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

In the Earth is engrossing even in moments that might challenge both patience and logic. And despite the slight nudge towards something more commercial, Ben Wheatley’s art-house reputation remains solid.

There is an overarching story and some obvious themes, including the extreme fear suggested in the film’s title. There’s also anxiety, masculinity, toxic femininity, toxic mothers, the road not taken, etc. But there’s also plenty going on beneath the surface, clues that a movie that is already surrealist enough, might be even more surreal than you can catch in one viewing.

Poirot’s latest adventure may engender some brief happiness in audiences, but I’m not sure it will leave them fully satisfied.

The Matrix Resurrections is an incoherent, narratively sloppy mess.

Director Mercedes Bryce Morgan (Fixation, Spoonful of Sugar), working from a script by Joshua Friedlander, keeps the pace moving well and creates some undeniable fun in a shell game of the three movie genres that depend on physical reaction —comedy, horror, and erotic thriller.

The film is Roth’s, and so expect a silly premise, comic-book violence, and gory set pieces. What you might not expect is the humour. Thanksgiving is funny.

To put Uncorked in wine terms, it’s not complex, but only a philistine would dismiss what’s easy and pleasing as flawed.

The craft of the re-enactment is more impressive than the script, which defaults to hackneyed dramatic moments, reminiscent of a generic disaster film, with its stock upstairs-downstairs tropes, young lovers, the cynic-turned-hero, and the dutiful subalterns showing courage above their pay grade.

All the intricacies — and absurdities — of creating a modern relationship are on display in Oh, Hi!, a clever comedy with Molly Gordon and Logan Lerman as a couple getting to know each other better.

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.

These questionable narrative kinks aside, Lee still features one of the year-to-date’s best performances, honouring a woman who needs to be remembered, along with a sober consideration of the roles of women in wartime.

The film loses momentum as it settles into movie-of-the-week familiarity, detailing the activities of the Jane collective, some of which seem hardly credible, though historically accurate.

It’s jittery in its pacing, the characters thinly drawn, and the youth crime drama elements formulaic...At the same time, the film feels emotionally original in its discordantly tender moments.

It is at times a terrifically uncomfortable movie to watch. But director Michel Franco's New Order, a searing and relentlessly grim indictment of class division and government corruption, scans not only as possible but entirely likely given our current world. Heavy doesn’t begin to describe it.

In the end, all Beetlejuice Beetlejuice did for me was make me want to see the singular version again.

The film, alas, feels far more emotionally conniving than its title character.

Credit the towering talents of Emma Thompson and Stanley Tucci with redeeming The Children Act, a film oddly thin on story despite coming from the marvelous Ian McEwan, who adapted his own novel for the screen but somehow failed to capture the surge of the source material.

It’s a clever bit of noir that keeps a viewer slightly off-balance at all times as the tension builds.

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.

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.

Intermittently witty, technically impressive, Free Guy sheds points in its second half, with pandering (Star Wars and Captain American references) and a series of numbing narrative loops, celebrating originality while practicing the opposite. And all of this with the usual alibi that none of this is meant to be serious.

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

The interconnected Irish anthology Lost & Found – about lives that intersect in and around a small-town train station - starts at an interesting, pleasant hum, and pretty much stays there, avoiding high drama. The result is something like an Irish-accented Coronation Street with more locations, fewer confrontations, and beer, which, to my mind, isn’t a bad way to spend time in a theatre.

Plane is a mild diversion that carries more baggage than necessary, a forgettable thriller pieced together from a collage of other films and ideas.

It’s fascinating stuff, and it rests both on its leads and on the universal truth that unburdening to strangers is often easier than unburdening to intimates, as any real-life cab driver or bartender can attest. And yet, as Daddio shows, that very spontaneous act fosters an intimacy all its own.

What keeps the movie from being simply a series of lurid events is the relationship between Mía and Euge, played with an easy grace by Gusmán and Bejo. Their chemistry is so comfortable, you have to remind yourself they aren’t actually sisters.

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.