Brad Wheeler

The film’s own unhurried pace might frustrate the popcorn crowd, but it is the blasé, blank-faced unconcern for expediency from judges, prosecutors and bailiffs that should prove much more infuriating.

A butterfly metaphor is employed by the time-flipping Takahata, a filmmaker whose delightful Only Yesterday took 25 years to arrive right on time.

Sublime documentary.

Whiplash is an intense, unmelodious, highly amped and probably unrealistic drama set in the fictionalized Schaefer Conservatory in New York.

Scenic, well-paced and rich in dialogue and character, the film is Coen brothers for the squares, and maybe the best middle-of-the-seat drama of the summer.

Todd Douglas Miller’s documentary about the first moon landing is dead brilliant, sure to enrage conspiracy theorists while thrilling most everyone else.

The film's police-procedural action is unimaginatively presented, but Oyelowo is compelling.

The racial context is incisive; the retelling is tense, tight and chilling. These kinds of stories are emotionally wrenching to watch but can’t be told too often.

Director Morgen is a bit messy with his timeline and his relentless insect photography really bugged me. But the biggest nit to pick is with Philip Glass's intrusive, crazily grandiose score.

Listen to Me Marlon is an offer so intimate that no film fan should refuse.

The accurately titled EPiC is the greatest concert documentary ever made.

Zhao’s artful look into the American West is a lightly brooding winner. Clearly this isn’t her first time at the rodeo.

Apologies to Eugene Levy, but the award for best supporting actor in the role of an adorably well-meaning father goes to the superb Josh Hamilton.

Film critic Roger Ebert described movies as “empathy machines,” in that they allowed people to understand the lives and stories of others. Empathy was a big part of what Fred Rogers taught. In this film and with others, Neville, who grew up in the entertainer’s neighbourhood, has demonstrated himself to be an A-plus student.

The story is simply told: the rise, fall and comeback of a lesbian trailblazer and soul-crushed singer. Chavela the person is more fascinating than Chavela the film – a tequila-sunrise love letter to an unknown icon.

Tension is built deftly. A dreamy dance scene uses Gowan’s hit song Moonlight Desires to magical effect. Filmmaker Dorsey keeps viewers guessing with her promising debut.

The story is told cleverly with two overlapping parts. The acting by newcomer Reid Asselstine and theatre player Darrel Gamotin is easy and natural.

While the film is well meaning and the joshing crew at Calvin’s Barbershop is a hoot, the Malcolm D. Lee-directed comedy is plagued by relentless mawkishness, indifferent storytelling, willful naiveté and clunky seriousness.

A subtext of the film is a focus on classical music, as if to ask how humans can be capable of both intense beauty and ruthless inhumanity.

Age in Being 17 comes in awkward bursts, and yet the film moves sublimely. Director Téchiné, 73 years old, is wise beyond his years.

As for the winner and new champion, it has to be Kuosmanen, who never met a boxing-film cliché he couldn’t discreetly avoid.

An immersive, compact and unpolished documentary from the Kurdish-born, Oslo-based filmmaker Zaradasht Ahmed.

This story of personal redemption tacks drama by the nautical mile. "The ocean is always trying to kill you,” says Edwards, a woman like most who knows about facing high odds and salty conditions.

Nothing much happens in this pleasantly casual 80-minute conversation of a documentary. It doesn’t come to you; you must come to it – like a Jim Jarmusch film, particularly his "Coffee and Cigarettes" from 2003.

The film hums to tepid indie-pop and is sentimental to a fault, but the cast is a soulful bunch (including Toni Collette and a wonderful Ted Danson) who breathes life into a film that is all heart.

Cleverly structured and popping with realistic dialogue, The Climb is a bromance comedy of uncommonly high aspirations.

This delightful stop-motion animated romp features no dialogue, which is as it should be – the beauty of animals is in their actions, not words, after all.

This dandy foreign feature from Anders Thomas Jensen is only posing as a revenge film – clickbait for the violence junkies and the popcorn crowd. Yes, leading man Mads Mikkelsen plays a brooding killing machine out to avenge the loss of a loved one. But Riders of Justice, in Danish with English subtitles, is actually a pitch-black comedy about questions, coincidences and ideas that pile up faster than the body count.

The Big Short has a reckless, off-balance energy, with an ending that doesn’t really end the uncertainty: The collapse could happen again, no joke.

Even if you’d rather die than be trapped in a broken elevator with endless Kenny G music, Lane’s excellent accomplishment is making 97 minutes about the musician so much smart fun.

The news behind the understated drama Menashe is that it’s a rare thing, a film performed in Yiddish, covertly shot in Brooklyn’s guarded Hasidic community.

Filmmaker Erlingsson has an eye for detail, a flair for the absurd – a sousaphone-based trio pops up here and there – and a deft touch with social commentary and political satire.

It’s lovely film to look at, Springsteen confronting his past and demons in the prettiest, gently tuneful barn-and-big-sky way imaginable.

The film is too long for the non-enthusiast. And we don’t learn much about the brothers’ personal lives – it’s as if they exist for the band and nothing else. But even if the music isn’t your thing, it’s hard not to admire the duo’s commitment to their creative impulses.

Toes will tap, a tear or two might be shed – a complex story about a deceivingly complex musical is adoringly told and ultimately simplified. “As long as humankind continues to have struggles,” asserts one talking head, “Fiddler on the Roof will be there.” File under: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Tense, immersive and excellently assaulting, Good Time is hella time.

It’s a tough watch, but inspiring.

The comedy is clever; the study of family dynamics is sharper still. Sandler's performance is superb, his character limping through the movie psychically as well as physically.

His story here is well-woven, with the kind-hearted voices of psychiatrists, playwrights, family members, lawyers and the gregarious McCollum himself failing to come up with a solution on how to handle an autistic, obsessive and irresponsible rail rider.

A magical and often bleak parable about societal clashes.

Douglas Tirola’s doc does the era and National Lampoon justice. The tone is sharp and freewheeling, the craziness is infectious and the pace is cocaine-quick.

Making his directorial debut is actor John Carroll Lynch (no relation to David Lynch). This first-timer quirks things up occasionally with surreal scenes of a nightmare and an on-the-nose allegory (Lucky walking toward an exit sign and standing at an abyss).

This could have been a thriller, but thrills are cheap and Moratto aims for something more documentative, sombre and meditative. It’s about paying debts and the illusionary concept of freedom.

Crosby, as we learn in the fascinating documentary David Crosby: Remember My Name, is no easy rider. He’s no easy anything. What he is is stunningly self-aware, relentlessly candid and highly interested in the subject at hand, which is himself.

Aquarela’s soundtrack shifts from ambient post-rock to gnarly speed-metal to widescreen strings. The effect is a serenely apocalyptic warning: Climate change is a killer, with water as its indiscriminately lethal weapon.

There's a certain nostalgia at work here, but where the film really clicks is on the subject of the creative process and as a meditation on the human-machine dynamic.

The pace is leisurely; this is no amped-up police procedural. I love what savvy director David Lowery does with the camera, panning here and there, picking up stray sights and happenings. Top-rate stuff.

With the zippy (if slightly confusing) animated feature Henchmen, the stooges and underlings of the world unite – literally, in the Union of Evil.

The nostalgia quotient might be indulgent overload for some, though catnip for others.

As he did with "Once," Carney with the somewhat autobiographical Sing Street mixes hardscrabble realism with highly charged romanticism, filmed on a low budget with mostly unknown talent.

Amir Bar-Lev’s excellent, definitive film on the Haight-Ashbury acid-testers is long – four fly-by hours – but there are very few wasted moments.

Scored intensely and photographed vividly, the electric film imagines a small slice of doomsday with horrific believability.

It is a heartfelt mediation on the creative process, with elegantly presented ideas on nature, music, mortality and things out of tune.

The picture sings and inspires.

The cinematography is evocative – rainy, rich, gritty and raw, for this inspiring but not always pretty story – and Curtis is 100-per-cent watchable as a puffy, mumbling shuffler whose chess lessons double as life strategies.

The film ends with a delicious question, an uncertainty that will linger long after the credits roll – no ribbon is tied on The Gift.

With no cutaways, the film’s story and the momentum of the unlikely robbers seems as unstoppable as the camera. The characters are confused, adrenalinized and breathless, as are you. Because the deal feels real.

What we have with Barry Avrich’s inspiring and eloquent documentary Prosecuting Evil: The Extraordinary World of Ben Ferencz is the American Dream meeting humankind’s nightmare.

Better Man is a triumph of cheek and imagination. Gracey attempts much but actually manages to accomplish all that he set out to do.

The deal with the new Hotel Transylvania animated comedy is that Count Dracula needs a vacation, but, really, it’s the creative team behind the franchise who could use the time off.

While The Wave doesn’t quite match the saga of, say, The Impossible from 2012, it’s a film absolutely worth catching.

Winterbottom is not out to thrill, but to lecture on the truth, which, he believes, can only be found in fiction.

At its worst, the film is an homage to Dion’s presented indomitability. At its best, it serves as a compelling portrait of a powerhouse performer’s lifeblood love of stage and audience.

The latest film from sports documentarian Gabe Polsky (In Search of Greatness, Red Army) is a doozy.

Stewart believed people would rally to the shark cause if only they knew the gravity of the situation. The film is now made, the word is out and Stewart more than did his part.

The documentary is a gas, with all the conspiracy-theory weirdness of Oliver Stone’s "JFK," but with the added attraction of Brugger’s gonzo-journalism shenanigans.

After 107 well-packed minutes, Dotan’s film (which curiously fails to mention current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) arrives at a pessimistic outlook. A settlement on the settlements is nowhere in sight.

Co-directors Antonio Santini and Dan Sickles tell the story gracefully, doling out Dina's tragic backstory in excellent increments.

This film moves from black satire to a horror-thriller so smoothly you don’t even realize it’s happening – like the proverbial slow-boiling frog. Grim stuff, gloriously so.

The racer turns out to be a contender, but the small-time syndicate is the real story, an inspiring tale heard, as it were, straight from the horse’s mouth.

What we learn from the enjoyable punditry of siblings, art-world associates and former lovers is that the gorgeous provocateur was consumed with fame, and that everything and everybody was a means to that end.

“I’m selective about my audience,” says the singer. “I don’t need everybody to like me.” With a dour, sophisticated film that won’t be to everyone’s taste, writer-director Nicchiarelli seems to have taken those words to heart.

Raw and electrically presented, Civil War is an ugly odyssey and an audacious premonition.

With his elegant bio-doc Oscar Peterson: Black + White, director Barry Avrich discreetly (perhaps too discreetly) sniffs around the question of Peterson’s legacy and whether he truly received the respect he deserved in his lifetime.

Writer-director Zandvliet has crafted a handsome, affecting and questioning film about post-war revenge and forgiveness. On a tough field to navigate, he makes it to the other side, commendably.

French director Julia Ducournau, however, delivers a mindblower that keeps you guessing for all of the film’s excellent 108 minutes. She shocks; she entertains; she wickedly defies expectations.

Fiennes really shines here, with an electric-cocaine vigour and lust for life.

Well conceived, deftly comic and finely acted (particularly Evelin Hagoel as the gutsy wives’ ringleader), The Women’s Balcony overlooks nothing when it comes to addressing faith, segregation and sexism in a peppery, entertaining way.

Comparisons of Janis: Little Girl Blue have been made to Asif Kapadia’s touching 2015 documentary on singer Amy Winehouse, but in Amy we don’t see a subject as remorseful as the Joplin presented by Berg.

Denis Villeneuve’s new Dune is a breathtaking film worthy of the visionary Herbert’s rich, sophisticated source material.

A fascinating and compelling dive into an artist’s uniquely ticking parts, gives voice to a complex dude and broadens the picture.

The film is as much about Hokusai as it is about the titular protagonist, and so she defers to her father here as she apparently did in real life.

This film is about giving credit where previously neglected credit is due. “You wouldn’t let us talk about it before,” Robertson says at the end of the doc. “But now I’m going to talk about it real loud.” No volume is too much at this point.

The political buck-passing from all entertains and creates the film’s time-sensitive tension.

An interrogation session involving a psychotropic drug is just too weird for words and some will find the film sentimental and too naked in its Academy baiting. That said, 13 Minutes works like clockwork as an artful (if not terribly ambitious) take on a grotesque era.

The film’s director, who would make an excellent character witness for the defence, raises the questions but frustratingly doesn’t answer them in an otherwise compelling documentary.

The song playing sombrely over the tail credits is Afraid of Everyone, which is a hell of a way to die, but an even worse way to live. There is no cheer to Transpecos.

This is a 3-D film sorely lacking in dimension. Hit me hard, hit me soft, Cameron, but hit me with something.

If you see only one movie this summer, see the movie about the movie it took seven summers to make. Hype? You bet. But the hard sell is warranted when it comes to a documentary with a high-flying title and an action-adventure blockbuster legacy attached.

LaBeouf’s script crackles with penetrating dialogue. His acting – LaBeouf portrays a version of his own father – might be the finest of his career.

The film is surprisingly timely: Today's fierce, revitalized misogyny makes the 1970s male chauvinism droll and quaint in comparison.

The elegant, condensed saga covers a dozen years, starting in 1933. You don't need to be an Einstein to guess where the story is heading. An evocative, slow-blooming feature is a study on the flash horrors of war and the gradual death of dreams.

With too much salutation and not enough action, this is a (fine) companion to the album but not a freestanding film.

Carter himself ties a bow on the film, noting that music is a galvanizing force and that what will unite mankind is a shared respect for truth, God, freedom and democracy. That and a righteous Allman Brothers jam.

Tender, topical and well-crafted, No Ordinary Man is no ordinary film.

Defining a politician’s titan legacy in a singularly unexpected way, Meeting Gorbachev meets its expectations.

Spry, entertaining documentary.

A great doc from Polsky; one more assist from Gretzky.