Karen Gordon

As a movie, it’s riveting. It also ends up being a thoughtful study in media coverage very much worth contemplating.

Shot when COVID protocols allowed for minimal location shooting, the film is amusing partly because it hits on these resonant COVID-tropes. That and some nice stunt casting, makes this rom-com/heist fun.

It’s intimate, quiet, lovely, and in spite of the melancholy, there are moments of real connection and joy.

Asteroid City is very Wessy. Maybe the most Wessy ever. And thank goodness for that.

The subtle trick of Paris, 13th District, is that it plays like a romantic dramedy, but it really is more like a series of character studies of these young people whose lives just so happen to intersect.

Border is more resonant than you’d expect, and one of the oddest movies of the year.

Emily the Criminal is the debut feature by John Patton Ford, who also wrote the script. He’s done a nice job here of ramping up the tension, without resorting to a lot of overwrought situations or melodrama. He keeps the story small and contained and the camera close on the characters.

Oddly, in spite of all the pain, what sticks in Rosi’s Notturno is a feeling of resilience.

Given its century-plus life span, the life and times of Horn and Hardart’s Automat restaurants, is a lot of story. And Hurowitz does it thoroughly in 78 minutes, in a wonderfully evocative way.

It speaks to the legacy of things that are impossible to record: love, experience, encouragement, a sense of family and belonging that Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller gave to their children, and which continues through them into the next generation.

The film’s tone and the story structure are both naturalistic, and realistic. Carpignano doesn’t force huge moments of upheaval in the film, or story points where characters have sudden shifts of personality to heighten the drama or bring the story to a dramatic conclusion. We’re experiencing what Chiara experiences, and again that documentary feel works to keep the story intimate.

Led by a beautiful performance by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, writer-director Ava DuVernay’s fact-based Origin is a profoundly moving and humanistic movie that explores a range of complex issues about race and culture through the lens of a woman coping with loss and grief.

Writer/director Sébastien Pilote has turned this piece of Quebec history into a visually stunning, deeply satisfying piece of cinema, a gorgeous period piece. Canadian history has rarely, if ever, looked so sumptuous on the screen, or felt so rich.

Bottoms is absurd, ridiculous, often wildly inappropriate in the way of teen comedies and occasionally as exaggerated as a Looney Tunes cartoon. But everyone in the movie is giving it their all, taking the craziness seriously and clearly having fun. There are a lot of terrific performances.

Most importantly, what the film really accomplishes, is bringing back to life Tenório Cerqueira Junior, a terrifically talented musician whose career was ended abruptly. They’ve restored his work and his legacy. It's no small thing.

This is a thoughtful movie. Gray isn’t sending us out of the theatre with neatly tied-up threads. Instead the movie reflects on a time and place in history, one that should be in the rear-view mirror, but with issues and questions that are sadly still relevant.

From a story point of view, Omaha is a slight film but one that punches way above its weight.

There’s life in Highest 2 Lowest, but I didn’t feel much of it. David King is meant to be a man driven by his passions, for music and for himself, his legacy and perhaps his family. I could see that and understood that, but I didn’t feel much of it.

On the Rocks is a delight.

If everything is fair in love and war, buckle your seatbelts. Aided by a superb cast, writer-director Chloe Domont makes a strong feature debut with Fair Play, a deft drama about gender dynamics in intimate relationships and in the workplace.

Director Chris Smith resists unnecessary embellishments to tell the story of the friendship and partnership of Andrew Ridgeley and the late George Michael two school friends who became international music superstars. The result is a satisfying documentary that resists hagiography and instead focuses on the human beings.

Like sequels of beloved movies, puberty can either be terrific, passable or really suck. So, while Riley, the lead character in Pixar’s Inside Out, has a rough-ish start to adolescence, the sequel Inside Out 2 — I’m relieved to say — is terrific.

The film looks at so many things at once, that in some ways it lacks depth or resolution.

Although the film gets the mood and feeling right, the story is maddeningly spotty. Its arrow is in the bow, but it feels like it’s one rewrite away from neatly hitting the mark.

The film is part buddy comedy, part rom-com, and partly just good natured silliness, but it coheres. It’s entertaining enough that you can just go with it, but there is depth there, if you’re so inclined. It says a few meaningful things about relationships without becoming a self-help class. And it has heart and charm in spades.

With its languid pace, rural setting, and natural beauty, The Long Walk is not your typical ghost story.

A stately 20th Century period piece in the style of the best British dramas, The Dig is just what the anglophiles ordered.

The film has a wonderfully quiet, reflective, and intimate tone, but that lovely subtlety ultimately robs it of some of its impact.