Josh Kupecki

Part of the brilliance of Cummings’ performance is how he can turn on a dime, baring his soul one second and throwing off a well-timed jab in the same breath. Thankfully, the actors around him are able to keep up with his pace.

Bettis is perfectly cast as Mandy, her hazy disaffection to the increasingly bloody mayhem she has to deal with is best described as nonplussed irritation. Other performances are hit and miss.

This film is a mess. It’s so grim and inept. There are a million plot holes at any given moment, that you must constantly pick up your eyes from rolling on the floor.

This is Woodard’s show, and her Bernadine is mesmerizing as she navigates her life of meting out justice while grappling with the price of it.

The way Ly and cinematographer Julien Poupard choreograph the film is amazing, especially the third act, which can be breathless at times.

While Reality Queen! seeks to parody contemporary culture, the irony here is that it is the very vapid thing it mocks. Ouroboros, eat your heart out (well, I guess it will anyway, endlessly).

The film is so alive, so joyous and raucous at times, that the empathy you feel for these characters is all the more poignant and the catharsis is well earned. This is a film you fall into, like an embrace you wish two sisters would hold, but one that the world denies them.

The film ostensibly is about bees and honey and how that affects these families' lives and income, but what really hits home is a broader impact of humanity (in all its messy glory), and a document of so many things: grief, loss, happiness, and joy.

It’s a shame that the film never rises above a perfunctory level of hagiography, but retrospective memorial docs rarely do.

While Good Boys has some interesting moments of reflection, make no mistake that this is a film about fart jokes and having 12-year-olds say “f**k” a lot.

While the film will be of acute interest to jazz fans, the film offers up an object lesson in how contemporary documentaries function in the 21st century. Comprised of the requisite talking heads, archival footage, and the shotgun blast of endless photographs of iconic moments, the film delivers a perfunctory tableau that is right at home with the programming on The History Channel (with fewer Nazis, of course).

It’s a shame that the narrative, with often astute and eloquent reflections on humanity, fails to cohere as a whole and gets bogged down by a common love triangle. Our Time is gorgeously filmed, but it is also vapid, and perhaps the languorous mind of this auteur needs to be shaken up.

True to Canadian stereotypes, it is a polite evisceration: a slap and a tickle, as it were.

I just wish Tcheng didn’t feel the need for unnecessary flourishes. There is a wonderful scene of archival footage where Halston takes a single sheet of fabric and uses scissors and one seam, and creates a simple but beautifully elegant dress. The filmmaker should have taken a note from that minimalist and flawless execution of a master designer.

While Non-Fiction can be quaint in its examination of art versus commerce, it is never boring.

The performances are wonderful, especially Hoult and Collins, who exude a charming chemistry, and fans of both the books and the films will find pleasure in this look at the early life of the man whose work still influences artists to this day.

The film, for all its archness and theatricality, is essentially a warm and welcome love story of two people, navigating a world that really doesn’t know what to do with them. It’s new. It’s old. It’s the same old tale of love versus oppression, but through the wonderful performances and the gloriously erudite script, Wild Nights hums along in the manner of the best of Dickinson’s work. This film is alive.

This is a film about people who are stuck, not just by the structures that bind them, but by themselves. Transit is a brilliant and timely film that reminds us that we may all be currently in hell, and regret the folly of our lives, but perhaps we have each other.

A sex-positive comedy that has a wit and a bite that are undeniable even though it at times traffics in traditional rom-com conventions.

The director is notorious for not having a working script, writing the day’s scenes the morning of, and improvising at any given moment. The internet tells me that this film was shot in two weeks, and while Hong’s off-the-cuff style seems restless at times, it coagulates like a small scab that never quite stops itching.

A feel-good film that uses hope, kindness, and generosity (if a bit austerely) to convey this strong message that releases endorphins as strong as any runner’s high.

I would not recommend this film to everyone, but those seeking a poignant satire on art will be continuously rewarded, as the film seeks, over and over, to grapple (in often wondrous ways), with what it means to live.

The film is episodic and often veers into hit-or-miss flights of fancy.

It is at times a beguiling and compelling piece of cinema, but it’s not without its frustrations.

Biller infuses the film with such style, such elegance, such joie de vivre, that I had a smile on my face for the whole running time.