The latest from Our House director Burns is a stylish, hallucinatory, and quietly unnerving experience that might actually benefit from being viewed alone in the dark. Vancouver actor Julia Sarah Stone (Weirdos, Honey Bee) stars as Sarah, a troubled Alberta teen who enrolls in a sleep study that unlocks something nightmarish in the way she sees the world. Come True moves with the vibrating disquiet of a horror movie, but the horror is entirely internal: it’s about how terrifying it must be to become unmoored from reality, and Stone’s performance is essential to conveying that idea. (She’s becoming one of Canada’s most interesting actors, and Come True gives her the opportunity to stretch in new directions.) As indebted to Douglas Trumbull’s Brainstorm as it is to John Carpenter’s Prince Of Darkness, Burns’s film feels like a voyage through someone’s subconscious in the best possible way: I don’t know that it’ll work on you, but it sure as hell worked on me. I just wish someone had persuaded him to drop the very last shot, which tries to offer clarification about what’s been going on but just muddles things further. 105 min. Now available on digital and on demand. (Norman Wilner)

Loro

(Paolo Sorrentino)

You can feel the contemporary resonances in this film about Italy’s boisterous prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. He complains about the constant media attacks with Trumpian paranoia and parlays his political power into massive profit. Played by Sorrentino’s muse, Toni Servillo (sporting a ton of hair dye), he even has sympathetic moments, as when a 20-year-old turns down his advances because he’s too old. It’s 2006, and even though his political career is not yet over, you get the clear sense that the man is in decline. So is his marriage to Veronica (Elena Sofia Ricci). All this would be fascinating but we have to wait an hour before Berlusconi hits the screen. The film is less biopic than an exploration of the social landscape he climbed and the hangers-on who ached to be in his presence. Chief among them is Sergio (Riccardo Scamarcio) who runs an escort service and snorts copious amounts of cocaine. Sergio finally gets an in via Kira (a mesmerizing Kasia Smutniak), who suggests he rent the villa opposite Berlusconi’s home and reel in his target via a mammoth party. Scenes of nubile naked women dancing and stroking each other (thanks to ecstasy) make up more than a half hour, and it’s way too much. Loro has the right indie soundtrack and Luca Bigazzi’s startling cinematography, including a longtracking shot that speaks volumes about class divisions. But most of the film has a one-note quality. It’s bold, wildly profane, and some of the images are spectacular—but it doesn’t work. 150 min. Subtitled. Available on VOD platforms on Tuesday (March 16). (Susan G. Cole)

Jump, Darling

(Phil Connell)

Aspiring Toronto actor and drag artist Russell (Thomas Duplessie) breaks up with his upwardly mobile boyfriend (Andrew Bushell) and packs up and moves to Prince Edward County to live with his elderly grandmother (Cloris Leachman) in this rambling, unfocused coming-of-age picture. The premise is promising, but Duplessie has an enervating screen presence when he’s Russell—his main character trait seems to be his alcoholism. And although his drag character Fishy Falters sparkles and comes alive, we’re given too little information about her and Russell’s connection to her. In her final screen performance, Leachman displays some great comic timing, but she, as well as local lights Linda Kash and Jayne Eastwood, are wasted in a film that doesn’t know what it wants to be, or say. Even the title, a reference to a character’s figure skating, doesn’t resonate the way it should. 90 min. Now on VOD platforms. (Glenn Sumi) 

Available on VOD

Boss Level

Mel Gibson, Frank Grillo, Naomi Watts; directed by Joe Carnahan

Apple TV, Cineplex, Google Play

Come True

Julia Sarah Stone, Landon Liboiron, Tedra Rogers; directed by Anthony Scott Burns

Apple TV, Google Play

Death Of A Ladies’ Man 

Gabriel Byrne, Jessica Pare, Suzanne Clement; directed by Matthew Bissonnette

Read our review

VIFF Connect

Dreamcatcher

Lou Ferrigno, Jr., Zachary Gordon, Adrienne Wilkinson; directed by Jacob Johnston

Apple TV, Google Play

Jump, Darling

Thomas Duplessie, Linda Kash, Cloris Leachman; directed by Phil Connell

Apple TV, Google Play

Trust

Victoria Justice, Matthew Daddario, Katherine McNamara; direted by Brian DeCubellis

Apple TV, Google Play