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The Latest Articles and Appearances from Rachel Ho

Exclaim! •

ADFF 2025: 'Kensington Market: Heart of the City' Celebrates a Stronghold Against Gentrification │ Exclaim!

The Gentrification Monster has taken many victims in Toronto. Vibrant neighbourhoods and distinct architecture have been replaced with streets lined with large glass boxes, and gone with it are the remnants of a rich history Toronto should hold dear.As of this writing, Kensington Market still retains its charm. As one of the subjects of Stuart Clarfield's documentary so eloquently expresses, it's where you can find drug dealers and organic smoothies. But, like the rest of the city, modern condos...
Exclaim! •

Richard Linklater Optimistically Celebrates Films for "Throwing Off the Dictator" │ Exclaim!

Since his debut in 1990 with Slacker, Richard Linklater has built his career upon the autobiographical hang-out movie — with a few exceptions, of course. His latest film, Nouvelle Vague, on the surface, seems to be one of these exceptions.It's a hang-out film to be sure, but one that chills on the sidelines as Jean-Luc Godard makes Breathless with Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo, and François Truffaut, Roberto Rossellini and Agnès Varda stop by on occasion. Not Linklater's typical gang of sla...
Exclaim! •

WIFF 2025: 'Montreal, My Beautiful' Finds Graceful Romance in la Belle Provence │ Exclaim!

Winner of this year's Prize in Canadian Film at the Windsor International Film Festival, director Xiaodan He told those in attendance at the awards reception in Windsor over the weekend that her film Montreal, My Beautiful (Montréal, ma belle) was a "love letter to Montreal." While a typically cliché sentiment, for He and the film, it's an entirely appropriate one.Joan Chen leads Montreal, My Beautiful as Feng Xia, a Chinese immigrant who has been living in Montreal for the past 14 years, raisin...
Exclaim! •

Scott Cooper Is "Stripping Away All of the Iconography" of the Boss in 'Deliver Me from Nowhere' │ Exclaim!

"If you make a film about Bruce Springsteen, you're making a film about the soul of America," director Scott Cooper says, speaking with Exclaim! inside the famed Stony Pony in Asbury Park, NJ, where Springsteen found his singing legs.To be authentic in this pursuit, Cooper told Springsteen and lead actor Jeremy Allen White, "We aren't making a film about Bruce Springsteen, the global-selling rock star. This is about a man who expresses himself through music to get through trauma, and he just hap...
Exclaim! •

'Bugonia' Stars Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons Seize the "Potential to Change People's Perspectives" │ Exclaim!

Many of Yorgos Lanthimos's films have held a mirror to contemporary issues, but none more so than his latest, Bugonia.For the film, Lanthimos re-teams with his Kinds of Kindness acting duo, Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons, who respectively portray a high-powered executive and a conspiracy enthusiast. Teddy (Plemons) has convinced his cousin Don (newcomer Aidan Delbis) that Michelle (Stone) is an alien posing as the CEO of a major pharmaceutical company."I think they both have this deep belief that...
Exclaim! •

'Regretting You': The Best Book-to-Film Adaptations │ Exclaim!

Transforming the intricacies of literature into a visual spectacle has offered cinema some of its greatest-ever films. In recent years, Colleen Hoover has taken up the mantle left by Nicholas Sparks as the go-to romance author whose books are inspiring studios across Hollywood.The latest Hoover book to receive the cinematic treatment is Regretting You, a romantic drama directed by Josh Boone about a family weathering their grief following a tragic accident. Allison Williams and Dave Franco star...
Exclaim! •

'The Mastermind' Smartly Slows Down an Art Heist │ Exclaim!

Slowly but surely, Kelly Reichardt has proven herself to be one of the modern greats of slow cinema. The minimalist filmmaking style Andrei Tarkovsky, Robert Bresson, Abbas Kiarostami and others popularized finds its footing in a steady camera that prioritizes long takes and an observational tone that asks for patience.In The Mastermind, Reichardt marries this unhurried style of filmmaking with a high-stakes, high-adrenaline heist led by Josh O'Connor's James Blaine "JB" Mooney, an unemployed ca...
Exclaim! •

Five Must-See Movies at the 2025 Windsor International Film Festival │ Exclaim!

On October 23, the 2025 Windsor International Film Festival kicks off with Chandler Levack's latest film (and an early Exclaim! favourite), Mile End Kicks. The City of Roses once again welcomes some of the world's most compelling filmmakers for the festival's 21st edition.In addition to hosting a special presentation of Come from Away, this year's WIFF sees a number of fantastic music-related films in their lineup, including Play It Loud: How Toronto Got Soul, It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley and M...
POV Magazine •

Who Killed the Montreal Expos? Review: Vive les Expos! - POV Magazine

Who Killed the Montreal Expos?
(Canada, 90 min.)
Dir. Jean-François Poisson
 
When the Montreal Expos relocated to Washington D.C. in 2005, becoming the Washington Nationals, the vacancy of “Nos Amours” created a hole in Canadian sports that has yet to be filled. Expos hats continue to adorn baseball fans up North, and with Major League Baseball well past due for another expansion, questions of whether Montreal will be a part of those discussion always rear their head.
Filmmaker Jean-François Po...
Exclaim! •

Julia Roberts Discusses the "Historic Relationship" at the Heart of 'After the Hunt' │ Exclaim!

Luca Guadagnino juggles a lot of balls in After the Hunt — or "spinning planets" as Julia Roberts describes it. Like most of Guadagnino's films, the motives and desires of all his characters create strange and unsettling dynamics, and, in this case, they weave a web of mistrust.After the Hunt follows the aftermath of a dinner party hosted by Roberts's Alma for her fellow Yale academics, where Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), a PhD student and Alma's protégée, claims Hank (Andrew Garfield), a professor at t...
Exclaim! •

Spooky Season's Streaming Must-Sees (and Must-Skips) for October 2025 │ Exclaim!

This year's Halloween hit list offers a movie from across the spooky season spectrum, from a soon-to-be classic German supernatural hitting streaming's most curated platform to the multiple horror hits of 2025 housed on Prime Video.Possession, vampires and ritualistic practices fill out the traditional seasonal watches, while robots and the perils of modern dating offer some alternative watches for those less inclined to the scares of Halloween.For those looking to be properly scared senseless,...
Exclaim! •

From 'Roofman' to Conmen: The Most Notorious Real-Life Criminals Put to Film │ Exclaim!

Cinema has long turned real-life criminals into cinematic gold. In recent years, this has evolved into the immense popularity of true crime podcasts, documentaries and TV series about shocking and often horrific cases.As the counterpoint to these horrifying crimes, Paramount Pictures' Roofman delivers a movie about a real-life criminal in a more lighthearted context. Derek Cianfrance's film stars Channing Tatum as Jeffrey Manchester, a former U.S. Army Reserve soldier who committed a chain of ar...
Exclaim! •

Five Must-See Movies at the 2025 Vancouver International Film Festival │ Exclaim!

The annual Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) returns for its 44th edition from October 2 to 12 in Hollywood North. Boasting a slate filled with talent local to Vancouver and from across the country, as well as some the year's biggest award contenders, VIFF returns with a bang and then some.In addition to the impressive list of films screening at the festival, several live events across the 10 days adds to the excitement as VIFF takes over the city. Mad Professor and claire rousay will...
Exclaim! •

Nepo-Drama 'Anemone' Is a Lukewarm Return to the Screen for DDL │ Exclaim!

When Daniel Day-Lewis announced his retirement from acting after his phenomenal turn as Reynolds Woodcock in Phantom Thread, it earned the actor his sixth Academy Award nomination, and the acting world lost a giant comparable to the likes of Laurence Olivier. Fortunately for audiences, nepotism exists, and DDL has returned to the screen with a performance far better than his son's directorial debut deserves.Anemone's family drama, co-written by father and son, sets Ronan Day-Lewis up for a decen...
Exclaim! •

'One Battle After Another' Might Actually Convert PTA Naysayers │ Exclaim!

In the opening sequence of One Battle After Another, a group of revolutionaries named the French 75 overtake a detention facility. Raucous and passionate, the group scream anti-government and anti-capitalist slogans as they free migrants and detain the officers in charge. A montage follows with other moments of anarchy replete with explosives and gunshots. The first glimpses of Paul Thomas Anderson's latest hint at a topical film about the state of America and the forces on the margins willing t...
The Asian Cut •

The Asian Cut’s Top 5 Films at TIFF 2025 - The Asian Cut

And so ends ten days filled with glitz and glam, but more importantly, a multitude of films that moved us to our core. 


Asian filmmakers and stories from the continent and across the diaspora were well represented at the 50th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival. Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet took home the coveted People’s Choice Award, while Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice claimed the inaugural honour of the International People’s Choice Award and The Furious was voted in as second runn...
Exclaim! •

'A Big Bold Beautiful Journey' Isn't │ Exclaim!

At first glance, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey seems out of place in Kogonada's filmography. Although only three films deep, the director of Columbus and After Yang doesn't immediately come to mind as someone who would direct a film that looks like it could be an adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel. Sure enough, it proves to be the only miss in the filmmaker's oeuvre thus far, but, oddly, not because of this seeming mismatch; rather it's the mismatch of its stars.Written by Seth Reiss (notably,...
Exclaim! •

Local Journalism Is Saved with September 2025's Streaming Must-Sees (and Must-Skips) │ Exclaim!

With the Emmy Awards being given out this past weekend, the television slate turns over another year. Kicking off the fall calendar, a prequel addendum to Alien finds its place among a stalwart Hollywood franchise, while Spike Lee's latest has us questioning whether we're doing the right thing.Meanwhile, a new Netflix miniseries narrowly misses the mark, and a once-beloved show finds itself overstaying its welcome in spite of the beautiful penthouse apartments. But to pick up the slack, the docu...
Exclaim! •

The Best and Worst Films We Saw at TIFF 2025 │ Exclaim!

The 50th instalment of the Toronto International Film Festival has come to a close after 10 days of sleep-deprived movie- and celebrity-watching. Some of Canada's brightest talent premiered soon-to-be cult classics, while filmmakers from around the world brought murder, drama and Elvis to downtown Toronto.It's been a wild couple of weeks, and while we may be Varda-clapped out, we're still buzzing about our favourite titles (and the ones that made us scratch our heads and roll our eyes). Here are...
Exclaim! •

TIFF 2025: 'EPiC' Shows Why Elvis Is Still the King │ Exclaim!

According to Baz Luhrmann, EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert is neither a documentary nor a concert film — it's "EPiC." Putting aside the corny acronym, in reality, Luhrmann's latest is both. Editing together rehearsal and on-stage footage into a 96-minute frenetic concertgoing experience, the Australian filmmaker brings the Las Vegas era of Elvis to life in the way only Luhrmann can, creating the best Elvis-related film since the singer's death in 1977.For those familiar with the singer's '68 Come...
POV Magazine •

Palimpsest: The Story of a Name Review - What’s in a Name? - POV Magazine

Palimpsest: The Story of a Name
(France/Hong Kong/Taiwan, 108 min.)
Dir. Mary Stephen
Programme: Centrepiece (World Premiere)
 
I first heard Mary Stephen’s name in 2023 after the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival named the Stephen the Fire Horse Award Recipient in recognition of her extensive film career. Admittedly, I expected, with a surname as Anglo as Stephen, that the filmmaker must either be mixed race or married to a white person — an ill-informed assumption I’m sure Stephen...
POV Magazine •

Aki Review: Mother Nature Prevails in Gorgeous Essay Film - POV Magazine

Aki
(Canada, 83 min.)
Dir. Darlene Naponse
Programme: TIFF Docs (World Premiere)
 
Set in Northern Ontario, Aki observes life in Atikameksheng Anishnawbek territory. Taking us inside the land and its people, Darlene Naponse creates a soundscape and visual essay that captures the past and future without any spoken dialogue. Naponse’s ability to build such tangible intimacy makes Aki a film to behold, feel, and hear — the latter largely due to Juno Award–nominated cellist Cris Derkson’s tremendous...
Exclaim! •

'The Smashing Machine' Is an Understated Bodyslam │ Exclaim!

Like many, I grew up knowing (and loving) Dwayne Johnson as the Rock, only to see the man who whooped so many candy-ass jabronis become a billionaire box office star by playing himself to various heightened degrees. So to hear that Johnson would be taking on a proper acting role with a prestigious director and co-star (unfairly) felt like the former wrestler pursuing a vanity project in the hopes of catching up to Dave Bautista's recent run of awards-worthy performances. But Benny Safdie had bet...
Exclaim! •

'Roofman' Disneyfies a Life of Crime │ Exclaim!

Channing Tatum and Chris Evans began their careers in very different ways, but they've ended up pretty much the same place — that of the former 20-something good looking heartthrob seeking to find roles and movies that will take them into the respected-actor stratosphere, while still maintaining that charm that brought them to us in the first place. For Evans, that's meant taking roles in films like Honey Don't and Sacrifice (the latter of which is also playing at TIFF this year); for Tatum, it'...
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