Chris Knight

Writer-director Genki Kawamura keeps his camera angles tight, the better to maintain tension at a boil, and makes the most of his minimal and repetitive set. Fans of the Canadian horror classic Cube should enjoy.

It’s your typical mistaken-identity love story, in which one pretty person must decide between two pretty people, with the choice heavily influenced by who looks best when wet.

If Logan’s Run and The African Queen had a baby, it might look something like Brazilian dystopian sci-fi drama The Blue Trail. If that’s too much of a narrative stretch, then imagine a close cousin to 2024’s Can I Get a Witness? Except, sadly, not nearly as good.

The AI Doc is visually pretty standard — lots of talking heads, B-roll of robots, and cutesy animation to make it more personal — but it’s also a grand primer on the topic, skipping the standard news headlines of Will It Take My Job? (maybe) and Does it Espouse Suicide (tragically, sometimes yes) in favour of a kind of point-counterpoint-synthesis setup.

If you want proof that hell hath no fury like an angry mom, look no further.

The President’s Cake remains a lovely tale, with some sweeping, almost touristic views of Baghdad, and a slightly ambiguous downbeat ending.

If you’re not at all familiar with the originals, but you know and/or love Back to the Future, that should be enough to guarantee you a good time at this almost-lawsuit-worthy homage/parody to the 1980s time travel classic. And if perchance you already love both Nirvanna and BTTF, then strap in, because when this movie hits 88 kilometres an hour…

It’s energetic, bonkers, and very funny. It’s also two-and-a-quarter hours long, and I didn’t begrudge it a single minute.

For an animated character, Scarlet feels remarkably real.

There are, however, three things that elevate Shelter above a C average score. The first is Statham himself, an actor who knows how to stay in his lane (all those driving movies!) and do what he does best, which is to be brusque and to kill people. Second is director Ric Roman Waugh, one of those stuntman-turned-filmmakers, which means he knows his way around an action sequence better than most.

You’ll have a great time following along in French director and co-writer Rebecca Zlotowski’s latest, which had its world premiere last May at the Cannes film festival. Sit back and enjoy or, as they like to say in Cannes: “Bonne séance!”

Just strap in and let Skarsgard’s chain-smoking, proudly sober, pushed-too-far little guy take you on a helluva ride.

There’s great writing in the screenplay (also by Ma), and fantastic music choices, including an otherworldly score by Montreal electronic music artist Marie-Helene Leclerc Delorme, and a groovy cover of the old love song “Unchained Melody.”

In the coming-of-age sub-genre of youthful rebellion and forbidden love, DJ Ahmet from Macedonian writer/director Georgi M. Unkovski is about as mild as they come. But that doesn’t diminish its crowd-pleasing pleasures.

The Plague is what remains if you strip most of the actual horror out of a horror movie, but keep the fear. The tension gets so thick you could cut it with a knife. Then it goes beyond that; you’d need something stronger, and sharper.

Groff and Radcliffe are great in two very different roles (each won a Tony last year for their performances) but there really isn’t a weak link in the cast, and the music is grand.

It’s a clever conceit but bungled in the delivery.

I daresay this one was worth the wait. Though darker, visually and emotionally, than part one, and shorter — two hours and 18 minutes, down from two-forty — Wicked: For Good is still a rollicking good time.

I must admit I am something of an ignoramus when it comes to classical music, barely able to tell a violin from a viola. But Measures for a Funeral also has much to say on the broader subject of music, and indeed sound.

Ultimately, Train Dreams is a unique concoction, and a journey worth taking for its own keening moments of grief and simple wisps of joy.

Anniversary is a political thriller. No, make that an apolitical thriller. Directed and co-written by Jan Komasa, it’s a hot-button story where all the buttons have gone cold. I’ve been in airport elevators with more pep.

Still, it’s a fascinating psychological thriller, a ghost story with (as Dickens would say) more gravy than grave in its construction.

Kiss of the Spider Woman remains an engrossing tale in this new century, and a lovely paean to old movies and the thrills of getting lost in them.

A solid follow-up from the director/star team of Allan Ungar and Josh Duhamel (2022’s Bandit), London Calling takes road/buddy movie tropes and turns them, if not quite on their heads, then at least disarmingly and sometimes even hilariously askew.

Neither big nor bold nor beautiful. Though I suppose it does count as a journey. Well, one out of four ain’t — no, wait, one out of four is terrible!

I’ll admit it: It wasn’t easy to say goodbye to the Seventh Earl of Grantham, his extended family and friends, and his retinue of below-stairs staff. But fortunately, the two-plus hours that is Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale provides many an opportunity for them to say goodbye to us, and to remind each other — and viewers — that history continues to march forward, and things must change.

It’s a fast-paced joyride, enlivened by great talent in even the smaller roles.

Films about stalkers and obsession tend toward on-the-nose titles like Crush, Watcher, Creep or, well, Obsession, and Stalker. Lurker is thus, right from the title card, a refreshingly original take on the genre.

East of Wall is Beecroft’s first feature, and I eagerly await her second — just please don’t let it be a Marvel movie. She captures so many little moments perfectly and just needs to trust herself to let the big moments take care of themselves.

Suffice to say this Naked Gun packs an Airplane!’s worth of sight gags, non-sequiturs, malapropisms and misunderstood lines into a rapid-fire, comedy-friendly 85 minutes, the exact (and perfect!) timing of the 1988 original.

One to talk about afterwards with your significant other — if the subject matter hasn’t made you terrified of spending too much time alone with them.

The film is a potent portrait of the heavy bootprint that colonialism left on the African continent, but the childlike point of view makes it an eminently watchable story, with moments of levity and even humour.

It has the potential to be a cracking good comedy, and the trailer suggests as much. But in the end, all this proves is that you can distill two minutes of hilarity from 96 of meh.

Two Women, for all its entertainment value, is silly and shallow, though deeper than porn, it must be said.

Disney’s Lilo & Stitch is about a dangerous alien lifeform that escapes from its creators, arrives on a backward planet and charms the inhabitants. Which is not a bad metaphor for Disney itself. It continues to remake hand-drawn animated classics as bloated live-action spectacles, hoping a nostalgic moviegoing public will continue to greet them with open arms and wallets.

In short, there is much to enjoy in Bonjour Tristesse, but the film as a whole never quite rises to the level of its best parts. And that’s a little sad.

Sacramento is a well-made, well-acted comedy drama that does just about everything right and almost nothing unexpected.

It’s a lovely, quirky tale, full of ruminations on regret, love coming from (and directed to) unexpected quarters, and a bizarre broken faucet that won’t not work.

Something about its proportions felt a little off. There was a touch too much flashback, an excess of cutaway, and a slight oversupply of innuendo in the early going that made the big emotional climax feel like it hadn’t quite earned its emotional beats.

The Penguin Lessons is a charmer: a warmer of cockles, a tugger of heartstrings, even a jerker of tears if you’re not careful. And while it may in hindsight seem a little over-engineered to do all those things, that doesn’t dampen the effect. People’s Choice material or not, I loved it.

It’s one helluva conversation starter, from one very thought-provoking story.

The Silent Planet is, at first glance, an ungainly pile of science-fiction tropes and platitudes that has no right to gel into anything cohesive or interesting. But do give it a second glance, because it does just that.

Ultimately, Grand Theft Hamlet — again, I’m referring to both the performance and the movie — is an emotional triumph. Best of all, you don’t need to be an experienced gamer to enjoy it, though I’m sure there are in-jokes for the initiated.

As written by Italy’s Paolo Sorrentino (who also directs), there is precious little going on beneath that alabaster exterior. One can only have characters ask each other “What are you thinking?” so many times before it feels as though the question is being begged.

The good news is that the whole shebang lasts just 83 minutes, stem to stern. The bad news is that you can only coast along on your love of Quan’s natural charm and screen presence for 60- or 65-minutes tops.

Companion ultimately delivers on three levels. It’s a creepy (and occasionally bloody, and also funny) thriller. It’s a whodunit, or maybe a whatdunit. And it’s a philosophical door-opener into questions to ask of ourselves when it comes to our computational creations — what to make of them, whether and how much to feel for them, whether we owe them anything.

Figuring out Nick’s motivations may be the most fun you’ll have over the film’s two-hour-plus runtime, though that isn’t saying much.

The series still has lots of heart, but its quality is moving in the wrong direction.

The End may literally be a little tone deaf, but it is not morally senseless.

Craig is easily the best thing in Queer, which grows a little maudlin at the end. Burroughs himself never properly completed the story, having lost interest along the way. But that’s not to say that his performance is the sole reason to see it.

Werewolves is of the small-movie variety, and I wish it were better. Alas, it’s not quite stupid enough to be a guilty pleasure, and not quite good enough to be an innocent one.

It tries to mine humour and a bit of horror from the era but fails to make much of an impact in either genre.

The film is long, a shade under two and a half hours, but Scott knows how to pace things so they don’t drag.

Expect deep conversations to follow your screening.

Clapin uses animated interludes to flesh out his human characters — his previous feature was 2019’s Oscar-nominated animated film J’ai Perdu Mon Corps (I Lost My Body). It’s an effective and beautiful way of turning emotions into visuals.

There’s not enough under the hood, and the screenplay sometimes strains to tell us (rather than show us) the complexities of the reality it’s creating.

Is it worth the wait? I mean, if you’ve already sat through The Last Dance — and I can’t advise that you do — then you might at well see it through to the bitter end. And I do mean bitter.

Seeds tackles topics as diverse as agri-business, colonialism, intergenerational trauma and personal grief — not to mention the enduring and often overlooked heroism of house cats. Its drama will grow on you.

The film, alas, feels far more emotionally conniving than its title character.

However you define it, it’s globally good fun.

Compulsus is a revenge thriller with a twist. No, make that two twists.

New Rome wasn’t built in a day, and we don’t always get the film we want. I doubt even Coppola did with this one. Megalopolis is what it is. You probably wouldn’t want to move there. But it’s worth visiting as a tourist, if only to gape at the locals.

Reagan the man may have been known as The Great Communicator, but Reagan the movie delivers its message stridently and with little nuance or room for debate.

Out Come the Wolves director/co-writer Adam MacDonald keeps us guessing until practically the final frame as to how it’s all going to play out in this finely crafted sylvan thriller.

Good One, a lesson in minimalist storytelling from first-time feature writer-director India Donaldson, is a movie that sneaks up on you.

The problem is the execution. As directed by Justin Baldoni (who also stars as the husband), the film feels lacklustre and slapdash, never doing anything to rise above the basic storytelling beats.

I was ultimately less enthralled with the final film than I was with some of the performances in Cuckoo. Stevens and Schafer are amazing, and Bluthardt makes an excellent oddity, a convenient ally with his own mysterious agenda. But Cuckoo can’t quite bring all its disparate elements together into something cohesive and coherent.

Atmosphere will only take you so far, and it soon becomes apparent that Starve Acre is 10 liters of helium in a 20-liter balloon. The result is limp and never fully takes flight.

RTA is a strictly volunteer program, with no academic requirement to enter or good-behaviour code to remain. Sing Sing, while not an advertisement for the program, does seem to capture what makes it special, and what its participants get from the experience.

Only the River Flows — based on the novel Mistakes by the River by Yu Hua — runs a tight 102 minutes but crams a lot of atmosphere into that time, moments of high drama interspersed with bizarre humour.

What National Anthem lacks in spectacle it more than makes up for in quiet moments of beauty, tenderness and heartache.

Returning director Chris Renaud, co-director of parts one and two, knows his way around the characters, and he knows what his audience wants: cartoon mayhem, mild naughtiness from the Minions, social awkwardness from Gru.

It’s one of those movies where, short of any actual existential terrors to throw at the audience, the sound engineers merely crank up the volume from time to time so that a door closing sounds like a cannon going off. Our Lady of Jump Scares preserve us!

It’s never a good sign when the Wikipedia page is more interesting than the based-on-a-true-story movie it references.

The Watchers is not a perfect movie, but it is an excellent start, heralding the arrival of a bold new talent.

It’s wonderful for its restraint, and for the things it doesn’t do.

It’s all freakin’ fantastic, a real all-night rave of a movie. But could we maybe just dial the whole thing down just a smidgeon? Could Challengers perhaps have given merely 100 per cent instead of 110?

It brushes up ever so lightly against Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And there’s a little of early-ish Yorgos Lanthimos (Alps, The Lobster). Except, you know, more heart. Much more heart.

Civil War is both premium entertainment and a cautionary tale.

There’s violence aplenty, which is another reason the John Wick reference has proven so sticky.

If The Old Oak is indeed the last film of the master, it’s a fitting sendoff for a director whose work will continue to echo for at least as long as Durham Cathedral has been standing.

What shines through in all these performances — and in recollections by Wilder himself and others — was a man dedicated to his craft and excited about the creative process.

There’s a smidgeon more humanity than in the braindead Godzilla vs. Kong, but nowhere near the wit and spirit of Skull Island.

Director Michael Mohan, who also directed Sweeney in 2021’s The Voyeurs, creates a wildly uneven tone here, with a film that starts out promising to be a supernatural horror before segueing into something far more prosaic.

Ultimately, what sinks the story is a combination of miscasting and bad writing, regardless of its language. Braff tries too hard to be likeable, sometimes coming off as almost creepy. Hudgens leans the other way.

This fourth film, featuring the same writers as two and three, but new co-directors Stephanie Stine and Mike Mitchell, isn’t a bad movie, but it does feel like it’s going through the motions.

Concrete Valley is a loving, lovely portrait of a corner of the city that, unless you live there, is probably either a blank spot on your map or a region you drive through to get somewhere else.

Sometimes I Think About Dying dares to ask the question: What if The Office wasn’t trying to be funny? And what if Pam was painfully shy, and Jim damaged from two previous marriages, and no one ever made a raised-eyebrow face at the camera?

If you enjoyed Paterson, Jim Jarmusch’s 2016 drama about… well, not much of anything to be honest, then you may similarly be moved by its spiritual cousin, Perfect Days by Wim Wenders.

Argylle is not as dreadfully unwatchable as the Kingsman movies, but it is dolefully derivative, as if The Manchurian Candidate and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty had a baby, then abandoned it to be raised on The Planet of the Apes.

On the plus side, production design is superb, and the sets look like they were built from NASA blueprints. I’ve spent some virtual time in the I.S.S. (thank you IMAX and VR headsets) and it does look a treat. But that’s still not enough to tether this problematic product.

It’s a well-made, witty movie that manages to send up some of the tropes of organized religion while simultaneously signaling that it is firmly on the side of the believers, and also managing not to annoy any atheists in the house. Jesus, it’s good.

Back in the 1950s the cars were little more than cockpits on wheels, without so much as a seatbelt. There might be a few hay bales by the side of the track. And then as now, there was a morbid fascination in the notion of a crash taking a driver and car out of a race. But be careful what you wish for.

The Boys in the Boat is a by-the-numbers story that does little to distinguish itself from other underdog tales. The boys may be trying to take home gold, but this boat is taking on water.

It’s almost as if 3D was made for this.

Despite its gloomy name, A Disturbance in the Force is in fact a celebration, one to rival an all-night Ewok rave.

Rebel Moon isn’t a terrible movie, but it pales in every comparison to the Star Wars universe.

This newest concoction gets a lift from its cast but falls to Earth thanks to a leaden script. It’s more exploding chocolate than everlasting gobstopper and, I’m sorry to say, more bitter than sweet.