One Night Only: Movie Review

A bold rom-com with minimal romance and comedy.

One Night Only as stated in the famous line in the trailer is set during “the one night of the year single people are legally allowed to have sex.” Which really just begs so many questions. How? How is it enforced? Why is this a law? How did it arise? Is it a federal law or state law? Going into this I had very little faith that these questions would be answered or at least answered satisfactorily.		2026 Directed by: Will Gluck Screenplay by: Travis Braun Starring: Monica Barbaro, Callum Turner

The Invite: Movie Review

Bitingly hilarious and then emotional and sad.

In a large apartment in San Francisco, Angela (Olivia Wilde) is busy getting their place ready for a dinner party with their upstairs neighbours. Joe (Seth Rogen) comes home from work and just wants to lie on the floor; he has a sore back, the new bike his wife got him is impractical and small, and he forgot to pick up wine for tonight’s dinner party. Angela insists she told him about it yesterday, he doesn’t believe her.		2026 Directed by: Olivia Wilde Screenplay by: Will McCormack, Rashida Jones Starring: Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton

Let's Love: Movie Review

A rom-com premise that goes nowhere.

Let’s Love has a great premise: the cast and filmmakers of a once popular romantic comedy have reunited in Wales for a 10-year anniversary fan convention. But when they arrive they discover there was a scheduling problem and a lack of interest problem, no tickets were sold and the event no longer exists. They want to talk to the man in charge, Jerry, the producer who works for the studio, but Jerry won’t be there for a few more days.		2026 Directed by: Jamie Adams Screenplay by: Jamie Adams Starring: Malin Akerman, Josh Hutcherson, Jess Weixler, and Martin Freeman

Tuner: Movie Review

Capitalism and consumerism, trauma and redemption, and Leo Woodall in a career-best performance.

Tuner is a smash hit. And I hope that sentence remains true in the box office sense, it deserves to and has the potential to bring audiences to the theater. With an original story and thoroughly entertaining (and unique) characters, Tuner quietly (and sometimes very loudly) packs a punch. It touches on capitalism and consumerism, trauma and redemption, and it doesn’t need to go deeper because it has a full plot and confidence in its complete approach.		2025 Directed by: Daniel Roher Screenplay by: Daniel Roher, Robert Ramsey Starring: Leo Woodall, Dustin Hoffman, and Havana Rose Liu

At the Place of Ghosts: Movie Review

Real trauma, supernatural beliefs, beautifully realized.

Fantasy horror movies can be a tough sell, mostly because it’s nonsense by definition, but each now and then one comes along because it makes it about something else. The fantasy elements are rooted in real beliefs, and the horror elements are just how it’s presented, leaving you with a rather compelling story steeped in atmosphere and indigenous mythology.		2025 Directed by: Bretten Hannam Screenplay by: Bretten Hannam Starring: Blake Alec Miranda, Forrest Goodluck

Middle Life: Movie Review

A loud, brash, bizarre rom-com.

Middle Life is a mid-life crisis rom-com from Canadian filmmaker Pavan Moondi. Andie (Leah Fay Goldstein) is in her mid-30s, married, has a baby at home and is struggling to get back to work as a wedding planner. She doesn’t like work much anymore but that’s because she’s not busy after having taken off more than a year to have and raise her baby. She doesn’t like her husband much anymore since the baby didn’t seem to disrupt his life the way it did hers. She’s not happy so she’s just going to sit around a complain instead of changing anything.		2025 Directed by: Pavan Moondi Screenplay by: Pavan Moondi Starring: Leah Fay Goldstein, Peter Dreimanis

Little Lorraine: Movie Review

A dark, devastating tale of community, morality and drug smuggling.

Little Lorraine is named after the small town it’s set in. Based on a true story, Little Lorraine is a small community settled on the Atlantic Coast of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. The residents went to church, went fishing or worked in the mine until they were caught up in the center of a massive cocaine smuggling ring in the late 1980s and early 90s. I was wary of the crime drama aspect but I’m a sucker for the “based on a true story” tag. A drama that goes straight for the heart with the real men caught between a rock and a hard place.		2025 Directed by: Andy Hines Screenplay by: Andy Hines, Adam Baldwin Based on the song by Adam Baldwin Starring: Stephen Amell, Stephen McHattie, Auden Thornton

The Devil Wears Prada 2: Movie Review

A sequel with a perfect premise and then starts repeating itself.

For most of the last twenty years, the cast of The Devil Wears Prada has said they would return for a sequel if the right story presented itself. It is indeed the right story, or at least the right premise, and any sequel that can get off on the right foot can keep itself upright as it walks the rest of the way down the runway.		2026 Directed by: David Frankel Screenplay by: Aline Brosh McKenna Starring: Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway

Maya & Samar: Movie Review

Queer love meets cultural boundaries.

Maya & Samar is a Canadian-Greek movie telling the tale of a Canadian journalist and an Afghan stripper. Maya (Nicolette Pearse), is a young sex-positive journalist from Toronto. Her pieces tend to center around women and social causes, and she lives her life very in the moment, whatever drug or party she fancies at the time. She’s supposed to be on vacation, even hangs up on her boss since she intends to not work, but her work finds a way to always be involved.		2025 Directed by: Anita Doron Screenplay by: Tamara Berger Starring: Nicolette Pearse, Amanda Babaei Vieira

Hair of the Bear: Movie Review

A story of self-survival with extreme violence.

Tori (Malia Baker), a teenager dealing with past trauma and mental health issues, is being driven by her mother to her grandfather’s remote cabin. Tori can’t handle school, her mother can’t handle her, so she’s off to live with grandfather in the woods of Manitoba where hopefully she can learn any type of life skill. Grandfather Ben (Roy Dupuis) is a fantastic character. He’s not just a gruff older conservative, he’s also patient and empathetic. The perfect combination of self-sufficient and understanding.		2025 Directed by: James McLellan, Alexandre Trudeau Screenplay by: Alexandre Trudeau, James McLellan Starring: Malia Baker, Roy Dupuis

Nika & Madison: Movie Review

Two women take on the racist law enforcement.

Nika & Madison, two cousins and former best friends from the First Nations reserve, are brought back together when Madison is sexually assaulted by a white cop and Nika comes to her rescue, only for the two to have to go on the run when they realize their word means nothing with the entire system rigged against them. It’s a drama about racial injustices and how many women are suffering on their own.		2025 Directed by: Eva Thomas Screenplay by: Michael McGowan, Eva Thomas Starring: Ellyn Jade, Star Slade

Ice Skater (AKA: The Drift): Movie Review

At the edge of the world and believability.

Ice Skater pairs the simplicity of the beauty of the arctic with the harsh realities of surviving in the arctic. There is only one actor on screen, and there is only one plotline: survive. I am slightly over-simplifying it, but to make it clear, the entire movie is one person, Emily (Thea Sofie Loch Næss) vs nature. Emily is stranded alone an ice floe which broke off of a glacier and is now slowly drifting south.		2026 Directed by: Taavi Vartia Screenplay by: Taavi Vartia Starring: Thea Sofie Loch Næss

The Stars Between Us: Movie Review

A terribly written romance missing the romance.

Often when Hallmark goes for a niche hobby, it’s a better than average movie because there’s an authenticity or genuineness, assuming the writers and director share that hobby. The problem is astronomy doesn’t lend itself to this style very well – for instance, most physicists are introverts who don’t attend solar eclipse parties where they mingle and fall in love.		2026 Directed by: Tim Huddleston Screenplay by: Tim Huddleston Starring: Sarah Drew, Matt Long

I Don't Love You Anymore: Movie Review

A creative thriller twisting the three characters’ stories and lives.

A thriller that is a lot more interesting because of how it’s presented. If this was told straight, let’s say chronologically, it would be a boring, forgotten movie not even worth the 75 minutes of your time. But instead, I Don’t Love You Anymore tells this story in pieces, three different points of view that don’t even contradict one another but just adds another angle to consider where sympathies, empathies or guilt lies.		2025 Directed by: Mitch Marcus Screenplay by: Mitch Marcus Starring: Henri Esteve, Hope Lauren, and Marcus Henderson

One Mile: Chapter Two: Movie Review

The story continues with different angles and better flow of the action.

At the end of Chapter 1, Alex was at university, but Stanley, head of the violent cultists living on an island, had already tracked her there. It doesn’t take long for him to kidnap her, instigating a cat and mouse game of revenge with Danny. If you liked Chapter 1, you’re going to like Chapter 2. The action is a bit more evenly paced this time, and extends the story with a few different angles.		2026 Directed by: Adam Davidson Screenplay by: TJ Brady, John Hlavin, Rasheed Newson Starring: Ryan Phillippe, Amelie Hoeferle

Last Ride: Movie Review

A depressing tale of survival that just gets worse.

A survival tale about life and death that would not have to be a survival tale at all if it were not for teenage boys. Three American boys, young teenagers, are on vacation in Norway with two parents, but they run off to take a cable car ride up a mountain. The boys, behaving as teenage boys would, are immature with zero care of safety for others or themselves, so they goad a cable car operator into taking them up even though the lift has just closed for the day.		2026 Directed by: Cinqué Lee Screenplay by: Cinqué Lee Starring: Roman Griffin Davis, Felix Jamieson, Charlie Price

Firebreak: Movie Review

An explosive, tense and meditative drama-thriller about love and loss in the midst of a forest fire.

With a fire burning in the background, Firebreak tells a story about assisted dying and a grieving family driven to extreme measures in search of a missing girl and answers. It’s an odd, strangely compelling movie, but it’s original, very well produced and photographed and very well acted. This Spanish movie is so universal in its approach and story, it should have no problem finding a global audience.		2026 Directed by: David Victori Screenplay by: Javier Echániz, Asier Guerricaechebarria, Jon Iriarte Starring: Belen Cuesta, Enric Auquer

One Mile: Chapter One: Movie Review

Father and daughter bonding eventually leads to some action and violence.

When Chapter One and Chapter Two get released simultaneously and dumped on streaming it would be fair to be concerned that it’s only half a movie and/or really bad. One Mile: Chapter One is neither. It tells a complete story (even if it is a little choppy), and then sets you up for Chapter Two, but it’s not quite pay for two movies to get one movie which this type of release certainly suggests it could be.		2026 Directed by: Adam Davidson Screenplay by: TJ Brady, John Hlavin, Rasheed Newson Starring: Ryan Phillippe, Amelie Hoeferle

Because of Cupid: Movie Review

Cute and fun and a little bit of nonsense.

Hallmark movies are generally at their best when they’re realistic or at least based in something real, when they deviate from that and want to dabble in time travel or other sci fi nonsense, things go awry. Because of Cupid is about a pair of bartenders who accidentally create a magical love potion that they serve to their customers, creating unexpected relationships out of a concoction of mixology chemicals.		2026 Directed by: Liz Farrer Screenplay by: Sarah Montana Starring: Amy Groening, Evan Roderick

Kissing Is the Easy Part: Movie Review

A fun teen romance that’s heartfelt and enjoyable.

Jennifer Lawrence’s No Hard Feelings was faced with initial skepticism because of its premise of a high school boy’s parents paying an older woman to date him, but then received good reviews, audiences got on board, and people had fun with the plot that was in fact based in truth. But now Tubi’s Kissing Is the Easy Part, flips the premise, reverses the genders, and still keeps it fun despite arguably being further from reality.		2026 Directed by: Fawzia Mirza Screenplay by: Christine Duann, Rebecca Webb Starring: Paris Berelc, Asher Angel