Guest: Rick Forchuk - TV Week Magazine Columnist and CKNW Contributor

In theatres:

- The Woman in the Yard (2025): This psychological horror-thriller from Blumhouse productions (the "Insidious" movies, "Black Phone," "Paranormal Activity" movies") begins with a frightening looking woman draped in black, complete with black veil, sitting in the yard of a family's dilapidated country home and it begs the question, "who is she and what does she want?" An hour and 28 minutes later, when the credits begin to roll, it still begs the question, "who is she, and what does she want?" This is one of those complicated stories that may leave you feeling that it is unresolved, although a trip or two to Google will help fill in the blanks. We immediately meet Ramona, a mom with two kids, who has clearly been in an accident of some sort as her right leg is in a cast and she is clearly in pain. Over time we learn that there was a car accident, and that her husband died as a result. When the woman appears in the yard, Ramona makes her way out on crutches to ask if she can help in some way

- A Working Man (2025): As George Peppard's Hannibal Smith used to say in each episode of the 1980s TV series "The A-Team," "I love it when a plan comes together." That's how I felt watching this well-crafted action-thriller which stars Jason Statham as a one-time Royal Marine Black Ops man of a thousand killer skills Levon Cade, now working for a construction family in Chicago as a man in a hardhat, his chosen profession to put the old life behind him. Of course it isn't long before the teenage daughter of his employer is kidnapped during a night out with friends celebrating the end of their first semester in college, which threatens to push Cade back into the "life" he wanted to forget. Initially he says to his boss (Michael Pena) that he can't help, but in no time, he's on the case looking for the Russian mobsters that run a human trafficking business, with the young girl their latest star. And that's when the plan comes together. Cade works his way up the mafia chain from the low end to the high end leaving a growing body count in his wake, and employing a wide array of lethal weapons

On Netflix:

- The Electric State (2025): I think, just based on the online chatter, that this is one of those movies that you either love or you hate, with very little middle ground. It's a sci-fi thriller with an excellent cast and a premise which, on the surface seems like something we have seen many times before, but which, as the story plays out, becomes something very, very different. Millie Bobby Brown, one of the stars of the hit series "Stranger Things," is the key player here, and she is accompanied by Chris Pratt ("Guardians of the Galaxy"), and the ubiquitous Stanley Tucci. In a reimagined 1990s-era, we find ourselves right in the middle of the robot wars between humans and machines, but unlike the "Terminator" movies the robots here range from household helpers to military giants. Millie Bobby Brown is Michelle, an orphan as a result of the robot wars, and she is out to find her lost younger brother. We learn very soon that he is alive, sort of, but that his mind and memories have been incorporated into a carnival-type robot who is anything but a threat to humanity, and is actually more of a cartoon than a mechanical creature