Presumed guilty. Films reviewed: Mercy, A Private Life PLUS Canada’s Top Ten
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This week, I’m talking about two new movies, both mysteries, about professionals forced to deal with crime that affects their personal lives. There’s a psychiatrist in Paris who uncovers a crime, and a police detective in LA blamed for a crime.
But before that I’m talking about a new series of Canadian films featured at TIFF in February.
Canada’s Top Ten
…is an annual series where programmers choose the best movies made in the previous year. While I haven’t seen all of them, a few really stand out. If you’re a regular listener to this show you may have heard my interviews last fall with Kid Koala about his 
delightful futuristic animated kids’ film Space Cadet, and Inuit auteur Zacharias Kunuk’s amazing timeless folk tale Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband), as well as my review of Matt Johnson’s hilarious, Nirvanna: the Band, the Show, the Movie. But let me tell you about a couple more that should not be missed.
Blue Heron is director Sophy Romvari’s first feature. It’s about a young artistic couple and their kids who immigrate from Hungary to a small lakeside town in Canada. It’s seen through the eyes of a little girl whose troubled teenaged brother is “acting out”. It also picks up the story, and the characters’ lives, decades later. While it might sound like a mundane drama, it’s actually a heart-wrenching story of one troubled family.
And Mile End Kicks is Chandler Levack’s sophomore follow up to her quirky and tender I Like Movies in 2022. This one’s about a budding rock critic in 2011 Toronto, who sets off to discover Montreal with just a contract in her hand to write a book about Allan’s Morissette. This movie is brilliant and cringey and hilarious, a coming-of-age dramedy about a woman trying to survive within the male dominated world of rock.
These are just two of the movies you must check out at Canada’s Top Ten.
Mercy
Dir: Timur Bekmambetov (Ben Hur)
It’s Los Angeles in the near future, and Chris Raven (Chris Pratt) is a real mess. He is bruised, battered and hungover from a drinking binge the night before… and has no recollection of the past 24 hours. He’s also in an unfamiliar place, a large, empty room, facing a giant video screen. He’s shackled to a chair with electronic instruments attached to his head. He is in the Mercy department, a new experimental court system, where a single person serves as the judge, jury… and executioner. That person is Judge Maddox (Rebecca Ferguson) a woman with straight hair and severe features. Why is Chris there? He’s been charged with first degree murder and has exactly 90 minutes to convince the judge that he’s not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt; if not, he will be executed in that chair. Oh! One more thing: Judge Maddox is actually a computer generated AI avatar, not a real human.
But Chris has a few cards up his sleeve. He’s a lieutenant police detective, so he knows all the legal procedures. Not only that, he and his partner created the Mercy system, so he knows all about it. But he never thought he’d be on the receiving end. Luckily, he has all the surveillance — CCTV, social networks, everyone’s cel phones and complete 
government, medical and legal histories — at his shackled fingertips. The bad news is, he seems to have motive, means and opportunity to do the killing, with no other obvious suspects. Can Chris Raven think his way out of this mess in the next 90 minutes? And can he put his destiny in the hands of a soulless, digital simulacrum?
Mercy is a science-fiction police procedural where a falsely accused cop must solve a crime remotely in a very short period of time. It’s also a mystery/action thriller about a dystopian future where machines hold the final authority. The “thrilling” parts are all tied to a constant timed countdown on the screen — like the old TV series “24” — and a “rating” of guilt; a percentage that goes up and down depending on the evidence he presents to prove his innocence.
The problem with this movie is it feels like it was made on someone’s telephone. There’s virtually no physical interaction between any of the various characters throughout the film, just talking heads on the screen, reached by cel. I understand why they had to film movies like that during COVID, but what possible reason could there be for doing it now? I saw it in 3-D, but when all you see are smaller flat screens projected on to larger ones, what’s the point? On the plus side are the few scenes where Raven’s partner Jaq (Kali Reis) zooms around on her flying motorcycle, searching for the bad guys — that part was awesome! And my interest never wavers over the course of the movie. I like the constant countdown, and the steps they take to solve the mysteries. But what I thought would be a subversive Robocop-style indictment of both runaway government surveillance and the looming dangers of AI, instead ends up as a run-of-the-mill police story.
Mercy may hold your attention, but don’t expect anything more.
A Private Life
Dir: Rebecca Zlotowski
It’s a posh arrondissement in present-day Paris. Lilian Steiner (Jodie Foster) is a successful American Freudian psychotherapist who runs her practice all alone, in a clinic attached to her apartment. She has no trouble filling her roster with well-to-do patients seeking psychoanalysis. But recently, a number of bad things happen all at once. A new neighbour plays loud music during office hours, disturbing her clients. One longtime patient suddenly quits, calling her a fraud after he claims a hypnotist cured him of smoking in less than an hour. Another regular misses her appointments twice in a row without telling her — unheard of. Turns out Paula Cohen-Solal is dead, and when she shows up at her shiva, Paula’s husband Simon (Mathieu Amalric) loudly denounces Lilian as the reason his wife killed herself. This combination of events breaks down Lilian’s cool demeanour; to her horror, tears keep rolling down her cheeks at inappropriate times.
She visits her eye doctor — who happens to be her ex-husband Gabi (Daniel Auteuil) — to solve this medical dilemma. He says there are no physical reasons for her tears. So net she visits the hypnotist her angry patient told her about. She manages to stop her tears but, at the same time, lets loose a series of psychosexual dreams and visions of past lives that haunt Lilian’s mind. And she becomes convinced that Paula did not commit suicide but was murdered. And when she decides to investigate, someone breaks into her clinic and steals no money, just certain files. Who is behind the killing? Was there more than just a doctor/patient relationship between Paula and Lilian? And now that she and her ex-
husband Gabi are spending time together again, could be this be the start of a new relationship?
A Private Life is a mystery thriller set within the world of Parisian psychotherapy, it’s devotees, their families and their unspoken private lives. It’s presented in a low-key but ambiguous manner: you’re never quite sure whether a crime took place or even whether what you’re watching is real. It presents infidelity, hidden passions, and personal relations, alongside dreams, fantasies and psychological visions. Sort of a Murder She Wrote on mushrooms. Good acting by the large ensemble cast, especially Jodie Foster, Daniel Auteuil, Virginie Efira as the dead Paula and Sophie Guillemin as the enigmatic hypnotist.
While A Private Life didn’t blow me away, I quite enjoyed both the story and watching Jodie Foster complètement en français.
A Private Life and Mercy both open in Toronto this weekend; check your local listings. And tickets are now available for Canada’s Top Ten, showing at TIFF in February.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Kill, Pray, Dead? Films reviewed: All You Need is Kill, Dead Man’s Wire, The Testament of Ann Lee
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This week, I’m looking at three great new movies with terrifying titles. There’s a religious leader giving her last will and testament, a hostage-taker with populist appeal, and a futuristic killer… who might save the planet.
All You Need is Kill
Co-Dir: Ken’ichirô Akimoto, Yukinori Nakamura
It’s the near future in a sparsely-populated, rural part of Japan. Rita (Ai Mikami) is a young woman waking up to another day. She has bright red hair in a pageboy haircut, with a jaded look on her face. She volunteers at a government project to care for the roots and branches of a giant plant. Exactly one year earlier, an enormous piece of vegetation — known as Darol — landed there from outer space and spread its tentacles for miles in all directions. The mother plant is a giant tower with colourful pointed leaves. It seems weird but harmless, and the volunteers, who wear helmeted space suits, scrub clean its enormous roots each day. Until today, when suddenly the plant spits out a small army of giant-legged flowers — like colourful daisies with hairy petals — resulting in mayhem,destruction and death. Only Rita fights back, killing one of the flowers before being overwhelmed by an intense wave of red light.
Next thing you know, she’s waking up in bed again as if nothing ever happened! Sure enough everyone else at work is alive and well, with no memories of the previous day. Was it just a dream? No, the daisy-monsters attack again, and 
everybody — including Rita — dies. This repeats over and over, like a never-ending groundhog day. She tries to escape, tp hide, she trains herself on new fighting techniques she even climbs into an enormous metal exoskeleton… but she always dies in the end.
Life and resistance seem futile, with the red tentacles poised to colonize the earth. Until one day she spots a guy standing alone, observing her with a tiny, flying drone. She is angry and upset… until he tells her, he’s just like her, remembering each day too. And Rita is his hero. Keiji (Natsuki Hanae) is a geek who likes playing computer games and gazing at the stars, keeping himself far removed from danger. But together… can they defeat these awful killer daisies, and save the earth?
All You Need is Kill is an animated, science fiction fantasy, with a bit of unexpected romance thrown in. Based on a Japanese novella by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, it’s already been made into a Hollywood sci-fi action movie, Edge of Tomorrow with Tom Cruise… This one has a very different feel and a female lead. I like the noir mood, set against endless highways and deserted gas stations (rather than quaint Japanese towns). And I love the Rita character as the unflappable, existential heroine, full of nihilistic tendencies. But most of all, I love the art and animation, the colour blast of psychedelic images and cool settings.
All you Need is Kill is satisfying sci-fi anime, without any cheap AI gimmicks.
Dead Man’s Wire
Dir: Gus Van Sant
It’s a cold winter day in Indianapolis in 1977. Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård: Nosferatu, The Crow, John Wick 4) is in a downtown high-rise. He has an appointment with the head of Meridian Mortgage, the bank he deals with. But M.L.
Hall (Al Pacino), the CEO, is not available: he’s in Florida, drinking cocktails and nibbling burritos. So the vice-president, ML’s son, Dick (Dacre Montgomery) says he’ll meet with him instead. But Tony has a bone to pick. A rather big one. He owned a plot of land he was going to turn into a shopping mall, until he was double-crossed by ML Hall, sabotaging his plans, ruining his life and swindling him out of his fortune. He wants revenge, restitution for the money he lost and a sincere apology. So he walks out of the building with a long gun wired to Dick Hall’s head (what’s known as a dead man’s wire). Any false move… kaboom!
But by this point, the cops have surrounded the building with snipers ready to kill. A cub reporter (Myha’la) who previously only did human interest stories, is there with her news van, scooping the story with eyewitness updates. And in the background is the smouldering Voice of Indianapolis (Coleman Domingo) on transistor and car radios everywhere. Tony manages to take Dick to his apartment, armed with 
explosives, and release his demands. But can a regular guy take on a City Hall, a powerful bank and the police force… and survive?
Dead Man’s Wire is a dramatization of a true event that gripped a city in the 1970s. There’s a definite Luigi Mangione feel to it, with a “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” vibe, of an ordinary person taking on a corrupt system. The acting is excellent. Bill Skarsgård — with his nervous moustache — wavers between funny and intense, Dacre Montgomery (he played Billy Hargrove in Stranger Things) transforms from terrified Dad to resigned hostage, and Al Pacino manages to convey the repulsiveness of his character in just a few minutes of screen time.
Gus Van Sant is one of the best American directors, but he hasn’t been making many movies — this is his first one in eight years. And though this is a true crime thriller, he aims toward character study rather than cheap, excitement. It’s a period piece and he gets that 1970s midwest urban feel spot on, but also feels oddly appropriate for right now.
And despite the provocative title, Dead Man’s Wire is probably the most laid-back, True Crime thriller you’ll ever see.
The Testament of Ann Lee
Co-Wri/Dir: Mona Fastvold (The World to Come)
It’s Manchester, England in the mid-18th century. Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried: The Housemaid, Seven Veils, First Reformed, Gringo, Lovelace, Red Riding Hood) is a little girl living a miserable life. She sleeps in a room with a dozen others, including her parents having sex. Put to work in a factory at a very early age — there are no child labour laws — she receives virtually no schooling outside of religious lessons. But she goes out of her way to protect her even younger brother William (Lewis Pullman: The Stranger Prey at Night, The Starling Girl). She eventually marries, but despite repeated tries with her new husband Abraham (Christopher Abbott), all their children die as infants. She joins a new religion, starts preaching to a flock, and begins to gain followers. And though she is childless her devotees call her Mother Lee. After increasingly brutal persecution, she emigrates to the American colonies, alongside her brother and her flock (sponsored by a rich parishioner).
They are called the Shakers, for the ecstatic dancing that is 
central to their religion. They force all sins from their bodies by expelling puffs of air even as they dance and writhe in a sexual-seeming way. They sing songs of joy and gratitude, hold egalitarian meetings and are similar to the Quakers, with one crucial difference: No more sex of any kind. Devotees are not born as Shakers they join them in their own free will. As popularity grows, they form colonies all across New England. They become known for their skillful carpentry (furniture made without nails or glue) weaving, and simple, pure lifestyles. Men and women are treated equally, and believe the Messiah will return in female form. But other sects brand them as witches and heretics, and start to attack them and burn down their places of worship. What will happen to Ann Lee and her followers in the new world?
The Testament of Ann Lee is a sweeping, epic historical drama about the Shakers and their founder Ann Lee. It’s also musical, with characters breaking into religious songs and chants throughout the film. They dress in lovely white dresses, and dance in semi-orgasmic circles of ecstasy. The beauty of this story and richness of the characters is portrayed in visually, audibly and emotionally stunning ways. Even the fonts used in the credits are attractive. Which is not surprising, since Fastvold and her creative partner Brady Corbet brought us The Brutalist last year. One small quibble: Amanda Seyfried’s attempt at a Manchester accent. Which she more than made up for in her passionate — and enigmatic — portrayal of Ann Lee.
Highly informative and exquisitely crafted, The Testament of Ann Lee is definitely worth seeing.
The Testament of Ann Lee, Dead Man’s Wire and All You Need is Kill all open in Toronto this weekend; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks with Mascha Schilinski about Sound of Falling
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
There’s an old farmhouse near a river somewhere in Northern Germany where Alma, a little girl with blonde hair plays practical jokes on her maid; adolescent Erika stares longingly at a naked man with one leg; a brash young Angelika asserts her sexuality even as she hides her pain; and naive Lenka navigates her parents’ new home. All of this in and around a looming, ancient farmhouse full of repressed memories of violence and trauma… but separated by generations: WWI in the 1910s, the end of WWII in the 1940s, in East Germany in the1980s and the present day. Each chapter punctuated by a terrible thud, the sound of falling.
Sound of Falling is a complex, intricate and powerful new movie, that looks at a century of life in rural Northern 
Germany through the eyes of four girls and women, interweaving their separate stories throughout the entire film. It’s tender and horrifying, mundane and jaw-dropping. It’s co-written and directed by award-winning Berlin filmmaker Mascha Schilinski, her first feature after studying cinema at the Filmschule Hamburg and direction at the Film Academy Baden-Württemberg. Her movie won the prestigious Jury Prize at Cannes, played at TIFF and is on the 2026 Oscar shortlist for Best International Feature.
I spoke with Mascha in Los Angeles via ZOOM.
Sound of Falling opens theatrically in Canada on January 23rd, 2026.
Different. Films reviewed: Father Mother Sister Brother, Primate, The Choral
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This week I’m looking at three very different movies from diverse genres: historical drama, suspense horror, and an arthouse tryptic. There’s a choir in England, a killer chimp in Hawaii, and three sets of adults visiting their parents in the US, France and Ireland.
Father Mother Sister Brother
Wri/Dir: Jim Jarmusch (Only Livers Left Alive, Paterson)
Jeff (Adam Driver: Ferrari, White Noise, House of Gucci, Marriage Story, The Report, Black KKKlansman, Paterson, Hungry Hearts, ) and Emily (Mayim Bialik) are on a long road trip to visit their dad (Tom Waites: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, The Old Man & the Gun ). They’re worried about him: his health, well-being and financial status, ever since their mom — his wife — died. Maybe he needs some money? He lives in a remote wooden house beside a frozen pond, somewhere in New England. But their annual visits are always short, awkward and perfunctory. Meanwhile, in Dublin, Ireland, two sisters Lilith (Vicky Krieps: The There Musketeers, Old ) and Timothea (Cate Blanchett: Black Bag, Borderlands, Tar, Nightmare Alley, Don’t Look Up, Stateless, Truth, Blue Jasmine, Hanna,) are visiting their Mom (Charlotte Rampling: Benedetta, The Sense of an Ending, 45 Years, ) for high tea. She lives in an elegant home where they meet once a year. But the adult daughters are too busy playing pranks and hiding secrets to pay much attention to their Mom’s petits fours. And sister and brother Skye and Billy (Indya Moore, Luka Sabbat) are paying a final visit to their late parents’ long-time flat in Paris after visiting the family storage locker. Can parents ever understand their kids? Are adult children really grow up? And can family dynamics 
ever evolve past childhood?
Father Mother Sister Brother is a triptych that looks at three sets of families in sequence: uptight, white-bread American sister-brothers with a cooler dad, eccentric sisters still terrified of their very chill mom, and hip Black-American sister-brothers from Paris whose much cooler parents recently died in an accident. The segments all share an unusual number of themes: Long drives, short visits, skateboarders on the street, discussions about water, whether a certain brand of wristwatch they’re wearing is real or counterfeit. So my immediate impression is it has great acting — Vicky Krieps, Tom Waits, Cate Blanchett, and Charlotte Rampling! I love Jarmusch’s distinctive style and wonderful cinematography, its visual and musical dynamics with a well-planned pace. But it’s way too repetitive to the point where it felt like an extended product-placement for Rolex. Once is cute, twice is funny, three times is just repetitive. But when I though about it some more, a week afterwards, I started to appreciate it as a baroque theme and variation, building on the original chapter but with slightly new twists each time. A slice-of-life from each family, put together to form a still life, a triptych.
Does it work? I’ll give it a qualified yes. It’s not my favourite Jim Jarmusch film, too long, too slow, too repetitive, but it does leave you with enough images to make it worth seeing.
The Choral
Dir: Nicholas Hytner
It’s a one-factory town in England during WWI. The local industrialist sponsors a chorus each year at Christmastime, there’s a noticeable dearth in participants with all the young men rushing off to join the army. Gone too is their chorus master. So they are forced to compromise and rehire someone controversial from their past, a certain Mr Guthrie (Ralph Fiennes: The Return, Conclave, A Bigger Splash). Though well- known in the music world, he carries a stain: he only recently returned from the Kaiser’s Germany, the enemy his country is fighting. The fact he had a male lover in Germany is also suspect but never spoken of. Another problem is what can they sing? All the local favourites are written by Bach, Brahms, Beethoven or Handel, Germans all. They decide to perform The Dream of Gerontius — an Oratorio by Elgar who A) is still alive, and B) still English.
Next they hold auditions and manage to find one returned soldier missing an arm, but with a angelic voice (Jacob Dudman), a young woman in the Salvation Army named Mary (Amara Okereke) whose notes are pure as the driven snow, and their benefactor — the industrialist — who sings an 
adequate baritone. But can the chorus be ready in time? And what will they do when Elgar himself shows up?
The Choral is a wonderful period drama about trying to put on a show despite all the hurdles in their way. With a large ensemble cast, it follows diverse storielines and covers wide ground: local prejudices, patriotism and hatred, first sexual experiences, love, valour, passion, rejection… and the dark cloud of war hanging over it all. I love the music, the acting, 
cinematography, but the movie itself is even bigger than the sum of its parts. I think we owe that to the writer, Alan Bennett, and the director Nicholas Hytner. You may be familiar with their past collaborations on stage and screen: The History Boys, The Madness of King George, and The Old Lady in the Van, to name a few. Like them the Choral is once again both grand and intimate, dealing with heavy issues but always light and clever.
I quite enjoyed this one.
Primate
Co-Wri/Dir: Johannes Roberts (Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, The Strangers: Prey at Night)
It’s another perfect day in Hawaii, and Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah) is really happy to be flying home again. Yes, she likes going to college but she also misses her family and home in Hawaii. Her late mom was a linguist who worked with apes in the style of Jane Goodall. And their dad (Troy Kotsur), is a bestselling author who was born deaf. So she and her shy little sister grew up speaking American Sign Language with their dad and another sign-and-spoken language with the chimpanzee Ben, who, though he sleeps in his own caged enclosure, is almost considered a part of their family. Coming home with her are her BFF Kate (Victoria Wyant), Kate’s brother Nick (Benjamin Cheng) who Lucy has a secret crush on, her frenemy Hannah (Jess Alexander), and a pair of himbos Hannah was hitting on aboard the plane.
And, as luck would have it, their dad is going away for a day to do some book signings, so they have the home — a multilevel glass- walled, playground with a stucco, lunar-landscape tunnel that leads to the backyard, and an Infiniti pool by the edge of a cliff — all to themselves. Which means it’s time to par-tay! They light up their pre-rolls and pop open their beers and start having fun.
But that’s when things go bad. Ben, the chimpanzee has rabies and is going ape-crazy, attacking and maybe even killing some of these college kids. Dad is far away, and all seven of them have misplaced their cel phones! Oh no! What can they do? Who will survive this murderous ape?
Primate is a suspense thriller/horror about college kids vs a 
killer chimp. It’s stupid-funny and basically plotless — just how to survive this rabid monkey till someone calls 9-1-1 — but it is fun. Lots of surprises, with the ominous chimp (still dressed in brightly-coloured kids clothes) swinging from the rafters, breaking through windows and, you know, killing people.
Personally, I found the goriness unnecessary — I don’t like watching people’s faces getting torn off — but I guess gorno is part of its horror appeal. And lest you think I’m spoiling it, the movie tells you about rabies before the first line is spoken, and Ben peels the skin off someone’s face in the first five minutes, so I’m not telling you anything they didn’t already want you to know.
Yes, it’s super-simplistic, and breaks down logically very quickly, but as a movie, it pushes all the right buttons.
Primate, The Choral and Father Mother Sister Brother all open in Toronto this weekend; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Best movies of 2025! PLUS: Rosemead, We Bury the Dead,
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s a new year, the perfect time for me to look back at the best of last year’s movies. What do I look for? Films that are novel, funny, scary, sexy, shocking, and emotionally or intellectually engaging. And just really well made. And because of limited space, I’m not including documentaries — like Laura Poitras’s Cover Up or Baz Luhrmann’s dazzling EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert— nor animation, though I loved Seth and Peter Scriver’s Endless Cookie, or the wonderful French movie Arco. So here are my favourite movies of 2025.
But first, I’m looking at two new movies opening this weekend and next. There’s a zombie apocalypse in Tasmania, and a mom and son drama in LA .
Rosemead
Co-Wri/Dir: Eric Lin
Irene (Lucy Liu) is a middle aged woman and single mom who runs her own printing shop in an LA strip mall. She’s bringing up her only child, Joe (Lawrence Shou). Joe was a top student and athlete (he’s on the school swim team) with a bright future. But when his dad suddenly died he fell into a deep funk. Now he spends most of his days scratching creepy ink drawings of spiders and corpses in his notebooks. He is seeing a therapist to help him recover, but it doesn’t seem to be doing much good. Irene, meanwhile, has problems of her own. She has cancer, and is being treatment with some new, experimental medicines, since nothing has worked in the past. Though she’s frequently coughing up blood, she tells Joe everything is going fine. She doesn’t him to have to worry about her, too.
But Joe keeps getting worse, obsessing over mass shootings in American schools. Though his best friends are trying to help, things look grim. He has a breakdown in class when they do a armed intruder exercise. Irene finds links to gun images on his computer. And then he disappears entirely, running away from home just 
weeks before his 18th birthday. Can Irene find Joe and keep him safe? And what will he do if her chemo is unsuccessful?
Rosemead is a character study of a mom and her son dealing with medical and mental health issues.
No spoilers, but the film is inspired by a true event, that made the headlines. The usually glamourous Lucy Liu plays a frumpy mom who speaks only broken English and Chinese, as she deals with her very real pain. (Her story takes place mainly within LA’s Chinese community) Lawrence Shou is also sympathetic as a teenager dealing with a sudden onset of schizophrenia. Though more grim than heart-lifting, Rosemead is a moving, real-life drama.
We Bury the Dead
Wri/Dir: Zak Hilditch
It’s present-day Tasmania, Australia. Ava (Daisy Ridley) is a recently- married young professional in the US. She has just arrived in Tasmania’s capital, Hobart, to look for her husband. He went there a week earlier for a business retreat but never came back. The reason is catastrophic.The US military has been testing weapons of mass destruction in the south Pacific, and one, a secret bomb that uses electromagnetic pulses, accidentally explodes, wiping out every last man, woman and child in Tasmania.
So a number of volunteers, including Ava, arrive there to help clean up and bury the bodies. The Australian military provides direction: the lands south of Hobart are strictly off-limits. Ava is teamed up with a scruffy ne’er-do-well named Clay (Brenton Thwaites) who is rather loose with his axe. He seems to like smashing windows more than burying bodies. Ava has a second motive. She wants to find and bury her husband; she needs the closure that would bring (he flew off to Australia at a crucial point in their relationship.) But the resort he had been staying in was in Woodbridge, a town far south of Hobart. So when they come across an illicit drug dealer’s shiny motorcycle, Ava manages to convince Clay to secretly drive her south to find her husband. But wait! There’s more. Among all the dead bodies a small percentage are coming back to life. And the 
army has orders to wipe them all out. Are they humans or zombies? How can Ava and Clay deal with them? And will she ever find her husband? And what will happen if soldiers catch them out of the zone?
We Bury the Dead is a speculative drama about marriage and relationships in the face of a potential zombie apocalypse. Australians have shown an amazing talent for the scary and grotesque, in movies like Talk To Me. But it’s not really a horror movie. There’s some good acting, an interesting post-apocalyptic storyline, and beautiful scenery. But although there are some scary parts, these zombies don’y seem that hazardous. Yeah, their eyes are pus-y and they clack their teeth together with a very unnerving sound… but they move slowly and don’t eat brains. So if you’re mainly looking for zombie-scares, I think you should look elsewhere.
Here are my favourite films of 2025
In alphabetical order:
Christy — this is a biopic about a lesbian female boxer and her abusive husband/manager.This was a collossal flop but I thought it was a great sports melodrama with over-the-top performances by Sidney Sweeney and Ben Foster.
Eddington
Another flop that many viewers and critics hated, but I think Ari Aster has given us a stunning microcosm of contemporary American politics — starring Joachim Phoenix as the police chief and Pedro Pascal as the Mayor of a small New Mexico town.
Frankenstein
This is Guillermo del Toro’s totally original retelling of the gothic horror classic, starring Oscar Isaac as the mad scientist and Jacob Elordi as his gentle monster.
Hamnet is a lovely fictionalized version of two parents — William Shakespeare and his wife Agnes (Played by Jesse Buckley and Paul Mescul) — dealing with the death of their son. A genuine tearjerker.
I Swear
Is a touching and hilarious biopic about a man in Scotland dealing with Tourette’s syndrome.
Marty Supreme
…is a frenetic and chaotic look at a champion pingpong player in the 1950s, portrayed as a charming yet infuriating character by Timothy Chalamet, in this whirlwind of a movie.
The Mastermind
Cinematic master Kelly Reichardt’s latest drama about a would-be art-thief turned underground fugitive in the 1970s. Josh O’Connor stars in this diverse ensemble.
Nirvanna, The Band, The Show, The Movie
The infuriating but hilarious Matt Johnson and the even headed Jay McCarrol bring us this mind-boggling back-to-the-future story about a failed Toronto band and its obsessed leader, willing to travel back in time to find success.
Secret Agent
Is an engrossing and surprising political mystery/thriller set during the military dictatorship in Brazil that stars Wagner Moura as a dissident forced to flee to Reciffe to keep his son, and himself, safe.
Sinners
Is a spectacular horror set in the American deep south that combines black music with monsters. It stars Michael B Jordan as twin brother musicians who open a juke joint in a county swarming with both Vampires and the KKK.
Sirat
Is a mind-blowing road movie about an ordinary Spanish dad and his young son who follows a caravan of ravers and freaks through the western Sahara as he searches for his daughter.
One Battle After Another
Loosely based on a book by Thomas Pynchon, Paul Thomas Anderson’s this political satire looks at a former underground revolutionary cel brought back to life in contemporary California. It stars Leonardo Dicaprio, Sean Penn and Teyana Taylor.
Runners up:
Girl/Left-Handed Girl
Both Taiawanese coming-of-age stories about a young girl growing up in Taipei.
Wake Up Dead Man
Rian Johnson’s brilliant locked-room murder mystery set within a renegade Catholic Church.
Weapons
A truly original horror story.
Bring Her Back
Another horror, this one from Australia, is very disturbing.
The Testament of Ann Lee
A musical biopic about the start of the Shakers, an ecstatic American sect in the 18th and 19th century that forbade all sexual contact.
Meadowlarks
A deeply moving drama about the tentative reunion of an indigenous family’s brothers and sisters who were forceably separated for decades by the Sixties’ Scoop.
Friendship
A cringe comedy starring Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd.
The History of Sound
An historical drama about two ethnomusicologists who find fleeting love while collecting music in early 20th century America.
Orphan
Oscar-winner László Nemes ’s heart-wrenching drama about his own father’s life in 1950s Budapest.
Sorry Baby
Writer /director/ actor Eva Victor retelling — with a dark sense of humour — of a terrible incident in her own life as a New England grad student.
Bury the Dead opens this weekend, and Rosemead next week in Toronto; check your local listings. And all of my Best Movies Of 2025 are playing theatrically, digitally or are coming soon.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
culturalmining.com 
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