REEL | 90s Baby! – Still 'Dazed and Confused' After All These Years

"It'd be a lot cooler if you did."

Universal Pictures / Focus Features

Beloved Austin-based, independent filmmaker Richard Linklater's highly influential but box office disappointment of a sophomore teen film, Dazed and Confused, famously took its title from the killer Led Zeppelin classic rock song whose music rights the film was unsuccessful at securing for its bitchin' soundtrack, all the way back in the year 1993. This was one of many omens of sorts for its eventual lasting cultural legacy as a stone cold cult classic. Some three decades after its debut, its all-in-one-day, last-day-of-high-school hangout vibes remain strongly rewatchable.

GENRE | Anne Hathaway Hails 'Mother Mary' – A Pop Nightmare

"This is your burial."

A24 / VVS Films

Eclectic filmmaker David Lowery writes and directs the gothic pop-horror music psychodrama, Mother Mary, starring Anne Hathaway as an iconic singer (think Lady Gaga meets Taylor Swift) in search of a new stage costume from her estranged former collaborator (Michaela Coel). It's an all-female, two-hander chamber piece of ghostly confrontation that doubles for the complications of artistic and creative partnerships.

REEL | Jaafar Jackson Transforms the King of Pop – 'Michael' Goes 'Bad'

"I believe music can change the world."

Lionsgate / Cineplex Pictures

From the same producer (Graham King) and filmed in a similar vein as the wildly successful but much deservedly critically maligned Queen/Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody comes the ill-advised Michael, the estate-authorized biographical musical drama based on the life of the controversial "King of Pop," superstar Michael Jackson. He's portrayed impressively by his actual nephew, Jaafar Jackson (son of Jermaine, also an executive producer alongside Michael's other living brothers), with the adorable Juliano Krue Valdi playing the younger MJ, and directed by journeyman filmmaker Antoine Fuqua.

REEL | 'Brat' Summer Forever – Charli XCX Captures 'The Moment'

"It's all cringe."

A24 / VVS Films

Provocative British pop superstar Charli XCX (aka Charlotte Emma Aitchison) plays a fictionalized version of herself in Scottish music video director and celebrity photographer Aidan Zamiri's amusingly frank mockumentary about the music industry's stark vanity. Filmed during the height of the Brat 2024 Arena Tour, The Moment takes the Brat Summer phenomenon that captured the popular culture zeitgeist to extreme lengths after her sixth studio album release.

SCENE | 'West Van Story' Sweeps the Spirit of 'East Van Panto'

"You're just jealous, because I was an early developer."

Dawn Petten, Tresha Thamilchelvan, Izel de Lara & Ivy Charlies / Photo credit | Emily Cooper

Commercial Drive—One of my favourite annual traditions of leftist satirical musical propaganda (complimentary), East Van Panto, is back for another year of shared theatrical joy. Theatre Replacement's latest holiday stage production, presented by The Cultch, returned to the York Theatre for its lucky thirteenth edition of love, laughter, and low-income housing.

VIFF 2025 | 'Mile End Kicks' Relives the Age of Indie Sleaze

"I can't date two guys in the same band."

Vancouver International Film Festival

VIFF 2025—Toronto-born entertainment writer turned filmmaker Chandler Levack continues to mine her own youthful personal experiences as she revisits the indie sleaze music scene (circa 2011) in her winning sophomore film, Mile End Kicks. Starring Euphoria actress Barbie Ferreira as a young music critic from Ontario who moves to Montreal's vibrant Mile End neighbourhood of artists to write a book about Alanis Morissette before becoming sidetracked after falling for a struggling indie rock band.

GENRE | From the South Till 'Sinners' – Michael B. Jordan Feels the Blues

"Y'all ready to sweat till y'all stink?"

Warner Bros. Pictures / Proximity Media

Frequent Scorsese/De Niro-style collaborators, writer/director Ryan Coogler and star Michael B. Jordan, reteam in their ultra-sexy period vampire saga, Sinners. Set over the course of a single day and night in 1932 Clarksdale, Mississippi in the thick of the Jim Crow-era Deep South, the supernatural gothic horror fantasia harkens back to the influences of the period's Black culture of jazzy blues music (later appropriated by white musicians) in the aftermath of the First World War.

SCREEN | 'The Ballad of Wallis Island' Reflects on the Past

"Some things you just can't get back."

Focus Features / Baby Cow Productions

British comedy duo Tom Basden and Tim Key write and star in the cozy relationship comedy The Ballad of Wallis Island. Based on their 2007 short film, The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island, the big-hearted film revolves around an eccentric but lonely double lottery winning superfan widower tricking his favourite folk rock musical duo, "McGwyer & Mortimer," into reuniting together on the eponymous remote island for a private concert unbeknownst to half of them.

SCREEN | Recollections of a Vietnamese Rebellion – 'New Wave' Culture

"I was chasing a story about a bunch of Vietnamese-American rebels."

Photo credit | Yudi Echevarria/Angel City Press

Chinese-Vietnamese-American director Elizabeth Ai explores the immigrant experience through music in her fun but meaningful documentary, New Wave. All about the influence of the titular genre of music and its effects on the pop culture of the Vietnamese diaspora emerging from 1980s Southern California, the film takes an interesting approach to dissecting the unspoken collective intergenerational trauma of these children of refugees after the fall of Saigon in 1975.

SCREEN | 'It's All Gonna Break' Collects A Broken Social Scene

"It's really difficult to put that much chaos on stage."

Blue Ice Docs / Fathom Film

Influential Toronto indie rock collective Broken Social Scene gets the documentary treatment in It's All Gonna Break, an intimate time capsule aiming to capture the youthful spirit of the underground explosion of musical creativity in the early 2000s, thanks to cheap rent and a bunch of talented musicians living near each other.

REEL | Timothée Chalamet Walks Hard – 'A Complete Unknown'

"Every deck has two jokers, don't it?"

Searchlight Pictures

America's boyfriend Timothée Chalamet channels a young, pre-Highway 61 Revisited era of Bob Dylan, chronicling the folk singer's rise to fame in the early-1960s New York City set, A Complete Unknown, based on the 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties by music historian Elijah Wald. Journeyman director James Mangold helms the period musical biopic with a measured verve and mastery of performances filmed in the moment, with the actors recorded singing live to camera.

SCENE | 'East Van Panto' Takes 'Robin Hood' Back from the Rich

"This is Lululemon Lake now!"

Jason Sakaki / Photo credit | Emily Cooper

Commercial Drive—It's that time of year again. East Van Panto, Theatre Replacement's wackiest annual holiday stage tradition presented by The Cultch, returned to the York Theatre for its twelfth edition, featuring a very merry band of animal misfits (the "Merry-Thems") in a hyper-localized, joyful musical twist on the outlaw folklore of Robin Hood.

VIFF 2024 | Cementing 'Pavements' – A Pavement Musical Retrospective

"They're like the slacker Rolling Stones of the '90s."

Vancouver International Film Festival

VIFF 2024—Her Smell writer/director Alex Ross Perry helms the meta rock documentary hybrid of a fake musical biopic, Pavements, about "the most important and influential band" of our time, Pavement. It's a complex but hilariously multifaceted riff on the typical kinds of music vanity projects we usually get, including artist-sanctioned documentaries, jukebox stage musicals, or self-important biographical dramas like Bohemian Rhapsody.

VIFF 2024 | Eiko Ishibashi Live x A 'Gift' Does Exist x Rio Theatre

"Water always flows downhill."

Vancouver International Film Festival

Commercial Drive—(October 1, 2024) Talented Japanese singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist composer Eiko Ishibashi performed her affecting live soundtrack score for VIFF Live's special presentation of Oscar-winning auteur Ryûsuke Hamaguchi's wordless Evil Does Not Exist companion film Gift at the Rio Theatre earlier this month.

SCREEN | Speaking Irish – 'Kneecap' Raps It Up

"Every word of Irish spoken is a bullet fired for Irish freedom."

Sony Pictures Classics / Mongrel Media

Controversial West Belfast hip-hop trio Kneecap, known for rapping republican lyrics in their native Irish language, star in their own titular biographical film about their rise to fame and infamy. Set in 2019, British-Irish filmmaker Rich Peppiatt directs the plainly titled Kneecap with an energetic, riotous verve to its provocative, explicitly anti-UK material of rebellion.

REEL | Bradley Cooper Conducts 'Maestro' x WFF 2023

"You're going to die a lonely, old queen!"

Whistler Film Festival

A Star is Born filmmaker Bradley Cooper once again directs himself in the Leonard Bernstein period biopic Maestro, co-produced by cinematic legends Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg. Cooper crafts a complex portrait of the famed composer and conductor who had a tumultuous personal life amidst the highs of his professional accomplishments within the context of a difficult but loving marriage.

SCREEN | Talking Heads Starts 'Stop Making Sense' x TIFF 2023

"Talking Heads was such a good band."

Toronto International Film Festival

A24's newly acquired, soon-to-be re-released 1984 seminal Talking Heads live rock documentary, directed by the late Jonathan Demme has been gloriously restored in sparkling 4K video optimized for IMAX screens. Long considered "the greatest concert film ever" made, Stop Making Sense's pulsating musical cinematic composition feels as energetic and rhythmically innovative as ever, nearly four decades later.

WANDER | Meet Me in Gastown x Café Kitsuné x Water Street

Gastown—(August 31, 2023) Last week, several blocks of the historic Water Street were cordoned off to traffic and taken over by pedestrians for the second annual Meet Me in Gastown street festival in celebration of local dining, shopping, and live music.

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."

Drake and Adam Pally / Photo credit | 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.

REEL | 'Babylon' Revisits Hollywood's Golden Age of Depravity

"They're no worse than movie people."

Paramount Pictures

Celebrated cinematic wunderkind Damien Chazelle directs one of the most debaucherously extravagant contemporary studio pictures ever produced. Babylon, set during the film's transition from the silent film era leading into the early Golden Age of Hollywood talkies in the jazz-filled 1930s, explores the sheer depravity and corrupting power of show business while simultaneously showcasing the magic of the movies.