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.

Although it’s not a life-affirming or audience-flattering parable, the drama feels refreshingly raw and adult.

As stark a manifesto against rush-to-judgment as his story is, one can’t help but think how much worse Richard Jewell’s ordeal would have been in a social media-driven world.

Taken either as a metaphor for mourning or as a straight-up fictional narrative with a paranormal bent, The Night House’s ending is as disturbing — and intriguing — as it gets.

Director Halpern has described her film as a cautionary tale about the pursuit of excellence. And if Love, Charlie isn’t really that, it’s still a lively character study. What’s most interesting here is the glimpses of insight into Trotter’s unusual mind.

Leave the World Behind is not perfect — a little long at two hours and 18 minutes, and a little too talky in the final act — but it is emotional and affecting and very of-the-moment.

There are a lot of moments that are quirky, but the film never quite finds the right comedic rhythm. Things that should feel funny rarely rise to make us chuckle, and too often the film, which does have a genuine warmth, falls flat.

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.

If you were never interested in medieval Danish history, it’s unlikely that director Charlotte Sieling’s historical drama, Margrete: Queen of the North, will change your mind. Still, there are rewards to be found in this lavishly produced and well-acted costume drama, led by Danish actress Trine Dyrholm.

It’s a modern story that pays homage to the vintage stylings of this pair of characters, a blast from the past that should last for a new generation of cartoon aficionados.

Fans of cynically funny children's entertainment in the vein of Roald Dahl or Lemony Snicket’s Daniel Handler should glean some fun out of the new Netflix animated movie, The Willoughbys, an energetic and semi-imaginative comedy about an appalling family.

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.

Digressive, sure, but hot damn the film is fun, its 155-minute running time as slick as the track at Monza in a rainstorm. And just in time for summer.

Sometimes I Think About Dying dares to ask the question: What if The Office wasn’t trying to be funny? And what if Pam was painfully shy, and Jim damaged from two previous marriages, and no one ever made a raised-eyebrow face at the camera?

Not the most profound movie in Laika’s catalogue. But Missing Link is an entertaining 90 minutes, with glib dialogue that may skew a little old for younger viewers, but with maybe enough realistic physical comedy and terrific stop-motion animation to make up for 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.

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.

Sorting out what’s true and what’s not becomes so convoluted that the abrupt ending seems a case of either running out of money or ideas. Still, Come True is a movie that you’ll likely remember for the images it burns in the brain, more than for its story.

What the film does well though is deliver a precisely balanced combination of jump scares, intense situations and confrontations with truly horrible creatures. It’s an effectively scary story, and it’s through the silence of the audience that you can measure this film’s success. Punctuated by some powerful emotional delivery, the audience is able to connect with characters meaningfully, distracting them from convenient story factors and encouraging willing disbelief.

The parade of post-punk artists and artistic legends is entertaining for anybody who’s ever followed that era’s art scene.

Some might find that No Time to Die, clocking in at just under three hours, is a long journey. But there are enough action sequences— some of the best since the crane fight in the opening scene of Casino Royale—to make time move quickly.

While the film prompts a mildly interesting inquiry, in the end, it’s simply nostalgia that is the draw.

In the end, there’s insufficient emotional pay-off or psychological insight here to justify the credibility-defying tricks and narrative convolutions. But the kid is adorable and Exarchopoulos, as the hot and cold Joanne, is believable at every moment, in a film more attuned to mood and sensation than literal meaning.

I Blame Society barely scrapes by as midnight movie camp; it’s much better as a form of wryly witty performance art/film criticism.

Again, this is Cronenberg, and I would expect nothing less than an obscure narrative and underplayed emotions. But the bleakness Cronenberg plies onto the landscape, whether it's a child playing by the seaside near the wreck of a fallen ship, or well-dressed socialites chatting over cocktails, weighs too heavy to be appreciated.

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.

Though it comes with good credentials, four hours feels like a lot of screen real estate for a what is essentially an elevated soap opera. For the home-streaming viewer though, The Real Thing meets the essential requirements for binge-watching: it’s undemanding to follow but sustains enough of a mystery to keep us hooked.

Shortland has given us a fast-paced movie with action sequences, character depth, and very subtle social and political subtexts about the way women are seen, treated and exploited in the world.

To be sure, Climate of the Hunter is an oddball outing, a melodrama disguised as a horror-thriller with not much horror and not many thrills. And if, by the end of the final act, you're shaking your head, mumbling, "Wait…what?" you won't be alone.

It doesn’t sound much like it, but Problemista is a comedy and a savage send-up of much of what America holds dear. Torres’ absurdist humour underpins the storytelling.

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

Rustin is not about the man who had a dream in front of the roaring throngs, but the man standing behind him who gave King the stage. It’s a pleasure to get to know him.

Given the accelerated pace of a 90-minute movie whose main narrative happens in one night, Williams gives a powerfully controlled performance, creating a character whose awareness level is high.

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.

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

While The Way of Water could have easily lost an hour from its three-hour-plus running time, it would have been a shame to lose its most magic moments, the stuff that makes it different.

The film works, mostly as a comedy, never as a horror, but would work better if Story didn’t squander the film’s potential with an uneven script that fluctuates between extremes.

In the end, all the sorrow and horror and anger and angst just seem pointless despite Corbet’s stated intention to juxtapose the meaningless against the tragic.

My Old School is an original, fascinating, and compelling documentary that tacks on a gimmick to better tell its story. Although Cumming’s participation can't fairly be called a gimmick if his role makes the film work.

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.

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.

You’ll have a great time following along in French director and co-writer Rebecca Zlotowski’s latest, which had its world premiere last May at the Cannes film festival. Sit back and enjoy or, as they like to say in Cannes: “Bonne séance!”

Scott contrives a convincing resemblance to events leading up to the last court-sanctioned duel-to-the-death with a meticulous eye for specifics. He transfers a riveting piece of history into a riveting film—mostly.

Despite its horror-film veneer, Innuksuk wraps the viewer in a warm blanket of nostalgia whenever the film threatens to chill. But Slash/Back has enough creep factor to settle any argument purporting that Stranger Things only happen in the cozy climates of Midwest America.

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.

Not funny enough to be a biting satire on the absurdity of Hollywood or absorbing enough to be a portrait of regrettable spiritual emptiness, Jay Kelly feels oddly flabby.

With winks at the cheesiness of a previous generation’s entertainment and a razzberry directed at contemporary blockbusters with a thousand times its minuscule budget, Psycho Goreman is an entertaining exercise in low-tech sci-fi camp.

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.

The Loneliest Whale is gripping and highly persuasive, blending hard science with real-life action/adventure sequences, talking-head interviews, and — sorry, sorry — a whale of a true story that has been headline news for years.

If you want to see what it means to a film when an excellent actor fully commits to a role, look to Adam Driver’s performance in Leos Carax’s award winning musical Annette. He breathes life into what is an otherwise dry and emotionally disconnected film.

The film does a pretty good job of walking the tightrope between comedy and pathos. To that end, Apatow has pulled together a wonderful cast.

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).

Static… low energy… no spark to speak of. A weak biopic of Nicola Tesla, the man who defined our electric lives, practically begs for shameful puns. For that, I apologize.

Freaky jumps to the top of a long line of genre films with one of the best horror/comedy concepts since Shaun of the Dead (2004).

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

The Old Ways might have continued along a path of deception and naïve beliefs and have survived on its bleak and irreverent humour, but director Alender steers the film from dark to darker. It’s not quite an about-face, as the film never reaches a point where it can be taken too seriously, but it does churn out a few unexpected and unpleasant shocks.

It is engaging, warm, touching, and sincere without being cloying or manipulative.

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.

All You Need is Death is a film to experience. It requires some work from the audience. An impassive viewer is unlikely to piece together the fragments that make a cohesive whole. This is a film to be discovered, made by a director worth discovering.

Not to put too fine a point on this or anything, but Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is an interminable slog.

Wakanda Forever is far from a failure, except that where there should be excellence, there is a middling feeling of watching something spectacularly competent.

In its eagerness to correct past wrongs and set the story straight, the film feels weirdly rigid, narratively predictable, and occasionally overstated.

Sometimes, the script is very funny; always, it tries too hard to please; and it never lets you forget that it has been calculated down to a smirk and a teardrop.

Porter and Souza together, in this film, are using his images as a reminder that a true leader can bring more than just relief from a chaotic time, and that the best leaders have always had a deep and measured well of compassion.

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 film’s view is simply too narrow to be comprehensive on such a startling and potentially life-altering/life-ending subject. That said, it’s a chilling surface look into yet another unanticipated side effect of our ostensibly great wired society.

Fitting In is kind of on-the-nose in the way it portrays the transference of attitudes.

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?

The dubbing is a distraction that undermines Laurent’s efforts and robs the movie of much of its intensity and some of its integrity. Still, the movie engages as a mystery with a countdown element that effectively raises the stakes to nail-biting anxiety.

Sweetheart, a coming-of-age first feature from Marley Morrison, has a cozy familiarity to it.

Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams is a study of a man who found his passion early in life and lived it with commitment.

Palestine ‘36 is at its most moving in the scenes of archival footage, and most provocative as an illustration of how England’s imperial tactics of pitting national groups against each other and terrorizing civilians (characters refer to similar approaches India and Ireland) became the template for Israeli’s ongoing military domination of the Palestinian territories. The argument is unlikely to change fixed hearts and minds, but it is difficult to ignore how familiar it seems.

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.

Apart from a few eye-roll moments, Giant Little Ones is redeemed from coming across like a progressive after-school special by the authenticity of performances, particularly of the young actors and a refreshing open-endedness about the fluidity of sexual behaviour.

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

While relying on some historical information, its inherent sweetness is the main reason for its success.

An odd, sweet, dryly funny, existential and slightly blasphemous buddy-movie, in which an Orthodox cantor, grieving his wife’s death, seeks the help of a pot-smoking college professor to understand what becomes of a corpse.

If themes about the importance of friendship, hope, and love land a bit on the nose, there’s no denying Brian and Charles takes an innovative approach to delivering them, even if — see above — the tack is brazenly metaphorical. Yet its distinctive charms are resonant enough to offset a slender story in what nevertheless amounts to a sweet and earnest, modern-day fable.

If Everything, Everywhere All at Once causes concern about the direction cinema is heading—all flash and edits and quirky perspectives — then Missing might leave some hyperventilating. But if you can afford the paper bag needed to keep your breathing under control, then you’ll likely find plenty to enjoy in this Google-approved thriller.

There are enough speeches in the movie to make the film seem more curated than directed. But hang in until the third act, and you are likely to find that the lecture has a significant payoff.

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.

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.

Mulan is distinct enough from its predecessor that it hardly seems like a remake at all.

Life, like love is messy. The beauty of the film is the way Miele, through the dilemma of Adrienne and Matteo, asks us to look at our own messy lives and see it through fresh eyes.

Yes, Anderson is good, but it’s the film that ultimately lets her down.

If you’re willing to go with it, the Zellner brothers and their cast have delivered something that is by turns funny, sad, and, in the end, surprisingly poignant.

There is plenty to like about director Anna Kerrigan's film Cowboys. Its (near) family-friendly pitch on transgender issues is refreshing. Its uncluttered presentation is disarmingly frank.

In its rambling pace, Causeway at times is reminiscent of Winter’s Bone, the 2010 movie that introduced Lawrence to film fans, and may still be her finest performance. In Causeway, the doctors aren’t the only ones wondering what’s going on inside her head. The audience does too, and she reveals it as slowly as she needs to.

It Feeds delivers a layered and unpredictable narrative. Much of that independent energy comes from its strong ensemble cast: Ashley Greene, Ellie O’Brien, Juno Rinaldi, Shayelin Martin, Shawn Ashmore, and Scott Baker.

With its first half a kind of post-mortem of this so-called accidental masterpiece and the second devoted to its cultural influence on everyone from drag queens to film scholars, You Don’t Nomi — its title a snappy riff on lead character Elizabeth Berkley’s name — is impressive for its breadth and depth.

Dinklage’s performance here is crushingly sad, and he is never more persuasive than as a man convinced he is unworthy of love despite his substantial social standing and towering intellect.

The movie, with its misfit ensemble of kids, is an ‘80s throwback and a fitfully clever update on the King Arthur story.

My feeling is that Rupert Goold’s Judy is as good as it needs to be to stand as a framework for Zellweger’s incandescent performance. Parts of the plot are A-to-B, a lot is unsubtle and a climactic scene involving her most famous song is pure-Hollywood schmaltz. But the worst of Judy is worth the price of admission for the one bravura performance.

It’s energetic, bonkers, and very funny. It’s also two-and-a-quarter hours long, and I didn’t begrudge it a single minute.

This newest concoction gets a lift from its cast but falls to Earth thanks to a leaden script. It’s more exploding chocolate than everlasting gobstopper and, I’m sorry to say, more bitter than sweet.

The ideas are there. You can see why Baumbach would take this on. In the end, what we’re left feels like more of a sincere and heartfelt attempt than a successful movie.

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

The performances are uniformly good — Dunst is particularly appealing — but there’s something unsatisfactory about the storytelling.