There is no pretension in what The Lost City is or what it’s trying to do, other than entertain an audience for slightly under two hours. It has one job, and it does it well.

Despite Oh’s solid fear-filled performance, Amanda’s inevitable possession seems to take forever in an 87-minute movie, and the inevitable maternal-love-powered dispossession seems rushed.

It’s not wise to dive head first into Deep Water. But if you dip your toe and slide slowly, you might wade neck deep in a cool erotic thriller.

Double Walker’s story is feverishly imaginative, though its internal logic often doesn’t hold up. But the star and co-writer Sylvie Mix is committed to her story, playing a mostly silent, seductive (often nakedly so) phantom who “can only be seen by believers and sinners.”

Moon Manor is in a middle ground, a fiction that claims to be “true-ish”.

It’s ambitious, but not as much fun as it wants to be.

An undercooked ‘70s-style blaxploitation revenge fantasy with a reverse-Shyamalan plot (the “twist” is up front), Alice is an objectively bad movie wrapped around one great, all-in performance.

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.

Not even its rather silly ending can undermine its heart.

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.

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

The complicated part of Huda’s Salon, and the riskiest in terms of holding the audience, is that this is actually the story of two women: Not just Reem, but that of the salon keeper, Huda.

Simply said, there is magic in this film, rising out of simple observations, allowing the camera to linger through moments of play, pausing for glimpses of charity while holding fast to the possibility of tragedy. A film that nurtures a balance of trust with betrayal.

With its languid pace, rural setting, and natural beauty, The Long Walk is not your typical ghost story.

Batman as a straight-ahead film noir anti-hero – just psychos and murder, no end of the world scenarios - is an idea that’s overdue. It was the tone the original comic book set way back when. And for long stretches, The Batman gets it.

As the film progresses, the idea of using a school shooting as a subject for a thriller feels deeply ill-conceived, undermining the gravity of the subject it attempts to address.

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.

It's harmless fun, enough to achieve a place among music movie curios like Ringo Starr/Harry Nillson's unwatchable Son of Dracula (1973) and the equally cringe-worthy Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park (1978). For what it’s worth, Studio 666 is leagues better than both of those efforts.

The script is a dazed, meandering, thing, involving drugs, pornography, neon-lit slo-mo, debauched starlets, car chases, soft-core sex scenes and loud gun fights.

No one sets out to make a bad film, but at over two hours, the shot-in-Toronto Big Gold Brick seems like a bunch of ideas that must have looked good on paper, but just didn’t gel. Both Garcia and Isaac are terrific actors, and charismatic as hell. But neither can bring this listless film to life.

Dog is a bumpy, unpredictable ride because that’s what our heroes are on, but it’s all delivered with a gentle touch and authentic feeling that assure us that Briggs and Lulu are heading in the right direction.

Uncharted once again confirms my belief that video games make for bad to mediocre movies. At least Uncharted scrounges up enough fortitude to be mediocre.

This will disappoint those who prefer their werewolves with teeth. Still, The Cursed rises above most standards set by the genre. I only wish I could say it was a Howling success.

Horror fans will find that Paxton's film is not a straight-ahead feast of digestible thrills and chills. Others might perceive it as an acquired taste. A Banquet requires a deliberate decision to watch as it doesn't pair well with distractions and traditional expectations.

Neeson maintains a certain doleful dignity as an action star who apparently takes no pleasure in his gift for violence, but Blacklight has little else going for it.

Kimi is executed with a brisk sketch-like lightness, propelled by a jittery score from Cliff Martinez and pulse-jumping blasts of music from Billy Eilish to The Beastie Boys.

On the surface, Parallel Mothers is an engaging melodrama centred around a fabulous performance by Penélope Cruz. But, as is typical of Pedro Almodóvar’s movies, this easygoing, entertaining film is deeply layered, dealing with issues of personal morality and family ties, mixed with a reminder of Spain’s dark and not-so-distant fascist past.

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

Like its characters, I Want You Back, is likeable but somewhat unambitious and complacent.

Adapted from a novel by Finnish writer Rosa Liksom and set in brutal cold of a northern Russian winter or in a cramped jostling train car, Compartment No. 6 somehow lands in an unexpected warm place between the grim and the serio-comic.

On the surface, it’s a simple enough premise: a young woman transitioning into adulthood, trying to find her place in the world. But in the hands of Norwegian director Joachim Trier, The Worst Person in the World is at one level a social satire about love, identity and relationships, and at the same time, a warm and deeply poignant look at the imperfect way life can creep up on us.

The dialogue is clunky at times, and the forced four-narrative format means no character is really fleshed out. But the movie finds its heart and its footing in the last act with Danny’s story and a redemptive finale.

As a character study, the film doesn’t dig much more deeply than a news magazine episode. As a study in some aspects of police culture, though, the film has a sobering message.

Rifkin’s Festival is a romantic farce, with ideas that long-time fans will recognize from a range of other Allen films, but with one difference. The movie ends on a surprisingly sweet note.

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.

Where a lot of films, particularly in this genre, fall apart in the third act, Scream 2022 holds out for a satisfying payoff. But Scream 2022 spends more time winking to the audience than building tension. And for a horror film, tension is a trope too significant to be overlooked. Even if it is just one more requel to add to the list.

Esthetically perched somewhere between a low-budget TV biopic and a soap opera - with occasional flourishes of bonkers-cheesiness worthy of cult status - Aline is the Celine Dion hagiography no one could have dreamed up except its director.

Despite some exemplary action sequences, including an impressive chase scene through the streets of Paris and into the subterranean tubes, The 355 fails to shed the tropes of male gaze and the kickass female fetishes of Kill Bill, Charlie's Angels, and every film Luc Besson has made with a female lead.

A lavish, deeply silly movie targeted at the adolescent girl market, The King’s Daughter features Pierce Brosnan as The Sun King, Louis XIV, looking like an aging glam rock star, traipsing about the Palace of Versailles in a wavy wig and pouffy sleeves.

Oscar-nominated Iranian director Asghar Farhadi (A Separation), with his powerful and perceptive tale A Hero, shows us universalities, from the complexities of human nature to the modernized way we’ve manipulated right and wrong.

As a study in mutual traumatic grief between doctor and patient, Marionette has some resonance, but the emotional core of the story is smothered by its irritating intellectual pretensions and altogether too much wood paneling.

The film is blessedly short, which does allow for its quirky pace and oddball plotting to play out without exhausting the viewer’s curiosity, even if it is just a series of head-scratching WTF? scenes leading to nowhere.

Okita keeps a firm grip on the film's action, maneuvering the story through its layers of twists and possibilities without putting too much of a strain on our disbelief.

With brilliant work by Colman, The Lost Daughter is a haunting work about choices, motherhood, and memory.

Death to Metal is something of a fresh breath of stale air. In a genre long familiar with demonizing nuns, having an evil priest is a nice change of habit.

Led by performances by Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, the production makes this story of treachery, murder and the psychological cost of crossing moral boundaries feel both era specific, and frighteningly modern.

Madcap, complex, and already controversial — bursting with fabulous acting from two newcomers and some of the best cameos of the year — it’s a character study, a (sort of) coming-of-age story, a platonic rom-com, and a tribute to life in the suburban San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles where Anderson grew up, among other things. In short, it’s one of the most exhilarating movies of the year.

The Matrix Resurrections is an incoherent, narratively sloppy mess.

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.

The King's Man takes known characters and events perverting truth with fiction. It's an amusing enough exercise even as it can jog free a few lost but freely interpreted high-school history lessons.

Dasha Nekrasova’s bored gamine onscreen presence is quite funny (she suggests a jaded Emma Watson). But much of the acting here is atrocious and the slash-and-splatter ending disappointingly conventional.

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

It’s not clear what Clooney’s hope for his film was, but presumably it was grander than what lands on the screen.

Throughout, Rasmussen never loses focus on the humanity. He’s telling the story, not of a refugee, but of a fellow human being whom he knows personally. The rapport between the two, the quiet honesty with which Amin speaks and the respectful and obviously deeply affectionate way in which Rasmussen tells the story, makes this film something special.

Visually opulent as only a Guillermo del Toro movie can be with gorgeously detailed, period-perfect costumes and interiors and a marquee cast, the noir thriller Nightmare Alley checks all the grand boxes of the genre. Yet the film feels emotionally inert, stacked with unsympathetic, strangely uncharismatic characters that defy empathy. Or worse: defy abiding interest.

Spider-Man: No Way Home is a comfort-food present to long-time fans, like a cross-over episode of one or more beloved TV series, with winks, call-backs, trivia, cameos, super-villains and copious destruction.

Given the devotion Ball continues to inspire in fans, it was perhaps too great a challenge for anyone to live up to casting expectations. Still, Being the Ricardos hits all the right notes, making these larger-than-life people seem at once pointedly human and even more ground-breaking than ever.

Running a long 145 minutes, it’s bleakly cartoonish polemic with few laughs or dramatic peaks, despite a climactic mad-as-hell speech from DiCaprio, some ineffectual pantomiming from Streep, and some third-act forced solemnity.

Agnes is a genre breaker that veers into unanticipated areas of drama, some of it absurd, some street-wise, and yet inescapably entertaining.

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.

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

To be fair to Curtis, Off the Rails is more like a Richard Curtis make-your-own-dramedy at-home game, with each character’s personality stamped on a card and they roll the dice to see which complications ensue.

While sticking close to the tried-and-true talking head documentary format, Harry Chapin: When In Doubt, Do Something — the title inspired by Chapin’s maxim in life and oft-uttered motto — succeeds in celebrating a life truly worth celebrating.

Watching The Souvenir: Part II is a wonderful tonic for those feelings of ciné cynicism, a reminder of film as a means of discovery.

Though it sounds crude to say it, Sarfaty has found an intimate hook to an almost unapproachably grim subject.

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.

Raccoon City is most fun when showcasing Avan Jogia as a rookie cop who’d been transferred to Raccoon City after accidentally shooting his partner in the butt—a bad joke that Jogia turns into a workable gag.

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.

It’s an easygoing, highly enjoyable look at the life and considerable influence of Julia Child.

Those ambivalent towards children may find the film positively tedious. Those in tune with its up-close storytelling and gentle pace may find much to enjoy.

There’s a sense that the film is attempting to navigate a sort of Atom Egoyan-like exploration of the ripple effects of trauma but it stumbles over a mishmash of a screenplay — the clumsy fragmentary flashbacks, the rushed climax and time-jumping, cross-cutting wind-up — none of which are improved by David Fleming and Hans Zimmer’s generic thriller score.

Certainly, it’s a welcome call-back to grownup movies of 1960s and 70s, about adult intimacy and meaning-of-life concerns. Shot with crisp, unfussy clarity inside a car or in boardroom offices and the streets of the modern urban Japan, it’s a drama about the intricate ways love, performance, and work merge into each other.

Unfortunately, despite these juicy elements, a star-studded cast, and a star director in Ridley Scott, House of Gucci is tepid and underwhelming.

She Paradise, which runs a brief 71 minutes, is raw in more than one sense. The characters are thinly developed, and the dance sequences, as robust as they are, could be more dynamically shot. On the plus side, Nestor — with her watchful quiet manner — is persuasive as a young woman awkwardly finding her way, and the other women are forceful presence.

Encanto is just so lovely to look at that its story, while well-told, is almost secondary. You honestly just want to crawl inside the screen, wear Mirabel’s swooshing skirts, pet those donkeys, sniff those flowers, and chow down on that grilled corn. Wonder and imagination are in abundant supply.

Jason Reitman’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife, a sequel to his father Ivan’s hit 1984 comedy about paranormal exterminators, is an exercise in family homage and over-familiar exorcism.

I was worried King Richard would come to resemble the platitudinous The Pursuit of Happyness, which earned Smith an Oscar nomination, but is not one of my favourites of his films. I was pleasantly surprised thereafter.

With The Power of the Dog, Campion has crafted a contemporary Western masterpiece that turns on the same pacing and style of 50-year-old films. She takes her time, letting the story, based on the 1967 novel by Thomas Savage, reveal itself in languid style.

Odagiri doesn’t give us many answers. They Say Nothing Stays the Same is enigmatic and, in some ways, frustratingly elusive, yet also affecting.

Tick, Tick…Boom! packs a great deal of joy into a story that pushes a more modern and darker take on the make-it-or-break-it mantra of classic ‘40s musicals. The songs are engaging and staged with a feel-good choreography that consists less of formalized dance (for the most part) than it does gleeful bursts of movement.

After proceeding through the childhood epiphanies and observed details, Branagh’s memory journey stumbles in the last act as he attempts to elevate the material into scenes of climactic magical realism.

Anchored by a solid performance by Tom Hanks, Finch, is a small-scale drama, that is ultimately — and please forgive me for being cliché — about the beauty of being alive. I mean that in the best way possible.

The largely interior cinematography by Claire Mathon is stark, cold and beautiful, backed by a soundtrack that ranges from funereal chamber music to discordant jazz-noise meant to inspire dread. If that sounds uncomfortable, well, that’s the point of being her.

Ambitious, yes. You’d expect as much from Oscar-winning indie director Chloé Zhao, who’s taking her leap into the world of nine-figure budgeted blockbusters. Unfortunately, the net result is underwhelming.

The decision to avoid having the characters speaking Chinese saves the trouble of subtitles but it also makes the drama feel generic, another pulpy sub-Scorsesian urban nightmare with episodes of spastic violence, the constantly throbbing soundtrack, the use of slow motion, and wide-screen, colour-saturated camera work.

Roh is a simple story, fueled entirely by atmosphere.

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.

It’s a beautiful-looking film. The characters treat each other with respect, and I’m sure that there are people out there who will appreciate that the movie, addresses a tough issue, without being too taxing or challenging. At the same time, the movie’s cautious approach short-changes the story and the issue.

I’m a fan of Wright’s work, so I’m disappointed that Last Night in Soho doesn’t hold up on both halves. But the parts that work, work terrifically.

In parlance its subject would have understood, the documentary The Capote Tapes, about iconic American writer Truman Capote, feels like something late to the party and underdressed.

Wife of a Spy is in some ways an imperfect film, sometimes stiff at the joints or broadly obvious, but it’s also carefully crafted and conceptually inspired.

It’s a testament to director Will Sharpe’s vision and humanity that a story predicated on mental illness, poverty, death, and heartbreak ultimately comes across as hopeful and lovely — whimsical even — while looking gorgeous on the screen.

Equal parts clever and annoying, Wes Anderson’s latest film is akin to being locked in a holding cell with a team of cellmates suffering from florid cases of logorrhea. They might be smart, but it would be a relief if they would just shut up or at least slow down occasionally.

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

This might be a Dune that could even be appreciated by someone unfamiliar with Dune.

Knocking is a configuration of atmosphere and dread, paced at a speed of unflinching stillness.

Falling for Figaro is a small story about big dreams that soft-peddles through familiar territory. Figaro can be as fluffy as the fur on a blow-dried angora cat but it scores big on its ready-and willing-to-please charm.

Halloween is still a Michael Myers slasher film. People meet horrible ends in extreme ways, and the plot rarely goes beyond the idea that someone really should put an end to all this nonsense. The difference in Green's film is that he gives us a taste of the emotional aftermath; and that can be more horrifying than the kill itself.