CABLE | Dominique Fishback Stans for 'Swarm' on Prime Video

"Who's your favourite artist?"

Amazon Studios / Big Indie Pictures

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 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.

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 | 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 reckless transformative journey of a young woman's diasporic anguish.

CINEMA | Michael B. Jordan Fights His 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.

SCREEN | Seducing 'Midnight at the Paradise' x WFF 2022

"Every relationship requires a healthy dose of delusion."

Whistler Film Festival

Toronto-based Japanese-Canadian actress Vanessa Matsui makes her feature directorial debut in the infidelity drama, Midnight at the Paradise. Her film focuses on the relationship between two interracial couples who collide over the course of a night of sexual chemistry and delusion when an encounter outside the titular Paradise Theatre reignites old sparks.

WEEKENDER | Adam Pally Live x Just For Laughs x Rio Theatre

"It's nice to step outside into a city and see The Last of Us."

Adam Pally and son Drake / Photo | Grailed

Commercial Drive—(February 17, 2023) I spent An Intimate Evening with Adam Pally last Friday night alongside a packed house full of initially cautious fans of varying levels of inebriation seated inside the Rio Theatre as part of the returning, ten-day-long seventh annual Just for Laughs Vancouver (formerly JFL NorthWest) live comedy festival.

GENRE | Elizabeth Banks Chases the 'Cocaine Bear' Necessities

"The bear—it f*cking did cocaine!"

Universal Pictures / Lord Miller Productions

Actress turned director Elizabeth Banks helms the 1980s horror-comedy throwback that mostly lives up to its spectacularly obvious title, Cocaine Bear. Full of apex predator animal hijinx, the film's deceptively simple premise—just barely inspired by actual true events where a black bear (nicknamed "Pablo Eskobear") ingested a duffle bag of cocaine in 1985—mines tons of relentless, drug-fuelled violence.