This month had some notable theater experiences: I donned 3D glasses for the first time in a while for Sam Raimi’s feminist survival thriller Send Help, caught a 70mm showing of The Testament of Ann Lee, and laughed harder than I have at a comedy in a long time when I saw the best Canadian movie of 2025.
Send Help
United States of America | 2026 | 113m | English
An alright movie that feels like it just now escaped Development Hell after first being written in the #MeToo era and then inexplicably shelved for several years. She’s into survival because how else can she exist in a toxic male workplace—get it? I don’t mind the premise but this still felt strangely lifeless and tame for much of the runtime. Why use so much CGI? I’ve seen the kind of practical effects you’re capable of, Sam Raimi.
I was hoping for something crazier, gorier, riskier. Something with more balls. Actually, that’s the problem: they kept the balls but I wish they didn’t. (That will make sense after you watch this, trust me.)
The Testament of Ann Lee
United States of America, United Kingdom, Sweden, Cyprus, Hungary | 2025 | 137m | English
This is one of those movies where I can ask myself, “If it wasn’t being shown in 70mm, would I have bothered to see it?” and the answer is almost surely, “No.” But credit where it’s due, in addition to its projection format, I was also intrigued by the Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet connection. Those two were behind my favorite film of 2024, The Brutalist, and this seemed like it might more directly speak to themes of Christianity’s place in American history and culture.
The Testament of Ann Lee, while an aesthetically striking film, ultimately didn’t land for me. It takes Ann Lee’s story at its word, which I have mixed feelings about as someone who has strongly experienced the effects of American Protestant culture. I wish it had more to say about this type of thinking or the effect that it has on its adherents, rather than just portray them a-dancin’ and a-shakin’. The musical aspect of the film didn’t wow me, either. While I can admire the production design, not a lot else resonated with me. It was all just a bit too straightforward. The parts that stuck with me the most were the ornate intertitles and beautifully peaceful, meditative end credits. What does that say about the movie? Probably that it’s worth skipping unless you’re really interested in the Shakers for some reason.
Bad Lieutenant
United States of America | 1992 | 96m | English, Spanish
He’s not a bad lieutenant because he abuses his power and position. Not because he abuses every substance he can get his hands on, each day’s hangover compounding upon the last, his body only barely able to hold it together with the faint hope that his redemption is right around the corner—one more World Series game away. He’s a bad lieutenant because he doesn’t arrest the criminals and put them away as his job demands of him—he forgives them and lets them live.
For as grimy and deplorable of a film as it is, Bad Lieutenant surprised me with its essentially Christian morality at the end. The film is not simply anti-police because its protagonist is the most hypocritical and repugnant possible example of that profession, but because its final argument is to say that to fulfill the expected duties of a policeman is to act in direct contradiction with Christ’s message to judge not lest ye be judged. It’s too bad that most Christians will probably be so off-put by the overbearing NC-17 skeeziness of the movie that they’ll turn it off long before its message manages to crystallize.
Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie
Canada | 2025 | 102m | English
It’s been a long time since I laughed this much in a theater—and maybe the most ever that I’ve laughed for a new release in a regular old Cineplex. Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie is something I can easily recommend to everyone—even those like myself who come with no prior exposure to the original web series. As a Toronto resident, however, it held a particular appeal for me because I could identify so many of its settings as streets I’ve walked day after day for years. When I can watch this and say, “Hey, the Paradise Theatre isn’t across from the CTV building!” I know I’m watching something made for me. It’s far and away the best Canadian film of 2025, but—unusually—I can pair that accolade with saying that it’s one of the best films of the year, period.
Scare Out
China | 2026 | 104m | Chinese
This one lost me pretty fast, so none of the twists had any impact on me. I think the average shot length is under one second (not exaggerating) and whipping my gaze back-and-forth from the subtitles at bottom of the screen to the center for the entire runtime wasn’t a great experience. It’s not like there was any need for such a TikTok-brained editing style: most of the movie is exposition. I’m gonna have to file this one under “not for me.”
Face/Off
United States of America | 1997 | 139m | English
That’s gotta be the most entertaining opening 20 minutes of any movie ever. But it doesn’t stop. Every action set piece feels climactic. Then there’s the actual climactic action scene, with the boats: one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen.
Every part of this movie is unbelievable. Nicolas Cage. John Travolta. Cage-as-Travolta, Travolta-as-Cage. I wonder why I didn’t like The Killer or Hard Boiled anywhere as much as this: it’s got shootouts inside of a church, a hospital, a boat scene. But Face/Off is just a masterpiece. So absurd, so crazy, so fun. Best John Woo movie by far. I will recommend this to everyone I can.
Jimmy
France, Turkey | 2024 | 67m | English, French
Unexpectedly, it seemed to help that I went into this with only a surface level knowledge of James Baldwin. That way, I wasn’t let down by this movie’s surface level treatment of James Baldwin as a character or thinker.
Jimmy works best as a stylized collage of images portraying a young man abroad, basking in a dazzling, unfamiliar environment. I assume the shaky, hazy 16mm camera was meant to invoke the 1940s time period, but to me it worked better as framing the series of disconnected, plotless episodes as warm, distant memories—far from precisely remembered but beloved nonetheless. I enjoyed the film the most when I let it lull me into memories of my own time spent abroad in my early twenties. I connected to the sense of wonder and optimism, and the loneliness of most of the scenes was not lost on me.
Just don’t pay too close attention to the backgrounds! While a period-accurate taxi picks young Jimmy up to drive him into the heart of Paris, the scores of modern day cars driving alongside him quickly break the illusion that we’re watching film of James Baldwin from almost a century ago. I wonder if this movie would have worked better if we dropped the pretense that this is supposedly old-timey footage and just embraced the idea that this protagonist is a contemporary hipster who prefers to articulate his thoughts on a typewriter after coming back to his hotel room from a cafe full of teens on smartphones.
I also need to mention the score—easily the best part of the film. The swelling orchestral strings overtop vibrant jazz drumming worked incredibly well in lending gravitas to this footage.
Magellan
Philippines, Portugal, Spain, France, Taiwan | 2025 | 164m | Portuguese, Spanish, French, Cebuano
I was so impressed by West Side Avenue when I watched it last April that I considered myself an immediate fan of director Lav Diaz. I was excited when I saw that he had a new film debuting at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival. While I didn’t get the chance to see Magellan at the festival, I decided that I would take advantage of its limited theatrical showing at the TIFF Lightbox.
With this previous exposure to Lav Diaz’s directorial style, I can’t claim that I was bamboozled by the ponderous editing and glacial pace of Magellan. This is from one of the figureheads of “Slow Cinema,” after all. But the unhurried pace of the five-hour-long West Side Avenue didn’t bother me—in fact, I think it was necessary to fully flesh out the rich panorama of that setting and large cast of characters. The (comparatively slight) two hours and forty minutes of Magellan do not achieve anything close to the former’s depth. Maybe it’s the smaller cast of characters, only a couple of whom are fleshed out. Maybe it’s the director’s stubborn refusal to deviate from a stationary camera, which sucks the life out of many of the scenes. (Partway through, I found myself daydreaming of other movies that actually move their cameras around a scene, telling a story through motion—it seemed almost unbelievable that such exciting films could exist.) Often, the only movement on screen is in the facial expressions of a single character, sitting in the distance, barely visible.
Just about every scene could have been shortened by as much as half. In fact, the film would have been much stronger for it. There’s no doubt that many of these shots are beautifully composed and the overall production design is impressive, but when each and every scene drags on… and on… and on some more… they wear out their welcome and convey, more than anything, a self-indulgent editing style overeager to declare how Big and Important this movie is. The Slow Cinema approach works great under the right circumstances, but Magellan, unfortunately, is not an example of that.
Hard Eight
United States of America | 1996 | 102m | English
I’m glad to see more of Paul Thomas Anderson’s filmography, but I think he hadn’t yet developed his fast-paced, energetic style until after Hard Eight. It felt just a bit too slow most of the time for me. It’s too bad Amazon Prime Video won’t let you bump up the playback speed like the Criterion Channel and YouTube apps do.
The cast is pretty stacked, and many of the performances are good. Philip Baker Hall carries the movie, as he ought to as the lead. But I liked Samuel L. Jackson and the great one-off scene with Philip Seymour Hoffman. John C Reilly didn’t blow me away. The music, when it was there, was really good. Overall, though, it’s a “people standing around talking” movie that lacks the energy and dynamic camerawork that makes so many of PTA’s later movies so compelling.
Other Movies I Saw This Month
- Ben-Hur (1959) [4/5]
- The Handmaiden (2016) [2.5/5]
- I’m Gonna Git You Sucka (1988) [3/5]
- Scream 4 (2011) [2.5/5]
Best Movies I Saw This Month
- Face/Off
- Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie
- Ben-Hur
- Bad Lieutenant
Worst Movie I Saw This Month
- Scare Out
Josh Anderson 