Brad Wheeler

In a franchise rife with missteps, this sequel does not dishonour its source. Hats off (and heads off) to the film’s creators.

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

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

The film's brisk pace is a bit wearing once the one-hour mark is passed, but the high energy and intelligence is quite charismatic over all.

Educating young audiences as it entertains just about anyone, Penguins features the droll narration of Ed Helms and some great Antarctic cinematography.

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.

Sure, the film’s a bit of a hit job. But hey, as Bannon himself tells us, “There’s no bad media.” Sadly, he’s probably right.

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

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.

It is a rare song that deserves its own book, but Hallelujah is one of them. The story is a doozy.

[A] soulful, fluently told, low-key comedy.

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.

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.

Like Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven," the underlying tension involves the protagonist's journey to regain his humanity. Hostiles, a hotbed of hostility.

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

A bittersweet salute, appraisal and explanation of the early-nineties Saturday Night Live troupe mainstay.

Jarecki picks up all sorts of celebrated people and thinkers – probably too many. I would have liked to hear more from Elvis’s Graceland cook and less from Alec Baldwin.

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

The script is loose; the acting is natural and nuanced. Over the credits plays an acoustic song about lives in the how-did-we-get-here stage. If you do not leave this Netflix movie asking questions about your own paths, the failing is yours, not Duplass’s.

A supernatural winner.

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.

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

Handsome, profoundly austere and vaguely traumatizing, Black Hollow Cage has no fun at all with the time-travel trope. But, then, one man's kitchen knife to the neck is another man's hot tub or Michael J. Fox.

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).

The film is a technical wonder, especially the sound design. There's also an excellent incongruity at work: Happy faces drawn in blood, viscous killers in playful masks and cheesy eighties music as the soundtrack to savagery.

A lively, dashing and amusing motion picture that smartly spoofs and slyly celebrates the James Bond spy-film franchise.

Trueba, 62, has reassembled a lot of the old cast, most of whom play characters trying to recapture old magic. Make of that what you will. It's fun.

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.