TIFF 25: Bad Apples dir. Jonatan Etzler

Saoirse Ronan shines as Maria, an elementary school teacher pushed too far in Jonatan Etzler’s darkly funny thriller, Bad Apples. If you’ve read the tagline for the film, do yourself a favour and don’t read anything else about it. Go in with the knowledge that Maria is working to keep her class engaged. She has…

Companion (2025) – Drew Hancock

Companion was a super-enjoyable film with a not-so-subtle commentary about how we, as a society, use and abuse technology, including AI, for our comforts. Which shouldn’t be a surprise considering we do that each other. Often funny, and filled with sharp dialogue, and whip-smart performances from Sophie Thatcher, Jack Quaid, and Harvey Guillen. You know…

Love and Monsters (2020) – Michael Matthews

The charming and likeable Dylan O’Brien stars in the adventure comedy Love and Monsters which serves as a bit of a coming-of-age tale for his character, Josh. Seven years ago, Earth was able to launch enough missiles to stop an asteroid from wiping out the planet, unfortunately, the chemicals used perverted the environment and mutated…

Magnum P.I. (2019) – Day the Past Came Back, and Murder is Never Quiet

The series keeps that continuity running and introduces another legacy character, MacReynolds (Ammie Masterson) in Day the Past Came Back. Written by Peter M. Lenkov and Eric Guggenheim. It first debuted on 18 February, 2019. With callbacks to the series premiere, Magnum (Jay Hernandez) is kidnapped and taken back to the shipwreck of stolen Iraqi…

Insidious: The Red Door (2023) – Patrick Wilson

Patrick Wilson makes his directorial debut with the fifth (and final?) Insidious film that takes us back to the Lambert family, checking in on them nine years after the events of Insidious 2, which was the last time the family was featured as the main characters in the series. There are some fun ideas here,…

Swan Song (1987) – Robert McCammon

I remember seeing the original cover for this paperback in a variety of book racks when I was a teen, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I didn’t recognize the name of Robert McCammon at the time, though since that time Boy’s Life has become one of my favourite books. I didn’t…

Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013) – James Wan

Director/writer James Wan and writer/actor Leigh Whannell return for the second Insidious film which picks up shortly after the first film ended continuing off the troubling reveal that Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson) is no longer Josh but some malignant spirit that has come back from The Further with him, and killed Elise (Lin Shaye). While…

Insidious (2010) – James Wan

Director James Wan, and writer Leigh Whannell’s Insidious is a fairly solid ghost story, though it took me forever to come around to it. My first experience seeing it was in the theatre, where I couldn’t get over how a couple in front of me was scared by everything that was happening on the screen….

Road to Singapore (1940) – Victor Schertzinger

  The first musical recommendation from the Great Movies – 100 Years of Film book following my screening of The Jazz Singer, is this highly enjoyable romp starring Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour. Hope and Crosby play Ace and Josh respectively, a couple of sailors, and chums who love to crack-wise, drink, chase…