Category Archives: Drama

Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Drama, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: OBEX — Fantasia Festival 2025

OBEX had its Canadian premiere on July 29 as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival.

It’s 1987. “Computer” Conor (Albert Birney, who also directs) spends his morning talking lovingly to his dog Sandy and watching the news on one of the three television sets stacked in a row in the middle of his living room. He works from home, rapidly typing out on his Macintosh computer digital recreations of photographs that people send to him. His neighbor Mary (Callie Hernandez) arrives weekly to check up on him and bring him groceries, but he never opens the door.

While thumbing through a computer hobbyist catalogue, Conor stumbles upon a mysterious ad for a video game called “OBEX.” Not only is it a game, but it is Continue reading Review: OBEX — Fantasia Festival 2025 →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Drama, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Fantasia Festival 2025 Reviews — Lucid and Every Heavy Thing

Lucid and Every Heavy Thing had their world premieres on July 21 as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival.

Lucid

Mia (Caitlin Taylor) is an art student without inspiration. When she screws up her self-portrait, she nails a dead fish to it at the last minute and hurries to the studio. Her instructor and most of her classmates are unimpressed. Desperate for Continue reading Fantasia Festival 2025 Reviews — Lucid and Every Heavy Thing →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Drama, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025) Movie Review

After nearly 30 years, the Mission: Impossible film franchise is finally (maybe) coming to an end. As a time capsule, it has tracked Hollywood’s A-list golden boy Tom Cruise through multiple eras of Hollywood blockbuster. In 1996, the town was dominated by movies led by actors who could “open.” That list of talent who can sell a movie on their star power alone has long since shrunk into (arguably) a single digit number.

Cruise has fought to remain on this dwindling list, largely hanging his hat on the franchise that allows him to tout death-defying stunts and globe-trotting exploits. The franchise has grown with his outsized ambition, bloating into epics of grandiose international espionage with ludicrous plots and lengthy (and often exquisitely choreographed) set pieces.

For those that enjoy the fare, the ballooning insanity of the franchise’s stunts (and runtimes) is not only accepted but encouraged. It is only expected, then, that Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie would fully embrace the Continue reading Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Drama, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words), musical

A Complete Unknown (2024) Movie Review

No matter how you want to trace the lineage of the music biopic, we don’t arrive at a formula-to-an-absolute-fault film like Bohemian Rhapsody without first traveling through James Mangold’s Walk the Line. To see Johnny Cash resurface in Mangold’s return to the genre (now played by a perpetually suave Boyd Holbrook) is like witnessing a poltergeist haunting another film. Or a demon that somehow escaped total exorcism from Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, a superior take down of the music biopic and a film that remains culturally relevant so long as Hollywood continues churning out mediocre celebrations of celebrity.

Walk the Line was a crossover success, breaking $100 million at the box office, garnering generally positive reviews, and earning a number of accolades including an Oscar for Reese Witherspoon. A Complete Unknown is angling to do the same. The problem (perhaps) is that Continue reading A Complete Unknown (2024) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Drama, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Romance

Review: Queens of Drama — Fantastic Fest 2024

Queens of Drama is screening as part of Fantastic Fest 2024, which runs from September 19 to September 26.

Alexis Langlois’s Queens of Drama is a riff on the A Star is Born formula, wherein the young, bright-eyed ingenue is thrust into a world of celebrity that bends and breaks them. The young star-to-be in question is Mimi Madamour (Louiza Aura), a quiet 18-year-old auditioning for an American Idol-adjacent singing competition. While there, she meets Billie Kohler (Gio Ventura), another competing hopeful. In some ways, their drastically different experiences with the singing audition paves the way for their diverging paths toward pop notoriety.

The film quickly establishes a dichotomy between the American Idol-ization of mainstream pop and a much more sonically potent underground music scene. In both cases, Continue reading Review: Queens of Drama — Fantastic Fest 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Drama, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: Steppenwolf — Fantastic Fest 2024

Steppenwolf is screening as part of Fantastic Fest 2024, which runs from September 19 to September 26.

Steppenwolf is a formally striking piece of grand existential absurdism. Within the confines of a brutal civil war, the characters in the film (in particular, the sociopathic Brajyuk) face death with an ironic distance that would make Camus’ Meursault proud.

The film opens with the violent takeover of a remote police compound where political prisoners are being tortured. When staring down the barrel of a gun, Brajyuk (Berik Aitzhanov), a corrupt police interrogator, tells his rebel captors that Continue reading Review: Steppenwolf — Fantastic Fest 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Drama, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Review: Black Eyed Susan — Fantasia Festival 2024

Black Eyed Susan is screening as part of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 18 to August 4.

Scooter McCrae could be described as an underground filmmaker. His three features have all been made on shoestring budgets and have provocatively challenged conventions. I remain a neophyte to McCrae’s work (I promise I will watch Sixteen Tongues very soon, but I didn’t have time to catch up with it ahead of this review). At the same time, I imagine I will see similar themes and moods to Black Eyed Susan present in his earlier films.

In the film, a man with a history of alcohol dependency and aggressive outbursts, Derek (Damien Maffei), is hired by an acquaintance to work at an artificial intelligence development company. The technology the company wants to push to market, and which Derek is tasked with testing, is a highly realistic Continue reading Review: Black Eyed Susan — Fantasia Festival 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Drama, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: The Soul Eater — Fantasia Festival 2024

The Soul Eater is screening as part of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 18 to August 4.

In the rural town of Roquenoir, France, a series of murders and kidnappings have taken place. One survivor, a young boy, says it is the work of the “Soul Eater,” a creature of urban legend that steals children away into the woods.

Two investigators working under different jurisdictions are tasked with investigating the case. Elisabeth (Virginie Ledoyen) works for the National Police and is focused on the murders. Franck (Paul Hamy), the captain of the National Gendarmerie, is focused on the missing children. The two butt heads as they seek answers about this mysterious series of crimes.

Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, best known for their bloody 2007 film Inside, bring glimpses of the gruesome to this otherwise Continue reading Review: The Soul Eater — Fantasia Festival 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Drama, Horror, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: The Beast Within — Fantasia Festival 2024

The Beast Within is screening as part of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 18 to August 4.

The Beast Within is the least fun werewolf movie I’ve seen.

Alexander J. Farrell, who is normally a documentary filmmaker, brings us this horror-lite werewolf picture starring Kit Harington. Harington, top billed, is more accurately the third lead in a film with only four characters. He doesn’t say a line of dialogue until the 23-minute mark, for one. While his character Noah is the one inflicted with the titular “beast within,” the film is centered around his young daughter Willow (Caoilinn Springall) as she comes to learn about the affliction that plagues her family.

The Beast Within is, ostensibly, a film about a werewolf. But the truer explanation of its premise is that it is a film about lycanthropy as a thin metaphor for Continue reading Review: The Beast Within — Fantasia Festival 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Drama, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: FAQ — Fantasia Festival 2024

FAQ is screening as part of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 18 to August 4.

FAQ is an interesting little creature. It has an infectious personality, driven by the child actor at its center. For a small-scale story about childhood and parenting, it is doing quite a lot (perhaps too much). Even as it is unclear exactly where it is going, what its odd plot points are progressing toward, the film gets by on heart and charm and liveliness.

At its core, FAQ is a film about a daughter and a mother. Dong-chun (Park Na-eun) is a quiet, curious, and restless child who, despite an excelling mind, struggles to make sense of her studies. Her mother (Park Hyo-ju) is worried about Continue reading Review: FAQ — Fantasia Festival 2024 →