Barry Hertz

Firecrackers is not as casually joyful as its title suggests – but it is absolutely as incendiary.

The resulting drama, while perhaps predictable in an American Movie meets Cocoon kind of way, is still awfully sweet and warmhearted.

The director simply trusts that his performers and sun-dappled visuals will carry the film forward. And he’s right – there’s little narrative propulsion to Too Late to Die Young, yet it hums along with a vibrant humanity all the same.

Jackman is such a finessed force of nature that he’s as good as you might expect, but Hudson – who never quite landed as juicy a part as in Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous, which is now more than a quarter-century old – matches her co-star beat for beat, bar for bar. Good times, they never seemed so good.

The story is captivating, the characters are magnificently fleshed out, and the emotional stakes are entirely, utterly believable.

The White Fortress is a startling, hypnotizing, but above all haunting work destined to linger.

The film’s many tiny dramas add up to a thoughtful, though sometimes shaggy, study of hopes and regrets, aspirations and reality. It is not groundbreaking, but it is funny and sad and completely relatable.

Mank is, overwhelmingly, so very interesting. But it is also something of a half-masterpiece mess: thematically scattered, awkwardly paced, overlong and curiously uninterested in the inner life of its title character.

Yet the most striking, shaking moment in Annihilation has nothing to do with Area X or the perverted flora and fauna within it. Rather, it's when the film's spare score is interrupted by the folksy strains of Crosby, Stills & Nash's Helplessly Hoping.

Soderbergh, once again acting as his own cinematographer under the alias Peter Andrews (and editor, with the nom de plume Mary Ann Bernard), finds his own way of keeping the camera swirling and twirling, electrifying lengthy, densely composed monologues that require some visual energy to keep them from landing with a cinematic thud.

Every now and then, Jackman dips into Serious Acting exercises but seems so visibly uncomfortable placing himself in such situations that he feels a micro-second from jumping out of his own skin, when he should instead be sinking into someone else’s (see The Fountain, Prisoners, The Front Runner).

Like the stock market itself, there are peaks and valleys.

The film is rich in such positive messaging, and its subjects quickly endear themselves to the camera.

In terms of pure spectacle and shock-and-awe achievement, Villeneuve has produced an adaptation of mad glory and power.

While the split-POV conceit initially begs comparisons to Rashomon, Monster’s three perspectives are not so much in argument with one another as they are pieces of the same puzzle. And once they are locked together, the final portrait is staggeringly heartbreaking.

However Buster Scruggs came to be, it highlights the best of the Coens' mordant minds, but not without tripping over a few unintended obstacles. Which probably suits the pair, always in awe of things never going right, just fine.

Sallitt is grasping for something profound here – a portrait of friendship seen both up-close and from a distance. Fourteen may ultimately be just that – a grasp – but it is worth reaching out for all the same.

It’s a delightfully cruel work of high tension, perfect in just how quickly and easily it gets under your skin.

There are so many missteps that Hancock and screenwriter John Fusco make here, but to list a few briefly: The dialogue is 85-per-cent clumsy exposition, the heroes are given exactly one character trait each (Gault’s a drunk, Hamer’s a jerk) and the film’s politics read as MAGA-esque vigilante evangelicalism (the movie is perpetually on the verge of having Hamer say, directly to the camera, something along the lines of, “the only good criminal is a dead criminal”).

In Fences, every time a character opens their mouth is an opportunity to savour the playwright’s impeccable ear for language – for capturing the joys and frustrations that come when someone simply tries to say something – anything – about the daily struggle that is life. It’s as much workaday poetry as it is dialogue and Washington knows better than to dilute it or make it his own.

Soderbergh, once again acting as his own cinematographer and editor, pulls out nearly every cinematic trick he has to elevate Koepp’s material, but the film too often tip-toes when it should run: Every narrative and character beat feels muted, as if the tech-thriller is being apologetic for its own place within the genre.

Berger’s film is a sometimes zippy, frequently ridiculous drama.

Priscilla the movie is as complicated and beguiling as Priscilla the woman.

The Painter and the Thief might be the best documentary of the year, if it could be fairly called a documentary. Instead, director Benjamin Ree’s film is more a mesmerizing, and potentially transgressive, investigation into just how far the documentary form can be torn apart and put back together – and whether the audience should accept such a wild reconfiguration.

Lawrence Michael Levine’s film, though, is only sporadically clever enough to pull off its central trick. Mostly, we’re stuck with a group of rather unpleasant people doing rather unpleasant things. To what desired end, it is never quite clear.

It is beautiful, delirious, frustrating and so wedded to that film-critic notion of the unimpeachable “Kaufman-esque” sensibility that there is little point in arguing with its power, with its immeasurable impact. It works, even (especially?) when it’s not supposed to.

Kajillionaire is certainly not operating on a familiar wavelength, but it is also more than, say, Wes Anderson cosplay. In its quizzical, candy-coloured, sideways view of the world – one that normalizes apartments that regularly flood with pink sludge – the film is offering a challenge to its audience. Accept it, or move along.

Maison du bonheur is a thoughtful, affecting study of the space we choose to take up in this world, and what happens when we grow old enough to realize the truth and consequences of those decisions.

Maverick works its wonders thanks to the perfect match of star power, source material ripe for retrofitting, and a director who knows how to wring the best out of his leading man and, more importantly, when to get the heck out of his way.

BlackBerry is funny, fast and nerve-rattling. And it is always – always – intensely entertaining.

A wonderfully uncomfortable, deeply hilarious coming-of-age movie, the new film Didi plays like an extended and surprisingly welcome visit to the filmmaker’s childhood bedroom.

After Yang is a tightly controlled yet tremendously alive film, powered by the beating heart that is Farrell’s performance.

A giddy and fitfully amusing mashup of "Adventures in Babysitting," "Date Night," the Spy Kids franchise and, um, "Wet Hot American Summer," The Sleepover is the latest entry in Netflix’s experiment in catch-‘em-all entertainment.

Monos sinks you into its mud until the dirt stuffs your mouth. You won’t be able to breathe – but you’ll be thanking Landes for the cinematic suffocation all the same.

Clocking in at a severely bloated 165 minutes, Chapter 4 is both a thrill and a slog, an all-you-can-eat buffet that insists on stuffing your guts before it spills them.

The film is simply operating at a speed constantly one click ahead of expectations, never satisfied that any one viewer could know where it might all be heading.

The thrill Soderbergh and his co-conspirators are enjoying is contagious.

Slipping in references to everyone from Kubrick to Fellini, Gray creates a truly intoxicating experience, overwhelming in the best possible way. It is this close to being an all-time classic, if only Charlie Hunnam’s central performance as Fawcett didn’t slip out of Gray’s period trappings every now and then (you can’t help but wonder what Gray’s long-time collaborator, Joaquin Phoenix, would have done with the role).

Even if I could muster the strength to defy studio marching orders on plot details, there is no point. There is little in Endgame that is worth spoiling, given how its core is spoiled rotten to begin with.

More than anything, NTBTSTM is simply hilarious – a furiously funny roller coaster of a film whose energy never, ever dips. It is difficult to imagine a better, sharper comedy coming along this year. Or the next.

It's a my-brother's-keeper drama, except when it's a violent comedy. It's a tale of There Will Be Blood-levels of greed, except when it's a high-ho adventure.

Director Maria Schrader’s new sci-fi-tinged rom-com might be conventionally structured, but it is also smoothly crowd-pleasing work, tackling all the anxieties and neuroses of midlife romance with the fears and promises of next-generation technology.

It is a sadly out-of-touch tactic that recalls an old man yelling at the clouds (or, more accurately, cloud computing).

Bronstein infuses every moment of If I Had Legs... with a jagged kind of intensity, stringing together scenes with an adrenalized propulsion that makes a story of a mother struggling against a world pitted against her feel both singular and universal.

If Frankenstein is enough to shake the director of his creature comforts and push him to explore something new, then so be it. But don’t expect everyone else to devote themselves to such an exquisite corpse.

The no-contest wildest comedy of the season, will keep your mind busy for weeks.

In the case of Sam Mendes’s First World War thriller 1917, I am willing to concede that this is indeed a cinematic experience that demands the largest canvas possible.

The film hits a truly unexpected high when it introduces Daniel Craig's bank-vault expert Joe Bang, an imprisoned force of comic fury whose unhinged performance elevates Logan Lucky above any notions of genre shtick. Good luck keeping that one locked up.

By twisting around preconceptions of what an outer-space epic should be, French auteur Claire Denis returns to the fertile ground of her Trouble Every Day era, using genre to dig beneath themes that others would only treat as skin-deep.

Regrettably, both director and star are constantly fighting uphill battles in Till, which is saddled with a thoroughly conventional screenplay whose narrative energies only rarely attempt to match the incendiary intensity of the history that it obviously cares so much about retelling.

This is an imaginatively conceived, impressively scaled, and surprisingly funny ride. Just pay as little attention to the promotional scare tactics as possible.

There are great things to be found in little packages, and Islands offers tremendous evidence that, if Edralin might ever be given more than the bare minimum of resources, the director will create something gigantic.

Broker too frequently goes broad and wide, resulting in a story that doesn’t earn the happiness that its flawed characters desire, and eventually achieve.

Malcolm & Marie is the worst kind of self-indulgent nonsense. It is an obnoxious gripe about everything and anything that is so devoid of wit and imagination that it ends up being about nothing at all.

Alice, Darling does so much right that it is acutely painful when it goes wrong.

The finale is a gut-punch, but it arrives too long after Komasa has already exhausted most of his story's, and leading man's, energy.

The fact that The Royal Hotel keeps its audience as captive as its leads until that final moment is an impressive and ultimately incendiary feat.

Typically, Whitaker can lend the sloppiest assignment some much-needed dignity, but here he gives far more than the easy and lazy script ever demands, so much so that you begin to feel sorry that he took the time and energy to do so.

The dramatic set-up courtesy of director and co-writer Clint Bentley (whose family has a long history on the track) isn’t exactly novel, but the film’s acute sense of place and specificity of profession lends Jockey an authenticity that is irresistible.

The real trick of the film, though, is how it constantly steadies itself in the face of ever-mounting absurdity. This is a movie of such sexual outrageousness and stylized depravity that it should topple over every few minutes. And yet Glowicki and Petrie (who plays multiple roles) ride the razor’s edge of delirium to create something fantastical, even beautiful.

Ultimately, The Promised Land is a testament to not only the resilience of Denmark’s agricultural homesteaders . . . but also to the fierce power of Mikkelsen’s presence.

Deeply playful while never falling for the more hoary tendencies of the genre – remarkably, Soderbergh seems to have invented a new way of filming a “jump scare” here – Presence keeps its audience close and tight, building to a finale that forces you to reconsider the entire experiment.

This isn’t a movie of easy cynicism or a snide middle finger to horror-movie tradition – it is a finely calibrated shock to a system that Barker obviously grew up worshipping.

As intense and rigorous and thoroughly impressive a work Maestro is, the triple-threat Cooper cannot quite summon the nerve, or verve, to go completely off-book.

At almost every turn, Project Hail Mary attempts to convince you that it is groundbreaking, innovative filmmaking. But in actuality, the movie lands as a grand act of cinematic recycling – the fusing together of familiar, comforting bits and pieces into something determined to please crowds and warm hearts.

From the projectionist played by Toby Jones who regularly pops up to vocalize what everyone onscreen and the audience is already well aware of – movies are an escape, of course! – to its eye-rolling treatment of Hilary’s mental health, Empire of Light is the most noxious kind of faux-benevolent “prestige” cinema.

First Love is neither a return to form for Miike nor is it a groundbreaking new leap into the unknown. The film rests instead in the mushy, bloody Miike middle – a pleasant diversion for the director’s faithful fans and an easy-ish entry for those eager to jump on the man’s over-the-top-is-not-good-enough wavelength. Your Miike mileage may vary – but rest assured, there’s no barf bag required.

As with every summer – even this supremely strange one – there are a ton of horror movies coming down the pike. But no matter how scary the new Conjuring or how disgusting the new Saw may be, I can guarantee that you won’t see as soul-shaking a film this season as The Amusement Park.

Mother! is an unparalleled achievement, entirely unprecedented and unexpected in this era of studio filmmaking.

If hell is other people, then high school is a four-year journey through all nine levels of Dante-ish misery. But while most teen-centric films skip over this harsh reality, The Edge of Seventeen embraces it with a refreshing zeal.

Mangold mostly lets Logan stand as a showcase for Jackman, that rare performer who can take an already-iconic figure and own him completely, to the point where it’s hard to divorce the two.

For a while, it’s quietly meditative and riveting – worthy of the Palme d’Or it captured last spring in Cannes. But in the film’s final 10 minutes, Audiard lets his bombastic sensibilities loose, creating an over-the-top revenge tale that’s bewildering.

It is hilarious and heartbreaking all at once, especially when factoring in Dave Franco's performance, a beautiful game of shadows in which he's forced to play the more respected artist against his older, more famous brother.

The new comedy Kneecap is a riotous delight that will have even the most staid audiences ready to flip the bird.

Essential to the film’s success is Murphy, clearly having his best time in a long time as Moore, who adopted a flashy pimp-esque persona that would eventually take the blaxploitation landscape by storm.

There is a sincerity here that sticks.

Dealing with such heavy matters as death, faith and forgiveness, the film wants to be a classic-in-the-making, but it just doesn’t hit the emotional and narrative cues necessary for such a weighty job.

This new version of an old tale has the capacity to horrify you into shell-shocked pacifism, while delivering a few minor-key surprises along the way.

His characters are the brightest, slickest people you will ever meet, and whether you’re meant to love or loathe them, Sorkin has a genuine talent for ensuring his heroes and villains will forever stick in your head, wandering the recesses of your mind in an eternal walk-and-talk formation.

By the film’s haunting finale – a gut-punch moment of reckoning that follows nearly half an hour of entertainingly amateurish gunplay – Kurosawa’s sentiments on the current state of e-commerce are clear. Whether emptor or venditor, capitalism is full of caveats.

If you can walk away from a movie with a tune in your heart and a bounce in your step, then it’s safe to say that the film clicked in just the ways that were intended.

Saulnier has returned with a tremendous, high-impact blast of a movie, making any delayed gratification all the more satisfying.

Although the movie’s energies dip slightly toward its end, when Mia’s plan to rid the world of the cursed hand requires superhuman acts of strength and derring-do, Talk to Me delivers a series of slash-and-burn shocks that last far longer than 90 seconds.

If you have ever heard of the term “catfishing” – and if you haven’t, I’m impressed and envious – then you’re already one step ahead.

Wagner Moura (Narcos’s Pablo Escobar himself) does what he can as the sturdy Sergio, and the actor has strong, near-instant chemistry with a love interest played by Ana de Armas.