Complications of history aside, The Woman King is Black Panther minus the vibranium and with more women warriors, an empowerment tale fueled by kickassery, with battle scenes, ear-splitting ululated war cries and sword fights.

The violence in Medieval is fast, frequent and fierce and could possibly be the film's biggest draw. History might be the film's initial hook, but it's the movie's grisly depictions of military violence that the film will likely be remembered.

Despite Parker’s apt depictions of the atrocities of war, including but not limited to misogyny, harassment, abuse of power, and crimes committed without accountability, it is a story weakened by allowing the audience to know more than the characters. Careless reveals render a potentially suitable thriller into a merely passable one.

With its themes of the superficiality of arena-sized hallelujahs and the worship of riches, Honk for Jesus: Save Your Soul is a terrific platform for some solid actors to strut their sanctimonious stuff.

Aranoa has pulled together an excellent cast. But holding it all together is the formidable and always watchable Bardem. His performance makes this satire also a character study.

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.

The story it tells — of environmental assault, mistreatment of Indigenous people, corrupt government and business — is woefully familiar. But the brutality of it all never ceases to amaze.

Purcell’s performance and ambition in reframing this foundational Australian tale are admirable. But her version of the story would be more resonant if it held more mystery and less message.

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

There are moments where director Bell seems to be positioning Esther as an anti-hero, which would have been interesting. But it’s not a path to which he commits, and it’s back to bloody business as usual. The fact that this is a prequel drains even more suspense from the movie’s resolution.

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.

To its credit, Fall doesn’t pretend to be a metaphor for more meaningful ruminations on life and death. It’s a female-led thriller designed to make you gasp and wince, plain and simple. You probably should see it just for the acrobatic camerawork and insane vistas. But you will hate yourself.

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.

Within the back and forth of family squabbles and warm moments, there are also sprinkles of magic realist beauty.

Bodies Bodies Bodies, boosted by an excellent mostly Gen Z cast, cleverly employs all the usual tropes in a way that feels fresh and fun.

There is a lot of subtlety in this film, but too much of the plot is left to ambiguity or weak implication. The UFO theme is almost completely sublimated in favour of the relationship between the two fringe dwellers.

It’s a mess of a plot and a literal trainwreck of a denouement. No faulting the destruction scenes, since they’re in Leitch’s wheelhouse, and as they say, every dollar is on the screen in that regard. But to paraphrase a quote from the late character actor Edmund Gwenn, killing is easy, comedy is hard.

There is enough right and apparently painstakingly accurate about Prey – the Predator series prequel in which the now-familiar species of extraterrestrial hunters sets sights on a tribe of 18th Century Comanches – that hearing the characters speak an actual indigenous language would have taken it to a whole other level. Instead they speak jarringly modern English.

What works as edgy comedy is determined by what you can get away with. Having introduced depression and virtual incest, I Love My Dad just isn’t adroit enough to find a credible happy ending escape hatch.

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.

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.

Vengeance is a movie whose dry humour carries its message well and even has its sweet moments. The desolate desert location hangs over everything, sometimes suggesting another planet peopled by humans. But given the movie’s suggestion of the emptiness of city life, it may also suggest just another kind of desert.

It’s a film that has some obvious parallels to Howard’s Apollo 13, a docudrama about a small group of endangered people in a claustrophobic space, with worldwide media attention on a rescue effort and a happy ending, thanks to technological ingenuity, courage, and collective effort.

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.

I'm all for the drama. Unfortunately, the drama in Glasshouse comes as an intrusion on the promise of a different story—a better story camouflaged behind the one being told.

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

Where the Crawdads Sing is recommended, and part of me liked it. But I confess to feeling a bit bored and, surprising even to myself, a bit disappointed that the filmmakers, in the quest to honour Owens’ book, created something without a single surprise in casting, setting or anything else.

It moves, it’s entertaining, Ryan Gosling is as buff as he’s ever been and all-in as an action star. And who knew all it would take was a porn ‘stache to turn Chris Evans from Captain America into a psycho mercenary?

A wearying spoof, the film, with its Regency-era setting, takes a smart, sombre drama and turns it into a juvenile inanity.

It aims to be easy-going, entertaining and joyful, without being taxing or too stressful. At the same time, its reluctance to dig too deeply robs it of some of its emotion and makes it feel superficial.

Filmmakers Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine, inspired by the Alan Light’s book The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley & the Unlikely Ascent of Hallelujah, leave almost no stone unturned in their quest to examine the enduring appeal of “Hallelujah” across the years and mediums.

These images tantalize, but without satisfying, like a trailer for a narrative that would work better as a long-form series.

Neptune Frost’s real triumph is the deployment of striking imagery, led by the production and costume design of Rwanda fashion designer, Cedric Mizero, mixing traditional and fashion-forward adornment with technological bric-a-brac (fairy lights on bicycle wheels, circuit boards as jewelry).

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

Beauty and loss hold hands in Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel, an intimate and impressionistic documentary about New York’s storied Chelsea Hotel from Belgian filmmakers, Amélie van Elmbt and Maya Duverdier.

After 28 films, it’s incredible that Marvel studios has anything new to say, never mind the ability to be fresh and entertaining.

Fourth of July is meant to be a comedy, but isn’t in the sense that there is nothing funny enough to laugh at. It is a domestic car crash with no edge or purpose.

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.

Despite an abundance of spent artillery, terrorists disguised as caterers, military strategizing, and filthy rich people in imminent danger, Attack on Finland achieves the level of a dry espionage drama with only a few surprises to elevate it from the mundane.

The argument, these days, is that too many films are about sensation. Big action movies, superhero movies, movies that deliver a lot of adrenaline and thrills but really don’t ask much of the viewer. With his latest film The Passengers of the Night, French director Mikhaël Hers goes in the opposite direction, making a movie that resists manipulation and drama.

McDonagh’s sumptuous version of the novel —which premiered at TIFF last year — is utterly faithful and thus note perfect, capturing its resonant ruminations on social inequity, racism, and cultural tourism in a sweeping Moroccan desert Sheltering Sky novelist Paul Bowles would recognize.

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.

It’s the antic humour set against the retro décor that acts as a common meeting ground for youth and adults to enjoy Minions: The Rise of Gru together. It’s funny on both age levels.

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.

The Spanish comedy/satire Official Competition plays on those clichés, and yet doesn’t really say anything new. But thanks to its A-list cast, led by Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas, it’s quite enjoyable.

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.

Its pace, at least in the early going, is breathless.

It’s a neo-Western, a sensitively acted, heartfelt and ambitious drama which stumbles when it resembles an illustrated thesis about the legacy of the West.

True to Pixar’s magic storytelling, Lightyear offers a much deeper and more complex set of ideas for adult viewers on that very theme, without being heavy or depressing. There is much sweetness here.

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.

The odd golfball-centric bit of whimsy aside, The Phantom of the Open is straight-ahead storytelling (complete with a pat family crisis that is neatly resolved) that can only be as good as the actors in it.

If you want a film where the dinosaurs go roar, then this is your film.

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.

The film’s tone and the story structure are both naturalistic, and realistic. Carpignano doesn’t force huge moments of upheaval in the film, or story points where characters have sudden shifts of personality to heighten the drama or bring the story to a dramatic conclusion. We’re experiencing what Chiara experiences, and again that documentary feel works to keep the story intimate.

Watcher is a successful thriller, good enough to hold viewers through its three acts and into the final scene. But the reward for sticking around might not be the payoff viewers were waiting for. Neither is it all that original.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

To give Noé’s credit, he used the Saint Laurent fashion money to practice the split-screen technique which is employed far more movingly in Vortex. He also made the only fashion ad I won’t instantly forget.

Women, men, relationships, the patriarchy feminism, nature, and body-horror merge in writer/director Alex Garland’s creepy, allegorical art-house horror thriller Men.

Once you get past the clinical mis-en-scène and the voyeuristic surprise, the story is the usual A Star Is Born showbiz rollercoaster of big dreams, success, and disillusionment.

The new documentary Mau by the Austrian brother team of Benji and Jono Bergmann offers some insight into what is termed “design thinking,” the idea that creative design process influences almost every area of human life. Unfortunately, the film is far too busy admiring its subject to offer much insight into the discipline’s real-world applications.

Director Simon Curtis and writer Julian Fellowes deliver the dual comedies of errors with cheer, sprightly/stately music and the lightest of drama. The scenery, both at Downton and in France, is worthy of Rick Steeves’ Europe. If this is a goodbye (and there are plenty of signals that it is, barring unexpectedly huge box office), it ends on a note of smiles, tears and no hard feelings.

This is a heavy-duty topic but rather than lecture or make an angry or ideological film, Diwan works here with restrained and even slightly distant tone, focusing on the character of Anne and her determination to control her own life.

I saw Firestarter at a late-night screening. A person in the audience talked loudly on their phone for much of the film's second half. No one asked them to stop. No one cared.

Weeraskathul also explores how identities emerge, dissolve, and connect but he steps onto that shifting ground of memory and experience through a poetic, reverent portal.

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.

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.

Apart from the inspired split-screen gimmick, the film works because the cast is superb, with Argento as the impatient, angry old lion holding on to his threads of power. Lebrun’s performance, though, is the heart of the film.

There is magic in French writer/director Céline Sciamma’s beautiful new film Petite Maman. Running just 72 minutes, this spare and gentle little film has an emotional core that feels true and authentic.

Thanks to performances by this formidable cast, this is a riveting film.

Producer-director Jonathan Keijser’s debut feature is a fish-out-of-water tale that softens the edges in the story in favour of eccentric character comedy and mild family conflict. Oh, and it does a pretty good job of portraying Antigonish as one icy-cold but warm-hearted town.

McCabe-Loko substitutes erratic behaviour and raised voices for tension. But Stanleyville does seem to have something to say. Just because I cannot decipher any significant meaning doesn't mean you won't. Then again, in the words of someone wiser than me, some films are merely meant to be experienced. That could be the case with Stanleyville. I only wish the experience was a bit more enjoyable.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is a mostly joyless exercise whose only saving grace is the mordantly silly touch of director Sam Raimi, who delivers ghouls, demons, necromancy, imaginatively surrealist backdrops and at least one rampaging monster that looks like it escaped from an episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. For many, this is entertainment enough.

Director Martin Campbell (Casino Royale) seems to be directing by template, never stopping to let us get to know anybody – least of all Neeson’s Alex, who for the most part is only there to kill people. Some things never change.

What really works are the thoughtful and committed performances of the two leads.

Though it’s impossible not to see the documentary as a kind of prequel to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, on its own, Navalny is a lively, absorbing mix of original and archival footage with elements of real-life thriller set against the backdrop of the current disinformation wars.

Given its century-plus life span, the life and times of Horn and Hardart’s Automat restaurants, is a lot of story. And Hurowitz does it thoroughly in 78 minutes, in a wonderfully evocative way.

A road trip movie that refreshes and elevates the genre, Hit The Road follows a squabbling Iranian family on a life-changing journey. Though it would be a stretch to describe the film as the Iranian art cinema’s answer to Little Miss Sunshine, this deft hybrid of crowd-pleasing fun and poetic melancholy comes close.

It is a wild and trippy ride that mixes “reality,” with sequences that dip into the mystical world of the Vikings, and back out again. It’s also meticulously made, with an attention to detail as close to actual 10th century Viking life as is possible.

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.

The film is both a love story and a lament for the city where the director grew up.

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.

The subtle trick of Paris, 13th District, is that it plays like a romantic dramedy, but it really is more like a series of character studies of these young people whose lives just so happen to intersect.

If cute was the selling point of this spin-off series, it’s practically out of stock in Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, a movie that has traded in its charm (and, for the most part, its fantastic beasts) for an extended Nazi metaphor.

It’s a fact of life that a novel about the right to die can’t be represented in depth in 105 minutes. But a compelling essence remains in this story about two sisters from a Manitoba Mennonite community - one with a mess of a life who nonetheless wants to live, the other, blessed with a seemingly perfect life, who wants the opposite.

Mothering Sunday, which unfolds on one day in the 1920s English countryside, is an exquisite expression of the female gaze that sifts through the memories, reveries, and revelations of a writer and explores—in a story that captures “the whole feeling of life,” as one character puts it— how she became one.

Although the subject matter is serious, Ozon has directed here with a light hand and a cool and distant eye. He’s completely avoided melodrama, focusing on people going through their lives day to day. Thanks to his accomplished cast, and sophisticated approach, the emotions are there, but they don’t overwhelm the story.

With DNA largely spliced from the movie Speed, it’s a carnage-filled action film that is essentially a single extended car chase. Ambulance is a movie that is nothing if not focused.

Cow never makes any case for veganism or any other cause. Rather, the film is a product of the increasing scrutiny of our destructive hierarchical categories, including the unnecessary cruelty of factory farming, the growth in the legal studies of animal rights, and scientific interest in animal consciousness.

Where New Order broadly surveyed and compartmentalized Mexico’s upper and lower classes, Sundown pretty much rests its entire narrative on one man, wealthy British business owner Neil Bennett — played with few words but (oxymoron alert) riveting impassivity by Tim Roth.

It’s a tough slog, this film, partly because it delivers its arguments with a sledgehammer, and partly because we know what it’s saying is true.

The trouble starts with the script, which wobbles between an investigative thriller and a psychological study.

You do get the sense that Swedish director Daniel Espinosa really wanted to make a horror film instead of the usual super-hero origin-story-punctuated-by-carnage.

Ultimately, the edge that Navid is pushing is less to do with a rant against the Israeli government than in creating a cinematic depiction of a tortured psychological state, in both the individual and collective meanings of that word.

Shapeshifting, murder, possession, gender fluidity and the lowly lot of women are all part of the arthouse horror You Won’t Be Alone, the impressive debut feature film by Macedonian-Australian writer/director Goran Stolevski.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is a sci-fi/fantasy/martial arts action movie on steroids: a cuckoo-bananas story about life and love and family and humanity and a bunch of other things… all at once.