Eleanor the Great is fine, but it could be a lot better. As actor June Squibb rides her career high after her leading turn in last year’s Thelma and Scarlett Johansson approaches her first chance to direct a feature film, the audience expects more than an easy crowd-pleaser; pitched to the over-50 crowd like an underhanded softball. Squibb plays the titular senior, who gets a kick out of playfully humiliating people to entertain her loyal aged friend…
Jimmy and Stiggs is, what I imagine, an accurate portrayal of what an alien invasion would be like in the company of strung-out and loudly belligerent meatheads with grudges and substance abuse. The question is: does that sound like a good time? The premise for Joe Begos’ hallucinatory horror, at the very least, sounds good on paper: former friends with a fractured relationship, and a reliance on four-letter expletives, have to work together to kill…
Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas, Hotel) directs Megadoc, a feature-length fly-on-the-wall documentary about the making-of Francis Ford Coppola’s polarizing self-funded epic Megalopolis. The doc proves that cinephiles and critics alike weren’t the only people puzzled by last year’s movie – everyone featured in Megadoc is trying to make heads or tails of Megalopolis, including Francis Ford Coppola. The documentary is as much about Megalopolis as it is about collaborating with Coppola. The interviewed cast and crew are ecstatic to be…
With such surly sentimentality, Claudia Lonow’s D(e)ad could be the Lifetime movie-of-the-week on the unhinged and uncensored network in Swearnet. But, that isn’t a knock against Lonow’s very funny dramedy – it’s a compliment towards the film’s charm and the honesty behind grief as penned by screenwriter/star Isabella Roland. Brilliantly enough, while watching D(e)ad, the audience is always on the razor’s edge of laughing or crying. Daniel has been a lousy father and a brash…
In Light of the World, directors Tom Bancroft and John J. Schafer issue a fresh perspective on the story of Jesus for a young audience – a beautifully animated recollection told from the experience of Jesus’ apostle John. This film is another chapter for The Salvation Poem Project, a non-profit, Christian-based collective co-founded by Schafer that wants to find different ways to deliver devout stories to viewers. Up next is their video game Clayface. I…
I will go to the ends of the earth for actor Zoey Deutch (Flower, Buffaloed), but I have to draw a line at Chad Hartigan’s nonsensical romantic-dramedy The Threesome. An indie that positions the ambitious performer as a second, sometimes third, banana portraying a waffling love interest. Deutch plays Olivia, a sarcastic server, who incessantly teases guy pal Connor (Jonah Hauer-King of 2023’s The Little Mermaid). This sharp-tongued playfulness turns Connor on, but Olivia has…
For her directorial and screenwriting debut, actor Kristin Scott Thomas retreats to tried and tired formulas in My Mother’s Wedding to tell an autobiographical story. Luckily for Thomas, she’s been blessed with star-power who can not only sell this routine family dramedy, but can also make the movie out to be a matinee must-see. Thomas also co-stars as bride-to-be Diana. Diana, twice widowed by men who both served in the Royal Navy, is excited to…
“Extreme” “Gruesome” “Unreleasable” These words, among others, have been used to describe Macon Blair’s adaptation The Toxic Avenger, along with the film’s tumultuous journey to the big screen. The popularity of the horror genre, however, hasn’t wavered; leading to studios and distributors making big, ambitious swings. The hit success of Terrifier 3 certainly helped The Toxic Avenger find a home, along with a “carte blanche” decision to release it “unrated” in the United States. Although, Canada had no problem issuing…
Bruce Sweeney (Crimes of Mike Recket, The Dick Knost Show) returns to the big screen (since 2018’s Kingsway) with She Talks to Strangers, a brazenly funny black comedy that gives the Canadian filmmaker a turn to mine for gold in the trends of compulsive true crime followings. The backbone of Sweeney’s Toronto-set thriller, however, is the condensed, character-driven story of clumsy curmudgeons picking feuds with each other to gain a sense of control. Leslie (Camille…
Julian Glander’s vaporwave indie Boys Go to Jupiter is an exercise in procrastination. Experienced by the characters, but felt – with each painstaking step – by the audience. In a Floridian suburb, high school dropout-turn-courier-for-hire Billy 5000 (voiced by Jack Corbett) has set a goal to save $5,000. Why $5,000? Because Billy 5000 supposes he could finally get his life moving with that much dough. He’s also discovered a currency glitch through his courier’s app that…