August 08, 2025

WIFF’S WEEKEND WATCH LIST — 8/8

Check out our recommendations of what to watch this weekend.

iF you love an original

freaky friday

Vincent Georgie: While we are all excited for the latest installment of the Curtis/Lohan adaptation of this film, let’s go back to 1976 and hang out with Barbara Harris and 12-year-old Jodie Foster in the film that started it all. Disney does not make non-animated family films like this anymore, and I wish they would. Incredibly, Foster made both this film and Scorsese’s Taxi Driver in the same year—lots to unpack there.

Synopsis: Annabel Andrews (Jodie Foster) and her mother, Ellen (Barbara Harris), don’t always see eye to eye. After a particularly frustrating argument on Friday the 13th, the two simultaneously wish they could switch places — and suddenly their wish is granted. Each discovers how difficult it is to be in the other’s shoes, with Ellen causing chaos at Annabel’s school, and Annabel unable to deal with her mother’s domestic duties. The two learn a lot about themselves and their relationship in the process.

Available on Apple TV, Disney+, Amazon Prime, and YouTube.

if you want to engage both heart and mind

blackfish

Vincent Georgie: Gabriella Copperthwaite’s eye-opening, maddening, and emotional film was a big deal upon its release in 2013 and with good reason: a killer whale documentary that was both a drama and a thriller.

Synopsis: Tilikum, a captive killer whale, has taken the lives of three people. This impassioned documentary tells his story to unravel the consequences of keeping orcas in captivity and reveal how little is known about these highly intelligent mammals.

Available on Apple TV and Plex.

if you want something inspiring

the divine order

Vincent Georgie: A quality film from Germany, and a fan favourite from WIFF 2017. Appealingly performed, well-written, and ultimately, quite satisfying.

Synopsis: A young housewife from a small Swiss farming village challenges the status quo by fighting for women’s suffrage in 1971 Switzerland.

Available on Apple TV and Amazon Prime.

DOUBLE FEATURE

villainesses

Vincent Georgie: 1993 delivered these two underseen, mixed-reviewed thrillers. However, nobody was mixed in heaping praise upon the wildly committed work that both Lena Olin and Jamie Lee Curtis. These villainesses leap off the screen.

romeo is bleeding

Jack Grimaldi (Gary Oldman) is a cop who offers tips to the Mafia for money, and cheats on his loving wife with a young mistress. His life changes when an Italian mob boss, Don Falcone (Roy Scheider), asks him to kill Mona Demarkov (Lena Olin), a Russian assassin. But Mona escapes from Jack’s grasp at every opportunity, leaving him to face dire consequences, dragging him into a lethal game of cat and mouse and manipulating him into carrying out otherwise unimaginable acts.

Available on Apple TV and Amazon Prime.

mother’s boys

Sexy but unstable wife and mother Jude (Jamie Lee Curtis) walked out on her family three years ago. Now, just as suddenly, she is back. But her husband, Robert (Peter Gallagher), has fallen in love with Callie (Joanne Whalley-Kilmer), an assistant principal at his sons’ school. He asks Jude for a divorce. She responds by trying to turn her three boys against Callie, then by slashing herself and blaming her rival, and finally by drawing her 12-year-old, Kes (Luke Edwards), into a murderous plot.