#yvarcade

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Montreal, My Beautiful (Montréal, ma belle, dir. Xiaodan He) x WIFF 2026.

Screen legend Joan Chen stars as a Chinese immigrant mother living in the titular French-Canadian metropolitan city who engages in a steamy same-sex affair later in life with a vibrant, young Québécoise woman (Charlotte Aubin). This puts her traditional family situation in turmoil while she enjoys her newfound menopausal sexual freedom. She struggles to juggle her marital and parental responsibilities with the carefree romantic yearning of new love. Director He builds a complex portrait of womanhood that balances strong Eastern culture with familiar Western ideals fluidly.

Winner of the Best Canadian Film prize at the 2026 Windsor International Film Festival.

Screening at the VIFF Centre from Feb. 13-22 (and Mar. 8-18).

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The Sheep Detectives (dir. Kyle Balda).

A sweet Hugh Jackman briefly stars in the cozy, talking animal murder mystery based on German crime author Leonie Swann's 2005 detective novel Three Bags Full. Set on an English farm, a flock of sheep must solve the murder of their beloved, mystery novel-reading shepherd in a sappy but delightful comedy that warms the heart. Scripted by Craig Mazin, it's light fun that derives much of its humour from the contrast between the dim but sweet barnyard animals and the quirky townspeople.

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Malcolm in the Middle: Life's Still Unfair (prod. Linwood Boomer).

Hulu's middling but oddly comforting four-episode revival of the influential 2000s Fox sitcom economically catches us up with the surnameless dysfunctional family led by Bryan Cranston and Jane Kaczmarek, twenty years later. Child actor-turned-NASCAR driver Frankie Muniz once again ably anchors the show, this time alongside his similarly smart but outcast daughter (Keeley Karsten) as a single father who has gone to great lengths to distance himself from his lower-middle-class parents and siblings. The same youthful, sincere charm from the child performances is gone, with the cast significantly older but only mildly wiser, while the manic performances have been suitably stretched to today.

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H is for Hawk (dir. Philippa Lowthorpe) x VFF 2026.

Claire Foy and Brendan Gleeson star as a grieving daughter and her recently departed photojournalist father in an emotional film about taking up falconry in order to process unexpected grief. Adapted from award-winning, non-binary English naturalist Helen Macdonald's acclaimed 2014 memoir of the same name, the biographical film focuses on a year in their life struggling to train a Eurasian goshawk while juggling an academic career. It's a somewhat removed adaptation of interior moments of mourning that reflects on nature as a form of therapy.

Screening at the 2026 Victoria Film Festival on Feb. 10, 12 & 15.

Screening at the VIFF Centre from Feb. 19-26.

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Tow (dir. Stephanie Laing).

Rose Byrne stars in the real-life social justice dramedy about an unhoused Seattle woman's quest against a towing company's malicious practices after her cherished 1991 Toyota Corolla is stolen, impounded, and then improperly fined. It's a socially conscious tale about unfair corporate behaviour that hurts the already impoverished, driven by a massive power imbalance. Byrne's dynamic performance highlights the everyday injustice many face when they are least able to deal with it, making it a classic David vs. Goliath slice-of-life tale. However, the detailed 369-day legal battle to get a car back stretches the limits of that basic narrative structure, with little else to elevate the real-life events.

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Widow's Bay (prod. Katie Dippold).

As a welcoming but weird folk horror-comedy mashup clearly inspired by the many works of Stephen King, its supernaturally mythic small-town elements only heighten its dryly deadpan humour.

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The Wizard of the Kremlin (Le Mage du Kremlin, dir. Olivier Assayas) x TIFF 2025.

Jude Law and Paul Dano star in a fictionalized, English-language political satire of post-Soviet Russian power as a young Vladimir Putin (aka the "tsar") and his kingmaker operative, inspired by the actual titular "wizard," Vladislav Surkov. It aims to retell three decades of empirical history as an extended monologue, drawing on French-Italian essayist Giuliano da Empoli's 2022 debut novel of the same name. There's just something amiss about the westernized telling of Putin's rise to power in the 1990s. Dano's Vadim Baranov greatly understands the inner workings of a totalitarian propaganda state, but the sprawling explanation of the birth of the Russian Federation remains cryptically simple in execution.

Screened at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival as part of the Special Presentations program.

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R.J. Decker (prod. Robert Doherty).

ABC's breezy case-of-the-week police/P.I. crime procedural offers some familiar storylines in its South Florida setting. Loosely inspired by the Carl Hiaasen novel Double Whammy, we follow Scott Speedman's eponymous ex-con photojournalist turned private investigator as he solves cases alongside a colourful cast of sordid characters. There's a charm to the twisty but always sunny murder mysteries.