Jim Slotek

As an impressionistic portrait of the man, it works, mainly because of the intense vulnerability Dafoe brings to the role.

I was worried King Richard would come to resemble the platitudinous The Pursuit of Happyness, which earned Smith an Oscar nomination, but is not one of my favourites of his films. I was pleasantly surprised thereafter.

An emotionally moving thriller that smoothly negotiates the horrors of the supernatural and real world evil with haunting imagery and tension.

In Sharkwater Extinction, we also get a glimpse of the sanguine approach Stewart brought to coming face-to-face with the extermination of the creatures he loves.

Complications of history aside, The Woman King is Black Panther minus the vibranium and with more women warriors, an empowerment tale fueled by kickassery, with battle scenes, ear-splitting ululated war cries and sword fights.

At more than two hours, Blaze is a meandering tale of genius and futility, tender, but overlong and wallowing, given that we know how it ends.

Capernaum is a movie with a lot of dramatic ideas and plot-points, worthy of a miniseries at least, squeezed into a two-hour sausage of misery.

People expecting plenty of Laurel & Hardy style laughs will be disappointed, obviously, given the movie’s comedy-lions-in-winter theme. But this thoughtful portrait of a long-lasting professional marriage rings touchingly true.

Though Under the Tree falls firmly into satire, it is not a comedy with a lot of laughs. It is more an absurdist tragedy, with cringe-worthy moments.

An audacious and demented film, tailor-made for its recent Midnight Madness slot at the Toronto International Film Festival, Julia Ducournau’s Titane also has intimations of profundity - quite a claim for a film about a woman who is impregnated by a car.

A preposterous mess of romance-with-secrets, generations-old closet skeletons and revenge, The Good Liar is the kind of fragrant dramatic cheese that Sidney Sheldon would have squeezed an ‘80s network mini-series out of. But the never-before-paired screen couple of Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren consume this cheese like so much scenery. There’s nothing like actors with gravitas slumming, all bemused smiles and droll delivery, even as the material descends clunkily into unintentional comedy.

Still, as a premise it’s irresistible. And Megan Park’s funny and touching My Old Ass brings a fresh twist to a mystically-assisted two-way generational life lesson that, in the movies, has usually involved switching bodies.

You don’t have to travel very far anywhere in Canada these days to see towns whose economic and social life-signs are so weak, you practically see ghosts yourself. Ghost Town Anthology merely brings that feeling to life – or death.

This might be a Dune that could even be appreciated by someone unfamiliar with Dune.

Colette is ultimately a feminist tale, but never one that wallows in self-pity or seriousness. It is also carried along lightly by a script with a streak of wit.

Touch is a film that moves at its own Icelandic pace to savour its own tragic, but ultimately hopeful story.

She Said is about cracking the code of silence, and the flood that follows when it breaks.

However closely it does or doesn’t hew to reality (Durkin’s script is “inspired by” the Von Erichs, rather than “based on”), The Iron Claw is an emotionally resonant movie about a profoundly dysfunctional family with an unescapable gravity-well of connectedness, one that dates to when they all grew up in a house on wheels, going from bout to bout.

Their creative process in action is just one of the cool archival treats in Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie, a jam-packed two hours of pop cultural hindsight that is part extended sketch, part couples therapy, and part traditional documentary.

Creed III has the fights, it has a story, and it has a heart. For Jordan, it’s a feature directing debut with punch.

Air is enjoyable, engaging, sprinkled with some of the ‘80s sprightlier hits (including Sister Christian and Money for Nothing), and good for some laughs.

While Stahelski is unlikely ever to be called upon to make a rom-com or coming-of-age movie, he and Reeves have taken the fluid action of the John Wick series to a point of “how are they going to top that last insane thing they did?” And there’s an imagination at work that’s straight out of Looney Tunes.

The surprisingly conventional Tiny Tim – King For A Day mixes archival photos and film, and animation, to present an image of the man before and after he hit the pinnacle of pop culture by getting married to first wife Miss Vicki live on The Tonight Show.

In this feature debut, De Filippis paints an utterly believable picture of the kind of immigrant/children-of-immigrants family where emotions fly and can turn from rage to love on a dime.

You can’t come away from Love, Cecil without appreciating how much of Beaton's aesthetic outlived him.

A rom-com it is. A typical rom-com it isn’t.

Bugonia is not Lanthimos’s best, but it is likely off-kilter enough for fans, or maybe introductory-weird for newcomers to his genre.

There may be a lot of questions unanswered in Possessor, but there’s feverish imagination at work.