FILM REVIEW:
53 DOMINGOS (53 SUNDAYS) (Spain 2026) ***
Directed by Cesc Gay
Three brothers meet to discuss their octogenarian father, who has started showing strange behaviour.
Cesc is no newcomer to directing. He is known for Truman (2015), Nico and Dani (2000) and En la ciudad (2003), small entertaining little movies, just like this one.
The pleasure of 53 DOMINGOS lies in the keen observations of the family dynamics. How the family members argue, make mountains out of molehills and then get irritated and make more mountains out of molehills. The family could be called dysfunctional, but this dysfunctionality can be seen in almost every family. There is sibling rivalry and friction over how the father comes into the picture. The issues examined in the film are uni resale - an aging parent and what to do with him - to put him in a home or have one (which one?) of the siblings look after him.
Though not plot-heavy, the film is a sharp observation revealing a messy confrontation that exposes years of tension and unresolved conflict. It's humorous to see how one little remark becomes a catalyst for an out-of-control argument.
53 DOMINGOS (53 SUNDAYS) opens for streaming on Netflix on March 27th.
Trailer:
AFTER THE RAIN: PUTIN’S STOLEN CHILDREN COME HOME (UK/Ukraine 2024) ***
Directed by Sarah McCarthy
AFTER THE RAIN: PUTIN’S STOLEN CHILDREN COME HOME is advertised as a powerful and deeply human documentary from director Sarah McCarthy that confronts one of the most harrowing humanitarian crises of the modern era. Set in a forest retreat on the Baltic Sea, the film follows a group of Ukrainian families as they begin the slow and painful process of healing at an animal therapy retreat in Estonia, after their children were illegally deported to Russia during the ongoing war.
At the heart of the story are the children themselves – survivors of forced separation – who begin to rediscover trust and joy through animal-assisted therapy with golden retrievers and Palomino horses. In the hands of compassionate councillors, their trauma gradually unfolds, revealing the emotional and psychological toll of displacement, fear, and resilience.
Of all the children attending the retreat, the film focuses on two of them. One is a precocious girl, Sasha, who loves to talk and is hyperactive. She and her father were stopped at a checkpoint, and her father was taken away. The father was away for three hours before she was taken away to Moscow. The father is with her at the retreat. She also lost her mother at the age of 8 months, and she is always looking for a mother. When meeting any woman, she first looks to see if there is a wedding ring of her finger before asking her if she had children or is married. The other is Veronika. She was first one to hear the overhead jet fighters in her home, sh claims. The councillor says that she smiles at almost every emotion she sees. Veronika is accompanied by her elderly grandmother, who apparently is the one who had found her. Veronika claims she spent quite a lot of days in solitary confinement, but unlike one who has spent three weeks in solitary confinement. Obviously, she is not the same after the experience.
Despite the intent and content of the doc, none would have expected something more shocking or eye-opening to take away with water the film. There are too many scenes of the children just being children, and these scenes could have been taken out of any children’s camp.
Still, the doc brings audiences to the story of stolen children, an important issue and something that should never happen in the world. Truly, Vladimir Putin should be arrested and imprisoned for this dire state of affairs.
AFTER THE RAIN: PUTIN’S STOLEN CHILDREN COME HOME, the doc NYC grand jury prize nominee, premieres exclusively in INDIEPIXUnlimited this Friday, March 27th, 2026.
Trailer:
BTS: THE RETURN (South Korea/USA 2026) ***
Directed by Edwin Earl Lewis
Who is BTS, and what is their new Netflix original movie about? Unless one is familiar with pop music, the name is universal, and every pop loving teen would know of this famous Korean group.
BTS: The Return is a Netflix documentary that follows the global K-pop group BTS during one of the most important moments of their career—their reunion after years apart.
Adults should also be familiar with BTS. BTS just appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon this week. BTS is a 7-member band, each of whom speaks English, though not that well.
BTS (Korean: Bangtan sonyeondan; lit. 'Bulletproof Boy Scouts'), also known as the Bangtan Boys, is a South Korean hip hop boy group formed in 2010. The band consists of Jin, Suga, J-Hope, RM, Jimin, V, and Jung Kook, who co-write or co-produce much of their material. Although a hip hop group, they expanded their musical style to incorporate a wide range of genres, while their lyrics have focused on subjects including mental health, the troubles of school-age youth and coming of age, loss, the journey towards self-love, individualism and the consequences of fame and recognition. Their discography and adjacent work have also referenced literature, philosophy and psychology, and include an alternate universe storyline.
On June 14, 2022, the group announced a scheduled pause in group activities to enable the members to complete their 18 months of mandatory South Korean military service, which they all completed by June 2025. Their first group album in almost four years, Arirang, was released on March 20, 2026.
This doc documents the group’s return, as they meet in Los Angeles for their reunion album, through interviews with each of the members. They begin recording a new album called Arirang while reconnecting creatively after years of separation. It disinteresting to see them trying to figure out who they are now—as a group and as individuals.
The issues should interest a branded audience more than just the teen idols of the group.
BTS: THE RETURN is not just the making of. At best, the doc covers deeper issues while demonstrating the emotional portrait of a comeback—showing BTS at a vulnerable turning point as they try to redefine themselves after years of fame, pressure, and separation.
BTS: THE RETURN is a Netflix original doc that opens for streaming on March 27th.
Trailer:
A MAGNIFICENT LIFE (Marcel et Monsieur Pagnol)(Belgium/France/Lux 2025) ***½
Directed by Sylvain Chomet
When one hears of a film made about Marcel Pagnol, nostalgia comes immediately to mind. Two of the most beloved French films of all time, JEAN DE FLORETTE and MANON DES SOURCES, are based on his novels.
In 1955, 60-year-old Marcel Pagnol was a well-known and acclaimed playwright and filmmaker. When the editor-in-chief of ELLE magazine commissions a weekly column about Pagnol's childhood, he sees this as a great opportunity to go back to his artistic roots: writing. Realising his memory is failing him and deeply affected by the disappointing results of his last two plays, Pagnol begins to doubt his ability to continue his work. That is, until Little Marcel - the young boy he used to be - appears to him as if by magic. Together, they will explore Marcel Pagnol's incredible life and bring back to life his most cherished encounters and memories.
Marcel Pagnol, born on February 28, 1895, in Aubagne ( Bouches-du-Rhône ) and died in Paris on April 18, 1974, is a French writer, playwright, filmmaker, and producer.
He became famous with Topaze, a play created in Germany in 1927 and then presented in France in October 1928In 1934, he founded his own production company and film studios in Marseille, then made numerous films with the great actors of the period, including Raimu, Fernandel and Pierre Fresnay, in films such as Angèle (1934), Regain (1937) or La Femme du boulanger (1938). After 1956, he withdrew from film and theatre and began writing his childhood memoirs, including La Gloire de mon père* and Le Château de ma mère. Both were also made into films. Finally, in 1962, he published L'Eau des collines, a two-volume novel: *Jean de Florette * and *Manon des Sources *, inspired by his film *Manon des Sources *, made ten years earlier and starring Jacqueline Pagnol.
A MAGNIFICENT LIFE is directed by Chomet, who has never failed to impress. In this film, wonder is everywhere, especially when he shows Paris to his audience. As Marcel and his wife arrive in Paris from Marseilles, raining and just getting a last-minute, drab room, the camera shifts to the animated lights of the night, sous les toits de Paris, beautifully animated and accompanied by classical French music. There is a certain magic in Paris that emerges from the ground. Marcel tells his wife only to hear her rebuttal about the water (the rain) that drops from the sky. Director Chomet also takes his subject through the world wars.
The film opens with Marcel in his senior days, where his writing has failed to attract audiences, though he is still respected by the readers of Elle Magazine. He reminisces about his youth, and the film goes back in time to his arrival in Paris to teach Latin. He meets Paul and begins his new career as a writer, but his wife, who hates Paris, eventually leaves him. The film’s story follows Marcel’s life closely, including his efforts to cast actor Raimu to perform his play set in Marseilles, as well as the writing of the play Topaze, originally titled The Beauty and the Beast.
The animated feature is screener here in English, spoken with an English accent. It would be more accurate to have a French soundtrack with English subtitles.
What is impressive about director Chomet’s tactic is the use of a younger Marcel that takes the older version of himself through a reflective look at his entire life. The framing device — a somewhat fading artist reconnecting with his younger self — gives the movie both emotional weight and a sense of “looking back,” making it a character study about aging, regret, memory loss, and creative doubt
A MAGNIFICENT LIFE is full of wonder and magic, with a soundtrack, animation, and dialogue that captures Marcel Pagnol’s magnificent life, doing the writer, playwright, and filmmaker justice.
Trailer:
THE RED LINE (Thailand 2026) ***½
Directed by Sitisiri Mongkolsiri
Three women fall prey to a ruthless phone scam. To settle the score, they decide to ‘take back their lives’ by taking on the criminal network that stole their money and their dignity. But will they? This is the RED LINE that the film title refers to. The “red line” is crossed when
They stop being victims seeking justice… and become people willing to break the law to get it.
The film begins with a housewife and mother called Orn being scammed in what sounds like a typical scam that most audiences would already be familiar with. Orn loses both her and her husband’s money and her daughter’s trust educational fund. The police do nothing. “I am an idiot mother,” she tells her husband, Benz, who is a little sympathetic. But Orn lives in a nightmare, and needs to show that she is no idiot mother and smart enough to get her money back. She is the brains of the trip, a vigilante, and three female musketeers. This is also a strong, female-character-driven story.
The other two scammed are a cosmetics cream seller with her grandmother, who has lost all her savings through the scam. The third is a physical therapist (whom the other two call a doctor) who has lost all her savings for the condo that she has saved to buy.
Other characters include a hacker and Aood, the scamming crew supervisor who also steals a lot of the money that belongs to his Chinese bosses. Aood is given a loving wife and son, for the audience to feel a bit more sympathetic for this villain, who is only too glad to see the scammed lose all their money. Stupid bitches is what he calls them.
The scammers are good. This is one of the first films that has gone into the intricate scamming network, which exists internationally between the Chinese and Thai borders. The Chinese are greatly depicted as the bad guys - no surprise since this is a Thai production. The film also goes into the computer details, and how scamming accounts and hacking can also occur. This makes this Thai thriller stand out among other scam movies. The emotional element is also strong in the film, with each scammed victim losing much more than the money
THE RED LINE serves as a successful action-driven morality tale that, though running long at two hours and fifteen minutes, moves fast enough with sufficient action set pieces (climactic car chase and shoot-outs included) that it is entertaining as it is thought-provoking.
The film shows that removing the villain does not solve the problem. That person will be replaced. The system still goes on, and people will be continually scammed. The film also questions how far one would go to cross the red line.
The intriguing characters drive the narrative as well as make the movie. One of the secondary characters featured is the hacker known as OJ. OJ enables everything. He provides the technical means to track and expose the scammers. Without him, the group couldn’t act. By the end, He stands slightly apart—less emotionally invested. But he still crosses legal lines by helping them.
THE RED LINE, one of the better Thai Netflix original movies, opens for streaming on March 26th.
Trailer:
TWO PROSECUTORS (France/Germany/Netherlands/Latvia/Romania/Lithuania/Ukraine 2025) ****
Directed by Sergey Loznitsa
In 1937, amid Joseph Stalin's Great Purge, Kornyev, a young Soviet prosecutor who recently graduated from law school, comes across a letter written by a prisoner in Bryansk. Believing the man to be the victim of NKVD corruption, he attends the prison and obtains a visit through his oversight role in the local prosecutor's office.
In the prison, after much unnecessary waiting, Kornyev meets Stepniak, an imprisoned Old Bolshevik and local party stalwart. He earns the old man's trust by recounting how he had attended one of Stepniak's speeches about truth and Bolshevism at his law school. Stepniak shows Kornyev torture wounds received after refusing to falsely confess and begs him to tell Stalin or members of the Politburo about the wrongful convictions and illegal actions taken against loyal citizens who learn of or resist the NKVD's corruption. After enduring a long wait, Kornyev meets Vyshinsky, tells him about the conditions in Bryansk, and shows him Stepniak's bloody letter. Kornyev also explains that he came directly to Vyshinsky because he fears the local prosecutor's office is cowed by the local NKVD. Vyshinsky tells him that without strong documentary evidence, his office cannot open an inquiry into the NKVD and sends him back to Bryansk with documents authorizing him to conduct further investigations.
TWO PROSECUTORS has a Kafkaesque (from the writer Franz Kafka), feel of unsettling, absurd, and oppressive quality—like the worlds in his novels such as The Trial or The Metamorphosis. This is where the greatest pleasure of the film lies, in the creation and delivery of this mood and atmosphere. This is often created with a static camera with almost no movement and long takes, minimal editing, resulting in an effective and cold, controlled visual composition that almost makes the film look as if it is in black and white.
The Kafkaesque absurdity if felt in many of the film’s set pieces. One is the bureaucratic nightmare in which the young prosecutor, Kornyev, faces when he enters the government building to make an appointment with the prosecutor general - a sequence that lasts 15 minutes of screen time. At the Procurator General's office, Kornyev struggles to navigate the Soviet bureaucracy but is given a chance at an appointment after an earnest plea to Procurator General Andrey Vyshinsky's secretary. When a lady worker sees him searching for the office. She asks him who he is looking for. When he replies to the prosecutor general, she replies that if he had an appointment with him, he would know where to find him. When Kornyev finally finds who appears to be the secretary, he is told that he is not only on a doubtful list of appointments. The system, especially the prison system, does not make any sense with the authority figures unreachable, vague, or arbitrary. Kornyev is trapped in this absurdist world.
The TWO PROSECUTORS of the film title are Kornyey and the Procurator General.
The film had its world premiere in the main competition of the 78th Cannes Film Festival on 14 May 2025, where it won the François Chalais Prize. The film opens on March 27th and is definitely worth a look.
Trailer:
THEY WILL KILL YOU (USA 2025) ***½
Directed by Kirill Sokolov
Asia Reeves and her sister Maria attempt to flee from their abusive father but are cornered at an unnamed convenience store. Asia shoots him and is arrested, while Maria remains stuck in the custody of their father. This is the exciting introduction to the film, which sets the tone for the rest of the fast-paced film.
The basic premise of the film follows Asia Reaves, an ex-con trying to rebuild her life, who takes a job as a live-in housekeeper in a luxury New York high-rise called The Virgil.
But almost immediately, something feels wrong:
The building has a history of mysterious disappearances
The residents are secretive, wealthy, and unsettling
Strange rituals and symbols begin to surface.
She soon realizes she hasn’t taken a job…
She’s walked into a trap.
The twist in the story is that the building is actually run by a Satanic cult made up of elite residents. Housekeepers (a =nd there are quite a lot of them) are being used as human sacrifices
Ten years later (from the introduction of the film), Asia arrives at The Virgil, an exclusive high-rise building in New York, posing as the new maid. She is greeted by building manager Lily, who explains that Virgil is 100 years old and occupied by the wealthy and elite. Asia goes to sleep in her quarters, where several masked intruders, including residents Kevin and Sharon, break in and attack her. They are shocked to discover Asia is armed and highly skilled at defending herself, managing to kill all of her assailants. The best line of the film is then uttered by Lily, “Who the fuck are you?”Asia confronts Lily and demands to know the location of Maria, who works at the Virgil as a maid. Asia’s attackers resurrect, and she flees into the vents.
Asia is saved by Lily’s husband, Ray, who explains that Virgil is a temple to Satan and the residents have been made immortal by performing human sacrifices. The human sacrifice allows the worshippers to be immortal. Unless they fail, and then they will die. The two travel up a floor, unaware they are being followed by Sharon’s sentient eyeball. The two meet with Maria, who reveals she is aware of what is happening at the Virgil and does not want to leave. Asia knocks her unconscious, but she and Ray are attacked by the cultists.
Besides Zazie Beetz in the title role, the film contains two heavyweights. One is Patricia Arquette as Lilith Woodhouse (i,e, Lily) and the other is Tom Felton (one of Harry Potter’s roommates, the one who is his rival) as a cult member.
With a running time of and you and a half, THEY WILL KILL YOU is an efficiently and effectively made action horror comedy that is at least original enough (it is not a sequel) besides the human sacrifice premise. The title says what the film is all about, and horror aficionados should be pleased.
THEY WILL KILL YOU opens in theatres Friday with early showings Thursday night.
Trailer:
WHAT DOES THAT NATURE SAY TO YOU (South Korea 2025) ***
Directed by Hong Sang-soo
WHAT DOES THAT NATURE SAY TO YOU is the latest film from South Korean director Hong Sang-soo, considered one of the most distinctive contemporary filmmakers. His films often look simple on the surface, but they have a very recognisable style and philosophy.
WHAT DOES THAT NATURE SAY TO YOU (2025) is a South Korean comedy-drama by Hong Sang-soo about a 30-something, struggling poet named Donghwa (Ha Seongguk). He takes his girlfriend, Junhee (Kang Soyi), to meet her parents at their suburban home, where he spends a long, drunken day with them that ultimately leads to the unravelling of his romantic and artistic ideals
Hong Sang-soo’s films are deemed ‘special’ because they turn ordinary conversations and small moments into philosophical cinema—using repetition, awkward humour, and minimalist filmmaking to explore how people misunderstand each other.
The repetitive part of the director Hong is immediately noticeable at the start of the film. Junhee mentions to her boyfriend that her father built the house for her grandmother, not twice but three times. There is a lot of dialogue before Donghwa is invited to the house.
There are different ways of showing the love between a couple in a film. One is to watch a passionate kiss between the two lovers. Another is the profession of love between the two, and yet another might be an erotic sex scene. In Hong’s film, the love between Donghwa and Junhee is shown by a quiet conversation between Junhee’s father and Donghwa. The father first talks about his love for his wife, and this is followed by Donghwa saying that he loves his daughter. When the couple are shown in the film before this moment, there is not a whole lot of affection shown in one form or another.
The film unravels in unnamed chapters, 1, 2, 3 and so on, offering different stages of the evening. The film, as in all of director Hong’s other films, is a slow burn. The pleasure to be obtained is often in the observations that the audience makes and not from any action scenes. Patience is a virtue and is definitely required here to appreciate Hong’s film. But it must be said that a lot comes from the actors’ performances as well. If a character gets annoying, as Junhee’s father occasionally does, the film gets annoying too.
Whether one can enjoy Hong’s film depends on the individual. For that reason, the film WHAT DOES THAT NATURE SAY TO YOU is given 3 stars (out of 5). There is nothing really distinctive between this film and Hong’s other films that would warrant it an extra star. Or anything really awful for the film to be considered a failure. It is a Hong Sang-soo film, and his fans will get what they expect.
WHAT DOES THAT NATURE SAY TO YOU is in itself a question that is posed to the audience to answer as the film progresses.
Trailer:
WHAT DOES THAT NATURE SAY TO YOU screens in Toronto at the Bell Lightbox on April 2nd. Other dates and cities listed below....
