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 4 minute read Preview

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

Alison Gillmor 4 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.

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 Yesterday at 2:01 AM CST

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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Yesterday at 2:01 AM CST

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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Michael Greyeyes’ career includes stints as an actor, director, choreographer and teacher.

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Sentimental journeys into holiday season

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Preview

Sentimental journeys into holiday season

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025

Confounding weather patterns aside, we are slipping into winter. Our screens are happy to oblige our hibernation urges with movies and series that might give the gift of a smile or a wee sniffle. Plus a sexy hockey drama! Whoa. Let’s have a look at some new viewing options.

● The Assassin (series premières in Canada on Thursday, Nov. 20, on Prime Video/AMC+)

Brothers Harry and Jack Williams (Fleabag, The Missing) have a new series that mashes up family drama, comedy and thriller. Mom (Keeley Hawes, Line of Duty) wants to be a former killer-for-hire, but the job just keeps pulling her back in. Complication: her estranged son Edward (Freddie Highmore, The Good Doctor) is part of her latest and hopefully last assignment. Neither are very happy about the arrangement. And you thought your holiday family socializing was complicated!

● Train Dreams (movie premières Friday, Nov. 21, on Netflix after limited theatrical release)

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Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025

Sentimental journeys into holiday season

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

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

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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

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