VIFF 2025 | Alexander Skarsgård Dominates 'Pillion'

"I have an aptitude for devotion."

Vancouver International Film Festival

VIFF 2025—Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling star in English filmmaker Harry Lighton's explicit yet crowd-pleasing directorial debut, Pillion, based on British author Adam Mars-Jones' 2020 novel Box Hill. Framed as a stylish, BDSM-themed gay biker romance, both actors are fearless yet earnestly sweet in their tender but often graphic courtship.

REEL | Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo Steal 'Crime 101'

"I suggest you load it."

Amazon MGM Studios / Working Title Films

English true-crime documentarian Bart Layton adapts pulp novelist Don Winslow's 2020 novella of the same name. Crime 101 stars frequent Avengers co-stars, Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo, as our opposing criminal and cop characters. Their hard-boiled film adaptation cleverly revolves around a series of jewel heists along the titular 101 Freeway in Los Angeles while clearly being inspired by the many films of director Michael Mann, particularly Heat.

REEL | Sam Rockwell Terminates 'Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die'

"I am from the future and all of this goes horribly wrong!"

Briarcliff Entertainment / Constantin Film

After nearly a decade in director's jail, blockbuster filmmaker Gore Verbinski returns with his wacky sci-fi adventure, the bombastic but retro-futuristic Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die. Starring Sam Rockwell as an unhoused-looking time-traveller from the future, who arrives suddenly in a Los Angeles diner, trying to prevent a rogue A.I. apocalypse from destroying the world—think Terminator meets Everything Everywhere All at Once.

REEL | 'Brat' Summer Forever – Charli XCX Captures 'The Moment'

"It's all cringe."

A24 / VVS Films

Provocative British pop superstar Charli XCX (aka Charlotte Emma Aitchison) plays a fictionalized version of herself in Scottish music video director and celebrity photographer Aidan Zamiri's amusingly frank mockumentary about the music industry's stark vanity. Filmed during the height the Brat 2024 Arena Tour, The Moment takes the Brat Summer phenomenon that captured the popular culture zeitgeist to extreme lengths after her sixth studio album release.

SCREEN | 'Spring After Spring' Parades Around Chinatown x VAFF 2025

"She wanted to see us thrive."

Vancouver Asian Film Festival

Chinese-Peruvian-Canadian local filmmaker Jon Chiang, making his feature debut, directs Spring After Spring, a Vancouver Chinatown-based documentary following three remarkable dancer sisters, Anabel, Val, and Lisa Ho. They reunite to lead the annual Lunar New Year Parade after the death of their mother, dedicated community leader and dance teacher Madame Maria Mimie Ho.

CABLE | 'Wonder Man' Casts Yahya Abdul-Mateen II on Disney+

"Let your misery drive the bus."

Marvel Television

Wonder Man, Marvel's self-referential miniseries adaptation of the Hollywood-themed superhero, created for television by Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton and television writer Andrew Guest, stars the imposing but affable Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as a struggling, fame-seeking actor hoping to reboot the eponymous role—think The Studio set in the MCU—while coincidentally being imbued with pure "ionic" superhuman strength and energy powers in a fresh, meta take on the genre.

GENRE | Rachel McAdams Saves Dylan O'Brien's Bacon – 'Send Help'

"Don't ever mistake my kindness for weakness."

20th Century Studios

Master of horror-comedy Sam Raimi directs the twisted desert island survival thriller, Send Help, starring Rachel McAdams and Dylan O'Brien as our mismatched but stranded co-workers. Essentially a Cast Away-type two-hander with shades of Triangle of Sadness that aims to reverse common but sexist gender roles in the workplace, Raimi's gnarly film mines so many wildly fun genre thrills by slyly toying with our expectations.

SCREEN | Touring the 'Islands' – A Sunshine Noir

"I'm not running away from anything."

Greenwich Entertainment / Vortex Media

Brit actors, Sam Riley and Stacy Martin, star in German director Jan-Ole Gerster's seductively sun-soaked, Hitchcockian tennis noir thriller, the appropriately titled Islands. Set on the eponymous Canary Islands, Riley's burned-out hotel resort tennis pro, Tom, gets entangled with a troubled English tourist couple's unhappy marriage to uneasy consequences.

SCREEN | Kristen Stewart Swims Past 'The Chronology of Water'

"We will publish or perish together!"

The Forge

Talented actress turned first-time feature filmmaker Kristen Stewart directs Imogen Poots in her riveting portrayal of Oregon-based, bestselling author Lidia Yuknavitch in a hazy film adaptation of the latter's 2011 cult memoir, The Chronology of Water. Framed around a tumultuous family life centred on parental abuse leading to both substance and sex addiction before a promising competitive swimming career, the film is a narratively ambitious portrait of personal salvation.