Miryam Charles receives the inaugural Charles Officer Legacy Award, honouring the late filmmaker’s dedication to craft and community-building.
TFCA Friday: Week of January 17
January 17, 2025

Welcome to TFCA Friday, a weekly round-up of film reviews and articles by TFCA members.
In Release this Week
Back in Action (dir. Seth Gordon)
“Back in Action is like a low-sodium potato chip or a can of Miller Lite; you’re still enjoying it but you’re just not entirely sure why,” admits Dave Voigt at In the Seats.
“At the 30-minute mark, one realizes how lame the script is, and that the film has not generated a single laugh-out-loud laugh,” sighs Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “Not to mention the lacklustre action scenes. Romantic action films are hard to excite genres, the most successful so far appears to be The Fall Guy, which was in reality just so-so, though aided by some death-defying stunts. Then, Former CIA spies Emily and Matt are pulled back into espionage after their secret identities are exposed. Is it a hard fight which film is worse? The ridiculous Black Annie also starring Foxx and Diaz or this one?”
Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion (dir. Matthew Miele)
“Cher’s eye-catching gowns are part of the Mackie legend: showing nothing but beauty while appearing to be scandalously revealing,” writes Marc Glassman at Classical FM. “Elton John’s creative collaboration with Mackie in the Seventies, in which he wore outrageous outfits that included making him look like Donald Duck, actually paved the way for him to emerge from the stereotype of being a rock star to become the Broadway and Hollywood legend he is today. And Carol Burnett offers a different side of Mackie: the humorist who could design a “curtain dress,” which actually included the rack as part of her gown, as she played a version of Scarlett O’Hara in a wicked take on Gone With the Wind.”
“The clothes are obviously the big stars here even though Naked Illusion features a who’s who of talking heads. Besides Mackie, who provides full access to director Matthew Miele, but not necessarily much personal information, the documentary boasts legends like Cher, Elton John, Carol Burnett, Mitzi Gaynor, and RuPaul, along with designers like Tom Ford and Zac Posen, and pop stars like Pink and Miley Cyrus,” says Pat Mullen at POV Magazine. “It’s energetic and engaging. The film sparkles like a Mackie dress on the stage. When the film lights up, it’s an escape. It’s a celebration of women, their bodies, their energy, and their presence. But also the empowering feeling of how damn good it feels to wear something that makes you look really, really great.”
The Last Showgirl (dir. Gia Coppola)
“[A] superior character study, with Pamela Anderson as Shelly, a 57-year-old Las Vegas strip dancer whose show is closing after 30 years,” writes Anne Brodie at What She Said. “Anderson’s sublime, gut wrenching performance firmly reshapes her career and opens important new opportunities. Her flawless work in a show about ageing in a youth obsessed culture is mesmerising. The Razzle Dazzle revue is the last of its kind, considered old fashioned in the era of other moneymaking shows. Shel’s colleague, Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis) is desperate and embittered, appropriately and brilliantly unlikeable, a victim of Las Vegas’ pressures, always ready to lash out after losing her ‘cocktailing’ sidehustle having aged out.”
“As much as Shelly seems a departure from the beach beauty image Anderson cultivated on television’s Baywatch, her character of a veteran Vegas dancer in a show called Razzle-Dazzle is, at least thematically, right on target. It casts her as facing something Anderson likely experienced herself; a beautiful woman aging in a career that courts the young. Yes, Anderson is good, but it’s the film that ultimately lets her down,” observes Thom Ernst at Original Cin. “The Last Showgirl centres around Shelly’s dilemma when new management announces the end of Razzle-Dazzle’s 30-plus-year run in exchange for a show more current, and sexier. For Shelly, once the razzle and the dazzle of the show, the news is devastating. With no pension and limited opportunities to find something new, Shelly’s future without Razzle-Dazzle looks bleak.”
“Something feels missing in director Coppola’s film,” admits Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “One thing for sure is that there is nothing in the film that is insightful and what transpires on screen is what is expected and predictable. It is also brutal to see old age catch up on someone as it catches up on everyone including every person in the audience watching the film. There seems to be nothing at the end of the rainbow of age.”
La Pietà (dir. Eduardo Casanova)
“Intriguing, disturbing, surreal but ultimately wickedly entertaining, La Pietà feels like a cross between Alex de la Iglesia who produced the film and Pedro Almodóvar,” notes Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto.
Sons (dir. Justin Simms)
“Hoping to begin again, each subject confronts the generational paths of behaviour and fatherhood set before them, and wonder if they can change the trajectory. Prevent their sons from “the dark side of masculinity”. Each had absentee fathers who did men’s work – making a wage – while the women had no choice but home work,” notes Anne Brodie at What She Said. “The men missed raising their boys, like their fathers and grandfathers, with the tired misogynistic ideals of what makes a man. Being forceful. Taking no guff. But they wanted to change their paths, to give their sons better than they had and build good men – buts it’s hard to achieve, frustrating and fraught. They’re emotionally raw as they find limited but incremental success.”
Soundtrack to a Coup d’État (dir. Johan Grimonprez)
“With jazz as the soundtrack, Grimonprez’s film skillfully shows the contradictory nature of the era,” notes Marc Glassman at Classical FM. “The United States under President Dwight Eisenhower stood as the representative of democracy and freedom world-wide despite continuing harsh racism in the American South while the popular Premier of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, spoke feelingly about Communism and the power of the people although he had recently been involved in repressing an anti-imperialist rebellion in Hungary. Meanwhile, the older colonialist forces from Europe held sway in much of Africa and Asia throughout the 1950s and only began to surrender power during the time depicted in the film.”
“At best, the collage of archive footage and excellent soundtrack captures the horrors of the Cold War and their injustices done to the people of the DR of Congo,” says Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “At best too is the awesome jazz soundtrack performed by the jazz musicians that makes the movie.”
Wolf Man (dir. Leigh Whannell)
“Despite an impressive and compelling first half, the film falls about right at the half way mark once the car has the accident and the wolf attacks the family car,” says Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto.
“There are glimmers of hope that Whannell might take a page from The Shining when pitting mother against a crazed father. Unfortunately, these hopes dissolve as the third act limps into a series of frantic chase scenes. Ginger does a lot of screaming, Charlotte furrows her brow, and Blake, caught between the two worlds of man and wolf, tags along like a live-action Scooby-Doo in a moth-eaten dog costume,” sighs Thom Ernst at Original Cin. “The film should be called Whannell’s Wolf Man to distinguish it from the pack of other versions. With what is primarily a three-character story, Whannell’s version plays less like a horror movie and more like an Edward Albee chamber drama. Perhaps, a better title would Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf Man?”
File Under Miscellaneous
At The Globe and Mail, Barry Hertz remembers filmmaker David Lynch, who passed away this week at age 78. “Glancing at his filmography, it is shocking to realize just how few movies Lynch made,” writes Hertz. “Can the man whom The New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael once called ‘the first populist surrealist’ only have helmed just 10 feature films? Even adding in one giant, landscape-altering work of television – not to mention his dozens of short films – the thumbprint that Lynch stamped upon the American pop-cultural psyche feels so immensely large, so weighted with legacy and influence, to necessitate a more Steven Spielberg-like level of productivity. And yet Lynch didn’t need 30-plus movies to worm his way into the cultural firmament. The adjective ‘Lynchian’ has seeped into everyday language as if the director has simply always been part of the way we come to understand the world. He is generation-less.” Hertz also chats with Nightbitch director Marielle Heller in advance of the film’s release next week, and considers the impact of the LA wildfires.
At What She Said, Anne Brodie catches up with TFCA Awards champ Nickel Boys: “The story suggests strong parallels between the reformatories of the past and the residential school horrors in Canada. Beauty and hope comes from Elwood and Turner’s bond and mutual support and need to understand the world better,” says Brodie. “The awful true events contrast vividly with the focus on the healing powers of the natural world. Ross’ cinematic eye is expansive, paying minute attention to the details of life, nature and humanity and somehow reframing them.” She also checks out A Real Pain to see if it lives up to the hype: “An authentic, human experience that lingers.”
At Zoomer, Nathalie Atkinson looks at the behind-the-scenes drama of September 5. “The drama seamlessly incorporates archival footage with dramatic recreations of field coverage from sports anchor Howard Cosell and Canadian journalist Peter Jennings, who’s on hand,” writes Atkinson. “Jennings was not yet ABC’s trusted nightly news anchor but the network’s bureau chief for Beirut at the time, with a nuanced view and deep knowledge of the longstanding Middle East tensions. When one of the team suggests powerful language to describe the attackers, even without several confirmed sources as to who they are, Jennings cautions against defaulting to certain loaded words (like ‘terrorists’) and presenting them as fact. The same issue of rumour and misinformation will come up again later, when reporting on the fate of the hostages.”
At Original Cin, Karen Gordon catches up with September 5: “One of Fehlbaum’s best choices was to use the actual footage of the TV broadcast of the games, hosted by another broadcast legend, ABC sports journalist-broadcaster and chief anchor of the games, Jim McKay. That adds a lot of depth to September 5,” says Gordon. “In the film we see Morgan calling the shots in the control room, feeding the latest information to McKay, who we see on the monitors in the control room as he listens, and then reacts smoothly on air. It’s very effective. Seen through the lens of September 5, McKay’s coverage is even more striking for its measured tone, and its unflagging, unambiguous humanity.”
TV Talk/Series Stuff
At What She Said, Anne Brodie reports on the doc series An Update on Our Family: “Shines an unforgiving light on the saga of YouTube Family Channel vlogger Myka Stauffer. From the heights of fame, popularity and admiration, not to mention a healthy income from YouTube to pariah wiped from socials, hers is a cautionary tale of manipulation and deceit.” Meanwhile, Murdoch Mysteries celebrates its 300th episode: “The eppy’s portentous title The Men Who Sold the World isn’t kidding. What fun!”