The real achievement of Roma is Cuarón’s bold conception of a memory movie, blending childlike detail and adult detachment, and the rich visual and aural design that make this one of the more sensually pleasurable films of the year.

Director Alister Grierson, an Australian with numerous television and feature credits, does a decent job with the crowd and lively ring action though it's not nearly enough to make us forget that Tiger is a movie struggling to punch way above its dramatic weight class.

It’s hard to imagine a lovelier fly-on-the-wall experience than Nothing Like A Dame – a documentary that basically intrudes on a regular, wickedly-funny get-together of four octogenarians who’ve been friends since they were barely more than precocious schoolgirls.

It’s a tricky premise, and maybe a bit too much for first time writer/director Tom Edmunds Not even the reassuring presence of Tom Wilkinson, who makes everything he’s in better, can right this particular ship.

The Cleaners is a doc of remarkable access and a feast for thought.

After the success of Ryan Coogler-directed Creed, an inventive series reboot, Creed II is a familiar disappointment though the "familiar" part will probably outweigh the disappointing part for audiences who enjoy the films as adult bedtime stories.

Ralph Breaks the Internet is everything that made Wreck-It Ralph enjoyable, painted on a canvas as big as the Internet itself. The satire is sharp and the pace is relentless, a can’t miss combination for a kid outing.

Green Book is not the deepest depiction of racism, but it is a funny and heartwarming depiction of a friendship, forged in a car.

It’s extremely watchable, packed with curios and contrasts and narrative twists, filled with the sincere and the ersatz, the stupid and the clever, the grotesque and the goofy.

In spite of all the talent, in the end, the success of a heist movie is in whether you buy the movie’s twists and turns. In this case, it’s an enjoyable ride, but some of the story’s weaknesses make it less than it might have been.

Grindelwald is a movie that seems to want to recreate the Potter universe and does it in the most plodding way, crowding it with characters and plot points, many of which go nowhere.

Boy Erased isn’t the powerhouse that it could have been. But the movie has heart and soul. And, given that Gay Conversion Therapy centers still exist, the story at the core of the film is an important one.

The premise feels so quaint it might as well be framed by Cinderella-like animated bluebirds.

In the end, Hill is inclined to land closer to the heartfelt teen dramas of S.E. Hinton (The Outsiders, Rumblefish) than the docudrama grittiness he affects.

Behind the shell game of motives between the three main characters, there are subtle perceptions about class, youth alienation, and disposable people in contemporary Korea.

Pretentious, which might be defined as a showing an excess of ambition, is a modifier that clings to Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria — a remake of Dario Argento’s 1977 Day-Glo horror classic — like a wet leotard.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this greatest-hits patchwork approach or the correct racially diverse, girl-power script from Ashleigh Powell. There’s also nothing new or necessary about this jumbled, pretty mess of a movie, which barely covers the seams between its varied pilferings.

Assembled by first-time French director and Callas devotee Thomas Volf, this adoring clip reel has both pros and cons.

You will not see a more perfect and imperfect rock and roll biopic than Bohemian Rhapsody, which does many things extremely well, other things sort of average, and one thing flawlessly: capturing the immense charisma and panache of Queen singer Freddie Mercury. Jamie Foxx’s full-body inhabitation of Ray Charles just got some competition at the top.

McCarthy’s talent is towering and yet so few roles (excluding SNL appearances which feature dozens) really leverage her versatility. Can You Ever Forgive Me? gives platform to it all — funny but nihilistic, bleak, sardonic, knowing — with McCarthy disappearing and something else rising in her place.

As a first-time filmmaker, Barinholtz is on training wheels, shooting almost entirely in closed-space interior, the better to concentrate on his words. To that extent, The Oath is (at first anyway) a scarily realistic depiction of the argument feedback loop that seems to be ripping society apart. But the denouement allows him to slip away without a realistic premise for how one would leave that loop.

In Sharkwater Extinction, we also get a glimpse of the sanguine approach Stewart brought to coming face-to-face with the extermination of the creatures he loves.

The topical issue of gender indeterminacy is examined, not through the lens of moralizing or academic theory, but from one person’s vulnerable experience.

As with Carpenter, build-up is the thing (Michael is mostly talked-about for the first half-hour), and producers Blumhouse’s trademark jump-scares are a nice stylistic fit.

What distinguishes Knuckleball from other thrillers involving children is the seeming reality of the peril portrayed.

The good in the movie is overwhelmed by its by-the-numbers approach to its story. There’s not enough in Bigger to make a fan out of non-fans of body building, and there’s enough wrong to turn off the real fans.

Only by stepping back is it possible to see how peculiar and relatively original the movie is: A politically radical black youth drama for mainstream consumption; dissonant entertainment for fractious times.

There is absolutely nothing in Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween that you haven’t seen before, and seen done far, far better.

In the end the joy of the movie is in watching these four very different characters interact.

Bradley Cooper makes an impressive directing debut with A Star Is Born, turning one of Hollywood’s most remade movies into something fresh and soulful, even though it’s hampered by some of the story’s clichés.

You’ve probably heard punchier dialog at dinner parties.

While this is an autobiographical story about a young aspiring filmmaker and his skateboarding crew, it also speaks volumes about contemporary rust-belt USA, masculinity and abuse, weaving its themes and characters around scenes of the boys sailing through the near-empty streets.

Something of an intriguing curio (the first feature film about a subject treated in song, poem, television and theatre), Lizzie has some memorable pluses and significant minuses.

It’s hard to describe exactly how fun it is to watch the performances and archival footage generously offered in Bad Reputation. Suffice to say rock fans with a bellyful of beer will have a ball.

Colette is ultimately a feminist tale, but never one that wallows in self-pity or seriousness. It is also carried along lightly by a script with a streak of wit.

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.

It’s hard to imagine anyone who enjoyed Radner’s performances in their lifetime not finding much to love about Love, Gilda… even as our hearts break a little at what might have been had she lived longer.

Assassination Nation may be empty calories as social satire, but it’s a dark, wry, of-the-moment story of run-amok panic that will entertain horror fans.

Roth, in restricting himself to the polite requirements of a kid-friendly movie, keeps his darker instincts in check, making this more a movie about set design than emotions.

For the old fans, there are a few splashes of Moore’s caustic levity.

Feig has done a superb job of building a compelling story from angular bits that shouldn’t fit together but do while making pointed commentary on everything from gender roles to social media.

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.

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.

Director/co-writer Shane Black, indulging his tendency towards glibness, brings an outright comic touch that turns the latest interaction between humans and these dreads-wearing extraterrestrial big-game hunters, into something of a bloody romp – as inappropriate as that sounds (and often is).

I will give The Nun this, it has an utterly outrageous ending that pretty much brought the house down at the advance screening I attended.

The Last Suit has its narrative flaws and leaps of faith. But the sheer force of its central character’s untethered voyage of discovery – and the acting behind it - overcomes all.

The nut of the movie, the thing I return to again and again when thinking about it, is the issue of how much the odds were stacked against Kusama. Kusama-Infinity is a perfect movie for the #metoo era: A glimpse into the life of a woman with a vision who had the misfortune of being born at a time when even what was arguably the most progressive culture felt that it was just fine to ignore a woman’s voice.

Yes, it’s a formula and we’ve been here before. But the characters are engaging, the performances elevate the material, and the various dilemmas of each gives this more layers than you might expect.

A kind of gothic, ghostly mash-up of Downton Abbey and Grey Gardens, The Little Stranger is as mannered, tattered and morose as that marriage of premises suggests.

It’s awful by any metric you apply.

One of the pleasures of Support the Girls is that it explores the constant fender-benders of sex, race, class, and age without ever coming off as preachy or lecturing.

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

As fresh as the female perspective is, as Skate Kitchen circles and swoops through the Manhattan twilight toward its conclusion, there is a sense of missed potential, that the film could have been much richer than it is.

Alpha aims to be not just a story but a transporting visual experience, which is one area where it over-reaches.

Nicchiarelli’s film makes a case that Nico’s instability and bleakness was no pose.

There’s enough promise in The Happytime Murders for it to possibly work as a short-lived, gimmicky Comedy Network series. But the effort that’s put into stretching this gag over the length of a feature film is more painful than funny.

The most compelling performance here belongs to the Indonesian actor and martial artist Iko Uwais, who became famous in The Raid movies. Here, he plays the “asset” who must be taken out of the country. Uwais’ hand-and-foot battles are genuinely explosive and when he’s not fighting, he doesn’t say much, which is a welcome relief from all the rest of the babble.

The characters of Rachel and Nick are charming but their relationship feels backgrounded by numbing amounts of money porn, stilted melodrama, and often-strained comedy.

City-dwellers may go their entire lives without realizing that the greatest movie screen of all is above their heads, telling billions of stories.

Dog Days moves along, mostly pleasantly and at its worst is a somewhat-forced good time.

Audiences looking for a so-bad-its-good bit of kitsch catharsis will likely be let down. The Meh – sorry, The Meg – is so calculatedly flattened out for international markets, especially its Chinese financiers, that even the dialogue feels as though it’s in translation.

As a movie for adults, Christopher Robin has rewards, but needn’t have been so antic. The schmaltz would have sufficed. As a movie for children, well…

Reiner’s attempt to create Spotlight-like docudrama of newsroom courage and stoke fresh outrage about government lies is undermined by clunky old-fashioned filmmaking and Joey Harstone’s exposition-clotted script.

Blindspotting is a first film, a busy jumble of thoughts and urgent feelings: The humour is sometimes corny, the surreal fantasies strained and the dramatization of racial privilege unsubtle. Yet the level of ambition here, the commitment to try to say so much, is fresh and exciting.

For a film where every single scene is rigidly contained within a screen — framed by an iPhone FaceTime chat, a laptop exchange, TV image, home movie or security camera surveillance — Searching has a surprising sense of momentum.

It’s hard to imagine The Darkest Minds becoming the franchise it was intended to be. The plot is murky confusing and unengaging, and the entire genre may just be worn out by now.

The movie that can contain McKinnon, or the movie where she’s willing to be contained, has yet to be made.

Given all the on-screen risk-taking, Mission: Impossible - Fallout plays it pretty safe. What you get is essentially an action movies greatest hits package.

In both its light and dark phases, Three Identical Strangers comes across as almost too calculatedly entertaining, as Wardle carefully deals out the critical information, with the odd red herring, for maximum effect. In its defense, the film is consistently compassionate and fair-minded. Ultimately, the film confirms its investigative legitimacy by refusing to offer easy answers.

Crucially, Macdonald (see also The Last King of Scotland, Marley, State of Play) doesn’t stint on the train-wreck aspects of her career: the infamous Diane Sawyer interview, disastrous, flabby late-career performances, and yes, those tabloid images of a gaunt, wild-eyed, and clearly tripping Houston. Whether audiences feel greater insight into her dreams and demons as a result is somewhat less certain.

It’s a roiling mix of wry race comedy, economy-grade dystopian sci-fi, and Silicon Valley satire. Also, it's as funny and as caustic as hell.

Callahan, who died in 2010, understood the emotional venting behind his work and talked about it. As moving as it often is, we get a lot of the venting in Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot, but not enough of the work, or the man behind it.

Though Under the Tree falls firmly into satire, it is not a comedy with a lot of laughs. It is more an absurdist tragedy, with cringe-worthy moments.

Burnham’s debut is a little gem that feels true and is surprisingly tender.

Despite committed performances all around, Boundaries stays firmly rooted in the meh. Much as we want to root for Laura, her constant whining about her unhappy childhood wins no empathy and drags things down.

The First Purge has a lot of narrative and unsubtle subtext to cram into a movie that’s barely 90 minutes long. In fact, its big, violent finish notwithstanding, a lot of it is quite dull and its pacing inconsistent.

Ant-Man and the Wasp moves, mainly on the strength of snappy repartee and visuals. Ignore the plot and live in the moment – kind of a quantum concept right there – and it’s entertaining enough.

You can’t come away from Love, Cecil without appreciating how much of Beaton's aesthetic outlived him.

What gives Hearts Beat Loud its life is the father-daughter interaction and chemistry between Offerman and Clemons. Their original jam session makes the audience sit up and take notice.

The triumph of a film like Upgrade, an unapologetic B-movie, is that it aims low and exceeds expectations.

Uncle Drew is a goodhearted broad comedy, one where you don’t have to know the players (under all that latex) to enjoy the game.

Here’s yet another incident-packed, steroid-pumped, dumb airport novel of a movie, with a few flourishes of Spielberg-inspired titanic imagery (though the director is J.A. Bayona) and a wall-to-wall John Williams-like orchestral score (by Michael Giacchino), with scenes that echo from the previous Jurassic Park movies.

The crude if silly humour of the movie’s first 90 minutes is followed by a dollop of sentiment at the film’s end, resulting in a case of tonal whiplash... like a slap with a wet fish followed by a forced bear hug. No doubt Tag means to be a rude but heart-warming trifle, but it just isn’t funny enough to get past its awful taste.

Though it can’t match the Michael Mann-level menace and poetic rapture it aspires to, the new Atlanta-set Superfly is certainly watchable. Along with its set-piece fantasies of lavishness and violence, it features a flavourful cast of drug dealers, and stars the charismatic baby-faced Trevor Jackson.

Incredibles 2 is a movie that could have been made redundant by time. Instead, it lightens the mood in a world gone super-serious.

Powerful, unrelenting, and with excellent performances — especially from Song who is never less than outstanding — Memories of Murder is unforgettable and justifiably described as a masterpiece.