Once Upon a Time is an elegiac mash note to Hollywood 1969, at times sublimely, almost surrealistically moving while simultaneously managing to be the director’s funniest and least violent film to date.

This riveting documentary about powerhouse never-say-die Aussie yacht skipper Tracy Edwards is every bit as thrilling and emotionally grueling as "Mad Max: Fury Road." And it’s all true.

While the film will be of acute interest to jazz fans, the film offers up an object lesson in how contemporary documentaries function in the 21st century. Comprised of the requisite talking heads, archival footage, and the shotgun blast of endless photographs of iconic moments, the film delivers a perfunctory tableau that is right at home with the programming on The History Channel (with fewer Nazis, of course).

Sometimes, the movie argues, it’s the things we don’t say that prove how much we care. Billi’s path to acceptance of this makes The Farewell one of the most heartfelt homecoming films in years.

Fortunately Trespassers has Balk, who adds just the right dose of slow-acting venom into proceedings.

The Spy Behind Home Plate is a documentary that should appeal to anyone with an interest in stories about the Golden Age of baseball, World War II spy missions, and unusual corners of American Jewish history.

This footage is essential to this film, allowing us to view Marianne as a solo human being and not just as a muse to a great man. It is she who first noticed the figurative beauty of a nearby “bird on a wire,” not he. Yet this is also how the movie fails. Praiseworthy for finally providing some three-dimensionality to the figure of Ihlen, the film doesn’t go far enough in examining the plight of the muse.

This pretender to the throne never gets past the fact that it's a remake, but with spiffier graphics. It's like a remastered classic game, but somehow the spirit is lost when the 16-bit animation is replaced with the processing power of a modern console.

It's a simple set-up, it gets straight to the action, there's just enough personal drama to give the audience a good reason to root for the humans, and it's all just top-notch gory fun.

Singer has great inspirations, and the multilayered approach to edits and sound design within the hypnosis is ingenious and excellently executed. But it doesn't add up to much.

The movie is like an old honky-tonk song, a little sentimental but full of heart. It torches and twangs without getting too hokey.

Like the repertoire of most bar bands, this all plays out like a cover – competently performed, but the original was better.

It’s the sort of movie that defines the term “summer doldrums” in a way few others have.

The film's joy is in its earnest simplicity.

In the Aisles is a triumph of mood, aided by an eclectic soundtrack that skips from Delta blues to electro-pop to Strauss and Donizetti, and a worthy stage for Rogowski to continue introducing himself to an international audience.

In the end, the film is caught in a tug-of-war between absurdity and sincerity.

The decidedly defiant grande dame of African American literature is shown here as an intellectual and creative dynamo who, at the age of 88, shows zero signs of deceleration; if anything, she appears to be just getting warmed up. Haters beware.

Far From Home never forgets that it's a teen comedy-drama-romance, just wrapped up in a superhero story. But oh, that wrapping.

As the whimsical setup in Yesterday deteriorates until its unimaginative conclusion, the familiar Lennon/McCartney collaborations (along with a couple written by Harrison) provide the only solace, timeless songs that make it better. Viva Los Beatles!

It’s a shame that the narrative, with often astute and eloquent reflections on humanity, fails to cohere as a whole and gets bogged down by a common love triangle. Our Time is gorgeously filmed, but it is also vapid, and perhaps the languorous mind of this auteur needs to be shaken up.

True to Canadian stereotypes, it is a polite evisceration: a slap and a tickle, as it were.

What makes Ghost Light a true pleasure is that it's a lovely homage to the kind of hybrid supernatural rom-coms that they don't make any more, in the tradition of "Blithe Spirit" and "Topper." What's done is done, and executed with an endearing wittiness.

The film switches timelines every fifteen minutes, jumping between six months before and present day with an absolute disregard for storytelling, and this is merely the most obvious problem, not its worst.

Neither the worst nor the best of the Conjuring franchise, Annabelle Comes Home is only as creepy as it needs to be and no more. Keep your expectations low and you might just enjoy it.

Despite the obvious shortcomings, Echo in the Canyon should please fans of the music, as well as newcomers to the sound who are experiencing it fresh.

Ultimately, its most poignant details come from depicting a nonsexual friendship between a straight guy and a gay guy.

Worst of all, its mix of horror and comedy never walks the tightrope of shrieking absurdism that the originals did at their peak (and it's easy to forget that they started as a straight horror franchise). Instead, it ends up with the off-putting meanspiritedness of late-era Charles Band, the king of 2000s straight-to-video exploitation.

A wily, hard-hitting slab of old-school action badassery.