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.

Suffice to say this Naked Gun packs an Airplane!’s worth of sight gags, non-sequiturs, malapropisms and misunderstood lines into a rapid-fire, comedy-friendly 85 minutes, the exact (and perfect!) timing of the 1988 original.

At more than two hours, Blaze is a meandering tale of genius and futility, tender, but overlong and wallowing, given that we know how it ends.

Capernaum is a movie with a lot of dramatic ideas and plot-points, worthy of a miniseries at least, squeezed into a two-hour sausage of misery.

Pacifiction is a movie to experience. In the end, it’s all an analogy between politics and nightclubs and the assumption (fiction?) of power and persuasion. But that’s my guess. Your guess is as good as mine. And to that effect, ours is as good a guess as even Serra is willing to offer.

A semi-autobiographical and powerfully moving story by Kyle Hausmann-Stokes, My Dead Friend Zoe is inaccurately described as a “dark comedy” or as a “buddy film”.

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

People expecting plenty of Laurel & Hardy style laughs will be disappointed, obviously, given the movie’s comedy-lions-in-winter theme. But this thoughtful portrait of a long-lasting professional marriage rings touchingly true.

One can see clear linkages between Undine to the nightmare weirdness of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, though it’s as if this similar story were drained of its passionate momentum and rendered abstract.

Though Under the Tree falls firmly into satire, it is not a comedy with a lot of laughs. It is more an absurdist tragedy, with cringe-worthy moments.

The very opposite of kinetic, director Fernando Meirelles’ (City of God) The Two Popes is a slow-moving, ruminative, dialog-driven think piece set to film which might enjoy a successful second life as a stage production, and might actually be better served by that forum.

Oddly, in spite of all the pain, what sticks in Rosi’s Notturno is a feeling of resilience.

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.

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.

In the wonderfully weird and atmospheric Fever Dream, Peruvian director Claudia Llosa (The Milk of Sorrow) explores a mother’s guilt and fear in a fable of physical and supernatural contamination.

Queer Japan serves as a series of lively snapshots of a multifaceted and shifting subject and comes up a little short on the issues of day-to-day experience of Japanese gay life.

Blind Ambition doesn’t rewrite any rules about documentary filmmaking, and it stumbles into the hokey at the very end. But if one subscribes to the adage that the story is the thing, then it’s hard to beat.

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.

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.

Nicchiarelli’s film makes a case that Nico’s instability and bleakness was no pose.

It speaks to the legacy of things that are impossible to record: love, experience, encouragement, a sense of family and belonging that Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller gave to their children, and which continues through them into the next generation.

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.

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.

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.

Civil War is both premium entertainment and a cautionary tale.

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.

This is essentially an affectionate documentary about a group of killer musicians, who are still working and obviously loving what they do and each other. That spirit of respect and love is part of what makes the documentary enjoyable.

While there are a few credibility hurdles here (including a lot of butter-fingered gunplay) Patton’s authoritative performance keeps things honest.