WEEKENDER | The Downside Live x Just For Laughs x Biltmore Cabaret

"It's about all the weird ways hamsters die."

Photo credit | Andrew Kelly/NYT

Mount Pleasant—(February 17, 2025) On a crisp winter long weekend ("When's Joy Day?") night out, I gathered, amidst a jovial audience, to witness the energetic New York-based, Italian-Jewish-American stand-up comedian co-host a live edition of his semi-popular The Downside with Gianmarco Soresi podcast alongside fellow Uncle Function sketch group sidekick, Broadway performer Russell Daniels, on stage at the Biltmore Cabaret in the middle of the annual ten-day Just for Laughs Vancouver comedy festival.

SCENE | Arts Club Deposits 'Primary Trust' x Granville Island Stage

"I miss wanting to win."

Celia Aloma & Andrew Broderick / Photo credit | Mark Halliday

Granville Island—Arts Club Theatre Company brings celebrated African-American playwright Eboni Booth's 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Drama-winning off-Broadway stage play Primary Trust to Vancouver for its Canadian premiere. It stars Andrew Broderick as the Mai Tai-sipping Kenneth (a role originated by William Jackson Harper), a thirty-eight-year-old suburban bookstore clerk who embarks on a journey of self-discovery after being laid off.

REEL | Anthony Mackie Activates 'Captain America: Brave New World'

"Help me rebuild the Avengers."

Marvel Studios

Falcon sidekick Anthony Mackie officially takes over the superhero mantle in the long-awaited but bottom-tier Marvel sequel, Captain America: Brave New World, directed by Julius Onah. After many production delays, creative overhauls, and lengthy reshoots, the new Cap uncovers another deep criminal conspiracy seeded within the deepest depths of the now alien invasion-averse U.S. government.

SCREEN | Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy Protect 'The Gorge'

"You bury enough secrets, the graveyard runs out of room."

Apple Original Films / Skydance

The Gorge stars Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy as hired guns tasked with protecting the undisclosed titular narrow land passage from unnatural creatures beneath while being stationed alone at opposing ends of the mysterious outpost. Genre filmmaker Scott Derrickson directs the remote action horror romance with just barely enough stylish verve to maintain our limited streaming-dominated attention spans but not much else.

CABLE | 'Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man' Spins A Tangled Web

"I truly believe that I have these powers to help people, to protect them."

Marvel Animation

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is Marvel Animation's latest all-ages alternate reality spin on the web-slinging superhero with a strong retro artistic style inspired by Jack Kirby's classic two-dimensional hand-drawn visual designs updated through modern 3D computer technology for a cool "moving comic" look and aesthetic.

REEL | 'Bring Them Down' Shepherds Revenge x TIFF 2024

"Where there's livestock, there's dead stock."

Toronto International Film Festival

First-time writer/director Christopher Andrews makes an assured debut in his tragic Irish revenge drama, Bring Them Down. Told from the points of view of two feuding shepherding families in the remote countryside, the film focuses on the escalation between neighbours from a generational cycle of parental angst, economic uncertainty, and emotional trauma being passed down.

SCREEN | Recollections of a Vietnamese Rebellion – 'New Wave' Culture

"I was chasing a story about a bunch of Vietnamese-American rebels."

Photo credit | Yudi Echevarria/Angel City Press

Chinese-Vietnamese-American director Elizabeth Ai explores the immigrant experience through music in her fun but meaningful documentary, New Wave. All about the influence of the titular genre of music and its effects on the pop culture of the Vietnamese diaspora emerging from 1980s Southern California, the film takes an interesting approach to dissecting the unspoken collective intergenerational trauma of these children of refugees after the fall of Saigon in 1975.

GENRE | Sophie Thatcher Finds Romantic 'Companion'–ship

"The days of you controlling me are over."

New Line Cinema

Veteran television writer Drew Hancock makes an impressive feature horror screenwriting and directing debut in his inventive romantic horror-comedy. Companion carefully employs the tech-savvy culture of our digital age as a contemporary breakup metaphor for unhealthy romantic relationships.

GENRE | Jude Law Chases Down 'The Order' x TIFF 2024

"You preach racial economics. We live it."

Toronto International Film Festival

Australian director Justin Kurzel directs a weary Jude Law as a loner FBI agent hunting the eponymous white supremacist domestic terrorist group active in the Pacific Northwest during the 1980s. Based on the 1989 non-fiction book, The Silent Brotherhood, by Denver journalists Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt, The Order dramatizes the atrocities committed by a real-life splinter group of organized racist separatists committed to the violent insurrection of the United States.