Vogt masterfully—undoubtedly infuriating for some - understates the horror in his film by filtering it through a bright summer Nordic sun while adults mill about oblivious to the violence around them.

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.

Some scenes in The Painter and the Thief feel stagey, including a couple of delayed dramatic reveals. And the characters certainly seem aware of the camera’s presence. Seen in its best light though, The Painter and the Thief is a kind of Rorschach test: Do you see a tale of improbable friendship and compassion, or a story of trespassed boundaries and compulsion? Or, is this one of those “bistable” optical illusions, like the vase and the face, where different things are true, moment to moment?

Falconer allows viewers a glimpse into the ordinary lives of richly developed characters in Sunfish. The filmmaker presents their stories in an understated and unhurried fashion, showing lives led against a bittersweet, end-of-summer landscape that is tinged with nostalgia.

Intriguingly weird, and only loosely tethered to its own reality, Lawrence Michael Levine’s Black Bear is two movies in one - both on the theme of creativity-squeezed-from-pain, and both offering Aubrey Plaza the acting turn of her career.

What’s miraculous is that, through it all, Kaufman stays on course in a movie that is as intriguing as it is wonderfully odd.

Films about stalkers and obsession tend toward on-the-nose titles like Crush, Watcher, Creep or, well, Obsession, and Stalker. Lurker is thus, right from the title card, a refreshingly original take on the genre.

The archival clips are an enjoyable reminder of Fox’s ‘80s onscreen persona, as a 5’4’’whirlwind of mental and physical energy, with dazzling comic timing.

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.

Les Miserables is an intense ride, a gripping action-filled police procedural that leaves you with grappling with social issues and youth when the movie ends.

Clocking in at under two hours, virtually every word of prosaic bro dialogue, every dramatic exchange, every turn of events, is designed to do one thing: get us back in the sky twisting and turning at several times the speed of sound, narrowly avoiding crashes with other planes and with the ground.

It’s clever and backed up by enough tech-speak to give viewers a sense of the nuts and bolts of things without wandering into the weeds.

Though sometimes over-explanatory, the film gains in complexity as it progresses, raising thorny questions about the duty of victims to maintain their humanity.

A visceral cross-section of an Iraq War incident, related by the veterans who served there, Warfare stuns viewers into submission and leaves them with a grim apprehension of military service - albeit as close as one gets without being there.

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.

Lifted by a deep and thoughtful performance by Colin Farrell, After Yang is a poetic and subtle meditation about the aftermath of unexpected sadness over the loss of “someone” who is technically not human.

For a film where relatively little happens plot-wise, Gloria Bell is oddly beguiling thanks to its leads: Moore (reliably great) embracing every square-peg aspect of her character and Turturro, whose resting look — itchy, perplexed, possibly lost — is deployed with precision in a character meant to be wildly uncomfortable in his own skin.

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

The stunts are super-human, the combat is exhilarating, and definitely in the realm of the unrealistic. But that’s the joy in watching an animated show and suspending disbelief. The audience wants to be entertained and this film certainly does that with its detailed explanations of how these technologically-backward heroes are even able to stay in the fight.

A circus of violence, it’s a noisy, non-stop combination of dance and Loony Tunes-worthy manic cartoonishness.

Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain is a carefully made film, a wonderful homage to a flawed hero. It will lift you up, it will potentially break your heart. But it will remind you that you’re not alone. We’re in this together.

Subtlety is the strength of The Humans. It is an intelligent even-handed drama where the family’s issues aren’t played to the point where they’re gruelling and destructive. Rather, they show us something more ordinary and therefore more truthful.

A tale of trauma told, fittingly, with a poker face, Paul Schrader’s The Card Counter is a sure-handed rumination on redemption and finding peace of mind.

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.

Groff and Radcliffe are great in two very different roles (each won a Tony last year for their performances) but there really isn’t a weak link in the cast, and the music is grand.

Kristen Stewart makes an impressive directorial debut with her adaptation The Chronology of Water. The film is a raw, emotional primal scream anchored by a career highlight performance by Imogen Poots.

Directed by Alli Haapasalo and written by Ilona Ahti and Daniel Hakulinen, it is an empathetic, almost sociological portrait that could be shown in health class in a progressive high school.

In a word, it’s terrific.

The Belarus-born Loznitsa, now a Ukrainian citizen, is not a follower of the “brevity is the soul of wit” school of dark humour. Each vignette is almost too long to earn that descriptor, almost as if he doesn’t want to let go of a scene until the viewer is utterly uncomfortable. But that churn builds on itself, taking us by the last act to a dark and cynical place.

It’s a lovely, quirky tale, full of ruminations on regret, love coming from (and directed to) unexpected quarters, and a bizarre broken faucet that won’t not work.

If you’re not at all familiar with the originals, but you know and/or love Back to the Future, that should be enough to guarantee you a good time at this almost-lawsuit-worthy homage/parody to the 1980s time travel classic. And if perchance you already love both Nirvanna and BTTF, then strap in, because when this movie hits 88 kilometres an hour…

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

The script by Richard Kaplow, who wrote Linklater’s 2008 film Me and Orson Welles, feels as though it were adapted from an off-Broadway play, with the action mostly in one location over the course of one night, March 31, 1943, the opening night of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, Oklahoma!

Sugar Daddy impresses as an idiosyncratic film with a forceful visual style and sound design, attached to a familiar story about the ways of bad men and a young woman getting lost in the fast life.

I’m Your Man is certainly a metaphor for our increasingly intimate relationship with our own technology. Some have seen it as a direct reference to our intimacy with personae on social media, virtual relationships that exist at the expense of our connections with people in the real world. Whatever it is supposed to be, it is a smart and often witty take on a not exactly new sci-fi premise.

At just under two-and-a-half hours and spanning three decades, The Eight Mountains feels thorough, as well as sensitively acted and moving. Its weakness is a tendency toward grandiosity, treating an anecdotal drama as though it were an epic.

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.”

In the end, del Toro has created an impressive piece of entertainment that manages to retain the existential thoughts that inspired Frankenstein in the first place. Ultimately, it’s one of his best films.

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.

It’s impossible to overstate the immersive feel and psychological sway of 1917; Mendes inhabits those god-forsaken trenches in ways that are palpable, bringing the stink, filth, claustrophobia, and gallows humour to bear with stunning resonance.

The film is an indictment of law enforcement as it operates (or doesn’t) for aboriginal people.

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

The Starling Girl is a film that highlights remarkable performances in a story that travels down familiar territory.

Anyone expecting a crowd-pleasing crossover movie from the French director of modern art-house landmarks like Beau Travail and 35 Shots of Rum may be ill-prepared for this perplexing, repellent/fascinating vision of bodies in tight spaces.

Eggers is honouring the legacy of the original Nosferatu, and he gives us a worthy film. But one wishes that he’d gone father in his own direction. A little bit more of his focused madness would have been welcome.

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

The Personal History of David Copperfield is a comedy that washes over you with its warmth. Iannucci’s fans should be prepared to encounter the director in an unusual and infestious good mood.

Reservations aside, Clemency has moments of shivering gravity. Almost all of them involve complex emotions registered in Woodard’s extraordinary face, her dignified resistance to a turmoil of emotions within her, and her agonized need for forgiveness.

Bolan's film is essentially a home movie, that fantails into a larger cultural narrative of post-war North American culture. Shot on video between 2013 and 2018, mostly in intimate indoor settings, the film begins as fly-on-the-wall style cinema verite.

Nope is an eccentric vehicle for some of Peele’s favourite themes – the movie business, Black social history, and character-over-plot.

The interesting thing about the remarkably intense, violent police-procedural/occult-drama Longlegs is that it doesn’t overplay the Cage card.

The narrative arc of Islands, so minimalist it’s really more of a slow bump, is about the gradual breaking down of Joshua’s small shell of comfort, his family and cultural conventions.

A mixture of social realism, melodrama, and road comedy, the two-hour-plus Broker isn’t Kore-eda’s best work. But it’s redeemed by the filmmaker’s signature deep empathy for his lonely characters.

Despite lacking the visual scope and timeline of Polley's earlier works like Take This Waltz, Away From Her, and Stories We Tell, Women Talking is her most accomplished film to date: An intimate portrayal of a group of people driven to the brink of rebellion lest they concede to defeat.

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.

This is toxic masculinity seen from a feminist viewpoint; rest assured the women are not victims.

A hero from an era when we still had heroes, the diminutive Romanian-born, activist and lawyer fairly burns through the screen with passion born of witnessing the worst that humanity can do. And he still tours the world with the impossible dream of ending inhumanity.

American drama Jockey is superb, the perfect confluence of a great story expertly directed, with outstanding performances, stunning cinematography, and a dazzling score.

On one hand, its chief conceit is commendably weird: the adult Williams is played by Jonno Davies as a chimpanzee filmed in motion capture, conjured with CGI to humanoid effect, and voiced by its subject. Daring! Yet its story follows a ho-hum biopic trajectory structurally indistinguishable from recent entries such as Rocketman and Bohemian Rhapsody.

The Promised Land is visually splendid and utterly absorbing, a rags-to-riches/vengeance/love story packed with action and heartbreak.

It’s a ghost story, a minor entry in Soderbergh’s oeuvre but still worthy of attention.

That core idea here, the pole in the middle of the merry-go-round, is that the stuffy, secretive King, as Robertson Davies suggests, is the embodiment of Canada’s locked-down colonial psychology. The Twentieth Century is a strange creation, though but there’s nothing unusual in the notion that Canadian blandness may be a form of camouflage. Anyone who has read history, or for that matter, watched a hockey game, knows that.

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.

Project Hail Mary, the latest cinematic adaptation of an Andy Weir novel, is a crowd-pleaser loaded with humour, charm, and tropes galore. In the best tradition of sci-fi, there’s also a lesson in being the best a human can be, as shown by an alien teacher.

3 ½ Minutes, 10 Bullets, as well as being a compelling real-life courtroom drama, offers some clarity about race and injustice in the pre-Trump era.

Irena’s Vow is beautifully filmed, with careful attention to period detail.

Thelma is really entertaining. The cast (which includes Malcolm McDowell) is very strong. The performance from Squibb, a 70-year vet of the industry and Oscar-nominated for her work in Nebraska, is fantastic, and Roundtree is likewise magnetic.

Love Lies Bleeding is bent in the most unexpected ways, filling the screen with the impossible while refusing to make excuses.

Greek director Christos Nikou makes an impressive feature film debut with Apples, a subtle, offbeat and quietly affecting movie about amnesia, identify and grief.

Quiet, understated and unforgettable, The Mustang is a winner by five lengths.

The Scottish green hills and forests make for an intriguing change of scenery for the series, with nighttime given that added edge of dread that comes with unseen menace and glowing eyes.

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

It’s very easy to forgive this film for what it lacks, such as being shot on a minimal budget at dull locations. Some of the performances seem amateurish at times but because the story is one that has a universal appeal, they are overlooked in light of how relatable the whole concept is.

Awash in colour and sunlight, the doc The Last Resort is both a modern cultural history of the confounding should-be-paradise that is Miami Beach, and a loving bio of a young, short-lived photographer who froze one of its moments in time.

Both a horror story about domestic abuse and a love-letter to the mother-daughter relationship, Shayda is an award-winning first feature about female agency from writer-director Noora Niasari.

Though the subject of immigrants from persecuted minorities fleeing their homelands is topical, what elevates I Carry You With Me above most social dramas is its finespun, artisanal quality.

Frothy, but deceptively dense, Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story focuses on Liza’s psychology and her friendships and teachers through the 1960s and 1970s.

Baker has pitched this as a dark comedy. And thanks to the relentless energy of Simon Rex, the film feels like a comedy.

There’s nothing new in noting that crime and dirty politics are fast tracks to success. (“Is it the same in your country?” Balram asks the viewer). What’s more interesting here is how The White Tiger explores the paradoxes of the master-servant dynamic. Singer-actor Gourav is marvelous in capturing the duality.

For a film where not a lot happens, and what does happen happens very slowly, Islands is strangely gripping. That could be the hypnotic effect of its endlessly sun-drenched Canary Island setting, as writer-director Jan-Ole Gerster dips his audience in the languorous pace of a holiday destination in this low-boil psychological drama.

Led by Reisman’s deadpan, uningratiating performance, Retrograde is a funny, uncomfortable portrait of young millennial, struggling with her loss of status and clinging to the wreckage of her past aspirations.

All Quiet on the Western Front exists to make the viewer uncomfortable – infinitely preferable to what the characters endure.

Given The Trial of the Chicago 7’s snapshot of an era of an almost hopelessly divided America, and Kafka-esque and monstrous misuse of power by a bullying President, the timing for its release couldn’t be better.

There are plot turns, double crosses and, appropriately for the online world, threats of live streaming torture and echoes of video battle games. But there’s at least a half-hour too much of it.

A solid, if not revelatory portrait of contemporary Russia through the story of exiled oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Jay Sebring… Cutting to the Truth works on a level beyond simply the director giving props to his all-but-forgotten uncle. Its more visceral message is that, “the dead have no rights.”

This coming-of-age film captures the exuberance of childhood even as it shows the gradual encroachment of outside social pressures.

Though it occasionally gets a little repetitive in its use of archival devil movie and tabloid television clips, Lane’s film is mordantly funny and certainly persuasive in making the case that religion should be kept out of politicians’ dirty hands.

While you can admire the “House of Mirrors” structure of The Whistlers and its ironic mix of glum and glamorous, there is little emotional purchase here. This is a flatter, more arch experience than Porumboiu’s devastatingly absurd earlier films, and the entire exercise feels more about ingenuity than art.

There is a bristling, neon energy to Zola which, given its provenance as a series of real-life tweets from waitress and exotic dancer (and now executive producer) A’ziah “Zola” King, seems about right. This is a road trip movie straight outta weirdsville.

Credit goes to the Philippou brothers for their originality and perfectly queasily executed bits of ghoulish anarchy.

Occupied City is designed not so much to provoke emotions as to challenge our capacity for paying attention (“It’s okay to drift in and out,” recommends McQueen in the film’s production notes.) When we focus, we’re compelled to connect the double strand of the narrated past history and contemporary images in front of our eyes.

By comparison with Red Army, Red Penguins is a less-polished, seat-of-the-pants effort that involved Polsky sitting and waiting in a Moscow hotel room for opportunities to do quickie interviews (with many still reluctant to talk about those days pre-Putin). But there is some evocative archival footage, including shots of the game’s between-period “entertainment,” which involved dancers from the strip club that operated within the arena.

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.

If Hokum proves anything, it’s that McCarthy isn’t just part of this new wave of horror filmmakers—he’s carving out his own narrow corridor within it. A place where folklore, psychology, and just enough chemical suggestion collide.

Squaring the Circle is a gripping true story told with towering visual panache.

Boys Go to Jupiter, the debut feature film from American 3-D animator, video game designer, and illustrator Julian Glander, is both jaded and fresh, a Gen-Z version of Richard Linklater’s early slacker comedies with a sprinkling of Studio Ghibli’s childlike fantasy.