Movies – Winnipeg Free Press

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Agatha’s Almanac features Agatha Bock growing, cooking and canning food, and maintaining her property.

Award-winning doc featured at local festival

Randall King 4 minute read Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025

A 90-year-old Manitoba woman was the hit of the Hot Docs documentary film festival in April in Toronto. You can come to that conclusion honestly since the film — Agatha’s Almanac — won Best Canadian Feature Documentary at the festival.

And now we can see what the fuss was about. The film is playing at Gimme Some Truth, the 16th edition of the Dave Barber Cinematheque’s own documentary festival. It screens today at 3 p.m.

The film wears its distinction proudly, but not too proudly. With its gentle, considered pace and its lovingly composed, Zen-like images of agricultural beauty, it is the antithesis of some of the typically provocative docs out there.

It’s more of a barn-builder than a barn-burner.

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Post-Second World War film can’t handle weight of material

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Preview

Post-Second World War film can’t handle weight of material

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Friday, Nov. 7, 2025

Looking at the lead-up to the first Nuremberg trials in 1945, this misguided historical drama wastes its intriguing and important source material and squanders some very good actors with a script that feels tonally off.

Writer-director James Vanderbilt has written for the Spider-Man, Independence Day and Scream franchises, as well as making his directorial debut with the serious real-life news drama Truth.

Working here from Jack El-Hai’s book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, he’s clearly aiming to balance prestige and popular appeal, trying for a smooth, handsome, Oscar-worthy blend of information and entertainment.

Unfortunately, Nuremberg alternates between over-obvious exposition and oddly glib character beats, without ever conveying the enormity of its historical moment.

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Friday, Nov. 7, 2025

Scott Garfield / Sony Pictures
Rami Malek (left) and Russell Crowe are forced to do a lot of heavy lifting with modest degrees of success.

Issues of race, queerness integrated in heady adaptation of Isben classic

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

Issues of race, queerness integrated in heady adaptation of Isben classic

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Friday, Oct. 31, 2025

Stepping into a role that’s been played onstage by some of the great leading women of the past century (Ingrid Bergman, Diana Rigg, Glenda Jackson, Isabelle Huppert, Claire Bloom, Maggie Smith, Judy Davis, Cate Blanchett), Tessa Thompson is magnetic.

As the centre of Henrik Ibsen’s scandalous 1891 play Hedda Gabler, Thompson (Creed) mesmerizes, veering from manipulative monster to misunderstood martyr with a complex emotional energy that practically vibrates onscreen.

American writer-director Nia DaCosta (Candyman) transfers Ibsen’s original text to a swanky version of 1950s Britain, working with freedom and flare but also rigorous intelligence. The issues of race and queerness raised in this updated adaptation aren’t just dropped in, they are thoroughly integrated into Ibsen’s examination of social conformity and existential authenticity.

The results are both gloriously theatrical, bursting with big juicy performances, and slyly cinematic, as DaCosta’s camera prowls restlessly through an opulent English mansion over the course of one fabulous, debauched, possibly deadly party.

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Friday, Oct. 31, 2025

Courtesy Prime / TNS
As Hedda Gabler, Tessa Thompson is enigmatic to the very end.

Laughing — and screening — all the way to 2026

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Preview

Laughing — and screening — all the way to 2026

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2025

There is abundant comedy available to ease into the formal new year and abundant new and returning television in the month to follow to keep your various screens crackling. Press Play now.

● Ricky Gervais: Mortality (comedy special premières Tuesday, Dec. 30, on Netflix)

The British comic Ricky Gervais offers more of his usual bitter, bitter candy, but that might be just the palate cleanser required after too much holiday sugar. It’s one of a veritable avalanche of new comedy specials, some available now (Kumail Nanjiani’s adorably bewildered Night Thoughts on Disney+; Robby Hoffman’s ferociously indignant debut special, Wake Up, on Netflix; Tom Segura’s gleefully disgusting Teacher, also on Netflix); and coming up (SNL’s Marcello Hernández’s American Boy, recorded in front of a hometown Miami crowd, on Netflix on Wednesday, Jan. 7).

● Best Medicine (series gets a “special advance” première on Sunday, Jan. 4, on Fox and on Wednesday, Jan. 7, on CTV)

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Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2025

Netflix
Jon Bernthal and Tessa Thompson star in the new thriller His & Hers.

From blockbusters to intimate dramas, cinematic gems lit up the screen in 2025

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Preview

From blockbusters to intimate dramas, cinematic gems lit up the screen in 2025

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Friday, Dec. 26, 2025

With the movie business facing so-so box office, corporate consolidation, shifting viewing habits and the encroachment of AI, 2025 often felt odd, exhausting and polarizing.

In an uneven year of big disappointments and unexpected pleasures, here are some of the films that snuck up on me.

MUSIC MOVIES (BUT NOT MUSICALS):

Sorry, Wicked: For Good. The movie music that really grabbed me this year was from Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, a Depression-era vampire movie propelled by blistering blues, haunting gospel numbers and some undead Irish step-dancing.

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Friday, Dec. 26, 2025

Warner Bros. Pictures
Sinners, starring Michael B. Jordan (centre), is propelled by a blues and gospel soundtrack.

Table tennis dramedy Marty Supreme serves gold

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

Table tennis dramedy Marty Supreme serves gold

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2025

Kinetic, frenetic, incredibly anxiety-provoking, this cynical sideways take on the underdog sports story delivers the kind of out-and-out chaos that actually requires a lot of cinematic precision.

Filmmaker Josh Safdie’s sardonic comic-drama, Marty Supreme, is both completely assured and slightly insane, and it’s held together by a tricky, nervy, live-wire performance by Timothée Chalamet.

Safdie has previously partnered with brother Benny on such films as Good Time and Uncut Gems, with the pair specializing in everyone-shouting-at-once havoc. Here Josh is solo director, while sharing a screenwriting credit with frequent collaborator Ronald Bronstein.

Marty Supreme takes us back to the 1950s and New York’s Lower East Side, where Marty Mauser (Chalamet) is working at his uncle’s shoe store just long enough to make the fare to England for an international table tennis tournament.

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Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2025

A24 / TNS
Timothée Chalamet delivers a nervy, livewire performance in Marty Supreme.

Chilling thriller fuel for nightmares

Randall King 3 minute read Preview

Chilling thriller fuel for nightmares

Randall King 3 minute read Saturday, Dec. 20, 2025

David Gregory’s fascinating documentary Theatre of Horrors is not to be confused with the grand old 1973 genre chestnut Theatre of Blood, which saw Vincent Price as a deranged Shakespearean actor out to avenge himself on a London critics’ circle, employing gruesome acts of murder inspired by the Bard himself.

But then again, the two films have a common thread, suggesting that contemporary horror cinema owes a debt to live theatre.

This is specifically true of the Grand Guignol, a hideaway little playhouse in the sketchy Pigalle neighbourhood of Paris that operated for about 65 years, commencing in 1897, treating theatregoers to sex- and violence-filled spectacles that literally employed buckets of blood. The activities on its narrow little stage would fuel screen nightmares for generations to come.

Considering very little footage exists of the theatre and its productions, director Gregory makes the most out of a barrage of animators who manage to reinvent the grotesquerie that was on display.

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Saturday, Dec. 20, 2025

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The Grand Guignol Theatre in Paris

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Director Rob Reiner’s oeuvre more than mere movies

Jen Zoratti 4 minute read Preview

Director Rob Reiner’s oeuvre more than mere movies

Jen Zoratti 4 minute read Saturday, Dec. 20, 2025

Rob Reiner made the kind of movies that became people’s favourite movies.

For all of high school, his 1984 mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap was mine. As a kid who grew up loving rock music and wanted nothing more than to be a music journalist, his comedy about an aging English heavy metal band — played by Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer, all in top form — going out on an American tour with a documentary crew in tow, checked a lot of boxes for me.

This Is Spinal Tap came out a year before I was born, so I discovered it via my dad, who caught it on TV while channel surfing and summoned me with a “You gotta see this, it’s a classic” even though it was late and I had school the next day.

But education comes in many forms, and This Is Spinal Tap is a masterclass in comedy.

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Saturday, Dec. 20, 2025

Lisa Rose / MG
From left: Michael McKean, Harry Shearer and Christopher Guest in This Is Spinal Tap

Yellow Christmas

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

Yellow Christmas

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Friday, Dec. 19, 2025

Just in time for the holidays, the little yellow fellow is back for a fourth big-screen outing.

The new family-friendly SpongeBob comedy-adventure never matches the surreal genius of the television series’ early seasons, but it’s still a showcase for the sweet, sublime silliness of its underwater protagonists, SpongeBob SquarePants (voiced by the unsinkable Tom Kenny) and his best pal, Patrick Star (Bill Fagerbakke).

We open with SpongeBob realizing he is now 36 clams high, which officially makes him “a big guy.”

He relates the good news to his boss, Mr. Krabs (Clancy Brown), who tells him he’ll have to stop being a “bubble-blowing baby boy” and start being a “rough and tumble” man. By way of example, Mr. Krabs recalls his own swashbuckling youth when he tangled with the fierce Flying Dutchman (Star Wars’ Mark Hamill, who’s gone on to do a lot of voice work).

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Friday, Dec. 19, 2025

Escapist viewing for a stressful time of year

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Preview

Escapist viewing for a stressful time of year

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025

In the middle of the best-of-the year roundup season, here is a list of simple escapist viewing, (mostly) minus deep thinking. Consider these five suggestions as either (both?) reward or procrastinatory enabler for all the hard work of preparing for and enduring whatever holiday season you celebrate.

● My Next Guest Needs No Introduction (new Season 6 episodes première starting today, Tuesday, Dec. 16, on Netflix)

Anyone missing the former network talk-show titan gets a stocking full of new one-on-ones. Debuting earlier this month, David Letterman’s interview with Adam Sandler is only slightly in support of the latter’s new film, Jay Kelly, with George Clooney (also on Netflix, after a theatrical run). Mostly, it is a charming look at the sometimes fratboy scat-mouthed comic and serious actor, here rendered cowed fanboy, alternating between trying to amuse his hero and marvelling, like any fan would, at being in the same space as the bearded curmudgeon. Next up are three new episodes in which Letterman banters and gets occasionally serious with Michael B. Jordan (Sinners), Jason Bateman (Black Rabbit) and the influencer philanthropist MrBeast.

● Save Me/Save Me Too (series premières Thursday, Dec. 18, on BritBox)

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Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025

Kimberley French / Netflix
Helen Mirren (left) and Kate Winslet star in the tearjerker Goodbye June.

It sucks, it bites, sometimes it’s bloody brilliant

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

It sucks, it bites, sometimes it’s bloody brilliant

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Friday, Dec. 12, 2025

Absolutely filthy, intermittently brilliant and utterly exhausting, the latest round of cinematic lunacy from polarizing Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude (Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World) cycles through vampire mythology with messy, maximalist glee.

An absurdist arthouse take on cheap, trashy, clickbaiting “content,” the film both critiques and wallows in the banal excesses of our era. As it lurches toward the three-hour mark, Dracula (in Romanian, with English subtitles) becomes a fascinating but frustrating creative stalemate, piled up with gratuitous gore, porno provocations and deliberately obvious and awful AI slop.

Jude holds things together — just barely — with an unnamed onscreen filmmaker (Adonis Tanta) who talks directly to the camera. The Director, as he’s called in the credits, has decided to use a screenwriting chatbot to generate stories about Dracula, the fictional character based partly on Vlad the Impaler, an important historical figure in Romania.

After a rapid montage of the worst kind of icky, uncanny, big-eyed AI kitsch — in which we see Space Dracula, Baby Dracula, Hot Dracula, Historical Dracula and more — Jude dives into longer riffs.

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Friday, Dec. 12, 2025

Saga Films
Gabriel Spahiu plays the elderly ‘Fake Dracula.’

Santa slasher quick, dirty, but also top-notch

Randall King 4 minute read Preview

Santa slasher quick, dirty, but also top-notch

Randall King 4 minute read Friday, Dec. 12, 2025

A few decades back, the movie Silent Night, Deadly Night was a creature that stirred controversy all through December of 1984.

While somewhat nastier and sleazier than the usual ’80s slasher, its downfall — that is, being removed from theatres before it had even begun its wide release — was contained within its Christmas trimmings. The idea of a psycho Santa was too much for Reagan-era audiences in the U.S., even though an axe-wielding psycho Santa was highlighted some 12 years earlier in the 1972 holiday release Tales from the Crypt. But despite its abbreviated run, it would achieve cult status, spawning two sequels and two reboots.

The new iteration of Silent Night, shot in Manitoba earlier this year, redeems the source material with a fresh take that, uncomfortably, compels the audience to be more sympathetic to its designated psycho.

Billy Chapman (Rohan Campbell of Halloween Ends and The Hardy Boys) is an itinerant young man who arrives by bus into a small Midwestern town with apparently evil intent. Dream flashbacks tell the story of his early childhood trauma: As a little boy, he witnessed the brutal slaying of his parents by a shotgun-brandishing Santa.

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Friday, Dec. 12, 2025

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Rohan Campbell plays Billy Chapman, an itinerant with evil intentions, in Silent Night, Deadly Night

Reworked stage flop starts at end, makes its way to musical

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Preview

Reworked stage flop starts at end, makes its way to musical

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Friday, Dec. 5, 2025

This new movie version of Stephen Sondheim’s unlikely hit musical is a so-called “proshot” — a live performance captured by a professional crew.

Filmed in June 2024 at New York City’s Hudson Theatre, Merrily We Roll Along doesn’t have the full freedom of cinema or the electric immediacy of theatre, but for those of us who couldn’t swing a Broadway visit, this is a valuable record of one of Sondheim’s most mysterious, complex and personal works, rooted in a trio of terrific performances.

With words and music by Sondheim (Into the Woods, Sweeney Todd) and a book by George Furth, this story of three friends, told in reverse chronology, was considered cold and confusing when it debuted in 1981. A critical and commercial flop, Merrily — which is about the breakup of a creative partnership — did in fact lead to a professional rupture between Sondheim and his longtime director Harold Prince.

Over the decades, though, the musical has been rejigged and reworked, and its recent Broadway iteration, starring Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez, and directed by Maria Friedman, won four Tony Awards in 2024, including Best Revival of a Musical, making for a heck of a comeback story.

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Friday, Dec. 5, 2025

Sony Pictures Classics
From left: Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez in the Broadway production of Merrily We Roll Along

Sharper than ever

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Preview

Sharper than ever

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Friday, Nov. 28, 2025

With a third instalment that’s even better than 2022’s Glass Onion, the Knives Out franchise continues to be a cinematic treat.

Filmmaker Rian Johnson and star Daniel Craig have pulled off a playful, theatrical, well-crafted entertainment, one that’s cleverly self-aware about its whodunit tropes while still thoroughly enjoying them.

And because Wake Up Dead Man sees dapper, witty private detective Benoit Blanc (Craig) solving a crime in a small, isolated church in upstate New York, all that pure murder-mystery pleasure is topped up with a surprisingly serious investigation into the nature of belief.

Jud Duplenticey (The Crown’s Josh O’Connor) is an idealistic young priest who’s been sent to this small-town parish to assist Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), a controversial figure described by Father Jud’s bishop as “a few beads short of a rosary.”

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Friday, Nov. 28, 2025

Netflix
Josh O’Connor (left) and Daniel Craig become unlikely sidekicks as they work in Rian Johnson’s latest whodunit.

Siblings dispersed during ’60s Scoop reconnect in hard-hitting drama

Randall King 3 minute read Preview

Siblings dispersed during ’60s Scoop reconnect in hard-hitting drama

Randall King 3 minute read Friday, Nov. 28, 2025

In her documentary work, Alberta filmmaker Tasha Hubbard has never had a shortage of things to say.

And she has said them with fiery conviction in films such as Singing Back the Buffalo — which links the deliberate destruction of the buffalo to the deliberate genocide of Indigenous people — or Nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up, an angry condemnation of the justice system following the 2016 shooting of Colten Boushie in rural Saskatchewan.

Making her debut in the realm of drama, Hubbard revisits the premise of her 2017 National Film Board doc The Birth of a Family, which saw a reunion of four siblings cruelly separated during the ’60s Scoop, a shameful episode of Canadian history that saw more than 20,000 First Nations children taken from their families and placed for adoption in mostly non-Indigenous households.

Scripted by Hubbard and playwright Emil Sher, the drama maintains the premise but erases the documentary crew and reinvents the family.

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Friday, Nov. 28, 2025

BOAF Films
Michelle Thrush (left) and Carmen Moore reconnect after being taken from their family during the ’60s Scoop.

Shift from docs to drama brings challenges

Randall King 4 minute read Preview

Shift from docs to drama brings challenges

Randall King 4 minute read Thursday, Nov. 27, 2025

With Meadowlarks, filmmaker Tasha Hubbard is, in a way, telling the same story twice.

The Alberta-based Hubbard, a seasoned documentarian (Singing Back the Buffalo, Nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up), is making her narrative feature debut with Meadowlarks.

The drama is about a reunion of four Cree siblings, separated in their early childhood by the ’60s Scoop, a cultural cataclysm that saw more than 20,000 First Nations children ripped from their families and placed for adoption in mostly non-Indigenous households.

The four siblings, played by Michael Greyeyes, Carmen Moore, Alex Rice and Michelle Thrush, meet over a holiday weekend in Banff and tentatively try to connect as a family after decades of separation.

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Thursday, Nov. 27, 2025

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