With its quirky take on a doomsday scenario and a hero you could tuck into your pocket, Hanky Panky lives up to its title as a mischievous slice of offbeat nonsense.

The film certainly does not ignore O’Connor’s attitudes and fictional treatment of race. It just doesn’t make it particularly central to her reputation.

It aims to be easy-going, entertaining and joyful, without being taxing or too stressful. At the same time, its reluctance to dig too deeply robs it of some of its emotion and makes it feel superficial.

Meander, by director Mathieu Turi, uses the device of the escape room, or tunnel in this instance, as a way of negotiating the story of a woman’s perilous journey through a debilitating sadness. It’s allegorical, no doubt. But it’s an allegory that makes excellent use of an incredibly intricate and claustrophobic set piece.

It moves, it’s entertaining, Ryan Gosling is as buff as he’s ever been and all-in as an action star. And who knew all it would take was a porn ‘stache to turn Chris Evans from Captain America into a psycho mercenary?

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.

Watching the teen romance The Sun Is Also a Star, starring the splendid-looking young couple Yara Shahidi (Blackish) and Charles Melton (Riverdale’s Reggie)), is something like wading through fields of pink candy floss and suddenly finding a speck of grit.

Carmen, the debut film from French dancer-choreographer Benjamin Millepied, is an example of a work that flagrantly colours outside the recognized lines, blending melodrama, myth, dance and stagey spectacle. The result doesn’t coalesce into a neat bundle, but at moments, it’s peculiarly exciting.

If you want a film where the dinosaurs go roar, then this is your film.

Though it’s a movie with an identity crisis, Rahim’s magnetic performance carries enough of The Mauritanian to make it a worthwhile watch.

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.

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.

The King's Man takes known characters and events perverting truth with fiction. It's an amusing enough exercise even as it can jog free a few lost but freely interpreted high-school history lessons.

As a character study, the film doesn’t dig much more deeply than a news magazine episode. As a study in some aspects of police culture, though, the film has a sobering message.

There are scenes of explosions, gangland killings, car chases, and more explosions. Still, the film strives to be more than just a mesh of Bay-inspired blow-ups and easy to reach jokes.

Not only is this Boyle's gentlest film since the under-seen and underrated Millions (2004), it's also his most improbable, imperfect, and delightful work.

Wright may have made The Running Man the way he and King always wanted — just not necessarily the one we expected.

It’s never a good sign when the Wikipedia page is more interesting than the based-on-a-true-story movie it references.

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.

Here’s the thing: it’s hard to care about anyone presented on screen. Sorry but… they’re just not very nice. Nor are they fascinating criminal masterminds pulling off complex, game-changing capers.

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

At times, that slowness and steadiness in writer-director Shelagh McLeod’s tale is worth the wait as solid actors – including Dreyfuss and Graham Greene – do their thing. At others, it’s a source of consternation (particularly when events are moving at what should be a swift pace). But the “sad piano” soundtrack trope in the first act is probably the movie’s biggest hurdle. Stay with it, though.

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.

While all of this is too niche for wide interest, the film touches the troublesome heart of adolescent girls’ gymnastics, which is both a triumph of art and athletics and a sport riddled with a legacy of abuse. That abuse is the secondary but most interesting theme in The Golden Girl.

With its dark palette and atmosphere, Honey Bunch could have been a simpler, more disturbing and pointed story. There’s enough there to suggest as much.

While entertaining, The Upside lacks the original film’s fizzy spark, the prickly charisma of its co-stars, and the tantalizingly sense that this incredible story — which is actually true — happened on a planet we would recognize as our own.

In essence, a 90-minute commercial for the festival, inviting audiences to come down to “the most kickass party in the world’ and “the world’s greatest backyard barbecue.”

Smile, the debut feature from director Parker Finn, twists the expectations of a common pleasantry into something grotesque. It's creepy but not new.

While most romantic melodramas and rom-coms play with the idea of destiny, the bittersweet Japanese oddity Asako I & II makes it something of a central character.

It’s decent, adequate fun.

The film can be over-wrought, manipulative, and by some standards, unfairly stages death as a backdrop for parading a rogue-gallery of family archetypes. And though I recognize the film’s flaws, I choose to let my cynicism slide.

Too conventional by half, the prequel betrays the boldness of the original show, though it stirs up good memories. Sopranos complete-ists, who have exhausted analyzing the 86 episodes, may want to pay it homage via this relic, like a bonus extra on the series’ box-set.

It’s an unoriginal, budget-conscious and hardly brain-taxing race against time. But that doesn’t negate its entertainment value or its often heart-pounding pace.

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.

While it has charm and an interesting twist or two, it lacks bite.

There’s a little more room for characters to breathe. This is not to last, however. The whole thing must ignite into a final act of fights, car chases and general destruction (and Snake Eyes’ discovery of honour). The battle scenes are often darkly lit and confusing (though it is a change of pace to see so much swordplay as opposed to gunplay), and the attempt to fuse the Joes and Cobra into the plot in the last act is not exactly smooth.

It’s visually lovely. But there’s a hollowness at the core of Jeanne du Barry, despite the obvious talents of its writer, director and star, the almost absurdly watchable French performer Maïwenn, who approaches this tragic-comic 18th century fact-based story with a sympathetic view towards its protagonist without probing too deeply into anyone’s motivations.

To be sure, Climate of the Hunter is an oddball outing, a melodrama disguised as a horror-thriller with not much horror and not many thrills. And if, by the end of the final act, you're shaking your head, mumbling, "Wait…what?" you won't be alone.

Shot when COVID protocols allowed for minimal location shooting, the film is amusing partly because it hits on these resonant COVID-tropes. That and some nice stunt casting, makes this rom-com/heist fun.

The argument, these days, is that too many films are about sensation. Big action movies, superhero movies, movies that deliver a lot of adrenaline and thrills but really don’t ask much of the viewer. With his latest film The Passengers of the Night, French director Mikhaël Hers goes in the opposite direction, making a movie that resists manipulation and drama.

Ultimately, what keeps this film from becoming great in either the werewolf or romance department is the way it fails to fully commit to either strain, or to meld them into something new and unique. The ending might even be said to suffer from a case of lupus ex machina. On the plus side, the acting is supurb.

The Brink, director Alison Klayman’s year-long cinema verité portrait of Steve Bannon, is unlikely to change anyone’s mind about Donald Trump’s political strategist, who helped connect the candidate to white nationalists before falling out of favour.

Despite the film's willingness to playfully stir unrest, it never reaches its full potential, and the promise of confronting abusers who hide behind avatars gets second billing to a less exciting defense of free speech. And yet, The Columnist works because of Katja Herbers’ performance.

For this viewer, the movie felt stagey and entirely devoid of emotion, You never forget you’re watching a film — a beautifully made film, but still.

Despite the talent of the voice actors and the success of the previous franchise films, this fails to attract the attention that I think it deserves because it’s a shortcut.

The Hand of God lacks the imagination and mysticism that elevated The Great Beauty from being just a navel-gazing narrative about film. And the movie's presumptions about sexuality and coming-of-age are far too male-centric to be comfortably amusing.

As always, it’s what’s under the surface that matters. And that begins to change as the movie moves along and begins to twist and turn. And here is where the movie starts to have problems, arguably, both with the story, and in terms of tone.

The series still has lots of heart, but its quality is moving in the wrong direction.

The film’s final act stretches credulity and hangs its hat on an impossibly (albeit suitably Harlequin-esque and dreamy) farewell sequence. Still, it’s all but certain the intended audience will find in Five Feet Apart a cogent and watchable weepie worthy of marquee status at sleepovers.

If the Miranda musical touches are getting familiar, they’re still a lot fresher than the script here, yet another story of a pet animal on a mission and its special bond with a lonely child.

It’s a beautiful-looking film. The characters treat each other with respect, and I’m sure that there are people out there who will appreciate that the movie, addresses a tough issue, without being too taxing or challenging. At the same time, the movie’s cautious approach short-changes the story and the issue.

The dialogue is clunky at times, and the forced four-narrative format means no character is really fleshed out. But the movie finds its heart and its footing in the last act with Danny’s story and a redemptive finale.

Even as a reboot, it remains both scenically beautiful and an ordeal at the same time.

Much like the nature of the park which Mickey calls home, the film is a glossed-over and superficial history.

At its most basic level, Becky is a female empowerment/revenge movie. And a movie like this, with its de rigueur open-ended sequel-friendly ending, suggests Becky has plenty more empowerment left in her.

The film works, mostly as a comedy, never as a horror, but would work better if Story didn’t squander the film’s potential with an uneven script that fluctuates between extremes.

If Logan’s Run and The African Queen had a baby, it might look something like Brazilian dystopian sci-fi drama The Blue Trail. If that’s too much of a narrative stretch, then imagine a close cousin to 2024’s Can I Get a Witness? Except, sadly, not nearly as good.

The Retreat’s premise is as effective as it is disconcerting. The violence against its gay characters is horrific, but the film’s gimmicks and twists eliminate it from adding much to a conversation about hate crimes. And the surprisingly comic elements that arrive in the third act suggest there was never any intent to be political.

It’s not for lack of trying as Crisis has a terrific ensemble cast doing terrific work. But the film never sparks or soars.

A lavish, deeply silly movie targeted at the adolescent girl market, The King’s Daughter features Pierce Brosnan as The Sun King, Louis XIV, looking like an aging glam rock star, traipsing about the Palace of Versailles in a wavy wig and pouffy sleeves.

The lighter moments are the best reason to catch The Marvels. Getting a reprieve on the running time is a close second.

A good-natured and well-acted small-town drama about midlife renewal, Gary Lundgren’s Phoenix, Oregon is the opposite of topical or urgent. That’s why it can be recommended as a distraction and a slice of comfort food.

None of it makes any sense, alas, and you’ll stop caring about what happens or who it happens to, fairly early on. There seems to be a lot of pseudo-Freudian yammer in the middle of this crime drama, or perhaps there’s a lot of drug-trade-related violence in the middle of a psychological family study; either way, it’s mystifying as hell.

Compulsus is a revenge thriller with a twist. No, make that two twists.

This is the sort of film that will divide audiences between those who will have their hearts torn out… and those who will want to tear out their hair.

As stark a manifesto against rush-to-judgment as his story is, one can’t help but think how much worse Richard Jewell’s ordeal would have been in a social media-driven world.

Rabid is a suitable entry into the science-fiction/horror genre that occasionally slants towards the promise of offering something more. And while the film’s science-fiction/horror elements don’t disappoint, the promise of something more doesn’t quite pull through.

As a turn-your-brain-off, tech-heavy action movie, Captain America: Brave New World succeeds well enough. As a Marvel movie that connects with other Marvel movies in any meaningful way, or charts a new direction (other than that vague suggestion of a “New Avengers”), it’s little more than a space-filler.

You could think of it as a 98-minute ad for the Super Bowl, opening as it is a week before this year’s edition. These words do not sound like the description of the GOAT of movies. And 80 for Brady is not that.

Knock at the Cabin doesn’t send you home with a clever epiphany that has you rethinking everything you just saw. What he gives you is an ending that you never have to think about again. And a film to match.

If our planet should collapse into some colossal cyber-punk afterworld, we can take comfort knowing that Milla Jovovich has our back.

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

At times, it feels more like an elevated made-for-television movie. In spite of this, the film is affecting and moving. The formidable British actress Cynthia Erivo does great work here. The script doesn’t give her much range, but Erivo gives us a woman whose determination and humanity shines, presenting a hero for her age… and ours.

Whatever authenticity the film hopes to build through its natural-horror premise is occasionally undercut by a visual distortion that pulls us out when it should be dragging us further in. And yet, despite my quibbles, annoyances, and perhaps unreasonable expectations of chimp-centric emotional realism, Primate does deliver where it counts.

There’s life in Highest 2 Lowest, but I didn’t feel much of it. David King is meant to be a man driven by his passions, for music and for himself, his legacy and perhaps his family. I could see that and understood that, but I didn’t feel much of it.

A genuine crowd pleaser. But its commitment to serving the hero’s legacy frequently brings the fun to a grinding halt. Not to worry though, the fun manages to resurface even after the film flounders in a blaze of super-human gobbledygook involving evil scientists, mythical demons, and a snarky wizard.

The film, alas, feels far more emotionally conniving than its title character.

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.

The White Crow is really “Nureyev before Nureyev,” and it’s a struggle to sort out its purpose.

If brevity is indeed the soul of wit, at a tidy 90 minutes, Venom: Let There Be Carnage is on point for what it largely is - a violently slapstick domestic sitcom.

A film that wants to be a metaphor for something, the French film The Animal Kingdom is like an edgeless, absurdist high school version of The Island of Doctor Moreau.

There’s still plenty to admire: Derrickson’s eye for atmosphere, the bleakly beautiful snowscapes, and a handful of effective scares. But where The Black Phone haunted you with what might happen, Black Phone 2 simply tells you what will.

Wakanda Forever is far from a failure, except that where there should be excellence, there is a middling feeling of watching something spectacularly competent.

I'm all for the drama. Unfortunately, the drama in Glasshouse comes as an intrusion on the promise of a different story—a better story camouflaged behind the one being told.

It's an understandable impulse for a film of this sort to hold off on divulging secrets, content to fill the story with ambiguity rather than rush to reveal anyone's agenda. But directors Martín Blousson and Macarena García Lenzi's tight clench on the film's secrets feels more like an exercise in prying out a reveal than a steady unraveling of clues and discovery.

As empty of purpose and overlong as it is, Hobbs & Shaw is at least a more entertaining machine than the last F&F film.

There are enough speeches in the movie to make the film seem more curated than directed. But hang in until the third act, and you are likely to find that the lecture has a significant payoff.

This is as close to a grilled cheese on white made with Kraft Singles as a movie can get. Comforting in its way but so blandly familiar.

The Old Ways might have continued along a path of deception and naïve beliefs and have survived on its bleak and irreverent humour, but director Alender steers the film from dark to darker. It’s not quite an about-face, as the film never reaches a point where it can be taken too seriously, but it does churn out a few unexpected and unpleasant shocks.

Unfortunately, in Cold Storage, the first act sets too high a bar to maintain, and the rest, though watchable, is busy-ness punctuated by green splatter.

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.

Halloween is still a Michael Myers slasher film. People meet horrible ends in extreme ways, and the plot rarely goes beyond the idea that someone really should put an end to all this nonsense. The difference in Green's film is that he gives us a taste of the emotional aftermath; and that can be more horrifying than the kill itself.

What really works are the thoughtful and committed performances of the two leads.

Regardless of how derivative Nobody is of films both better—John Wick—and movies a whole lot better—A History of Violence—hardcore action fans will find Nobody hard to resist.

For the first two acts at least, Jungle Cruise is reasonably good fodder for a family outing, very much a theme park ride of the cinematic kind.

Considering the (pardon the expression) glacial pace of much of the lead-up, Hold the Dark’s eruption into massacre-level violence is jarring. Once it takes hold, it is relentless and grueling.

You won’t find much ambiguity on these subjects in the documentary Ithaka, directed by Ben Lawrence and produced by Assange’s half-brother, Gabriel Shipton. Unsurprisingly, it’s totally Team Julian.

We get it. This is their entry ticket into the MCU. And the space-age ‘60s vibe does add a little bubblegum to soften any attempt at over-seriousness (it brings to mind the use of ‘50s kitsch in the game-based series Fallout).