Werewolves is of the small-movie variety, and I wish it were better. Alas, it’s not quite stupid enough to be a guilty pleasure, and not quite good enough to be an innocent one.

Pasolini has taken a classic, set thousands of years In the past, and very subtly pulled out themes about masculinity and power, about the psychological and emotional toll of war and PTSD, and its way of changing a person’s way of being. These are things that, unfortunately, still speak to the modern world.

The Girl with The Needle is a harrowing drama based on real-life crimes that took place in Copenhagen around 1920. Directed by Magnus von Horn, the film is beautiful to look at but difficult to watch — this is dark, gripping, Bergman-esque fare.

It tries to mine humour and a bit of horror from the era but fails to make much of an impact in either genre.

Ruizpalacio’s purpose is to present the harried workplace as a microcosm of American capitalism, its obsession with abused undocumented immigrants, anger at women’s reproduction rights and devotion to the churning machinery of consumption. The message isn’t new but, in the present moment, the sheer bluntness of the critique feels liberating.

Peck’s fleet approach briskly compresses a great deal of information without clumsy interview setups and joins the dots between Black political and artistic freedom then and now while literally gives an important activist-artist a voice again.

The film gives us a glimpse into the band’s attitude (relaxed and casual) and their easygoing dynamics and relationships, and their very British sense of humour with its slightly satirical flavour.

With the one-off low-budget Nutcrackers, Green says he wants to pay tribute to the rough-edged adult-child comedies of his youth, films like The Bad News Bears and Uncle Buck. The result is a film that often feels, beat by beat, like you’ve seen it somewhere before.

For a biopic about Maria Callas, one of opera’s most vivacious personalities, director Pablo Larraín’s visually sumptuous Maria is unusually downbeat.

Wicked can at times feel like a movie that’s one brick short of a road. But when all is said and sung, it’s still a road paved in gold.

The film is long, a shade under two and a half hours, but Scott knows how to pace things so they don’t drag.

A non-stop action movie with just enough plot to stitch together more action scenes, Red One is as soullessly fast and furious as you’d expect from scripter Chris Morgan of Fast & Furious franchise fame.

The genuine cathartic effect of the film is achieved by an accumulation of smart choices, including the dryly witty narration, the ingenious visual surreal world building using kids’ crafts table materials, the strong voice cast (including vocal cameos from Eric Bana and Nick Cave) and an elegant classical-style score.

The unusual narrative device described as a “docufiction hybrid” at the heart of Starring Jerry as Himself is at once clever and heartbreaking.

Expect deep conversations to follow your screening.

Cillian Murphy follows up his Oscar-winning role in the epic Oppenheimer with another brilliant performance in a much smaller and more intimate film, but one that also deals with questions about morality and responsibility.

Clapin uses animated interludes to flesh out his human characters — his previous feature was 2019’s Oscar-nominated animated film J’ai Perdu Mon Corps (I Lost My Body). It’s an effective and beautiful way of turning emotions into visuals.

The Piano Lesson is a hugely energetic, albeit often bittersweet, film.

Superficially, it plays like an indie buddy comedy. But this film walks lightly and comes at its subject matter so obliquely, that it never aims to overwhelm the viewer. It’s about a multitude of deep emotional things, including grief, intergenerational trauma, and the complexities of love.

It’s a powerfully emotional story built on a foundation of surprising historical accuracy. This film treats us to a cross-section of the civilian experience of World War II that isn’t typically thought about.

Beneath the soft storybook ending, there’s a hard emotional knot here in an exploration of how the scars of poverty, abuse and neglect are bound up with family love and interdependence, and how those contradictions are what prime the springs of imaginative creativity.

For film nerds and fans of classical and orchestral music, it’s absolutely gold.

There’s not enough under the hood, and the screenplay sometimes strains to tell us (rather than show us) the complexities of the reality it’s creating.

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.

A great script and a great cast are key to Juror #2, a gripping moral study dressed up as a courtroom drama.

The film’s various elements do not quite meld, and despite a few strong performances, none of the characters feel fully three-dimensional.

Watching the movie Here is a bit like eating a Big Mac — it’s all fine and inoffensive in the moment, but you don’t want to look too closely or think about it too much afterward.

In a sense, Dahomey, which runs just over an hour, is also a ghost story as well as a creative conversation between the past and present.

The film is an exploration, a combination of fan worship, curiosity, and surprising insight into the making of Chasing Amy as well as its significance to the LGBTQ+ community and even to the cast and Smith himself. In a haphazard but honest way, Rodgers brings a new appreciation to the film.

An audacious and absurdly entertaining genre-hopping musical thriller set in Mexico, Emilia Pérez tells the tale of a drug cartel boss who enlists the talents of a junior lawyer, played by a Zoë Saldaña, to help him undergo gender-affirming surgery, then entangles her in his quest for redemption.

Is it worth the wait? I mean, if you’ve already sat through The Last Dance — and I can’t advise that you do — then you might at well see it through to the bitter end. And I do mean bitter.

Anora is frenetic and entertaining and sometimes very funny, but it will break your heart.

Seeds tackles topics as diverse as agri-business, colonialism, intergenerational trauma and personal grief — not to mention the enduring and often overlooked heroism of house cats. Its drama will grow on you.

Written and directed by Barry Avrich, Born Hungry is part travelogue, part Master Chef foodie outing, and part rags-to-riches Canadian success story. The parts don’t always meld together, but Simpson’s life is fascinating enough to hold a viewer’s attention throughout. He is a compelling individual.

In real life, what happens in the Vatican generally stays in the Vatican. But as cinematic guesswork goes, Conclave is as good as it gets.

It hits a lot of the right notes, but, overall the film suffers from a predictable plot. But Pugh and Garfield’s nuanced performances give the film empathy and depth that pulls us through.

It’s fascinating to watch Join or Die and see how Putnam’s work has affected other areas of research, such as community connections and economic mobility.

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

However you define it, it’s globally good fun.

Smile 2 is a freakshow that will likely delight those willing to go all in, seeking a chaotic experience while others will be left to wonder not only where this is all going to but where did it come from?

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

This is an auspicious directing debut for Kendrick. Woman of the Hour has a big impact and may prompt viewers to search out more information about the Rodney Alcala case. It will certainly inspire some viewers to thread their car keys through their knuckles on the walk back to the car afterward.

Though The Apprentice does not really explain Donald Trump as a psychiatric or political phenomenon, it justifies its existence as pitch dark comedy with some terrific performances and a reminder that even the Orange Menace was once someone’s darling boy.

A more focused storyline might have served her better. Then again, Field wholly embraces the quirky. By that metric, with Happy Clothes, she got something very much in line with her own aesthetic.

To repeat, Folie à Deux is not “canon.” It’s a writer/director realizing a vision with something sincere and clever, which you can accept or reject. Superhero fans will get their fix soon enough. But this is not that.

It’s not accurate to say the film stars Saoirse Ronan. Saoirse Ronan is the movie, the luminous north star of every scene.

It’s impossible to overstate the range of emotions, from heartbreak to delight to humility, conjured by the new documentary Blink, which is also visually dazzling thanks to its pedigree as a National Geographic Documentary.

The Wait is a modern morality fable that initially unfolds like a revenge Western but then transforms into a supernatural horror story.

Frankie Freako isn’t the film you’re going to rave about to friends. It will, however, be an excellent subject for conversation about how much films got away with in 1986. If you can watch this film through that lens, it’s definitely a freaky film you can appreciate.

Campbell and Johnson – both of whom worked with Radwanski in Anne at 13,000 ft. - make a great team. They've been allowed to improvise some of their dialogue, which adds to a sense that we’re eavesdropping on two people who are responding to a particular moment.

Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night is a representation of 90 eventful minutes of TV history as tightly packed narratively as a neutron star. It is about that tightly wound as well. For a movie about the debut of Saturday Night Live, the show that changed comedy, the experience is more anxiety than humour.

It's a very easy story to accept, but the ease of the storytelling allows the message to penetrate and gives rise to thoughtfulness about how we can be better to those around us. Quite simply, this film allows us to want to be better than who we are.

Seeking Mavis Beacon starts off as one thing and then becomes another, overall a chaotic but intriguing journey about art, identity and history in cyberspace … where everything lasts forever.

New Rome wasn’t built in a day, and we don’t always get the film we want. I doubt even Coppola did with this one. Megalopolis is what it is. You probably wouldn’t want to move there. But it’s worth visiting as a tourist, if only to gape at the locals.

These questionable narrative kinks aside, Lee still features one of the year-to-date’s best performances, honouring a woman who needs to be remembered, along with a sober consideration of the roles of women in wartime.

In this nuanced and often joyful film, the only violence involves the recurrent crash of bulldozers through stucco and timber walls as the neighbourhood transforms and some dreams get crushed as well.

Beyond the humor and pathos, Will & Harper is a touching and heartfelt exploration of friendship.

Schimberg’s film is a blend of low-level science fiction and mid-range body horror, though it’s body horror with a social conscience. It’s remarkable viewing, even as it distills its theme into a well-worn message of resilience that’s idealized rather than realistic.

A movie with a surreal premise, that examines whether it’s better to be not seen than hurt, The Invisibles is a tonic for the soul.

Overall, Wolfs is not breaking new ground, nor is it trying to. But it is an entertaining couple of hours at the movies. That works for me.

Still, as a premise it’s irresistible. And Megan Park’s funny and touching My Old Ass brings a fresh twist to a mystically-assisted two-way generational life lesson that, in the movies, has usually involved switching bodies.

Writer-director Coralie Fargeat’s comedy is an inspired send-up of the contemporary emphasis on youth and beauty.

Transformers One is a great watch for longtime fans. Though the franchise’s box office success in this century has been predicated on noisy live action with a CGI assist, this exciting and fun-filled film returns the Transformers to their animated roots.

Director James Watkins’ American remake of Speak No Evil, starring James McAvoy and Scoot McNairy, is a thrilling, fun night at the movies.

This critic says The Critic is an imperfect film saved by a terrific cast. In particular, Sir Ian McKellen steals the show as a preening newspaper god in 1930s London.

In the end, all Beetlejuice Beetlejuice did for me was make me want to see the singular version again.

Reagan the man may have been known as The Great Communicator, but Reagan the movie delivers its message stridently and with little nuance or room for debate.

You Gotta Believe is billed as family entertainment. Whose family, exactly, they never specify.

Out Come the Wolves director/co-writer Adam MacDonald keeps us guessing until practically the final frame as to how it’s all going to play out in this finely crafted sylvan thriller.

There is a gentle, sad, sweet core to Between the Temples, though American indie director Nathan Silver seems determined to discourage any feelings of sentimentality in a movie that could easily have tipped in that direction.

Forced and contrived, it makes one miss the ‘90s.

Strange Darling is a thriller structured as a complex series of surprises. Writing anything much about the story runs the risk of spoiling some of those surprises, so this will be a short review. Go and see it.

Alien: Romulus may not have the edgy feel of the original Alien, nor the rollercoaster ride we got with Aliens, but it's arguably the best entry in the franchise in over thirty years.

For sure, the film is heartwarming, and it is fun to watch Dindim waddle around and engage with the human world, adopting Joao as a family member. But that’s not quite enough to overcome the film’s problems.

Good One, a lesson in minimalist storytelling from first-time feature writer-director India Donaldson, is a movie that sneaks up on you.

The problem is the execution. As directed by Justin Baldoni (who also stars as the husband), the film feels lacklustre and slapdash, never doing anything to rise above the basic storytelling beats.

One hopes Sugarcane will be shown in schools all over North America.

An hour and 40 minutes of noise without any tension or sense of purpose, Borderlands would be Exhibit Z in the conventional wisdom that video games don’t transfer well filmically – that is, if recent efforts like The Last of Us or Fallout hadn’t proved otherwise.

I was ultimately less enthralled with the final film than I was with some of the performances in Cuckoo. Stevens and Schafer are amazing, and Bluthardt makes an excellent oddity, a convenient ally with his own mysterious agenda. But Cuckoo can’t quite bring all its disparate elements together into something cohesive and coherent.

Working from a script by Neil Forsythe, Marsh has created a superficially experimental if tame take on an artist of grim truths and dark comedy.

Fast, funny and entirely forgettable, The Instigators is an entertaining if shopworn heist story.

Trap is simply M. Night Shyamalan’s silliest movie since The Happening.

What holds it all together is a superbly understated performance from Wang, who is fully three-dimensional as Chris — a decent kid trying to figure it all out. Absent here are all the usual cinema cliches and exaggerations about teen life, thank the goddess.

Atmosphere will only take you so far, and it soon becomes apparent that Starve Acre is 10 liters of helium in a 20-liter balloon. The result is limp and never fully takes flight.

RTA is a strictly volunteer program, with no academic requirement to enter or good-behaviour code to remain. Sing Sing, while not an advertisement for the program, does seem to capture what makes it special, and what its participants get from the experience.

Only the River Flows — based on the novel Mistakes by the River by Yu Hua — runs a tight 102 minutes but crams a lot of atmosphere into that time, moments of high drama interspersed with bizarre humour.

Kneecap is one of the most likeable films this year. Turn up the volume and enjoy.

Compassionate and original, Crossing is an odd couple road movie about friendship and acceptance of differences that demonstrates rather than preaches its theme.

Even with its slender premise, sporadic laughs, and abundant clichés, The Fabulous Four is entertaining and unapologetically — almost aggressively — sweet-natured, promoting friendship and female camaraderie while spotlighting a demographic underrepresented on screen and widely considered to have the kinds of dilemmas presented here all figured out by now.

Deadpool & Wolverine is enjoyable on its merits: R-rated, horribly violent juvenile fantasy loaded with nostalgic references from the glory days of comic reading that fans, new and old, will thoroughly enjoy as it drags you down to its irreverently funny level.

Plenty happens in Exhuma, which branches out from its home base in South Korea, briefly touching down in America, with added references to Japan. It can make for a crowded narrative, launching several storylines of unsettled spirits and ghostly miscreants. Yet Hyun's story is told efficiently enough not to seem convoluted or aimless.

What National Anthem lacks in spectacle it more than makes up for in quiet moments of beauty, tenderness and heartache.

As a summertime popcorn film, it’s fine. But Twisters lacks the breathtaking je ne sais quoi oomph a film of this scope should have. We get spun alright, but the landing feels very safe and predictable.

It may not sound like a big deal, but it’s actually very satisfying to see game-changing historical women having their stories told on a major platform and having them told well, with emotional intelligence.

If you know Stalter from HBO's Hacks then you know the general territory. In this case, the whole movie is Stalter and while her bizarre charm is formidable, it’s not quite enough to carry everything — a stronger script might have helped.

Watching this film is a lesson in history. It’s detailed, accurate and meticulous in its presentation of a human drama that realistically could have happened. When you hear about Viggo’s attention to history, this is a western story that becomes and grittier and accurate look into the past and a lesson in history.

Valley of Exile is a slow, closely observed and very personal story that distils the terrible cost of conflict and presents it on a relatable human scale. While the film celebrates the women’s resilience, it also shows the gradual, inexorable unravelling of family as all things familiar fall away.

It seems to be about a lot of things — a kinder, gentler America, early feminism, truth in advertising, an impartial media. But above all, it’s a pleasant few hours at the movies with charismatic actors Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum.