As effective as Enforcement is on a visceral level, it comes up short in any deeper reflection on the social crisis of its premise.

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

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

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.

Alpha aims to be not just a story but a transporting visual experience, which is one area where it over-reaches.

Victoria and Abdul is a beautiful looking costume drama with a dream cast. It may not be much of a surprise that Dame Judi Dench turns in another absolutely beautiful performance. But it is always joy to watch her in action.

As long as you don’t mistake Opus for a thriller, it’s a fun ride at the movies.

As fresh as the female perspective is, as Skate Kitchen circles and swoops through the Manhattan twilight toward its conclusion, there is a sense of missed potential, that the film could have been much richer than it is.

In short, Ballerina is as close to a John Wick 5 as you are going to get without calling it that.

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.

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

The nut of the movie, the thing I return to again and again when thinking about it, is the issue of how much the odds were stacked against Kusama. Kusama-Infinity is a perfect movie for the #metoo era: A glimpse into the life of a woman with a vision who had the misfortune of being born at a time when even what was arguably the most progressive culture felt that it was just fine to ignore a woman’s voice.

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.

A solid follow-up from the director/star team of Allan Ungar and Josh Duhamel (2022’s Bandit), London Calling takes road/buddy movie tropes and turns them, if not quite on their heads, then at least disarmingly and sometimes even hilariously askew.

A decent, fast-moving nod to the spirit that originally made the Terminator movies a permanent part of pop culture.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

There’s no doubt that spotlighting Close’s reputation in our recent cultural history is worthwhile. But the documentary is unjust in ignoring such seminal figures as acting coach and academic Violin Spolin, who developed and wrote the bible on the subject (Improvisation for the Theatre).

This is Spinal Tap is now a movie classic. I wish I could say the follow up Spinal Tap II: The End Continues is as good. But, alas, it doesn’t really touch the beloved original.

Written and directed by first-time Danish director, Gabriel Bier Gislason (the son of Susanne Bier), it’s a moody low-key psychological affair, free of schlock and gore, and ultimately, more of a romance than a scare fest.

A stately 20th Century period piece in the style of the best British dramas, The Dig is just what the anglophiles ordered.

Lots of it doesn’t make sense, but a fever-dream doesn’t have to. There’s a disparity in the talent-level of the two leads that weakens the (ultimately-predictable) “surprise.” But what plays out is a fair allegory for a sport where men trade their well-being (bones, brain, etc.) for glory. Tipping even (over)uses an x-ray effect during scenes of violence, as if to underscore the injuries beneath.

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.

Something about its proportions felt a little off. There was a touch too much flashback, an excess of cutaway, and a slight oversupply of innuendo in the early going that made the big emotional climax feel like it hadn’t quite earned its emotional beats.

The urge to find hope in tragedy is as inevitable as the one to recognize shapes in clouds. But Funny Boy leaves an unsettling chasm between this one slender story and the grim history it represents.