The Film Father - Making an Offer You Can’t Review

  Starring : Daniel Craig, Josh O’Connor, Josh Brolin, Glenn Close, et. Al Directed By : Rian Johnson Available on : Netflix Wake Up Dead Man is the third in the Benoit Blanc series of whodunnit stories - a film that once again showcases Rian Johnson’s gift with dialogue and clever plotting mechanics. It’s a film that, while not perfect, closes out what may be one of the highest-quality trilogies that you’ll see in modern film and also features a genuine starring turn by Josh O’Connor. It’s twisty, turny, timey-wimey and if you liked the first two films in the series you’ll almost certainly like this one as well. As is always the story with these types of films (the Agatha Christie-style murder mystery), we first meet the players - which this time around centres completely around a catholic church in upstate New York, including the rather-bullish priest (Josh Brolin), his new protege (Josh O’Connor), the head of the church booster program (Glenn Close) and notable parishioners - am...

Starring : Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Odessa Young, Stephen Graham, et al. Directed By : Scott Cooper Where It’s Available : Disney Plus (all territories) Here’s something you may know about me - Bruce Springsteen is my favourite musician of all-time. His songs about working-class struggle and fighting through loss to see just a little bit of sunshine really resonate with my own lower-class upbringing. I’ve seen him in concert four times. I own at least 10 Springsteen vinyls. So when they announced a biopic for Bruce - specifically one with another personal favourite, Jeremy Allen White (of FX’s spectacular ‘The Bear’) - it was a foregone conclusion that I would watch this film. And it might be difficult for me to be truly objective about it. With that said, it pleases me to state that the stands as a solid - if a little rote and formulaic - biopic. Setting the film during a specific time period of Bruce’s life (late 1981 through mid 1982 - just after he finished his world tour...

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Benito Del Toro, Sean Penn, Regina Hall et al. Directed by : Paul Thomas Anderson Where it’s Available : HBO MAX in the US and most territories, Crave in Canada. The first scene of PTA’s 2025 opus, ‘One Battle After Another’ literally involves a group of self-styled ‘revolutionaries’ breaking migrants out of an ICE internment camp. I texted a friend of mine, “Oh, so this film is POLITICAL political”. And it is. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Pat (later Bob), a bomb specialist of the ‘French 75’ revolutionary group. Their manifesto, while not explicitly stated on-screen, is clearly left-leaning (they protect immigrants and minorities, they threaten a senator’s campaign office because they voted for an abortion ban, etc). These are the film’s good guys. The primary antagonist is a white supremacist soldier with a fetish for powerful black women (played with sufficient malice and menace by Sean Penn). This is the playing field on which this film lives - which is why...

In the Year of Our Lord 2025, I rolled credits on 11 games (okay, 10.5 anyway - you’ll see what I mean). That’s three fewer than last year. I blame the fact that I am still wasting a disproportionate amount of time playing Balatro (#2 from last year) and Baldur’s Gate 3 (#1 from 2023 and a top-5 all-timer). This year was ‘very’ strong overall in terms of product (you’ll notice the top two - and six of 11 overall - on my list were from this calendar year), but the state of the industry overall seems like it’s hanging by a thread. Let’s hope 2026 continues the quality output and steadies itself in terms of industry foundation (give talented people money to make games, folks. Please). 11. Night Trap (Limited Run Games - Originally Released 1992, 2017 ‘25th Anniversary Re-Release’) - Available on everything, played on Nintendo Switch. As someone of my vintage, this was more so I could say “I did it” than any real want or need to experience the deep narrative nuance of this infamous Sega CD...

  Starring : Mason Thames, Madeline McGraw, Ethan Hawke Directed By : Scott Derrickson Where It’s Available : A Theatre Near You, on-demand streaming at home digital rentals  The original ‘Black Phone’, released in 2022, was a rare beast in horror films - a truly original idea. Ghost stories have been around even longer than horror movies, but I don’t ever recall the ghosts being the ‘good guys’ in a slasher/horror genre picture before (we’re not talking about Casper here). In case you missed it (spoiler warning for the end of the original Black Phone - which is actually fantastic and well worth a watch if you have not seen it) - at the conclusion of the film, Finn Blake (Mason Thames) had escaped from the clutches of The Grabber (Ethan Hawke) thanks in no small part to his sister, Gwen (Madeline McGraw). In the course of the escape, Finn kills The Grabber (good riddance) and also helps avenge the five dead children who preceded him in being caught in The Grabber’s clutches. ‘...

Starring : Michael B. Jordan, Michael B. Jordan, Miles Caron, Hailee Steinfeld et. Al. Directed by : Ryan Coogler Where It’s Available : HBO MAX in the US and most international territories, Crave in Canada It’s not often that a film can seemingly come out of nowhere based on a trued and true idea, take that concept, tweak it and set the world on fire, but in Ryan Coogler’s ‘Sinners’, that’s exactly what happened. Ostensibly a period-piece genre film, but in truth something that’s much more than the sum of its parts, Sinners is a film that years from now, when you look up ‘cool’ in the dictionary, a still from this film will be staring back at you. Michael B. Jordan stars in duel roles as the twin brothers ‘Stack’ and ‘Smoke’ - two wiseguy street toughs in depression-era Mississippi. The brothers have returned home after several years (where, among other things, they worked for Al Capone in an unstated capacity) with designs of opening up their own juke joint - a Chicago-style night sp...