Tim Grierson

Judy Blume Forever boasts a lively score — as well as impassioned testimonials from famous admirers, such as Lena Dunham — and proves to be an enjoyable, highly polished production that offers a compelling overview of Blume’s literary achievements and lasting legacy.

By this point, the 1960s have been sufficiently chronicled and celebrated, but the specificity of Linklater’s portrait nevertheless has a poignancy to it.

This film may seem stupid, but it takes real smarts — and a lot of joy — to keep the crowdpleasing silliness zipping along.

Ballad doesn’t reinvent the Coens’ sardonic, measured aesthetic, but the anthology’s looser structure allows them a friskiness that is welcome from such masterful veterans.

There may not be a lot of depth to Green Room, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t sufficient thought and care.

The film has much to say about peer pressure and male rites of passage, although Polinger’s points can become repetitive and his insights not especially deep. Still, this uneven mixture of coming-of-age drama and psychological horror suggests a filmmaker with a flair for unsettling atmosphere.

Offering predictably heartfelt messages about seizing the day, The Last Word can be very sweet and funny, but its lightness starts to feel cloying rather than ebullient.

The Assistant is inspired by potentially scandalous material but subverts expectations, asking the audience to consider the broader societal implications of the crime.

A smoothly executed but decidedly drab crime drama. Checking all the necessary narrative boxes for its target audience and asking little of stars Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson other than to bring their well-established onscreen personas to the characters, the latest from director John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side, Saving Mr. Banks) dabbles in familiar dramatic ironies and rather obvious observations about violence, celebrity and ageing. The Highwaymen never puts a foot wrong, but it fails to elicit much passion or fascination.

Fences is a deeply affecting treatise on marriage, poverty and the struggles of sons to confront the long shadow of the man who brought them into this world.

Conclave is most effective when it’s as shamelessly entertaining as its ambitious characters.

The 59-year-old actor’s legacy may indeed be one of perseverance, but “Not Alone Anymore” touchingly details just how much more challenging her battles with addiction and sexual abuse have been than those of other famous people.

“One to One” isn’t a salute to the Beatles’ brilliance or Lennon’s genius. Despite the large screens this film will play on, the movie renders its subjects as touchingly life-sized.

Some may be frustrated that Kaufman leaves viewers to figure out his ultimately puzzling narrative, but this film’s entrancing strangeness begins to assert a hallucinogenic hold. Even if the roads are sometimes treacherous, they’re well worth exploring.

The directorial debut of long-time screenwriter and producer James Schamus exudes a tasteful reserve, but actor Logan Lerman cuts through the seeming gentility in a performance that seethes with his character’s burgeoning arrogance and cynicism.

Far from presenting Michael J. Fox as a tragic case, Still is uplifting but also clear-eyed — as piercing as the look Fox gives the camera as he stares straight into the lens.

Some people will always want what they do not have, but it is hard to imagine anyone feeling short-changed by such a tonally rich, thematically ambitious film.

A beautifully bizarre film whose considerable strangeness allows for sharp observations about family, loneliness and the terror of emotional intimacy, Kajillionaire is further proof of writer-director Miranda July’s ability to bend reality to her will.

Featuring a rousing finale — two of them, actually — and substantial nostalgic pleasures, the new film can’t quite balance its desire to be both wistful and escapist, knowingly cheesy and surprisingly touching.

3 Faces can sometimes feel like a whimsical doodle without much forward momentum. But that placidness belies a certain degree of melancholic resignation on Panahi’s part, for himself and his homeland.

Each new segment of All That’s Left of You is its own self-contained drama, but they build on one another, the past’s invisible weight bearing down on children who cannot fully comprehend the sorrow that came before, but have grown up knowing nothing else.

Sometimes sexy, sometimes campy, Fifty Shades Darker is a smorgasbord of silliness, its dopey pleasures indistinguishable from its many awkwardly melodramatic moments.

It is to Jacobsen’s credit that she highlights how apparently minor decisions can suddenly feel weighty.

This is a gripping, sometimes hypnotising film in which notions of good and evil are less clear-cut than the urgent desire to stay alive.

Shults has once again made a movie about the terror of family, but It Comes At Night’s confident, ruthless craftsmanship suggests a filmmaker only starting to reach his potential.

Whether it’s Skarsgard’s cartoonish villain or the director’s showy nods to Lawrence Of Arabia and Sergio Leone, Chapter 4 plays dress-up rather than feeling like a legitimately rich, involving epic.

The film’s professional polish and slick accessibility sometimes come at the expense of probing insight, but those still grieving his suicide should find comfort here.

Although compelling ideas float through High Flying Bird, the film is neither well crafted or intellectually rigorous enough to compensate for a generally lacklustre presentation.