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Movies

Prime Video Jaalen Best (left) stars as Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali in the series The Greatest.

TV that makes the cut

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Yesterday at 2:01 AM EST

Ambition is a great motivator in fields as diverse as professional boxing, high-school dance team, photography, animal wrangling and even — stay with me here — bank robbery and alien-summoning?

Sure, some of these are more relatable than others, but the solutions, and the series and movie that contain them, are intriguing. Press play to become a better you.

● The Greatest (docudrama series premières Wednesday, Nov. 4 on Prime Video)

This dramatization of the life of acclaimed boxer and activist Muhammad Ali is billed as the first authorized scripted series on the subject. Its executive producers include his widow, Lonnie Ali, as well as serious name brands Jay-Z and Michael B. Jordan. Newcomer Jaalen Best plays the title role, supported by Giovanni Ribisi (American Hostage) playing Angelo Dundee and Michael Ealy (The Following) as Malcolm X.

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Movies

MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS Hollywood icon Pam Grier is in town as the keynote speaker at Canada’s Supporting Women in Film Trades (SWIFT) conference being held on Saturday.

Star Grier still blazing trails in film

Jen Zoratti 4 minute read Preview

Star Grier still blazing trails in film

Jen Zoratti 4 minute read Friday, Oct. 23, 2026

Work as long as Pam Grier, and you’ll have stories. And does Pam Grier ever have stories.

There’s the one about Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini, who wanted her to teach him to make fried chicken but all they had on hand was squab.

“I made fried pigeon for him, and the rest of my life he sent me a birthday card until he passed.”

Or the one about meticulously rehearsing a scene in which she has to stealthily pull a gun in Quentin Tarantino’s 1997 film Jackie Brown.

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Friday, Oct. 23, 2026

Movies

Dennis Parrington photo Rocky Horror Picture Show comes to Centennial Concert Hall tonight with a live shadow cast.

Rocky Horror star prepared for a rude reception in all the best ways

Conrad Sweatman 6 minute read Preview

Rocky Horror star prepared for a rude reception in all the best ways

Conrad Sweatman 6 minute read Friday, Oct. 23, 2026

While it enjoys the longest theatrical release of any movie in history, The Rocky Horror Picture Show was all but ignored by critics when its revolutionary brand of camp first hit silver screens in 1975.

And before it whipped up a cult following, Rocky was a fringe theatre hit in London whose first run’s final night — which had attracted such luminaries as Mick and Bianca Jagger — was derailed by an unlikely culprit: glitter. According to the late Tim Curry (who died at 80 in August), the shiny stuff ended up where the sun don’t shine.

“Well, Rocky got some glitter down his trunks and it set up an irritation. When we arrived at the theatre, he was standing in the shower and the show couldn’t go on,” he told the press in 1974, after crossing the Atlantic to lead the show’s American theatre debut.

Glitter is one of the things audiences may not throw at the stage at The Rocky Horror Picture Show screening tonight at the Centennial Concert Hall. Unlike in the anarchic midnight screenings at the New York’s Waverly Theater beginning in 1976, where audiences chucked everything but the kitchen sink, a prop bag will be courteously supplied at the door.

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Friday, Oct. 23, 2026

Movies

Evan Johnson photo Blake Draper as Rimbaud

Winnipeg-shot biopic as daring as its subject

Randall King 5 minute read Preview

Winnipeg-shot biopic as daring as its subject

Randall King 5 minute read Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026

Simultaneously huge in its biographical breadth and intimate in its scale, Patrick Wang’s film A. Rimbaud is a portrait of the 19th-century poet Arthur Rimbaud, a grand, 175-minute biopic that eschews the genre’s convention with the adventurous spirit Rimbaud applied to the written word.

For example, while we follow Rimbaud travelling the globe, the film was shot entirely on a Winnipeg soundstage.

Also, Rimbaud (portrayed by charismatic Australian actor Blake Draper) is always alone on camera. The voices of other characters are filled in by a series of musical instruments, inevitably recalling how the same technique was employed by Bill Melendez in Peanuts cartoons, wherein adult voices were portrayed by a muted trombone.

The film ended up being shot in Winnipeg thanks largely to producer Evan Johnson, a filmmaker in his own right with shared directing credits on various films with his brother Galen Johnson and Guy Maddin, including The Green Fog (2017) and Rumours (2024).

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Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026

Movies

JACOB MAHFOUD PHOTO Tall Shadows (Christine Sedge and Woes Fairbairn) spent eight months composing a score for Faust, which will screen along with their performance at the Park Theatre Oct. 28.

Tall Shadows brings original compositions to Faust screening

Sheldon Birnie 7 minute read Preview

Tall Shadows brings original compositions to Faust screening

Sheldon Birnie 7 minute read Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026

In a time of plague and crisis, a good man makes a deal with the devil, in hopes of saving his community from death and destruction. But when his community turns on him, he finds his newfound power too much to resist.

The German folktale of Faust and his bargain with Mephisto dates back to the 15th century, while Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s tragedy was first published over 200 years ago.

In 1926, F.W. Murnau’s German-expressionist take on the tale debuted on the silver screen. A century on, viewers remain entranced with the fantastical images of Faust, Mephisto, demons riding skeletal steeds through the heavens, and more, created using cutting-edge practical effects for the time.

Just in time for Halloween, Montreal-based avant-goth duo Tall Shadows will bring Murnau’s Faust to the Park Theatre on Wednesday, Oct. 28, performing an original score in celebration of the classic silent film’s 100th anniversary.

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Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026

Movies

Alisha Wetherill / Amazon Content Services LLC / TNS Anne Hathaway brings plenty of campy energy to her role as Verity Crawford in the steamy thriller Verity.

Thriller has steam to spare, but story slogs

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Preview

Thriller has steam to spare, but story slogs

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Friday, Oct. 2, 2026

Based on a 2018 book by hugely popular, wildly polarizing author Colleen Hoover (whose novels It Ends with Us, Regretting You and Reminders of Him have also been made into movies), this new adaptation is being billed as a sexy psychological thriller.

There is sex — quite a lot of sex. As for those other descriptors, Verity is not only lacking in thrills. It’s almost laughably light on plausible human psychology.

Plausibility can be overrated, of course. Scripter Nick Antosca (2026’s Cape Fear) and director Michael Showalter (The Idea of You) could have thrown plausibility out the window and gone all-in on escapist fun.

But while there is a gorgeous modernist lake house and some excellent knitwear here, and Anne Hathaway, at least, seems to be having a ball with her deliciously two-faced role, Verity is mostly a sloggy mess, with draggy pacing, flat characters and a fatal lack of atmosphere.

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Friday, Oct. 2, 2026

Movies

Philippe Bosse photo Jay Baruchel plays unsung Canadian stuntman Ken Carter in The Stunt Driver.

Baruchel soulful in role as frustrated Canuck daredevil

Randall King 4 minute read Preview

Baruchel soulful in role as frustrated Canuck daredevil

Randall King 4 minute read Friday, Sep. 25, 2026

For better and worse, the name of the barely famous Canadian stunt driver Ken Carter (a.k.a. The Mad Canadian) will always be associated with the name of his much more famous American counterpart Evel Knievel.

Both men made their livings cheating death, jumping vehicles over a series of ever-more-daunting barriers, breaking records and bones in equal measure.

Carter’s career was, well, just more Canadian, which is to say obscure. After Knievel unsuccessfully tried to fly a motorcycle over Snake River Canyon in Idaho, Carter got the notion of flying a Lincoln Continental a whole mile over a stretch of the St. Lawrence River as the ultimate challenge of his career.

What followed was not so much a test of courage but endurance, as Carter kept cancelling the jump over a period of years, determined to do it without killing himself in the process.

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Friday, Sep. 25, 2026

Movies

Vianney Le Caer / Invision/The Associated Press Files Tom Hiddleston, a.k.a. Loki, is 43 today.

Actors Tom Hiddleston and Aimee Lou Wood scheduled to walk TIFF red carpet

2 minute read Preview

Actors Tom Hiddleston and Aimee Lou Wood scheduled to walk TIFF red carpet

2 minute read Tuesday, Sep. 15, 2026

TORONTO - A drama about Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky and his wife Anna, who is said to have saved him from ruin, is among the films premièring today at the Toronto International Film Festival.

"Ripley" actor Johnny Flynn and "White Lotus" breakout Aimee Lou Wood star in "The Idiots(s)" as the writer couple, and both are set to walk the red carpet.

Other celebrities making an appearance at the festival include Tom Hiddleston, who's in town for the Canadian première of "Tenzing."

The biopic stars the English actor alongside Willem Dafoe and Genden Phuntsok, and tells the story of the Himalayan Sherpa mountaineer who helped lead the first successful summiting of Mount Everest in 1953.

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Tuesday, Sep. 15, 2026

Movies

Sally Field shouts out Canada at Emmy Awards as Hollywood honours Catherine O’Hara

Sally Field shouts out Canada at Emmy Awards as Hollywood honours Catherine O’Hara

4 minute read Preview

Sally Field shouts out Canada at Emmy Awards as Hollywood honours Catherine O’Hara

4 minute read Tuesday, Sep. 15, 2026

Canada's rocky relationship with the United States made its way to Hollywood on Monday night as Sally Field accepted a top prize at the Emmy Awards, while actors also paid tribute to the late Catherine O'Hara.

Field took home the trophy for best actress in a limited or anthology series or TV movie for her role in the Netflix drama "Remarkably Bright Creatures." At 79, she became the oldest Emmy winner in the category.

The movie, based on Shelby Van Pelt's 2022 novel by the same name, follows the deep bond formed between a widowed aquarium worker and a young aspiring musician played by Lewis Pullman.

The movie was filmed in Deep Cove, B.C., including some scenes at the Vancouver Aquarium.

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Tuesday, Sep. 15, 2026

Movies

The Sultan’s Women Harem Productions Inc. The Sultan’s Women, about the lives of women in Ottoman ruler Murad V’s harem, is now streaming.

Docudrama reveals lives of harem’s wilful women

Conrad Sweatman 6 minute read Preview

Docudrama reveals lives of harem’s wilful women

Conrad Sweatman 6 minute read Tuesday, Sep. 15, 2026

A stable of admiring women centred on a domineering patriarch, a secretive world of sexual oppression — the connotations of the word “harem” are not especially positive or progressive.

But there are famous examples of women who navigated this coercive hierarchy not merely to survive but ultimately to command vast influence, some rising from slavery.

The Sultan’s Women — a docudrama written, produced and directed by Emmy- and Peabody-winning, Morden-born filmmaker David Rabinovitch which has recently become available on Tubi, among other platforms — depicts this world in the turbulent final years of the Ottoman Empire, whose collapse also ended the institution.

Told with a Game of Thrones-like relish for elite intrigues, the film opens in the 1870s, with liberal-minded sultan Murad V and his sprawling harem. Ultimately placed under “house arrest” for nearly three decades in Çırağan Palace in what was then called Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey), Murad’s harem had women stronger in will, if not formal position, than the unstable, deposed sultan.

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Tuesday, Sep. 15, 2026

Movies

WARNER BROS. PICTURES Nicole Kidman (left) and Sandra Bullock fail to find the magic again in the sequel to the 1998 movie.

Movie review: sequel to cult classic fails to conjure same charms

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

Movie review: sequel to cult classic fails to conjure same charms

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Tuesday, Sep. 15, 2026

“You’ve heard tell of the Owens sisters,” says a handy voiceover at the start of this unsatisfying sequel.

Why, yes, they were in a movie 28 years ago, which did so-so box office at the time but went on to develop a large and loyal cult following.

That first Practical Magic go-round, adapted from the book by Alice Hoffman, was full of crowd-pleasing “You go, girl” empowerment and witchy shenanigans, making for a sweet, supernatural-lite kind of vibe.

It wasn’t a great movie, but it had its own hokey, Halloweeny charm. It was a pumpkin spice latte before pumpkin spice lattes were even a thing.

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Tuesday, Sep. 15, 2026

Movies

Manitoba artists in TIFF spotlight as fest begins

Manitoba artists in TIFF spotlight as fest begins

Randall King 7 minute read Preview

Manitoba artists in TIFF spotlight as fest begins

Randall King 7 minute read Tuesday, Sep. 15, 2026

Expect Winnipeg film production — and Manitoba talent — to grab its share of the klieg lights at the 2026 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival, which starts today and runs to Sept. 20.

On the TIFF menu: the feature film debut of a local filmmaker who began taking short films to the festival 10 years ago.

In 2016, Ian Bawa arrived at the festival with three collaborators — Markus Henkel, Milos Mitrovic and Fabian Velasco — debuting their outrageous satire Imitations to the Short Cuts program, devoted to short films.

Bawa kept coming, scoring a short film hit in the COVID-truncated 2020 edition of TIFF with a personal project titled Strong Son, which featured his own father, Jagdeep Singh Bawa, in the role of a bodybuilder’s stern father.

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Tuesday, Sep. 15, 2026

Movies

JESSICA LEE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Ben Akoh, curator and organizer of African Movie Festival Manitoba. Akoh founded the festival in 2017.

Film fest showcases Africa’s best

Ben Waldman 5 minute read Preview

Film fest showcases Africa’s best

Ben Waldman 5 minute read Tuesday, Sep. 15, 2026

Winnipeggers are sometimes accused of living within the Perimeter, meaning a visit to Ouagadougou, the capital city of Burkina Faso, might be out of the question for your weekend travel plans.

But the African Film Festival in Manitoba — which kicked off Monday and runs to Sept. 20 — gives local audiences three feature-length opportunities to embrace stories from a nation that’s widely considered the home of African cinema.

Chief among these is Katanga, a tense re-imagining of Shakespeare’s Scottish play told in the Fulah language. Directed and written by Dani Kouyaté, the film was the winner of the the Etalon D’or — the top prize — at last year’s FESPACO, a biennial celebration of Pan-African film and television held in Ouagadougou.

Starring Mahamadi Nana and Prosper Compaore, the film also features a striking, late-career performance by Rasmané Ouédraogo, who starred in the Palme d’Or winner Tilaï — in which a man returns to his village to find his fiancee has become his father’s second wife — in 1990.

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Tuesday, Sep. 15, 2026

Movies

Bell Media Rapper Jay-Z (left) and producer Rick Rubin chat in Jay-Z in 8.

Rap moguls, rock legends amid slate of fall shows

Denise Duguay 5 minute read Preview

Rap moguls, rock legends amid slate of fall shows

Denise Duguay 5 minute read Tuesday, Sep. 15, 2026

Even in this advanced age of streaming dominance, September still marks a welcome but also overwhelming arrival of new and returning programming. As usual, the focus here remains on brand-new series and movies, but some returns are worth briefly noting.

When Saturday Night Live returns for a 52nd season on Sept. 26 on NBC, hosted by NBA star Jalen Brunson with music by L.A.’s Katseye, the Canadian simulcast moves from Global to CTV/Crave as announced by Bell Media in April.

This TV lover’s heart is also glad to note the return of the feel-goodiest series of the spring, Best Medicine (Season 2 premières Sept. 20/22 on Fox, Sept. 22 on CTV/Crave).

It follows a very grumpy (but soft on the inside) city doctor (Josh Charles, Handmaid’s Tale) returned to family roots and family practice in a coastal fishing village.

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Tuesday, Sep. 15, 2026

Movies

Amazon MGM Studios Damian Lewis is the villain opposite a terrified mom (Gal Gadot) in the thriller The Runner.

TV to raise and lower your stress-hormone levels

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Preview

TV to raise and lower your stress-hormone levels

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Tuesday, Sep. 1, 2026

Is it just my Instagram feed that is flooded with prescriptions for how to stem the flood of stress hormones in these trying times? Consult a real professional and take care of yourselves out there. Like social media, TV is not letting up, however. The upcoming 25th (yes!) anniversary of 9/11 is accompanied by a slew of network and streaming programming, including 9/11: United We Stand — 25 Years Later on ABC tonight. As for fictional programming, here are a few harrowing highlights, with a couple of comedies thrown in for an attempt at balance.

●The Runner (movie premières Wednesday, Sept. 2, on Prime Video)

High-profile London lawyer and devoted mom Maia Marten (Gal Gadot, Wonder Woman) thinks her biggest challenge on this day is a big day in court. The problems and the stakes escalate immeasurably after a phone call interrupts her morning run. The title is apt, as this thriller has the heroine racing to meet one demand after another. Failure risks the lives of her near and dear and many more. Go!

● Mayday (movie premières Friday, Sept. 4, on Apple TV)

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Tuesday, Sep. 1, 2026

Movies

Dazed and confused stoner comedy hard to get right

Dazed and confused stoner comedy hard to get right

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

Dazed and confused stoner comedy hard to get right

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Friday, Aug. 14, 2026

Stoner comedy has always been kind of a dude thing. Think of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Cheech & Chong, Ice Cube’s Friday franchise, Harold & Kumar, basically any movie with the young Seth Rogen.

Screenwriter Dylan Meyer (Moxie) provides a much-needed gender swap in her directorial debut, giving us Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat as ride-or-die roommates Frankie and Molly. Dipping in and out of the gig economy and perpetually broke, they share their Los Angeles bungalow with two cats, a life-size cardboard cutout of Celine Dion and an enormously complicated “bong-a-tron” that takes up most of the living room.

Finally, finally, it’s women who get to be messy, aimless and really high.

Unfortunately, stoner movies — no matter the gender — are surprisingly hard to get right. The Wrong Girls is sweet and shaggy and intermittently funny, but Meyer ends up struggling with the genre’s common buzzkills.

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Friday, Aug. 14, 2026

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