Tim Grierson

The film refuses to go in predictable directions, unveiling bizarre side characters and travelling down odd narrative backroads. But that occasional bagginess also allows for a richly textured picture bursting with energy.

This heartfelt picture can be overly familiar, but Poulter’s intensely interior performance lends the proceedings sufficient edge and fascination.

Consistently intriguing and filled with tender interludes, this elliptical drama is the filmmaker’s most experimental work – although it frustrates as much as it enraptures.

The picture deftly blends genres to create an arresting snapshot of the ricocheting carnage of sexual violence.

The film struggles to juggle its combination of rage and humour, satire and sadness, but the game performances mostly help gloss over the material’s familiarity.

I Want Your Sex ends up being more fizzle than sizzle.

Wilson sometimes struggles to make this feature-length documentary as consistently entertaining as his old series’ half-hour episodes. But he continues to mine surprisingly emotional moments from his wryly comic approach.

Such questions are central to this elusive marvel, which invites the viewer to complete the drawing that Schilinski evocatively sketches.

Despite their clear affection for these women, the Dardenne brothers never sugarcoat their characters’ unenviable circumstance or latch onto phony bromides to alleviate our anxiety. And yet Young Mothers contains its share of sweetness and light.

A Private Life offers plenty of fizzy pleasures alongside somber reflections on the passage of time and the regrets you have to live with.

Homegrown never makes excuses for its subjects — there’s no blaming their ugly views on economic disparity — but the disturbing ordinariness of these men is chilling.

Primate is often a blunt instrument, but these set pieces exude a little elegance in their sustained dread.

The movie is most cutting when it moves away from the big set pieces and, instead, examines the small ways that employees lose their humanity to a capitalist system that’s out to destroy them.

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.

The movie glides by so unassumingly, you may be stunned how moved you are by the end.

The beloved animated character’s latest big-screen adventure is an amusing romp full of the expected horrible puns, dopey slapstick and generally cheerful vibe.

The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent director Tom Gormican once again latches on to a meta-movie idea with great comic potential, but this limp satire of vain actors, deluded filmmakers and shamelessly recycled IP quickly starts to sputter.

It is as visually extraordinary as its predecessors and, while the film contains some of those earlier pictures’ weaknesses, the deficiencies are starting to feel like charming quirks in an otherwise transporting series.

With Resurrection, Bi delivers something uncommonly rich, boldly conceiving his latest as a salute to the history of film. Still, his focus remains on people — whether they be in his stories or watching in the theater.

Emma Mackey gives a heartfelt performance as the titular protagonist, whose marriage is collapsing just as she’s about to be named her state’s new governor, and this comedy-drama contains some of the crackling dialogue and disarming candour of Brooks’ best work. Ultimately, however, this disjointed character study ultimately feels as messy as its heroine’s life.

If Mendonça Filho overstuffs his accomplished picture, it’s a fitting rebuke to a violent regime that would have tried to tamp down his voice. He finds a worthy partner in Moura, who embodies the rugged sex appeal and muffled anguish of a principled individual in a world gone mad.

What makes this adult animation so affecting is the writer-director’s commitment to fortifying his spectacle with a deep emotional undercurrent.

The killer mascots may spring the coop, but this sequel never breaks free of its own conventionality.

La Grazia salutes simple, humble decency, and writer-director Paolo Sorrentino follows the example of his protagonist, largely avoiding the usual array of visual flourishes that have marked his previous collaborations with Servillo. The result is a decidedly reflective film that’s among the director’s most affecting.

This propulsively entertaining, bracingly amoral character study is powered by Timothee Chalamet’s performance as a despicable egoist who happily manipulates those around him.

By sidestepping the sharper, tougher questions about matters of the heart, the film still plays it too safe. Freyne may love all three characters, but what he doesn’t do is make his audience care deeply enough about which of them will get their happy ending—and which one won’t.

“My Undesirable Friends” captures dark times with some of the funniest people you’d ever hope to have as sisters-in-arms. Defiant, emotional and life-affirming, the film presents us with endearing patriots who love their country but hate its leaders, sucking us into a riveting tale with a powerful undertow.

White lands on an organic happy ending that doesn’t negate Gibson’s sad circumstance but, instead, reinforces everything that was so inspirational about their poetry and worldview.