Jim Slotek

If brevity is indeed the soul of wit, at a tidy 90 minutes, Venom: Let There Be Carnage is on point for what it largely is - a violently slapstick domestic sitcom.

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.

There’s an entertaining commitment to the story and its references in Saint-Narcisse (a real place that may be impossible to photograph badly, such is the natural beauty that surrounds this demented tale). And La Bruce knows a striking leading man when he casts one.

Its script is undercooked and veers in random directions from its simple premise. But it has a heart, and two likeable leads who work well together.

A tale of trauma told, fittingly, with a poker face, Paul Schrader’s The Card Counter is a sure-handed rumination on redemption and finding peace of mind.

Krymalowski brings a vivacious energy to a movie that would otherwise be one long trudge to safe haven.

The Suicide Squad, Gunn’s sequel to David Ayer’s poorly reviewed first try at the tale of a group of super-villains forced to be good guys, is a nihilistic orgy of brightly coloured gore and violence apparently envisioned while on mushrooms. If you’re sitting near the front of an IMAX theatre, it plays like being in the “splash-zone” of a GWAR concert.

Here Today is the movie Crystal directs, a genial, monotone of good-heartedness that isn’t as funny as it wants to be or needs to be, but hits some truths about the subject of age and dementia, while maintaining its mild smile.

For the first two acts at least, Jungle Cruise is reasonably good fodder for a family outing, very much a theme park ride of the cinematic kind.

There’s a little more room for characters to breathe. This is not to last, however. The whole thing must ignite into a final act of fights, car chases and general destruction (and Snake Eyes’ discovery of honour). The battle scenes are often darkly lit and confusing (though it is a change of pace to see so much swordplay as opposed to gunplay), and the attempt to fuse the Joes and Cobra into the plot in the last act is not exactly smooth.

As utterly derivative action films go, Jolt has definite energy, and it’s not pretending to be original. As a time-killer, that may be enough for some.

The fast pace is attention-span theatre for the young’uns, and the adult-aimed quips are entertaining for a while.

If this seems like a bit of a deep dive when the subject is trendy restaurants in Portland, Pig is a serious movie with heady themes that just happens to come at you from oblique and unexpected angles.

With echoes of Starship Troopers (minus the pointed satire), The Tomorrow War, starring Chris Pratt, is the second noisy “temporal war” movie of the pandemic era, after Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. To differentiate between the two, this is the one Nolan would have written if he’d suffered a head injury.

Given the accelerated pace of a 90-minute movie whose main narrative happens in one night, Williams gives a powerfully controlled performance, creating a character whose awareness level is high.

It’s a lesser episode to be sure. But Wilson and Farmiga are both so accomplished and comfortable in their roles at this point, that they distract us from the movie’s flaws.

Despite its winks at its source material, Cruella is very much a fun, stand-alone movie that lets two formidable actresses fly while everyone else stands back.

Canadians already made the definitive young-woman-turned-werewolf movie, with 2000’s Ginger Snaps, which is a bar to clear if Bloodthirsty is to make an impression on veteran horror fans. But the pop music angle, an LGBT angle, and a studio Svengali who lives in a mansion in the woods, gives Bloodthirsty some points for fresh twists.

Hovering over Together Together is the expectation that two people who enjoy each other’s company as much as Matt and Anna do will eventually end up together. Beckwith plays with this trope nicely.

This story about stories is best absorbed if you’re not in a hurry. The Oak Room is not long (88 minutes), but the words demand attention.

Mostly, this is a look at how solid actors can carry a nuts-and-bolts, dramatically undemanding action film. Jordan is physically imposing, and handles the action choreography with style.

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.

While stopping short of camp, and giving the movie all the visual aplomb it deserves, Godzilla vs. Kong isn’t ashamed of being light entertainment writ large. The dramatics are few, the quips just about right, and the booms are bombastic.

Sims-Fewer clearly follows her vision, and paints an unsettling picture with sure strokes. I look forward to more.

A reality-based hillbilly thriller that can’t decide what flavour of noir to serve up, Above Suspicion is one of those curious failures that the current appetite for home streaming often rescues from theatrical limbo.

Sorting out what’s true and what’s not becomes so convoluted that the abrupt ending seems a case of either running out of money or ideas. Still, Come True is a movie that you’ll likely remember for the images it burns in the brain, more than for its story.

A day in the life of Zeytin is, for the most part, an agreeable experience that doubles as a dog’s-eye-view of humans.

Though it’s a movie with an identity crisis, Rahim’s magnetic performance carries enough of The Mauritanian to make it a worthwhile watch.