The film White Boy Rick is about a young drug hustler who became a 15-year-old FBI informant. And yet, it’s Matthew McConaughey, playing the father, who is truly arresting in the picture. The young actor playing Ricky Jr., reportedly found in a principal’s ofiice in Baltimore, is good-not-great in his first performance. Richie Merritt’s shortcomings —…

Night School is one of those movies bound to make it to cable television, stuck between Will Ferrell comedies on the Sundays of holiday weekends. But for a leading man like Kevin Hart, it’s a glowing example of the type of film that banks on chemistry hiding a clunky script. Kevin Hart has been making…

So, I get it. Nobody asked for another sequel to the failed reboot from 2010, but the Predator franchise is one of the most beloved in the action universe. With Shane Black, writer and director of films like Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and Iron Man, this one crackles and pops with interesting characters,…

As the sad box-office numbers for Michael Moore’s latest political documentary come in, it saddens me. Maybe it’s Trump fatigue — a depressed population doing their best to forget their mistake — but if there’s any time to listen up when Moore discusses America’s pompous leader, it’s now. Americans elected him, and Michael Moore is…

With the vast number of features, documentaries, and shorts on display this year, I couldn’t see everything. Trust me, I tried. But contained here are the short films I did catch from some of the best up-and-coming filmmakers around.   Same Nightmare Directed By: Spencer MacKay Go to any film premiere, check out any of…

If you’d have told me during FIN announcements in August that one of my favourite festival films would be a schlock horror film with Nicolas Cage, I’d have cringed. But here we are, a day removed, and Mandy stands as a visual stunning, horrifically entertaining midnight movie, and one of Cage’s best performances in a…

Through Black Spruce presents the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous in a calculated, dramatic fashion. A woman goes on a journey to find her lookalike sister, who disappeared without a trace in Toronto. At the same time, her uncle deals with the repercussions of his missing niece and her boyfriend, a drug dealer whose…

This modern noir story of an intelligent, aimless 30-something who goes on the hunt to locate a missing woman he met by chance is flush with character. The only problem is the film spends more time trying to look breezy and self-assured that it forgets to actually have crucial elements of a film contained inside…

Legal dramas rise and fall on their ability to capture the hearts of the audience. The Children Act — a film about a judge who orders a blood transfusion for a 17-year-old boy whose religious forbids it — is part family drama and part about morality. In the face of great struggles, a boy just…