Respect, the new movie starring Jennifer Hudson as the late soul singer Aretha Franklin, proves once again that musical biopics have become the tribute mediocrity pays to talent.

What really works are the thoughtful and committed performances of the two leads.

Despite evoking a lot of previous pop-cultural touchstones (including Harry Potter, Shrek and even Weekend at Bernie’s), the nerd-minded, fast-moving Onward has wit, eye-catching anachronisms and imaginative actio

This story about stories is best absorbed if you’re not in a hurry. The Oak Room is not long (88 minutes), but the words demand attention.

The ponderous storytelling is such that you’re always aware you’re watching a movie.

While Reyes’ Blue Beetle isn’t as endearing as Ted Kord’s, the movie still finds its audience. The music and cheap jokes that are substituted for where meaningful dialogue could have been more successful still manage to carry the film. In short, the cheap laughs worked.

There is a lovely kookiness to The Persian Version which elevates an essentially straight-up mother-daughter conflict story with myriad snappy visuals and storytelling devices before settling into its main narrative trajectory, advancing the idea that we are all just doing the best we can with whatever tools we have.

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.

Tetris is dynamic combination of thriller and historical drama.

There’s more depth than meets the eye, and When You Finish Saving The World manages to be sweet and yet not sentimental, and with much to contemplate after the movie ends.

If you’re already on to the more sinister stuff, this is probably an unnecessary retreat into mild ickiness.

As always, it’s what’s under the surface that matters. And that begins to change as the movie moves along and begins to twist and turn. And here is where the movie starts to have problems, arguably, both with the story, and in terms of tone.

It’s an easygoing, entertaining movie, boosted by its name cast. And sure, it doesn’t ask much of its audience. But sometimes a well done movie-length TV mystery is enough.

This is not art, it’s not brooding, it doesn’t offer any relevant commentary, it’s not even a refreshingly feminist take on an overtly masculine saturated movie-industry. It’s a loud, sometimes disjointed, mildly convoluted, ultra-violent comic-book adventure that moves at a break-neck speed. And, if you stick with it, it’s loads of fun.

Purcell’s performance and ambition in reframing this foundational Australian tale are admirable. But her version of the story would be more resonant if it held more mystery and less message.

Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night is a representation of 90 eventful minutes of TV history as tightly packed narratively as a neutron star. It is about that tightly wound as well. For a movie about the debut of Saturday Night Live, the show that changed comedy, the experience is more anxiety than humour.

The film has a lot of promise, but in the end, it simply just doesn’t deliver.

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.

Neither version of the film — the talking-heads documentary or the period drama — has the depth to achieve much impact.

The film’s best parts, apart from abundant vintage footage and those groovy 60s-era threads, are recollections from those at ground zero, like club operators as well as performers Jimi and Judy Mamou.

Though predictable in its messaging — don’t be afraid to be your wild eccentric self! — the film is visually stylish and clever enough to engage sugar-jagged children and even adults for its merciful 90-minute running time.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is a mostly joyless exercise whose only saving grace is the mordantly silly touch of director Sam Raimi, who delivers ghouls, demons, necromancy, imaginatively surrealist backdrops and at least one rampaging monster that looks like it escaped from an episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. For many, this is entertainment enough.

Freakier Friday is a corny, tepidly enjoyable, thematically recyclable, narratively entangled cinematic situation — sort of like watching four people trying on the same style of sweater in different sizes. And it’s nuanced.

Romanticization and exploitation often converge. Stripped of its warm memories, this could be an MBA study on turning local youth trends into global lifestyle commodities, inevitably leaving casualties along the way.

This is the feature film debut of veteran television director Tom George, and his experience directing comedy shows in the perfect comedy timing here. There are small bits that turn into running jokes through the movie. Then again George was given a lot to work with by screenwriter Mark Chappell, whose tight script uses every genre cliche in the service of clever fun. And this top-notch cast is a joy to watch.

Overall, Wolfs is not breaking new ground, nor is it trying to. But it is an entertaining couple of hours at the movies. That works for me.

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.

Too conventional by half, the prequel betrays the boldness of the original show, though it stirs up good memories. Sopranos complete-ists, who have exhausted analyzing the 86 episodes, may want to pay it homage via this relic, like a bonus extra on the series’ box-set.