From the first act straight through to the third, the film engages on a level far higher than it needs to. Which is what happens when you put real craft behind a premise that could have coasted on novelty.

If Hokum proves anything, it’s that McCarthy isn’t just part of this new wave of horror filmmakers—he’s carving out his own narrow corridor within it. A place where folklore, psychology, and just enough chemical suggestion collide.

While it’s fun to see the characters back in action, The Devil Wears Prada 2 is overstuffed and meanders. The film also suffers from self-consciousness. Too many celebrities show up in ways that feel pointless, turning TDWP2 into self-congratulatory mush.

Harlin has had a long and uneven career leading up to this. Though he isn’t quite old enough to have tackled Deep Water back in 1979, he did make Cliffhanger and Die Hard 2 in the 1990s, and this feels like a kind of spiritual successor to those star-driven action movies.

It’s difficult to assess what’s more compelling in this story: the characters, real Canadian salt-of-the-earth people who were that desperate enough to go through with the scheme, or the actual simplicity and near-success of the scheme itself.

Zweig’s hope is that his film helps give people permission to talk. Participants describe the decision-making involved in whether or not to disclose a loved one’s suicide — they don’t mind talking about it, but it can make other people uncomfortable. As one man says about his loss, “As hard as it is, please ask me about it.” Zweig asked. The result is a lean, unfussy, and very human documentary. May we all have Zweig’s courage.

It would have been a nice touch to have Switzer, Watt-Cloutier, and Farmer meet and interact. If nothing else, it might have given Tough Old Broads a connectivity beyond three fascinating stories, separately told.

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.

Fuze’s denouement is terrific, completely unpredictable and surprisingly funny. It’s as if summer blockbuster season came early. Fuze is… wait for it… a must-see blast.

I Swear is what’s usually described as a “crowd pleaser” but there is an issue with the way the film conveys the alienation John Davidson feels. A viewer gets a pile-on of terrible events rather than the deep character dive required for emotional investment.

If you don’t know much about Michael Jackson and are content to keep it that way, Michael is the film for you.

Though I am sure there will be many more family memory films, Blue Heron sets the bar at a new level.

Cronin doesn’t just show you something disturbing—he insists you sit with it until it becomes personal.

The Christophers is full of heady thumb-sucking questions about legacy, artistic expression and commerce, and reinvention, a subject Soderbergh knows well. This is far from blockbuster Soderbergh (Erin Brokovich, the Oceans trilogy, Magic Mike), but a return to the basics: A set, a mobile camera, a couple of terrific actors, and a story to explain what brings them there.

If Lorne really is “the most boring” doc of the Oscar-winning Neville’s career, it’s only because his career bar is high. As it is, Lorne is a terrific backgrounder for devout fans of Saturday Night Live. Fairweather fans, on the other hand, might find it like an overlong sketch.

Writer-director Genki Kawamura keeps his camera angles tight, the better to maintain tension at a boil, and makes the most of his minimal and repetitive set. Fans of the Canadian horror classic Cube should enjoy.

It’s your typical mistaken-identity love story, in which one pretty person must decide between two pretty people, with the choice heavily influenced by who looks best when wet.

The film is immersive, in the sense of the frog in gradually heating water, where you reach boiling point before you realize it.

For a movie that lazily spins its wheels, Fantasy Life is oddly amiable. The only wholly dislikable character is David, and he’s so great at being dislikable, you almost like him for it.

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.

It’s an exceedingly black comedy threaded through with intense drama that completely deconstructs the rom-com, casting it as both a shiny and sinister thing… and one frequently inducing vomiting.

If Logan’s Run and The African Queen had a baby, it might look something like Brazilian dystopian sci-fi drama The Blue Trail. If that’s too much of a narrative stretch, then imagine a close cousin to 2024’s Can I Get a Witness? Except, sadly, not nearly as good.

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.

The scenes feel like they've come straight out of 1970s and 80s B-comedies, outdated and out of step with the main plot, which feels richer in comparison. It’s distracting enough to slow the movie down.

The AI Doc is visually pretty standard — lots of talking heads, B-roll of robots, and cutesy animation to make it more personal — but it’s also a grand primer on the topic, skipping the standard news headlines of Will It Take My Job? (maybe) and Does it Espouse Suicide (tragically, sometimes yes) in favour of a kind of point-counterpoint-synthesis setup.

Historical hindsight lets us predict where this kind of train ride inevitably ends.

We can see the character’s angst, happiness and sorrow, but it doesn’t cut through. The film’s emotional life doesn’t quite connect and feels remote.

There’s a particular confidence to Undertone that doesn’t announce itself with spectacle, but with restraint. It’s the confidence of a film that knows exactly how little it needs to show you in order to get under your skin.

Project Hail Mary, the latest cinematic adaptation of an Andy Weir novel, is a crowd-pleaser loaded with humour, charm, and tropes galore. In the best tradition of sci-fi, there’s also a lesson in being the best a human can be, as shown by an alien teacher.

By the end, we have the sense of witnessing a blackly funny social encounter, but watched a heroic fable in reverse, in which the clueless Donghwa, instead of a hero-conquering the dragon and saving the princess, has been politely demolished, chewed up and spit back out.

The Things You Kill is a challenging movie about the world men inhabit, about patriarchy, about intergenerational trauma and about all the exigencies of “masculinity.” Iranian-Canadian writer/director Alireza Khatami presents a family drama that has rich social and political underpinnings.

It’s messy. It’s excessive. It overstays its welcome. But like any good dysfunctional family gathering, you don’t leave early.

For a film where not a lot happens, and what does happen happens very slowly, Islands is strangely gripping. That could be the hypnotic effect of its endlessly sun-drenched Canary Island setting, as writer-director Jan-Ole Gerster dips his audience in the languorous pace of a holiday destination in this low-boil psychological drama.

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.

If you want proof that hell hath no fury like an angry mom, look no further.

Smith’s musical performances in the film, which are big on power chords, anthemic hooks, and gravel-voiced melancholy, help fill some the film’s emotional weak spots. What primarily distinguishes this lowkey, unsurprising drama is a well-stocked soundtrack, courtesy of music supervisor Natasha Duprey, amounting to a survey of Canadian alt-country songs over the past three-and-a-half decades.

None of it makes any sense, alas, and you’ll stop caring about what happens or who it happens to, fairly early on. There seems to be a lot of pseudo-Freudian yammer in the middle of this crime drama, or perhaps there’s a lot of drug-trade-related violence in the middle of a psychological family study; either way, it’s mystifying as hell.

This is pared-down storytelling that leaves you to draw your own conclusions, but nobody’s dreams are coming true here. Filmmaker Franco seems to assume his viewers will be paying attention, so Dreams is a typically understated affair, just slightly chilly in its detachment and stripped down in action and in dialogue. Money talks, though.

The President’s Cake remains a lovely tale, with some sweeping, almost touristic views of Baghdad, and a slightly ambiguous downbeat ending.

There are two types of pirate film fans: those who love the genre for its thrilling adventure. Then there are the fans of actual piracy, the more bloody and violent the better. The Bluff combines the salt and tang of piracy with a daring, bloody fight to the finish that will satisfy fans of all ranks and allegiances.

Much as I had hoped to love it given its cast and source material, Midwinter Break just never took flight. Not all great books make great movies.

The gender questions are open-ended and the sacrifices of the artist’s life familiar ground, but Kokuho truly comes alive in the performance sequences that evoke the deep roots of theatre, and the semaphore of emotions represented in gestures, poses, strange movements and painted faces that evoke feelings beyond words.

EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert doesn’t ask you to worship Elvis so much as to remember what it felt like when the man took control of a room and decided—joyfully, deliberately—to make it move with him.

If you’re not at all familiar with the originals, but you know and/or love Back to the Future, that should be enough to guarantee you a good time at this almost-lawsuit-worthy homage/parody to the 1980s time travel classic. And if perchance you already love both Nirvanna and BTTF, then strap in, because when this movie hits 88 kilometres an hour…

Wuthering Heights is a sensual feast. But, while there’s plenty to admire and lots of passion and heat, the film doesn’t quite add up in a way that brings the feels.

Unfortunately, in Cold Storage, the first act sets too high a bar to maintain, and the rest, though watchable, is busy-ness punctuated by green splatter.

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.

Both rudely funny and soppy in a terribly English way, Pillion is a rough-sex romance that will be relatable to anyone who has fallen hard for an emotionally distant lover.

For an animated character, Scarlet feels remarkably real.

It’s a clever hook, and the film milks it for some genuinely inventive, well-executed set pieces. As a delivery system for imaginative deaths, Whistle does its job with a certain professional pride.

It will be catnip for fans of the music star; others will find various aspects — such as the psychedelic flashing title cards — hugely annoying. Charlie XCX however, comes off well, feisty and self-deprecating. She never plays the victim. As the film concerns getting the fame one seeks and then disparaging the high cost of that fame, it’s a fine line to tread. She does it well.

The story of Bram Stoker’s Dracula is so well-known that it’s hard to find a new angle. That is, unless you’re Luc Besson and you go back to the book’s inspiration, and present Dracula as a lost soul in need of forgiveness and redemption. And, refreshingly, that’s exactly what you get in this film.

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

With a relatively simple sci-fi plot of wisdom and loyalty triumphing over greed and deceit, this genre film is punctuated with humour, martial art fights and full blast of CG generated military action sequences.

The Testament of Ann Lee can be seen as a feminist companion piece to the much-awarded 2024 film The Brutalist, which Corbet directed and Fastvold co-wrote, starring Adrian Brody as a fictional Holocaust survivor and brilliant architect.

There are, however, three things that elevate Shelter above a C average score. The first is Statham himself, an actor who knows how to stay in his lane (all those driving movies!) and do what he does best, which is to be brusque and to kill people. Second is director Ric Roman Waugh, one of those stuntman-turned-filmmakers, which means he knows his way around an action sequence better than most.

A vicious, relentless dark comedy, the film takes the well-worn “unlikely duo forced to work together” premise and strips it down to the bone—then starts gnawing.

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!”

The film is amusing, occasionally clever, and perfectly serviceable as a distraction, but it never quite becomes the reinvention of the action film it seems to think it is.

With its dark palette and atmosphere, Honey Bunch could have been a simpler, more disturbing and pointed story. There’s enough there to suggest as much.

Along with Schygulla’s warm performance, Yunan is elevated by the choices of Canadian director of photography, Ronald Plante, who captures the melancholic beauty of the island with its slate and blue skies, black sea and white-capped waves, and pale green fields.

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.

Sheepdog is an intense drama, a tad overlong and amateurish in parts, but definitely an affecting crowd-pleaser with more than a dozen film fest “best movie” and “audience choice” awards to prove it.

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

It’s a new apocalyptic pallet to paint upon, and I look forward to where it goes next.

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.

A bravura example of an endangered species: the unapologetically enigmatic, visionary European art film.

Whatever authenticity the film hopes to build through its natural-horror premise is occasionally undercut by a visual distortion that pulls us out when it should be dragging us further in. And yet, despite my quibbles, annoyances, and perhaps unreasonable expectations of chimp-centric emotional realism, Primate does deliver where it counts.

The Choral is a beautifully made film with a great cast and impeccable credentials, a collaboration between writer Alan Bennett and director Nicholas Hytner, as were The History Boys and The Lady in the Van. Alas, it’s a bit dull.

There’s great writing in the screenplay (also by Ma), and fantastic music choices, including an otherworldly score by Montreal electronic music artist Marie-Helene Leclerc Delorme, and a groovy cover of the old love song “Unchained Melody.”

In a streaming universe glutted with accounts of bizarre and brutal crimes, Rosemead risks being just another example of the terrible things that people do and have done to them.

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.

By turns exhilarating and exhausting, Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme is a whirlwind race of a movie anchored by another brilliant all-in performance by Timothée Chalamet.

The Plague is what remains if you strip most of the actual horror out of a horror movie, but keep the fear. The tension gets so thick you could cut it with a knife. Then it goes beyond that; you’d need something stronger, and sharper.

Sadness is the dominant emotion in this film, not fear. While there are those moments that will accelerate the audience’s hearts, there are also those moments that will open them. After all, zombies were once people, too.

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).

Yes, The Voice of Hind Rajab is both emotionally distressing and ethically uncomfortable, brutally so, as it was intended to be. But for all the reviewers’ gut-wrenching adjectives, the critics were physically safe from harm.

Well shot, well acted and with locations that vary from brutalist factory sites to beautiful nearby forests, No Other Choice is both believable and absurd as it unfolds. But its social relevance remains spot-on.

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.

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

With Breakdown 1975, Neville isn’t asking us to consider whether the year was pivotal. He’s making the case that it was.

Despite the sterling performances of co-stars Aimee Carrero, Lil Rel Howery and Rob Riggle (who plays a thoroughly horrible and vicious ER Attending Physician), there isn’t a lot of glamour to get the first glance that this well-crafted and poignant film deserves.

It’s a decent, eye-catching, stay-the-course addition for Cameron, who has pretty much turned his entire career to this franchise, a la George Lucas with Star Wars.

Watching each new documentary by Poitras (The Oath, Citizenfour All the Beauty and the Bloodshed), is to lock into a mental track, with a balance of structure and pace, coherence and surprise, intellectual and emotional engagement.

The mind behind TV’s Hannibal and Pushing Daisies makes his feature directorial debut with Dust Bunny, a wonderfully strange mix of murder, mayhem, and childhood monsters-under-the-bed.

The ironic thing about Ella McCay, James L. Brooks’ surprisingly slight politically themed comedy, is that it’s an aggressively feel-good movie that may leave you feeling bad.

This is an artistic film best enjoyed in a theatre on a big screen, when the different shades of darkness juxtaposing against the shifting colours take you on a magical ride.

One More Shot is a film that’s quirky, but needs to be hilarious. It has flawed characters who could have made more mistakes, but in the end, you know you want them to fix everything. It has funny moments, and there is a welcome twist at the end. But all in all, this film, while cute, needed to be funnier.

Johnson delivers a wicked satire on faith and fanaticism, a lively mockery of far-right politics cloaked in the sacred robes of a classic whodunnit. It’s feel-good entertainment with just enough spiritual cleansing to seal the deal.

I get a sense that Five Nights at Freddy’s and this week’s inevitable salad of a sequel Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, marks a turning point in how Hollywood approaches the visual medium that has been eating its lunch for decades. The lesson: Stop trying to make video game film adaptations that appeal to a general audience. A giant in-joke of a movie can pay off bigtime if the target audience is big enough. Screw the rest.

Groff and Radcliffe are great in two very different roles (each won a Tony last year for their performances) but there really isn’t a weak link in the cast, and the music is grand.

Mendonça, a former film critic, has crafted a film steeped in seventies’ cinematic references, especially Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, David Cronenberg’s body horrors, and the paranoid American political thrillers of the era, stuffed with affectionate care for depicting the fashion, cars, décor and music of the era.

It’s a clever conceit but bungled in the delivery.

Hamnet is a sensitively told, beautifully realized pastoral tale, driven by Buckley’s magnetism, and a well-placed cast.

If John Wick is a ballet of ultra-violent choreography, then Sisu: Road to Revenge is its bad-ass country cousin: a full-body-contact square dance where you don’t just swing your partner to the left, but off the top of a speeding train, headfirst into a tree.

A soft, sentimental, gentle movie that doesn’t ask much of its audience, but can, if only momentarily, provide a salve for the spirit.

I daresay this one was worth the wait. Though darker, visually and emotionally, than part one, and shorter — two hours and 18 minutes, down from two-forty — Wicked: For Good is still a rollicking good time.

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.