In small-town Warsaw, Indiana, mother Ana (Erica Muñoz) and her 17-year-old daughter Izzy (Izzy Hau’ula) are faced with what would have been an unthinkable future of separation just a few years ago. Fighting against strin...

Last year, I felt pretty strongly about the upcoming adaptation of Little Women from Greta Gerwig. It had all the right ingredients: Greta Gerwig for one, Meryl Streep, Timothée Chalamet, Saoirse Ronan. Sure Emma Stone had been re...

There’s a saying: people don’t need a doctor, they need an audience. Now I’m not telling you to cut off your doctor and get up on your soapbox (please don’t) -- but there’s definitely a therapeutic element ...

After a first look at Queen & Slim last month, Universal today dropped an extended trailer, pulling us deeper into the world of intrigue and all-too-common police misconduct and brutality. With a string of impressive music video and ...

When I reviewed Disney's live-action remake of The Jungle Book I proclaimed that it was a revolution in digital animation. The uncanny valley had been defeated and we now stood on the precipice  of a new era in CGI, where you stru...

In December 2015, T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong published an essay online called An Unbelievable Story of Rape, which centred on the story of an 18-year-old woman, Marie. In it, the writers describe how Marie was reportedly sexua...

The killer animal film has come a long way since Jaws. These days you've got to have a prehistoric giant shark to even get folks talking about your movie. The thinking is that normal-sized, non-mutated animals just aren't enough anymore, I ...

Buckle up and hold onto your cookies, nerds, because Season 2 of Final Space is officially on its way. This week two new trailers have dropped for the second instalment, which were released on both Youtube (by AdultSwim, the Cartoon Ne...

Canadian-born Muslim Tarek Mounib had lived most of his life with a cultural double-identity. One day, he suddenly had the idea to offer any willing participants in the US a free trip to Egypt and to film the experience, aiming to help ...

Movies, right? So many of them. With Disney apparently buying the whole freaking industry at this rate, there will be a comical number of films coming out under their many labels. After their purchase of 21st Century Fox, Disney's schedule ...

Between all of the coverage I've been doing for the Tribeca Film Festival, I needed a break from the sea shanties, cannibalism, and organ trafficking. So in between screenings, I would find a nice little hobbit hole and queue up some episod...

"Avengers assemble" is a stupid line. Actually, it's a stupid line when spoken out loud. In comics it's a great line. You've got the alliteration of the two As lining up in print. It rolls across the eyes when read and you can do some great...

French director Eva Husson isn’t one to shy away from danger. Her previous film, Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story) pretty much says all you need to know about her head-on filmmaking style. While watching Girls of the Sun, the story of a...

What if nothing happens? What if a big, massive, terrible event occurs and the world collectively shrugs at it and everything goes on as it was. That's probably what happens most of the time, actually. But in cinema that's not what we see. ...

I feel incredibly fortunate to have been able to attend a select theatrical screening of the Israeli film Trip of Compassion, both from a psychological point of view and as a critic attempting to make objective sense of the deep humanitaria...

Remember that time The Greatest Showman outperformed critics’ expectations and there were theatrical encores galore, and people loved it as it gave them hope and joy and song in their lives? Well, forget all that because it was an inf...

Taking place in Santa Monica, California, the 2019 Independent Spirit Awards took something of a more grounded approach to awards season than the Academy. Although inevitably overshadowed by tonight’s Oscars, they represent an impor...

On the one hand, I’m really pleased to hear that Your Name is getting the praise it deserves in the form of imitation — surely that’s the sincerest form of flattery. On its release in 2016, it was the highest-grossing anim...

(This review is a continuation of my analysis of Les Miserables, Episode Six, Part 1.) The real turning point of episode six, for me, came about midway through. Although I emphasize that I know and love the plot of Les Mis, I genuinely di...

Readers, for the sixth and final(ish) time, welcome back to my review of BBC’s miniseries, Les Miserables - episode 6, part 1. I have so much to say that we're just going to have to slice this up across two posts...all the more ...

Readers, you are welcomed to the fifth week of Victor Hugo-inspired raving! What's eerily prescient about this episode is the way in which it echoes the ongoing real-life protests by the gilet jaunes, a French grassroots activist group ...

There's a certain magic to the perfect childhood movie. It involves the right mix of high adventure, coming of age, poor parental supervision, and the innocence of youth. The 80s was jam-packed with movies that somehow nailed this (or maybe...

Reflecting so far on the miniseries Les Misérables, it’s been a fantastic ride. Jean Valjean has completely turned his life around from convicted felon to mayor and employer of an entire town; afterwards, he makes amends...

It’s been thrown around a lot that this would be the defining performance of Melissa McCarthy’s career, and I have to admit that I entirely believe this to be the case. Ironically, even as unrecognizable as she was, her perfor...

While myself and fellow Flixist staff member Matthew Razak couldn't understand all the praise lavished on Baby Driver, it's hard to deny that writer-director Edgar Wright is a fantastic filmmaker. His work on the Cornetto Trilogy was a mast...

It was back in 2013 that Dome Karukoski first announced his upcoming biopic of the great J.R.R Tolkien -- that’s John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, in case you were wondering. Since then, this picture seems to have slipped a little under th...

To say that I was in shock after this week's episode would be a monumental understatement. Aside from the fact that I have been completely awestruck by Dominic West’s performance throughout the first and second episodes, there ha...

Capernaum made me think that we’re so privileged in the West: there are so many cultures in the world that haven’t had the safety and security -- on a national, local and personal level -- that many of us have experienced. ...

Welcome back! After last week’s pilot, I’m really glad to say that the BBC adaptation of Les Misérables is soaring. Thanks to the enduring patience of Flixist’s US writers, who have given me free reign to cover wh...

While I don’t often review individual shows, this is a unique and rare instance where the worlds of film, musical theatre, literature and TV come together in glorious harmony, or at least like competing relatives forced to be civil ...

It’s been something of a song and dance to get the sixth installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise going, largely because of waning box office figures and increasing apathy for the whole shebang. Back in May of last year, ...

Michael Bay lost it somewhere along the way. Sure, he was always grandiose and absurd, but his action held together and his movies were fun. Look back at any of his classics and they are still exactly that. At one point, he was a good actio...

We're in an era of sequels and remakes, and with 2018 being the biggest box office year in the history of cinema we're going to be getting plenty more. If a studio can bring something old and beloved back they're probably going to do it. It...

After I (perhaps overzealously) reported in the summer that Wes Anderson’s latest film would turn out to be a musical set in 1950s France, it’s with a heavy heart that I have to go back on my words. Now that production is unde...

After multiple plot changes and an entire crew reshuffle since Toy Story 4 was first announced - screenwriters Rashida Jones and Will McCormack have walked away, and controversy surrounding John Lasseter booting him out - nobody seems quite...

I once I had the honor of meeting Eoin Colfer - and he is such a cool guy. Regrettably, I didn’t own a smartphone at the time (he, losing out on the opportunity to connect with his fans, understandably looked sad - I’m sorry, 2...

As if the news of the second LEGO Movie couldn’t get any better, YouTube has teamed up with Warner Bros. for a Black Friday publicity move, streaming The LEGO Movie for free this week - for one day only! On the back of yesterday&rsq...

I honestly got stuck with Instantly Family to review. Sometimes as EIC you gotta take a bullet for the team and let someone else review the big Harry Potter film (review coming later) or whatever. I was all set to take t...