GRUB | Cheeseburger and Shake x Burger Crush x Downtown

Financial District—Victoria's popular throwback to the fast-casual style burger and shake joint, Burger Crush, just opened its second (forty-seat) location in the old Johnny Rockets space only a stone's throw away from the infamous Granville strip.

CABLE | 'The Last of Us' Survives the Zombie Apocalypse on HBO

"Save who you can save."

Sony Pictures Television / PlayStation Productions

HBO's television drama series based on the acclaimed 2013 Naughty Dog video game franchise The Last of Us is a triumphant screen adaptation thanks to the vivid and compelling portrait of its grounded characters. From episode to episode, we follow an intimate group of survivalists who go on missions to maintain a semblance of life and humanity after a zombie apocalypse.

GENRE | Alexander Skarsgård Drowns – 'Infinity Pool' x Sundance 2023

"It's like a new skin working itself into place."

Sundance Film Festival

An emasculated Alexander Skarsgård and truly unhinged Mia Goth star as privileged resort guests on an all-inclusive luxury vacation in Toronto filmmaker Brandon Cronenberg's third sci-fi body horror feature, a dystopian piece of pure nightmare fuel. Set in the fictional impoverished Eastern European nation of Li Tolqa with a strange ritual of punishing foreign lawbreakers, Infinity Pool envisions both a descent into psychological madness and piece of twisted gratification.

SCREEN | 'You People' – Jonah Hill Comes to Dinner on Netflix

"Do you just come up here for our food and women?"

Khalabo Ink Society / Strong Baby

Black-ish creator Kenya Barris directs comedian Jonah Hill (also co-writer/producer) in the mismatched interracial romantic comedy riff on the Guess Who's Coming to Dinner formula with shades of Meet the Parents. You People is a refreshingly amusing take on contemporary racial tensions while injecting hot topic elements of our current social climate.

CINEMA | Mother vs. Son – 'When You Finish Saving the World'

"Everyone around me is a narcissist."

A24 / Sphere Films

Acclaimed actor/playwright Jesse Eisenberg makes his screenwriting and directorial debut in the indie coming-of-age cringefest, When You Finish Saving the World, based on his 2020 audio drama of the same name. Julianne Moore and Finn Wolfhard star sublimely as a high-strung do-gooder mother and her self-involved teenage consumerist son with a contentious relationship due to their generational divide and shared tendencies of oblivious narcissism.

GENRE | 'Searching' for a 'Missing' Person on Screen(s)

"I'm not giving up on my mom."

Stage 6 Films / Screen Gems

From the same creative team behind the sharp 2018 "screenlife" mystery thriller Searching comes a standalone sequel, the appropriately titled Missing. Written and directed by Nick Johnson and Will Merrick, editors of the first film, the follow-up stars Storm Reid as a teenager left alone trying to find her missing mother (Nia Long) after she fails to return from a Colombian vacation with her shady new boyfriend (Ken Leung).

GENRE | Hayley Law Traps 'Door Mouse' – Stylish Neo-Noir Pulp

"It was a full pack of cigarettes type of night."

Gravitas Ventures / Elevation Pictures

Vancouver native Hayley Law stars in fellow local actor turned filmmaker Avan Jogia's stylish debut feature behind the camera in an indie neo-noir dripping with contemporary pulp. Door Mouse mines gumshoe detective genre fare with a modern gloss (not unlike the 2005 film Brick) for a rathr oddball mystery genre effort.

SCREEN | Gillian Jacobs Finds 'The Seven Faces of Jane'

"Everyone struggles to find a version of themselves that they like."

Gravitas Ventures

The Seven Faces of Jane, an experimental anthology indie road film conceived by producer Roman Coppola as an "exquisite corpse" blind collaboration starring Gillian Jacobs as the eponymous heroine, is a surrealist vision of a woman tumbling through eight different strange mini-adventures. It's an odd but often emotional series of small character pieces.

GENRE | Allison Williams Programs 'M3GAN' to Slay

"They could be building emotional connections that are too hard to entangle."

Universal Pictures / Blumhouse Productions

Produced by horror stalwarts Jason Blum and James Wan, M3GAN is a PG-13 techno sci-fi slasher-comedy that hits most of the right notes as a cleverly satirical genre mashup of both evil toy dolls and killer futuristic robots. Directed by Gerard Johnstone, the film stars Allison Williams as a robotics engineer who creates a kid-friendly yet clearly sinister android with its own A.I. gone rogue to care for her orphaned nine-year-old niece (Violet McGraw).