LE BUS: LES BLEUS EN GREVE (The Bus: A French Football Mutiny) (France 2026) ***½
Directed by Jérôme Fritel and Christophe Astruc
This French documentary revisits the French football team’s controversial 2010 World Cup and the bus strike that sparked global headlines and national outrage. It all began with football coach Raymond Domenech getting into a spat with one of the footballers, who ended up calling the coach vulgarities before being banned from play. This enraged the other players, leading to a training strike/mutiny with the players walking off their training session right in front of the hungry press waiting to exploit the news.
“We are football!” Without football, we are nothing. This is true for the French. This reviewer was in Paris the day France won the World Cup in 2018, and what a celebration!
This is not the first time a coach comes into violent disagreement with his players, and also not the first film to focus on the topic The recent SAIPAN is a 2025 sports film directed by Glenn Leyburn and Lisa Barros D'Sa and written by Paul Fraser that dramatises the Saipan incident, an altercation between the Republic of Ireland national football team player Roy Keane (played by Éanna Hardwicke) and their manager, Mick McCarthy (Steve Coogan), ahead of the 2002 FIFA World Cup. SIPAN is yet to be released but was screened at last year’s TIFF.
Domenech was dismissed after the team lost out of the World Cup in 2010. He is an interesting personality, and the directors highlight the fact in the doc. Domenech is of Catalan descent, shown to be fascinated by astrology, and believes that people's personalities are shaped by star signs. He has denied rumours that he picked squads based on astrology, or that he dropped Robert Pires for being a Scorpio (which the doc emphasised), instead saying that the 30-year-old Arsenal winger was declining and a bad influence on the squad. The doc also highlights the team captain, Patrice Evra. The incident resulted in Evra, for his role as captain, being suspended from national team duty for five matches. He returned to the squad and enjoyed a solid career after.
The Bus: A French Football Mutiny is a fast-moving, 75-minute, real-life, exciting documentary that gets right to the chase with candid interviews with all those involved, including the coach and the football captain, all giving their points of view. It is clearly a case of ego, and the villain here is the coach who gets his comeuppance at the end. Recommended even for non-football fans. The doc comes right in time for the FIFA World Cup this summer. The film is currently streaming on Netflix beginning on Wednesday, May 13th.
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THE CRASH (USA 2026) ***
Directed by Gareth Johnson
THE CRASH incident made such headline news that the driver of the car has a page on Wikipedia. Mackenzie Shirilla was raised by her parents, Natalie and Steve Shirilla, in Strongsville, Ohio. At the time of the crash, Shirilla was a 17-year-old recent graduate of Strongsville High School. During her studies, Shirilla had met her boyfriend, Dominic Russo, who had graduated from the school by the time of the incident. Russo dated Shirilla for 4 years. According to Russo's brother, Shirilla and Russo had frequent conflicts and had broken up and reunited multiple times. The pair started living together in 2021. Russo's mother, Christine, said that about six months before the crash, the relationship between Russo and Shirilla experienced tension again.
The Netflix doc has parts that actually happened. The audience knows that the voiceover “Recording” can be heard.
When the film begins. The word ‘recording’ is heard. From the cop cruiser, a car crash, the worst car crash that I have ever seen, cries an officer as the camera pans to show the destruction of a car. The voiceover is quick to point out that there is a question of whether this is an accident or a murder. The crash is intercut with the opening ceremony of Mackenzie’s school and the introduction of what can be seen as the best, best friend group in the school. But nothing is what it seems, as the film unfolds.
Both Russo and Flanagan were pronounced dead at the scene, while Shirilla was seriously injured and taken to the hospital. Shirilla, who was 17 years old at the time of the crime, was later arrested and charged with the murder of Russo and Flanagan. In a 2023 bench trial, the judge concluded she intentionally crashed the car in an act of premeditated murder.
The film suffers from being the typical Netflix doc where the incident is sensationalised, though one might argue that this is done for artistic entertainment. But on the positive side, the film is intriguing, allowing the audience to be glued to the material as director Johnson stresses the important points of the story, which is the toxic relationship between Shirilla and Dom. The things young ones are capable of are seen with all their comfortable intrigue.
THE CRASH opens for streaming on Friday, May 15th.
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JACK RYAN: GHOST WAR (USA 2026) ***
Directed by Andrew Bernstein
On Prime Video. Jack Ryan: Ghost War (also known as Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan: Ghost War) is an upcoming American political action thriller film directed by Andrew Bernstein and written by Aaron Rabin and John Krasinski, based on a story by Krasinski and Noah Oppenheim. It is the sixth film and third reboot in the Jack Ryan series and a continuation of the Amazon Prime Video television series Jack Ryan (2018–2023).
The film is weak on plot with the main story just involving Jack Ryan fighting a former CI boss. John Krasinski agian plays Jack Ryan, a former U.S. Marine officer and Afghanistan veteran working as a field operative for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Wendell Pierce is James Greer, the deputy director of the CIA and Michael Kelly plus Mike November, a former CIA station chief in Venezuela, now a private security contractor.
The female cast include Betty Gabriel as Elizabeth Wright, the director of the CIA.
with Sienna Miller as Emma Marlow.
The film contains a few action sequences tat should satisfy both Jack Ryan and action fans. The action set pieces including urban surveillance chases, embassy attacks, close-quarters gunfights though these look the most used in action films thus lacking lustre, drone warfare,
and large-scale explosions. One sequence appears to involve Ryan and November trapped in a safe house while mercenaries attack using military-grade equipment. and the best of the lot features Ryan pursuing a terrorist financier through crowded Middle Eastern markets.
The action leans heavily into tactical action and hand-to-hand combat.
One of the film’s flaws is its technicality , especially involving the CIA that many might not care that much about. The film’s publicity insists that Jack Ryan gets more personal in the return to action.
Ryan eventually uncovers that the real mastermind is not an outside terrorist leader but a Western intelligence figure using chaos to expand covert power and military influence. The discovery is revealed way before the film’s conclusion. The climax appears to involve Ryan exposing the conspiracy publicly rather than simply killing the villain — more in line with the political thriller roots of the Tom Clancy stories. The ending is leaves the franchise open to more films, and one would not be surprised that another Jack Ryan film is already in the making.
JACK RYAN: GHOST WAR is released worldwide on Amazon Prime Video on May 20, 2026.
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KARTAVYA (India 2026) ***
Directed by Pulkit
The title Kartavya is a Hindi/Sanskrit word meaning “duty,” “obligation,” or “moral responsibility.” The film is so-called as in the context of the film, the title refers to the central conflict faced by the protagonist, police officer Pawan Malik (Saif Ali Khan), in his duty as a law officer to investigate the truth, his duty to protect his family, and his broader moral duty to society in a corrupt system.
The film features a reluctant hero with flaws, like smoking and getting angry, though he is as efficient as Clint Eastwood in any of his cop movies. The film begins with Malik’s birthday, and it is not a happy one. Besides receding the gift of white shoes twice, he is out on suspension after the journalist he is supposed to protect gets killed and a fellow officer is injured on his watch, returning home. Malik finds his brother has eloped, causing his family to be threatened by the girl’s family.
The film follows Pawan Malik, a rural Haryana police officer who comes under intense pressure after a journalist is murdered while supposedly under police protection. As he investigates the killing, he uncovers a web of political corruption, caste violence, local government, and institutional cover-ups.
The film succeeds as less of a conventional action movie (do not expect a Bollywood-style film here) and more of a morally tense psychological crime drama. It focuses on a flawed hero grappling with systemic corruption, social hierarchies in small-town India, and the emotional burden borne by honest officers trapped within broken institutions.
KARTAVYA opens for streaming on Netflix on Friday, May 15th.
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SILENT FRIEND (Germany/France/Hungary 2025) ***
Directed by ILDIKÓ ENYEDI
Set in a botanical garden in a medieval university town in Germany, Silent Friend unfolds around a majestic ginkgo tree that has stood for more than a century. The Ginkgo tree survives for centuries and thus serves as a silent witness (and SILENT FRIEND) to time, while it observes the lives of three people across different eras, each changed by their encounter with the natural world.
2020: A neuroscientist from Hong Kong (Tony Leung), studying the minds of babies, begins an unexpected experiment involving the old tree.
1972: A young student is deeply affected by the simple act of observing — and connecting with — a geranium.
1908: The university’s first female student uses photography to discover striking patterns in the natural world, hidden in even the most ordinary plants.
The film follows their attempts to connect with nature, with one another, and with themselves. Across time, Silent Friend becomes a moving reflection on transformation, belonging, and what it means to be human. Director Enyedi uses theatre to switch from one story to the next. Each of the three people also encounters the tree, which makes an important impact on their lives. Though the tactic might seem pretentious, SLIEN FRIEND after all, is a slow-burning, contemplative art film.
Two of the film’s heavyweights are Tony Leung (INTHE MOOD FOR LOVE) and Lea Seydoux (BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOUR), who both appear in the latest 2020 story, during the time of the Pandemic, which ironically is the weakest of the three stories. The most interesting of the three is the 1908 story, as it deals with the urgent matter of female abuse. The young student at the university is the first female student and undergoes humiliating questions from the board of male chauvinist professors. They ask her whether she would participate in orgies just to gauge her response. She, nevertheless, is accepted as the first female in the university and gradually grows a fondness for photography, then examines plants through the process of how they grow.
The film gradually becomes a meditation on time, memory, solitude (each character is secluded for one reason or another, such as the Pandemic), ecological awareness, and the idea that humans may not understand the living world around them as well as they think.
One flaw is the director’s decision to ie gets involved with a intercut the three stories instead of showing them one after the other. The result is fragmented storytelling. Once one gets interested in a character, the film intercuts to the next story so that the momentum and focus are often lost in the process.
The film runs a lengthy 147 minutes. The film is a slow burn, which makes it a touch watch if one is interested. But many arthouse fans have found the film interesting, and this film, to its credit, has won accolades when shown.
` SILENT FRIEND won the FIPRESCI Prize and the Marcello Mastroianni Award at the Venice Film Festival. It opens in Toronto on Friday, 15th, 2026.
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THE WIZARD OF THE KREMLIN (France 2025) ***½
Directed by Olivier Assayas
THE WIZARD OF THE KREMLIN (French: Le Mage du Kremlin) is a 2025 English-language French political satire film directed by Olivier Assayas, who co-wrote the screenplay with Emmanuel Carrère. It is based on the 2022 novel by Giuliano da Empoli.[2] It follows the fictional government official Vadim Baranov (Paul Dano) during the final years of the Soviet Union and the turbulent start of the Russian Federation, while a young Vladimir Putin (Jude Law) rises to power. It also stars Alicia Vikander, Will Keen, Tom Sturridge, and Jeffrey Wright.
Olivier Assayas is a French filmmaker who has delved into the serious and the comical. The comical involves films like the vampire romp IRMA REP, and his serious films would include this alter film, which is part black comedy.
The Wizard of the Kremlin is a political drama/thriller based on the novel by Giuliano da Empoli. It offers a fictionalised, insider-style look at the rise of modern Russian power.
The story follows Vadim Baranov (Paul Dano), a shadowy political strategist who becomes a key spin doctor for a rising Russian leader clearly modelled on Vladimir Putin (Jude Law). Baranov is not a public figure—he operates behind the scenes, shaping narratives, manipulating media, and engineering political outcomes. The “wizard” in the title refers to his almost magical ability to control perception and power without ever stepping into the spotlight.
The film follows real political figures. For those in the know of political affairs, the film will be much more insightful and entertaining. For example, the film’s character Vadim Baranov is inspired by Vladislav Surkov, a Russian politician and businessman who served as First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration of Russia from 1999 to 2011, during which he played a central role in shaping domestic political strategy. During this period, he was widely credited with formulating and promoting the concept of sovereign democracy. Surkov has been described as an influential political strategist and is sometimes referred to as a "grey cardinal" of Russian politics. He has also been linked to literary works published under the pseudonym Nathan Dubovitsky.
The film was made with tons of effort and research, and the result shows. There are no action segments or suspense elements. Commercial audiences should beware, as this is not the typical American commercial film. But the pleasure that can be derived from the film evolves from the dialogue, the book’s apt adaptation, and the parallels between fiction and the true Russian political performances are more than excellent.
Though this is a political film, the universal story of greed and ambition should interest the general audience.
The film benefits from excellent performances, the best of these being delivered by Jude Law playing Vladimir Putin, looking more like Putin than himself. This is an Oscar-worthy performance, which he hopefully should at least get an Oscar nomination. Paul Dano is also excellent in the pivotal lead role.
THE WIZARD OF THE KREMLIN, which was screened at last year's TIFF, has a Canadian theatrical release beginning May 15th, 2026.
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