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Written by: Gilbert Seah

Parent Category: Articles

Category: Movie Reviews

Published: 27 September 2025

FILM REVIEWS:

 

GOOD BOY (USA 2025) ***
Directed by Ben Leonberg

 

GOOD BOY is Todd’s pet dog, Indy.  GOOD BOY is a horror film told from a dog’s perspective.

The canine hero, Indy, finds himself on a new adventure with his human owner—and best friend—Todd (Shane Jensen), leaving city life for a long-vacant family home in the country. From the start, two things are abundantly clear: Indy is wary of the creepy old house, and his affection for Todd is unwavering. After moving in, Indy is immediately vexed by empty corners, tracks an invisible presence only he can see, perceives phantasmagoric warnings from a long-dead dog, and is haunted by visions of the previous occupant’s grim death. When Todd begins succumbing to the dark forces swirling around the house, Indy must battle a malevolence intent on dragging his beloved Todd into the afterlife.

According to the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), 45.5% of U.S. households own at least one dog.  And in Canada, around 35% of people own dogs (i.e., 35% of households or individuals, depending on the study).  The film will undoubtedly attract dog owners, and as listed in the statistics, that is a good share of the target audience that will show interest in viewing the film.

The film shows different stages in Indy’s life, likely from the director’s own photos and old videos.  Indy is indeed a cute puppy and even as a full-grown dog at 35 pounds.  There are shots of Indy getting his tummy rubbed, playing as a puppy, and just goofing around as dogs do.  The film is obviously aimed at dog lovers, myself included, a Rhodesian Ridgeback owner.

From Indy’s point of view, the audience sees the dog reuniting with his owner, Todd, as he is discharged from the hospital.  Indy is also given the brush off (poor dog!) when Todd is ill in bed.  But the sickness in that Todd has is not explained or given any details.  The only thing the audience sees is the blood he coughs out.  Those in the medical field would know that the symptoms could be due to: Tuberculosis (TB) – one of the classic causes, especially untreated or advanced cases; Bronchiectasis – damaged and widened airways that bleed easily or Lung cancer – tumours can erode into blood vessels.  But the film also hints at, but never makes sure that there might be a supernatural element involved, as there is always black glue around.

The audience also observes a dog’s life, and it is often not pretty.  Indy loves his master but has to succumb to his burst of anger due to his illness.

Todd’s health causes his sister, Vera, concern.  Vera is occasionally seen calling Todd on his cell phone, as observed by Indy.

Unfortunately, there is not much story or plot that goes into the story.  The premise of filming at dog eye level from a dog’s point of view is a novel idea, and the film benefits primarily from being a curiosity piece.  Despite the short running time of under 90 minutes, the film lags in the middle, and many plot points are left unexplained.

GOOD BOY opens in theatres on October 3rd. (Revue Cinema in Toronto)

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KILLING FAITH (USA 2025) ***
Directed by Ned Crawley

 

KILLING FAITH combines several different film genres like the western, supernatural religious thriller, mystery, slavery, and horror in a film where everything goes, and where twists and turns can appear as surprisingly as new characters do.

The setting is the American West in 1849, as the credits inform.  The frontier region, which is the Arizona Territory (the film is shot around Santa Fe, New Mexico), is ravaged by plague, superstition, but mostly feared are the Indians (the awful description of the scalping process is described in the dialogue) and worse, the white man who can do far worse than the Indians.

Arriving into the story is an African American just freed salve black woman named Sarah (DeWanda Wise) and her white daughter, who is feared as everything she touches dies.  The girl is first seen touching a horse.  Sarah shouted to her: ‘Don’t! '  But she does, and the horse collapses.  Apparently, the story of the girl has reached far and wide and the girl is both feared and sought.   In the town, Sarah and her daughter are warned never to enter the town again.   In the town, Sarah seeks the services of a protector/escort as she and her daughter want to travel to see a preacher whom she hopes can cure her daughter of what she believes is possession.  Sarah meets a doctor, Dr. Bender (Guy Pearce), who agrees to be paid to accompany them.  He thinks what is happening could be due to a sickness rather than a possession.  The girl wears gloves so that she does not touch any living creature.

The mystery that pervades the film is whether the girl is ill or possessed.  The answer is only revealed in the final frame, and not to be revealed in this review.

The majority of the film is a road adventure of the three as they venture for 5 days to reach their destination, where they encounter different characters, some stealing the girl in the process, with disastrous results when the girl unleashes the fury within her.

The film concludes with them meeting a preacher, called Preacher Ross, in a wheelchair, played by Bill Pullman in a performance he had never delivered before with such evil and wicked relish.  Pullman is having great fun overdoing his performance,e and it works as his character brings much life into the story. 

The film contains a few very gory scenes, like the one segment where the doctor has to free himself from handcuffs by breaking his hands.  There is also more violent content that includes sexual assault and other grisly images, not to mention strong language in the dialogue.  There is also drug use as the doctor frequently sniffs ether, which, as a doctor, he can get hold of.

The film also plays with the underlying conflict between belief, fear, superstition, and science, while not taking sides.

KILLING FAITH is as entertaining as it is strange, with actor Guy Pearce in another strange starring role.  Pearce seems to be attracted to portraying odd characters lately.

KILLING FAITH opens in theatres on October 3rd.

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MONSTERS WITHIN (USA 2025) **
Directed by Devin Montgomery

 

MONSTERS WITHIN is a moody piece of male brooding, a directorial feature debut by Devin Montgomery, who also stars as the troubled war veteran who returns to his small American town.  Montgomery must think he is the new James Dean, but he is as bad an actor as a director and scriptwriter.

The premise is that whoever looks interesting enough on paper.

Life brings Luke Wolf (Montgomery), a war veteran, back to his hometown, where his sister, Ellie (Daniella Montgomery), is, who has Down Syndrome. Luke had an affectionate bond with his sister before she passed.  She had given him a glass angel to protect him, something that he always carries around.  Things are different as Luke faces his monsters.

There is some truth to the story and the actors on screen.  The character of "Elle," who is the main character's sister and the heart and soul of the movie, is played by Devin Montgomery's actual sister, Daniella Montgomery.  She has performed at several events for the Down Syndrome Associations and Special Needs choir in Oklahoma. The story of the bond between a brother and sister, with one having special needs, being portrayed as authentically and real as possible, was very important to both Devin and Daniella Montgomery.

Montgomery has no shame in writing long monologues where he speaks his mind, forcing the audience to listen often to some bad writing.  The word shit punctuates the dialogue ever so often, and if Luke runs out of things to say, he will scream at the top of his voice to depict aggression and frustration.  Montgomery, as director, fares not much better in his role.  Luke meets a girl at the local bar and chats her up.  The scene is intercut with another scene of the two having hot sex.  The film then moves to the end of the night when the bar closes and Luke brings her home for sex, which the audience has already witnessed. There is no point in the intercut segments.  The music mixing also leaves far to be desired with long bout of soundtrack dragged along in order for a scene to properly end.  But the one segment that is the worst to watch is the one in which Montgomery, the director, gives Montgomery, the actor, a whole 5 minutes to cry on screen,

The film also shifts in the last 30 minutes into a slasher/horror film after Luke’s girl is kidnapped by her ex-lover, who seems to have tracked her down forthe  money he had gotten from him. 

It is surprising thoug,h that MONSTERS WITHIN has gone on to win awards in several film festivals. 

MONSTERS WITHIN has the release date of October 3rd, 2025, on @primevideo and @fandango at Home.

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ORWELL: 2+2 = 5  (USA/France 2025) ***
Directed by Raoul Peck

 

ORWELL: 2+2 = 5 is high high-profile documentary produced by heavyweights Alex Gibney (TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE; ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM) and Raoul Peck (I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO; ERNEST COLE: LOST AND FOUND), who also directs the doc.

George Orwell, born George Blair, is an English writer famous for 1984 and ANIMAL FARM.  He started to write 1984 on the Scottish isle of Jura in 1948.  This doc is a blend of Orwell: his life and works with current events that include Trump’s fascist rule, the Ukraine invasion by Russia and the Palestinian/Israel War.

The doc includes old photos of Orwell as a baby and as a boy in school.  He belonged to the poorer end of the middle class.  His father, having the same status, assumed a higher status by taking a military post in the British colonized countries.  Orwell hated those in authoritarian power, as evident in his two most famous works, 1984 and ANIMAL FARM.  Orwell’s writing drew from his personal experience of poverty in Down and Out in Paris and London, of colonialism in Burmese Days, and of revolutionary uprising in Homage to Catalonia.  Most notable: At age 46, nearing death from tuberculosis, the last sentence he wrote was: “All that matters has already been written.”

The doc is most entertaining with clips of related movies, particularly Michael Radford’s 1984, which starred John Hurt as Orwell.  More than a dozen films are featured, particularly from multiple different adaptations of 1984 and ANIMAL FARM

The doc,  totally from director Peck’s point of view, which is both a little bit much and personal, evokes a very depressing look at today’s world, at what it has become.   The doc concludes with a solution for what can be done.  This is reflected in organized protests by the people, like the Black Lives Matter walk.  But these solutions are difficult to come by and take lots of time and dedication from the people involved.

ROCKSTAR: DUKI FROM THE END OF THE WORLD (Rockstar: DUKI desde el fin del mundo)(Argentina 2025) ***

Directed by Alejandro Hartmann

 

The documentary offers an intimate and unfiltered portrait of Duki’s personal life and career.  It traces his evolution from a freestyler in Buenos Aires (competing in rap battles) to becoming an internationally recognized hitmaker. The film also examines the duality of his identity — who is Mauro (the person) vs. who is DUKI (the stage persona) — and explores how fame and artistic expectations impact him.

The documentary begins with Duki (Mauro Lombardo) reflecting on his childhood in Buenos Aires.  Old home videos and interviews with family show a shy kid who found escape in music. His teenage years are portrayed through the rise of freestyle rap battles in Argentina, particularly El Quinto Escalón, the underground competition that launched him into the spotlight.

The doc is a mix of his interviews, archive footage of his life, and his concert performances.

The main difference between this documentary and other biopic documentaries, such as those about Elton John or Elvis Presley, and many others, is that this one features the artist at the age of 27.  Duki himself says,” At 27, I have it all.”  The audience sees all his ups and downs, concert performances, and quiet moments all condensed into 27 years.  Though the name might not be familiar, he is an internationally famous artist; his story is familiar.  An Ok doc, on a reflection on life and concert performances.

The doc opens on Netflix (streaming) on October 2, 2025

 

THE SMASHING MACHINE (USA 20225) ****

Directed by Benny Safdie

 

Arguably one of the best sports dramas ever made since RAGING BULL, THE SMASHING MACHINE from director Benny Safdie (GOOD TIME and UNCUT GEMS) plays pagans the typical Hollywood feel-good sports boxing romantic action drama, Sylvester Stallone’s ROCKY.   THE SMASHING MACHINE charts the downfall of the couple’s romance rather than the buildup and happy ending of Rocky’s romance.  The film is based on the 2002 documentary The Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr.  Both film works in different ways.

THE SMASHING MACHINE  is the powerful story of pioneering mixed martial arts/UFC fighter Mark Kerr (Dwayne Johnson).  Kerr helped grow the sport’s popularity in its early days, but the fights’ brutal demands took a toll, eventually leading to painkiller addiction. The constant need to travel, since the most lucrative early matches were always in Japan, didn’t help either.

The film begins wth a voiceover by Mark Kerr as he enters the ring for his first UFC fight.  Kerr pins his opponent to the floor and delivers multiple violent blows to his head, beating his opponent’s face to a bloody pulp, hence the film’s title, THE SMASHING MACHINE.  “Is he all right?” Kerr asks ironically.   Of course, there are also segments when Kerr gets punishment as well.  Boxing sports films are often bloody, like RAGING BULL and ROCKY, and THE SMASHING MACHINE is no different.

 

Dwayne Johnson, best known for his countless action-comedy roles, plays drama and sports here.  Johnson has hair in this film, just like Mark Kerr, the character he plays.  With his hair, Johnson is totally unrecognizable here with his different look.  It is only when he shaves his head in the last 30 minutes of the film that Johnson looks like ‘The Rock’, his usual self.  Johnson undoubtedly delivers the best of his career and does his co-star Emily Blunt.

The film contains one of the best argumentative confrontational scenes between the couple, Mark and Dawn.  The couple’s fight scene works well because both deliver realistic and valid argument points.   The best couples' confrontational scenes are:  Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver in MARRIAGE STORY; Diane Ketin and Al Pacino in THE GODFATHER: PART II, and Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio in REVOLUTION ROAD.  Johnson and Blunt now add to the list.

THE SMASHING MACHINE, a fictionalized story of Mark Kerr, is shot quasi-documentary style, with his romance with Dawn Staples dramatized.  The film is aided by superb performances by both Johnson and Blunt, who might just win Academy Award nominations for their roles.  Entertaining,  dramatic and and engrossing watch, THE SMASHING MACHINE is yet another of director Benny Safdie’s successes.

The film ends with a 5- minute sequence of the real Mark Kerr on screen as opposed to just the customary image comparisons in other sports biopics.

THE SMASHING MACHINE premiered at the Venice International Film Festival, where it won the Silver Lion.  It was also screened having its North American Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.  It opens in theatres October 3rd, Friday.

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STEVE (UK/Ireland 2025) ***** Top10

Directed by Tim  Mielants 

 

Reminiscent of the French classroom drama and Cesar Award Winning Best Picture,  ENTRE LES MURS (THE CLASS), done cinema-verite/doc style, or a more maverick styled TO SIR WITH LOVE, the film follows a head teacher STEVE (Cillian Murphy) working in troubled school of boys, somewhat before they become residents in a borstal, s in the film SCUM.   

Steve (Murphy) is the passionate head of a crumbling “last chance” reform school for teenage boys. With meagre resources, overstretched staff, and a mounting sense of futility, Steve must navigate one pivotal and precarious day made more tense by the arrival of a documentary news crew profiling the school, and the result may prove to be more exposé than commendation. The school is part institution and part last-ditch social experiment conducted in a shoddy rural manor house run by tired yet dedicated adults who believe their students still have something to offer the world.   How the students and staff feel and go through are highlighted by both the incidents on screen as well as their own words as they talk to interviewers on camera, for a film.     In one of the emotional scenes in the film, the vice head school teacher says of the students that she is a warden, teacher, and mother to them, and that they are simply adorable.

The boys, meanwhile, navigate an uneasy border between volatility and vulnerability. Mielants' score top marks in his storytelling technique using a combo of flashbacks and forwards, added by Murphy’s and Emily Watson’s stunning performances.  He films the incidents that sequentially as they appear on screen so that the actors know exactly how the film should unfold.

Despite the mixed reviews this film’s scored, STEVE is still one of my favourite and most emotional films that I have seen at the Toronto International Film Festival.  A definite must-see, and the film ranks as one of my Top 10 of 2025.

Trailer: 

WAYWARD (Canada 2025) ***½

Directed Various directors, including Mae Martin

 

WAYWARD is a Canadian-made limited series from Netflix.  

At the Toronto International Film Festival in the Primetime (TV) Section, the first 2 episodes of an 8-episode limited series were premiered, introduced by Mae Martin and Ryan Scott.  Martin acted as the show runner on the series alongside Ryan Scott, serving as executive producer.  And the two episodes were entertaining as they were thrilling and impressive.

WAYWARD follows rebellious teens Abby (Sydney Topliffe) and Leila (Alyvia Alyn Lind) in their early teens as they skip classes, get high, and listen to their Disk-mans, unaware that their parents are scheming to remedy their “bad” behaviour by involuntarily admitting them to a mysterious correctional school.  As Abby and Leila innocently enjoy their final days of slacker freedom, detective Alex Dempsey (Martin) arrives in the town of Tall Pines with their wife, Laura (Sarah Gadon), who grew up there and feels drawn to return in her final months of pregnancy.   

Tall Pines (the title of the first episode) is the kind of place where everyone knows your name, and homemade preserves are left on your front porch by neighbours, a gesture Laura finds comforting and Alex finds jarring.   It is a creepy place, and the film has an exciting mystery air reminiscent of THE STEPFORD WIVES and the recent WEAPONS.  In case one is wondering, Martin is non-binary, playing a husband.  The first two episodes are nothing but excellent, making one eager to watch the rest of the series.  The third episode, titled ESCAPE, has the two on an escape from Tall Pines Academy.

Besides the well-known name Mae Martin, the series features Toni Collette as Evelyn Wade, head teacher at Tall Pines Academy, and Sarah Gadon as Laura Redman, Alex's pregnant wife, a former Tall Pines student, a fact that Alex is unaware of.  Of the supporting cast, Byron Mann as Brian, Abbie's strict father, and Jenny Raven as Carla, Abbie's mother, stand out.

Choice dialogue lines punctuate the series:

“I can’t wait for you to meet the new you.” 

“Children go in.  Something else comes out!”

“Something is not right in this town.”

“The only way out of this place is through that door.”

“She is one of them.”

The most intense is Episode 5 - the sex shocking sex scene and the Academy shutdown.  The sex scene might be the reason the public gave a below 50% rating to the series, whereas critics awarded a higher over 70%.

WAYWARD is an impressive, well-paced, mysterious Canadian thriller filmed largely in Ontario with new twists and turns appearing in each of the 8 excellent episodes.

All 8 episodes are currently running on Netflix beginning this week, and one can binge-watch the entire series or watch them at one’s discretion.

Trailer: 

Details

Written by: Gilbert Seah

Parent Category: Articles

Category: Movie Reviews

Published: 20 September 2025

FILM REVIEWS:

AMOUR APOCALYPSE (Peak Everything) (Canada 2025) **
Directed by Anne Emond

Director Anne Emond tackles male trauma with her forty-year-old protagonist suffering from insecurity and a need for acceptance.  Despite his regimen of exercise and antidepressants, Adam (Hivon), proprietor of a Quebec kennel, cannot help but despair over the ever-escalating climate catastrophe. One night, while feeling especially hopeless, he calls the tech support line for his newly acquired therapeutic desk lamp, believing it to be a crisis help line. He gets lucky: on the other end is Tina (Perabo), who's relieved to talk about something more meaningful than assembly instructions.  This is a romantic comedy tackled with nuances and from a different angle.  But Director Emond’s pace is too slow to match the premise.  The pair connect over their shared existential worries and, when an earthquake rocks Tina's Ontario town, Adam takes the opportunity to drive there and help this woman he's never seen. Environmental dread brought these two together on the phone, so it's only fitting that a natural disaster prompts them to meet.  This sets the couple off on a path of romance and adventure.

The film is a strange love story of sorts.   Director Emond gets her character, Adam, to cry, mope, and come to terms with himself.  Her female characters, those that Adam encounters, like Tina and his kennel helper, have stronger personalities.  It is hard to identify with a protagonist with self-worth issues, but the film feels too like one with too much of a female slant.

AMOUR APOCALYPSE (Peak Everything) premiered at Cannes this year, followed by a screening at the Toronto International Film Festival.  It opens this week in theatres.

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ELEANOR THE GREAT (USA 2025) ***
Directed by Scarlett Johansson

 

Scarlett Johansson makes her directorial debut with ELEANOR THE GREAT, a comedy/drama starring June Squibb as the 94-year-old named Eleanor, who relocates from Florida to Manhattan after a devastating loss of her best friend, Bessie (Rita Zohar), and roommate of over a decade, only to discover how hard it is to make new friends… until she tells a tale that takes on a dangerous life of its own. 

  Eleanor hopes to reconnect with her family in Manhattan.  Instead, she finds herself living with a daughter (Jessica Hecht) who thinks her mother should be in a retirement home, and a grandson (Will Price) who loves his grandmother but is busy with his own friends.  Eleanor now feels adrift and invisible.  Squibb portrays Eleanor initially as bitter with lots of snide remarks, but her barrier to friendship gradually and eventually breaks down.

Things get worse after helping another senior with her stuck zipper; she is given a compliment.  "You are very kind.  We have to look out for each other.”

During a visit to the Manhattan Jewish Community Center, Eleanor stumbles her way into a support group for Holocaust survivors and, joining their circle, begins to tell her own story.   “Come on.  The first time is always the hardest.”  Eleanor is encouraged by her first friend she meets in Manhattan.  Except, unbeknownst to everyone listening, it isn't Eleanor’s story — it’s Bessie’s.  The story snares the attention of journalism student Nina (Erin Kellyman), who wants to feature Eleanor in an article.  Never one to turn away attention, Eleanor begins to forge a close bond with Nina. But how long will it take before the truth shatters that bond?   What happens then will not be released as a spoiler, but needs to be seen for the film to be appreciated.

The film has two key issues as its theme.  One is the subject of the resilience of one in old age, an issue actress June Squibb has dealt with many times, as in her last films (THELMA), and the other is the Jewish religion leaning towards the holocaust.

The film contains a few prized and sensitive moments.  One is the rendering of the Stephen Sondheim song: “I am still Here”, crooned by a senior, after which she shrugs in disbelief.

It is of interest to note that the reason director Johansson and actress Squibb were attracted to the subject of Jews and the holocaust survivors.  Squibb is one who’s converted to Judaism, and American-born actress/director Johansson (her father worked as an architect in Copenhagen, though her grandfather was Swedish) has Jewish roots on her mother’s side, with the surname of Schlamberg, her mother’s family fleeing Poland and Russia.

ELEANOR THE GREAT is not a great film and holds few surprises, but it is a decent, well-intentioned cautionary tale by Squibb and Johansson that should entertain while providing a lesson or two.

ELEANOR THE GREAT premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes 2025, followed by a debut at the Toronto International Film Festival a fortnight ago, and opens in theatres September 26th.

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ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER (USA 2025) ****
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

 

The film comes right on with today’s headlines of immigrant and alien workers in the United States.  The story takes the Mexican worker problem to a different level, with established networks functioning in the United States.

The main character is Bob Ferguson (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), who used to be part of a radical revolutionary group.  The film opens with him and his activities, including dealing with his enemy, Mr. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), and his girl (Regina Hall).  Now Bob lives off-grid with his daughter, in a state of paranoia, trying to avoid his past. But the reemergence of the enemy forces him into action.

The film is loosely based on Thomas Pynchon's novel Vineland (1990), which director Anderson developed for years before pre-production began on the film.  But having trouble, he set aside the idea of an adaptation and wrote a series of separate stories. One Battle After Another emerged as a combination of those independent stories with some elements of Vineland, particularly the father-daughter dynamic.  It should be noted that the film, as a result, is quite different from the novel.  Even the names of the characters are changed.  Which is better is up for debate, but the general story in the film is consistent with the series of unfolding events that are more suited to an action thriller.  The main plot of the film is the kidnapping and rescue of Bob’s daughter while covering issues such as the aftermath of the idealism of what happens to revolutionaries or radicals when the movements fade, when the social momentum diminishes. How do they survive, change, betray, or get compromised?

Director Anderson has proved himself apt at genres such as satire, black humour, and drama, all of which are blended into this action thriller.  The action sequences are fast-paced, examples being the raid of immigrant workers and the car chase at the end, with some amazing camerawork on display.  This is that rare action thriller in which the hero is not a super fighter.  The visuals and pacing are also energetic, with cinematography by both Anderson and  Michael Bauman.

The film is anchored by a central, award-winning performance by Academy Award Winner Leonardo DiCaprio.  Other performances are also top-notch notch especially Sean Penn’s and Regina Hall’s. right down to a one-minute memorable one by an unknown no-binary.

This is one film that, though totally engrossing from start to finish, should be watched on the big screen, on IMAX if possible.  Watching the film streaming, for example, will allow the audience to take breaks, thus compromising the momentum of the otherwise fast-paced movie.  The film opens in theatres in different formats, including iMAX, on September 26th, 2025.  One of P.T. Anderson’s best, showing his versatility in the making of this fast-paced action thriller.

Anderson’s highest-grossing film, the 2007 THERE WILL BE BLOOD, grossed $77 million, so the success of this 162-minute, $140 million costing film hinges on the drawing power of Leonardo DiCaprio.  It is Anderson’s first film in IMAX.

Trailer: 

 

PLAINCLOTHES (USA 2025) **½

Directed by Carmen Emmi

 

PLAINCLOTHES refers to Lucas, the film’s protagonist, who has the job of a plainclothes police officer.  His assignment is morally troubling to him as he works on operations to entrap and arrest gay men, acting as bait in public bathrooms.   The film is set in the 1990s, when a lot of these operations were done.

No surprise that Lucas is closeted himself. His identity is in conflict with his work and what society around him expects, which provides for some drama in the film.  During one of the assignments, he meets an older man, Andrew, one of his intended targets, and develops a romantic/sexual attraction that challenges the boundaries of his assignment and forces him to reckon with his feelings, his duty, and the risk of exposure.

The film is told in 3 segments, all intercut with each other.  The segments are: Lucas at work; Lucas at his mother’s New Year's Eve party, and the encounter between Lucas and Andrew.

Director Emmi, for his first feature, tries hard to create an edgy film but fails.  Emmi includes three intercut story segments, which results in a disjointed narrative in which the suspense that has been built up is suddenly abrupt.  His use of jarring images amidst handheld cameras is also more annoying than artful.   Lucas’s facial hair in the New Year’s Eve party scene is at least, to help  sort, which segment is on the screen, as it can get confusing to the audience which segment is going on.

Director Emmi builds up good suspense, especially in the scenes where Lucas is working undercover.

Other than the premise of the plainclothes Lucas entrapping gay men in the toilets, this story serves no new territory.  Coming out, family and girlfriend pressures, first sexual encounter, persecution of gays in toilets in the 90’s, secrecy, shame, leading of a double life are all issues that have been worked on before, in other films.

PLAINCLOTHES opens at the TIFF Lightbox on Friday, September 26th.

 

SUSPENDED TIME (HORS DU TEMPS) (France 2024) **1/2
Directed by Olivier Assayas

 

The film SUSPENDED TIME is so called as it is as if time stood still during the lockdown of the COVID-19 Pandemic.  The film is set during the April 2020 lockdown.  It follows two brothers, Paul (a film director) and Etienne (a music journalist), who are confined together in their childhood home in the French countryside. They’re joined by their respective romantic partners, Morgane and Carole.   The old house is large, its rooms, objects, and the surrounding landscape trigger memories and reflections: of parents, neighbours, absences, childhood, past relations, much of which is revealed through the film’s voiceover.

As society recedes in the spring of 2020, film director Paul Berger (Vincent Macaigne) returns to his childhood home in the provincial Chevreuse Valley. Still processing the legacy of his parents and feeling out the uncertain shape of the world to come, Paul hunkers down with his documentary filmmaker girlfriend Carole (Nora Hamzawi), his music journalist brother Etienne (Micha Lescot), and Etienne’s new girlfriend Morgan (Nine d’Urso). Squabbling over the minutiae of health protocols and the morality of a hermetic lifestyle mediated by ubiquitous online shopping, the makeshift household finds new ways to lacerate familiar wounds.

Yet Paul also finds a surprising refuge in the compulsory quietude of pandemic life, an opportunity to reconnect with the books and art and enchanted forests of his youth. A scabrous French comedy from master filmmaker Olivier Assayas, Suspended Time is a sharply personal and fiercely neurotic ode to the eternal expanse of memory and the allure of life beyond our personal screens.

Though SUSPENDED TIME attempts to project what it would be like to isolate during the Pandemic, what transpires on screen is not what the general public would go through.  In the film, the two brothers and their respective partners stay in a beautiful countryside house and experience the beauty of the outside.  They undoubtedly isolate, but the isolation feels more like a secluded holiday than any imprisonment due to COVID-19.  Another point is that the filmmaker and the journalist talk a lot about art and their experiences, which are way above those of many of the audience.  In the evening scene, when they play a tune to be identified or the film the tune was taken from, much of what is played cannot be recognized by the average moviegoer.

The two brothers, Paul and Etienne, get on each other’s nerves, which results in one shouting match.  Paul is more annoying, and watching these two on film can require a bit of patience.

Yet Assayas’s film is not without charm.  Though nothing much happens, and the nuances of the characters begin to bother each other, for example, the volume of the music or what they want to do, like read or watch a movie, there are cute observations where one can laugh at the follies of humans.

The film contains lots of voiceover that gives the audience more perspective of what is going on and how the characters react and feel.  The tactic was used very much in Francois Truffaut’s DEUX ANGLAISES ET LE CONTINENT and this film feels like Truffaut’s classic.

SUSPENDED TIME opened only in the United States recently and will premiere in Canada, being available on Digital September 30th.

Trailer: 

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Written by: Gilbert Seah

Parent Category: Articles

Category: Movie Reviews

Published: 17 September 2025

FILM REVIEWS:

 

HIM (USA 2025) **
Directed by Justin Tipping

 

HIM arrives with the Jordan Peele tag.  Peele is a renowned director of horror hits, breaking into international horror cinema with GET OUT, his best film , followed by US nd NOPE.  It should be noted that HIM is not directed by Peele, so watch it. HIM is priced by Peeke under his Monkeypaw production company.

Cameron Cade (Tyriq Withers) was destined for football glory until an attack by an obsessed fan threatened to end his career before it began.  Just when hope fades, his idol, legendary quarterback Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans), invites him to train at his private compound. But what starts as the opportunity of a lifetime soon twists into something far more dangerous, as Cam discovers the true cost of chasing greatness.

The film unfolds in chapters, from Day 1 to Day 6, according to the training schedule of the hopeful greatest player of all time, Cam (short for Camron).  Unfortunately, the film is all over the place, not making much sense, and with a let-down climax, which is a violent blood fest, that makes little sense.  Each chapter from Day 1 to 6 has a title like Leadership, Vision, Sacrifice, and so on.  Unfortunately, each title has nothing much to do with each title except for the last title sacrifice when Cam is confronted with the choice of sacrificing everything for fame or bearing the consequences, an offer he cannot refuse.  Actually, he can, but with dire consequences.

HIM is neither scary nor suspenseful, but bloody and violent.  The premise of sacrifice for the ultimate gain is simple enough and moves towards a climax with new characters, while not making much sense.

HIM opens in theatres on Friday, the 18th September.

Trailer: 

THE HISTORY OF SOUND (USA/UK 2025

Directed by 

(to be posted weekend)

 

JUST BREATHE (USA 2024) ***

Written and directed by Paul P. Pompa II

 

When the advice “Just breathe” is given to someone, that someone is either:

• suffering from some panic anxiety
• lost it and needs to cool his or her temper.

The title JUST BREATHE refers to the latter, as when the film begins, the protagonist Nick has just been fired from his job for punching up his supervisor (not seen on screen).  This causes problems with him and his girl, Mel. Nick intends to propose to her and sets up an expensive dinner date at a posh restaurant, only to overhear two servers laughing at their country bumpkin ways in the bathroom.  Nick beats one of them to a comatose state, resulting in his arrest and imprisonment.  In the meantime, Mel loses her apartment, and they break up.  But Nick pursues her and pursues her despite his angry temperament.

The above scenario is a perfect classic case study for anger management.  Nick knows better but cannot control himself.  So what can he do?

JUST BREATHE aims at being a tense crime thriller that combines raw intensity with profound emotional depth, resulting in a compelling narrative that lingers long after the credits roll.  The film follows Nick Bianco (Kyle Gallner), who plans to rebuild his life and win back the love of his life after a year spent in prison for assault. Upon his release, Nick learns that the target of his affections has another admirer, Chester (Shawn Ashmore), his no-nonsense parole officer. Nick soon finds himself caught in a gripping rivalry that threatens not only his second chance at love but also his chance to stay out of prison.

JUST BREATHE works during the first half of the film when the audience is unsure where the story leads and when the premises are set up.  Once done, the film falls into cliche territory (during the second half), so that what transpires is expected with little surprises after, though the ending is neatly closed.

The film covers issues like anger management, father and son relationship,  a couple’s relationship amidst insurmountable troubles, and a fate that does not good to anyone in the story.

Actor Kyle Gallner is sufficiently credible in the title role, playing a character that one both loves and hates.  The villain of the piece is Chester, Nick’s parole officer, who is also involved with shady activities in the clichéd storyline.  The casting of a clean-cut Ashmore aids in the storytelling.

There is hardly any action or suspense in what is basically a story of the redemption of a guy given the bad hand of fate, as well as a destructive personality.  It is a hard sell for a movie, and it is a surprise that the movie got the go-ahead.

JUST BREATHE is entertaining enough as a low-budget film for undemanding audiences.  The difficulty of rooting for such a choleric protagonist who is self-destructive and uncontrollable is another flaw in a film where it is generally the case that a protagonist is a likable one.

JUST BREATHE will hit on-demand & digital on September 16, 2025. 

SAME DAY WITH SOMEONE (Thailand 2025) **
Directed by Rangsima Aukkarawiwat and Yanyong Kuruangkura

  

Definitely a first in the time loop genre, SAME DAY WITH SOMEONE combines the romantic comedy genre with the time loop premise in this new Thai film opening on Netflix this week.

Mesa, when a child asks the Red Ribbon Goddess for wishes like happiness and romance.  The Goddess seems to accommodate her requests so that she is at present, grown up, totally happy with everything.  When questioned about her success, she says that there are good days followed by bad days, and that makes life what it is.  But for Mesa, there are no bad days.  Until…..

Same Day With Someone is a Thai romantic comedy / magical realism film (on Netflix) about a museum curator named Mesa who ends up stuck in a time loop.  Mesa is living what seems to be a perfect life—good job, relationship, social standing—but one day everything goes wrong.  On that disastrous day, a priceless artifact, the Sirir Stone she was supposed to protect in her new museum, is broken, and her fiancé breaks up with her.  After wishing to forget that terrible day, she finds herself reliving it over and over.   The stone is supposed to be a bridge between Chinlin and Thailand.

For information: Chinlin or Kim Lin ('golden/wealthy neighbour) was an ancient political entity in modern lower central Thailand that existed from the 9 CE to the 3rd century.   In the film, when the Sirisila stone is broken, the visiting Ambassador of Chinlin storms out of the museum’s opening day, causing a rift between Chinlin and Thailand.  Which Mesa needs to mend?  Also interesting to note is that he location of Chin Lin remains unclear.  It was first mentioned around 9 – 22 CE during the late Western Han period

As in all time loop movies, as the cycle repeats, Mesa must figure out how to break free of it.   Along the way there are romantic elements (notably with a character named Ben), comedic moments, and personal growth.  One slight variant is that Mesa tells her friend Ben about the time loop, and Ben manages somehow to be in Mesa’s time loop together with her.  A romance begins.

How does he time loop originate?  After Mesa experiences the worst day in her life, after her fiancée, Pue, broke up.

With her and the disaster at the museum opening, she wishes that the next day would never come.  Mesa is then stuck in a time loop of the same day.  This is before all the misfortunes happen, so Mesa tries to prevent them.

The film is not that interesting for a time loop film, unable to reach the heights of GROUNDHOG DAY or any of the other time loop films.  It does not help that the main character, Mesa, is totally annoying, getting what she wants half the time.. Giggling or sulking, Mesa is one spoilt child, to put it mildly.

SAME DAY WITH SOMEONE opens for streaming this week on Netflix.

Trailer: 

SHE SAID MAYBE (Germany 2025) **½

Directed by Buket Alakus and Ngo The Chau

 

A German-raised woman named Mavi learns of her Turkish noble heritage and enters a world of luxury, challenging her relationship as she navigates her newfound identity.

SHE SAID MAYBE is a romantic comedy.  As far as romantic comedies go, there is always an obstacle to a happy ending.  In the new Netflix German comedy, the obstacle is taken to extremes.

Mavi and Can appear at the film’s start to be a perfect couple.  Both are very good-looking. Can is a successful lawyer in his father’s firm, while she is a talented architect just gaining recognition in s top architecture magazine.  After two years, Can intends to propose to Mavi.

The first proposal goes haywire on a zip-lining mishap, so Can is tempted to propose to her in Istanbul.

There are family secrets that translate to obstacles in a romantic comedy.  This comes in the form of Mavi’s new wealthy family in Turkey, which she does not know about.  Yes, the problem of thrice and famous!

The rom com is light ok entertaining with lots of scenic sights of Istanbul.  This is a rich couple that spends time mostly on yachts and in expensive restaurants, where the reality of the ordinary folk is totally ignored.  Throw caution to the wind to enjoy this one.

Trailer: 

THE STRANGERS: CHAPTER 2 (USA 2025) **

Directed by Renny Harlin

 

Horror movies are easy and cheaply produced, and usually make a good profit.  The evidence can be observed by franchises like FRIDAY THE 13th, HALLOWEEN, SCREAM, and the recent CONJURING, just to name a few.  At the bottom of the list is THE STRANGERS.  Studios shamefully milk the successes to the hilt.  But who can blame them?  The films all make a good buck.  The latest CONJURING movie is a prime example.  Lionsgate, the company that is now under the dumps, used to be the King of franchises like the TWILIGHT and DIVERGENT series, and is now hoping to get on the bandwagon with THE STRANGERS. (Personally, I hope they do well, as I do still hold their stock.)

THE STRANGERS film series consists of American psychological horror films. Based on an original story by Bryan Bertino, the plot centres around three masked psycho-sociopathic home invaders who prey on the innocent owners.  Though the first film was marketed as "based on a true story", this was a slight misdirect as the filmmaker stated that he wrote the concept from a series of break-in burglaries that took place in his neighbourhood when he was growing up, as well as borrowing elements from the Manson Family Tate murders.  Continuing this marketing technique, a "based on a true story" tag was also included at the beginning of the sequels.  Talk about abuse and misleading statements.

The only common element in all the franchises is the trio of 3 masked home invader killers.  The victims change.  The locations change.  All this makes one wonder about the connection among the different films.

If one is really fixed on THE STRANGERS series, then stay till the end of the closing credits.  There are clips of what is to come.  What can be seen is cheesy, but fans might be thrilled.

Renny Harlin is a well-known Hollywood director of hits such as Sylvester Stallone’s CLIFFHANGER.  He is desperate for a hit, despite his old age, and some of his zest can be observed  at several points in the film.

THE STRANGERS: Chapter 2 is the second installment in a new Strangers trilogy (after Chapter 1).   The protagonist, Maya, wakes up in a hospital after surviving the brutal attack at the end of Chapter 1. But she soon realizes the masked killers (the Strangers) are not done with her.

The killers, wearing masks (Dollface, pin-up girl, scarecrow), knowing Maya is still alive, begin to pursue her again to “finish what they started.  This film takes Maya outside the home setting, to the hospital, and about town.

Director Harlin hs Maya escaping and is rescued by car by other strangers, causing her to wonder if her rescuers are the masked killers.  This tactic is used twice in the film, but the film still fails to generate any surprises or wonder.  The magic question is whether audiences will say enough is enough after Chapter 2.

Lionsgate is hoping big for THE STRANGERS.  But judging from the competition of horror films out there and the ease of competition entry, Lionsgate should be prepared for contingency plans.

Trailer: 

Details

Written by: Gilbert Seah

Parent Category: Articles

Category: Movie Reviews

Published: 13 September 2025

Of the 75 films I have seen at TIFF 2025, these are the top standouts, in alphabetical order.

 

The following are the prize winners given out by TIFF,

Personal Best;

DIYA: Prix du Snag (Chad, France, Germany, Côte d’Ivoire 2025) ***½

Directed by Achille Ronaimou

 

Fast-paced with the urgency that the protagonist faces, DIYA is the local African term for the price of blood.  Dane (Ferdinand Mbaissané, winner of the Best Actor award at FESPACO 2025), a driver for an NGO in the capital, has the misfortune to run over a schoolboy.  His pregnant wife (Marina Ndormadjingar Solmem) runs to his aid to pay the hospital bills, but it’s too late: the child succumbs to his injuries, and his family summons Dane’s. He will be subjected to the diya, the blood debt, the payment of an exorbitant sum he doesn’t have.

Cleverly orchestrated, Diya puts us right at the heart of Dane’s torment: repaying the debt or languishing in prison far from his soon-to-be-born first child.   Dane is a good person depicted in the film as one who is sympathetic to the child’s mother.  It is a much scramble for funds as the director takes his audience through the colourful and informative journey of the villagers and people.  All ends well with a surprise ending in what can be described as a well-orchestrated and entertaining yet powerful movie.

THE LAST VIKING (Denmark 2025) ****
Directed by Anders Thomas Andersen

 

THE LAST VIKING teams director Anders Thomas Andersen with Mads Mikkelsen after MEN & CHICKEN and RIDERS OF JUSTICE in yet another weird, violent, and fucked-up (but in a good way) movie.  Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas play Anker and Manfred, brothers who are reunited after Anker’s years-long jail stint for a bank robbery. Since Manfred is the only one who knows where the loot is buried, Anker has no choice but to contend not only with his brother’s many psychological issues but the legacy of the traumas they suffered in their childhood.  Andersen assembles a highly memorable gallery of misfits, miscreants, and many other unique individuals with their own foibles and fixations, one of which may involve re-forming the most famous pop band ever.  Mikkelsen is simply marvellous as the mentally challenged John aka Manfred, who, if not jumping out of cars or windows, is trying to harm himself by stabbing his hand with fondue forks.  Likely the most fucked up but entertaining movie of the year.  And by the way, it is also ultra-violent.

 

NO OTHER CHOICE (South Korea 2025) ***½

Directed by Park Chan-wook

 

The film starts with a family group hug, and Man-soo has it all: a loving wife, two talented children, and two happy dogs.  He even bought the beautiful forest-enclosed house where he grew up.  Then, after 25 years of dedicated work for Solar Paper — where he was awarded Pulp Man of the Year in 2019 — Man-soo is suddenly given the axe.  Soon, he is falling behind on his mortgage payments, and his wife Mi-ri insists they put the house up for sale.  Man-soo is desperate to scoop a coveted position with Moon Paper, but he knows there are other job seekers who match his pedigree. So he hatches a plan: invent a phony paper company, reach out to each of his rivals, lure them into a meeting… and, one by one, dispatch the competition.  It is a wicked and occasionally hilarious satire based on the novel THE AX by Donald Werstlake. Director Chan’s film takes its time to establish the plot, but it is all worth it in this deliciously wicked thriller.

NOVELLE VAGUE (FRANCE 2025) ****
Directed by Richard Linklater

Having spent several years writing for Cahiers du cinéma, Godard (Guillaume Marbeck), not yet 30, declares, “The best way to criticize a film is to make one.” So off he goes, convincing George de Beauregard (Bruno Dreyfürst) to fund a low-budget independent feature and whipping up a treatment — there was never a proper script — with fellow New Waver François Truffaut (Adrien Rouyard) based on a news item about a gangster and his girlfriend.  A meticulously and handsomely delivered black and white homage to the French New Wave aka NOUVELLE VAGUE, sees the homage paid through the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s A BOUT DE SOUFFLE, also known in English as BREATHLESS.  Cinephiles will definitely delight in all the film references as well as the depiction of New Wave greats like directors Claude Chabrol, Francois Truffaut, Agnes Varda and husband Jacques Demy.  The film also depicts the idiosyncrasies of Godard, who shot BREATHELESS sans script and sand continuity, much to the chagrin of his financial backers, makeup artist and collaborators.  Seberg wanted to quit many times, but Belmondo finds all this absolutely amusing.

 

 

OCA (Mexico/Argentina 2025) ***½

Directed by Karla Badillo

 

 

 

 

 

A young nun sets off on a poetic, mystical pilgrimage to save her dying congregation, encountering others whose own trials of faith, privilege, and contradiction mirror her haunting search for divine meaning in a fractured, material world.  The film is described as Bunuel-ish for the reasons that the events in the film feel surreal and also for the religious overtones.  The protagonist is a catholic nun who travels to San Vincente on a motorcycle.  She is full of faith and believes that God has a plan not only for herself but also for others, especially those she meets on the way to a sort of pilgrimage.  She encounters a variety of odd characters, including a wealthy femme fatale driven in her car by her trusty chauffeur, a pilgrimage of villagers hoping to meet the arch-bishop in San Vincente and also robbers who steal her motorcycle.  OCA , the film title is a Spanish game in which there are twists and turns to get to the winning pots, just as the nun has to manoeuvre her way out of tricky situations.  A very intriguing film with lots of intriguing characters and events.

OLMO (USA/Mexico 2025) ****
Directed by Fernando Eimbcke

14-year-old Olmo is going through adolescence..  The film begins mischievously with Olmo’s dream, and he steps inside a hot rod with his sexy teen neighbour.  The toilet roll beside his bed shows him ready to finish off the dream with a happy ending.  OLMO tells the story of his quest for sex with his neighbour, who needs a stereo for her party.  To be invited, he has to steal and repair the broken one that belongs to his parents.  His father is bedridden with MS, and his mother is stressed, overworking, and behind with 3 months' rent.  The film is beautifully shot with the setting of 1979, bearing the mischievousness of the early John Hughes teen comedies, but this one has a message.  Director Eimbcke balances his family drama and growing-up story with plenty of humour, while avoiding sentimentality and melodrama. Totally remarkable and delightful performances all round, especially from Aidan Uttapa as Olmo.  Family is everything, even at the end of the film, when the mother still does not have enough money to pay the rent, when one knows everything is going to be all right.

A POET (Un Poeta) (Colombia/Germany/Sweden 2025) ****
Directed by Simón Mesa Soto

 

Coming right from Cannes, where A POET, in the Un Certain Regard section, won the Jury Prize, the film revolves around Óscar Restrepo, an aging poet who once had hopes of literary success but whose life has since drifted into obscurity, melancholy, and self-destructive habits.  He lives with his mother, struggles with unemployment, and drowns some of his disappointments in alcohol.  While teaching in a secondary school, he mentors Yurlady, a teenage student who shows raw talent in writing.  But fate is not on his side, as things go south for the poor soul.  A POET is tragedy in its most gruesome form, with Oscar brilliantly played like a monstrous troll by Ubeimar Ríos.  Dream big but achieve chaos!  One of the best of the festival!

SAIPAN (UK/Ireland 2025) ****

Directed by Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn

 

SAIPAN is the real-life drama behind star player Roy Keane’s rift with manager Mick McCarthy on the eve of the 2002 World Cup, Saipan is a story of ego, loyalty, and identity that resonates beyond the world of sports.  What began as a dispute over professionalism and pre-tournament training conditions on the remote Pacific Island of Saipan escalated into a national reckoning, dividing a country where football can be sacred. It was a moment that transcended sport, sparking pub debates, tabloid frenzy, political commentary, and even parliamentary mentions.  Steve Coogan delivers a riveting turn as McCarthy, opposite a formidable performance from Éanna Hardwicke as Keane.  This is a film not only for those who love the game of football.  What is most surprising is how the directors turn a story without a happy ending into an uplifting one.  There are a lot of solid quotes in the film as well, with a standout confrontation scene between the two men.

THE SECRET AGENT (O AGENT SCRETO) (Brazil/France/Germany 2025) ***** Top 10

Directed by  Kleber Mendonça Filho

 

Brazil, 1977. Marcelo, a technology expert in his early 40s, is on the run. He arrives in Recife ( seaside town in Brazil) during carnival week, hoping to reunite with his son, but soon realizes that the city is far from being the non-violent refuge he seeks.  Marcelo is told by the police chief that perhaps 100 people will die during the carnival, a joke that carries on throughout the movie.  Marcelo’s past is catching up with him, but he chooses to bring his life to a close with the satisfaction of spending the rest of his life with his son.  His son is presently staying with Marcelo’s parents, who care very much about the boy.

Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho, who also wrote the script for the film, is a familiar name to many cinephiles and film critics, making his name in his 2012 multiple award-winning NEIGHBOURING SOUNDS, also set in his birthplace of Recife in North East Brazil, and also his recent 2023 documentary PORTRAITS OF GHOSTS.  THE SECRET AGENT is a film the director reportedly wanted to make for years and it is not only an excellent film but one of the best to hit screens at both TIFF and in theatres.

The film pays homage to several films of the 70s when the film is set (actually 1977).  Most noticeable is the 1975 Steven Spielberg’s JAWS.  Recife is also a seaside town.  Other films that can be noticed in Filho’s film include actor Jean-Paul Belmondo, most likely in Philippe De Broca’s 1964 film THAT MAN IN RIO.

The film suffers from a rather overlong epilogue, featuring a conversation between two individuals in a hospital, which is a bit of a letdown after a spy-like chase through the streets.

Actor Wagner Moura, who plays Marcelo in the film, also serves as one of the film’s producers.  Some humour is provided by a cameo by Udo Kier who plays a German showing off his bullet scars on his leg.  Some of the supporting cast provide terrific performances.

Director Filho keeps his audience guessing most of the time about what is happening.  There is always a sense of intrigue and mystery from the film’s start when the hero, Marcelo, is driving through a gas station in which a deadman has been shot and covered with a blanket just outside the vicinity of the station at the film’s start to two sudden thugs suddenly appear out of the blue in pursuit of Marcelo.

THE SECRET AGENT has won multiple awards at Cannes, where it premiered.  It runs a lengthy 160 minutes, but every minute is worth it.  A major surprise, THE SECRET AGENT proves intrigue, mystery, action, some biting humour while reflecting the urgency of one’s times, whether the past and present, and how one needs to come to terms with one’s past, despite the risks involved.

 

 

STEVE (UK/Ireland 2025) ****

Directed by Tim  Mielants

 

Reminiscent of the French classroom drama BETWEEN THE WALLS, done cinema-verite/doc style, or a more maverick styled TO SIR WITH LOVE, the film follows a head teacher STEVE (Cilian Murphy) working in troubled school of boys, somewhat before they become SCUM in a borstal  Steve (Murphy) is the passionate head of a crumbling “last chance” reform school for teenage boys. With meagre resources, overstretched staff, and a mounting sense of futility, Steve must navigate one pivotal and precarious day made more tense by the arrival of a documentary news crew profiling the school, and the result may prove to be more exposé than commendation. The school is part institution and part last-ditch social experiment conducted in a shoddy rural manor house run by tired adults who believe their students still have something to offer the world. The boys, meanwhile, navigate an uneasy border between volatility and vulnerability. Mielants' score top marks in his storytelling technique using a combo of flashbacks and forwards, added by Murphy’s and Emily Watson’s stunning performances.

 

TORONTO — TIFF is announcing 12 awards today, including the Platform Award, TIFF’s only juried competition, and the coveted People’s Choice Awards presented by Rogers. This year’s awards include two exciting new additions: the International People’s Choice Award and the Short Cuts Award for Best Animated Short Film. As TIFF’s 50th edition comes to a close, the Festival is proud to have welcomed over 700,000 guests, nearly 2,000 accredited media, 6,000 Industry delegates, 1,200 screenings, and a stellar lineup of talent who graced 110 red carpets.

 

Audiences can catch this year’s People’s Choice Award–winning films at TIFF Lightbox screenings starting at noon today, with free tickets available to the public (visit here for more information).

 

PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARDS PRESENTED BY ROGERS

 

The 48th edition of TIFF’s People’s Choice Awards, presented by Rogers, presents the audience’s top titles at the Festival as voted by the viewing public. All feature films and Primetime series in TIFF’s Official Selection are eligible.

 

People’s Choice Award presented by Rogers: Hamnet, dir. Chloé Zhao

First runner-up: Frankenstein, dir. Guillermo del Toro

Second runner-up: Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, dir. Rian Johnson

 

International People’s Choice Award presented by Rogers: No Other Choice, dir. Park Chan-wook

First runner-up: Sentimental Value, dir. Joachim Trier

Second runner-up: Homebound, dir. Neeraj Ghaywan

 

People’s Choice Documentary Award presented by Rogers: The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue, dir. Barry Avrich

First runner-up: EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, dir. Baz Luhrmann

Second runner-up: You Had to Be There: How the Toronto Godspell Ignited the Comedy Revolution..., dir. Nick Davis

 

People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award presented by Rogers: Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, dir. Matt Johnson  

First runner-up: Obsession, dir. Curry Barker

Second runner-up: The Furious, dir. Kenji Tanigaki

 

SHORT CUTS AWARDS

 

Short Cuts Awards are presented to the Best International Short Film, Best Canadian Short Film, and Best Animated Short Film, as awarded by the Short Cuts jury. Each of the three winning films will receive a bursary of $10,000 CAD. The 2025 jurors for the Short Cuts Awards are Ashley Iris Gill, Marcel Jean, and Connor Jessup.

 

Short Cuts Award for Best International Short Film:

Talk Me, dir. Joecar Hanna | Spain/USA

 

Short Cuts jury’s statement: “This film sparked one of the most interesting conversations around the jury table. Talk Me is bold in its portrayal of intimacy and the universal longing for connection. The characters fit so naturally into the film’s unique, evocative world that everything feels normal very quickly. Its cinematography is beautiful, delicate yet deliberate, each frame carefully crafted to draw us deeper into the story. By allowing the visuals to lead, the film creates an immersive experience of vulnerability and honesty. For its courage, craft, and sensitivity, the jury presents the Short Cuts Award for Best International Short Film to Joecar Hanna’s Talk Me.”

 

Honourable Mention:

Agapito, dirs. Arvin Belarmino & Kyla Danelle Romero | Philippines

 

Short Cuts jury’s statement: “For its formal precision, command of a delicate tone, poetic awareness of space and movement, and deeply personal reflections on family, the jury is thrilled to present an Honourable Mention to Arvin Belarmino and Kyla Danelle Romero’s remarkable Agapito. The jury also wants to acknowledge the brilliantly nuanced and committed performances of the film’s young cast.”

 

Short Cuts Award for Best Canadian Short Film:

The Girl Who Cried Pearls, dirs. Chris Lavis & Maciek Szczerbowski | Canada  

 

Short Cuts jury’s statement: “In addition to highlighting the film’s daring technical achievement and sumptuous artistic direction, the jury also wants to recognize a fable about greed and the capacity of artists to create a fantastic world by the power of their narrative voice. The Short Cuts Award for Best Canadian Short Film goes to Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski for The Girl Who Cried Pearls.”

 

Honourable Mention:

A Soft Touch, dir. Heather Young

 

Short Cuts jury’s statement: “A Soft Touch really pierced our hearts. It finds a way to transform routine, everyday moments into a quietly devastating portrait of neglect and resilience. With searing precision and simplicity, the film illuminates how easily older folks can be overlooked, and in doing so, demands our attention, empathy, and accountability. The jury awards an Honourable Mention to Heather Young’s A Soft Touch.”

 

Short Cuts Award for Best Animated Short Film:

To the Woods, dir. Agnès Patron | France

 

Short Cuts jury’s statement: “This wordless journey into the bond between two siblings becomes a transcendent meditation on the mysteries of time and memory, love and loss, connection and transformation. Animated with lush, cosmic beauty and vibrating with tenderness and insight, the film plunges its viewer into deep, deep feeling. For its overwhelming artistry, luminous spirit, and soul-expanding sense of mystery, the jury presents the Short Cuts Award for Best Animated Short Film to Agnès Patron’s To the Woods. The jury also wants to note the film’s jaw-dropping sound design and the work of composer Pierre Oberkampf, whose score ranks among the best film music of recent years.”

 

FIPRESCI PRIZE

 

The FIPRESCI jury is awarding the International Critics Prize, dedicated to emerging filmmakers, to a debut feature film having its World Premiere in TIFF’s Discovery or Centrepiece programmes. The 2025 FIPRESCI jury members are: Katharina Dockhorn (Germany), Francisco Ferreira (Portugal), Jean-Philippe Guerand (France), Andy Hazel (Australia), and Justine Smith (Canada).

 

FIPRESCI Prize:

Forastera, dir. Lucía Aleñar Iglesias | Spain/Italy/Sweden

 

FIPRESCI jury’s statement: “Spanish cinema, long shaped by the exuberance of Pedro Almodóvar, has found a new distinctive voice in Lucía Aleñar Iglesias. Set on sun-drenched Mallorca, Forastera follows 16-year-old Cata, whose carefree family holiday is brought to a halt by the death of her grandmother. In her grief, the teenager takes on the older woman’s persona — wearing her clothes, adopting her gestures and silences. Aleñar Iglesias directs with restraint and precision, finding power in understatement. Performances from newcomer Zoe Stein and veteran Lluís Homar anchor the film’s dreamlike rhythms. What might sound slight becomes luminous: a meditation on an adolescent’s first encounter with death, and a ghost story about how the past lingers in the present. Forastera is a quietly assured debut, simple yet transformative, marking Aleñar Iglesias as a filmmaker the FIPRESCI jury would like to bet on.”

 

 

NETPAC AWARD

 

Presented by the Network for the Promotion of Asian Pacific Cinema, the NETPAC Award recognizes films specifically from the Asian and Pacific regions. The jury consists of three international community members selected by TIFF and NETPAC, who award the prize to the best Asian film by a first or second-time feature director. The 2025 NETPAC jury members are Dina Iordanova, Helen Lee, and Keoprasith Souvannavong, who is serving as Jury Chair.

 

NETPAC Award:

In Search of The Sky (Vimukt), dir. Jitank Singh Gurjar | India

 

NETPAC jury’s statement: “For offering an indelible tale of tolerance, desperation and faith, conveyed through a unique lens of realism and poetics, elevated by striking performances. In Search of The Sky (Vimukt) is a truly independent achievement by Indian filmmaker Jitank Singh Gurjar. The film transports the audience to rural central India, where an impoverished elderly couple contends with their cognitively challenged adult son and the villagers who threaten their existence. A beacon of hope comes in the form of the Maha Kumbh Mela, a pilgrimage to the world’s largest spiritual gathering where they seek renewal and new possibilities of life.”

 

BEST CANADIAN DISCOVERY AWARD

 

The Best Canadian Discovery Award celebrates works of emerging filmmakers who contribute to enriching the Canadian film landscape. All Canadian first or second feature films in Official Selection are eligible for this award. The winner will receive a cash prize of $10,000 CAD.

 

Jury members presiding over both the Best Canadian Discovery Award and Best Canadian Feature Film Award are: Jennifer Baichwal, Sophie Jarvis, and R.T. Thorne:

“Thirty-five films in 10 days gives you some perspective on the cinematic zeitgeist in our country. As a jury, we were particularly impressed by the wonderful variety, breadth, and strength of storytelling in the Indigenous films supported by the Indigenous Screen Office. This was a powerful indicator of the future of cinema in this country, and we look forward to seeing more in the future.”

 

Best Canadian Discovery Award:

Blue Heron, dir. Sophy Romvari | Canada

 

Jury’s statement: “Blue Heron, written and directed by Sophy Romvari, is a film centered on a family struggling with a troubling personal crisis, where all elements — script, direction, cinematography, performance and editing — unite to powerfully transcend the sum of their parts. The complexity of story, perspective, and emotion is conveyed with understated simplicity — nothing is superfluous — and the transitions between real and imagined, past and present, are seamless, as well as heartbreaking. Blue Heron is a stunning and assured feature debut about love, grief, memory, and the yearning to go back to the moment before everything changed.”

 

Honourable Mention:

100 Sunset, dir. Kunsang Kyirong | Canada

 

Jury’s statement: “We as a jury were struck by the remarkable world-building in 100 Sunset, Kunsang Kyirong’s directorial debut. She invites us into the apartment complex that is home to members of the Tibetan immigrant community in Toronto, where we experience the gossip, rivalries, and intrigues through the eyes of an observant young thief who rarely speaks but seems to register everything. The growing friendship between the thief and a newly arrived young wife is a study in seeing and being seen, and the interplay of an old DV camera perspective takes us along on their journey of expanding horizons.”

 

 

BEST CANADIAN FEATURE FILM AWARD

 

The Best Canadian Feature Film Award honours the unique craft and storytelling in Canadian cinema. All Canadian feature films in Official Selection — excluding first or second features — are considered for the award. The winning filmmaker will receive a $10,000 CAD cash prize.

 

Best Canadian Feature Film Award:

Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband), dir. Zacharias Kunuk | Canada

 

Jury’s statement: “Wrong Husband, directed by Zacharias Kunuk, is a love story from thousands of years ago that blends the epic and intimate and immerses viewers in a mesmerizing and unique cinematic experience. The supernatural is ever-present and matter of fact alongside exquisite details of the daily rhythms of ancient Inuit life. The humour, gentleness and stoicism in the characters’ interactions is deeply moving, and the landscape is both a sublime setting and a character in itself. This is a beautiful and not unexpected achievement from a master storyteller.”

 

Honourable Mention:

There Are No Words, dir. Min Sook Lee | Canada

 

Jury’s statement: “An Honourable Mention goes to There Are No Words, written and directed by veteran documentarian Min Sook Lee. This film is a profound and devastating story of unspeakable loss; the shifting shape and mingling of individual and collective memory; the sometimes brutal immigrant experience; and how past violent personal and political realities can continue to define the identity of a family.”

 

 

PLATFORM AWARD

 

Marking the tenth anniversary of the Festival’s competitive section, Platform champions bold directorial vision and distinctive storytelling on the world stage. The Platform Award is a prize of $20,000 CAD given to the best film in the programme, selected by an in-person international jury: Carlos Marqués-Marcet (Jury Chair), Marianne Jean-Baptiste, and Chloé Robichaud.

 

Platform Award:

To The Victory!, dir. Valentyn Vasyanovych | Ukraine/Lithuania

 

Platform jury’s statement: “To The Victory! is the unanimous choice for this year’s Platform Award amongst a very strong selection. Bringing cinematic language to its roots and, at the same time, masterfully playing with audience expectations, this film dismantles convention to reveal deeply resonant universal emotions. Director Valentyn Vasyanovych has choreographed a mise-en-scène rendered with masterful precision, arriving at the kind of refined simplicity that can only be achieved with artistic maturity and bold vision. He has deftly used comedy to address a very complicated and complex situation into a work that is both audacious and profoundly beautiful. Ultimately, the film returns us to the very essence of cinema — reminding us why we are compelled to tell stories on film, and why we continue to do so.”

 

Honourable Mention:

Hen, dir. György Pálfi | Germany/Greece/Hungary

 

Platform jury’s statement: “The jury also wishes to recognize the extraordinary artistry of director György Pálfi, whose work exemplifies boldness, intelligence, and creative ingenuity. Blending cinematic genres in an inventive and seamless manner, Hen demonstrates remarkable precision in its camera movement and shot composition, resulting in an exceptionally effective narrative. György’s unwavering commitment to exploring humanity through the perspective of the hen yields a singularly original vision — a work of stunning originality, unlike anything else in contemporary cinema.”

 

Awards descriptions including eligibility can be found here: tiff.net/awards. Information on the People’s Choice Award voting process can be found here: tiff.net/vote.

 

Last Sunday, TIFF hosted its seventh annual TIFF Tribute Awards, in partnership with Rolex. Photos of the event can be found here.

 

The 50th Toronto International Film Festival, presented by Rogers, concludes today. The 51st edition of the Festival will take place September 10–20, 2026.

 

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Written by: Gilbert Seah

Parent Category: Articles

Category: Movie Reviews

Published: 08 September 2025

FILM REVIEWS

DOWNTON ABBEY (UK 2025) ***½

Directed by Simon Curtis

 

 

DOWNTON ABBEY is the third and final film of the franchise.

The film follows the Crawley family and the Downton Abbey staff as they enter the 1930s. When Mary finds herself at the centre of a public scandal caused by her divorce and the family faces financial trouble, the entire household grapples with the threat of social disgrace. The Crawleys must embrace change as the staff prepare for a new chapter with the next generation leading Downton Abbey into the future.

The story is set in the 1930s.  The Crawley family and their staff are facing financial trouble, and there are threats to their social standing.  A central plot line involves Lady Mary: she is at the centre of a public scandal following her divorce. This causes social backlash in the era’s more rigid society.  With so many characters in the franchise, there are many other stories.

Other storylines include generational transitions and “passing the torch.”  Upstairs, the older generation (Lord and Lady Grantham) must confront change and decide how to hand over responsibilities.  Downstairs with the help staff, equally important, and among the staff, there’s also movement: retirement, changing roles, and new leadership as younger characters step up.

The biggest name in the film is surprisingly non-British Paul Giamatti, who plays the uncle who loses a majority of the money of the Downton estate.  But as everyone is so nice, he is forgiven and even sympathized with/

DOWNTON ABBEY is the brainchild and baby of writer Julian Meadows, who also produced the film.  To his credit, he has devised quite a good screenplay that brings together all the multiple characters, giving each one their uniqueness as well as their stories.  The script also pays tribute to past characters, such as the one played by Dame Maggie Smith, who is seen, posthumously, at the end of the film.  Meadows is also cheeky to praise himself for being good at writing in the film.

In the story, the building is in need of money for repairs.  This is also, ironically, true in real life.

Meadows’ script covers several key issues that keep the audience attentive.

Change vs tradition: The film explores how a grand estate like Downton Abbey adapts (or struggles to adapt) to social, financial, and cultural shifts in the 1930s.  Legacy & responsibility: Who will lead Downton in the future? How to preserve what Downton stands for while also moving forward.  Scandal & reputation: Lady Mary’s divorce becomes a focal point, showing how society viewed marriage, divorce, respectability, and social reputation at that time.

Farewell/closure: As the title suggests, this is meant as a final chapter—wrapping up the arcs of many characters,

The DOWNTON ABBEY fans, and even if one is not, should enjoy and be entertained in this supposedly final entry.

The film opens only in theatres this week, September 12th.

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SPINAL TAP: THE END CONTINUES (USA 2025) ***½
Directed by Rob Reiner

 

Decades (41 years to be exact)after the first THIS IS SPINAL TAP movie, one that popularized the mockumentary concept, the creators have returned, finally with a sequel with the title THE END CONTINUES, a phrase that contradicts itself.

Spinal Tap II: The End Continues is an upcoming mockumentary comedy sequel to the 1984 cult classic THIS IS SPINAL TAP. Directed by Rob Reiner, who also reprises his role as documentarian Marty Di Bergi, the film follows the fictional British heavy metal band Spinal Tap—David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean), Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest), and Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer)—reuniting after a 15-year hiatus for one final, legally obligatory concert.

Rob Reiner is famous for playing the role of Meathead in the series ALL IN THE FAMILY, also known as the son of famous vaudeville comic Cal Reiner, who also directed Oh, GOD.

The band members are David, Derek and Nigel, each having gone their own way after the breakup.  The film unfolds as it traces each of their lives, less than the filmmakers think the sequences are.Nigel is now running a cheese and guitar shop in Berwick-upon-Tweed and plays in a local folk band.

• David lives in Morro Bay, California, composing music for true-crime podcasts and hold music.
• Derek, residing in London, curates the “New Museum of Glue” and has even composed a symphony called Hell Toupée.                                                                                    

The fondness for the mockumentary genre has long faded, as can be observed in this movie.  Even jokes like the leaking foldable wine glass and David’s wife sleeping, unknown to him, with another band member, fail to register any laughs.

The best thing bout the film is the star-studded cameos, including Paul McCartney, Elton John, Questlove, Garth Brooks, Trisha Yearwood, Lars Ulrich, Chad Smith, and more. with a soundtrack featuring both new Spinal Tap tracks and re-recordings of classics, including a new version of “Stonehenge” featuring Elton John, and guest leads by Beatles McCartney and John.

SPINAL TAP: THE END CONTINUES is amusing at best.

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Written by: Gilbert Seah

Parent Category: Articles

Category: Movie Reviews

Published: 26 August 2025

FILM REVIEWS:

THE ANTIQUE (Georgia/Finland/Switzerland/Germany/Russia/Croatia 2024) ***
Directed by Rusudan Glurjidze

Because of the world’s disapproval of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian films have been missing lately in the North American scene.  THE ANTIQUE is a rare Russian film, but actually a Georgian production with Russia as one of the co-producing countries.  The film is inspired by the 2006 unlawful and brutal deportation of Georgians from Russia, as well as the real-life deportations that deeply affected director Rusudan Glurjidze and her homeland, and is partly filmed in Russian.  It is the Georgian entry for last year’s Academy Award for Best International Feature.  (It did not make the shortlist.)  The unlawful and inhuman deportation is reminiscent of what Trump and his ICE agents are doing at present in the United States.

Lado, a young Georgian smuggler trafficking antique furniture across borders, dreams of getting rich quickly, but his girlfriend Medea is done waiting.  She buys a dirt-cheap apartment in St. Petersburg’s historic centre, fully aware it comes with a peculiar catch: the flat’s eccentric elderly resident, Vadim Vadimich, isn’t going anywhere.   Vadim is THE ANTIQUE of the film title, obviously.  As Lado is swept up in a government crackdown and forcibly deported, Medea finds herself hiding from police in a wardrobe of the very warehouse they once relied on. Left behind, she begins an unlikely, uneasy cohabitation with Vadim, navigating a strange limbo of loss, resilience, and bureaucratic absurdity. 

THE ANTIQUE is a quietly powerful portrait of displacement, endurance, and the unexpected bonds that emerge when history barges into your home.   The mood and atmosphere of the troubled times are effectively captured on film despite the otherwise meandering narrative that jumps from one character to another.

  Georgia's Official 2024 Oscar Entry, THE ANTIQUE, Makes its Exclusive North American and Canadian Premiere on Film Movement Plus on 8/29.

 

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CAUGHT STEALING (USA 2025) ***** Top 10

Directed by Darren Aronsofski

 

CAUGHT STEALING is a black crime noir, set in 1998.  Henry "Hank" Thompson (Austin Butler) tends bar on the Lower East Side, where his girlfriend Yvonne (Zoe Kravitz) works as a paramedic, and frequently calls his mother (surprise cameo by a well-known star revealed only at the end of the film) in Patterson, California to discuss their beloved San Francisco Giants.  A star baseball prospect in high school, Hank is haunted by the car crash that killed his friend Dale and left him with a career-ending knee injury.

Hank's neighbour, British punk Russ (Matt Smith), returns to London to see his ailing father, leaving Hank to care for his cat, Bud.  Searching for Russ, Russian mobsters Aleksei and Pavel viciously beat Hank, who loses a kidney.  Hank can no longer drink, smoke, or do drugs. After the Russians break into Russ's apartment, narcotics detective Roman questions Hank and reveals Russ is a drug dealer connected to deadly Hasidic brothers Lipa and Shmully Drucker. Finding a key hidden in Bud's litter box, Hank notifies Roman when the Druckers search Russ's apartment.

CAUGHT STEALING, as the title implies, means stealing a base in baseball.  The lead character is not only obsessed with baseball but also stood in line for being drafted into the big league until something drastic happened.  The references to baseball and to the U.S. baseball teams run throughout the film and will be a delight to baseball enthusiasts while being a bit too much for others.

Director Aronofsky blends flashbacks, nightmares and jump scares well into the narrative.  His pacing is excellent, too, building the film up to a good climax that no one would suspect of happening.  Credit goes too to the scriptwriter Charles, who based the script on his own book.

Austin Butler, all bulked up now, since his breakout role as ELVIS, is once again excellent in the role, proving him to be a star in the making.  He also stole the movie DUNE 2 from Timothee Chamalet.  He only gets to use his muscles once in a boxing duel with a bad guy while acting the victim during the rest of the film.  Regina King also stands out as a crooked New York cop.

Director Aronofsky makes good use of locations with the film shot in New York’s Lower East Side.  The rows of fire escape stairs at the back of buildings remind one of the sets in WRST SIDE STORY but the staircases are used here for a different purpose.  The film paints a bleak look at New York City with all the crime, drugs, mafia and crooked cops.

CAUGHT STEALING is Aronofsky’s best film to date, balancing drama, action in a thriller genre with its raw energy, unpredictability and occasional black absurdist humour, including some Jewish jokes like not driving during Shabbos.   At best, it reminds one of Hitchcock’s NORTH BY NORTHWEST, in which an innocent man is caught in an intrigue of crime, as well as AFTER HOURS (Griffin Dunne is also in both films).  Aronofsky’s last film THE WHALE, was excellent too, showing the director at his prime with his new films improving one after another.  It will be a worthy wait to see his new project in the making.

CAUGHT STEALING opens everywhere in theatres on Friday, August 29th.

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CHRISTOPHER: A BEAUTIFUL REAL LIFE (Denmark 2025) **
Directed by Nynn Duva Hall

 

CHRISTOPHER, the documentary is about Christopher Lund Nissen, a Danish singer from Copenhagen, signed to EMI Denmark. In November 2012, he won an award at the Danish Music Awards 2012.  He was born in Frederiksberg, but later moved to Amager, Denmark, with his parents and younger brother Oliver.  In 2012, Christopher moved in with his girlfriend, Danish singer Medina.  The couple later split up. In 2014, he began a relationship with Danish model Cecilie Haugaard.  The couple married in June 2019.  The pair welcomed their first child, a daughter named Noelle, in 2021. In 2023, Haugaard gave birth to the couple’s second child, a daughter.  This is where the film begins.

The film offers an intimate look at the life of Danish pop icon Christopher (Christopher Lund Nissen).  It explores the complex crossroads he faces between his soaring career and his growing family responsibilities.  At the same time, his personal life is flourishing—his partner, model and influencer Cecilie Haugaard, is expecting their second child.  This newly found happiness brings a profound dilemma: chasing fame or cherishing family time.
Questions like: "Is the dream worth the cost?" and "Can he turn down the biggest opportunity of his life to preserve what matters most?”

There is nothing wrong with this Danish doc except for the question of whether this really intimate look at a foreign star would really interest the average moviegoer.  The segments are realistic, if not touching enough, but there are too many segments telling the same message.  This is not to mention that it is difficult to feel sympathetic for a white, wealthy, good-looking, and famous couple that has everything already laid out for them.  Put me in their shoes and give me their problems anytime!
CHRISTOPHER: A BEAUTIFUL REAL LIFE opens for streaming this week on Netflix.

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FANTASY FOOTBALL RUINED OUR LIVES (Italy 2025) **
Directed by Alessio Maria Federici

 

This Italian sports comedy contains quite an unfamiliar topic for Canadians, which makes the comedy an odd watch.  For one, football in Italy means soccer.  One needs to know first of all what fantasy football is.  This is not explained in the movie, and is assumed that one knows what it is.

In the film, the characters are part of the “Mai una gioia” fantasy football league, where each participant drafts real soccer players into their virtual teams and scores points depending on those players' actual performances.

A tight-knit group of friends participates in a fantasy football league called “Mai una gioia” (“Never a joy”). On the day of Gianni’s wedding—also the season’s final and most critical league day—Gianni disappears and fails to submit his lineup.

The film begins with a no-show of the groom, with the bride cursing on the wedding day.  Police arrive to arrest the fantasy football league.

As the film progresses, secrets unravel through group chat chaos—insults, accusations, incriminating screenshots, and even dark comedic "death threats.”  These are not particularly funny,y with the actors acting like humanized cartoons
The film attempts to show, it is presumed, how fantasy football can spiral from harmless fun into an all-consuming battle of pride, betrayal, and revenge.

The film misses the goal and ends up a silly mess of mostly missed humour.

FANTASY FOOTBALL RUINED OUR LIVES opens for streaming on Netflix this week, an original and horrid comedy.

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LURKER (USA 2025) ***½

Directed by Alex Russell

 

LURKER is a film about a fan and a stalker - the same person.  But to distinguish it from the typical slasher or psycho thriller film, the term lurker is used.  But LURKR is neither a thriller nor a slasher film but a sort of satire on the music/fan industry.

When a twenty-something retail clerk, Matthew (Canadian rising star Theodore Pellerin) encounters a rising pop star, Oliver, also known as Oliver (British actor Archie Madekwe) in his store, he takes the opportunity to edge his way into the in-crowd.  But as the line between friend and fan blurs beyond recognition, access and proximity become a matter of life and death.

A few details are left unexplained.  One is Oliver’s British accent, which is never addressed.  The film begins with Oliver accepting Matthew into the group and putting Matthew in front of his current cameraman.  Oliver is impressed with Matthew’s work and decides to hire Matthew to make a documentary about him.  Matthew is more than delighted to be in Oliver’s closed-knit group.  But Matthew’s talent precedes him.  Matthew grows obsessive and jealous, especially when Oliver takes an interest in Jamie (Sunny Suljic), Matthew’s work colleague.

The bond between two people makes a sensitive topic that can be geared towards homosexuality.  Director Russell stays away from this topic, making it clear that the two men have no sexual attraction for each other.  But there are two homoerotic segments in the film.  One is the spontaneous wrestling match Matthew imposes on Oliver, Matthew wrestling in his underwear.  The other is Oliver and Matthew making love, having sex, with females the same bed while gazing into each other.  The film was screened in Europe at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival in the section Berlinale Special Gala, where it was screened in competition for the Teddy Award.

It takes a while to be charmed by LURKER.  Russell’s film is initially all over the place and one wonders initially where the story is leading.  But one soon realizes that this is director Russell’s style and the spontaneity and roughness of the film add to the film’s uniqueness.  The film is aided by one terrific performance by Theodore Pellerin in a breakout performance.  Pellerin is always good and has been seen in a small role in a couple of films.  LURKER will surely put this young talent in the spotlight.

The film also serves as a late coming-of-age story of Matthew.  At the beginning of the film, Matthew says on camera that he is happy and needs nothing more out of life.  But this is not true and Oliver shows how insecure he really is.  But his obsession and conviction, though he does indulge in some blackmail and dishonesty, finally gets the fame Matthew gets, whether deserving or not.  LUKER also serves as a cautionary tale of fame, how it might be overrated and whether it might not always be deserved.  There is also a twist surprise ending.

LURKER premiered in Canada at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal and opens in theatres August 29th.

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UNKNOWN NUMBER: THE HIGH SCHOOL CATFISH (USA 2025) ***
Directed by y Skye Borgman

On the internet, catfishing is when someone creates a fake online identity and persona, often using false photos and information from others, to deceive someone into a relationship, usually to scam them for money or emotional exploitation. The person creating the fake profile is called a "catfish," and the act is a form of online deception that can occur on social media, dating apps, and other platforms. 

UNKNOWN NUMBER: THE HIGH SCHOOL CATFISH is a chilling true-crime documentary directed by Skye Borgman (Girl in the Picture, Abducted in Plain Sight). It explores a harrowing case of cyberbullying that shattered a small Michigan community, Beal City.

The story unfolds in Beal City, Michigan, where 13-year-old Lauryn Licari and her boyfriend Owen, became targets of anonymous, harassing text messages that began in October 2020 and resumed in September 2021.  The messages escalated rapidly, becoming vicious, explicit, and deeply personal.NetflixBig Rapids Pioneer.  As months passed, suspicion ran rampant throughout the school and community. Parents, officials, and even the FBI got involved in trying to trace the source.NetflixBig Rapids Pioneer
The identity of the catfish is only revealed at the end in a twist, which is, as expected, someone close to Lauryn.

The film is an ok watch, but comes lower on the score in the scale of Netflix’s true crime dramas.  It is difficult to feel sympathetic for young teens who have nothing better to do than spend the whole time looking at their phones, though what has occurred is a crime.  The teens cannot speak properly without the overuse of the word ‘like’, which makes listening to them quite annoying.

UNKNOWN NUMBER: THE HIGH SCHOOL CATFISH open for streaming on Netflix August 29th, 2025.

Trailer:

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Written by: Gilbert Seah

Parent Category: Articles

Category: Movie Reviews

Published: 20 August 2025

FILM REVIEWS:

FALL FOR ME (Germany 2025) **
Directed by Sherry Hormann

 

FALL FOR ME is a German film shot in German and some Spanish, set in Mallorca, about German sisters.

Lilli visits her sister Valeria, surprised to learn she's engaged to a Frenchman, Manu. She spontaneously meets nightclub manager Tom, sparking an instant connection. A dark secret lurks behind the island's events.

This is a film about scammers, as the audience is told at the beginning that for a scam to work, it must be something that the victim or target really wants.

The scamming in the film takes its time to pop up, around the 30-minute mark, which means that the film is padded with little nonsense that can be both boring and annoying.

Described as an erotic thriller, the film turns up more as a tease than anything else.  There are erotic shots of nipples through wet tops, but never any full nudity.  The danger is also not as threatening as it sounds, while the film moves at too slow a pace to be a satisfying thriller.  Positive for the movie, however, are the stunning surroundings of Mallorca (the seas and cliffs) the film is shot and the story is set.

FALL FOR ME opens for streaming on Netflix this week.

Trailer: 

 

GOLD RUSH GANG (Thailand 2025) **

Directed by Wisit Sasanatieng

 

GOLD RUSH GANG follows a real folk legend—Ko-Wah Thungsong—into a modern epic.  The story draws on real events and local history, heightening its authenticity and cultural resonance.

Set in post–World War II Southern Thailand, the story follows Ko-Wah Thungsong, a legendary bandit akin to a Thai Robin Hood. He leads a motley crew of skilled misfits as they attempt to hijack a Japanese Army train carrying a fortune in gold.  Their mission: to use the loot to drive out the invaders and return prosperity to their people.

Supposedly based on a real-life figure and real events, what transpires on-screen looks so silly and manipulative that credibility is shot out the window.  The Robin Hood-style action comedy can hardly be called exciting or even remotely funny.  The subplot of the romance is also contrived, if anything else.

One can hardly be excited when one has a band of bandits on horses using weapons like little axes and crossbows fighting against a hundred time their number of Japanese soldiers, all armed with military hardware.   Yet no bandit is killed.

The film is in Thai and written by the director and Phetthai Vongkhamlao, the actor playing Ko-Wah.

GOLD RUSH GANG is open for streaming on Netflix this week.

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RELAY (2025) ***½

Directed by David MacKenzie

 

The title of the film RELAY comes from a communications service used in the film called ‘relay’, used in covert operations.  The use of relay is of utmost importance in the operation of the protagonist's work.

The "relay" in the title is a statewide or regional phone relay system—often termed the "Tri-State Relay"—that connects callers using assistive devices (like typed text) with operators who speak the messages aloud and vice versa.  In the film RELAY, Ash (played by Riz Ahmed), a shadowy "fixer" helping whistleblowers return stolen documents in exchange for guaranteed safety, exploits this service to remain anonymous.  He types messages on a special assistive device (that looks like a typewriter with a skinny digital screen), which then gets read aloud by relay operators to the recipients, with no identifying information retained or traceable back to him.   It is a shrewd means of communication in a hyper-surveilled world: the service doesn’t log caller information or preserve records, so Ash’s voice, number, and location remain hidden, even when brokering dangerous exchanges between whistleblowers and corporations.  It is central to both the plot and tone—enabling the fixer, Ash, to orchestrate secret exchanges under high stakes, while also reinforcing the film’s mood of paranoia and emotional distance.

Ash (also known as Tom in the film) is a reclusive “fixer” who mediates covert deals between whistleblowers and corrupt corporations—while preserving complete anonymity. He conducts communications via a public telephone relay service (designed for the deaf and hard-of-hearing), leveraging its operator-mediated anonymity to stay off the grid.

When Sarah (Lily James), a former biotech scientist, reaches out, offering secret files about dangerous genetically modified wheat in exchange for her safety, Ash embarks on a high-stakes game.  Together, they navigate a tense cat-and-mouse chase, pursued by corporate operatives led by Dawson (Sam Worthington).

The film has the feel of classics in the mystery/noir genre like THE CONVERSATION, Francis Ford Coppola’s 1971 classic, and the more recent MICHAEL CLAYTON.

Academy Award Winner Riz Ahmed is once again excellent in the role, mostly without much dialogue in the first half.  The use of the relay to promote intrigue and also humour and tension is marvellous.

There is an expert twist at the end (not revealed as a spoiler in this review) that should get the audience delighted.  A little slow-paced, but the reward comes with patience and the wait for the conclusion.  Also working well is the emotional state and personality of Ash, which makes the film more relatable.

Scottish director David MacKenzie proves himself once again an apt and rewarding director.  His previous HELL OR HIGH WATER was his career best, and the upcoming FUZE, to be screened at TIF,F is his new film to watch.

RELAY premiered in Toronto at TIFF last year and is in theatres this week.

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THE TRUTH ABOUT JUSSIE SMOLLETT? (USA 2025) ***
Directed by Gagan Rehill

 

THE TRUTH ABOUT JUSSIE SMOLLETT? features Smollett interview plus talks with police, lawyers and investigators claiming new case evidence. Viewers can judge who's telling the truth about the Jussie Smollett case.

Jussie Smollett is an American actor and singer.  He began his career as a child actor in 1991, debuting in The Mighty Ducks (1992).  From 2015 to 2019, Smollett portrayed musician Jamal Lyon in the Fox drama series Empire, for which he is best known.  But it is not his career that is focused on in the doc, as the actor did something criminal that is more interesting and which is what makes this new Netflix original documentary.

In January 2019, Smollett claimed to have been a victim of a hate crime, but police later determined that he had staged the attack with two acquaintances.  He was initially charged with filing a false police report, but charges were dropped after he completed community service and forfeited $10,000.  In 2020, a special prosecutor re-indicted him, and he was convicted on five counts in December 2021.  He was sentenced to jail in March 2022, although his release was ordered after six days. The sentence was upheld on appeal in 2023, but the Illinois Supreme Court later reversed the conviction in 2024 on the basis that he had fulfilled the plea agreement made in 2019.

The ultimate answer to the question on the truth of the hate crime is left unanswered and left to the audience to decide based primarily on Smollett’s testimonies and interviews.  The doc is interesting enough as its subject and what had happened to him.

The doc plays like a detective mystery in parts when the cops question irregularities in Jussie’s attack.  Why was he still carrying the sandwich after the attack?  Anyone would not have.  Why did he fold the noose so efficiently, like a prop when taking it away from his head?  The camera footage and hunting down of the suspects are also interesting parts of the doc.

THE TRUTH ABOUT JUSSIE SMOLLETT opens on Netflix Friday, August 22nd.

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Written by: Gilbert Seah

Parent Category: Articles

Category: Movie Reviews

Published: 12 August 2025

Capsule Reviews:

100 SUNSET (Canada 2025) **
Directed by Kunsang Kyirong

Though Canadian in production, 100 SUNSET looks very much like a Tibetan production, mostly because large part of the films shot in Tibetan and most of the players in the film are Tibetan.   The story is driven by the activities of Kunsel (Tenzin Kunsel), the taciturn introvert at the film’s centre. Kunsel’s fascination with others manifests in her two primary pursuits: spying on her neighbours with a newly acquired video camera and committing petty thefts. vBut after she meets Passang (Sonam Choekyi) — an enigmatic newcomer with a much older husband — Kunsel must venture beyond her comfortable position as a wary, watchful outsider.  The film suffers from a weak narrative, giving the effect that the film looks aimless in the director’s delivery.  It is also difficult to tell who is whom and how the characters are related at the start of the film.  !00 SUNSET is the apartment block in the Parkdale district, where the protagonists live.  The film has familiar sights of Toronto, mainly in the poorer suburbs.

AKI (Canada 2025) ***½

Directed by Darlene Naponse 

 

The doc is told in seasons beginning with winter and closes one full cycle.  The largely wordless doc is compensated for by the beauty of Northern Ontario. All of the seasons pass in bright blooms, vivid foliage, and white shining snow, in director Darlene Naponse’s AKI. Set on Atikameksheng Anishnawbek (formerly known as Whitefish Lake First Nation), her home community in Northern Ontario, Naponse’s latest captures soundscapes, the natural world, and the generations of inhabitants and all types of creatures calling this territory home.

In a documentary that is almost completely wordless — except for some Anishinaabemowin — Aki finds beauty in the smallest of moments, from the kids playing hockey on an outdoor ice rink, to the joy of a dog running through a lake.  The best way to enjoy this wonderful doc is to just sit back and enjoy!

 

AMOEBA (Singapore/Netherlands/France/South Korea 2025) **½
Directed by Siyou Tan

 

AMOEBA is a coming-of-age story of one young rebellious student in the city-state of Singapore, where rebellious behaviour is very much discouraged, if not severely punished.  There is one scene where a girl is punished by caning.  Sixteen-year-old tomboy Choo Xin Yu (Ranice Tay) seems like a misfit when she joins a highly competitive, elite all-girls school in Singapore. But she quickly befriends three others who share her rebellious nature. While the girls struggle to fit in, they pledge loyalty to each other and vow to start a gang as a form of resistance. When their rebellious acts — recorded by the girls on a camcorder — are discovered by their teacher, their lives are upended.  What keeps haunting Choo may be more than just the ghost she suspects is in her room.  The film is a worthy first feature, but her first feature can be noticed from her lack of detail or the depth of her story.  There are no signs for the reason that Choo’s school is an elite one, except for the fact that it is mentioned that it became number one in Singapore.  The students and families live in cramped HDB flats and not in big houses with parents who are doctors or lawyers, which is typical in an elite school.  Even though a fiction film, the claim that the school is the first to build an Olympic-sized swimming pool is not true (the first was ACS, where this critic was educated).  The depth of rebellion is only superficial and could be looked upon with greater depth, such as the problems with the overly strict government.    

 

 

 

AMOUR APOCALYPSE (Peak Everything) (Canada 2025) **
Directed by Anne Emond

Director Anne Emond tackles male trauma with her forty-year-old protagonist suffering from insecurity and a need for acceptance.  Adam is a kennel owner, Adam grappling with climate anxiety. Amid a natural disaster, he embarks on an adventurous, bilingual romantic journey to find her.  Adam has issues that the story blames on his affection-avoidant father, and lets his young assistant take advantage of his good nature.  To help combat his eco-anxiety, Adam orders a therapeutic solar lamp. Through the lamp's supplier's technical support line, he meets Tina, a radiant woman with a voice that soothes all of his worries.   The film is a strange love story of sorts.   Director Emond gets her character, Adam, to cry, mope, and come to terms with himself.  Her female characters, those that Adam encounters, like Tina and his kennel helper, have stronger personalities.  It is hard to identify with a protagonist with self-worth issues, but the film feels too like one with too much of a female slant.

BAD APPLES (UK 2025) ***

Directed by Jonatan Etzler

 

A British satire directed by a Swede with that rare Nordish humour with a stir that involves with Saoirse Ronan playing Maria, an elementary teacher at a ritzy private school.  But her \s plagued by the epic bad behaviour of one extremely foul-mouthed and disruptive child, Danny. After he has a violent altercation with another student, Maria is forced to take action.  This involves unexpectedly kidnapping him and locking him up in her basement while Danny is declared missing and searched for by the police and local community.  While watching the events unfold, the one question on everyone’s mind is how everything would end, and one is sure that it would be in Maria’s favour.  However, the ending is kind of awkward with credibility issues. Otherwise, not a bad and amusing look at desperation and coping with one’s problems.

 

THE BALLOONISTS (USA/UK/Austria 2025) ***½

Directed by John Dower

 

Wonder is the one aspect in film that wows audiences. THE BALLOONISTS is about explorers with dreams and how they do their utmost best in life to achieve them.  The doc begins with a history of explorers trying to travel around the world in an air balloon, but failed, or as the film says. learns from their failures, before settling on two who achieved their dreams - Biran Jones and Bertrand Piccard, Piccard himself being an extremely difficult person to work with, reminiscent of the CEO who designed the disastrous vessel to explore the Titanic wreck.

Filmmaker John Dower focuses his narrative on the 1990s when the race intensified among competitors to be the first in history. He taps into a rich archive that captures all the highs and lows on camera. Virgin mogul Richard Branson was among the highly publicized aeronauts to encounter successive failures. The perils were numerous: technical malfunctions, changing winds, severe storms, ice formation, and the threat of certain countries shooting down unauthorized aircraft.  Central to this story is the Swiss explorer Bertrand Piccard, who became obsessed with hot air balloons as a boy. He was driven to match the legacy of his father, Jacques Piccard, a renowned inventor and explorer. Bertrand partnered with the English pilot Brian Jones on the custom-built Breitling Orbiter 3.  Wonderfully entertaining and plain wonderful!  And one can learn a thing or two about engineering as well.

BLOOD LINES (Canada 2025) ***½

Directed by Gail Maurice

 

Canadian Indigenous director Gail Maurice returns after her acclaimed ROSIE with another entertaining hit that also encompasses current Indigenous issues.  Maurice plays a mother, riddled with cancer, who returns to reconciliation with her daughter, taken away from her because of drink.  Meanwhile, the daughter, also a storyteller and store clerk, Beatrice (Dana Solomon) is completely taken by a new woman who arrives in her Métis community looking to find her biological family. Beatrice decides to help Chani (Derica Lafrance) in order to spend more time with her.  Meanwhile, a chorus of older women, collectively referred to as “The Grannies,” tries to get Beatrice to mend things with her mom. Director Maurice’s tale is also full of humour that lifts the dramatic tale up several notches.  Entertaining while making a point with an important message.

THE BLUE TRAIL (Brazil/Mexico/Chile/Netherlands 2025) ****

Directed by Gabriel Mascaro

 

It is a dystopian future in Brazil, and seniors are given a hard time.  They are forced to stop work and leave work for the younger population. At the same time, the government is forcing them to socialize in ways they deem acceptable to them.  Tereza, 77, has lived her whole life in a small industrialized town in the Amazon, until one day she receives an official government order to relocate to a senior housing colony.  The colony is an isolated area where the elderly are brought to « enjoy » their final years, freeing the younger generation to focus fully on productivity and growth. Tereza refuses to accept this imposed fate. Instead, she embarks on a transformative journey through the rivers and tributaries of the Amazon to fulfill one last wish (her bucket list wish) before her freedom is taken away—a decision that will change her destiny forever.  This is a very funny and timely film and one of the best films about seniors in a long time, and I am not talking COCOON here.  The stunning cinematography of the rivers in the Amazon is simply breathtaking.  

CALLE MALAGA (Morroco/Fr/Spa 2025) ***
Directed by Maryam Touzani’

 

This is Carmen Maura’s movie all the way, the esteemed veteran actress who appears in almost every frame of the movie.  Maura won fame and acclaim from Pedro Almodovar’s films, including his first hit, WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS?  María Ángeles (Carmen Maura) is a fiercely independent senior living in the Spanish quarter of Tangier. When her daughter Clara (Marta Etura) arrives for a long-overdue visit, she comes with an agenda: to pressure María into selling the home — left in Clara’s name by her late father — to offset her own post-divorce financial struggles. But María, deeply embedded in her community and cherished by her neighbours, quietly resolves to stay.  Determined not to be displaced, she devises a resourceful plan to earn enough money to keep the apartment and buy back the cherished belongings her daughter hastily sold to an antique dealer in preparation for the sale of the property. In the process, María unexpectedly finds a romantic spark with someone she once viewed as an adversary.  The film is shot in the director’s home in Tangier and shows the local street vendors' shops and surrounding architecture.  Quite slow-moving and sentimental, this is the film, however, that Maura’s fans will love.

THE CHRISTOPHERS (USA 2025) ***½

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

 

Director Soderbergh teams up again with writer Ed Solomon to create a stylish chamber piece rich with dialogue and colourful characters set in the art world of forgery and deception.

The film centers on Julian Sklar (Ian McKellen), a once-celebrated painter now reclusive and dwindling in relevance, and his estranged children who see his unfinished series of paintings ("The Christophers") as a potential posthumous windfall. They hire Lori Butler (Michaela Coel), a struggling art restorer posing as his assistant, to finish or forge these works so they can profit from them after his death.  Lori and Julian begin a relationship that is both hateful and tolerant, which grows for the queerest of reasons.   McKellen is excellent in delivering his lines, exhibiting black humour, pathos, and respect for both his character and for himself as an actor. Again, another small but wonderful entertainment from Soderbergh.

THE CONDOR DAUGHTER (La Hija Condor)(Bolivia/Peru/Uruguay 2025) ***
Directed by Álvaro Olmos Torrico

 

A female coming-of-age cautionary fable of the conflicts between tradition and modernization and between duty and personal desire.  The film follows Clara (Marisol Vallejos Montaño),a young, smart and resourceful woman living in the community of Totorani, high in the Bolivian Andes.  Her adoptive mother, Ana (María Magdalena Sanizo), has dutifully taught her the ancient traditions of midwifery, including the tender Quechua songs believed to help safely usher newborns into the world.  But while Clara loves, respects, and is expected to continue this tradition, she dreams of discovering the wider world on her own, and maybe even conquering the city with her gifted voice.  The film benefits from director Torrico’s attention to detail in both her characterization of Clara as well as the capture of the rural period and atmosphere, despite the film’s somewhat languid pace.  Torrico moves the film towards the expected ending with a conflict showdown between mother and daughter.

 

THE COST OF HEAVEN (Gangne Ton Ciel)(Canada 2025) ***
Directed by Mathieu Denis

 

As the film title implies, there is a cost, and a very expensive one, to get to heaven, and it takes fight to do it. The cost of Heaven is a cautionary tale of a hardworking man, Nacer (Samir Guesmi), who figures that life has cheated him and he has not gotten the riches he deserved.  Of course, he does not realize that he has a loving wife and three children.  But the film shows him appreciating them at the start during a Christmas dinner, but his greed causes him to lose sight of things, till a life-altering lesson causes him to become a sort of prodigal son.  The film was inspired by a true crime Montreal incident, it seems.  Director Denis gets his details correct on the investing wheeling and dealing, including the crypto safe haven.  Nacer and his wife speak French with a French accent, showing them to be likely immigrants, while the rich and powerful speak with a Quebecois accent.  The happy ending seems too convenient for one.

COPPER (Cobre)(Mexico/Canada 2025) ***
Directed by Nicholas Pereda

 

Mexican Canadian director Pereda has a unique sense of storytelling.  It is slow-framed, weird in execution, and has a Kafka-ish feel of mystery and intrigue.  What seems to be happening high not and nothing is what it seems.  The story focuses on a poor worker named Lazaro, who, one wonders, is a liar or one who is really suffering health issues as he keeps asking the docket for days off work.  Facing skepticism, suspicion, and scorn from just about everyone he encounters, Lázaro doesn’t fare much better with his own family members, including the aunt who seems to be the object of a special longing.  Wry humour is also present, making this slow-burning film entertaining in a surprising way.

COVER-UP (USA 2025) ***
Directed by Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus

 

This is a doc about a brave and risk-taking reporter nicknamed Sy who exposes the deeds of the wicked.  “It’s complicated to know who to trust. I barely trust you guys,” says Seymour Hersh. He’s speaking to the directors, Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus, about his career as an investigative reporter.   The film goes back and forth with Hersh’s interview.  He is shown with all candidness, displaying eagerness, energy, anger, and anger as the director pushes his boundaries.  Time after time, Hersh has exposed brutal realities that governments and corporations wanted to cover up.  He shares behind-the-scenes details of how he reported the My Lai massacre, Watergate, the operation of CIA spying on Americans, and the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, to name a few of his major headlines.   Every step of the way, he faced fierce pushback from powerful interests.  President Nixon is heard on tape saying, “This fellow Hersh is a son of a bitch.”  As they say, Hersch might be a son of a bitch, but he is our son of a bitch.   One often hears about the cover-ups, but this doc combines news of cover-ups with the man behind them.

 

DANDELION’S ODYSSEY (France/Belgium 2025) ***½

Directed by Momoko Seto

  

Following the footsteps of the Oscar-winning animated FLOW from Latvia, DANDELION’S ODYSSEY is a stunning animation with little plot, though penned by three writers, but it is more than made up for by the imaginative journey that defies time and space.  Dendelion, Baraban, Léonto and Taraxa are four odd friends; four seeds used to belong to the same dandelion. Rescued from a nuclear explosion that destroyed the Earth, they find themselves hurled into the cosmos, travelling through planets and constellations. When they land on an unknown planet, they set off on an unforgettable adventure to find a new home and settle for good, through planets and constellations. When they land on an unknown planet, they set off on an unforgettable adventure to find a new home and settle for good.  The story is told through sounds and music, with a little cuteness thrown in as the seeds with their tentacles often dance in the wind.  This is director Momoko Seto’s first full-length animated feature after three shorts.

 

DEAD LOVER (USA 2025) **

Directed by Grace Glowwikcki

 

DEAD LOVER, as the film title implies, is one weird movie.  If one likes very, very weird movies, then this is your kind of movie.  I myself, this critic loves fucked up films, but thiamine is just too much for me..  The reason is that director Glowwicki just does what she likes, regardless of anything anyone thinks, or crypto or narrative, or logic.  Writer-director Grace Glowicki stars as a wily gravedigger whose stench has left her bereft of amorous suitors. That is, until a horny dandy (co-writer Ben Petrie) with a penchant for her fetid funk enters this vibrantly chiaroscuro picture. The two consummate their love, but when a misbegotten voyage reduces the gravedigger’s lover to a mere severed finger, she feverishly turns to unnatural sciences to concoct a means of literally resurrecting the relationship.  There is a reference to  Mary Shelley at the film’s start, but all in all, this is one bad, indulgent, crazy, weird film..\

 

DEUX PIANOS (Two Pianos)(Franc 2025) **
Directed by Arnaud Desplechin

 

The French film bears two heavyweights - director Arnaud Desplechin and Oscar-nominated French-speaking actress Charlotte Rampling.  But the story revolves around a virtuosic pianist, Mathias Vogler (Francois Civil), who travels to his hometown of Lyon, where his childhood mentor Elena (Rampling) convinces him to collaborate on a series of concerts at the city’s historic auditorium.  Elena is a supporting characte,r but the main character’s (Mathias) story is cliched all the way from start to end.  In a park, he encounters a boy who seems to be his doppelgänger.  This strange child leads Mathias to Claude (Nadia Tereszkiewicz), a woman he once passionately loved — and whose reappearance threatens to destabilize Mathias’ already-fragile mental state.  Mildly entertaining at best, that at least avoids melodrama.

DINNER WITH FRIENDS (Canada 2025) **
Directed by Sasha Leigh Henry

 

A film that aims high to be the new THE BIG CHILL or HUISBANDS, the Canadian first feature DINNER WITH FRIENDS is one boring, clichéd dinner party.  The film attempts to cover many issues, like a gay couple, a straight couple breaking up, and another couple having their first baby.  The film takes a while before one can figure out who is who.  The audience only ever sees the group together, with the exception of the first scenes introducing long-married couple Joy (Tattiawna Jones) and Malachi (Alex Spencer) as they debate whether to put in the effort to reunite the friend group. Once together, long-held tensions and inside jokes lend authenticity, suggesting these friends have spent their twenties together.   There are many, many dinners during the course of the film, so that a more appropriate title for the film would be DINNERS WITH FRIENDS.  Another major flaw of the film is that all the characters speak the same way; for example, they all use the word ‘shit’, because it is one writer penning the dialogue for all the friends.

DIYA: Prix du Snag (Chad, France, Germany, Côte d’Ivoire 2025) ***½

Directed by Achille Ronaimou

 

Fast-paced with the urgency that the protagonist faces, DIYA is the local African term for the price of blood.  Dane (Ferdinand Mbaissané, winner of the Best Actor award at FESPACO 2025), a driver for an NGO in the capital, has the misfortune to run over a schoolboy.  His pregnant wife (Marina Ndormadjingar Solmem) runs to his aid to pay the hospital bills, but it’s too late: the child succumbs to his injuries, and his family summons Dane’s. He will be subjected to the diya, the blood debt, the payment of an exorbitant sum he doesn’t have.

Cleverly orchestrated, Diya puts us right at the heart of Dane’s torment: repaying the debt or languishing in prison far from his soon-to-be-born first child.   Dane is a good person depicted in the film as one who is sympathetic to the child’s mother.  It is a much scramble for funds as the director takes his audience through the colourful and informative journey of the villagers and people.  All ends well with a surprise ending in what can be described as a well-orchestrated and entertaining yet powerful movie.

EPIC: ELVIS PRESLEY IN CONCERT (Australia 2025) ***
Directed by Baz Luhrmann

 

Baz Luhrmann returns to the subject of his most audacious film — 2022’s Elvis — with the extraordinary EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert. Free of contemporary interviews with experts, critics, or other stakeholders.  The doc is exactly what the title implies,  a series of Prestley’s concerts.  Brilliantly compiled with an aficionado’s enthusiasm and sensitivity, the film shifts skilfully between rehearsals, where Presley is cheerful, hard-working, even goofy, and live performances that vary from powerful and grandiose to rushed. There are moments where he can’t keep up with the breakneck arrangements and loses his breath. (He was booked to do at least two shows most days.) Among the standouts are “Polk Salad Annie” and “Burning Love,” a chart-topper he cut in early 1972.  Director Luhrmann is known for his quick edits and again is true in the doc.  There are hardly any segments that last more than 12 seconds without a cut.  One of Presley’s songs is intercut with 4 performances of the same song - not bad for a nouvelle achievement.  Prestley’s fans will enjoy this doc immensely.

 

EXIT 8 (Japan 2025) ***
Directed by Genki Kawamura

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mazes and maze puzzles have always fascinated people.  Trying to get out of a seemingly endless puzzle is the goal.  In the new Japanese movie EXIT 8,  Arashi superstar Kazunari “Nino” Ninomiya plays the Lost Man, a backpacked commuter trapped in an endless, sterile subway corridor. To escape at Exit 8 — where his ex awaits his thoughts about her pregnancy — he must obey one rule: if anything looks off, turn back. Miss a single anomaly and he’s snapped to the start, condemned to loop again. The premise becomes a taut metaphor for guilt, responsibility, and the paralysis of indecision.  There is nothing really much moe in the story, but Nino makes turn after turn in one corridor after corridor for the full length of the movie.  Definitely a movie that is NOT to be seen twice, credit should be given at least to the filmmaker to capture the attention of audiences for a full 90 plus minutes without incident and with much repetition.  No one walked out during the screening - a rare achievement.

FLANA (Iraq/France/Qatar 2025) ***
Directed by Zahraa Ghandour

 

Ever since the fateful day her 10-year-old friend and neighbour, Nour, went missing, Ghandour has been looking for answers. Focusing on the concept of “flana,” an Iraqi term for forgotten or anonymous women, Ghandour links past and present, connecting with her elders and peers while attempting to find her childhood playmate in the context of disappearances that still happen every week.  Director Ghandour adds her own words (i.e., her view) in many scenes.  She says that the homeless females are placed in prison-like conditions in Central Baghdad, while those guilty of putting the girls there remain free.  The effect of the American invasion of Iraq makes all the matters worse, especially for the girls who have no guidance or anyone to tell them or teach them what is going on.  Nour is first born a girl, then abandoned by her mother, adopted before being abandoned again by her adoptive parents, and left deserted when her adoptive parents tell her that they will return with cookies, only never to return.  Ghandour’s tale is a heartfelt one, and her aim of getting the news and stories of abandoned women in Iraq is a sad eye-opener.

THE FURIOUS (HK/China 2025) ***

Directed  by Kenji Tanigaki

 

Action movies make a lot of money.  Examples being the John Wick franchise, the Bourne Identity franchise, the EQUALIZER series, just to mention a few.  The key to all these is the choreographed action scenes and maybe a little plot.  THE FURIOUS satisfies the plot criterion with a deaf-mute kung-fu expert father who trains his daughter before she is kidnapped in a human trafficking scheme involving top brass.  The plot is only secondary to the film, but at least the film plays the plot as if it is all important, which is a good plan.  The action sequences are excellent and better than the average Hollywood action flick.  The introduction of an archer bad guy and a strong man bad guy helps, too.  Just sit back and enjoy the violence!

 

FUZE (UK 2025) **½
Directed by David MacKenzie

 

Brit David MacKenzie, known for the excellent HELL OR HIGH WATER and the recently released RELAY, returns to TIFF with a high-stakes thriller with lots of twists and turns entitled FUZE.   When a World War II-era bomb is found in a construction site in a busy area of London, the authorities quickly spring into action, determined to save the throngs of innocent bystanders in the vicinity. Scripted by Ben Hopkins (the mind-bending The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz, TIFF ’00), Fuze moves at a breakneck pace. As the tension mounts and time threatens to run out, it soon becomes clear that no one can truly be trusted.  MacKenzie has the clout to attract high-profile actors like Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Theo James, Sam Worthington, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw.  The film also benefits from famous London sights like Edgeware Road, where the robbery takes place.  But the script written by the writer of THE NINE LIVES OF TOMAS KATZ is too over-the-top to be credible unaided by the supposedly humourous closing credits, not as funny as the filmmakers think.

HONEY BUNCH (Canada 2025) 

Directed by Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli

A genre-bending sci-fi thriller with a 70s look and setting, this film is as weird as nothing normal can be expected in a tale that involves love in a remote rehab facility.  The story follows Diana, who wakes from a coma with fragmented memories.  Her husband, Homer, takes her to an experimental trauma centre hidden in the remote wilderness, yet the reason eludes her... As fragments of her memory start to return, and just as more of the plot is revealed to the audience, so do disturbing and sinister revelations about her marriage.  Grace Glowicki and  Ben Petrie are marvellous as the troubled couple, with two British veterans Kate Dickie andJason Isaacs lending their hands as well.  Character actor Julian Rching, who has appeared in more than 200 films, also has an appearance here.  The film is bookended by the segment in which Diana carries Homer into the sea, but the climax before the ending scene is something really out of the ordinary.   Be prepared for one of the most gross-out set pieces seen in a film this year.

IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT (French title: A Simple Accident)(Iran/Fr/Lux 2025) ***

Directed by Jafar Panahi

 

If one recalls the premise of a victim recognizing his or her torturer and kidnapping him for revenge, one will definitely remember the disturbing play and film DEATH OF A MAIDEN.  A variation of this premise is utilized in director Panahi’s latest Palme d’Or Winner IT WQW JUST AN ACCIDENT.  Panahi has been jailed for his political activities.  Its driver, Eghbal (Ebrahim Azizi), is heading home with his wife (Afssaneh Najmabadi) and daughter (Delmaz Najafi) when he hits a dog, killing the poor animal and destroying his engine. Seeking roadside assistance, he wanders into a warehouse. Here, a worker named Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) spots him, and it's possible they are not meeting for the first time. Vahid’s life has been in shambles since his hellish time in prison, due to the actions of a torturer he calls Pegleg — and he thinks Eghbal is this man. While his impulse for revenge is swift-acting, doubt is sewn by his captive, and Vahid must seek out help from other survivors, including Shiva (Mariam Afshari), a spitfire wedding photographer, and a bride named Golrokh (Hadis Pakbaten) who brings her groom (Majid Panahi) and their impetuous friend (Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr) along for the ride.  The film isn't half bad, but it suffers from an overwrought and too lengthy melodramatic ending.

 

JOHN CANDY: I LIKE ME (USA 2025) ***
Directed by Colin Hanks

 

The doc on Canadian comedian JOHN CANY: I LIKE ME is so-called as Candy has a problem of being comfortable with himself, being overweight, as the doc shows time and again.  Despite his talent and losing quite a bit of weight in the past, which included hiring a personal trainer, the man is still feeling the problem.  The doc, featuring candid testimonies from John Candy’s friends and family — including Steve Martin, Tom Hanks, Catherine O’Hara, and more — Colin Hanks’ wildly entertaining documentary celebrates one of the most beloved comedic actors of our time.  Included are clips from his hits like PLAINS, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES and UNCLE BUCK, while not forgetting his flops such as WAGONS EAST.  The doc goes through all the processes required for a doc like showing Candy’s childhood, family, rise to fame, and fall from grace.

 

KARMADONNA (Serbia 2025) *

Directed by Aleksandar Radivojević

 

What happens if you get a call from God on your cell phone?  This is the premise of a horror first, Midnight Madness in Serbia.   Aleksandar Radivojević (co-writer of A Serbian Film) makes his directorial debut with an audacious satirical thriller about an expectant mother (Jelena Djokić) who receives a phone call from a deity that demands she obey a list of murderous instructions.  After a sinister demonstration of the self-proclaimed deity’s omniscient powers, the voice offers an ultimatum: murder a select list of individuals or lose her unborn child. And this is how Yelena finds herself descending into the Serbian criminal underground to cross names off a divine hit list, from corrupt cops to toxic social-media influencers.  The film becomes increasingly bloody and ridiculous as it progresses, and by the last 30 minutes, nothing makes sense.  Walk out of this one while you can!

THE KING FOX (Malaysia/Indonesia 2025) ***
Directed by Woo Ming Jin

 

The Malaysian film shot in the country’s native language of Malay in an unnamed fishing village, probably the east coast of Malaysia, judging from the white sandy beaches, is a story of twins Ali and Amir.  Having lost their mother at birth, the pair are left to depend on each other after their father leaves them for a new, younger wife. This proves to be especially burdensome for Ali, who looks after his brother. Amir’s vocabulary is limited to a few words, and his difference makes the two of them prone to bullying. But Ali never doubts this brother’s brilliance. One day, the twins come across a mesmerising woman, their new English teacher, Ms. Lara (Dian Sastrowardoyo), dancing on the beach. Her arrival ushers in changes to their seemingly unbreakable relationship.  The film is mainly a growing-up, coming-of-age film with some sensitive moments that lift the film out of the ordinary.  The film also depicts what local school life is like, despite the film’s occasional choppy narrative.

KOKUBO (Japan 2025) ***½

Directed by Lee Sang-il

 

Directed by Lee Sang-il and starring two of Japan’s most prominent actors, Ryo Yoshizawa and Ryusei Yokohama, Kokuho is a gripping tale of friendship and rivalry in the world of Kamigata kabuki.  The story opens in Nagasaki in 1964 and unfolds over five tumultuous decades. It follows Kikuo — the son of a slain yakuza boss — who, at fourteen, is taken in by a celebrated kabuki master and raised alongside Shunsuke, the master’s son and designated heir. Their bond — part brotherhood, part rivalry — drives an epic saga of ambition, sacrifice, scandal, and devotion, culminating in the emergence of a singular kokuho: a living “national treasure.”    The film educates the audience on the world of kabuki with all the lavishness and splendour of the disciplined choreography, costumes, makeup up and voices.  The kabuki is so controlled that all the female roles are played by males.  As such, the two male actors are extremely good-looking, with the film bearing lots of homo-eroticism.  The only problem is that the film his way too long at 3 hours, stretching the last bit way too far.  The film is a hit in Japan.

THE LAST VIKING (Denmark 2025) ****
Directed by Anders Thomas Andersen

 

THE LAST VIKING teams director Anders Thomas Andersen with Mads Mikkelsen after MEN & CHICKEN and RIDERS OF JUSTICE in yet another weird, violent, and fucked-up (but in a good way) movie.  Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas play Anker and Manfred, brothers who are reunited after Anker’s years-long jail stint for a bank robbery. Since Manfred is the only one who knows where the loot is buried, Anker has no choice but to contend not only with his brother’s many psychological issues but the legacy of the traumas they suffered in their childhood.  Andersen assembles a highly memorable gallery of misfits, miscreants, and many other unique individuals with their own foibles and fixations, one of which may involve re-forming the most famous pop band ever.  Mikkelsen is simply marvellous as the mentally challenged John aka Manfred, who, if not jumping out of cars or windows, is trying to harm himself by stabbing his hand with fondue forks.  Likely the most fucked up but entertaining movie of the year.  And by the way, it is also ultra-violent.

 

LAUNDRY (South Africa/Switzerland 2025) ***1/2
Directed by Zamo Mkhwanazi

 

 

 

 

A small yet powerful movie about Apartheid.  Filmmaker Zamo Mkhwanazi’s quietly powerful debut LUANDRY crafts an intimate portrait of a Black family navigating the uneasy privileges and hidden costs of exemption within the violently unequal system of apartheid South Africa.  The film is set in 1968, the same year that negative international opinion against apartheid fomented during the Summer Olympics, but 26 years before the end of the institution.  A family owns a laundry business, the store set up, unfortunately, in the white section of the city.  The patriarch of the family, Enoch, goes to see the mayor in order to be able to get permission to continue his business, only to be insulted and thrown into prison when he finally speaks out.  The story also focuses on the son, a talented instrument player, wishing to play for the black celebrity of the city, who has had an affair with the father.  Director Mkhwanazi films the conflict segments with crafted finesse, creating some very intense scenes, scenes that lift he film out of average family drama.  Of course, worse are the abuse and the degrading Apartheid scenes that are to be seen to be believed—Shot in Zulu (the family’s background) and English.

 

LILITH FAIR: BUILDING A MYSTERY (Canada 2025) ***
Directed by Ally Pankiw

 

 

Back in the ’90s, conventional “wisdom” suggested that commercial radio couldn’t play two women in a row. Frustrated by this, Sarah McLachlan went on tour with Paula Cole to offer audiences an entire night of women’s artistry. That tour went so well that the next summer, McLachlan debuted Lilith Fair, named after the Lilith of Jewish lore:  Adam’s renegade first wife. It became the year’s top-grossing festival simply because the artists were so good. Besides the luminaries noted above, the Fair’s eventual roster included Fiona Apple, Tracy Chapman, Dixie Chicks, Sheryl Crow, Suzanne Vega, Indigo Girls, and Pat Benatar.  The doc celebrates the empowerment of movement that includes black women and gay women at the same time.  Of course, there are the evil morons who fight against Lilith, including the likes of Jerry Falwell and anti-choice Americans.  The doc stays away from Trump, who is yet another moron who should be denounced in the doc.  The film also mentions the revival of Lilith, which was a failure, but ends on a high note with McLachlan performing a song at the conclusion of the film.

LITTLE LORRAINE (Canada 2025) ***½

Directed by Andy Hines

 

 

 

 

 

The film begins with the news of underwater mining in the waters around Cape Breton, where the audience is told that 148,000 people of the time.  Most were miners, but the mines closed, and employment was at its lowest.   The film title is derived from the name of a village in Nova Scotia, located on the east coast of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada.  A 1986 mining explosion that left 10 men dead in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, launches this thrilling drama, inspired by a true story, that merges coastal fishing with an international cocaine smuggling ring.  With the closing of the mine, Jimmy (Stephen Amell, television’s Arrow) is suddenly out of work, just as his untrustworthy great uncle Henry (prolific Nova Scotian actor Stephen McHattie) saunters in with a business proposal: join him on his lobster fishing boat.

Believing it’ll be a way to safely support his family, Jimmy also convinces his friends Tommy (Joshua Close) and Jake (Steve Lund) to join him, and very quickly, the three are rolling in the cash. The emotional toll also takes effect, particularly on Tommy, one of the crew members, when he ends up confessing to the priest during confession.  The moral issue of whether to support one’s family also comes into the equation.  Also included in the story are the effects of drug use, as in cocaine use by the locals.  LITTLE LORRAINE  is a solid film with a good story reflecting the atmosphere and period of Cape Breton with credible performances all around.

LUCKY LU (USA 2025) ***

Directed by Lloyd Lee Choi

 

LUCKY LU is far from lucky in yet another story of an immigrant who strives for a living using a bike. We have seen it all before in Vittorio De Sica’s classic BICYCLE THEIVES and the recent SOULEYMAN’S STOY, both films are much better than this one.  LUCKY LU is set in NYC, where Lu awaits the arrival of his wife and daughter.  New York food delivery driver Lu has been in the US for five years, hanging onto his dream of running a restaurant while doing whatever it takes to get by. As Lucky Lu begins, Lu has just acquired his first apartment, a sparsely furnished one-bedroom with a single window that lets in morning light. And he has found the place just in time — his wife and daughter are on their way from China. “A new place. A new beginning,” says his landlord. But Lu’s fresh start will prove agonizingly difficult to secure. A pretty dismal film, even if Lu gets the rent at the end, as it is just the beginning of a whole off of struggles.  Message in this film?  Do not immigrate.

MAMA (Israel/Poland/Italy 2025) ***1/2
Directed by O Sina

O MAMA tells the story of a mother, Mila (Evgenia Dodina, in a devastating and powerful performance), told from the character’s point of view of a suffering mother who has given up her family to work abroad in order to provide for her family financially.  She returns after an accident involving her arm, only to discover family problems like her cheating husband and her daughter pregnant and getting married.  Mila is no saint, having an affair with a younger black gardener ( a steamy sex scene), as well.  Director Sinai steers her drama away from melodrama and cheap dramatic theatrics while concentrating on the details of what can be called a character-driven story of human relationship decay within a family.  No one is perfect in this story, and no judgment is made. 

MEADOWLARKS (Canada 2025) **
Directed by Tasha Hubbard

 

 

MEADOWLARKS is based on director Hubbard’s  2017 documentary Birth of a Family.  Director Hubbard’s Meadowlarks is an emotional, fictionalised true drama that follows four siblings, separated by the Sixties Scoop, as they come together over a week.  Sixties Scoop refers to the term given for the then-common practice of removing Indigenous children from their families, often without consent, and placing them with the child welfare system.  There are no fewer than 3 Canadian films dealing with his topic at TIFF this year.  Instead of dealing of issues like how the siblings got to each other and reunite, how they got taken away, Hubbard concentrates more on awkward small talk, gifts, and forced bonding events, the one brother and three sisters do their best to get to know one another after decades apart, their interactions and how they come to terms with one another.  Unfortunately, Hubbard stays on melodrama and emotional theatrics to tell her story, resulting in forced sentiment and overlong hugging and screaming sessions that go on with dysfunctional families that one has already seen too much of.  The audience is also forced to sit through one of the siblings, Justine’s full rendition of her ‘throat singing’.

MEMORY OF PRINCESS MUMBI (Kenya/Switz/Saudi Arabia 2-25) **
Directed by Damien Hauser

Drawing on modern technology i.e. AI) to visually restore kingdoms, director Hauser presents us with sumptuous settings while focusing on the human aspect: namely, the life and death of Princess Mumbi (Shandra Apondi), as told by the filmmaker Kuve (Abraham Joseph), who is threatened by his rival, the prince (Samson Waithaka), to whom the beautiful princess has been promised…  The film appears to b all over the place, with making doc to a romance and then death all summarized at the end of the film.  Princess Mumbi emphasizes in the film that filmmakers should make what audiences wish to see and not what they think international audiences like.  This amateurish-looking film with pastiched colours does not seem to heed either saying.

MILK TEETH (Romania/Denmark/France/Greece/Bulgaria 2025) **
Directed by Mihai Mincan

 

MILK TEETH is the story of how the younger sister copes with her missing elder sister after she goes missing while taking the trash to the dumpster, while she continues to play.  Maria feels guilty, as it was actually her turn to take out the garbage, and her sister was angry at her before she went missing.  But director Mincan is less interested in solving the case, instead reflecting on Maria’s feelings in the setting of a socialist Romania.  He could have done both.   While her mother (Marina Palii) loses her grip on the day-to-day and her father (Igor Babiac) loses his hope, Maria takes matters into her own hands, determined to find her sister. As Maria’s investigation begins taking a toll on her own mind, and her family continues slipping through the cracks, the auspicious political revolution dawning in Romania acts as a backdrop for their own personal nightmare.  The blurred narrative does not help the slow pace of the narrative.  There is no happy ending or solid closure to Maria’s demise.

 

 

NI-NAADAMAADIZ: RED POWER RISING (Canada 2025) 
Directed by Shane Belcourt

Armed with only having eight minutes of archival footage of 90 days in 1974, when 150 people took over Anicinabe Park in Kenora in protest over the ongoing mistreatment of Indigenous people at to work with, director Shane Belcourt — collaborating with acclaimed author and journalist Tanya Talaga who also serves as writer and producer — crafts a captivating and educational documentary of the struggle, injustice and racial prejudice of the Indegnuous people.  The movement is led by the charismatic and eloquent Louie Cameron, leader of the Ojibway Warriors Society. The protest reached all the way to the nation’s capital and beyond — it even caught the eye of the American Indian Movement, whose members joined the cause.  There are interviews carried out with Cameron’s close family like his wife and son, who bring an urgency and credibility to the story.  There is much to be learned, and the doc really puts one in the shoes of the mistreated.  Indian beaters, gay bashers, and  KKK members - why is there so much unnecessary and stupid hate in the world?

 

NO OTHER CHOICE )South Korea 2025) ***½

Directed by Park Chan-wook

 

The film starts with a family group hug, and Man-soo has it all: a loving wife, two talented children, and two happy dogs.  He even bought the beautiful forest-enclosed house where he grew up.  Then, after 25 years of dedicated work for Solar Paper — where he was awarded Pulp Man of the Year in 2019 — Man-soo is suddenly given the axe.  Soon, he is falling behind on his mortgage payments, and his wife Mi-ri insists they put the house up for sale.  Man-soo is desperate to scoop a coveted position with Moon Paper, but he knows there are other job seekers who match his pedigree. So he hatches a plan: invent a phony paper company, reach out to each of his rivals, lure them into a meeting… and, one by one, dispatch the competition.  It is a wicked and occasionally hilarious satire based on the novel THE AX by Donald Werstlake. Director Chan’s film takes its time to establish the plot, but it is all worth it in this deliciously wicked thriller.

NOMAD SHADOW (USA/Spain/France 2025) ***

Directed by Eimi Imanishi

 

American Japanese director Eimi Imanishi’s debut feature NOMAD SHADOW is an ambitious drama following a young Sahrawi woman as she determines her future after a major shakeup in her life.  The film begins with a dance club in Madrid as Mariam is escorted out of the club for drug selling.  As a result, she is deported from Spain to her home country in the Western Sahara.  Matters get worse as she tries to assimilate into life with her family.  The film shows what life in eh Shra is like and how people, particularly when faced.  Director Imanishi adds a surreal touch with scenes of Mariam on a boat at sea.  Through Mariam’s journey, he audience examines what both home and belonging mean.

NOVELLE VAGUE (FRANCE 2025) ****
Directed by Richard Linklater 

 

 

Having spent several years writing for Cahiers du cinéma, Godard (Guillaume Marbeck), not yet 30, declares, “The best way to criticize a film is to make one.” So off he goes, convincing George de Beauregard (Bruno Dreyfürst) to fund a low-budget independent feature and whipping up a treatment — there was never a proper script — with fellow New Waver François Truffaut (Adrien Rouyard) based on a news item about a gangster and his girlfriend.  A meticulously and handsomely delivered black and white homage to the French New Wave aka NOUVELLE VAGUE, sees the homage paid through the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s A BOUT DE SOUFFLE, also known in English as BREATHLESS.  Cinephiles will definitely delight in all the film references as well as the depiction of New Wave greats like directors Claude Chabrol, Francois Truffaut, Agnes Varda and husband Jacques Demy.  The film also depicts the idiosyncrasies of Godard, who shot BREATHELESS sans script and sand continuity, much to the chagrin of his financial backers, makeup artist and collaborators.  Seberg wanted to quit many times, but Belmondo finds all this absolutely amusing.

 

NUNS VS. THE VATICAN (USA 2025) ***
Directed by Lorena Luciano 

 

Like other docs about the abuse and misconduct of the Catholic Church, NUNS VS. THE VATICAN focuses on abuse by the priests on female nuns instead of male boys.   The thread of the doc is nothing out of the ordinary as it covers the abuse, the cover-up, the testimonies and possible prevention of further misconduct.  This doc by director Luciano covers the material from a more personal perspective, mainly from the abuse of an informer nun, Gloria, as she identifies the abuser, Marko Rupnik, who has gained much fame from his artistic works that have been displayed in churches around the world.  One can see the torment and trauma Gloria has experienced,d which makes this doc all the more relevant.   Ultimately, all of Rupnik’s art has been removed, but still, this man should be in prison.

 

 

OCA (Mexico/Argentina 2025) ***½

Directed by Karla Badillo

 A young nun sets off on a poetic, mystical pilgrimage to save her dying congregation, encountering others whose own trials of faith, privilege, and contradiction mirror her haunting search for divine meaning in a fractured, material world.  The film is described as Bunuel-ish for the reasons that the events in the film feel surreal and also for the religious overtones.  The protagonist is a catholic nun who travels to San Vincente on a motorcycle.  She is full of faith and believes that God has a plan not only for herself but also for others, especially those she meets on the way to a sort of pilgrimage.  She encounters a variety of odd characters, including a wealthy femme fatale driven in her car by her trusty chauffeur, a pilgrimage of villagers hoping to meet the arch-bishop in San Vincente and also robbers who steal her motorcycle.  OCA , the film title is a Spanish game in which there are twists and turns to get to the winning pots, just as the nun has to manoeuvre her way out of tricky situations.  A very intriguing film with lots of intriguing characters and events.

OLMO (USA/Mexico 2025) ****
Directed by Fernando Eimbcke

14-year-old Olmo is going through adolescence..  The film begins mischievously with Olmo’s dream, and he steps inside a hot rod with his sexy teen neighbour.  The toilet roll beside his bed shows him ready to finish off the dream with a happy ending.  OLMO tells the story of his quest for sex with his neighbour, who needs a stereo for her party.  To be invited, he has to steal and repair the broken one that belongs to his parents.  His father is bedridden with MS, and his mother is stressed, overworking, and behind with 3 months' rent.  The film is beautifully shot with the setting of 1979, bearing the mischievousness of the early John Hughes teen comedies, but this one has a message.  Director Eimbcke balances his family drama and growing-up story with plenty of humour, while avoiding sentimentality and melodrama. Totally remarkable and delightful performances all round, especially from Aidan Uttapa as Olmo.  Family is everything, even at the end of the film, when the mother still does not have enough money to pay the rent, when one knows everything is going to be all right. 

ORWELL: 2+2 = 5  (USA/France 2025) ***
Directed by Raoul Peck

 

 

ORWELL: 2+2 = 5 is high high-profile documentary produced by heavyweights Alex Gibney (TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE; ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM) and Raoul Peck (I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO; ERNEST COLE: LOST AND FOUND), who also directs the doc.

George Orwell, born George Blair, is an English writer famous for 1984 and ANIMAL FARM.  He started to write 1984 on the Scottish isle of Jura in 1948.  This doc is a blend of Orwell: his life and works with current events that include Trump’s fascist rule, the Ukraine invasion by Russia and the Palestinian/Israel War.

The doc includes old photos of Orwell as a baby and as a boy in school.  He belonged to the poorer end of the middle class.  His father, having the same status, assumed a higher status by taking a military post in the British colonized countries.  Orwell hated those in authoritarian power, as evident in his two most famous works, 1984 and ANIMAL FARM.  Orwell’s writing drew from his personal experience of poverty in Down and Out in Paris and London, of colonialism in Burmese Days, and of revolutionary uprising in Homage to Catalonia.  Most notable: At age 46, nearing death from tuberculosis, the last sentence he wrote was: “All that matters has already been written.”

The doc is most entertaining with clips of related movies, particularly Michael Radford’s 1984, which starred John Hurt as Orwell.  More than a dozen films are featured, particularly from multiple different adaptations of 1984 and ANIMAL FARM

The doc evokes a very depressing look at today’s world, at what it has become.  The doc concludes with a solution for what can be done.  This is reflected in organized protests by the people, like the Black Lives Matter walk.  But these solutions are difficult to come by and take lots of time and dedication from the people involved.

A POET (Un Poeta) (Colombia/Germany/Sweden 2025) ****
Directed by Simón Mesa Soto 

 

Coming right from Cannes, where A POET, in the Un Certain Regard section, won the Jury Prize, the film revolves around Óscar Restrepo, an aging poet who once had hopes of literary success but whose life has since drifted into obscurity, melancholy, and self-destructive habits.  He lives with his mother, struggles with unemployment, and drowns some of his disappointments in alcohol.  While teaching in a secondary school, he mentors Yurlady, a teenage student who shows raw talent in writing.  But fate is not on his side, as things go south for the poor soul.  A POET is tragedy in its most gruesome form, with Oscar brilliantly played like a monstrous troll by Ubeimar Ríos.  Dream big but achieve chaos!  One of the best of the festival!

THE PRESIDENT’S CAKE (Iraq 2025) ***½

Directed by Hasan Hadi

In the tradition of Jafar Panahi’s Iran 1995 film THE WHITE BALLOON, THE PRESIDENT'S CAKE has a young protagonist spending the entire film trying to find ingredients to make a cake in celebration of President Sudan Hussein’s birthday.   It is 1990s Iraq,  Young Lamia (Baneen Ahmed Nayyef) lives with her ailing grandmother, Bibi (Waheeda Thabet Khreiba), eking out an existence in a remote village where the best means of travel is by meshouf, a kind of canoe. Disaster strikes when Lamia is “honoured” with bringing the cake for her school class’s mandatory celebration of Saddam Hussein’s birthday.  In other circumstances, this might be an innocuous responsibility, but Bibi and Lamia can’t afford the ingredients — and the last family that didn’t comply was dragged through the streets.  Director Hadi takes his audience around the poorer streets of Iraq, showing how people eke up a living, and it is not a pretty sight.  People are poor and often dishonest.  Hadi paints the wonderful innocence of children, especially of Lamia, not even knowing at the film’s start that her grandmother was selling her off for good.  The film has premiered and been lauded at Cannes.

A PRIVATE LIFE (Vie privee)(France 2025) ***

Directed by Rebecca Zlotowski

 

Lilian (Foster), an American psychoanalyst in Paris, is devastated to learn that her client Paula (Virginie Efira) has taken her own life. Or has she? Visits from Paula's furious widower, Simon (Mathieu Amalric) and taciturn daughter Valérie (Luàna Bajrami), along with the discovery that files have been stolen from Lilian's office, suggest that Paula may have fallen victim to foul play.  Assisted by her ex-husband Gabriel (Daniel Auteuil), Lilian undertakes some amateur sleuthing.  Academy Award winner Jodie Foster stars in this strange murder mystery black comedy, playing an American psychiatrist working in France.  Foster speaks perfect French and it is strange but wonderful to watch her totally inhabit the role.  She works with French veteran Daniel Auteul, who plays her ex, Matthieu Amaric, in an angry, deranged encounter among others.  The script contains a lot of crazed characters, Jodie’s psychiatrist being one of them, with her conspiracy theories of murder and her past life.  It all turns out well at the end with a happy ending, though a bit too far-fetched for the film’s own good.

 

RENOIR (Japan/Singapore/France/Philippines/Qatar 2025) ***        

Directed by Chie Hayakawa

RENOIR captures the delicate and troubled transition from childhood to adolescence through the eyes of Fuki, an 11-year-old girl grappling with her father’s terminal illness, portrayed by incredibly talented newcomer Yui Suzuki.  Drawing on her own childhood experiences and set in the late 1980s when the director was the same age as her protagonist, Hayakawa’s narrative unfolds through the eyes of Fuki (Yui Suzuki), an 11-year-old girl coping with her father’s terminal illness. As Fuki navigates the emotional turbulence of preadolescence, she is left to fend for herself, with her mother (Hikari Ishida) overwhelmed by work and the stress of caring for a dying husband (Lily Franky).  The film is a slow burn but covers effectively the subjects of grief, emotions, adolescence and a parent/daughter relationship.  The heart of the story of Fuki’s father having cancer while her mother is working and stressed out over the situation, leaving Fuki much to herself.  The film covers too many issues, such as a sex predator and leaves too many unanswered questions about the issues brought forward.  One can argue that life is similar without many solutions, and director Jayakawa is providing a nuanced, though authentic, story of her past.

RETREAT (UK 2025) ***1/2

Directed by Ted Evans

 

Directed by Ted Evans, who is himself deaf, debuts his first and impressive genre-bending thriller with a deaf and deft thriller set in a commune of deaf inhabitants.  The story begins with a German newcomer, Eva (Anne Zander), entering the facility only to discover that nothing is what it seems.  Unlike other thrillers where the newcomer tries to escape, Eva is converted to start, while another, Matt, who has stayed there since 4, wishes to escape.  And all hell breaks loose as nothing is what it seems in this dark institution.  Director Evans builds his film to a credible and frightening climax.  The film has the feel of classics like LOGAN’S RUN and THE HANDMAID’S TALE.  An impressive, remarkable first feature!

ROOFMAN (USA 2025) ***½

Directed by Derek Cianfrance

 

ROOFMAN is the true story of a thief/robber named Jeffrey, aka ROOFMAN, who enters many McDonald’s through the roof, and hence the nickname.  A US military veteran unable to make ends meet, Jeffrey (Channing Tatum) gets caught robbing McDonald’s restaurants to provide for his kids. He’s tried, sentenced, incarcerated — and promptly breaks out.  While on the run, he finds his way into a Toys “R” Us, where he crafts a makeshift hideout behind a wall. Months pass, the manhunt is all but forgotten, and Jeffrey finds himself falling for Leigh (Kirsten Dunst), one of the store’s employees. A connection is forged, though Leigh knows nothing of Jeffrey’s criminal status nor his current residence inside her workplace.  Director Cianfartnce, who also co-wrote the script, ups the ante on charm with the film’s subject’s personality of always being a good guy, meeting the story.  The film plays as a romance, a comedy with a few very funny parts and a bit of a thriller.  Everyone loves to root for an underdog, especially with one as nice as Roofman, Jeff.  ROOFMAN is better and more entertaining than the film looks.

SACRIFICE( UK/Greece 2025) ***

Directed by Romain Gravas

 

A satire in its most energetic and blackest form, with nuanced actors like John Malkovich and Vincent Cassel who add to the mayhem, makes this climate change satire SACRIFICE an unforgettable experience, even if it is often too over-the-top and ridiculous.  Bracken (Vincent Cassel), a fusion of your least favourite billionaires, is present to muster support for a highly questionable deep-sea mining effort targeting essential minerals.  Complicating his efforts is Joan (Anya Taylor-Joy), the leader of a doomsday eco-cult.  She and her acolytes are convinced the only way to prevent the catastrophic, world-ending eruption of the huge volcano burbling off the coast is to offer up suitably famous sacrifices.  But the film centres on a self-centred Mike Tyler (Chris Evans) who is more concerned about his toupee than the proceedings.  Watch this one for all that it's worth!

SAIPAN (UK/Ireland 2025) ****

Directed by Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn

 

SAIPAN is the real-life drama behind star player Roy Keane’s rift with manager Mick McCarthy on the eve of the 2002 World Cup, Saipan is a story of ego, loyalty, and identity that resonates beyond the world of sports.  What began as a dispute over professionalism and pre-tournament training conditions on the remote Pacific Island of Saipan escalated into a national reckoning, dividing a country where football can be sacred. It was a moment that transcended sport, sparking pub debates, tabloid frenzy, political commentary, and even parliamentary mentions.  Steve Coogan delivers a riveting turn as McCarthy, opposite a formidable performance from Éanna Hardwicke as Keane.  This is a film not only for those who love the game of football.  What is most surprising is how the directors turn a story without a happy ending into an uplifting one.  There are a lot of solid quotes in the film as well, with a standout confrontation scene between the two men.

THE SECRET AGENT (O AGENT SCRETO) (Brazil/France/Germany 2025) ***** Top 10

Directed by  Kleber Mendonça Filho

 

Brazil, 1977. Marcelo, a technology expert in his early 40s, is on the run. He arrives in Recife ( seaside town in Brazil) during carnival week, hoping to reunite with his son, but soon realizes that the city is far from being the non-violent refuge he seeks.  Marcelo is told by the police chief that perhaps 100 people will die during the carnival, a joke that carries on throughout the movie.  Marcelo’s past is catching up with him, but he chooses to bring his life to a close with the satisfaction of spending the rest of his life with his son.  His son is presently staying with Marcelo’s parents, who care very much about the boy.

Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho, who also wrote the script for the film, is a familiar name to many cinephiles and film critics, making his name in his 2012 multiple award-winning NEIGHBOURING SOUNDS, also set in his birthplace of Recife in North East Brazil, and also his recent 2023 documentary PORTRAITS OF GHOSTS.  THE SECRET AGENT is a film the director reportedly wanted to make for years and it is not only an excellent film but one of the best to hit screens at both TIFF and in theatres.

The film pays homage to several films of the 70s when the film is set (actually 1977).  Most noticeable is the 1975 Steven Spielberg’s JAWS.  Recife is also a seaside town.  Other films that can be noticed in Filho’s film include actor Jean-Paul Belmondo, most likely in Philippe De Broca’s 1964 film THAT MAN IN RIO.

The film suffers from a rather overlong epilogue, featuring a conversation between two individuals in a hospital, which is a bit of a letdown after a spy-like chase through the streets.

Actor Wagner Moura, who plays Marcelo in the film, also serves as one of the film’s producers.  Some humour is provided by a cameo by Udo Kier who plays a German showing off his bullet scars on his leg.  Some of the supporting cast provide terrific performances.

Director Filho keeps his audience guessing most of the time about what is happening.  There is always a sense of intrigue and mystery from the film’s start when the hero, Marcelo, is driving through a gas station in which a deadman has been shot and covered with a blanket just outside the vicinity of the station at the film’s start to two sudden thugs suddenly appear out of the blue in pursuit of Marcelo.

THE SECRET AGENT has won multiple awards at Cannes, where it premiered.  It runs a lengthy 160 minutes, but every minute is worth it.  A major surprise, THE SECRET AGENT proves intrigue, mystery, action, some biting humour while reflecting the urgency of one’s times, whether the past and present, and how one needs to come to terms with one’s past, despite the risks involved.

 

 

 SENTIMENTAL VALUE (Norway/Sweden/Denmark/France/Germany 2025) ***
Directed by Joachim Trier

This is the Grand Prix Jury Cannes Winner that reportedly received a 19-minute standing ovation, a film that arrives with high expectations, too high to meet.  At its worst, the film is a predictable, artistic, pretentious, but layered film that heads straight to a cop-out happy ending in which telling a story heals wounds.  The story centres on two estranged sisters—Nora, an intense stage actress, and Agnes, who leads a more stable life—who are forced to confront the return of their father, Gustav, a once-celebrated but now forgotten film director. Stellan Skarsgard shines in his performance despite the film’s faults.  Again, too many added components create a hardly believable story of reconciliation (the healing of old wounds) and trauma.

STEVE (UK/Ireland 2025) ****

Directed by Tim  Mielants 

 

Reminiscent of the French classroom drama BETWEEN THE WALLS, done cinema-verite/doc style, or a more maverick styled TO SIR WITH LOVE, the film follows a head teacher STEVE (Cilian Murphy) working in troubled school of boys, somewhat before they become SCUM in a borstal  Steve (Murphy) is the passionate head of a crumbling “last chance” reform school for teenage boys. With meagre resources, overstretched staff, and a mounting sense of futility, Steve must navigate one pivotal and precarious day made more tense by the arrival of a documentary news crew profiling the school, and the result may prove to be more exposé than commendation. The school is part institution and part last-ditch social experiment conducted in a shoddy rural manor house run by tired adults who believe their students still have something to offer the world. The boys, meanwhile, navigate an uneasy border between volatility and vulnerability. Mielants' score top marks in his storytelling technique using a combo of flashbacks and forwards, added by Murphy’s and Emily Watson’s stunning performances,

THERE ARE NO WORDS (Canada 2025) 
Directed by Min Sook Lee

 

The image above shows an old photo of the director and her mother.  Piecing together old letters, photos, and a few videos of her past childhood, director Min assembles and makes sense of the past that wraps an entire family's history, its mysteries and controversies, its lies, and its truth. 

Review embargo lifted after Thursday, 4th 10 pm screening.

 

TRUE NORTH (USA/Canada 2025) ***
Directed by Michele Stephenson

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A bold, informative, and disturbing documentary, Michele Stephenson’s TRUE NORTH is a compilation of archive footage telling of the fight against black racism.  The documentary centres on the 1969 student protests against racism at Montreal’s Concordia University and their contribution to the story of Black liberation.  Director Stephenson lets the events and the activists captured on camera speak for themselves and lets her audience decide for themselves how to make sense of all the information at hand.   The main difference between this doc and others is that it does not hammer you with the filmmakers’ views through their voiceover or writings.

THREE GOODBYES (TRES CIOTOLE) (Itay/Spain 2025) **

Directed by Isabel Coixet

 

 

 

The Italian title of this wonderfully delivered film on the wonder of life as experienced, ironically by the protagonist diagnosed with stage 4 cancer after an emotional breakup, is ‘three riceballs’, which are served in Antonio’s restaurant.  The balls are peeled like an onion to reveal different, unexpected aspects of life.  There are natural surprises in the films, just as a dog happened to walk past in a scene where Marta is speaking with her sister.  Marta (Alba Rohrwacher), a high-school teacher, and her partner, Antonio (Elio Germano), a chef, live in Rome.  While Antonio’s star is rising, Marta seems to lack passion and interest in Antonio’s recipes. One day, after many years together, the pair split after a seemingly trivial argument. Marta withdraws into herself while Antonio jumps into his new endeavour, a restaurant of his own creation. Soon after, everything changes in Marta’s world when she discovers that her loss of appetite has more to do with her health than the pains of separation. Now, with time running out, Marta must learn who she is and what she lives for.  Life is shown in the film as an accidental wonder, with a message that one should do things for oneself, with wonderful, unexpected results. just like watching this strange yet wonderful film from director Coixet.

 

TO THE VICTORY! (Ukraine 2025)

Embargo lifted after screening on Sat Sept 6th 3:30PM ET  

THE UGLY (South Korea) ***½

Directed by Yeon Sang-ho

 

Director Yeo of TRAIN TO BUSAN  tackles a more intimate subject in a lower-budget but no less engrossing movie about abuse (sex abuse, bullying, spouse abuse) of many sorts.  THE UGLY follows Dong-hwan (Park Jeong-min), a young man searching for answers about his mother’s mysterious past.  Park skilfully portrays both Dong-hwan and the younger version of his father, Yeong-gyu (in flashbacks), a blind stamp carver obsessed with the beauty he cannot see.  The film quietly interrogates what beauty really means — who defines it, who owns it, and what it conceals. Ironically, the film’s clearest insights into beauty come from its blind characters, further challenging the audience’s assumptions.  Yeon’s story moves slowly, though not without much drama and material, unfolding through flashbacks in chapters from Interview Number 1 to Interview Number 4.

UNDER THE SAME SUN (Dominican Rep/Spain 2025) ***
Directed by Ulisis Porra

UNIDENTIFIED (Saudi Arabia 2025) ***
Directed by Haifaa Al Mansou

 

Saudi Arabian director Haifaa Al Mansour (Wadjda)’s latest film is a mystery crime thriller that unfolds like a true crime drama.  It is a female gender slant that pushes against gender norms and challenges simplistic narratives of femicide,  a female-driven detective story that transgresses all manner of jurisdiction in its dogged pursuit of justice.  A young woman’s abandoned body is found in the desert and bears no identification.  When the Riyadh authorities go to investigate, they recruit police department receptionist Nawal (Mila Alzahrani) to help the otherwise all-male team discover details only a woman would notice.  The intelligent and observant Nawal, a true-crime fan, possesses an unusual degree of knowledge when it comes to homicide investigations. While the police drag their heels, she quietly takes matters into her own hands, going to different all-girls’ high schools to ask about missing students, only to find the administrators uncooperative, wanting no part in any story about supposedly “sinful” girls.  But if it appears all too convenient that Nawal eventually finds all the clues and solves the case, there is more than meets the eye in a clever twist that one would never expect, lifting the film from what one would think is the typical murder mystery.  Well-plotted and delivered in a seldom-seen setting, UNIDENTIFIED is a surprise gem.

A USEFUL GHOST (Thailand/Singapore/France/Germany 2025) **
Directed by Ratchapoom Boombunchachoke

 

Described as a black comedy, A USEFUL GHOST is an over 2-hour slow-burning deadpan comedy that moves so slowly that it takes great effort to stay awake, especially when watching the film during a festival.   The film boasts a fresh idea.  March is mourning his wife, Nat, who has recently passed away due to dust pollution. He discovers her spirit has returned by possessing the vacuum cleaner. Being disturbed by a ghost that appeared after a worker's death shut down their factory, his family rejects the unconventional human-ghost relationship. Msrch’s family accepts the fact and allows him to communicate with the ghost vacuum.  Trying to convince them of their love, Nat offers to cleanse the factory. To become a useful ghost, she must first get rid of the useless ones.  It is weird to see actors talking or making out with a vacuum cleaner, and the director Ratchapoom Boombunchachoke uses the fact for the utmost effect.  The film is mildly amusing and one wonders the point in all of this.

WAYWARD (Canada 2025) ***½

Directed by Mae Martin and Ryan Scott

 

WAYWARD is a Canadian-made limited series by Netflix.  What is the screen are the fruit 2 episodes of an 8-episode series.  Wayward follows rebellious teens Abby (Sydney Topliffe) and Leila (Alyvia Alyn Lind) in the early aughts as they skip classes, get high, and listen to their Discmans, unaware that their parents are scheming to remedy their “bad” behaviour by involuntarily admitting them to a mysterious correctional school.  As Abby and Leila innocently enjoy their final days of slacker freedom, detective Alex Dempsey (Martin) arrives in the town of Tall Pines with their wife, Laura (Sarah Gadon), who grew up there and feels drawn to return in her final months of pregnancy.   Tall Pines is the kind of place where everyone knows your name, and homemade preserves are left on your front porch by neighbours, a gesture Laura finds comforting and Alex finds jarring.   It is a creepy place, and the film has an exciting mystery air reminiscent of THE STEPFORD WIVES and the recent WEAPONS.  In case on is wondering, Martin is non-binary, playing a husband.  The first two episodes are nothing but excellent,t making one eager to watch the rest of the series.

YOUNGBLOOD (Canada 2025) **
Directed by Hubert Davis

 

Director Davis, known for his award-winning racism hockey do BLACK ICE directs YOUGBLOOD that looks like a fictionalized doc.  Conditioned by his father, Blane (Blair Underwood) to match any slight with a greater show of aggression, Dean (Ashton James) is a black player whose potential for greatness is stymied by his short temper on and off the ice.  A chance to play for the Hamilton Mustangs could be Dean’s last opportunity to course correct.  But that means contending with toxic teammates and finding a way to work with Murray (Shawn Doyle), the Mustangs’ skeptical coach.   The story, however, is riddled with cliches. made worse with a relationship between Dean with the bench boss’s daughter Jessie (Alexandra McDonald).   Everything goes on as expected in a sports drama, including a final win at the climactic hockey match.  The film is dedicated to the legendary late Canadian director Charles Officer, who was originally slated to direct the film.

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Written by: Gilbert Seah

Parent Category: Articles

Category: Movie Reviews

Published: 08 August 2025

FILM REVIEWS:

EAST OF WALL (USA 2024) ***
Directed by Anne Beecroft

 

The complaint about the under-representation of women in films can be clearly discarded these days.  In the area EAST OF WALL, (Wall is a town in Pennington County, South Dakota, United States; the population was 699 at the 2020 census), lives a family run by the strong female matriarch, which is where the story of this film comes from.  The film is so-called as it is the location of the family ranch - the setting of the story.

Despite its small population, Wall is quite famous.  Wall was named for the "natural wall" in rock formations by the Badlands National Park.  The National Grasslands Visitor Center is also located in Wall.

EAST OF WALL can be described as a docu-fiction as it is an authentic portrait of
female resilience in the “New West,” inspired by those who live it.  The film and story revolve around a tough, tattooed Tabatha Zimiga (Tabatha Zimiga plays herself), a rancher with an uncanny gift for taming wild horses.  She and her teen daughter Porshia Zimiga (she also plays herself) are often at loggerheads with her mother.  Porshia blames her mother for the loss of her stepfather,

  Tabatha takes good care of her 3 children – Porshia, older son (played by family friend Wyatt Mansfield) and 3-year-old son (Stephen Neumann as himself) – plus a slew of teens (as themselves) who need somewhere to live.  Tabatha has her hands full with humans to train beside the horses. Tabatha also hasn’t ridden a horse since his death. Instead, she coaches the teens who often perform tricks on horses while selling them at auctions or via TikTok.  Even so, it is a financial struggle.  Then along comes a wealthy businessman (Scoot McNairy) with a proposal to buy her 3,000 acres.

EAST OF WALL benefits from the raw emotions generated from the story of a family often at unease, but shares the common love for horses.  The rodeo riding and horse stunts help in the film's authenticity and also create the proper atmosphere for a horse movie.  The film is beautifully shot by cinematographer Austin Shaboozey.  Despite the fact that most of the cast are non-professionals, a lot of them portray themselves, which makes their performances realistic.

Despite the realistic atmosphere and performances, one can hardly call the film enjoyable for the reason that it is never much fun to watch a family in struggle.  The story occasionally falls into clichéd territory, as one can expect Tabatha to be fighting with the ranch’s buyer over her loss of control of the ranch.  The film’s cop-out happy ending that includes Tabatha having her way with the ranch and the dolled-up reconciliation between mother and daughter are also a bit hard to take.

Director Beecroft and cinematographer Shelton spent three years living with the family, absorbing their daily life before shooting the film.  Their efforts clearly show on screen.

EAST OF WALL has made its debut at various international film festivals and opens August 15 across Canada, including Toronto at the TIFF Lightbox.

Trailer:

FIXED (USA 2025) ***
Directed by Genndy Tartakovsky

Bull (Adam DeVine) is a two-year-old Staffordshire Bull Terrier Mix (aka Bull is a mutt) who frequently humps anything that piques his interest to vent his perverse instincts.  He is friends with Rocco (Idris Elba), a gruff, proud Boxer, Fetch (Fred Armisn), a wannabe-influencer Dachshund and Lucky (Bobby Moynihan), an eccentric Jack Russell Terrier, all of whom except for Bull have been neutered, which makes them a target of ridicule from the haughty, self-absorbed Borzoi show-dog, Sterling (Beck Bennett). Bull also harbours a crush on his show-dog neighbour, a Borzoi named Honey (Kathryn Hahn), but is hesitant to reveal his true feelings for her.

One day, Bull's owners make a great show of pampering him, feeding him treats and filling the toilet with Kool-Aid. Bull realises that he is due to be neutered the following morning, as Luther (Aaron LaPlante), a Great Dane, had a similar pre-neutering experience.  Bull bemoans his experience and soon decides to leave home in order to save himself from being sterilised. He soon reconsiders when he is accosted by a large clowder of alley cats, but is saved by his friends, who came searching for him when he ran away from his home, and they're all chased out of the cats' territory.

Dog owners should relate more than others to this movie, which highlights the eccentricity of the animal.  FIXED is an adult animated comedy about dogs and particularly about a mutt named Bull about to get fixed.  Being fixed means, for Bull, getting mutilated and his balls cut off, which means that there are plenty of high jinks involved with dirty jokes abound.  The jokes are a hit and miss with fortunately, more hits than misses.  But the humour gets nasty in this R-rated comedy.

For example, what do dogs do at the dog park? (Again, those with dogs know how much that is shown on screen is true, and funny.)

• Dogs are happiest when off-leash
• They smell each other’s butts
• Some have sex
• They poo on each other
• They poop and pee all over the place
• They smell each other’s poop and shit
• Some eat shit

A few segments are not as funny as they want to be.  One example is the pair of Mutt’s balls escaping from him.  In a dream!

The best voice characterisation belongs to Brit Idris Elba.  His British accent works for Rocco, a boxer and close friend of Mutt.  Rocco’s funny, self-conscious and offers silly but meaningly advice to Mutt.  The best laugh-out-loud segment comes from Elba, too.  Rocco’s dialogue is also the most foul.  Foul but always funny1

It was way back in 2018 that Deadline Hollywood reported that writer/director Tartakovsky was set to write and direct the film, with Michelle Murdocca producing it.  Sony Pictures Animation (TRANSYLVANIA 2000) was set to produce it, marking the studio's first R-rated film.  Tartakovsky IS An American animator, screenwriter, film producer, and director, best known as the creator of various animated television series on Cartoon Network and Adult Swim, including Dexter's Laboratory, Samurai Jack, Star Wars: Clone Wars, among others.

FIXED opens for streaming on Netflix this week, from Wednesday, August 13th.

Trailer: 

NIGHT ALWAYS COMES (USA 2025) **½
Directed by Benjamin Caron

 

NIGHT ALWAYS COMES is a crime drama based on the novel of the same name by Willy Vlautin.

NIGHT ALWAYS COMES benefits from Vanessa Kirby, one of today’s best actresses, taking the title role.  Kirby’s best roles include 2022 THE SON, with her recently seen in FANTASTIC FOUR: FRST STEPS (2025).  Kirby rose to international prominence with her portrayal of Princess Margaret in the Netflix drama series The Crown (2016–2017), for which she won the BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress.  For her performance in the film Pieces of a Woman (2020), she won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.  Kirby is the best thing about the movie.  Kirby also co-produced the movie with fellow Brit Benjamin Caron as the director.

The film follows a very desperate Lynette (Kirby) who needs to drum up $25,000 for a down payment on a house in order to prevent eviction.

The film moves along briskly, but the trouble with the film is its predictability.  One can see whether the film is heading in the first 30 minutes, as the fact that everything is going wrong for Lynnette is forcing his lady into crime.  Crime can be committed by good people as well, and the film intends to show this fact.  

Another problem is he film’s casting, Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Lynette’s mother, Doreen.  Leigh looks young enough to be the sister.  Also, Lynette’s elder brother, Kenny (Zack Gottsagen from THE PEANUT BUTTER FALCON), looks young enough to be Lynette’s son.

NIGHT ALWAYS COMES opens for streaming on Netflix Friday, August 15th.  A predictable time-wasting yarn that is barely an entertaining watch.

Trailer: 

 

NOBODY 2 (USA 2025) ***
Directed by Timo Tjahjanto

 

I did not see NOBODY, but one need not know anything about the original film before heading out to see NOBODY 2.  NOBODY cost $16 million to make and grossed close to $60 million.  NOBODY 2 has been granted a larger budget of $25 million to make.  $25 million is, in Hollywood standards, a modest sum, which can be said to be efficiently put together in this action-packed comedy that works as a non-demanding summer flick.

NOBODY 2 sees former henchman government assassin Hutch Mansell aka Nobody (Bob Odenkirk from BREAKING BAD and THE BEAR) taking various violent jobs in order to pay off a massive loan.  The loan is the result of Hutch’s exploits in the first movie.  This results in him being away from his family.  He decides he needs a break to spend time with his wife, Becca (Connie Nielsen), son Brady (Canadian actor Gage Munroe) and daughter, Sammy (Paisley Cadorath).  So it is family vacation time.  Hutch takes family with grandpa, David  (Christopher Lloyd) in tow to Plummrville but discovers his childhood memories amusement city is now run by mobsters led by a vicious girl called Lendina (Sharon Stone).  Hutch has to save the day as well as his family.  The thugs led by the sheriff (Colin Hanks) will not leave Hutch alone.

NOBODY 2 works as the film steals from the good bits of a whole slew of successful box-office hits, the most notable being Harold Ramis’ 1983 Chevy Chase hit NATIONAL LAMPOON’S VACATION.  Griswold brought his family to Walley World with Aunt Edna (Imogen Coca) in tow.  In NOBODY 2, it is Grandpa in tow to Plummerville.  Plummerville, specifically the Wild Bill’s Majestic Midway and Waterpark. Plummerville serves as a fictional small tourist town with a tacky, nostalgia-laden waterpark resort that Hutch fondly remembers from his childhood.  Other nods come from films like HOME ALONE (Hutch and gang set up various booby traps for the bad guys), HIGH NOON (the wife stands behind the husband in a showdown involving the villains), and John Wick films (leave Lendina alone and she will do the same).

A disturbing feature about the film is the acceptable use of violence that is allowed for Hutch to keep his family on vacation.  Hutch gets to lose a finger, though this segment is treated in all good fun.  Lots of bloody, violent gore are also present with weapons like daggers and machetes, chopping off limbs and thrusting into various assorted bodies of the villains.

NOBODY 2 still comes across as good clean (or good unclean) fun, all taken with large pinches of salt.  The trailer shows many of the film’s good parts, but there are many, many Moreno shown in the trailer to keep the action comedy still fresh.

Director Timo Tjahjanto is a young 44-year-old Indonesian director specializing in horror and action films.  Definitely a talent to watch, judging for the efficient entertainment derived from NOBODY 2.

NOBODY 2 , the only big movie opening this week, opens in theatres August 15th.

Trailer: