FILM REVIEWS
DEPARTURES (UK 2025) ***
Directed by Neil ElyLloyd Eyre-Morgan
When gay films first showed up on the radar, there were so many themes not yet covered. Themes like coming out, doing tricks, AIDs, bath houses, social unacceptance, and first gay love were explored for the first time. The new theme has run out with new ideas on the gay scene coming up scarce, so filmmakers have to come up with new nuances and ideas. DEPARTURES show frequent gay meetings of a gay Brit couple in Amsterdam with largely beefy gay men instead of clubby slim good-looking twinks.
DEPARTURES is a British LGBTQ+ drama film centring on emotionally damaged men trying to navigate love, sex, self-worth, and identity in contemporary gay culture. The characters are intentionally messy, vulnerable, and psychologically layered rather than idealised romantic figures.
The two main characters are Benji (Lloyd Eyre-Morgan) and Jake (DzvinTag).
Benji is the emotional core of the film. He is a gay man in his thirties from Manchester who desperately wants intimacy and emotional connection but repeatedly sabotages himself through insecurity, dependency, and self-destructive behaviour. He is witty, self-aware, emotionally needy, and often painfully funny in the way he narrates his own suffering. The film presents much of the story through his memories and inner monologue, making him both sympathetic and unreliable. He is shown to be emotionally raw and vulnerable.
Physically, Benji is not portrayed as the stereotypical “perfect” gay leading man. His anxieties about body image and desirability become major themes in the film. He often uses humour, partying, sex, and drugs to mask loneliness and rejection. The story explores his fear of abandonment, low self-esteem, addiction tendencies, and his longing for genuine love. Benji’s emotional spiral after his breakup drives much of the narrative. The film begins with his breakup
Jake is the charismatic but emotionally unavailable man with whom Benji becomes obsessed. He is physically attractive, masculine, sexually confident, and difficult to fully understand. The relationship begins after they meet at an airport and start taking secret monthly trips to Amsterdam together. Jake initially appears exciting and liberating to Benji, but gradually becomes emotionally distant and manipulative. Jake embodies several themes the film critiques:
toxic masculinity, fear of vulnerability, compartmentalised sexuality, and emotionally transactional relationships. He is shown to be living a “double life,” suggesting internalised shame and unresolved identity conflicts. He is neither villain nor hero. The film presents him as another damaged person who cannot give Benji the emotional safety he needs.
Other characters include Rya, Robbie, Kieran and Venessa, with the most interesting one being his Aunt Janet (Lorraine Stanley), who brings her client to Benji’s home, not to mention her stealing and selling Benji’s dog Banjo and selling it for 40 quid. She loves Benji deeply but has difficulty expressing emotional understanding in modern language. She also carries trauma from domestic abuse and guilt connected to Benji’s childhood. Janet represents generational tension: older attitudes toward homosexuality, working-class survival mentality, and imperfect but genuine maternal love. Stanley steals every scene she appears in,
The film, which has received, at the time of writing, 95% approval on Rotten Tomatoes, succeeds in its emotional honesty, subtle and dark humour and raw depiction of toxic gay relationships. The strong performances by Lloyd Eyre-Morgan and David Tag help as well.
DEPARTURES from Filmwelike opens in theatres May 22nd and is worth a look.
Trailer:
I LOVE BOOSTERS (USA 2026) ***
Directed by Boots Riley
A booster is a person or thing that increases, supports, or improves the power, effectiveness, or morale of something else. That is the normal meaning of the word booster. But in the film, booster takes a different ‘slang’ meaning. A booster is used in its slang criminal sense: a shoplifter, especially someone who steals clothing or retail goods for resale.
The term is important because it gives the movie a political and social angle. In the teaser and early descriptions, the boosters are portrayed almost like anti-capitalist Robin Hood figures — people who see stealing luxury fashion as a response to economic inequality and exploitation in the fashion industry. One article notes that the characters view boosting “almost as a community service.”
The film follows a group of “boosters” called The Velvet Gang, operating in a surreal version of the Bay Area, who steal fashion items and designs from major retailers and fashion elites. They then go up against a ruthless fashion mogul played by Demi Moore (doing a poor person’s imitation of the Meryl Streep role in THE PRADA WEARS PRADA) after she appropriates their designs.
One must give writer/director Riley credit for trying his hardest in his movie; he said that this is the best film at the introduction of the film at the promo screening. His film contains some stunning, though vulgar, visual effects, and his energy clearly shows throughout the movie.
The film I LOVE BOOSTERS is an acquired taste. It celebrates Boots Riley’s style, similar to SORRY TO BOTHER YOU, where satire, class politics, and absurd comedy are mixed together, like in this film. Those who like their political satire subtle and quiet will hate this, but I LOVE BOOSTERS leans towards the wild and the absurd. The film is like his Q&A that was held after the promo screening. Riley is all over the place when asked a question, pretty much like his film, in which anything can happen on screen.
I LOVE BOOSTERS opens in theatres on Friday, May 22nd.
Trailer:
LADIES FIRST (USA 2026) ***
Directed by Thea Sharrock
LADIES FIRST is an American comedy satire set in London that puts a spin on the male chauvinistic corporate world.
The story centres on Damien Sachs (Sacha Baron Cohen), a wealthy, arrogant London advertising executive who embodies casual sexism. Damien is successful, charming, and manipulative — the kind of man who treats women as decorative accessories while expecting to become CEO of his agency. He constantly flirts, ignores female colleagues’ ideas, and assumes authority naturally belongs to men. Rosamund Pike plays Alex Fox, one of the agency’s smartest executives. In Damien’s normal world, she is respected but continually sidelined by the company’s male leadership. Damien dismisses her concerns and sees her as competition rather than an equal partner. Early in the film, Damien suffers a head injury after an accident on a London street. When he wakes up, he discovers he is living in an alternate universe where gender roles are reversed, and women dominate nearly every level of society.
The male-female switcheroo world is full of male-to-female jokes with products like Burger Queen to books like Donna Quixote, and where females take over men’s jobs from construction to cab-driving. In this new world that Damien goes into, women occupy the highest political and corporate positions. Men are objectified, sexualized, and socially expected to be submissive. Advertising routinely uses male bodies as decoration.
Director Thea Sharrock (her latest hit was Olivia Colman’s comedy WICKED LITTLE LETTERS) aptly milks the comedic material with solid timing and pace, providing many laugh-out-loud moments, aided by solid performances by no less than Sasha Baron Cohen, Rosamund Pike, and most of all veteran Fiona Shaw playing Felicity, the receptionist promoted to CEO in the new women’s world.
Despite the film’s country of origin being listed as the United States, this is a British film at heart. Both leading figures, Pike and Cohen, are British; in fact, both were born in the same Hammersmith neighbourhood, London. The setting is London, and the dialogue is four British terms and terminology, many of which are not used in North America; the most common one is the word fit substituting for the word " sexy. Use: She or he looks really fit (sexy).
The film has a solid comedic premise, though a bit outdated for 2026, which is put to relatively good use in the script, despite its one joke idea premise written by Natalie Krinsky, Cinco Paul and Katie Silberman. It should be noted that the script is based on the Netflix French film, JE NE SUIS PAS UN HOMME FACILE (I Am Not an Easy Man), written by Eléonore Pourriat.
As expected from Sasha Baron Cohen, there is little subtlety in this satire, and a few jokes fall flat, such as his character screaming during a hair removal procedure.
LADIES FIRST opens for streaming on Netflix May 22nd, 2026.
Trailer:
THE LAST ANNIVERSARY (Canada 2025) *
Directed by The Butler Bros.
THE LAST ANNIVERSARY is a low-budget Canadian dysfunctional family of friends horror film with a premise set on the last day before the world ends.
It is the end of the world. No explanation is given for this unfortunate apocalypse, nor how the characters know of it.
A couple drives to an abandoned hotel (again, why the hotel is abandoned or how the characters know of it are never explained) to celebrate what is their wedding anniversary, which also serves as a reunion of their friends. The couple arrange the star and prepares the rooms while setting up food before the guests arrive. The couple tend to love each other tremendously, with the notion of the end of the world coming into play largely forgotten.
The assorted guests arrive, most of whom are terribly annoying. The one scene with the singer and a friend in a hotel room discussing various events of the past is total boredom. “I have done nothing in my life!” claims one, in a conversation riddled with cliches. The many and different encounters share the common traits of melodrama and forced emotion for the sake of what the directors hope to entertain their audience with.
Aubrey (Jesse McQueen) is essentially the emotional centre of the film. She was once part of the wedding party and becomes increasingly unstable as buried resentments and supernatural events emerge. Much of the story follows her attempts to understand what really happened years earlier to the missing maid of honour. She is portrayed as emotionally wounded, paranoid, and trapped between guilt and survival instincts. Her beau is Tom (Kenneth Northfield). Tom is connected to the hotel’s past and to the collapsing relationships within the group. He represents regret and emotional exhaustion, particularly surrounding failed friendships and old romantic tensions.
The horror begins at the 30-minute mark of the film when a character is forced to feed liquor from a bottle. The figure force-feeding disappears so that one wonders if the horror is more psychological.
One also wonders if the characters are intentionally unpleasant, damaged, or emotionally toxic, though it is clear that the fact would annoy more than entertain. The movie leans heavily into unresolved wedding-night trauma and failed relationships with guilt over the missing maid of honour in the setting of interpersonal cruelty and apocalyptic hopelessness.
This group of people unravels psychologically as the film progresses while trapped in a decaying hotel at the literal end of the world.
The slow burn of the horror drama set in a not-too-credible last day before the end of the world setting, with unlivable and annoying characters that no one would want to spend time with, is a messy, boring piece of theatre that one cannot wait to end.
THE LAST ANNIVERSARY embarks on a theatrical tour this spring, bringing the film directly to audiences across the country with filmmakers and cast in attendance at select screenings for special Q&As. The Toronto dates with the venue are:
Toronto, ON — May 21–28, 2026 | Imagine Cinemas – Carlton (filmmakers and cast in attendance at select screenings)
THE MANDALORIAN AND GROGU (USA 2026) ***
Directed by Jon Favreau
As the audience is informed at the start of this new STAR WARS episode, the Empire has fallen, and the scattered imperial warlords are still trying to do harm to the Republic. Following the fall, the New Republic enlists Din Djarin, also known as the Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal) and his apprentice Grogu to rescue Rotta the Hutt in exchange for information from the Hutt clan on a New Republic target. In terms of the series, the plot of The Mandalorian and Grogu picks up after the events of the Disney+ series The Mandalorian.
The movie opens with Din and Grogu living quietly on Nevarro, trying to settle into a calmer life after the liberation of Mandalore. Grogu is becoming more independent and confident with the Force, though he still behaves like a mischievous child. Din, meanwhile, struggles with the idea of being both a Mandalorian warrior and a father figure. Their peace is interrupted when New Republic officer Colonel Ward (Sigourney Weaver) recruits them for a dangerous mission. Intelligence suggests that a powerful Imperial remnant leader is trying to unite criminal syndicates and former Imperial forces in the Outer Rim. The key to locating him lies with the Hutt cartel.
The film lacks emotional traction, though the film contains no lack of special effect action set pieces. These are impressive enough and include a large middle section, which becomes a large-scale adventure across several planets, in which Din infiltrates underground fighting arenas while Grogu secretly uses the Force to sabotage gladiator battles. The pair encounter bounty hunters, smugglers, and old Imperial officers. There are large action sequences involving speeder chases, cantina shootouts, and starfighter combat. The Chemistry between the two is acceptable, as it is hard to feel for non-human characters. Din gets to remove his mask once to reveal Pascal’s face, a rarity.
The STAR WARS franchise has been milked to death as a cash cow, even the Mandalorian series. At a length of 2 hours and 15 minutes, the film, despite the impressive design of the Star Wars characters like Grogu, just feels like a lacklustre extension of money wasted on another Mandalorian TV episode.
Famed director Martin Scorsese has a credit billing in the film. He voices an Ardennian alien shopkeeper (sometimes described as a fry cook or information broker) whom Din Djarin visits while investigating the kidnapping of Rotta the Hutt. The character is a four-armed alien similar to Rio Durant from Solo: A Star Wars Story. One line he utters is: “For that price, I’ll tell you whatever you want.”
Disney hopes, obviously, that this film will secure a big Star Wars return event, but just like Disney Marvel Superheroes movies, many audiences have felt that enough is enough, and there is too much of both already flooding the market.
THE MANDALORIAN AND GROGU cost $165 million to make, which is actually quite a modest sum, considering other blockbuster movies that have opened this year. Despite the mixed reviews from critics so far, this film should be able to cover its production costs given the film’s large fan base and its modest budget. THE MANDALORIAN AND GROGU opens widely in theatres this Friday, May 22nd.
Trailer:
