Barry Hertz

Finally, a big and shiny studio-backed holiday movie targeted to queer audiences that is just as sappy, cheesy and predictable as the many groan-inducing films that have been chucked toward straight moviegoers all these years.

A movie perfectly engineered for home viewing. Particularly with the best set of headphones that you own.

Appropriately for a film about art forgery, every cast member in The Last Vermeer seems to be attempting their best impression of someone else.

Rarely, though, has cinema been so devoted to idealizing the importance of journalism than in Collective.

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.

Landon is not aiming to break new ground here – only to use well-trod territory for his own gag- and gross-out-happy ends. This is candy-coloured mayhem, bright and snappy and enjoyably wince-inducing in its desire to disgust. And just as Vaughn can easily play both male murderer and winsome teen girl, so, too, can the charming Newton ace her required flips.

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.

The “new” film is firmly an artifact of the past. More specifically the imaginary era of Gotham that Allen has become a permanently unstuck-in-time guest of since "Annie Hall."

Make no mistake: Ron Howard’s Hillbilly Elegy is a bad film, inert and clichéd and largely devoid of cinematic imagination. But it is not a problematic film.

The result is messy, zippy and smart-alecky. But never boring, and occasionally funny enough to warrant a spit-take or three.

Ultimately, Ponti’s film survives on the one surprise that’s not much of a surprise at all: the power and majesty of his lead actress. And how did the director score such a casting coup? You’d have to ask his mother ... Sophia Loren.

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.

A skilfully executed thriller that is narrowly aimed at one demographic – audiences over 50 who like a little violence with their late-life dramas – but succeeds at entertaining just about anyone who comes across its dusty, blood-soaked path.

The movie surprises on almost every level, breaking a number of contemporary rom-com rules along the way thanks to Tiffany Paulsen’s self-aware screenplay. I don’t mean in the meta-satirical sense of, say, David Wain’s absurdist They Came Together. More like a watered down Nora Ephron project.

Come Play’s themes, characters and story are too strong to lump the film in with the wave of sub-tier horror flooding the market this month.

Ultimately, Weekes’s story, which pivots on a minor-key twist that doesn’t quite earn its intended gasps, falls just short of justifying its feature-film length. There is an excellent short film hiding in the corridors of His House – it just needs a slight renovation.

A disposable, ultimately best-forgotten movie.

For 2020, though, this new and unexpected Borat is a nice surprise. Very niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice.

Over the Moon is far more interesting than its animated contemporaries, if only for the parsing of its back story.

For some reason that shall forever remain a mystery to all those but director Ben Wheatley and the almighty Netflix algorithm, 2020 has delivered one of the most unnecessary remakes in the history of an industry built upon revisitation: Rebecca.

Anyone who has ever watched a movie about young love and the C-word (no, not Clouds) will know exactly where the film is headed, as well as the obligatory narrative beats that stretch out the inevitable. But for a sob story, Clouds is not nearly as watery as it could have been.

A solid, well-acted, and slightly predictable drama of morals whose novelty evaporates once you realize that the general beats of the story itself have been presented before, to far more haunting effect.

From its joyful and exuberant opening half to a late-game moment of deep and sombre introspection, Lee’s version of American Utopia is thoughtful pop performance art captured with the propulsive power of cinema.

The longer I Am Greta goes on, the more clear it becomes that Grossman is content to just tag along for the ride, adding little cinematic depth or insight to the environmentalist’s trajectory.

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.

Despite the too-twisty story and drippy characters, Larney does extremely impressive work with a limited budget, creating an entire world (or two) as if he had the resources of a Marvel escapade, or at the very least a Terminator entry. It’s only a shame that his performers don’t quite match his aesthetic ingenuity, especially Smit-McPhee, who wails and garbles with grating abandon.

But like Tasya, Possessor succeeds in getting under your skin. If this is just a taste of what Brandon Cronenberg has in store for cinema, then long live the new flesh.

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.

You’re unlikely to any time soon encounter a more thorough and energetic dive into the art of letting go. I look forward to Johnson’s next act, whilst I look over my shoulder.

Despite all these challenges, the performances that Mantello wrings make the 2020 effort worth everyone’s trouble.

Like an exhausted artist facing a blank canvas, or an underwhelmed film critic staring at a blank screen, The Artist’s Wife doesn’t have much to say but tosses something on the screen regardless, hoping it will stick.

As much as Stanley wants to believe in binaries – good honest work versus cheating, respect versus irresponsibility – Cohn’s low-key narrative undercuts such disingenuous naivety. Combine that with Jenkins’s slow-burn performance, and you have a film that speaks to, rather than talks down to, its audience.

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.

Each performer tries their best to inject the material with energy and wit and verve, but Rebecca Frayn and Gaby Chiappe’s script has too many threads to weave together, leaving everyone looking a bit stranded.

Executed with more energy than either of Guy Ritchie’s recent blockbusters, and with Henry Cavill acting as a more suave Sherlock than Robert Downey Jr., director Harry Bradbeer’s adventure is a perfectly fine piece of Holmes-ian content, if not a work of actual, you know, cinema.

At times, this cinema-vérité approach results in a claustrophobic and engrossing viewing experience. But its construction also frequently, and curiously, lacks urgency, and the few characters the filmmakers keep returning to never quite stick.

City of God crossed with A Prophet by way of One Thousand and One Nights, Philippe Lacôte’s Night of the Kings is an ambitious thriller that constantly surprises.

The film is not quite a medallist. But it’s certainly a spirited contender.

An intense new film that pivots on a tremendous, teeth-gnashing performance from Law as a 1980s father whose aspirations of upward mobility threaten to destroy his life.

A film in which every single character is despicable, but some are more despicable than others, could have run into a sympathy problem. Yet thanks to J. Blakeson’s zippy direction and a chillier-than-thou lead performance from Rosamund Pike, the movie is immensely watchable. Just not especially memorable.

The result is that the particularly cruel delights of Pollock’s writing get lost in an adaptation that can never nail any of its sprawling cast of characters, or escape the Southern-fried clichés that the novel transcends.

The humour doesn’t go nearly as deep as the science of “looking eternity in the eye,” resulting in a neat-enough educational experience, if not a fulfilling work of documentary cinema.

A portrait of America that is devastating and freeing, bursting with sorrow and empathy.

In this new era of McG movies, you can simply turn his film off, walk a few steps to your bedroom and go to sleep.

There is certainly much to celebrate and remember about the former U.S. president’s tenure, but Souza, and Porter, don’t seem much interested in anything approaching nuance.

But viewed from another, more cynical angle, The Broken Hearts Gallery reveals itself as just another lightweight Saturday-night diversion – zippy and heartfelt, certainly, but hardly reinventing or even seasonally rotating the rom-com wheel.

The movie gets so, so close to achieving its goal of complete audience seduction and surrender, too. Right before it rips your heart out with a narrative turn that has to be seen to be (dis)believed.

While the scale of Hu’s production is indeed impressive in its giganticness, and likely plays excellently on the IMAX screens for which it is intended (I had to settle for watching it on my television), The Eight Hundred falls a few hundred yards short of war-movie greatness.

And before anyone pulls out the “guilty pleasure” card – no. There is zero pleasure here, no matter how low your bar is currently set. Only pain. So much pain.

Sumptuously designed, brightly costumed and shot with an eye toward epic grandeur, the new film is simply gorgeous to take in, no matter the size of the screen. Less pretty is the script, which took four screenwriters to conjure even though there’s perfectly good source material just sitting there, waiting for a photocopy machine.

Instead of funnelling his inspirations into one singular vision that he could call his own, Boone has made a Frankenstein of a franchise movie, a giant elevator pitch that leads directly to the sub-basement of originality.

Although the tale feels a bit slight – and yeah, I’m still aware we’re talking about a Bill & Ted movie – the affair is ultimately breezy, harmless fun.

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.

I also appreciated the film’s quick glimpse of Hell itself, which Lucia is plunged into as a warning to whose who won’t accept salvation. With its cheap CGI demons and soundtrack of wailing souls, it was unintentional comedy of the highest order. If you need me, I’ll be laughing all the way to Hades.

Doff has created a film that bursts off the screen more often than not, albeit in that ultra-extreme Joseph Kahn kind of way. Your mileage may vary, but it’s a good enough game to play these waning summer days.

It is riveting, deeply depressing stuff – and would be more engaging if co-directors David Darg and Price James had decided to explore the many similarities that movie-making and wrestling share, such as their devotion to putting on a highly fictional show.

Tenet is not so much a decipherable thriller as it is an extreme exercise in reverse-engineered narrative incomprehensibility – the cinematic equivalent of a half-baked pretzel, its goopy symmetrical loops superficial yet delicious all the same.

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.

Summerland may not be the greatest show on Earth, but it is firmly Arterton’s show – and deserves more attention than most anyone on these shores will likely give it.

The One and Only Ivan elevates its babbling baboons and erudite elephants to a level of graceful storytelling and emotional catharsis. The film might only be available to stream in the emptiness of your own home, but it has enough big-screen ambition that you can easily imagine it holding an entire theatre’s audience rapt.

Politicians are craven and driven by all the wrong reasons, and though the pair uncover a handful of hopeful voices – especially Ben Feinstein, a compassionate and committed idealist – you will likely exit the world of Boys State as cynical as you entered it.

While Spinster works well enough as a showcase for Peretti’s talents, Dorfman never matches the power of her star. With a bare-bones production design and most of its scenes blocked in a pedestrian manner, Spinster looks like a TV show that simply goes on too long.

The latest adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1911 novel is not necessarily a bad film, just an unnecessary one. Given that we’ve already been treated to about a dozen film and TV (and anime!) adaptations, there is little that Munden and his creative team offer that is essential.

The characters aren’t compelling, the comedy isn’t energetic, and the narrative surprises that Rey throws at the screen will be obvious to anyone who has ever heard the word “Sundance.”

In its cautious rhythm, its economical storytelling and its deliberately over-the-top colour scheme – each character’s “infection,” so to speak, is back-lit by deeply saturated red and blues – She Dies Tomorrow unsettles without using any of cinema’s typical tools.

The international cast manage to acquit themselves fine enough, with Jagger in particular having a ball as an energetic rapscallion.

While Rich’s script misses a few trickier opportunities to further dig into questions of religion and history – Herschel sleeps his way through the entirety of the Second World War, yet there’s never any discussion of how the Holocaust has irrevocably changed the world he wakes up in – An American Pickle is a movie that your bubbe will love.

Perhaps sensing that the rest of his story - mostly focusing around the earnest do-goodery of Golja's aide - falls emotionally flat, Navarretta lavishes attention on his two marquee players, creating tiny moments of poignancy.

There is not much more you could ask of a Canadian thriller, even if the director lets the Thailand-set portions of the film devolve slightly into clichéd Brokedown Palace territory.

White Lie is a wildly entertaining ride.

Given that his movie never gives us an opportunity to understand who these men are, it is hard to mourn them beyond a superficial fashion.

Fatal Affair will live up to the first half of its name, and you’ll be bored to death.

“SEE THE MOVIE THAT NO AUDIENCE CAN OUTLAST!” – after actually taking in The Painted Bird, I can confirm that the horror more or less matches the headlines.

But Schneider, whose only other directing credit is the extremely low-key 2009 family drama "Get Low," finds a way to portray the nautical action with clarity and precision. You might not know what Krause and his crew are saying at all times, but you definitely know what they’re witnessing.

Maybe Rapoport’s script from way back when was fiercer, sharper, and funnier, and the sands of time have simply eroded any of its interesting edges down to mere nubs of gross-out nothingness. But watching it today on Netflix, it can’t help but feel highly algorithmic.

There are a few scenes where Theron is an inch away from completely rewriting the proceedings – she just needs a slight jolt in the right direction from her director, a nudge toward chaos. But filmmaker Gina Prince-Bythewood never quite delivers the inspirational spark her star needs to unleash such fury, and the resulting antics rest somewhere between spectacle and shoulder-shrug.

This is a tremendously entertaining trip through the births of both America and the musical form, with each institution given a lightly revisionist torque by Miranda, who approaches the material with a scholar’s dedication to detail and a showman’s slick wit.

Regrettably, and predictably, Force of Nature isn’t interestingly bad – it’s just bad.

Listen, Will: The film, your first with streaming giant Netflix (which maybe says something about the state of your brand of big-screen comedies, or maybe not), isn’t a total disaster. There are moments where you and Dobkin embrace the surreal . . . that hint at a better, more interesting kind of absurdist comedy.

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.

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.

Irresistible is toothless, it is weak-willed and it is depressingly unaware of either of these facts. If this is indeed Stewart’s response to the madness of the Trump era, then we should all be glad that he decided to depart The Daily Show when he did. It is clear that he didn’t have anything left to say.

You Should Have Left will, however, make you seriously rethink your next Airbnb rental. And maybe even push you to watch "Mortdecai," just to see what a real horror looks like.

Maybe arguing the merits of a quote-unquote bad movie through the means of an imperfect documentary is the only option that makes sense. I have the distinct feeling, though, that somewhere in Europe, Verhoeven is laughing his ass off.

Gordon-Levitt, absent from the big screen since 2016′s "Snowden," oscillates nicely between maintaining an air of remarkable calm and then breaking down completely, and he pretends to know what all those airplane buttons do quite well.

A confusing, muddled, sloppy mess of bad intentions and worse execution.

It is messy, it is incendiary, and it is frustrating. It may not be what you wanted or were promised by the slick and smooth marketing materials provided by Netflix, the streaming giant that is partnering with Lee here for the first time. But Da 5 Bloods is what you need.

Unless you are made of stone – to say nothing of being actually stoned – it is pretty damn funny. For at least 100 of its 137 minutes.

Part revisionist history and part deeply grim fairy tale, writer-director Mirrah Foulkes’s feature debut wants to be as clever as it is fiendish, as funny as it is dark, and as progressive as it is exploitative – but such goals collide instead of coalesce.

With its gore and brutality and general nihilistic sensibility – not to mention an eyeball scene that would make Bunuel blush – Becky is not fit for 95 per cent of the populace, especially those who might innocently click on the title after recognizing the star of their favourite CBS sitcom. But for those who like to get dirty with this kind of scuzzy chaos, then this is near-perfect slimeball cinema.

There is a semi-frustrating sense that Frias hasn’t quite made the movie that he wanted to – that either time was not on his side or that he fussed too much in the editing booth.

Alternately deploying twisty monologues and quick back-and-forth exchanges, Montague and Sanger are clearly having a ball. They’re not only riffing on obvious inspirations like Orson Welles’s "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast and "Twilight Zone" mastermind Rod Serling, but also the modern ubiquity of podcasts, and their propensity for devolving into audio fabulism.

This is still a light and frothy rom-com, predictable and charming in equal measure, and most comfortable when it fits the efficient mold of genre obligations. But when it wants to, it can really crank that charm up to 11.

It’s the type of film that was birthed with 1997′s "The Full Monty," which shares a director with Military Wives in Peter Cattaneo – as well as a flat, incurious sensibility that lacks any hint of complexity in the layers of its world or the inner lives of its characters.

An exercise in miserablism that, although clocking in at an ostensibly tight pace, feels never-ending.

Watching it all unfold in my sweatpants while shoving frozen pizza into my gullet, I found it deeply, unshakably depressing.

A zany mix of dark comedy, slapstick, and high-concept adventure, The Lovebirds moves fast in the hopes that no one notices how messy its construction is.

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.

Despite its half-decade worth of aspirations to be something, Scoob! is a middle-ground of nothingness. Toss it a bone, if you wish – just know that your stay-at-home kids will be fighting over other, more interesting scraps soon enough.

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.

Overriding everything is a profound sense of laziness. Jokes do not land here so much as they ooze forth, slow and noxious.

The tension between trying to make something unique and trying to adhere to whatever expectations you place on yourself when you call your movie Capone (although to be fair its working title was Fonzo) is right up there onscreen. In all its glorious mess.

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

A uniquely Canadian exercise in down-and-out misery, Amy Jo Johnson’s second directorial effort, Tammy’s Always Dying, delivers a wealth of interesting talent to the table, and leaves them to fight for scraps.

All Day and a Night offers renewed hope for Wright acolytes, all while reaffirming a new star in Sanders.

The filmmaker’s narrative and visual approach isn’t especially novel in style, but it is compassionate, detailed and persuasive in its assembly.

From its lazy title down to its yes-we-all-saw-that-coming third-act twist, Dangerous Lies offers a particularly boring kind of last-resort viewing.

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.

If there is a one-word skeleton key to unlocking Guns Akimbo, it might simply be: “sloppy.”

This is a movie that cries out for attention, in ways both admirable and grating.

It is as much a gusty dissection of colonialism as it is a gut-spilling splatter-thon.

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.

Unless you are a direct descendant of Robert the Bruce, or perhaps part of the Macfayden clan, you’re better off letting this particular version of history get lost in the sands of time.

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).

But while first-timer mistakes abound – everyone except the three leads deliver performances so stiff I wondered if they were deliberate – Selah and the Spades is more than just a slick calling card. It’s impassioned, informed and sometimes furious work that could find Poe being name-checked herself not too long from now.

Parents might get more of a kick out of the voice-casting and darker corners of the story than school-aged children. But Vancouver’s BRON Animation studio provides a strong, often beguiling sense of tyke-hypnotizing flair to the visuals, and the zippy, synthy score by Wes Anderson favourite Mark Mothersbaugh should keep kids bouncing up and down, in a good way.

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.

Yang’s deeply personal, imaginative work is very much its own creation, just as much as "The Farewell." Or any other movie whose producers knew that audiences are hungry for diverse stories. That representation matters as much as story and style and performance. All of which, by the way, Tigertail has in spades.

It’s zippy and distracting enough to keep you and your brood entertained for half an afternoon, but don’t get too comfortable – I can see the soundtrack eventually grating if you ever find your kids demanding to watch it over and over again. Which is inevitable.

Just like the film’s half-hearted conceit, take comfort in knowing that you’ll be able to divorce yourself from the proceedings with the click of a button.

Director Marc Meyers’s sometimes funny, but more often creaky, spin on devil worship, murder and good ol’ fashioned religion has only one or two nifty ideas – all of which are sacrificed early on, leaving about an hour of footage in desperate need of divine intervention.

Slowly, but not always confidently, Dowse and Mack begin to upend obligations of the structure, play fast and loose with the limits of good taste and wind up with, while far from a comedic masterpiece, an enjoyably reckless piece of vulgar entertainment.

The entire movie doesn’t merely tip-toe into the ridiculous, it dives head-first into the shallow end of stupid, cracking its head, and yours, along the way.

A fascinating, frequently angry and occasionally darkly funny documentary.

A smooth family drama with hints of big, bold comedy and a spicy, complicated aftertaste reminiscent of Lifetime movie-of-the-week tropes, Uncorked is the cinematic equivalent of merlot: fine enough if you’ve drained all your other options, but nothing to get drunk on.

Eisenberg does an admirable job porting his typically nervous energy into Marceau, a man who’s not portrayed as a full-blooded hero so much as a sincere, if naive, nebbish constantly wrestling with his fears and doubts.

Vivarium is an exercise in wringing dry the audience’s emotions until we’re nothing but husks. For some, that could be appreciatively cathartic right about now. Myself, I felt little other than a deep and nagging depression.

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.

The most shocking part of this too-shocking-for-audiences-today production is that Cuse and Lindelof are even involved, given the far smarter and sharper work they did last year on HBO’s "Watchmen," which took the carcass of U.S. politics and thoroughly eviscerated it in a new and startling fashion.

As far as the preaching-to-the-choir genre goes, though, I Still Believe is a far more tolerable exercise than, say, last year’s anti-abortion screed "Unplanned" or any recent movie with the word “Heaven” in the title (Heaven Is for Real, Miracles from Heaven).

Diesel’s "Fast & Furious" movies have heart. His "Riddick" movies have weirdness. His "XXX" entries have lunacy. (Can we pause to admire how many franchises this man has to his name?) Bloodshot, though, only offers mere generic mediocrity.

Just as it is possible to make a compelling doc without telling an entire life’s story end to end, Lost Girls proves that you can make a substantial thriller that doesn’t rely on a comforting real-world conclusion.

As audiences, we lean toward demanding a near-constant auditory assault – that if we’re not hearing something, we’re missing something. Director Kelly Reichardt has no qualms with upending this, and other pieces of conventional cinematic wisdom with First Cow, a film that takes great care to remind us of the whisper-quiet bones of America’s history – a time when there wasn’t much to hear except what nature was telling us.

Spenser Confidential makes far more narrative and visual sense than the incomprehensible "Mile 22," and carries less of an America First odour than any of the pair’s previous partnerships. But it also proves that it is finally time that Berg and Wahlberg explored a trial separation. If you really love someone, guys, set them free.

Yet after half an hour in Wendy’s world, it is clear that Zeitlin has exhausted both his visual imagination and whatever narrative interest he had in Barrie’s tale other than “kids, they grow up fast.”

As the frequency of this particular nightmare ratchets up in volume, The Antenna proves a worthy successor to the work of David Cronenberg, Ben Wheatley and the many other filmmakers who delight in the meaty material of rancid subjects.

I’ve come around to Glass’s singular, purpose-filled vision – one that is intent on pushing its audience so far outside their comfort zones that you’d need a map to find your way back to baseline existence. Clark is also a wonder as the title character, playing a deluded and dangerous antihero with an unnerving zeal.

In writer-director Keith Thomas’s bid to add a layer of thematic novelty to a familiar genre, he has come up with a mish-mash that will satisfy only those with extremely acquired tastes.

Hikari’s work is well-meaning, and Kayama delivers an affecting, but not affected, performance that almost holds the story together. Eventually, though, the film loses confidence in itself.

Balagov displays the cinematic skills of an auteur at least twice his age, and both lead actresses are captivating – an especially remarkable feat given that neither had acted on-screen before. Yet as Balagov peels back the layers of Iya and Masha’s stories, Beanpole feels less like a deep cut and more like a scratch.

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.

So much of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is pulled from what has come before, and so much of it carries the wear and tear of repetition.

Whatever praise heads toward Sandler should be tripled in the direction of the Safdies.

When Malick reaches the end of Jaggerstatter’s story, A Hidden Life does reach something profound. Relief, maybe, that the film was over. But also a distinct pang that some filmmakers never change.

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.

A riotous and gleefully delirious assault on the senses. It is vulgar. It is absurd. And it is completely enthralling.

Hauser is just as skilled and invested an actor as any of the more critically certified players alongside him here, including Sam Rockwell as Jewell’s anti-authoritarian lawyer and Kathy Bates as Jewell’s overprotective mother.

Okay, one kind word: Bill Nighy is clearly enjoying himself playing a New York businessman whose caviar restaurant improbably becomes a beacon for a host of impoverished ne’re-do-wells. But that is the only nicety I can muster for this otherwise cartoonish treacle.

In Fabric is a beautiful, unpredictable nightmare for those drawn to giggle in the dark.

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.

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

I could watch the background environmental action here for hours. But then the second thought of my Frozen 2 experience hit: I really wish I was listening to Let it Go right now.

A sensual and heady stew of romance, family drama, police procedural, political polemic and ghost story, Atlantics marks the debut of a ferocious talent in Diop.

Deep inside the new Charlie’s Angels movie, there is a fun film struggling to breathe. There are momentary flashes of energy, of wit, of something sorta-kinda-maybe resembling entertainment. But every time writer-director Elizabeth Banks’s reboot threatens to come alive, it immediately falls to the floor, leaden and lifeless.

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

Ford v Ferrari’s narrative and emotional beats feel assembled in a factory-floor kind of way. The characters are stock, the story’s ups and downs are easily telegraphed, and the inoffensive but not particularly inventive dialogue is spat up as if the actors were eager to move onto the next thing.

Ewan McGregor does a solid job as Danny, still shining (i.e. reading minds and performing other freaky feats of the head) after all these years, and Rebecca Ferguson is having a great deal of fun as his new nemesis, driving across the country sucking souls and finding new and inventive ways of wearing chapeaus.

Midway is a choppy bore, its main source of intrigue centred around whatever New Jersey-ese accent British actor Ed Skrein is attempting as dive bomber Richard Best.

It is glorious.

Ultimately Dark Fate is nothing more than a run-duck-and-repeat production – an extraordinarily familiar, if efficiently made, exercise in Terminatorology. If the franchise pattern holds, it’ll be back.

The movie – a messy and frequently bloody blend of Shakespeare’s Henriad plays, but devoid of their language, scope and, well, drama – is forgettable.

Listen carefully, and you can almost hear the enjoyably comic and nasty tone Harpoon was likely going for – before it drowned in a flood of unwatchable idiots.

Campbell is tasked with carrying much of the film’s action and dialogue -- including two seemingly rambling but actually profound monologues delivered to unseen audiences in a nondescript bar -- and easily commands the screen.

Unfortunately, the new film Matthias & Maxime arrives lacking much of the emotional urgency of the Dolan who once captured the international art-house crowd, feeling provincial in more ways than one.

One of the worst movies of the year.

Sorta-kinda based on the true story of astronaut Lisa Nowak, Noah Hawley’s directorial debut may have started out as a feminist-forward film decrying the fact that women have to work five times as hard to succeed in the workplace, but it ends up being a movie whose message boils down to, “Ladies be crazy.”

Natali’s aesthetic exercise eventually outgrows his narrative trappings, and he’s forced to add unnecessary and foggy backstory to the source of the overgrown greenery.

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.

Joker reveals itself as very expensive cosplay: effective at first glance, but at its seams superficial, disposable and dishonest.

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.

The new film is easily’s Gray’s most ambitious, bare-your-soul work, and one of the finest films of the year, too.

The Moneychanger has fun on its road to a predictable ending. You won’t feel cheated, but you might think you overpaid.

An exhilarating and furious indictment of class struggle, Parasite might be the masterpiece South Korea's Bong Joon-ho has been working toward his entire career.

Sharply subverting the male gaze at every turn, Sciamma has created an unforgettable treatise on thwarted desire. It is so very easy to label a film incendiary, but Portrait of a Lady on Fire deserves the scalding honour. It will ignite every flame you might have.

While not a remotely pleasant viewing experience, the sensation of watching Pattinson and Dafoe drive each other to the brink is difficult to shake off.

Anne is such a startling and overwhelming work that the act of discussing it can feel unapproachable and crippling.

Clifton Hill becomes just as thrilling and disturbing as its titular strip of haunted houses and fading-fast motels.

Part siege movie, part rural drama, part gore-soaked freak-out, Bacurau is the one instance where it’s the destination, not the journey, that matters.

This is hilarious, heartbreaking cinema – a work that will make you burst out laughing one moment, and leave you tearing your hair out the next.

Crowley knows his way from adaptations thanks to 2015′s Brooklyn, but as this 149-minute mess proves, The Goldfinch should have never flown away from its literary perch.

Once the big twist kicks in, there’s plenty of gritty fun to be had, but patience is a hard-won virtue in genre filmmaking.

When Jallikattu lets it rip, it’s as exciting and unusual an experience as you’re likely to get this year. Grab it by its horns and don’t dare let go.

Jojo Rabbit excels with at least a sincerely attempted – if not exactly precise – balance of humour and horror, absurdity and tragedy.

What follows is a dizzy, politically astute murder-mystery comedy that, while not reinventing the genre, certainly hits all the expected beats with flair.

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.

Hanks is, not surprisingly, excellently cast, but it’s Heller’s direction and inventive aesthetic instinct – everything is washed out browns, with the exception of a moving blue-lit finale – that sell the work so well.

Jordan and Foxx take the little material they’re given and play it as deep as possible, turning in memorable, eventually gut-punching performances.

Waves is unmistakably and defiantly its own thing – and when its ideas and aesthetics coalesce, it is a wonder to behold.

In 96 minutes, Soderbergh presents a series of vignettes underlining humanity’s subservience to greed. Some of the segments work – especially one involving an African business titan who decides to teach his daughter an expensive family lesson – and some are too thin (maybe there is a downside to that brisk 96-minute runtime after all).

It Chapter Two is a film in need of a good ending. How badly it needs that ending is never in question, either. Hell, the movie cries out for help on the subject.

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.

Despite its sometimes overwhelming sense of familiarity – including a conceit that feels lifted from last year’s Game Night, an impossible feat given both productions’ development timelines – Ready or Not is still energetic, inventive and bloody enough to permissibly coast on its influences’ fumes.

The few parts of director Gene Stupnitsky’s film that feel new, then, don’t feel that new at all, from the ultra-shaggy plot to the gross-out gags that misunderstand the power that repetition might hold.

There is, buried deep somewhere in Linklater’s film or however many edits it may have undergone – the thing reeks of indecision – an insightful, even invigorating story about what happens to a creative genius once they stop creating. But the actual work presents a good argument that, for some artists, it might be best to quit while you’re ahead.

What we’re instead left with are two diametrically opposed performances: Williams goes small and intimate as the distressed Isabel, while Moore opts for a more operatic, less successful tenor that results in what might be the actress’s most unhinged moment ever (and not in a good way).

Part "Billy Elliot" and part Chadha’s own underdog hit "Bend It Like Beckham," Blinded by the Light is a feel-good coming-of-age movie that often feels way too good about itself.

There are small spurts of creativity ... but everything else about the production feels more watered down than the landscape our four interchangeable leads find themselves flailing about in.

An awkward, painful mash-up of horror and comedy that induces all the wrong kind of squirms.

"The Road" meets "Leave No Trace" with a sprinkling of another half-dozen sharper films, Light of My Life is Casey Affleck’s ode to the power of storytelling. Namely, Casey Affleck’s brand of storytelling: glacial, meandering, but not entirely ineffective.

So for now, I’m going to go lay down, chuckle at the film’s inventive ridiculousness and try not to think too hard about anything at all. It’s what Hobbs and Shaw would want.

The drama is an intricately constructed and intensely felt work that transcends the easy “coming-of-age” genre label that is so tempting to slap onto it.

In its thin conception, shaggy form and muddy execution – and in its glee in coasting on a perceived aura of cool whiz-pow-bang energy – the film is as much a comic-book movie as they come.

Unlike "Crazy Rich Asians," which had eyes for narrative substance but shamelessly flirted with the superficial, The Farewell is a more substantive, engrossing and ultimately deeper work about the bonds that hold and strengthen us.

It’s an entertaining and thrilling tale, if you’ve never seen it before. But you have.

In a Hollywood ecosystem obsessed with brands and inoffensive genericism, there is something admirable and fresh about a movie that has nothing on its mind other than delivering 87 minutes’ worth of gory gator-chomping thrills.

Unplanned will make you writhe in agony over how such an ugly, malicious and potentially dangerous piece of religious and political propaganda could have made its way into this world.

The drama is an endlessly inventive and devastating work, a lyrical ode to a city that has turned its back on its most devoted citizens.

In five years’ time, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Far from Home ranked near the bottom of everyone’s favourite MCU efforts – the film evaporates, Endgame-style, immediately after viewing.

I can’t imagine that the filmmakers behind the new horror film Isabelle were thinking about anything other than cold, hard cash while producing this utterly disposable work.

We’re watching Buckley electrify the screen today. May her voice rattle in your head for the rest of the year.

Still, once the end credits rolled – including superfluous “bonus” scenes wrapping up various narrative threads – I couldn’t help but empathize with that talking spork. Freedom, sweet freedom! For now.

The new movie is dumb, pointless and completely bereft of laughs. It wastes a talented cast and all of your time. Worst of all, though, it is unconscionably lazy, starting with its generic title (again, who is naming these things?) and ending with its shrug-of-the-shoulders climax.

The best thing about Late Night, a new comedy about modern office life, is that it could be set in almost any workplace and still feel mostly sharp and entirely necessary. The worst thing about Late Night is that it’s set in the world of late-night television.

Who needs original stars Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones when you have, um ... well, what does this new Men in Black Cinematic Universe offer, exactly? As evidenced by MiB:I, absolutely nothing of value.

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.

The entire production entertainingly coalesces into part concert doc, part cultural artifact, part “gotcha!” stunt, and part meditation on the fickle, fleeting nature of creativity.

Framing John DeLorean is a film that delights in stretching the truth, so maybe its constant ignorance of Hamm’s work is just part of its whole meta-narrative shtick.

The director’s semi-autobiographical, 1980s-set story may be small – it mostly focuses on the turbulent relationship between Julie and Anthony as the former struggles to find her artistic voice and the latter battles various addictions – but her impulses and vision are grand.

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.

When Dougherty is able to keep these intelligent-ish impulses at bay, King of the Monsters is stupendous stupidity.

The film is not nearly as strong as its villain. It is, however, just as immature.

Most everyone who watches The Perfection will instead be staring at the screen slack-jawed, dumbfounded at the gory silliness they endured.

Unfortunately no amount of self-confidence can sustain All Is True, Branagh’s stab at filling in the blanks of Shakespeare’s retirement, about which there is little officially known.

Each frame is drowning in vibrant colours and packed with so many decked-out extras that Aladdin’s environment seems less like a typical CGI-enabled sound stage, and more like a tangible, if bombastically stylish, world of its own.

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.

When the bloody finale does eventually arrive, though, you’ll be thankful that Leigh is at the helm. Once again, the director proves himself to be a master of basic human conflict, on whatever scale is necessary.

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.

Yet while last month’s Claire Denis drama "High Life" will go down as one of the year’s ultimate masterpieces, the Swedish soul-crusher Aniara will likely be remembered as an ambitious if ultimately weaker curiosity: the "Antz" to Denis’s "A Bug’s Life" (a sentence I never thought I’d be able to employ, but here we are).

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

If "The Great Wall" felt like Yimou was turning his greatest hits into something dispassionately bland, then Shadow takes the familiar and makes it feel startlingly new.

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

As usual, Levine rounds out his supporting cast with a suspiciously stacked roster of comic actors – Randall Park, June Diane Raphael, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Bob Odenkirk, and Andy Serkis, the latter taking his love of heavy makeup a bit too far this time – and keeps the story moving with a breezy briskness that should be studied by any aspiring rom-com director.

Yet despite the efforts of its stars and the inherent juiciness of its source material, the film falls flat when it should bounce with surreal glee. Perhaps it’s because Kelly is only telling half a story here.

The new animated film UglyDolls is a lazy flip, its main intention to foster the toy-aisle bond between kids and its quasi-hideous title characters.

The reason Diane (the film) exists is not to propose and then solve a mystery, but to engage with Diane (the person).

Nearly everyone in this movie, and nearly everything that happens in it, is awful. Vile. Nasty. But it is a nastiness that sticks.

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

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.

Puzzling out the reality and meaning of Long Day’s Journey into Night’s second half is as involving and absorbing an experience as watching the thing itself. And by the time Luo makes his way to what seems like the end of his journey, it is hard to not similarly feel transformed, or at the very least shaken.

There is an occasional sense of self-awareness that this is all pointless and silly, but 139 minutes is a long time for a film to forgo even delayed gratification.

Luckily, Henson finds just enough in this thin movie to chew on, and every moment that the actress is on screen feels like we’re glimpsing the promise of a better, different movie to come.

Mary Magdalene is ultimately an unnecessary cinematic resurrection.

Perhaps Nemes was hoping to let the precision of his intricately staged images artfully clash with the absurdity of a chaotic plot. But the result is more tedious than tense.

The Beach Bum feels like a similar display of prized possessions – only that one of you (Matthew) is taking us on a tour of his bongo- and bong-filled bedroom, while the other (hi, Harmony) is just leading us to his toilet.

More entertaining than a dozen Major League Baseball games stacked on top of one another.

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”).

The strong cast keep their heads down and offer all the obligatory rhythms – if you hire Bruce Dern as a crabby horse-trainer, you are going to get exactly what you paid for – and the film eagerly embraces the purely filthy dullness of prison life.

This shiny and progressive and golly-gee packaging misrepresents how Captain Marvel made its way into the world, and what it is actually about. Namely: money, the easy exploitation of intellectual-property, artistic conformity and queasy politics that undermine whatever liberal notions it’s peddling.

Mostly, Chandor, working with a screenplay co-authored by Zero Dark Thirty writer Mark Boal, engages in drive-by subversion, smoothly twisting his way through the obligatory genre steps until he arrives in the territory of a morally fraught neo-western: more The Treasure of the Sierra Madre than Sicario: Day of the Soldado.

After all, it’s a movie about professional wrestling – the blows may feel real, but the match is fixed from the very beginning.

Writer-director Christopher Landon’s quick-turnaround sequel is pure self-knowing nonsense – a smoothly executed, briskly paced mash-up of horror tropes, time-travel paradoxes and silly campus slapstick.

The filmmakers even manage to introduce a tune as devastatingly ear-wormy as the original’s Everything Is Awesome, even though its title (Catchy Song) betrays the fact that everyone here is working both a little too hard, and not quite hard enough.

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

The actor offers an incredibly committed and determined performance, but by the film’s end, you wish he’d be able to get back to doing what he does best: eating.

Another stroke of casting fortune was landing Scott as the disturbing Miles. I hesitate to applaud any business decision that encourages a kid to channel the spirit of a rapist and murderer, but the young actor accomplishes what I can only assume The Prodigy set out to do: make you reconsider parenthood, and just how much paprika you should stock.

It all feels arbitrary and aimless, especially when the filmmakers decide to wrap things up with a long, wanly executed shootout whose stakes couldn’t feel lower.

Velvet Buzzsaw is ultimately a matter of taste – and mine was to spit it right back out.

The animation is equal parts digital, graphic and oil-painting-based, creating a surreal and hypnotizing landscape, while the main narrative thread offers plenty of real-world metaphors without condescending to kiddie sentimentality.

From its intense beginnings to its what-really-c’mon-no-reallllllly-c’mon mid-film twist to its defiantly and successfully sentimental finale, the new Matthew McConaughey vehicle is playing by its own demented rules. When it deigns to care about rules.

McAvoy and Paulson fight as hard as they can against Shyamalan’s instincts – even though, as with "Split," it’s gross to watch dissociative identity disorder played for horror and laughs – but theirs' is a pointless battle. The somnambulist Willis and Jackson have the better idea, dozing through their scenes until the cheques clear. (Jackson, to be fair, has the benefit of his character being literally asleep for the film’s first hour.)

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.

It’s not that every film has to achieve some grand epiphany, but Touch Me Not is not nearly as satisfying as the primal act it’s obsessed with.

Cranston and Hart fight tooth and nail to keep the film as charming as possible, though, with Hart going to particularly impressive lengths. It almost works, until you remember it shouldn't.

There are moments, however fleeting, that suggest there’s a decent Mel Brooks-ian farce hiding amidst the wreckage. Deeply, profoundly hidden moments, but peeking through every now and then, an annoyingly sporadic Christmas miracle.

The film’s middling but good intentions might be enough for the work to skate by unnoticed – but then Leder constructs an unforgivably sentimental finale that builds to a cameo from Bader Ginsburg herself. At that point, we must object.

Stripped of its parts, Bumblebee (as annoying to type as it is to say!) is just another needless franchise extension that should’ve been junked years ago.

Welcome to Marwen is the ultimate Robert Zemeckis movie. This is not intended as a compliment. The film – not quite comedy, not quite drama, but definitely indigestible – finds Zemeckis embracing his worst late-career indulgences.

Bird Box could easily be reduced to, “It’s A Quiet Place meets Blindness crossed with The Happening!” And that high-concept pitch wouldn’t exactly be wrong.

Cheney remains an enigma throughout, less a character than another anonymous object for McKay to smash in his cinematic rage room.