CINEMA | Matt Damon Jumps – Fresh 'Air' Jordan x SXSW 2023

"A shoe is just a shoe until my son steps into it."

SXSW Film & TV Festival

Ben Affleck directs longtime friend/collaborator Matt Damon (both producers) in a period marketing drama about the courting of then NBA rookie and future all-star Michael Jordan to become Nike's first star athlete spokesman. Ostensibly a corporate dramedy about advertising and the birth of the wildly popular Air Jordan shoe brand, Air: Courting A Legend (as it's titled in advertising) hits all the right notes as it expertly mimics elements of the biographical underdog sports movie formula to a tee.

CINEMA | 'Dungeons & Dragons' Conjures High Fantasy Fun x SXSW 2023

"Never put your trust in a con man."

SXSW Film & TV Festival

Comedy directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley adapt the popular tabletop role-playing game D&D for the big screen for an amusing cinematic genre mashup. Starring Chris Pine as a confident fool of a scoundrel, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves balances its comedic high fantasy-adventure tone set in the magically medieval Forgotten Realms and clearly focused on its sophisticated world-building.

CINEMA | 'Until Branches Bend' Invades the Okanagan x SXSW 2023

"Peaches just rot."

SXSW Film & TV Festival

Vancouver-based production designer turned director Sophie Jarvis explores small-town drama in her captivating debut feature, Until Branches Bend. Filmed in and around Penticton on 16mm, the low-budget film shows Okanagan life through communal tensions as a result of looming oncoming invasions.

GENRE | Keanu Reeves Tracks 'John Wick: Chapter 4' x SXSW 2023

"I'm going to kill them all."

SXSW Film & TV Festival

Stuntman-turned-director Chad Stahelski and star Keanu Reeves once again return to the brutally violent and bullet-riddled gun-fu world of John Wick as they continue to expand the hitman's surprisingly complex mythology. John Wick: Chapter 4 is almost three hours of some of the most relentlessly dazzling action-packed sequences ever put to film.

CABLE | Beware the Hive – 'Swarm' Stans Prime Video x SXSW 2023

"Who's your favourite artist?"

SXSW Film & TV Festival

Co-creator Donald Glover, who also directs the pilot, and playwright/showrunner Janine Nabers' new half-hour psychological horror series stars Dominique Fishback as an obsessive fan of a Beyoncé-like world-famous pop superstar ("Ni'Jah") who ends up down a bloody path of murder and mayhem across the country. From there, each episode unfolds a different yet eerily impressionistic perspective on extreme toxic fandom.

CINEMA | 'Shazam! Fury of the Gods' Ages Into Menace

"We're gonna need more Skittles."

New Line Cinema / DC Studios

Swedish genre director David F. Sandberg brings back the whole Shazam! superhero family alongside Zachary Levi, once again starring as the DC Comics incarnation of the "Champion of Gods" with Asher Angel as his teen counterpart Billy Batson, in the superhero sequel, Shazam! Fury of the Gods.

GENRE | Ghostface Takes Manhattan – Slashing 'Scream VI'

"F*ck this franchise!"

Paramount Pictures / Spyglass Media Group

Scream 5 directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett return for the fast-tracked direct sequel to their successful, self-described "requel". Scream VI escapes Wesbero for New York City in a brutal and entertaining but excessive slasher follow-up stretching the limits of its horror franchise building.

CINEMA | 'Return to Seoul' Searching x TIFF 2022

"Sorrow is the way of Korean men."

Toronto International Film Festival

Cambodian-French filmmaker Davy Chou explores the internal complexities of foreign adoption in the splendid French-Korean drama Return to Seoul (aka Retour à Séoul or All the People I'll Never Be). It captures a surprisingly joyous and recklessly transformative journey of a young woman's diasporic anguish.

CINEMA | Michael B. Jordan Fights the Past – 'Creed III'

"It's now or never for me."

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer / Warner Bros. Pictures

Creed star/producer Michael B. Jordan makes his directorial debut in the third entry (and ninth Rocky film overall) of the venerable boxing franchise revamp. Creed III takes a more personal, family drama approach to the classic underdog sports drama formula.