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.

Know from the start: Halloween Ends has some of the best kills in the franchise.

Unquestionably, it’s a beautiful film, shot in 16 mm, with grainy, almost tactile, images and sounds. There is an inky sky, strewn with stars; the silhouette of a horse, mane blowing in the wind, water droplets and scampering bugs, the rustling of the wind and the rumble of waves. It weaves together themes of women’s life choices, our fraught relationship to nature, the art of archiving and the power of awe.

It’s a tall order to deliver a portrayal of such an auspicious historical character. Little effort is made to glorify him, and Scott makes sure that the audience renders their own judgement on his significance in history.

Censor is an off-brand horror treat that walks the distance between artistic freedom and the scrutiny of morbid excess to which the title refers.

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.

The mostly non-professional cast do a credible job of depicting a family growing progressively more anxious under increasing pressure.

Just strap in and let Skarsgard’s chain-smoking, proudly sober, pushed-too-far little guy take you on a helluva ride.

How wonderful to see a movie that deals with the emotional and sexual life of two very different women north of 60, who are the sum of their lives, not bound by cultural cliches or perceptions.

If it’s not exactly a documentary, Dumb Money offers up enjoyably anarchic glee as the little guy wins for a minute.

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

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.

Is Killing Faith a great western? Hard to say. Is it worth seeing? Absolutely. Because sometimes it’s the films that bewilder us that leave the deepest marks: hoofprints on wet grass, difficult to follow but impossible to forget.

Is this about forgiveness as a pathway to love? Lowery doesn’t sew it up for us in a neat package or give us the answers, but I have no doubt that anyone who resonates with the film will come away with thoughts of their own.

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.

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.

There is no question that Gyllenhaal packs her film with so many ideas that it can become dizzying. The themes sometimes pile up, the tonal shifts arrive quickly, and the story occasionally feels less like it’s unfolding than tangling itself into elaborate knots. Some viewers will likely bail when the plot begins tripping over its own ambitions. But the film also has an undeniable boldness. A willingness to be strange. To be excessive. To be gloriously weird.

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.

Director Chris Smith resists unnecessary embellishments to tell the story of the friendship and partnership of Andrew Ridgeley and the late George Michael two school friends who became international music superstars. The result is a satisfying documentary that resists hagiography and instead focuses on the human beings.

Writer/director Harry Macqueen (Hinterland) does best with this deeply moving drama of devotion and the dread of approaching loss when he stands back and lets these two actors loose. Firth and Tucci provide arguably the best performances of their careers as two 60-something lovers facing a crisis.

Showing Up is a movie that whispers, and yet when it ended, I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to Lizzy or to the other characters in her world, to the sunny leafy streets of Portland, to the free spirit vibe of the art school, to the relationships I just started to get to know. I wanted to see more. I still want to.

What shines through in all these performances — and in recollections by Wilder himself and others — was a man dedicated to his craft and excited about the creative process.

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.

This West Side Story retains its ‘50s feel, while polishing this venerable gem of a musical to a greater gleam.

Odd but meaningful, Secret Mall Apartment, is an entertaining documentary about how a group of eight young artists secretly maintained an apartment — from 2003 to 2007 — in a hidden nook in the Providence Place, Rhode Island, shopping center.

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.

Visually, Antlers is stunning as a portrait of a town dying. And there are plenty of gruesome, hide-behind-your-eyes scenes to satisfy most genre fans. But it's Cooper's commitment to his characters and the performance of the film's two youngest leads that make Antlers more than just a movie about killer—well, you'll have to see for yourself.

This dark comedy, co-produced and directed by Elizabeth Banks, is a non-stop ride. Complete with gore, sick humour and characters (including the bear) that quickly attach themselves to the audience, this film satisfies so many low-end viewing pleasures that it’s a film you want to see again just to confirm that yes, that WAS indeed what you just saw.

It would be easy to simply recount the stages and progressions of growing up, coming age, self-discovery, and sexual awakenings. Wildhood is all that, but it also dips into identity issues that run deeper than what is affected visual clues and by the preference of touch.

Colourful and crazy paced road trip animation, The Mitchells vs. The Machines is the goofy-smart and entertaining family fare we’ve been needing in these fun-challenged times.

This is a thoughtful movie. Gray isn’t sending us out of the theatre with neatly tied-up threads. Instead the movie reflects on a time and place in history, one that should be in the rear-view mirror, but with issues and questions that are sadly still relevant.

It’s all freakin’ fantastic, a real all-night rave of a movie. But could we maybe just dial the whole thing down just a smidgeon? Could Challengers perhaps have given merely 100 per cent instead of 110?

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 Black Phone doesn’t disappoint, although it delivers in ways unexpected. And though it takes time, the payoff is worth the effort put into packing up old expectations and unpacking new. But fair warning: The Black Phone is not the easy-to-digest horror film you might think.

Like a rash of contemporary films — The Trial of the Chicago 7, Judas and the Black Messiah and Da Five Bloods — F.T.A. reminds us how much the anti-war and civil rights battles of the past are currently resonant, even when we have our history slightly wrong.

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.

In drawing similes between the then and the now, Goulet juxtaposes history with prophecy. Using conventional science-fiction tropes—the collapse of society, a military state, dystopia, and unidentified flying orbs—she creates a sound case for entertainment to share the screen with stories that have meaning and social impact.

A magic realist fantasy, a ghost story, a love story and political allegory, Atlantics packs a deceptive amount of complexity in a gauzy, slender film.

All this is big, busy fun and while one might wish for some a bit more grit in the charm offensive, the catchwords here are feel-good and broad appeal.

I must admit I am something of an ignoramus when it comes to classical music, barely able to tell a violin from a viola. But Measures for a Funeral also has much to say on the broader subject of music, and indeed sound.

Materialists is fun and satisfying and, thanks its wonderful cast, full of tender sweetness.

Viola Davis is an actor apparently incapable of a false note. She’s a force of nature, playing a force of nature. She is perfection. And even though Ma is the center of the story, Boseman’s Levee goes through the most changes through the film, and covers the most emotional territory. It is a masterful and powerful performance - a beautiful take on a difficult and tragic character.

There are not many films on the release schedule with good writing and plotting, wit and solid acting. That’s an exceptional combination in a quick bite of the spy movie genre.

As is required of the story, Branagh isolates and imposes suspicions and conflicts so that every character becomes equal part victim and villain.

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.

This Too Shall Pass is a delightfully unexpected story of growing up, in the same vein as pretty much every John Hughes film. It’s laced with nostalgic hits of the 80’s and the type of humour you remember laughing at as a teenager.

Director George Miller’s Three Thousand Years of Longing, with its superb A-list cast led by Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba, plays quite nicely as an intelligent, warm-hearted, visually beautiful, movie that can be enjoyed at face value.

While H is for Hawk is a genuinely lovely film — often visually beguiling, beautifully acted, and tender-hearted — it lacks dramatic punch, which may be the inevitable byproduct of a cinematic interpretation of a deeply introspective book that rooted the reader deep in the author’s psyche.

Although Fire of Love isn’t about the ins and outs of [the Kraffts'] marriage or relationship, in this film, they do seem to have found an almost magical connection - to each other, to their work, and to volcanoes which they found endlessly fascinating.

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.

The Silent Planet is, at first glance, an ungainly pile of science-fiction tropes and platitudes that has no right to gel into anything cohesive or interesting. But do give it a second glance, because it does just that.

There’s violence aplenty, which is another reason the John Wick reference has proven so sticky.

The Sadness is good. Not just genre-specific good, but cinema good. And even when it arrives at the inevitable ‘who are the real monsters’ scene, The Sadness still has bite.

Mickey 17 is a long ride with a running time of about two hours and twenty minutes, with unexpected twists and turns. It’s a lot of fun, and as previously noted, is stuffed with ideas.

One can forgive the occasional stumble in such a powerful debut feature.

The Rule of Jenny Pen is a dark and deeply unsettling film. Lithgow is unhinged and Rush is the perfect foil to attempt to bring him down.

It’s intimate, quiet, lovely, and in spite of the melancholy, there are moments of real connection and joy.

The film is a potent portrait of the heavy bootprint that colonialism left on the African continent, but the childlike point of view makes it an eminently watchable story, with moments of levity and even humour.

If you are not a King Crimson fan, but love music or are interested in the process of making music, then, you should consider watching this documentary anyway.

One to talk about afterwards with your significant other — if the subject matter hasn’t made you terrified of spending too much time alone with them.

Its warm-heartedness, positivity, and consistently striking visuals are a pleasant counter to ugly January days and nights, and a reminder that a compelling story well told is… wait for it… a can’t-miss recipe for success.

Despite the participation of the traveler’s wife and biographer, Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin is as much about Herzog as it is about his subject. You can be a fan of either and enjoy the film and its voice, so seamlessly did they apparently share a vision of the world.

The comedy level is well-sustained throughout the film. There is no shortage of comedy in the first half. But it really is the second half when one is able to stop making the predictions and relax into the laughs. At that point, all snake hell breaks loose and the pace accelerates quickly enough that it’s easier to go along with it.

Welsh director Euros Lyn’s reality-based steeple-chasing feature Dream Horse never deviates far from the expected course. But its off-kilter humour and an ace cast, led by the ever-credible Toni Collette, brings some fresh colours to this unabashed crowd pleaser.

I’d almost recommend seeing the first act of Song Sung Blue and then heading home in high spirits. But it would be wrong to whitewash real life (rewrite it a bit, sure).

This is a story that could easily have descended into something very seamy, but Lee keeps the film's tone light. Sonny and Chester are lovely people, who are on the level and really, really like each other.

Krymalowski brings a vivacious energy to a movie that would otherwise be one long trudge to safe haven.

Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, which won the coveted People’s Choice award at the most recent Toronto International Film Festival, is a warm and easygoing family drama and coming-of-age story based on the director’s life. But you’re out of luck if you’re looking for deep insights into how a boy seized by movies, grew up to be one of the most successful directors in Hollywood.

The movie feels like a novel with well-developed characters weaved through the story without feeling like segmented excerpts from a more extensive work. The film's love story is made more palatable by casting two beautiful people as the leads. And Kajganich's script finds all the right words and tone to tell the story.

One can see clear linkages between Undine to the nightmare weirdness of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, though it’s as if this similar story were drained of its passionate momentum and rendered abstract.

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is a platform for comedy as a burlesque of drama, with enough winks, pop references and silliness to keep the premise going. Funny stuff.

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

Anchored by a superb performance by Emily Watson, God’s Creatures is a small, quiet film that packs a surprising punch.

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.

This is arthouse vacation horror. As such, Infinity Pool scrapes closer to Spring Breakers than Hostel. But it's also science-fiction, and it's the science fiction that moves the horror beyond shock.

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.

The real treat here is the fabulous original music, sometimes in the background, but more often performed.

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.

I’ve never been a fan of time travel as a premise for a science fiction story but Relax, I’m From the Future puts a more… well, relaxed spin on the well-worn sci-fi trope.

As the movie travels from country to country over Fisk's career, it's not always easy to follow the chronology. But overall, Mike Munn's editing is astute, covering decades of work and complex multi-party conflicts with as much clarity as could be reasonably hoped for.

All in all, this is probably the best production of the litany of Tolkien pre-Ring stories I’ve seen on the big screen and I’d count The Hobbit in that estimation. There is a part where it drags a little, and some moments that are campy (I blame those on the anime elements), but all in all, this is definitely something that I would recommend seeing on the big screen.

Hovering over Together Together is the expectation that two people who enjoy each other’s company as much as Matt and Anna do will eventually end up together. Beckwith plays with this trope nicely.

In the coming-of-age sub-genre of youthful rebellion and forbidden love, DJ Ahmet from Macedonian writer/director Georgi M. Unkovski is about as mild as they come. But that doesn’t diminish its crowd-pleasing pleasures.

The film adaptation of this treasured novel is absolutely delightful. Written and directed by Kelly Fremon Craig (The Edge of Seventeen), it’s honest, realistic, heartfelt and captures the emotions of Margaret and her young friends perfectly.

Ukrainian director Roman Liubyi’s Iron Butterflies is an experimental film, a memorial scrapbook and a forensic documentary that revisits the 2014 downing of the Malaysian passenger plane, Flight 17.

Most of the participants who knew Armstrong are dead and there’s something melancholy about realizing that the human being behind that voice is silent. What remains is a quality that Marsalis identifies as essential in Armstrong’s music, a gift which he was fully conscious of, conveying a “transcendent joy” through sound.

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

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.

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.

Some movies deal with the settling of the American West as mythic. And then there are films like writer/director Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow, which strips it down to its basics for a more human scale and poetic vision of the Western era.

Ignore the nay-sleighers. Violent Night is the counter-Christmas B-movie that ditches the ho-ho-wholesomeness of the season for a damn good, bad Santa.

On Swift Horses is best admired as a visual tone poem to the era, not so much a realistic story. The conceit of casting characters who seem too splendid for their surroundings evokes the movie melodramas of the fifties, the time of Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift.

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.

Let’s just say the film — scripted by Bader’s nephew Daniel Stiepelman with the Justice’s blessing — successfully splits the difference between capturing Ginsburg as a contemporary folk hero and as a fiercely ambitious intellectual competing for footing in an era when mixing a killer martini was the very height of wifely prestige. No one will mistake it for a documentary.

Neighborhood Watch has a conventional story motif: the unlikely duo who can barely stand each other, team up and despite their own misgivings, in the end discover something about themselves that surpasses their original goal. It may be formulaic in its composition, but there’s comfort in this predictability.

Blind Ambition doesn’t rewrite any rules about documentary filmmaking, and it stumbles into the hokey at the very end. But if one subscribes to the adage that the story is the thing, then it’s hard to beat.

Ultimately, Bring Her Back is a film of contradictions: intimate and epic, bloody and cerebral, empathetic and terrifying. It’s the kind of horror that might take until long after the credits roll before its full impact lands.

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.