Barry Hertz

Thanks to some skillful, nuanced editing – and the forgiveness of time that comes with three decades – Coppola’s experiment is an offer you (sorry) can’t refuse. Mostly.

Once you surrender yourself to what King Richard is doing, and what it’s not doing, that’s okay. It’s especially easy to shut up and go along with whatever rosy view the Williams family wishes to preserve because Smith is here the whole time, helping sell the story.

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

This is a near-masterpiece, an intimate and nerve-wracking shocker that deserves as big an audience as the mystery box can conjure.

Canadian director Jason Buxton crafts a sometimes tense and sometimes unsteady character study that isn’t so much laced with dread as it is slathered with it.

A sharp dramedy focusing on the romantic stirrings of a lonely office worker, played with considerable wit and verve by the 69-year-old Sally Field.

The filmmaker has such a strong command of mood, character and performances – especially impressive given the age of her cast – that her world quickly, seductively overwhelms.

Asteroid City proves, once again, that there is so much more to the filmmaker than casual detractors assume.

Incendiary and furious, confident and courageous, the new thriller How to Blow Up a Pipeline boasts not only the best title of the year so far but also the best score, cast and itchy, charged, electric directorial vision – all of it only ever-so-slightly goosed by a political softening that perhaps says more about contemporary American filmmaking than the storytellers working within it.

The entire experiment feels limited, constrained by both unfettered admiration and nostalgia for a time that Linklater never experienced firsthand. It is a movie of limits, whereas Godard knew none.

It is respectful and smooth filmmaking that never loses sight of its one and only goal: keeping its audience hooked.

With a tongue-in-cheek title inviting audiences to immediately dismiss its supposedly intense fear factor, Damian McCarthy’s new horror film arrives ready to play with convention and expectation. The scary thing, though, is that the movie exhausts itself halfway through, revealing Hokum as something closer to hogwash.

It’s a sort of bad-luck situation most documentarians secretly dream of, but to their credit, For Ahkeem’s co-directors don’t exploit the situation, merely letting their cameras continue to capture Daje’s ever-dire situation.

Although Abbasi and his co-writers fall into a slight genre trap toward the end – one familiar to any fan of traditional crime thrillers – Border is otherwise a work of spectacular, unclassifiable artistry. Don’t read another word about it: just go.

Ford’s film cannot be entirely discounted – the director knows a star when he sees one, and seems to retroactively contort his screenplay around the talents of Plaza as much as he can. The actress makes Emily’s plight seem relatable, unrelenting and never ever precious.

Focused on one cocky white student’s foray into the world of California battle rap, Bodied is at times vile in its content and bananas in its execution. But Kahn is not a mere shock artist, and as the film progresses and twists its perspective, it’s clear the director is playing a much deeper, more complicated and extremely messy game.

It’s not that Blaze lacks tension or focus – it’s simply that Hawke is more fascinated with passion than profile. And here, that’s more than enough.

Add it all up, and Extraction’s many creative solutions to reinvigorating the genre nearly balance out its many generic genre problems. So, it’s good enough to take a shot on, especially after a stressful day of isolated modern life. But just one shot.

As Laurel and Hardy learn by the end of the film, every gig is an opportunity. Good on Coogan and Reilly for possessing the same workhorse mentality – and better luck next time, boys.

Unlike Brian De Palma, Lynch is not a natural conversationalist, so the result is a stiched-together narrative that is as curious and occasionally frustrating as the man himself.

Whimsically beautiful, as if Anderson discovered a long-lost Antoine de Saint-Exupéry picture book.

While Benedetta the woman may have been touched by Heaven or cursed from Hell or neither, Benedetta the film is undoubtedly a miracle.

Cody’s third-act twist threatens to unravel Theron’s hard work; yet, somehow, the power of Tully remains firmly in Theron’s skilled and capable hands.

As a conversation-starter, though, Pleasure hits all the spots – and sometimes soars far beyond thanks to the work of Kappel, whose performance is absolutely committed, fearless and entrancing.

The film’s delightful collision of the poetic and the profane is illustrated perfectly about midway through Chapter 2.

The film is not a masterpiece, but a memory box. Comforting, inviting, and one you won’t mind keeping close.

It is only when Diggs and Casal near the end of the film − including a too-convenient-by-half encounter with a cop − that the effort’s ambition in creating a treatise on all of Western society’s ills begins to crack. But until then, Blindspotting possesses enough flair, passion and sweat to put up one hell of a fight.

With lesser performers, too, maybe Hammer would have felt more like a gag. Yet O’Brien, fresh off a tremendous and under-seen performance in last year’s "Goalie," radiates nervy energy like it was the most natural thing in the world, while longtime character actor Patton gives his wary patriarch an urgent, unshakable sense of disappointment and unease. It’s almost worth eating your own tail over.

Together is such a sharp blend of the hilarious and the terrifying that it busts your gut at the same time it has you gritting your teeth.

In nearly every way Civil War represents the dizzying heights of the genre.

The film’s bizarre, gore-soaked premise actually manages to ease viewers into the far more uncomfortable topic of grief – after all, dying is easy, but living with death is much more complicated.

It is a small story told with slightly greater ambition than the small-screen affords. The animation is slicker, the original-songs budget more generous (the movie is, like the series, half-comedy and half-musical), and the guest stars are plentiful. It is ideal lazy summer Saturday matinee viewing.

Bring Her Back feels less like a movie than a finely tuned instrument of doom. In the devilish hands of Australian filmmaking brothers Danny and Michael Philippou, evil has been concentrated into an exceptionally and impressively nasty 104 minutes.

It all makes for an entertaining, occasionally delirious ride – especially the opening sequence.

The film’s central problem is that it takes Fuqua forever to make the inevitable happen, and when he gets around to it, the entire set-piece arrives with all the refined taste of an overcooked noodle swimming in a bowl of ketchup.

A House of Dynamite doesn’t so much self-destruct as fail to even ignite a spark.

If this is the film that is destined to divide the movie business, it’s as weird and imperfect a choice as could possibly be.

Like her first film, 2016′s fine-young cannibals tale Raw, Ducournau is tracing taboos to sketch a messy but compelling treatise on life’s endless growing pains. Ride or die.

A con-artist movie that is something of a con itself.

Part political satire, part fantasy, part I-don’t-even-know-what, Diamantino is exactly the type of surreal concoction that begs to be discovered by unsuspecting audiences.

Films about single film scenes, however, represent unexplored territory. Which is why 78/52 is such an enticing prospect – a deep dive into one of the most influential moments in cinema history: the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.

Early in the film, Morgan is careful to highlight Abe’s talent in predicting a movie’s twist (“She poisoned his drink!”). It is extremely doubtful, though, that anyone could guess what happens at the end of The Kid Detective.

When Beans works, it resonates deeply. And when it doesn’t, it’s not a tragedy – just evidence of a filmmaker finding what works for her voice and vision, and what might work better for an anticipated follow-up.

A simple film only designed to charm.

I can sympathize with the skeptics who take one look at Jackass’s cultural durability and shake their heads in disgust over the state of the world. But, as ever, there is a subversive method to Knoxville’s madness: an obsessive, and impressive, drive to tease the forever-blurry lines between comedy and pain.

Frightening and romantic, dreamy and dreary, the film laces the gore of a zombie movie with the magic-hour sunsets of a Terrence Malick film, plus a healthy amount of 1980s needle-drops. It is, in so many ways, one of the most unusually beautiful and violently sensual films in recent memory.

Denis Villeneuve’s Dune is, at its best moments, pure and gigantic cinematic madness.

The film is also weighed down with a hokey record-scratch moment, a triumphant big-game sequence and a church-set finale that seems to be aping "The Graduate" but doesn’t quite have the courage to fully embrace the comedy of the moment.

Every detail and narrative swerve are stacked on top of the other to build a monumental story of compromises and consequences. This is a brave film, bracing and thoughtful. It is also, at times, painfully funny.

It is a love story, as beautiful as it is devastating.

Joy Ride is as fantastically filthy as they come, providing enough glorious gags about gagging to carry audiences through the cold, hard winter to come.

There is a certain charm to Shaw’s deadpan comedy – and I genuinely appreciated what I can only assume was an intentional callback to Michael Cera’s fate in 2013′s This Is the End – but one visit to the Cryptozoo was enough for me.

40 Acres is a top-tier genre film that Trojan-horses a flood of knotty, provocative conversations into multiplexes via the best kind of speculative fiction.

This is the chef’s-kiss premise of the new dark comedy Dream Scenario, a thoroughly imaginative and mostly brilliant movie from Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli that is easily the best thing – real or otherwise – that Cage has starred in for ages.

When Lee puts Washington in just the right scene, with just the right power dynamics and just the right nerve-rattling dialogue, the result is a thing of high art. Forget the film’s initial low points – just keep aiming toward the top. And keep watching King David’s throne.

Writer-director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat’s feature is built on a number of sly narrative and stylistic tricks that gradually cement its status as a new action classic full of nasty surprises.

In terms of musical-theatre bona fides and genuine, soaring emotion, Tick, Tick … Boom! drowns out its contemporaries all the way up to the rafters.

There is almost zero chance that this film escapes the festival or art-house circuit to become a mainstream cultural artifact – its sexually explicit material all but guarantees it – but Jude’s work is an almost profound act of high-wire lampoonery that deserves to be seen and debated far and wide.

Thor films have traditionally landed with a heavy foot. Thank goodness Waititi taught the big guy how to dance.

Queen & Slim’s ultimate route is a powerful one – a drive meant to be shared, and discussed, long after the road ends.

So, if you must celebrate Bill Murray Day this year, pour yourself a Suntory Whisky and watch "Lost in Translation" instead. And make that drink neat.

This is a picture as severe as the real-life generational abuse that its director is chronicling, even if a few false steps mean that The Iron Claw ultimately lands as a technical knock-out.

The film is neither a stern lecture nor cheap entertainment, with Domont instead threading the needle somewhere in-between to create a tense guessing game of just how far she will push her characters.

This is a raw, intense movie circling on despair, hopelessness and inevitable dead ends. It is about the dark. But in plumbing the pitch black, Werewolf offers the distinct hope of a brighter future – at least, a brighter future for Canadian cinema.

Perhaps now more than ever, the Pixar folks seem to be stuck inside their corporate heads instead of listening to their beating hearts.

The film’s most egregious misstep, though, is sabotaging its own best stunt: the high-wire chemistry between Gosling and Blunt.

The actor is as engaging and captivating as ever on-screen as Adonis, yet he’s just as present and committed behind the camera, delivering a stirring string of heartwarming and jaw-breaking moments that add up to something if not exactly unique, than certainly rousing, effective and entertaining.

The film’s harmless pro-nature message is replaced with a drippy sense of self-congratulatory idealism, turning the film into a home movie by way of humble-brag. And then, by the hour mark, it’s merely a giant commercial for the couple’s 200-acre Apricot Lane Farm in Moorpark, Calif.

A documentary as inspiring as it is flat-out bizarre.

Sheridan knows how to craft a tidy whodunit – and a late-act switch in perspective works better than it should – but he eventually leans toward sermonizing instead of storytelling, a well-intentioned move that edges the story just this close to melodrama.

The movie is so across-the-board charming that even the most hardcore of socialists will find themselves rooting for Nike – that bastion of global corporate responsibility – to make gobs and gobs of money off the hard work of a young Black athlete.

All right, there are bits and pieces of new material in Chapter 3, but they come in the form of gobbledygook world-building. What’s worse is that all this blather about the underground assassin economy arrives gussied up with characters uttering needlessly intimidating Latin phrases.

Supernova feels less like a film to cherish and more a tweet to favourite.

The Public is writer-director Emilio Estevez’s grand, well-meaning and extremely dumb vanity project/tribute to the public-library system.

Extraordinarily gross, metaphorically blunt, but also perversely and wildly entertaining, the new Spanish splatter satire The Platform is the perfect movie to watch while the world seemingly teeters on the edge of existence.

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.

As far as movies-as-line-items go, Homecoming is better than it has any right to be. The story is slight but spry, thanks partly to the jettisoning of origin story but also due to its blessedly small stakes.

For those entering grade school, there is likely no better and more concise primer on the scandal. For everyone else, well, you know the story.

Jamie M. Dagg's new film, Sweet Virginia, is a lot to take in – too much, really. It's a revenge movie, a crime thriller, a gentle and low-key romance, and a dusty drama about the pains of leaving the past behind. It doesn't succeed at being any one of those things, too muddled is the script and too unsteady is the direction.

The most disappointing part is that the film is peppered with so many brief moments of comic flair and clear-eyed truths that they are collectively almost enough to convince you that it doesn’t matter what Baumbach’s intentions might’ve been. Unfortunately, those sharper-edged bits and pieces eventually become subsumed by a drippy sentimentality that sticks to you like the crisp white suit that Clooney is often wrapped inside of.

This is David Fincher’s version of a sitcom: as violently funny as it is hilariously violent.

Guts will be busted, and sides will be split. Heck, moviegoers might even learn to kiss and make up with comedies for good.

A fascinating, frequently angry and occasionally darkly funny documentary.

Mourning her only child, her marriage, and very likely her fortune as the betrayed and sidelined Laura, Cruz goes scorched-earth, incinerating any performer sharing her space.

Hanks is sturdy as ever, grounding the proceedings in a warm sense of familiar, fatherly comfort. But the rest of the film feels weightless, and at parts unbelievably dumb. One mid-film shoot-out in particular is executed with such listlessness that it’s a wonder Greengrass was able to stay awake while filming it.

The Square turns from a sharp art-world satire into something egregiously bonkers, a collision of blunt comic beats and heavy-handed social commentary that's more messy than profound.

Ma’s film isn’t solely set on establishing The Peg’s winter bona fides, but rather exposing the city’s throbbing romantic heart, which might be able to melt the coldest of days.

It will make you mad as hell. So angry, even, that you might wonder why no one has given this opportunity to Todd Haynes before.

I don’t know how many subscribers actually interested in its mature story and top-level craft will be able to unearth it from their Holidate-choked queues, but here’s hoping some are willing to embark on the excavation.

It is at times brash and thick-headed in its characters and politics, but it is engineered with such an electric ferocity – a beautiful marriage of high-performance technical expertise and gonzo aesthetic imagination – that it cannot help but knock you out.

As the two women clash in the film’s final moments, Tjahjanto executes a truly glorious extravaganza of choreographed carnage, as impressive as it is overwhelming.

There isn’t enough raw drama, deep-felt emotion, or genuine artistry on display here to keep CODA from staring down its own obligatory end: a half-smile and a shrug.

Bros is a genuinely hilarious, wonderful movie: heartfelt, slick and crafted with such careful comedic care that a good deal of jokes will inevitably be drowned out by audiences still laughing over the punchlines that came just before.

Which is why when Mary and Charlotte’s first big sex scene arrives – a moment destined to become a meme unto itself – its explosive energy feels undercut by a lack of genuine connection between the two women. Both performers are throwing the entirety of themselves into Lee’s world, but only one is offered much of anything to grab hold of.

By the time The Insult's verdict seems near, you may find yourself as wrapped up in the inherent tensions and entertainment of a traditional legal thriller as Doueiri is. Give the man his Oscar already. He's earned it.

There is the overwhelming sense that Domino was not directed by any one person at all, but rather spliced and diced by committee into something barely watchable.

Mandy is, if it’s not clear yet, not for everyone. But for those who think nothing of staying up past midnight to devour the strange and fantastic, it hits the sweetest of spots.

Without Christopher Plummer, All the Money in the World would be an absolute bore.