The Cave may be the saddest, most infuriating chronicle of the ghastly ravages of war on a country’s most vulnerable citizens —children — ever made.

Synonyms free-wheeling episodic structure can grow a tad wearying, but Mercier’s aggressively kinetic performance and Lapid’s take-no-prisoners dismantling of the Israeli macho mystique — or French hypocritical superiority — are, in the best way, outrageous.

On the sliding scale of war movies, Emmerich’s Midway is obviously no prestige film like The Hurt Locker or Saving Private Ryan. It belongs more to the school of the original Midway, with Tora! Tora! Tora! as its exemplar. Tell the story of a battle, offer up some sketched-out characters, played with aplomb, add a dash of soap opera and fire when ready. On that scale, for what it’s worth, Midway is a much more solid piece of entertainment than the Pearl Harbor directed by Emmerich’s fellow master-of-disaster Michael Bay.

The result is a work stiff with pointed talk and chance encounters, little of which feels original. The acting, while variable, often has a stilted, recitative quality, as if the characters, rather than family members, recently met at a script readings.

This is some of De Niro’s most moving work in years. His performance full of anxious misfit energy, where his often-parodied grimaces, tics and haunted gaze feel entirely correct.

In some reality where it came without baggage – and where it didn’t have to be a bloated two-and-a-half hours to accommodate its relationship to a classic – Doctor Sleep could stand on its own as a decently stylish popcorn thriller.

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.

A decent, fast-moving nod to the spirit that originally made the Terminator movies a permanent part of pop culture.

In evocative and understatedly emotional scenes, carried out with a mature grace by Banderas, we come to a connection of how we get where we are, and what holds us back from what we dream of becoming.

A work of sublime sweetness and beauty.

It’s bonkers and a hell of a film. And even better, with The Lighthouse, Eggers establishes that he’s more than a one trick pony. He’s a true original, auteur and clever filmmaker who isn’t interested in pandering.

A good script can sometimes be held hostage by the performances. Harpoon relies heavily on the strength of its three leads to carry not only the film's suspense but also the characters’ internal hypocrisy. The leads here do not let the script down.

As entertained as the audience is throughout, you don’t leave the theatre undisturbed.

What redeems The King, beyond the excellent performances, is the way the film gets around to asking questions about making war. Why go to war and who benefits is part of the story here, which leaves it in an interesting place.

Norwegian director Joachim Rønning (who co-directed Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales) offers nothing unexpected here, in what amounts to a complicated exercise in paint-by-numbers movie-making.

Ozon’s film evolves less as a procedural story than a character study.

There isn’t a moment in Zombieland: Double Tap that takes itself the least bit seriously. The gags often seem made up as it goes along, but they have a high “hit” ratio and the looseness of the whole affair means there’s no pressure to impress.

A conceptual mess if a somewhat engaging one.

As the movie flips through familiar Bourne/Bond tropes, the dialogue by David Benioff, Billy Ray, and Darren Lemke, feels clichéd to the point of parody, with lines like “It’s like The Hindenburg crashed into The Titanic!” Or, “I think I know why he’s as good as you. He is you!” Only, let’s be honest, not as good.

This is one of those animated features that veers way towards adult references for the parents in the room, while creating occasional mayhem in the pursuit of short-attention-span theatre. The latter fails.

For the fans, Us + Them offers a meticulously constructed concert experience for a fraction of the price of a live ticket and a chance to join a chorus in yelling back at the TV. For the casually curious, be forewarned: While Waters still burns with righteous zeal, at an often repetitious 135 minutes, the film will leave your backside feeling uncomfortably numb.

Tyrnauer’s film doesn’t seem to trust its material enough to allow the power of the stories to unfold without a constant hammering of a B-level-journalism music soundtrack — the kind best-suited for tabloid news programs. And the film’s unwavering criticism of Cohn (however warranted it might be) reduces an otherwise gripping biographical story into a sensationalized television-ready expose.

Sometimes, the script is very funny; always, it tries too hard to please; and it never lets you forget that it has been calculated down to a smirk and a teardrop.

The Laundromat consistently feels as if it’s intended to be funnier or more poignant than it actually is.

Joker has what may be the best lead performance of the year, but it is not for the faint of heart. Director Todd Phillips digs deep into the shadow side of society for one of the darkest movies in recent memory.

Typical of a certain kind of Sundance feelie comedy, Before You Know It is both promising and exasperating enough you’ll probably leave the cinema thinking of ways it could be improved.

For all its hallowed movie references, and despite the pride Zeroville takes in its weirdness, it just might be a movie too strange for its good.

It occurs at a certain point that Ronstadt was kind of the Meryl Streep of pop music, capable of taking on any vocal role and making it sound like she was born to it.

Monos is an immersive, sweaty, almost hallucinatory experience of hormone-driven anarchy.

My feeling is that Rupert Goold’s Judy is as good as it needs to be to stand as a framework for Zellweger’s incandescent performance. Parts of the plot are A-to-B, a lot is unsubtle and a climactic scene involving her most famous song is pure-Hollywood schmaltz. But the worst of Judy is worth the price of admission for the one bravura performance.

As with the series, the movie is a mix of situational comedy and some drama. It touches on politics, personal and national, as well as other issues of class and status, that feel both era-specific and contemporary. And, of course, Maggie Smith as the crusty matriarch Violet Crawley, still gets the best lines.

It’s a movie that is well intentioned and aims big, but ends up being somewhat shallow.

Freaks is a mind-bending thriller that is subversive enough to be rebellious, and in this era of CGI superhero cinema, the revolution is welcomed.

Motherless Brooklyn is the sort of risk-taking effort that deserves kudos whether it works or not. As it happens, this lengthy film-noir labour of love by writer, director and star Edward Norton, is well worth the ride.

In between the long patches there are some scary turns, though with diminishing returns, and director Andy Muschietti and screenwriter Gary Dauberman frequently turn to fears first cousin, humour, by wise-cracking through their peril. This too gets tired. But almost anything would after nearly three hours.

An emotionally moving thriller that smoothly negotiates the horrors of the supernatural and real world evil with haunting imagery and tension.

It’s entertainment as fast food, though perhaps slightly less objectionable than the horrors perpetuated by KFC.

It’s not always a comfortable place to be, but with Linklater explores it here with humour, rather than pathos. And once again, with his persistent humanism, he offers us a question worth exploring.

While Chadha includes a few gritty nuggets about the psychological cost of immigration, the problems are mostly smothered in a warm jelly of sentimentality, a surfeit of stock characters and an exhausting succession of feel-good breakthroughs.

Good Boys might pride itself for its lack of restraint, but the film’s guileless good nature that it charm

If you’re already on to the more sinister stuff, this is probably an unnecessary retreat into mild ickiness.

There’s star power in front of and behind the camera in the new mob action-drama The Kitchen. But all that talent, unfortunately, doesn’t add up to a satisfying movie.

Like the characters it portrays, Mine 9 simply does its job as best it can with the resources at hand.

The cast is made up of some of the finest and most interesting actors working in film today. And for the most part they’re doing thoughtful work. Unfortunately, there’s only so much they can do. The film doesn’t go emotionally deep enough to pay off.

Cold Case Hammarskjöld is likely to be divisive; I’m divided myself. Brügger’s awkward juxtaposition of clowning with real-life horrors is off-putting. In a time plagued by conspiracy theories, the film is an example of an acutely timely uneasiness, reminding us how conspiracies can be simultaneously toxic and compelling.

The sharks are disappointingly not scary but they’re interesting-looking with their plastic torpedo heads and serrated-saw smiles. When they leap out of the dark to dismember bodies, they bloody the waters in swirling lava lamp patterns that feel almost peaceful. Or perhaps I’m just trying to find a nicer way to say dull.

On the surface, Luce is a study of race and privilege in contemporary America. But it’s more broadly and more subtly about family relationships and the psychological deals we make with others and ourselves.

David Crosby: Remember My Name is an excellent debut by first time documentary director A.J. Eaton. He has a journalist’s sense of story-telling. He doesn’t soften or romanticize Crosby’s story, or the era for that matter, and stays just far enough away from his subject to avoid judgement.

As it is, The Art of Racing in the Rain won’t disappoint anyone with basic expectations of a dog movie. It’s full of aww, if not wonder.

While the characters and events are real, the artful design of this film and its allegorical resonances seem to put Honeyland in its own genre – that of a real-life fable.

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

For anyone who has endured a long bus journey with strangers, it will be no surprise that there was more conflict among the Americans than between them and the Egyptians

Deft in its playful mockery of the broad acting and absurd plot twists of the soap genre, it somehow maintains a genial tone, despite references to terrorism, war, and daily humiliations of the occupation.

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.

Wistful, funny and complicated in interesting ways, Quentin Tarantino’s new movie, Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, may be his warmest film since Jackie Brown - which may not be what you expected to hear about a movie set against the background of the 1969 Manson murders.

The Farewell isn’t tour de force filmmaking. It doesn’t have to be. In telling her own story, or something close to it, Wang has managed to stand far enough back to see the crazy wonderful way in which a family dynamic — full of strange and wonderful ideas about how to live life uplifts us — and has delivered a gentle little gem.

At best, it’s no more than a puny version of David Fincher’s Fight Club.

The visuals are impressive. But looks aren’t everything. In spite of the obvious care and affection that has gone into this remake, the movie itself is emotionally flat.

Though it kind of loses track of its marquee title character mid-movie, Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love is a must-watch for Cohen fans, with copious concert and backstage footage. It is also a snapshot of a time, and of hedonistic artistic idealism.

It’s an inspiring chapter in history, beautifully conveyed on the screen.

It’s rare for a feature debut to be as fully realized and executed as Firecrackers. It’s as if someone forgot to tell director/writer Mozaffari that making your first feature film is a tough go, filled with doubts, indecision and second guessing; her choices never seem obvious yet always feel right.

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.

There are a few problems with Giacomo Durzi’s documentary, Ferrante Fever. The worst is that it’s mundane in the making, a talking heads and clips assemblage with a constantly breathless tone. The second is that betrays the entire idea of putting the work ahead of the literary cult: The film gives us neither the author in person, nor her writing, except in brief clips, read in voice-over by an actor.

From very early in the film, we have a sense where it’s all going. With no real narrative surprises then, the movie becomes all about the characters and the journey. Aster’s playing out of the journey is problematic.

Having finally honed the most enjoyably human superhero in the Marvel Universe, it seems “off” to want to ramp him up with tech.

Apparently intended as a gateway movie for future horror movie fans, Annabelle Comes Home is a sex-and-death-free haunted-house tale about adventures in demonic baby-sitting.

Wild Rose may not be what the summer season typically delivers to cinemas, but audiences miss it at their peril.

Dogman is essentially one long, twisted fuse burning toward an inevitable explosion. If the results are too conspicuously manipulated to feel cathartic, there’s no denying a certain dark poetry to this old-fashioned film with its whiplash of modern violence and bitter futility.

The result is a surprisingly entertaining, gory delight. Even hard-lined horror abstainers can comfortably enjoy the film’s grim humour and excessively over-the-top carnage.

And though Besson does salvage a reasonably entertaining tale, his unapologetic fetish for women who kill gives the movie an icky feeling of having stumbled across someone’s private web browser.

The focus on Woody means that Toy Story 4 is less of a metaphor about the things we leave behind as we leave childhood, which means emotionally it's the lightest of the series. That may mean fewer hankies for those of us sitting together in the dark falling in love all over again with a box of animated toys. But the sweetness persists.

With random elements of Bollywood, Western musicals and unlikely episodic plot contrivances, it is made to please everybody. The result is inoffensive.

The film settles for soft-peddling rehashed themes of belonging, where misunderstood mutants struggle once again to be accepted. We've been here before, and it was better the first time.

A parade of pulled punches, there’s not enough of anything in The Tomorrow Man to make it stick as drama or even a believable romance.

The subject may be glum but there is something consistently pleasurable about Mouthpiece, a film that is both audacious in execution and relatable, even for those of us who don't live in women's bodies.

This is a filmmaker in full control of her craft. But as accomplished as The Souvenir is, the story it chooses to tell can leave audiences both mesmerized and alienated.

Echo In the Canyon is an affectionate look at the pop music that came out of the Laurel Canyon area of Los Angeles in the mid-‘60s, a period that the film argues quite effectively, was hugely influential.

Late Night is a light-hearted comedy with something to say and an excellent cast, that is unfortunately hobbled by a storyline that doesn’t quite add up.

The results are what might be best called “solid” journalism, with the occasional eye-brow raising surprise (Nixon wanted to firebomb the Brookings Institute?) There’s a wealth of archival, often familiar, television clips along with fresh interviews with some of the first-hand witnesses and participants.

Call it Meh in Black. The pun is, I will admit, unoriginal. But then so is Men in Black: International.

The confrontations involve a lot of prolonged, quasi-slapstick bullet-spraying firefights, which are hard on windows… and on viewers’ patience.

The obvious thing to call this film is a social satire. The humour is dry, pointed and often very, very funny. But Jarmusch is too clever and too careful a filmmaker to simply toss off a genre film for a few laughs.

Despite its grand-sounding title, The Fall of the American Empire is another trifle, a familiar harangue against human perfidy wrapped in a creaky farce.

I accept the onscreen explanation that this Godzilla is simply on atomic steroids. It’s the movie that’s fat.

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.

Clumsily told yet intriguing because of its singular subject, Halston — director Frédéric Tcheng’s knock-kneed documentary on the pioneering American fashion designer ubiquitous in the 1970s, who made haute couture both aspirational and accessible — offers a trove of pop culture trivia.

Rocketman is as fabulously mercurial and debauched as its subject; anything less would have been futile and disappointing.

The loss of two-dimensional artistry of the original has some compensation of human warmth.

To some extent, the performances elevate the script.

The movie rattles through ninety minutes of episodic jolts, the visual style is jumbled. Distinctive only in having a better effects budget than your average demons-in-the-attic quickie. While the super-parody elements offer a few snorts of amusement, the movie avoids taking on more complex ideas about Superman as an American ideal, though the filmmakers are obviously aware of the Bizarro context.

The high school rite-of-passage film canon may have been raided here but its thieves — screenwriters Susanna Fogel, Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins, and Katie Silberman, doubtless abetted by producers Will Ferrell and Adam McKay — have wrung every drop of weird, contradictory, and squeamish fun out of the teenage experience.

A first-person documentary about a Los Angeles couple’s decision to move to the country and start a farm overcomes its excessively preciously start to become a genuinely insightful meditation on agriculture, nature, and our precarious relationship to the planet that feeds us.

For a film that’s about decades of interstellar aimlessness, Aniara seems hopelessly rushed and superficial.

Because the potential is extraordinary, it’s a surprise that the film, co-directed by Herzog and Andre Singer, is so conventional and enthusiastic, bordering on adoring.

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.

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.

A Dog's Journey is a film that romanticizes the needs of the master over the beast. And while it's not untrue that domesticated dogs live to please, the willingness of the film to take full advantage of such unconditional devotion can feel exploitative.

While the thematic scheme may be ancient and remote, Zhang’s poetic compression and technical pizazz feel as fresh as a splash in a mountain stream.