Zack Snyder’s first Rebel Moon film brought a team of expert fighters together, and now in Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver, they’re forced into an epic battle to save a village, against an empire, and its leader. Stars Sofia Boutella and Michiel Huisman sat down to talk about the sequel, their characters’ relationship, and their favourite scene. “My favourite part of her journey is to be able to explore something that was as dark as what was written and finding the ability or the opportunities to come out of it to the other side,” Boutella said. “And because I wanted so desperately for he ..read more

Sasquatch Sunset, the latest film from the Zellner Brothers, is a patently unreviewable film, but I am going to try to cobble something together, anyway. It’s honestly a pretty bad movie, but I certainly can’t suggest that it’s compromised or an unrealized vision. It’s more performance art than cinema, although it’s a handsome looking production with gorgeous, vivid shots of stunning natural landscapes. It’s as dull as watching paint dry, but curious in the same way as an Applebees parking lot can appear on a weekend night. It’s restrained, but also didactic in its own weird way. Sasquatch Sun ..read more

Trevor Anderson’s teen drama Before I Change My Mind is a curious film. It has a tremendous core concept about the nature of gender identity and a person’s right to privacy, but the way this concept is executed somewhat negatively impacts the rest of the film around it. There’s a lot to love in Before I Change My Mind – enough to recommend it overall – but also a considerable amount of teen movie cliches and narrative vagueness that imbalance the final whole. The year is 1987, and Robin (Vaughan Murrae) is a gender ambiguous teenager who has just moved from Spokane, Washington to small town Al ..read more

Housekeeping For Beginners is Goran Stolevski’s third feature film, and with each project the accomplished writer and director is crafting deeper, richer, and bolder stories that touch on meaningful human perspectives. His latest film is an incredible LGBTQIA+ drama about love, loss, and finding the people you belong with. It’s poignant, and cheeky, and feels like a real slice of life. “I go into every film with the principle that every scene and key moment needs to feel like it was found or stumbled upon,” he said, “rather than staged, and I want it to feel like it’s almost a documentary.” “B ..read more

Evoking memories of classic cartoons and the dawn of black and white, silent cinema, the relentless and often hilarious slapstick yarn Hundreds of Beavers delivers on the promise of its title and then some. A rapid fire assembly of gags and dazzling set pieces that fly in the face of its minuscule budget, Hundreds of Beavers has been rightfully gaining a lot of buzz among cult movie buffs. It’s a tiring film to sit through, but mostly because it has enough energy to propel a dozen different projects. And while it doesn’t always hit the comedic mark 100% of the time, director Mike Cheslik and c ..read more

A respectful, stately looking, and melodramatic historical drama about one woman’s selfless act of compassion, Irena’s Vow doesn’t bring many new ideas to the table, but it certainly tells a great story. Based on the true story of Irena Gut Opdyke, a Polish housekeeper forced to work for a high ranking Nazi official after the fall of Warsaw in 1939, this latest film from Canadian director Louise Archambault (Gabrielle, And the Birds Rained Down) and screenwriter Dan Gordon never fully realizes its true potential to move and captivate, but it does succeed at being a basically well meaning inspi ..read more

Twisty, clever, and pleasingly genuine, the romantic fantasy With Love and a Major Organ balances humour, cynicism, and hopefulness with a deft hand and a great deal of emotional intelligence. A literal and metaphorical dissection of what it means to give one’s heart to another, With Love and a Major Organ makes the wise decision to take its fantastical and satirical premise at full value rather than trying to weave something overly quirky or twee around it. Director Kim Albright and writer Julia Lederer walk a tonal tightrope with their collaboration, but they never waver in the conviction be ..read more

Sting is one of those movies that’s fine enough for what it is, but there’s not much to say about it beyond that. It picks a lane, follows it dutifully, and never over or under-whelms. Sting knows what it needs to succeed and mounts nothing more or nothing less. It’s a passable diversion, but not something that seems destined to be a genre classic. If creepy-crawlies put you on edge, and you like to be scared by them, Sting will offer up some unnerving delights. For everyone else, it’s an okay way to spend ninety minutes. Twelve year old Charlotte (Alyla Brown) lives in a Brooklyn apartment bu ..read more

Well intentioned, but ultimately self-defeating, the queer family custody drama Housekeeping for Beginners tries to look at a well known, melodramatic plot from a different perspective, but ends up doing curiously little with it. Last year’s selection for Best International Feature Oscar contention from North Macedonia, Housekeeping for Beginners taps into a wealth of cultural and sexual identities and customs, but forgets to build characters around them. It’s a film of big ideas and tropes designed to pull at the heartstrings, but few ways of pulling them all together into a satisfying and co ..read more

Alex Garland’s Civil War is an ideologically messy, but undeniably novel bait and switch. While its undeniable timeliness and clearly baiting title suggests a filmmaker examining a global superpower past the brink of political, economic, and ethical chaos, Civil War is really about the people who report upon that level of violent unrest while trying to remain dispassionately impartial. While there’s a lot of politically loaded material in Garland’s latest, it’s predominantly a Heart of Darkness styled journey about journalists, not a de facto state of the nation piece. Some might be tricked in ..read more