Movies – Winnipeg Free Press

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As Hedda Gabler, Tessa Thompson is enigmatic to the very end.

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

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Yesterday at 2:01 AM CDT

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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Death lives large in these small-screen parties

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Preview

Death lives large in these small-screen parties

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025

As leaves fall and chimney smoke rises, there’s even more of an excuse to turn to the nearest screen for these terminal explorations, via fact and fiction, of baseball, therapy, missiles, blackjack and a very grumpy private investigator.

●Who Killed the Montreal Expos (documentary premières Tuesday, Oct. 21 on Netflix)

“The Expos’ death is kind of like a big game of Clue,” says one of many talking heads in this re-investigation. “Lots of motives. Lots of suspects. We have a long list.” Among the people and factors under endless suspicion in the 2004 death of the scrappy embodiment of Quebec pride that was the Expos, are owner Claude Brochu; team president Jeffrey Loria; the strike in 1994 when the Expos were hailed as the best team in the league; and, last but nowhere near least, plain old economics. Will the mystery ever be solved? Hope and the fascination with the Expos both spring eternal.

●Harlan Coben’s Lazarus (series premières with all six episodes Wednesday, Oct. 22 on Prime Video)

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Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025

Amazon Studios
In Lazarus, Sam Claflin (left) is a psychiatrist who sees ghosts, including his dad (Bill Nighy).

Biography of beloved, complicated comedic icon ensures legacy lives on

Reviewed by Jen Zoratti 5 minute read Preview

Biography of beloved, complicated comedic icon ensures legacy lives on

Reviewed by Jen Zoratti 5 minute read Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025

John Candy would be — should be — celebrating his 75th birthday this Halloween.

When the Canadian comic actor, best known and beloved for his work on the sketch comedy series SCTV as well as in movies such as Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Uncle Buck, Splash, Home Alone, Cool Runnings and so many more, died on March 4, 1994 at the too-young age of 43, it was nothing short of a tragedy.

Here was a man who brought so much joy to people, an open-faced, preternaturally youthful guy as sweet as his surname who had an enormous heart that eventually gave out on him in Durango, Mexico while filming Wagons East.

Paul Myers’ new biography, John Candy: A Life in Comedy, is a warm, thoughtful, sensitive portrait of a complicated comedian by a writer who clearly has great admiration and affection for his subject matter.

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Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025

Canadian Press files
Fellow comics as well as co-stars and directors interviewed by Paul Myers remembered John Candy for his sense of humour, his kindness and his generosity.

Local filmmaker hopes to inspire an appreciation for the land with latest film

Janine LeGal 6 minute read Preview

Local filmmaker hopes to inspire an appreciation for the land with latest film

Janine LeGal 6 minute read Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025

Katharina Stieffenhofer loves being outside. Whether she’s among the fruit trees, the flowers and the raised garden beds in her yard, or out for a walk in her neighbourhood or in a forest somewhere, she’s in her element.

“I walk the walk,” she says about the lifestyle that inspires her daily to cherish the earth.

“I love to go out there, pick the sun-warm tomatoes, the first lettuce in the spring. I love cooking with ingredients that I have grown myself. There’s nothing I love better than to have my family around, invite friends over, point to everything on the plate — ‘This is from such and such a farm; ‘this is from my garden,’” she says.

Stienffenhofer’s husband makes the world’s best cucumber relish, she says. It’s a two-day event.

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Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS
Katharina Stieffenhofer, a local documentary filmmaker who cares passionately about environmental and social justice, is currently working on a new film called Everything We Need is Here.

Uneven musical drama gets caught up in its own web

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

Uneven musical drama gets caught up in its own web

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Friday, Oct. 17, 2025

In this unlikely, uneven but intermittently fabulous musical drama, a Marxist revolutionary and a gay window dresser end up as prison cellmates during Argentina’s Dirty War.

Since the two men have nothing much to do but talk, we get a lot of back-and-forth about esthetics and politics, sex and love.

We also get big musical production numbers, which can be occasionally terrific, often distracting and sometimes just off-putting. (Do we need a snappy song-and-dance take on prison torture? No, we do not.)

American filmmaker Bill Condon has worked on several movie musicals, scripting Chicago, helming the live-action Beauty and the Beast and writing and directing Dreamgirls. Here he’s adapting a 1990s Broadway and West End hit, which was itself adapted by playwright Terrence McNally from the 1976 novel by Argentine-born writer Manuel Puig.

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Friday, Oct. 17, 2025

Roadside Attractions/TNS
Initially, Molina (Tonatiuh, left) and Valentin (Diego Luna) appear to have nothing in common.

Simulated starlet lacks real appeal

Alison Gillmor 6 minute read Preview

Simulated starlet lacks real appeal

Alison Gillmor 6 minute read Saturday, Oct. 4, 2025

It’s an old story, one we’ve been telling ever since starlets were discovered at soda fountains.

A pretty young woman comes to Hollywood, with her glossy eight-by-10 headshots and her dreams. She’s had a few bit parts and she’s looking for an agent. She wants to make it big in pictures. She wants to be a star.

That’s Tilly Norwood in 2025.

Except that Tilly’s not real. She’s an AI creation, digitally manufactured by Dutch actor, comedian and producer Eline van der Velden.

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Saturday, Oct. 4, 2025

Xicoia image
While digitally manufactured ‘actor’ Tilly Norwood may be beautiful, she remains fatally generic.

Hamming it up online

Eva Wasney 4 minute read Preview

Hamming it up online

Eva Wasney 4 minute read Monday, Sep. 29, 2025

One man’s attempt to pass off hamburgers as “steamed hams” has become another man’s magnum opus.

Winnipeg graphic designer Tyrone Deise has achieved YouTube fame for his creative renditions of an iconic Simpsons sketch in which principal Seymour Skinner hosts school superintendent Gary Chalmers for an unforgettable luncheon.

The episode, which first aired in 1996, sees Skinner serving his boss fast food after his carefully prepared roast goes up in flames. Calf stretching and alleged aurora borealis sightings ensue.

Deise, 44, is a hobbyist filmmaker who grew up watching The Simpsons. After seeing the episode memed online, he decided to remake the steamed hams bit in the style of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. He submitted the silent, black-and-white Super 8 film to the local WNDX Festival of Moving Image and uploaded it to his YouTube channel (@TyroneDeise) in 2022, without a second thought.

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Monday, Sep. 29, 2025

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Local filmmaker’s lo-fi feature packs a punch

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

Local filmmaker’s lo-fi feature packs a punch

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Thursday, Sep. 25, 2025

It feels right that this low-budget, lo-fi experimental feature should be showing as part of We’re Still Here, a slate of programming that marks 50 resilient and resourceful years of the Winnipeg Film Group.

First off, Think at Night is idiosyncratically and intensely Winnipeggy, from rooftop views of our downtown skyline to shots of our green, scrubby riverbanks to scenes set in our oddly iconic parkades.

Secondly, the opening and closing credits of cast and crew are a roll call of WFG people over the decades. And finally, this 2024 film connects past and present in a poignant and unexpected way, as local filmmaker Greg Hanec explores the elastic nature of time.

Think at Night takes place over the course of one night, but Hanec, who’s also an artist, composer and musician, has been working on it since filming started over 30 years ago.

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Thursday, Sep. 25, 2025

Supplied
Greg Hanec plays Al, a questioning artist, in his long-gestating feature Think at Night.

A defiant brushstroke against darkness

Martin Zeilig 5 minute read Preview

A defiant brushstroke against darkness

Martin Zeilig 5 minute read Thursday, Sep. 25, 2025

In a world hungry for stories of resilience and hope, a new film arrives with the force of a revelation.

Bau, Artist at War — directed by Sean McNamara and starring Emile Hirsch, Inbar Lavi and Yan Tual — is a testament to the indomitable human spirit.

The film opens in Winnipeg on Friday, offering audiences a chance to witness one of the most extraordinary true stories to emerge from the ashes of the Second World War.

At its heart is Joseph Bau, a gifted artist, master forger and Holocaust survivor whose courage and creativity became tools of resistance.

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Thursday, Sep. 25, 2025

SUPPLIED
Emile Hirsch plays Joseph Bau, who was imprisoned at Plaszow concentration camp during the Second World War.

Laconic, iconic Redford bridged eras

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Preview

Laconic, iconic Redford bridged eras

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Saturday, Sep. 20, 2025

With onscreen charisma, offscreen activism and ineffable cool, Robert Redford, who died Sept. 16 at age 89, bridged genres and eras.

Redford retained a sense of Old Hollywood movie-star glamour, but he could also suggest gritty, scruffy 1970s naturalism. As a younger man, he embodied a certain kind of all-American golden-boy beauty — with that tousle of blond hair and sudden, disarming smile — but he seemed relieved when his looks became a side issue.

He divided critics on whether he could act. Some accused him of being emotionally opaque, while others believed his characteristic screen persona — simultaneously charming and withholding — is what drew us to watch him, over and over.

He was both iconically famous and famously private.

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Saturday, Sep. 20, 2025

DANNY MOLOSHOK / ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES
Robert Redford died Sept. 16 at age 89.

Nothing changes for characters in frictionless Downton Abbey finale

Alison Gillmor 6 minute read Preview

Nothing changes for characters in frictionless Downton Abbey finale

Alison Gillmor 6 minute read Friday, Sep. 12, 2025

Here’s a fun Downton Abbey drinking game: pour yourself some champagne and take a sip every time a character says, “The world is changing, and we must change with it.” (Or some variation thereof.)

With this latest – and supposedly last — chapter in creator Julian Fellowes’ upstairs-downstairs saga, you’d be tipsy within 10 minutes.

Here’s the funny thing, though. Nothing ever changes in the gloriously impervious Downton universe. Never mind the First World War, the Roaring ’20s and the stock market crash, everyone and everything remains essentially the same.

After six television seasons and two previous films, Fellowes shepherds his familiar characters into the 1930s with flagrant fan service that is fabulously pretty and completely frictionless. While offering almost nothing new, then, this Grand Finale will provide reliable comfort viewing and a fitting farewell for Downton devotees.

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Friday, Sep. 12, 2025

Rory Mulvey / Focus Features
From left: Laura Carmichael, Harry Hadden-Paton, Elizabeth McGovern, Hugh Bonneville and Michelle Dockery have a ball.

Winnipeg-shot movie gets raucous reception in Toronto

Randall King 5 minute read Preview

Winnipeg-shot movie gets raucous reception in Toronto

Randall King 5 minute read Thursday, Sep. 11, 2025

Die Hard meets Fargo.

That was one of the more on-the-nose critical reactions to the Winnipeg-lensed movie Normal, which got its world première Sunday at midnight at the 50th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival.

The film starring Bob Odenkirk, scripted by Derek Kolstad (John Wick) and directed by British filmmaker Ben Wheatley (Free Fire), got a raucous reception in the sumptuous Royal Alexandra Theatre, posh King Street digs for a film with a rather bloody, grindhouse sensibility. (Bear in mind, any movie in TIFF’s Midnight Madness program tends to draw a crowd that’s effusive in its appreciation of genre films, cheering at every gruesome death.)

But it did not hurt that Sunday night’s sold-out crowd of 1,200 was filled with Winnipeg actors who appeared in the film, including Rainbow Stage artistic director Carson Nattrass (who walked the red carpet with his wife Sharon Bajer, herself a veteran of the locally shot Odenkirk movie Nobody), Aaron Merke, clad in an elegantly red-splattered jacket, his partner Lauren Cochran, David Lawrence Brown and Dan De Jaeger.

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Thursday, Sep. 11, 2025

Supplied
Sharon Bajer walked the TIFF red carpet with her husband Carson Nattrass.

Five thrillers for a chiller season

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Preview

Five thrillers for a chiller season

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Tuesday, Sep. 9, 2025

All good summers must end and so we turn to our screens, big and small, for cosy autumn viewing. Onward to five worthy viewing options that cover thrilling, killing and even chilling, as Charlie Sheen exclaims “Winning” one more time.

● Only Murders in the Building (Season 5 premières the first three of 10 episodes today, Tuesday, Sept. 9 on Disney+)

With apologies to Shakespeare, as well as Yorick: Alas poor Lester, we knew him … possibly not very well at all? The gaudy exit of the beloved doorman (Teddy Coluca) in the Season 3 cliffhanger finale provides the central mystery of this new season. In addition to the intrepid Arconia investigators (Steve Martin, Selena Gomez and Martin Short), returning gems include Richard Kind, Nathan Lane, Meryl Streep, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Michael Cyril Creighton. Guest stars are not bad either, including Bobby Cannavale, Beanie Feldstein, Keegan-Michael Key, Téa Leoni, Logan Lerman, Christoph Waltz, Dianne Wiest and an icily coiffed Renée Zellweger.

● aka Charlie Sheen (two-part documentary premières Wednesday, Sept. 10 on Netflix)

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Tuesday, Sep. 9, 2025

Apple TV+
Aaron Pierre joins Season 4 of The Morning Show, starring Jennifer Aniston.

Death is only the beginning of this fall TV season

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Preview

Death is only the beginning of this fall TV season

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2025

The fall season arrives with death, death and more death. And not just of people. In one of this edition’s five viewing suggestions, a critic deals a death blow to one series while resurrecting another. So all good there. In another, an Office-esque mockumentary begins a deathwatch on a small Toledo newspaper. Which hits a little close to home. Say one Hail Mary, three hallelujahs and press play.

● The Terminal List: Dark Wolf (premières first three episodes Wednesday, on Prime Video)

This espionage origin story, spinning off The Terminal List, goes deep into the psyche of Ben Edwards (Taylor Kitsch) who is front and centre for a lot death and other bad stuff from his time in the Navy SEALs to CIA Special Ops. Chris Pratt reprises his role from the original series as James Reece.

● The Thursday Murder Club (movie premières Thursday, Aug. 28, on Netflix)

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Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2025

Netflix
Helen Mirren (clockwise from left), Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley and Celia Imrie star in The Thursday Murder Club.

Ethan Coen’s latest comedy caper gives it a go but ends up falling flat

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

Ethan Coen’s latest comedy caper gives it a go but ends up falling flat

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Friday, Aug. 22, 2025

Since the Coen brothers began working on solo efforts, Joel has gone heavy with 2021’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, while Ethan has headed into antic capers, with 2024’s Drive-Away Dolls and now this new crime comedy, which form the first two instalments in what Coen and writing partner Tricia Cooke have termed a “lesbian B-movie trilogy.”

Unfortunately, Honey Don’t! feels like less than half a Coen brothers film. This sun-baked, small-town noir flick comes off as a genre exercise that’s technically slick and self-referential but ultimately empty.

Margaret Qualley (who also starred in Drive-Away Dolls) has effortless screen charisma as Honey O’Donahue, a private eye in Bakersfield, Calif., but as she gets pulled into the town’s seamy underside, the tone is off. Coen and Cooke seem to be aiming for something light and loosey-goosey, with lots of clever nods to the pleasures of 1940s and ’50s pulp, but the quirkiness is forced, the violence gratuitously nasty.

When a young woman who was almost a client turns up dead, Honey feels obligated to investigate. Her search will take her to dark piano bars, deserted dirt roads, rundown housing tracts and a shady church led by the not-so-Reverend Drew Devlin (Chris Evans, happily chucking his all-American Eagle Scout image out the window). The pastor refers to sex with his parishioners as “fellowship” and is running a drug ring out the back.

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Friday, Aug. 22, 2025

KAREN KUEHN / FOCUS FEATURES / TNS
Margaret Qualley stars as Honey O’Donahue in Honey Don’t!

A bottomless stream of pompousness

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Saturday, Aug. 16, 2025

When it comes to streaming options, we are living in an age of abundance. That sounds good, right?

But so much of this content is merely meh. This flood of middling series and movies, this glut of take-it-or-leave-it entertainment can lead to viewing inertia. The search for something truly compelling can feel so exhausting and overwhelming that decisions often get made more by the gravitational pull of the couch than by anything actually happening onscreen.

Amidst this purgatory of TV that’s not quite bad enough to give up but not quite good enough to truly hook you, streaming content can stand out by being great. By being original, intelligent, well-crafted — you know, all that hard stuff.

Or, in what feels like a depressing confirmation of the crappiness of our 21st-century attention economy, it can stand out by being absolutely, excruciatingly awful.

November 1, 2025

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