Brad Wheeler

The problem with Shyamalan’s spin on dissociative identity disorder is that for all the dissociation, why are all 23 identities cool with locking terrified girls in a basement?

An oddball charmer of a motion picture about nostalgia, the pursuit of artistic passion and a coming of age bizarrely delayed and uniquely fulfilled. The bear itself is but a bit player.

Dad’s suspected infidelity is the tension in a film that hammers its nineties setting so relentlessly it could be called Sex, Lies and Videotape (and Floppy Disks and Payphones).

It’s a fantastically bonkers story told excitedly in The Lovers and the Despot, a stranger-than-fiction yarn that would make a hell of an opera.

Instead of captivating us with swagger, McConaughey chooses to go grim and dogged. Director Ross does the same.

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.

So, is Yesterday a one-trick Dig a Pony or did renowned British screenwriter Richard Curtis and the great British filmmaker Danny Boyle turn a cute hook into something meaningful? The answer is that the duo tries for the latter, but doesn’t quite nail it.

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.

The colourful film of course is allegorical: Peace is tough and tedious; war is an easy solution. And while the kids’ enthusiasm for battle wanes, pint-sized audiences will likely remain engaged.

It’s a genuinely fun affair – let’s not write it off as a cult classic just yet – with the smirking air of a confidant and mischievous filmmaker.

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.

With a fine balance of winking absurdity and wry humour – Cohen would tip his fedora to the born-and-raised Montrealer Bissonnette on that score – Death of a Ladies’ Man is a charming study of a man in crisis. It’s serious here and funny there.

Despite the film’s laudatory tone, a portrait of Foster is competently painted by the veteran documentarian Avrich.

Knuckleball does not flutter; its pace and tone is lean, mean and eerie. Luca Villacis plays the home-alone little hero, a Rambo MacGyver Jr. in the making. Not all the kid’s ingenuity and wits are plausible, though, and a late-plot throw-in is a bit much. Still, there’s Ironside and enough cold-weather tension to make Knuckleball a swing-and-hit deal.

What it is, is a delicious black-widow mystery, in which the deep-gazing actress Rachel Weisz rocks the veil.

The low-budget effort from Vancouver writer-director Scooter Corkle is earnest and methodical, with a tone-setting murkiness to it.

The victory of The Accountant is in the tone. The title character isn’t presented as a superfreak – this isn’t "Rain Man," in which autistic gifts are presented as powers for parlour tricks – but as a prototype and a beautiful mutant, maybe even a superhero.

The film is poetically structured and Lear is a spry, emotionally involved participant in a lively bio-doc that succeeds eulogistically and contextually.

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.

Adults should get a kick out of Phantom Boy’s sly humour but the story and the action is for the kids.

It’s a fine yarn spiced up with moments of hip hop, animation and pop culture references, all packaged nicely in something like the hot-pink doughnut boxes that the cruller maestro Ngoy supposedly invented.

Best of all, it’s tight at 81 minutes, which means a 7 p.m. screening gets you out of the theatre while it’s still light out, thank God.

The film is a level-headed look at artists who promoted joy but lost their own.

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.

From the cult Oklahoma director Mickey Reece, the horror film Agnes is funny – both funny ha-ha (in sly ways) and funny-peculiar all around.

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

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.

A well-layered film makes a fascinating case for forgiveness and a sharp rebuke of Bible-taught eye-for-an-eye revenge.