The week's wrap-up: Recently-released must-sees and must-misses

The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open  (B plus)  is one of the year’s most enigmatic titles and one of the year’s most heralded Canadian films. A woman Áila (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, who also co-directed the film with Kathleen Hepburn) is on her way home from the doctor’s office in East Vancouver when she comes across Rosie (Violet Nelson), a pregnant young woman, being threatened by her boyfriend. She decides to help her in a drama that appears to unfold in real time. Our reviewer Thom Ernest says this “subtle, patient and wholly authentic” drama will stay with you long after it’s over.

A hounded, wrongly-accused man faces a media circus in Clint Eastwood’s Richard Jewell

Jim Slotek reviews another Vancouver-set film of note, Bruce Sweeney’s Kingsway (B), a lively character-driven comedy with a mother and daughter (Gabrielle Rose and Camille Sullivan) who decide to take action in fixing the marriage of son-brother Matt (Jeff Gladstone).  And Jim approves of two other Canadian films still playing: emerging genre queen Audrey Cummings’  She Never Died (B-plus), a supernatural story with comic overtones about an immortal woman, Lacey (Olunike Adeliyi) with an appetite for human fingers.  Brotherhood (B-minus), a drama from Richard Bell, about a 1926 Kawarthas’ school boating accident that killed 11 young campers that is treated as a metaphor for the “lost generation” of boys without fathers after WWI.

Richard Jewell (B minus) is Clint Eastwood’s biographical drama of the security guard (a terrific Paul Walter Hauser) who went from media hero to terrorism suspect at the 1996 Atlantic Sumer Olympic Games, in this timely but flawed film from Clint Eastwood. Jim Slotek weighs in on the many thing thats go right, and one fictional detail that slanders a now-deceased woman reporter.

In Fabric from ultra-stylish director Peter Strickland is an ultra-stylish horror comedy about a killer red dress – no, not just rocking frock, but a gown that literally commits murder.  Reviewer Thom Ernst watched it twice, finding new horror and comic wrinkles each time.

For those avoiding all those annoying high-toned Oscar contenders in the theatres, we have Jumanji: The Next Level  (C-plus) which despite a fun cast (Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Kevin Hart and Awkwafina) is a level down from its predecessors in the franchise. 

And finally, there’s Netflix’s  6 Underground  (C), a Michael Bay film that our reviewer Kim Hughes says achieves predictable-but-still-annoying levels of Michael Bay-ish stupid violence.

Have a great weekend.