March 20, 2023

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

"Who's your favourite artist?"
Dominique Fishback Rory Culkin Janine Nabers Donald Glover | Swarm 2023 TV | Amazon Prime Video
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.

March 16, 2023

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

"We're gonna need more Skittles."
Zachary Levi Lucy Liu David F. Sandberg | Shazam! Fury of the Gods | DC Studios
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.

March 13, 2023

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

"Peaches just rot."
Alexandra Roberts Grace Glowicki Sophie Jarvis | Until Branches Bend | VIFF 2022
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.

March 9, 2023

GENRE | Ghostface Takes Manhattan – Slashing 'Scream VI'

"F*ck this franchise!"
Melissa Barrera Jenna Ortega Matt Bettinelli-Olpin Tyler Gillett | Scream IV
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.

March 6, 2023

CINEMA | 'Return to Seoul' Searching x TIFF 2022

"Sorrow is the way of Korean men."
Park Ji-min Davy Chou | Return to Seoul (Retour à Séoul) | TIFF 2022
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.

March 2, 2023

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

"It's now or never for me."
Michael B. Jordan | Creed III
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.

February 27, 2023

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

"Every relationship requires a healthy dose of delusion."
Liane Balaban Allan Hawco Vanessa Matsui | Midnight at the Paradise | Whistler Film Festival 2022
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.

February 23, 2023

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."
An Intimate Evening with Adam Pally | Just for Laughs Vancouver 2023 | Rio Theatre
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.

February 20, 2023

GENRE | Elizabeth Banks Chases the 'Cocaine Bear' Necessities

"The bearit f*cking did cocaine!"
Scott Seiss Elizabeth Banks Phil Lord Christopher Miller | Cocaine Bear
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.