REEL | 'Miami Vice' at 20 – Revisiting the Misunderstood Neo-Noir

"Let's take it to the limit one more time."

Universal Pictures / Forward Pass Productions

Ahead of the upcoming twentieth anniversary of its theatrical release, another reappraisal of methodical filmmaker Michael Mann's initially critically misunderstood but now reappreciated action neo-noir, Miami Vice, is clearly warranted. Based on the iconic 1984-89 NBC undercover cop drama series that he produced but was created by veteran television writer Anthony Yerkovich, the 2006 blockbuster film adaptation flopped hard at the global box office.

GENRE | Staying 'A Safe Distance' Away x SXSW 2026

"Would you like to take a ride on my time machine?"

SXSW Film & TV Festival

A Safe Distance, SFU Film alumnus Gloria Mercer's debut feature-length film, stars local actor Bethany Brown as a woman stranded in the woods by her petulant boyfriend (Chris McNally) after she rebuffs his marriage proposal while on an anniversary camping trip in rural British Columbia, who then becomes both emotionally and criminally entangled with an attractive but dangerous bank-robbing couple (Tandia Mercedes and Cody Kearsley).

SCREEN | Amanda Peet Babysits A 'Fantasy Life' of Anxieties

"I think you're an anxious Jew with mild OCD."

Greenwich Entertainment / Vortex Media

New York actor Matthew Shear writes and directs his first feature film, the charming age-gap comedy, Fantasy Life, starring himself, Amanda Peet (also a producer), and Alessandro Nivola, as a laid-off paralegal (also a law school dropout) struggling to manage his crippling anxiety who ends up babysitting the daughters of his psychiatrist's (Judd Hirsch) depressed former actress daughter-in-law with her aloof musician husband (the psychiatrist's son).

SCENE | Mitch and Murray and Kelli Ogmundson Do No 'Harm'

"Must be all the scissoring!"

Photo credit | Shimon Karmel

Fairview Slopes—Starring the appealing former Animal Control actress Kelli Ogmundson, Mitch and Murray Productions stages the North American premiere of British playwright Phoebe Eclair-Powell's gripping but deeply unsettling one-woman play. Harm is a powerful solo performance that requires the proper stamina and emotional range to truly express our toxic culture of digital discomfort and warped social realities through a single person's experiences.

GENRE | 'Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice' Fixes the Future x SXSW 2026

"I'm you and you're coming with us!"

SXSW Film & TV Festival

Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, starring two Vince Vaughns, one James Marsden, and Eiza González, comedically employs time-travel elements to express its zany action-comedy set in the criminal underworld. Written and directed by BenDavid Grabinski, audiences are dropped into a dangerous night of violence as two bumbling gangsters try to survive a series of strange but escalating events.

WEEKENDER | Vancouver International Wine Festival 2026

"Discover a world of wine."

Waterfront—(March 12 and 13, 2026) Wine lovers gathered together once more for the 47th annual Vancouver Wine Festival and its week-long celebration of alcoholic grape drink-related festivities. Tens of thousands of VIWF attendees wined and dined themselves while attending countless seminars, minglers, pairing meals, and signature tasting events across eight days of fun, known as "the largest wine festival in the Americas."

GENRE | 'Ready or Not 2: Here I Come' Doubles Down x SXSW 2026

"It didn't work out."

SXSW Film & TV Festival

Radio Silence filmmaking duo, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, reunite for their horror-comedy, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come. Six years after the first Ready or Not, the "eat the rich" sequel picks up directly following the memorable end of the original, with Samara Weaving's blood-soaked bride Grace, having just defeated her ne'er-do-well in-laws, when a new cabal of rich, soul-sacrificing oligarchs, the Danforths, kidnap her and her estranged younger sister Faith (Kathryn Newton) before forcing them both to play a new deadly game of hide-and-seek for their sick and twisted amusement.

REEL | Ryan Gosling Saves the Universe – 'Project Hail Mary'

"You just have to find someone to be brave for."

Amazon MGM Studios / Lord Miller Productions

Acclaimed comedic filmmaking duo Phil Lord and Christopher Miller adapt The Martian author and scientist Andy Weir's other grounded science-fiction astronaut novel, Project Hail Mary. "Just Ken" himself, actor/producer Ryan Gosling, stars in the impressive, almost-solo film about a mild-mannered but brilliant high school science teacher who is reluctantly sent into outer space and forced to save the universe in a last-ditch effort to prevent our dying sun from ending life as we know it.

REEL | Busting 'Ghost World' – A Sad Alt-Comic Book Brought to Life

"You guys up for some reggae tonight?"

United Artists / Granada Film

Before the twenty-fifth anniversary of its theatrical release, it's a fine time to revisit the first-ever film based on a graphic novel to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. In 2001, Ghost World translated famed Eightball cartoonist Daniel Clowes' offbeat yet grounded, cult classic alt-comic book (1989-2003) of the same name into live-action, offering a wholly bleak yet highly comedic slice of life, not dissimilar to American Splendor.