SYNOPSIS: Third feature in James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DC Universe, “Clayface” is the origin story of one of Gotham City’s most notorious villains. “This is gonna be hard for you to believe. Matt Hagen can change his face.”
CAST: Tom Rhys Harries, Naomi Ackie, David Dencik, Max Minghella, Eddie Marsan. Directed by James Watkins.
REVIEW: An origin story that doesn’t spare the violence and gore, “Clayface” is a bloody good time that breathes the same fetid air as body horror flicks like “The Fly” and “The Substance.”
The DC standalone action of “Clayface” centers on rising movie star Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries). From the rough-and-tumble streets of Gotham City to the big screen and an Oscar nomination, things are going great until he has an ill-advised dalliance with local crime boss Markos Szabo’s (David Dencik) girlfriend (Joana Ribeiro). In revenge Szabo takes a razor to Hagen’s face, rendering him disfigured and unrecognizable.
Scarred and with his career in tatters he looks into an experimental treatment to regain his old looks and identity offered by Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie). “Even if it kills me,” he says, “I’ll be better off than I am now.”
The miracle nanocell serum yields results, and Hagen’s movie star good looks return, but, as Dr. Corr says, “The procedure is causing troubling… physical changes.”
As the grisly side effects manifest themselves, his body shapeshifts into living clay, making him able to absorb and change into his foes.
As his life and body transform, his vain quest is overtaken by a thirst for revenge. “You want to know how I feel?” he asks. “The people I trusted betrayed me. The justice system failed me. They stole my career, my money, my life…! I’m a monster.”
Dark, violent and grimly entertaining, “Clayface” isn’t the same old from DC. It’s a body horror film that goes surprisingly hard, capped with a charismatic performance from star Tom Rhys Harries.
It’s a multifaceted role for the Welsh actor as he metamorphoses from movie star to monster. As his identity and sanity slip away, his shift from charismatic actor to desperate victim to vengeful villain is seamless. Those transformations are made tragic (despite his dreadful behavior) by Harries’s deft work.
Adding to the overall vibe are practical effects that give the movie a gooey, visceral Cronenbergian feel that make for vivid, cringe-inducing visuals.
A twisted tale touched by human tragedy and revenge, “Clayface” is not your typical origin or comic book movie, but it is a welcome addition to the DC Universe.
There’s plenty to be afraid of in Canada — and no, I don’t mean Quebec’s mythical werewolf, the loup-garou or Dalton McGuinty’s proroguing of the legislature. We may be known as a mild mannered people, but put us in front of a camera and all of a sudden we turn into creepy Canucks.
The Great White North has a blood splattered cinematic tradition, dating back to The Mask, the first Canadian film widely distributed in the United States.
A low budget 3D thriller about an archaeologist who believes he is cursed by a mask that causes him to have weird nightmares and even murder people, the movie was a cheapie knocked out to cash in on the 3D craze started by movies like House of Wax. Although it missed that movement by a few years, it may have inadvertently started a new trend. Since the release of The Mask, which coupled tried-and-true 3D with experimental electronic music to heighten its spooky effect, Canadian filmmakers have been scaring the toques off their countrymen and women.
Where would Canadian horror movies be without Valentine’s Day? In 1981, My Bloody Valentine, a creepy little slasher flick shot in Cape Breton, ran afoul of the ratings board but has since gone on to become a cult classic.
In 2008, a new type of terror reared its ugly head on the day Hallmark created. In Bruce MacDonald’s Pontypool, the townsfolk of a small Ontario town are infected by a deadly virus on Valentine’s Day — A God bug that turns them into flesh-eating zombies. Not even Cupid with a quiver full of arrows can keep this town safe.
Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer, an Ottawa-shot chiller, has cult hit written all over it. Breathing the same fetid air as genre classics Dead Alive and Demons, it has all the earmarks of a midnight movie in the making — humour, a tormented anti-hero, crazy creatures, gallons of guts and goo crowned by an over-the-top performance from horror legend Robert “Freddy Krueger” Englund.
No look at Can Con chills would be complete without at least one David Cronenberg movie. The Brood stars Oliver Reed, Samantha Eggar and Black Christmas (another great Canadian horror) star Art Hindle in a story about a brood of mutant children. Writer Ken Hanke called it one of the director’s most “unsettling” films, which is really saying something if you’ve seen Rabid, Shivers or Videodrome.
I join CTV Atlantic’s Bruce Frisko to talk about the whale of a tale “Whalefall,” the pulpy and pious “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother” and the rock ‘em, sock ‘em action “Street Fighter.”
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to wind your watch. Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the whale of a tale “Whalefall,” the pulpy and pious “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother” and the rock ‘em, sock ‘em action “Street Fighter.”
SYNOPSIS: In “Street Fighter,” a new martial arts film based on the iconic Capcom video game of the same name, a battle between estranged fighters Ryu and Ken uncovers a wide-ranging conspiracy. “This tournament isn’t what you think it is,” says Chun-Li (Callina Liang). “If you want to save your brother, then you must fight.”
CAST: Noah Centineo, Andrew Koji, Callina Liang, Joe “Roman Reigns” Anoa’i, David Dastmalchian, Cody Rhodes, Eric André, Andrew Schulz, Vidyut Jammwal, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Jason Momoa. Directed by Kitao Sakurai.
REVIEW: The “Street Fighter” franchise returns to the big screen for the first time since the 1994 Jean-Claude Van Damme, Raúl Juliá (in his final role) and Kylie Minogue team up earned a 20% rotten score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Set in 1993, the new movie sees estranged friends and martial artists Ryu (Andrew Koji) and Ken Masters (Noah Centineo) brought together by Chun-Li (Callina Liang), an envoy of power mad dictator Lord M.Bison (David Dastmalchian), to battle in the second World Warrior Tournament. “The fiercest, strongest, deadliest fighters on Earth. This is Street Fighter!”
Fists fly, but when Ryu and Ken learn of a deadly conspiracy to siphon the fighter’s “Psycho Power” to energize Bison, a Hurricane Kick to the face or a Buffalo Headbutt will be the least of their problems.
There’s more, but the story doesn’t matter much. It’s mostly a framework to showcase the fights, which are plentiful and should please fans who want their kung fu action unencumbered by a coherent plot. Highlights are a 2D anime-inspired flashback to the Ryu vs. Sagat fight, a showdown between Jason Momoa’s big green fighting machine Blanka and Ryu and a slapstick infused hotel room fight between Ryu and Ken. The fight choreography takes its lead from the games, and provides the rock ‘em, sock ‘em action fans expect.
Apart from the visceral fight fun, there isn’t much here for those unfamiliar with the games.
Noah Centineo, Cody Rhodes, who plays the elaborately coiffed fighter Guile, and ring announcer Eric Andre understand the assignment, fully embracing the silly, ‘90s throwback vibe.
“Street Fighter” is pure fan service. It’s more faithful to its source material than the 1994 version and comes with plenty of spectacle but the slack pace and disregard for story will likely test the patience of non-fans.
I sit with NewsTalk 1010 host Jim Richards, sitting in for Deb Hutton on NewsTalk 1010 to talk about a recently uncovered song by John Lennon, a new son for Michael McDonald and I review “The Social Reckoning” and “Run terry Run.”
I join the Bell Media Radio Network national night time show “Shane Hewitt and the Night Shift” to talk about the number one movie ever and one of the lowest grossing films of the year. Then I review “The Social Reckoning,” now playing on theatres, and suggest some viral cocktails to enjoy with the movie!
SYNOPSIS: In “The Social Reckoning,” a new legal thriller starring Mikey Madison and Jeremy Allen White now playing in theatres, a whistleblower leaks secret Facebook internal research. “The firehose of bad information you are injecting into the air supply is becoming jet powered.”
CAST: Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White, Wunmi Mosaku, Betty Gilpin, Billy Magnussen, Bill Burr, Jeremy Strong. Written, co-produced, and directed by Aaron Sorkin.
REVIEW: A companion piece to Sorkin’s 2010 film “The Social Network,” “The Social Reckoning” is based on the 2021 Facebook leak by whistleblower Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison) and Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White).
When Haugen, a data engineer for Facebook, uncovers documents proving the social platform’s executives knew its products were amplifying misinformation, hate and causing body-image issues in teens.
Instead of looking for remedies, however, Facebook’s parent company choses to ignore the research in favor of engagement and growth. “Almost no one outside of Facebook,” Haugen says, “knows what goes on inside Facebook.”
Putting it all on the line, she contacts Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz with data that implicates the company’s billionaire CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong) who fights to suppress the story, now known as the Facebook Files. “I’m an investigative reporter,” says Horwitz, “and that guy and this company are playing an unprecedented role in our lives.”
Just in time for the US midterms comes a movie about how easily voters are manipulated. Unfortunately, the movie’s timely messaging of Facebook’s (now Meta) commodification of outrage, misinformation, cyberbullying and social isolation, feels like old news.
Had the film, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin with cool elegance, been released in 2021 when The Wall Street Journal unleashed the Facebook Files, it may have packed more of a punch. Today, the detrimental effects of social media are known and ingrained, so the blockbuster disclosures of 2021 aren’t dramatically compelling no matter how many times Sorkin cuts to intense footage of the storming of the United States Capitol.
As a result, watching “The Social Reckoning” in 2026 feels like the cinematic equivalent of doom scrolling, two hours of time spent learning nothing new.
Direction wise, the movie is straightforward and solid, reminiscent of prestige television from the 1990s, long before Facebook drained eyes away from the boob tube. It’s graceful, if a little dull, missing the paranoid vibe that made investigative movies like “All the President’s Men” and “The Parallax View” so compelling.
Of the headliners, Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White and Jeremy Strong, it’s Madison who impresses.
White leaves the chef jacket of “The Bear” behind to hand in a restrained performance as the slow-and-steady Horwitz.
Strong plays Meta Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg as a po-faced robotic villain, the powerful embodiment of free-speech absolutism and profit. His line reading of, “This is a business, Charlie. You know why we don’t fact-check ads: because we don’t have to,” is chilling in its repercussions.
Madison impresses. The external performance of “Anora” has been turned inward as she makes the self-confessed nerdy whistleblower whose actions are driven by idealism, not malevolence, the film’s most persuasive character. “Connecting people, it’s a virtuous mission,” she says. “Something changed.”
Bill Burr also earns a nod as Charlie, an early Facebook investor who becomes one of the few who will speak truth to Zuckerberg’s power. “The firehose of bad information you are injecting into the air supply is becoming jet fuel,” he says.
These performances provide “The Social Reckoning’s” vigor even when the movie takes on the tone of a lecture on profit vs. social harm.
On the Saturday September 26, 2026 edition of The Richard Crouse we meet Alex Spring, a bold new voice in crime fiction whose debut novel, Lower City, is in fine bookstores everywhere.
Set in Hamilton, Ontario, during a tense October 2025 marked by job insecurity, rising rents, and social polarization, the novel follows 26-year-old steelworker Danny Clarke as a series of abductions plunges the city into chaos. Blending the gritty realism of S.A. Cosby with the page-turning pulse of Louise Penny, Lower City is a riveting yet warmhearted story about community, connection, and what it means to grow up and do the right thing.
Then, Anna Lambe, Canada’s newest breakout star from the Arctic and lead of North of North, the hit Arctic-set comedy TV series from APTN, CBC and Netflix, now in Season 2 joins the show.
Rising to prominence with her breakout role in the film The Grizzlies—which earned her a Canadian Screen Award nomination—she has gone on to deliver standout performances in series such as Trickster, Three Pines, and HBO’s True Detective: Night Country alongside Jodie Foster. In 2025 she took the lead in the critically acclaimed comedy North of North, a groundbreaking series set in the Arctic that has captivated audiences worldwide.
Season two builds on Season 1’s mix of heartfelt comedy, family dynamics, small-town gossip, cultural authenticity, and personal growth.
Each week on the nationally syndicated Richard Crouse Show, Canada’s most recognized movie critic brings together some of the most interesting and opinionated people from the movies, television and music to put a fresh spin on news from the world of lifestyle and pop-culture. Tune into this show to hear in-depth interviews with actors and directors, to find out what’s going on behind the scenes of your favourite shows and movies and get a new take on current trends. Recent guests include Chris Pratt, Elvis Costello, Baz Luhrmann, Martin Freeman, David Cronenberg, Mayim Bialik, The Kids in the Hall and many more!
All iHeartRadio Canada stations are available across Canada via live stream on iHeartRadio.caand the iHeartRadio Canada app. iHeartRadio Canada stations are also connected through Alexa, Siri, and Google Home smart speakers.
