Kim Hughes

Even those resistant to Gunda’s vegetarian message would be hard-pressed to describe these creatures cavalierly having witnessed these exquisitely framed, highly meditative moments. We see life within these beings, and we witness their undeniable will to live. And it’s beautiful. Gunda is truly one of a kind.

McCarthy’s talent is towering and yet so few roles (excluding SNL appearances which feature dozens) really leverage her versatility. Can You Ever Forgive Me? gives platform to it all — funny but nihilistic, bleak, sardonic, knowing — with McCarthy disappearing and something else rising in her place.

It may not be quite as thrilling as Edgar Wright’s brilliant The Sparks Brothers, which had the benefit of two still-living, sharp-as-tacks protagonists to interview, but it’s a must-see for fans and a highly interesting two hours for music junkies.

In its eagerness to correct past wrongs and set the story straight, the film feels weirdly rigid, narratively predictable, and occasionally overstated.

Beautifully shot and terribly sad, with a wildly twitchy score ratcheting up the tension, the Mexican drama Identifying Features is a profound statement about maternal love, brutal inequality, and institutional corruption.

When the creepy conflux of the title occurs, it’s terrifying because its conclusion is unforeseeable. Like life you might say: impossible to predict but nevertheless captivating.

The high school rite-of-passage film canon may have been raided here but its thieves — screenwriters Susanna Fogel, Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins, and Katie Silberman, doubtless abetted by producers Will Ferrell and Adam McKay — have wrung every drop of weird, contradictory, and squeamish fun out of the teenage experience.

Credit the towering talents of Emma Thompson and Stanley Tucci with redeeming The Children Act, a film oddly thin on story despite coming from the marvelous Ian McEwan, who adapted his own novel for the screen but somehow failed to capture the surge of the source material.

Not even its rather silly ending can undermine its heart.

The Cave may be the saddest, most infuriating chronicle of the ghastly ravages of war on a country’s most vulnerable citizens —children — ever made.

The story it tells — of environmental assault, mistreatment of Indigenous people, corrupt government and business — is woefully familiar. But the brutality of it all never ceases to amaze.

The starkly lit and shot film is a gently paced family drama about a collapsing marriage which, come to think of it, merits its horror-story veneer even if it is something of a red herring.

Quiet, understated and unforgettable, The Mustang is a winner by five lengths.

Those ambivalent towards children may find the film positively tedious. Those in tune with its up-close storytelling and gentle pace may find much to enjoy.

Strong performances abound while sly and sometimes slapstick comedy lightens the more intense themes of betrayal and vengeance.

A sad, poignant, dialogue-driven film destined for successful post-film life as a theatre production, writer/director Fran Kranz’s debut about two sets of parents on opposing sides of a tragedy locates the humanity in the seemingly endless, peculiarly American saga of school shootings. It also celebrates forgiveness.

The film chronicles suicide in a surprisingly forthright and unflinching way, and it takes an unexpectedly long time to reach its foregone conclusion. Still, Otto’s sweet, sentimental tone is not unwelcomed in the depths of a winter dogged by troublesome headlines on all fronts.

Let’s cut to the chase: Barbie is the greatest advertisement of all time. As a thrilling, escapist summertime movie? Yeah, no.

Wild Rose may not be what the summer season typically delivers to cinemas, but audiences miss it at their peril.

A shamelessly feel-good movie buoyed by dynamic, lived-in performances, Suze offers emotional rewards far grander than its simple story might suggest. And it’s an honest pleasure to watch.

The title is titillating enough to grab young ears. Yet the story at its core — about three college-age British women looking for thrills on holiday in Crete but instead finding some hard truths — would surely prompt discussion about consent, optics, and forethought that should be happening everywhere all the time and not just among women.

Rosaline is a delight from start to finish, a brisk, bright-eyed, and inventive romantic comedy with constituent parts that probably shouldn’t work this well together but do.

A compact drama with outsize emotional heft, The Assistant is propelled as much by what it doesn’t show as what it does.

One to One does the couple a disservice, being too fragmented and random to declaratively or persuasively elevate them as cultural visionaries despite featuring abundant never-before-seen material and newly restored footage. Strictly for fans of Lennon/Ono or very deep 1970s nostalgia.

For a film where relatively little happens plot-wise, Gloria Bell is oddly beguiling thanks to its leads: Moore (reliably great) embracing every square-peg aspect of her character and Turturro, whose resting look — itchy, perplexed, possibly lost — is deployed with precision in a character meant to be wildly uncomfortable in his own skin.

It’s impossible to overstate the immersive feel and psychological sway of 1917; Mendes inhabits those god-forsaken trenches in ways that are palpable, bringing the stink, filth, claustrophobia, and gallows humour to bear with stunning resonance.

American drama Jockey is superb, the perfect confluence of a great story expertly directed, with outstanding performances, stunning cinematography, and a dazzling score.

On one hand, its chief conceit is commendably weird: the adult Williams is played by Jonno Davies as a chimpanzee filmed in motion capture, conjured with CGI to humanoid effect, and voiced by its subject. Daring! Yet its story follows a ho-hum biopic trajectory structurally indistinguishable from recent entries such as Rocketman and Bohemian Rhapsody.

For a film where not a lot happens, and what does happen happens very slowly, Islands is strangely gripping. That could be the hypnotic effect of its endlessly sun-drenched Canary Island setting, as writer-director Jan-Ole Gerster dips his audience in the languorous pace of a holiday destination in this low-boil psychological drama.

There is a bristling, neon energy to Zola which, given its provenance as a series of real-life tweets from waitress and exotic dancer (and now executive producer) A’ziah “Zola” King, seems about right. This is a road trip movie straight outta weirdsville.

Squaring the Circle is a gripping true story told with towering visual panache.

It’s conceptually unsettling and bold, but there are some hiccups with the execution.

Encanto is just so lovely to look at that its story, while well-told, is almost secondary. You honestly just want to crawl inside the screen, wear Mirabel’s swooshing skirts, pet those donkeys, sniff those flowers, and chow down on that grilled corn. Wonder and imagination are in abundant supply.

Low-key and lovely if a bit short on dramatic umph, director Clio Barnard’s Ali & Ava is effectively a straight-up love story eyeballing bigger themes, perhaps to pad its slender story. Admirable for sure, but the result is a bit like fancy icing on a cupcake: nice, but still a cupcake.

It’s a good, fun film, the kind that likely scans differently with repeat viewings, and includes a savvy wink to the vegan word as per Silverstone’s noble and ongoing mission. But I had the killer — if not the labyrinthine impetus for the crime — pegged from the get-go.

The very opposite of kinetic, director Fernando Meirelles’ (City of God) The Two Popes is a slow-moving, ruminative, dialog-driven think piece set to film which might enjoy a successful second life as a stage production, and might actually be better served by that forum.

The stubborn ambiguity of Last Summer — with its genuinely could-be-this, could-be-that head-scratcher of an ending — will either be a dealbreaker for viewers or proof of bold, irreverent storytelling that refuses to be neatly packaged. To be sure, the film isn’t judging so much as presenting a fraught scenario for its audience to consider.

Blind Ambition doesn’t rewrite any rules about documentary filmmaking, and it stumbles into the hokey at the very end. But if one subscribes to the adage that the story is the thing, then it’s hard to beat.

The Rhythm Section is especially disappointing given its strong cast in front of and behind the scenes and its obvious ambition to rise above a paint-by-numbers action film with a somewhat relatable protagonist.

Crucially, Macdonald (see also The Last King of Scotland, Marley, State of Play) doesn’t stint on the train-wreck aspects of her career: the infamous Diane Sawyer interview, disastrous, flabby late-career performances, and yes, those tabloid images of a gaunt, wild-eyed, and clearly tripping Houston. Whether audiences feel greater insight into her dreams and demons as a result is somewhat less certain.

It’s hard to imagine anyone who enjoyed Radner’s performances in their lifetime not finding much to love about Love, Gilda… even as our hearts break a little at what might have been had she lived longer.

For film nerds and fans of classical and orchestral music, it’s absolutely gold.

Despite its virtues and intriguingly complicated morality, Queen & Slim never rises above its initial premise which is so not credible that it hoovers all ensuing tension from the rest of the film. Ridiculous can’t sustain a two hour–plus running time, and the stronger the filmmakers stick with their fire-breathing idea, the more frustrating Queen & Slim becomes, stomping out any connection to a reality most of us would recognize.

The Public, which played at TIFF last fall, is the kind of movie you want to like and that probably needs to get made and seen. But needing to see something and wanting to see it are different things.

Not funny enough to be a biting satire on the absurdity of Hollywood or absorbing enough to be a portrait of regrettable spiritual emptiness, Jay Kelly feels oddly flabby.

This lovely film with its unapologetically female gaze . . . kept me beguiled throughout.

Wharton’s film benefits from exceptional timing, which may not be accidental. Carter’s diplomacy and decency, his easy smile and comparatively youthful veneer contrast dramatically with the current American president and his secretive, self-aggrandizing, circled-wagons administration.

For a film where every single scene is rigidly contained within a screen — framed by an iPhone FaceTime chat, a laptop exchange, TV image, home movie or security camera surveillance — Searching has a surprising sense of momentum.

Lorelei is a lovely story told with heart and without judgment.

The new documentary Billie is for music nerds what hieroglyphics on a cave wall are for anthropologists: not so much a revelation as clear confirmation of a more nuanced life than previously known. It also has one heck of a back story.

Where New Order broadly surveyed and compartmentalized Mexico’s upper and lower classes, Sundown pretty much rests its entire narrative on one man, wealthy British business owner Neil Bennett — played with few words but (oxymoron alert) riveting impassivity by Tim Roth.

Legacies don’t come more dazzling. Sidney is a fitting tribute.

Visually opulent as only a Guillermo del Toro movie can be with gorgeously detailed, period-perfect costumes and interiors and a marquee cast, the noir thriller Nightmare Alley checks all the grand boxes of the genre. Yet the film feels emotionally inert, stacked with unsympathetic, strangely uncharismatic characters that defy empathy. Or worse: defy abiding interest.

Filmmakers Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine, inspired by the Alan Light’s book The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley & the Unlikely Ascent of Hallelujah, leave almost no stone unturned in their quest to examine the enduring appeal of “Hallelujah” across the years and mediums.

Rocketman is as fabulously mercurial and debauched as its subject; anything less would have been futile and disappointing.

It is also astonishingly tender and very human despite its fantastical premise, which rivals any superhero film for boldness of imagination yet summons uncommon emotional heft.

It’s impossible to overstate the range of emotions, from heartbreak to delight to humility, conjured by the new documentary Blink, which is also visually dazzling thanks to its pedigree as a National Geographic Documentary.

An interesting if rote, talking head–style film about a woman for whom fame was a constant battle but whose shadow stretched longer than her slight frame, a point highlighted often (if not always convincingly) throughout Suzi Q.

Oliveros keeps the pressure high in his briskly running film that’s propelled by a bloopy, squelchy soundtrack and a volley between harried behind-the-scenes scenes and stage-managed on-set pieces. The script drops enough red herrings to keep everyone guessing about everyone else’s agendas, elevating an otherwise straightforward story.

A strong ensemble cast ably supports Jacobs as she navigates palpable feelings of inadequacy and misguided affection.

Taken either as a metaphor for mourning or as a straight-up fictional narrative with a paranormal bent, The Night House’s ending is as disturbing — and intriguing — as it gets.

Digressive, sure, but hot damn the film is fun, its 155-minute running time as slick as the track at Monza in a rainstorm. And just in time for summer.

In the end, all the sorrow and horror and anger and angst just seem pointless despite Corbet’s stated intention to juxtapose the meaningless against the tragic.

The Loneliest Whale is gripping and highly persuasive, blending hard science with real-life action/adventure sequences, talking-head interviews, and — sorry, sorry — a whale of a true story that has been headline news for years.

While sticking close to the tried-and-true talking head documentary format, Harry Chapin: When In Doubt, Do Something — the title inspired by Chapin’s maxim in life and oft-uttered motto — succeeds in celebrating a life truly worth celebrating.

The film’s view is simply too narrow to be comprehensive on such a startling and potentially life-altering/life-ending subject. That said, it’s a chilling surface look into yet another unanticipated side effect of our ostensibly great wired society.

Feig has done a superb job of building a compelling story from angular bits that shouldn’t fit together but do while making pointed commentary on everything from gender roles to social media.

If themes about the importance of friendship, hope, and love land a bit on the nose, there’s no denying Brian and Charles takes an innovative approach to delivering them, even if — see above — the tack is brazenly metaphorical. Yet its distinctive charms are resonant enough to offset a slender story in what nevertheless amounts to a sweet and earnest, modern-day fable.

With its first half a kind of post-mortem of this so-called accidental masterpiece and the second devoted to its cultural influence on everyone from drag queens to film scholars, You Don’t Nomi — its title a snappy riff on lead character Elizabeth Berkley’s name — is impressive for its breadth and depth.

Dinklage’s performance here is crushingly sad, and he is never more persuasive than as a man convinced he is unworthy of love despite his substantial social standing and towering intellect.

It’s hard to describe exactly how fun it is to watch the performances and archival footage generously offered in Bad Reputation. Suffice to say rock fans with a bellyful of beer will have a ball.

It may not sound like a big deal, but it’s actually very satisfying to see game-changing historical women having their stories told on a major platform and having them told well, with emotional intelligence.

Where the Crawdads Sing is recommended, and part of me liked it. But I confess to feeling a bit bored and, surprising even to myself, a bit disappointed that the filmmakers, in the quest to honour Owens’ book, created something without a single surprise in casting, setting or anything else.

Fans of the novels of Jane Austen or the Netflix series Bridgerton will swoon with delight at Mr. Malcolm's List, a romance-slash-drama also set in early 19th century London that, like the beforementioned titles, is filled to bursting with dashing bachelors, scheming social climbers, fancy balls, innumerable frocks with empire waists, and pointed commentary on the British class system.

Even I found the film’s 90-minute running time draining, its story needlessly, maddeningly convoluted. I also lamented missed opportunities for in-jokes, sly sub-references, even guerilla fourth-wall demolition hijinks.

Sure, we’ve seen variations on this story and theme before but few better.

As a summertime popcorn film, it’s fine. But Twisters lacks the breathtaking je ne sais quoi oomph a film of this scope should have. We get spun alright, but the landing feels very safe and predictable.

There is a joyful lightness of spirit — and some very beautiful cinematography — in The Queen of My Dreams, the dazzling debut feature from Canadian writer-director Fawzia Mirza which premiered last fall at TIFF.

Bombshell is recommended; it’s a fun watch, often surprisingly funny, and snappily directed by Jay Roach (Trumbo, Dinner for Schmucks). Plus, it’s always entertaining to see actors summon well-known real people in a persuasive way. But given what it is and the climate it’s arriving into, it could have been so much more.

Clumsily told yet intriguing because of its singular subject, Halston — director Frédéric Tcheng’s knock-kneed documentary on the pioneering American fashion designer ubiquitous in the 1970s, who made haute couture both aspirational and accessible — offers a trove of pop culture trivia.

In parlance its subject would have understood, the documentary The Capote Tapes, about iconic American writer Truman Capote, feels like something late to the party and underdressed.

Rarely do remakes capture the lightning in the bottle of the source material. But The Guilty does, no doubt in part because screenwriter Nic Pizzolatto, best known for the True Detective series, drafted Gustav Möller, who wrote the original screenplay for and directed the original. Whether a remake was needed remains debatable, but the vision remains intact.

It’s a testament to director Will Sharpe’s vision and humanity that a story predicated on mental illness, poverty, death, and heartbreak ultimately comes across as hopeful and lovely — whimsical even — while looking gorgeous on the screen.

While H is for Hawk is a genuinely lovely film — often visually beguiling, beautifully acted, and tender-hearted — it lacks dramatic punch, which may be the inevitable byproduct of a cinematic interpretation of a deeply introspective book that rooted the reader deep in the author’s psyche.

For a biopic about Maria Callas, one of opera’s most vivacious personalities, director Pablo Larraín’s visually sumptuous Maria is unusually downbeat.

The Matrix Resurrections is an incoherent, narratively sloppy mess.

It is at times a terrifically uncomfortable movie to watch. But director Michel Franco's New Order, a searing and relentlessly grim indictment of class division and government corruption, scans not only as possible but entirely likely given our current world. Heavy doesn’t begin to describe it.

To its credit, Fall doesn’t pretend to be a metaphor for more meaningful ruminations on life and death. It’s a female-led thriller designed to make you gasp and wince, plain and simple. You probably should see it just for the acrobatic camerawork and insane vistas. But you will hate yourself.

For all its cinematic bell and whistles, something about Dumbo feels hollow (I wrote that word three times in my notebook during the screening) as if it’s mouthing the proverbial words phonetically without knowing their meaning. Perhaps I walked into the theatre with too-high expectations. I slinked out with shoulders bowed.

It’s fascinating stuff, and it rests both on its leads and on the universal truth that unburdening to strangers is often easier than unburdening to intimates, as any real-life cab driver or bartender can attest. And yet, as Daddio shows, that very spontaneous act fosters an intimacy all its own.

For viewers of this doc, Strike A Pose, though perhaps overly long and repetitive, is a touching reminder that we all occupy the same world and are vulnerable to its pitfalls… even those lucky (or unlucky) enough to have briefly dwelled in the shadow of the almighty Madonna.

Destroyer is all about Kidman as tortured, haggard detective Erin Bell. A single look into those bleary, bloodshot eyes alerts us to the fact that this character has been through the wringer. Destroyer is a forensic study of how Bell got this way. The trick, I suppose, is making us care.

There is joy in seeing this gifted ensemble have fun with their broadly scripted characters with Los Angeles in all its trashy splendour backdropping it all. But this angel comedy doesn’t quite reach for the heavens.

But what lands with Land is underwhelming; not quite a disappointment but considerably less than what was hoped for given Wright’s professional toolkit and the endless possibilities a subject as complex as profound grief offers.

Dazzling.

There is a lovely kookiness to The Persian Version which elevates an essentially straight-up mother-daughter conflict story with myriad snappy visuals and storytelling devices before settling into its main narrative trajectory, advancing the idea that we are all just doing the best we can with whatever tools we have.

The film’s best parts, apart from abundant vintage footage and those groovy 60s-era threads, are recollections from those at ground zero, like club operators as well as performers Jimi and Judy Mamou.

Much as I had hoped to love it given its cast and source material, Midwinter Break just never took flight. Not all great books make great movies.