Task

It's no easy task (see what I did there) to make a limited series this good. It's exceptional. HBO's Task is a seven-part crime drama starring Mark Ruffalo as Tom, a former priest turned FBI agent. He is pulled off his desk job as a job-fair career-recruiter to lead a task force. His boss (Martha Plimpton) is short-staffed and needs Tom, even though he's going through a dark family time. He is to lead a four-person task force to track a gang of bandits who are knocking off drug houses, owned by a motorcycle club called the Dark Hearts (a Hells Angels type club). The other half of the show is Robbie (Tom Pelphrey) who is performing these robberies. There are a lot of moving parts to this show and many characters, so pay attention. The thing that distinguishes it from other crime-dramas is its level of emotional depth. The characters here are fully formed, 3D people, flawed and real. The writing is exceptional. I have loved Ruffalo since I laid eyes on him in You Can Count on Me. I think this is one of his best performances to date - an ex-priest who has lost his faith and his ability to forgive. And Tom Pelphrey, who I'm not as familiar with is equally great as a man who is trying to provide for his family but is out of his depth. This is a show about family, commitment, loss, redemption, and love. The ending of this series left me in tears. I recommend you step up and perform this Task immediately. Catch it streaming on HBO/CRAVE or go rent it from Movies 'N Stuff. 

Messy

Alexi Wasser is the writer, director, and star of her first feature, Messy, which is anything but. With a tidy little runtime of 90 minutes, it doesn't overstay it's welcome. She plays Stella, a self-proclaimed sex and love addict who has just moved to New York City and is looking for work as a writer. I have a soft spot for writer protagonists. Stella is like someone permanently stuck in a manic state and doesn't seem to have a filter. The stuff Stella spews out to total strangers, usually before sleeping with them, is remarkable, and often funny as hell. Her story about going to the beach and discovering an unpleasant odour is particularly memorable - and hilariously uncomfortable. Hats off to Alexi Wasser - brilliant. And brave - she spends at least half the film topless in bed with various men.  If Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank, Bird) were to make a feminist Woody Allen comedy (am I allowed to say that? - ha), I think it would look exactly like Wasser's Messy. This is Bright Lights, Big Sex in the City. This is a low-budget but very smart film and I hope, like Stella, it finds some love. Catch it streaming on Prime.  

Honey Bunch

You might need therapy after this one! Honey Bunch is a new Canadian horror film which reminded me of Brandon Cronenberg's Infinity Pool if it were crossed with The Stepford Wives. It's also a love story. What's it all about? Well, without giving too much away, it's about Homer (Ben Petrie) who is accompanying his wife Diana (Grace Glowicki) to a kind of wellness recovery center after she has awoken from a coma. Homer and Diana were in a terrible car accident. There is another couple at the wellness center as well, and together they go through physical and mental recovery exercises. But is everything on the up and up? Diana is getting the feeling that something isn't quite right? What are Homer and this creepy place up to? So the mystery unfolds. Co-writers and co-directors, Dusty Mancinelli and Madeleine Sims-Fewer, have created a film which is Hitchcockian, bonkers, and romantic as hell! Watching Homer sing to his wife in a hospital bed might be the most romantic and bizzarro thing you will see this year. I was in awe of what I was watching. Equally fun is listening to Diana and Homer express all the ways they would die for each other (often in the most brutal and painful ways). Honey Bunch definitely won't be for everyone but it's my kind of therapy - the kind that whispers sweet nothings while holding a knife behind its back. Catch it in theatres or go rent it from Movies 'N Stuff when available. 

Checkpoint Zoo

This documentary would make a fabulous Hollywood movie. That said, we don't need it because we have this wonderful film already. This is the story of the 2022 Russian invasion into Ukraine as it pertains to the city of Kharkiv and the Feldman Ecopark Zoo, which lies just outside. When Russia invaded, the zoo was caught between the two warring front lines, a no man's land. The zoo was abandoned and the 5000 animals were left to starve to death. This is the story of how a small group of zoo workers and a handful of volunteers went about feeding and looking after these animals while under constant shelling, and how they tried to rescue as many animals as they could. This isn't just an animal story, it's a story of human compassion in a time when certain humans were behaving at their worst. It's a story of courage and compassion and if you cried during Hamnet, you might want to bring along a tissue. The zoo's owner, Oleksandr Feldman, is a character (like if Danny DeVito was in Uncut Gems) but a compassionate one who would do anything to save his animals. The film doesn't go into the morality of having zoos in the first place, but that's not what the film is about. With the war still raging on and the world feeling like it's in a spiraling, depressive state, Checkpoint Zoo feels like the uplifting monkey business we could use right now. Catch it at the Mayfair or Bytowne or rent it from Movies 'N Stuff, if and when possible.  

Sound of Falling

This slow, arty, two-and-a-half-hour, subtitled German film, which is a meditation on death (and sex) is certainly not going to be everyone's cup of tea. However it is mine,

- a big pot of it - and it flew by, utterly captivating. Set on a farm with an overlapping muti-generational story line, we flip-flop between four different timelines (around 1910, WWII, sometime in the '80s, and present day). There is no clear narrative except maybe the mystery of an amputated leg. The colours of this film are black and eggshell; straw yellow; sun-bleached grey barn board; 50 shades of dirt; dark plum; and all things cattle, horse, and beige pig. Sound of Falling captures wonderful family dynamics that feel reminiscent of Fellini - including a family game of riding a bicycle and trying to pick an eel out of a tub to toss it into another (those wacky Europeans and their eel-bike games). And then there is the suicidal daydreams - the "what ifs." Sound of Falling is filled with these. What if I were to. . . I won't spoil the death fantasies of young German girls for you. The images linger - far more memorable and haunting than any horror film, yet without the graphic violence. I'm in awe of the fact that this film exists. It's another example of why I go to the movies. Catch this at the Mayfair or Bytowne here in Ottawa or go rent it from Movies 'N Stuff when it becomes available. 

A Desert

There have been lots of films about voyeurism. Merriam-Webster defines it as (a) the practice of obtaining sexual gratification from observing others and (b) the practice of taking pleasure in observing something private, sordid, or scandalous

As movie watchers, we all fall into the later category. Hitchcock's Rear Window, Brian De Palma's Body Double, Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas, to name a few, have overlapping themes about our collective desire to watch others. Sitting in the dark watching - to see a film is to be a pervert (you heard it here first folks - ha). So A Desert falls into this bucket. It also falls into the "psycho in the dessert", film noir category - think of films such as, Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Wild at Heart, and No Country for Old Men. A Desert is the debut film from writer and director, Joshua Erkman. It's a banger. Visually it's stunning. What's it about? It's about a photographer Alex Clark (Kai Lennox) who is on a spiritual/artist journey to re-find himself by taking pictures of abandoned and dilapidated buildings as he did for his first book of photography. At a motel he runs into Renny (Zachary Ray Sherman)  and Susie Q (Ashley Smith) who seem to have walked out of the Natural Born Killers audition. As you might imagine, things go off the rails. There is a private detective played by David Yow and Alex's wife, played by Sarah Lind. These five actors were utterly fabulous - I was very impressed. For a debut film with a relatively unknown cast, A Desert feels like it ranks up there with some of the best of the genre. This horror film is one I know you want to watch, you perv! Streaming now on Shudder.  

Pluribus

If I had to say what my favourite TV shows of all time were, I would list the original Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, and Columbo. More contemporary favourites have been LOST, Battlestar Galactica (the reboot), Severance, 30 Coins, The Bear, Servant, The White Lotus, Black Summer, and Breaking Bad - Vince Gilligan's creation. He went on to make Better Call Saul, a Breaking Bad spin-off, which turned out to be just as popular. I tried to like it, but I just couldn't. Numerous people have told me I need to go back because it's great. I won't. Breaking Bad was perfect, tied with a baby blue bow. And I thought, Vince Gilligan was a name I wouldn't hear from again. Wrong. Enter Pluribus. Not a great title - certainly doesn't roll off the tongue easily. Whatever. It's my new favourite show to watch. I went in cold. Didn't know what it was about. I suggest you do the same. Spoiler Alert, if you continue to read, I will tell you a little about what the show is. Again, I would stop reading and come back after the first episode. So, if you are reading, you have already seen the show or you are one of those people who reads the last chapter or last few pages of a book so you know how it will end. Shame on you! Where is the mystery in that? Right? Bah, whatever. So, if you know the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, it's kind of like that, except it's as if the aliens everyone turns into were from a New Age cult of brainwashed happy people. Actor Rhea Seehorn plays Carol Sturka, a woman who is unaffected by the alien body snatching virus and is trying to navigate her new world. It's fantastic. Funny. Smart. Binge-worthy. Catch  it Streaming on Apple + or rent it from Movies 'N Stuff.