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.

Wryly funny, and just a little more complicated than its familiar indie film tropes suggest, the dramedy Shortcomings marks the directorial debut of comic actor Randall Park (Fresh of the Boat, Blockbuster, The Interview).

Maybe giant robots that turn into cars, or in this case, animals, isn’t your deal. But despite the goofy premise and the formulaic nature of the story in Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, it isn’t that bad.

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.

Possibly, no sane person could truly explain Dalí — who could account for the painter of Atmospheric Skull Sodomizing a Grand Piano? — but Harron’s film maintains a wry compassion for these mad love birds, who have spent their lives defying convention and perhaps reality itself.

Though not a deep musical dive and offering little new to Wilson’s well-documented and extreme biography, Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road is an welcome chance to spend time in the company of pop music genius. And it’s a reminder how surprisingly simple geniuses can be.

There is much to admire and contemplate in Martin Eden, including Marinelli’s performance, the marvelous range of faces that appear onscreen, the disorienting time shifts and melancholic seascapes that form many backdrops. While the tension between Martin’s right-wing superman fantasies and working-class status is a rich field, it’s not obvious that there’s a coherent intellectual framework behind the collage of beautiful moments.

It’s an entertaining fantasy from a kid’s perspective that hearkens back to the days of reading a stack of comics on your bed for an afternoon that never seemed to end.

Air is enjoyable, engaging, sprinkled with some of the ‘80s sprightlier hits (including Sister Christian and Money for Nothing), and good for some laughs.

Not even its rather silly ending can undermine its heart.

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.

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.

It’s an interesting juxtaposition of the Queen as a woman, as a girl, as a monarch, at work, at play, in love. For anyone who grew up with the more matronly era of the Queen, images of her as a vivacious, playful, beautiful young woman are fascinating.

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.

Kiss of the Spider Woman remains an engrossing tale in this new century, and a lovely paean to old movies and the thrills of getting lost in them.

A sweet and uplifting documentary twist on the horror genre, Silver Screamers is, as they say in Yiddish, a “mitzvah” on the part of director Sean Cisterna, and a gift that keeps on giving.

In contrast to the complex psychodrama of Nolan’s opus, A Compassionate Spy is a gentle and intimate film, largely narrated by Hall’s wife, Joan, who was 90 at the time of filming. She tells a love story.

In short, there is much to enjoy in Bonjour Tristesse, but the film as a whole never quite rises to the level of its best parts. And that’s a little sad.

Gossamer thin in the plotting but playful and gorgeous to look at, it’s a warm message of midlife liberation.

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.

This is a tremendous underdog story, and it works because Holmes shows a viewer exactly who LeMond is and why he was so popular — then as now.

If you’re yearning for a Western with a vintage feel, and a touch of mythos, writer/director Potsy Ponciroli’s homage to the genre, Old Henry will nicely fill that bill.

This is not art, it’s not brooding, it doesn’t offer any relevant commentary, it’s not even a refreshingly feminist take on an overtly masculine saturated movie-industry. It’s a loud, sometimes disjointed, mildly convoluted, ultra-violent comic-book adventure that moves at a break-neck speed. And, if you stick with it, it’s loads of fun.

This visual memoir paints a picture of a woman who, while leading a rich professional life, was plagued by personal demons.

The Traitor is a pleasure to watch. Working with cinematographer Vladan Radovic, Bellocchio blends sweeping camera work and flurries of action with painterly lighting and often ironic musical cues. The story itself is somewhat over-stuffed — the time-jumping narrative (Bellochio and three other writers are credited) and an onscreen counter of murder victims — but this is still a welcome chance to see a great old school European auteur at work.

Sometimes the story isn’t so much the thing. It’s the way the story is told that delivers the goods.

The result is a film that is presented as a kind of a fable, and a microcosm of a country whose fortunes once depended on oil.

A compact drama with outsize emotional heft, The Assistant is propelled as much by what it doesn’t show as what it does.

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.

Hustle may not surprise you, but that doesn’t detract from its charm. There are mountains for the characters to climb, a sense of connection to others, and other ideas that feel especially rewarding right now.

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.

If you’ve seen enough of the studio’s movies, even something this full of imagination suffers from some predictability. There is a period in Soul, where, in spite of the lovely creativity and goofy story-telling, it lags and feels a bit listless, before bouncing back.

Director Kyle Patrick Alvarez and screenwriter John Griffin’s Crater is a sweet story about friendship lasting a lifetime but set in the year 2257. Kinda like Stand by Me, but nicer… and in space.

Hanks and young German actress Helena Zengel (Shock System) play off each other faultlessly, with minimal dialogue, relying on gaze, gesture, and tone and we can easily understand how the twice-orphaned Johanna can look into Kidd’s warm, melancholy gaze and recognize a fellow misfit and survivor, accepting him as her protector.

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

In the end, Nobody 2 is about gratification. The fantasy that the bad guys never stand a chance. That justice is swift, brutal, and delivered without hesitation. It’s not subtle, but then again, subtlety never gets a standing ovation. And maybe, this summer, we need that more than ever.

Spinster adds up to more than the sum of its parts, even if its primary takeaway — a woman doesn’t need a man to be happy and/or successful, yada yada — is hardly ground-breaking.

The film employs a punk-inspired cut-and-paste collages, smashing together footage of police and protestor clashes, rock concerts, television shows and political marches, all annotated with animated handwritten letters, posters, newspaper clippings, and excerpts from RAR’s fanzine, Temporary Hoarding.

Mikkelsen’s affecting performance is backed by an exceptional ensemble cast, who bring to life the fears and emotional scars that come with age, and the part alcohol can play in it, for better or worse.

Are audiences, who are used to having their heroic stories delivered to them in fantastically exciting packages, ready for this reined-in version of the wounded hero? In spite of its flaws, Lowery’s The Green Knight makes a case for a different sort of hero whose time may have come.

There’s fun and excitement in good measure as well, but Rocket’s story brings the audience in closer and in doing so, it enables the other characters’ stories to matter to the audience as well.

Into the Weeds: Dewayne “Lee” Johnson vs. Monsanto Company is a cautionary environmental story, that raises unsettling questions about what’s in the food we eat, and how our farming practices are affecting the biosphere.

Rarely do remakes capture the lightning in the bottle of the source material. But The Guilty does, no doubt in part because screenwriter Nic Pizzolatto, best known for the True Detective series, drafted Gustav Möller, who wrote the original screenplay for and directed the original. Whether a remake was needed remains debatable, but the vision remains intact.

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.

Deeper, darker, mordant, with a definite horror movie vibe, it is what you might expect from del Toro, a filmmaker who gave us Pan’s Labyrinth – essentially a dark fairy-tale wrapped in real-world fascism, as this is as well.

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.

It takes incredible talent to make something this spare work. The Mastermind is the kind of high-wire act that only someone as gifted as Reichardt could pull off.

A strong ensemble cast ably supports Jacobs as she navigates palpable feelings of inadequacy and misguided affection.

Demigod is a small but effective seasonal treat; One of the few independent horror films that get tossed into the October horror real-estate that deserves a look.

The film is part buddy comedy, part rom-com, and partly just good natured silliness, but it coheres. It’s entertaining enough that you can just go with it, but there is depth there, if you’re so inclined. It says a few meaningful things about relationships without becoming a self-help class. And it has heart and charm in spades.

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.

It may not be quite as thrilling as Edgar Wright’s brilliant The Sparks Brothers, which had the benefit of two still-living, sharp-as-tacks protagonists to interview, but it’s a must-see for fans and a highly interesting two hours for music junkies.

Wharton’s film benefits from exceptional timing, which may not be accidental. Carter’s diplomacy and decency, his easy smile and comparatively youthful veneer contrast dramatically with the current American president and his secretive, self-aggrandizing, circled-wagons administration.

If there’s one thing that Beast does well, it keeps its audience on the edge of their seats.

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.

The movie is both an exercise in self-mockery and a spoof of both Hollywood and the kind of movie Cage might take to pay the bills.

Emily the Criminal is the debut feature by John Patton Ford, who also wrote the script. He’s done a nice job here of ramping up the tension, without resorting to a lot of overwrought situations or melodrama. He keeps the story small and contained and the camera close on the characters.

Mohr appears to be in control even when the film takes wild swipes from the absurd to the dramatic. Still, Boy Kills World works.

The Harder They Fall aims for, and mostly hits the target, with a double-barreled blast of entertainment and historical reclamation.

It’s, ironically enough, a terrific, serious performance by Will Arnett, arguably the best of his career.

Seligman’s tight script landed her on Variety’s list of 10 Screenwriters to Watch for 2020. She uses classic Jewish humour and archetypal characters here that echo 1960s comedy albums and TV sitcoms but freshens it with Generation Z angst and a cascade of emotional pileups.

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

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.

So, Ticket to Paradise… see or skip? Easy. See as there’s lots to enjoy. Bouttier as the wise-beyond-his-years Gede is absolutely rubberneck-worthy, the scenery and backdrops are gorgeous if out of reach for most of us, and the film crackles with energy. But you’ll be watching movie stars at work, and you’ll never forget it.

The film adds an authentic emotional resonance to an important story about an exceptional human who was singing her mind at a pivotal moment in 20th-century pop-culture history.

Returning director Chris Renaud, co-director of parts one and two, knows his way around the characters, and he knows what his audience wants: cartoon mayhem, mild naughtiness from the Minions, social awkwardness from Gru.

The deliberate pacing, cinematographer Tómas Örn Tómasson's images reminding of the vulnerable human scale against the landscape and the skeletal narrative, bringing a refreshing purity to a classic predicament.

Chapter 1 of this undertaking is imperfect, at times meandering and once or twice confusing, but it is never boring and never feels over-long. And it is spectacularly beautiful to look at.

The stubborn ambiguity of Last Summer — with its genuinely could-be-this, could-be-that head-scratcher of an ending — will either be a dealbreaker for viewers or proof of bold, irreverent storytelling that refuses to be neatly packaged. To be sure, the film isn’t judging so much as presenting a fraught scenario for its audience to consider.

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.

Cohen’s script doesn’t get backed up with messy gags that would rather have you gagging than amused. Instead, it’s flushed with charm, warmth, and just enough horror to put you on the edge of your seat—or rather, put your seat on the edge.

If you're looking for a little kid–friendly movie, Pixar’s delightful new animation Elio is just the ticket.

If Decision to Leave is indeed intended as an homage to a genre, mission accomplished.

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.

V/H/S Halloween marks the eighth entry in the franchise, and somehow it manages to feel just as effective, maybe even more so, than its predecessors.

There aren’t zombies rampaging through Norwegian director Thea Hvistendahl’s quiet film. Instead, the spare, slow-paced, thoughtful film is an affecting story about coping with grief.

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

It is to Costa’s credit that she provides a soothing, reflective tone to the subject, both in her poetic voiceover and a hypnotically smooth editing that movies from drone shots of crowds, congregations, rallies, and protest marches to handheld closeups of politicians clawing their ways through teeming throngs of admirers.

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.

In the end, it’s a story about family coming together in the last moments of a loved one’s life and facing death with not only dignity but with honesty as well. A touching story.

Fans of the novels of Jane Austen or the Netflix series Bridgerton will swoon with delight at Mr. Malcolm's List, a romance-slash-drama also set in early 19th century London that, like the beforementioned titles, is filled to bursting with dashing bachelors, scheming social climbers, fancy balls, innumerable frocks with empire waists, and pointed commentary on the British class system.

With its screwy supernatural premise — buoyed by terrific cast that includes Anthony Mackie, Jennifer Coolidge, David Harbour and Tig Notaro — the movie is a charmer with heart.

It would help if you were a deep-dive fan, hungry for ephemera and eager to hear stuff Young has rarely, if ever, played for an audience.

One Night in Miami is a powerful imagining of one of the most intriguing private gatherings in contemporary history. And though we are merely a fly-on-the-wall, eavesdropping on a conversation that is likely far more electrifying than the actual discussion, it's still a remarkable experience.

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.

The Beekeeper is mindless, overblown nonsense timed perfectly to drag us from a haze of prestige films and an awards bait stupor.

At times, the film is unabashedly cloying, like a ASMR Forest Gump or a Minion with sensitivity training. But if you can get past that, there’s an admirable ingenuity to the technique, integrating live action and stop-motion with humour and an easy, natural flow.

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.

Lisa Frankenstein can be fun, but there is a mean-spiritedness to Cody’s script that doesn’t fit with the film’s premise. It comes mainly at the hands of the creature whose victims are far from charming but don’t necessarily deserve the extreme comeuppance that’s dealt to them.

Low-key and lovely if a bit short on dramatic umph, director Clio Barnard’s Ali & Ava is effectively a straight-up love story eyeballing bigger themes, perhaps to pad its slender story. Admirable for sure, but the result is a bit like fancy icing on a cupcake: nice, but still a cupcake.

The studio set recreation of Hong Kong’s famous Bar Street, along with the gaudily delectable costumes throughout, give Master Z a dreamy heightened artifice. More than once, the film seems on the verge of breaking into a vintage Hollywood musical.

Let Him Go doesn’t reinvent the wheel. It is a genre thriller, where the good guys face impossible odds against cartoonish bad guys. But it plays out with style, violence that doesn’t strain credulity, and a consequence for every action taken.

The Call of the Wild is aiming to be an old-fashioned adventure movie for family viewing, and it delivers the requisite big warm cinematic hug. And more than being the story of a dog finding his inner wolf and fulfilling his destiny, it’s also an homage to the natural world. And that, wrapped in the adventures of a dog, is a pretty wonderful thing.

What’s interesting about the lifelong war-buff’s approach to this movie is that Hanks has been absolutely ruthless with Forester’s novel, paring it down to 91 minutes of pure tension sandwiched by bursts of action.

The horror in the film can be as equally as subtle as the humour—it is easy to miss both.

Wilson is beautiful but far from typical Hollywood beautiful which underscores the film’s wink-nudge absurdity. She’s also funny as hell, delivering deadpan with Aussie-approved aplomb.

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.

Die My Love has gorgeous cinematography, delicious nudity, way-cool music and Robert Pattinson, but the irresistible urge to check one’s watch kicked in early — at the one-hour mark. That’s not a good sign.