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Movies

Supplied Robert Bresson’s donkey-led film Au Hasard Balthazar plays at Dave Barber Cinematheque Friday.

The beauty of the bleak

Ben Waldman 5 minute read Updated: 6:31 AM CDT

Summer has officially begun, and the Dave Barber Cinematheque is ringing in the season with a seven-day festival full of despairing, shocking and unpleasant cinema.

Lead film programmer Olivia Norquay could hardly wait for Bleak Week.

Started in Los Angeles by the American Cinematheque in 2022, this year, the festival is expanding to 73 cities and nearly 100 theatres across the U.S., Canada, England, Scotland, Mexico, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile. Each venue then plots its own program of “uncompromising” films that “wholly embrace a cinema of despair in pursuit of unpleasant truths and raw empathy.”

Norquay — who selected 17 films from directors such as Béla Tarr (The Turin Horse), Agnès Varda (Vagabond), Michael Haneke (Funny Games) and Barbara Loden (Wanda) — says that even though this is the first year of participation for Winnipeg’s only downtown movie theatre, programming bleakness is nothing new at the Dave Barber Cinematheque.

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Movies

Netflix Likei it or not, Louis C.K. is back with a new comedy special.

Cutting comedy, frilly diversions

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Preview

Cutting comedy, frilly diversions

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Yesterday at 2:00 AM CDT

Do not go gentle into that good small-screen summer. There are difficult decisions to be made, philosophically and narratively, and intense Bear-ish drama to be endured.

In between, Mary, Larry and Elle will provide some relief. Well, mostly relief.

●Ryan Hamilton: This Just Hit Me (comedy special premières Tuesday, June 23, on Netflix) and Louis C.K.: Ridiculous (premières Tuesday, June 30, on Netflix)

Happy Face (2017) was tall Idaho-born comic Ryan Hamilton’s first Netflix special. He concentrated his considerable dryly delivered comedy on his perpetually affable, slightly surprised expression. Very funny but uncomfortably self-lacerating at times. That same year, a much more urgent kind of discomfort surfaced when comic Louis C.K. admitted to sexual misconduct after five women publicly accused him. Now both performers have new comedy specials this month. Hamilton’s new special riffs on getting hit by a bus. C.K.’s, recorded last fall, talks about getting older and putting his dad in a home. Tragedy + time = comedy has never been truer, or more challenging to discerning viewers.

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Yesterday at 2:00 AM CDT

Movies

Neon via the Associated Press Ryan (Stacy Clausen, left) and Naim (Joe Bird) develop a tender, passionate relationship just in time for a malevolent entity to arrive and attempt to wield it against them in Leviticus.

Poignant lead performances anchor tense Aussie horror

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

Poignant lead performances anchor tense Aussie horror

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Friday, Jun. 19, 2026

Bleak, beautiful and sad, this small Australian film combines art-house horror with a queer coming-of-age story. This is a monster movie in which the monster is homophobic hatred.

Naim and Ryan (Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen) are two teenage boys first seen doing teenage-boy stuff — breaking into an abandoned factory and goofing around.

We sense almost at once that all their wrestling and grappling is displaced desire. Ryan is a popular kid and Naim is a wary outsider, but a relationship grows between the two — tentative at first, then tender and passionate.

These adolescent feelings are complicated by the fact their families belong to a fundamentalist religious sect that dominates their tough small town.

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Friday, Jun. 19, 2026

Movies

Niko Tavernise / Universal Pictures The truth is out there: Emily Blunt (left) and Josh O’Connor in Disclosure Day.

Full disclosure: Spielberg’s latest a solid sci-fi outing

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Preview

Full disclosure: Spielberg’s latest a solid sci-fi outing

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Saturday, Jun. 13, 2026

Steven Spielberg, who has been making feature films for over five decades now, is in “watch the skies” mode with his new sci-fi movie, a deliberately old-fashioned alien visitation story that is sometimes sinister, sometimes sentimental and often outright goofy.

There are callbacks to cinematic history and Spielberg’s own sci-fi oeuvre — especially E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Minority Report. There are expertly executed set- pieces and indelible individual images. There’s a whole lot of lens flare. These are things that Spielberg fans will expect.

But there’s also a valiant kookiness that’s surprising in a summer blockbuster. Disclosure Day can be thumpingly obvious and oddly disjointed, but it’s one of those movies that’s actually made better by its imperfections.

Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor from Wake Up Dead Man) is a math genius on the lam from Wardex, a shadowy corporation run by Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth, being suavely villainous). Daniel holds a cache of evidence showing alien contact dating back seven decades, which has been systematically covered up by Wardex, the Department of Defense and military contractors.

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Saturday, Jun. 13, 2026

Movies

Apple TV Colin Farrell and Laura Donnelly finally return in Sugar, two years after a cliffhanger left fans with some big questions.

Love, music and the return of a weird noir

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Preview

Love, music and the return of a weird noir

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Tuesday, Jun. 9, 2026

There really is no excuse for staying indoors, except for streaming these five viewing suggestions.

● It’s Not Like That (series now streaming on Prime Video)

Religion is never not a volatile subject, but faith or belief or whatever word is preferred can/should be a different, more personal matter. Yet it is so seldom factored into small-screen storylines. Netflix’s Nobody Wants This (back for a third season in July) — a rom-com about a rabbi (Adam Brody) and a non-believer (Kristen Bell) — proved that with less preaching and more personal faith, audiences would respond.

Now, producers Ian Deitchman and Kristin Robinson (Parenthood) have delivered a new story about a widowed minister (Scott Foley of Scandal) and his wife’s best friend (Erinn Hayes from The Goldbergs). Their families still do everything together, which dovetails humorously and pointedly into their processing of grief and will-they-won’t-they intimacy. The children’s characters are also well developed, one of them observing about their elders: “I love how they get to start over and we’re supposed to pick up where they left off like nothing happened.” Buy tissues and enjoy!

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Tuesday, Jun. 9, 2026

Opinion

Marilyn Monroe (The Associated Press files)

Marilyn Monroe cursed to be Hot Forever

Jen Zoratti 5 minute read Preview

Marilyn Monroe cursed to be Hot Forever

Jen Zoratti 5 minute read Saturday, Jun. 6, 2026

Marilyn Monroe would have been 100 years old this week.

She was born Norma Jeane Baker on June 1, 1926, and died Marilyn Monroe on Aug. 4, 1962 at 36 of a barbiturate overdose, her incredible star a supernova.

Obviously, there’s a lot being published this week, looking at her filmography, her legacy and, in turn, our voracious appetite for the actor who, despite being a gifted talent, became who everyone thinks of when they hear the term “blond bombshell.”

We just can’t seem to quit Marilyn Monroe, and we really can’t seem to quit talking about her in a specific way. Why am I reading a Variety headline calling her, in 2026, the “goddess of sex”? The accompanying copy practically leers, describing her smile as “a lipstick bomb of bliss” and noting “the sparkly nightclub splendour of those curves.”

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Saturday, Jun. 6, 2026

Movies

Lionsgate As fellow songwriters, Nick Jonas (left) and Paul Rudd bond over balladry.

Music movie formulaic, but funny

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Preview

Music movie formulaic, but funny

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Saturday, Jun. 6, 2026

John Carney is a one-note writer-director, and I mean that in the good way. The Irish filmmaker likes to tell stories about the redemptive possibilities of music, in such projects as Flora and Son, Sing Street and the hugely popular, much loved Once.

His new dramedy (co-written with Peter McDonald) is a wee bit formulaic but still manages to be low-key funny in its comedy and gently melancholy in its drama. It’s a little underwritten with its themes of creativity and authenticity, but still pulls off a sweet, sincere and generous emotional vibe.

In fact, Power Ballad is a lot like the musical showdown it chronicles, caught between raggedy indie grit and catchy, crowd-pleasing riffs.

These opposing tones sometimes clash — especially in the confused second act — but thankfully Carney can rely on the endless, easy charm of star Paul Rudd to keep things going.

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Saturday, Jun. 6, 2026

Movies

Supplied From left: Festival organizers Matthew Shoup, Taryn Edgeworth, Caden Nikkel, Kieran Peters.

Emerging film fest fosters creativity, community

Conrad Sweatman 5 minute read Preview

Emerging film fest fosters creativity, community

Conrad Sweatman 5 minute read Monday, May. 25, 2026

While Ontario and Quebec film artists have long spoken ambivalently about working in the shadow of a cultural superpower, Prairie film artists tend to express a different kind of marginality.

“Canada doesn’t hold a candle to Hollywood and all that, but Winnipeg really struggles in the shadow of the folks in Toronto who set the agenda and who get most of the funding,” Winnipeg filmmaker Kevin Nikkel recently told the Free Press.

Nikkel’s son Caden, also a filmmaker, is driven by a similar sentiment.

He’s the programmer behind the Manitoba Emerging Filmmakers Festival (also organized by Matthew Shoup, Kieran Peters and Taryn Edgeworth). The festival, now in its third year, will show dozens of films next weekend in the Exchange District.

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Monday, May. 25, 2026

Movies

Magnolia Pictures Things get chaotic when Bob Odenkirk moves to Normal, Minn.

Minnesota not-so-nice

Randall King 4 minute read Preview

Minnesota not-so-nice

Randall King 4 minute read Tuesday, May. 19, 2026

British director Ben Wheatley has always been adventurous in his penchant for traversing genre boundaries, including hardcore horror (The Kill List), the big-budget monster movie (The Meg 2), the cerebral art film (High-Rise), and his own invention, the acid-trip period piece (A Field in England).

With his Manitoba-shot latest, Normal, Wheatley adds neo-western to the list, citing inspirations such as Bad Day at Black Rock, John Sturges’s 1955 thriller in which a one-armed stranger (Spencer Tracy) arrives in a small town to investigate the suspicious death of a friend.

The stranger in town here is Ulysses (Better Call Saul’s Bob Odenkirk, completing a trifecta of locally lensed action movies along with Nobody and Nobody 2), who has come to the Minnesota burg of Normal to act as an interim sheriff after the suspicious death of the previous officeholder.

Ulysses has both his arms, but he arrives bearing the after-effects of a trauma from his previous job. And at first blush, Normal is a town where he can heal, given that the worst thing he encounters is a shouting match at the hardware store and a lackadaisical parking job by the saucy local barkeep Moira (Lena Headey).

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Tuesday, May. 19, 2026

Movies

Janus Films Edik Beddoes plays a troubled teen in the semi-autobiographical Blue Heron.

Canadian drama gets meta in layered exploration of mental health

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Preview

Canadian drama gets meta in layered exploration of mental health

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Friday, May. 15, 2026

Delicate and devastating, this small Canadian drama starts with a voiceover narrative. A filmmaker (Amy Zimmer) speaks about the unreliability of childhood memory — how certain moments stand out with bright clarity while the larger context can be hazy.

She remembers her troubled older brother through images, through feelings, but as she has become older, she wonders what she might have misunderstood or missed.

Blue Heron, Toronto-based writer- director Sophy Romvari’s semi-autobiographical feature debut, becomes a layered investigation into family narratives and the elusive line between art and life. Excavating an often painful past, Romvari’s work is ambitious and quietly assured, but it maintains a frank humility in the face of difficult, perhaps unanswerable questions.

The film (in English, with some subtitled Hungarian) begins as an extended flashback to the 1990s as a Hungarian-Canadian family of six moves to Vancouver Island hoping for a fresh start.

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Friday, May. 15, 2026

Movies

Apple TV Tatiana Maslany stars in Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, premièring May 20.

TV that brings you home, whether you like it or not

Denise Duguay 5 minute read Preview

TV that brings you home, whether you like it or not

Denise Duguay 5 minute read Tuesday, May. 12, 2026

Escape is the theme of this edition of new-TV recommendations? Can you escape home? Or once decamped, can you ever return home? The first selection is the wisest of all, admitting that when pain and loss make their inevitable appearance, the only true path forward is through.

● Marty, Life Is Short (documentary premieres Tuesday, May 12, on Netflix)

Netflix is going ahead with director Lawrence Kasdan’s documentary celebrating the life of Martin Short, despite the recent death by suicide of the comic’s daughter. (The film was completed before her death.) Could definitely be seen as insensitive, or worse exploitive. Or, drawing from Short’s own playbook, that it’s not only OK but necessary for this show to go on. Before, during and after the time the Canadian-born comic actor was honing his skills on SCTV, Saturday Night Live, Only Murders in the Building and comedy tours with and without pal Steve Martin, Short has been impressively frank about the early deaths of his parents, his brother, his wife and recently friends and colleagues Catherine O’Hara and Rob Reiner. “Those kinds of situations are horrible,” he told The Guardian a few years ago, “but I think that you are either empowered by them or you become a victim of them.” This life and film lesson is yet another reason to be grateful for Martin Short.

● Dutton Ranch (series premières with two of nine episodes Friday, May 15, on Paramount+)

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Tuesday, May. 12, 2026

Movies

Vertical Entertainment / TNS Riz Ahmed’s Hamlet does cocaine and goes to nightclubs.

Though this be madness, yet there is method in it

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Preview

Though this be madness, yet there is method in it

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Friday, May. 1, 2026

Something is rotten in the state of … well, almost everywhere these days, which might account for the recent rush of Hamlet adaptations, with an anime version (Scarlet), a documentary version (King Hamlet), an origin story (Hamnet), and even Grand Theft Hamlet, a version set inside a video- game.

This new reworking places Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy among contemporary London’s South Asian business elite, and the results are sometimes electrifying, sometimes frustrating but always intensely watchable, thanks to an intimate and anguished central performance by Riz Ahmed (The Sound of Metal).

Setting Shakespeare’s language against modern trappings can be tricky — this is probably the first version of the melancholy prince who snorts cocaine — but director Aniel Karia (Surge) and scripter Michael Lesslie (who worked on a 2015 version of Macbeth) mostly handle the update in ways that feel urgent and alive.

Hamlet, having returned to England for his father’s funeral, finds his widowed mother, Gertrude (Bollywood actress Sheeba Chaddha), about to marry his uncle Claudius (Art Malik, the veteran British character actor last seen in The Woman in Cabin 10).

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Friday, May. 1, 2026

Movies

Kevin Mazur / Lionsgate Jaafar Jackson does an excellent impersonation of his uncle during the extended concert sequences.

Controversial aspects of King of Pop’s life story ignored, results fall flat

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Preview

Controversial aspects of King of Pop’s life story ignored, results fall flat

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Friday, Apr. 24, 2026

Michael Jackson was a musical genius and an electrifying performer.

He was also a troubled man, his legacy marked by accusations of child sexual abuse. This new film — which starts in 1966 in his family’s working-class home in Gary, Ind., and ends in a triumphant performance at Wembley Stadium in 1988 — is hoping the truth of that first statement will cover over the inconvenient realities of the second.

As a meticulously re-created concert film, Michael is a thriller, with Jaafar Jackson (the singer’s nephew) delivering expert dance moves and convincing (digitally blended) vocals.

As a biopic, financed and overseen by the Jackson estate and several members of the late superstar’s family, it is rote, flat and friction-free.

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Friday, Apr. 24, 2026

Movies

Joe Fuda photo Grace (Barbie Ferreira, right) becomes fascinated with Chevy (Stanley Simons) in Mile End Kicks.

Dramedy Mile End Kicks captures 20-something angst, confusion

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Preview

Dramedy Mile End Kicks captures 20-something angst, confusion

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Friday, Apr. 17, 2026

Canadian writer-director Chandler Levack is becoming an auteur of spiky, self-aware, semi-autobiographical nostalgia.

Her 2022 feature debut I Like Movies related the awkward coming-of-age story of a teenage video store clerk in Burlington, Ont., in 2003.

In this deliberately loose dramedy, which debuted at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Levack sets her wayback machine to the summer of 2011 in Montreal. Grace (Euphoria’s Barbie Ferreira), a 24-year-old music critic, has just got off the bus, determined to do important work, have sex and possibly learn French.

Low rents on cool apartments in the neighbourhood of Mile End are drawing young artists, writers and musicians from all over Canada, Grace explains in an article she’s writing about the city’s indie music scene.

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Friday, Apr. 17, 2026

Celebrities

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS Mycze Cutler, musical director at the Crescent Arts Centre, will be playing the organ to accompany the moving images Saturday at the inaugural Winnipeg Silent Film Festival.

Wealth of musical talent providing the sounds of silents

Ben Waldman 5 minute read Preview

Wealth of musical talent providing the sounds of silents

Ben Waldman 5 minute read Thursday, Apr. 16, 2026

The score will be settled in real time on Saturday at the inaugural Winnipeg Silent Movie Festival, with local musicians set to provide live, improvised soundtracks to 10 films released between 1912 and 1929.

In order to meet the challenge, Mycze Cutler will rely on an instrument that predates any of the festival’s selections from the pre-sound era: a Casavant pipe organ, installed at the Crescent Fort Rouge United Church in 1911, one year before Lillian Gish made her film debut.

Used every week for worship, the Quebec-made instrument — equipped with strings, flutes and horns, as well as more than 2,000 pipes — will be employed by Cutler to improvise live scores to the festival’s closing projections, The Haunted House and One Week, both starring the inimitable Buster Keaton.

Cutler, the church’s music director, is used to improvising during services depending on the mood of the day’s hymns and the content of the sermon. As an accompanist for upcoming run of The Pirates of Penzance (opening April 24) from the musical theatre program of the Manitoba Theatre for Young People, Cutler has a clear plan to follow.

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Thursday, Apr. 16, 2026

Movies

HMN Photography Markian Tarasiuk directed, produced and stars in Hunting Matthew Nichol.

Unique distribution model benefits local filmmaker’s found-footage flick

Randall King 5 minute read Preview

Unique distribution model benefits local filmmaker’s found-footage flick

Randall King 5 minute read Wednesday, Apr. 15, 2026

Sneaking into Winnipeg’s Scotiabank Polo Park cinema last weekend like a cunning, silent demon, the low-budget horror film Hunting Matthew Nichols managed to succeed, reaping more than double its budget throughout North America thanks in large part to actor-director Markian Tarasiuk.

Tarasiuk, 33, is a Winnipeg-born Ukrainian-Canadian artist whose parents met performing in the Rusalka dance ensemble. (It doesn’t get more Winnipeg than that.)

Evidently inheriting the performance gene, Tarasiuk was performing on the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre stage by age 14 in the 2007 production Over the Tavern. By the age of 18, fresh out of River East Collegiate, he enlisted in the prestigious Vancouver theatre school Studio 58.

Currently dividing his time between Vancouver and Los Angeles, Tarasiuk has gained dozens of screen credits since then, but his work in Hunting Matthew Nichols — which he also produced — feels more personal, inspired by the terror he once felt seeing the found-footage thriller Paranormal Activity at Kildonan Place cinemas in 2007.

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Wednesday, Apr. 15, 2026

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