This The Optimist film review covers one of the most quietly powerful films in theatres right now. Director Finn Taylor sets his story amongst the stately Redwoods of Marin County, California, where an elderly man has just been told to get his affairs in order. He doesn’t have long. The Optimist Film Review Hubert Heller (Stephen Lang) suffers a panic attack on hearing the news, his mind flooding with horrific images from his childhood in Nazi concentration camps: Theresienst

This Ghost Elephants documentary review covers one of the most arresting nature films you’ll see this year. Werner Herzog’s latest takes us into an entirely unfamiliar world, one where human language isn’t phonetic but rather grunts, clicks, and breaths, and where a massive “water tower” land formation creates wetlands and heavy rains in the midst of Africa’s Namibian desert. This is where the ghost elephants live. They are believed to be descendants of Henry, the world’s lar

From Toronto’s experiential filmmaker and iconoclast Matt Johnson comes Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie .  Don’t ask me what genre it is – I’m stumped. Its many genres except romance, maybe bromance, crammed together in a frantic collage of ideas, co-written and co-directed by Johnson.  Johnson and Jay McCarrol play themselves in what may be heightened versions.  I dunno. You’ll wonder if they really did what you see them do onscreen time and time again. These crazy kids

Canada’s reputation for humour got the boost of a lifetime in 1976 when the sketch comedy series SCTV (Second City TV) landed. It was revolutionary, featuring superb writing and the talents of an extraordinary ensemble of actors – Joe Flaherty, Andrea Martin, the late, great Catherine O’Hara, Eugene Levy, John Candy, Martin Short, Rick Moranis, Andrea Martin, and Dave Thomas.   They ran the fictional Melonville’s TV station and oh what zany fun.  Remember this? Its original s

Kaley Cuoco best known for her comedic roles goes dark, bewildered and terrified in the MGM /ROAR series Vanished which she also executive produced. The four-parter thriller finds her character Alice, a rising star archaeologist and her boyfriend Tom (Sam Claflin) touring Europe. Tom’s charming, solid and responsible and cares for her. They board a train from Paris to the south of France; she nods off and awakens to find him gone.  A search of the train turns frantic, no o

Anne Brodie interviews filmmaker Folklaur Chevrier about The Christine Jessop Story and the investigative failures that delayed justice for decades.

Netflix paid tribute to the late, great and much missed Catherine O’Hara highlighting the beloved 2000 mockumentary Best in Show on the service, one of her funniest turns as a dog mad competitor at the renowned Mayflower Dog Show.   A comedy classic written and directed by Christopher Guest, featuring O’Hara, co-writer Eugene Levy, Fred Willard and a host of today’s iconic comedians as dog-eat-d0g competitors. O’Hara’s comic genius and physicality shine as Cookie Fleck, who i

The Kennedy family  legacy captivated American culture like no politicial family before or since. The Kennedys were high achievers considered American Royalty for their accomplishments decades, through philanthropy, political leadership and a shared humane global outlook. The Kennedy politicians, influencers and powerbrokers gave the US its greatest period of world status, a period known as Camelot. But the family touched too often by tragedy. President John Fitzgerald Kenned

The fact-based drama Pike River revives one of the worst disasters in New Zealand’s history and the shocking aftermath.  On Nov. 19 2010, near Greymouth, twenty-nine miners died in a mine explosion, the legacy of corporate carelessness and failure to secure the men and the mine. Among the dead was a 17-year-old who was on his first day working, fathers, grandfathers and sons. The opening aerial scenes of the mine beneath a range of hills are ominous. Pike River Coal opened i

Super Channel goes full-on romance with 10 series and movies stretching out Valentine’s Day to a month, via Super Channel Heart & Home and Super Channel Fuse . Love Unleashed on Super Channel Heart & Home and TVOD Feb 6. A woman discovers someone else has adopted her missing dog. She and the new “owner” battle it out for custody and fall in love. But not so fast!  Stars Revell Carpenter and Garrett Edell. Emily on Super Channel and TVOD Fuse Feb 6 Emily Brontë’s Goth

Ladies over forty, there’s finally a highly entertaining series aimed squarely at us and boy does it hit! Right in the heart and brain. The Riot Women concerns four women, empty nesters, in different marital places and at loose ends as to how to re-ignite their lives. They are Beth (Joanna Scanlan), Kitty (Rosalie Craig), Jess (Lorraine Ashbourne) and Holly (Tamsin Greig). Now Beth’s opening scenes are distressing, she’s trying to hang herself; her husband went off with anot

Mamoru Hosoda’s Hamlet adjacent Scarlet (Mana Ashida), is a visual knockout, an animated story so powerfully expressed that it gave me serious shivers.  Set in the Kingdom of Denmark in the 1600s, and then Purgatory, it closely mirrors Shakespeare’s Hamlet, albeit through a different lens.  Scarlet, a young flame haired princess is on a mission, like Hamlet, to kill her uncle Claudius (Kôji Yakusho) who killed her father and avenge him. They face off in purgatory, aka Otherw

Shondaland’s mega hit series Bridgerton Season Four drops tomorrow! ‘Nuff said, your Ladyship.

Canadian celebrity chef and actor Matty Matheson’s YouTube channel is a hit and now he’s landed a cooking series on Netflix. However, Just a Dash is the only cooking show that made me lose my appetite. He feeds the public in twelve restaurants and NEVER WASHES HIS HANDS., even after using the loo, proudly stating that bacteria “endorse” a person. I know of him from The Bear; he’s funny and idiosyncratic but his persona here is purposely out of control.  Episode 1 begins as

Ladies over forty, there’s finally a highly entertaining series aimed squarely at us and boy does it hit! Right in the heart and brain. The Riot Women concerns four women, empty nesters, in different marital places and at loose ends as to how to re-ignite their lives. They are Beth (Joanna Scanlan), Kitty (Rosalie Craig), Jess (Lorraine Ashbourne) and Holly (Tamsin Greig). Now Beth’s opening scenes are distressing, she’s trying to hang herself; her husband went off with anot

After generations have spoken out and made films about their experiences as Jews during the Holocaust ( holocaust , derived from a Greek word meaning “burnt offering”, we think we know what went down as racially hypnotised, craven German, Ukrainian Slovakian, Romanian, Croatian, Hungarian , Bulgarian and Vichy French, along with Norwegians, Belgians and the Dutch participated in the murder of millions of Jews in Europe.  In these and other states, military, law enforcement a

Amazon / Acorn TV ’s old fashioned pulse pounder Steal is a clever finance thriller that reveals itself slowly and assuredly; but its sense of dread and audacious twists  is pure catnip.  Set in a London business district high rise, it follows two successful young traders – Zara (Sophie Turner) and her best friend, the slightly less self-confident Luke (Archie Madekwe). They’re close and spend time together. One afternoon, three thieves, armed with machine guns, burst into th

Testament of Ann Lee is a gut-wrenching story of a woman’s faith that will have you spinning.  Ann Lee, (Amanda Seyfried) born in Manchester UK in 1736 had a peculiar life. The opening sequence finds a group of pioneer women bending to the ground and throwing themselves towards heaven while chanting their way through a forest. Lee sailed to Massachusetts where she proclaimed her Methodist beliefs in concert with fellow believers, who as their numbers increased came to be know

Apple Tree Yard, released theatrically in 2017 is now available as a series well worth resurrecting. Sure, there are problems with pacing and our changing feelings about the characters, but hang on – the slow burn is ideal, things feel lifelike and resonant and at the en when we are slammed with a wildly unexpected double twist, we say to ourselves, I thought I knew them, how did I miss that. The sexually driven suspense thriller based on the novel by Louise Doughty stars Em

The moodiest of moody murder mysteries, the original series Shetland now on BritBox enters its tenth season with the deeply shocking murder of an elderly woman on a remote, isolated island farm.  Septuagenarian Eadie ( Maria MacDonell ) is found dead by neighbour Colin, a gruesome outdoor scene in full view of the surrounding empty lands. Tulloch had been bound and strangled with heavy ropes the kind used in the local fishing industry, and left in place for several days. DI