Kim Hughes

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

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.

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.

Even those with no particular interest in fashion will be gripped by this story and dazzled by Galliano’s undeniably artistry. It’s impossible not to be. The film is also a profound reminder of just how complicated we all are.

Bob Marley: One Love does not give a documentary’s worth of information and analysis into one of the 20th century’s most interesting, beloved performers. And yes, its approach is formulaic. But it celebrates Marley’s charisma and influence, and his music, which sounds as vital today as ever. Fair trade.

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.

If I was a teenage girl, I might love it. But as an adult reviewer, I can’t help but feel weary about this earnest but mostly needless retread of a smart and engaging teen comedy, a genuine stand-alone classic.

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.

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.

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.

If you’ve seen the red-band trailer for Strays, you know the dog-centric, live-action new comedy is profane and outrageous, slapstick and amusing in that distinctly stoner-friendly way.

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

Picturesque and genuinely heartfelt if a smidge corny, the Irish-set dramedy The Miracle Club serves mainly as a showcase for its trio of talents, Laura Linney, Kathy Bates, and Maggie Smith, billed in that order.

Maggie Moore(s) sun-baked backdrop — it was shot in and around Albuquerque — imbues the crime drama with a contrarian vibe that might be called Coen-esque though with much less umph than No Country for Old Men. It’s an enjoyable watch to be sure, but not destined to be memorable.

If you can get past the faintly ridiculous-slash-icky premise, underscored by the film’s double-entendre title, No Hard Feelings plays its broad comedy gamely and with some snappy dialogue to boot, albeit much given away in the trailer.

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

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

Joyride is terrific, a storytelling and acting gem bursting with heart yet never saccharine.

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.

Better and more candid than anticipated yet still weirdly underwhelming, big-budget Whitney Houston biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody achieves the filmmakers’ stated goal of shining a light squarely on the late American singer’s towering talent without camouflaging her also-towering struggles.

So, Ticket to Paradise… see or skip? Easy. See as there’s lots to enjoy. Bouttier as the wise-beyond-his-years Gede is absolutely rubberneck-worthy, the scenery and backdrops are gorgeous if out of reach for most of us, and the film crackles with energy. But you’ll be watching movie stars at work, and you’ll never forget it.

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.

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.

Ana de Armas is magnificent as Norma Jean, her every expression and movement embodying the late star and suggesting countless hours of research and rehearsal. But the movie surrounding this possibly career-best performance is an overheated dud save also some genuinely novel camera work, notably in a threesome scene where intertwined bodies melt into a rolling taffy wave.

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

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.

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.

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.