.
Trailer:
THAT THEY MAY FACE THE RISING SUN (Ireland 2023) ***½
Directed by Pat Collins
The slow burn of a light viewing drama of everyday rural Irish life is adapted from John McGahern’s acclaimed 2002 novel. The film is set in rural County Leitrim during the early 1980s. The film follows Joe and Kate Ruttledge, a couple who have returned from London to settle near Joe’s childhood home. Joe is a writer, and Kate is an artist; together, they seek a quieter life immersed in the rhythms of the countryside and its close-knit community.
County Leitrim is a county in Ireland. located just south of(central) of Northern Ireland, It is in the province of Connacht and is part of the Northern and Western Region. It is named after the village of Leitrim. Leitrim County Council is the local authority for the county, which had a population of 35,199 according to the 2022 census.
There will be no one left but ducks and warrens, says a character, Patrick of the people in the countryside.
This is a film of the Northern Irish countryside. And a slow one at that. The film opens with a long shot of a landscape with piano playing amidst the opening credits. A charter says later on: “The rain comes and then the morning and the sun shines. The children grow old and die. And there is not a whisper fit.” The title also implies a slow-moving film, but forgoes Irish and those who love anything Irish, the film is not without its rewards. There is plenty of rural countryside to look at and admire, and the slow pace of the Irish on display indicates that making money in a fast-paced world is not always the best thing to do.
“So you're happy then?" Joe is asked at one point in the movie, His answer: ”We have our health, peaceful life, work that suits us. What more can you ask for?”
The film, contains few dramatic plot twists, but offers a contemplative portrait of everyday Northern Irish life. The events unfolds over the course of a year, capturing the passing seasons and the subtle dynamics among neighbours, including characters like Patrick, a sharp-tongued bachelor farmer, and "The Shah," Joe’s uncle, thinking of retiring, who runs the local garage. The narrative emphasizes daily rituals, communal gatherings, and moments of quiet reflection, portraying the complexities and humanity of rural Irish life.
The couple, Joe and Kate, make a lovely couple living in nature’s paradise. Trouble arrives when Kate is asked to manage an art gallery in London, something she has always wanted to do. Her husband Joe wishes she would not go, but leaves it up to her to make up her mind to do what is best for her, or perhaps the best for both of them. Her decision is left after the film. The film also ends with a solemn funeral of a much-loved member of the community.
Reminiscent of the beauty of the recent Irish film, a few years back, THE QUIET GIRL,THAT THEY MAY FACE THE RISING SUN is a quietly moving drama about living it out in nature in rural Ireland. Trials also exist though the film largely contemplates the lasting happiness that passes unnoticed. A beautiful film!
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