The problems with The United States vs Billie Holiday aren’t about Day’s creditable performance, but pretty much everything that happens around it. That includes Pulitzer-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks’ time-hopping, confusing script and Daniels’ direction, which is both feverishly pulpy and stilted and laden.

Eleanor the Great is a small-scale film with depth and relatable themes: grief, loss, identity, family among them. The film has some flaws that lessen its emotional impact but there is admirable work here all around.

Banks is good at handling the action sequences; they are genuinely fun and well-executed, and Stewart gives the movie one of its better performances as Sabina, the unfiltered, bad-ass Angel. Sadly, Scotts’ turn as Elena, the adorable, somewhat blundering Angel is less affective, edging close to annoying.

It means well, but Greed fails to locate the heart of the fast-fashion calamity, instead spotlighting the grotesqueness of the one percent at the expense of everyone else.

Though it can’t match the Michael Mann-level menace and poetic rapture it aspires to, the new Atlanta-set Superfly is certainly watchable. Along with its set-piece fantasies of lavishness and violence, it features a flavourful cast of drug dealers, and stars the charismatic baby-faced Trevor Jackson.

It plods along with improbable turns that get less interesting as we wait for the inevitable dance sequences.

Overall, The Last Voyage of the Demeter is a middling entry in the Dracula canon.

Watching the teen romance The Sun Is Also a Star, starring the splendid-looking young couple Yara Shahidi (Blackish) and Charles Melton (Riverdale’s Reggie)), is something like wading through fields of pink candy floss and suddenly finding a speck of grit.

While Gutnik has assembled a talented cast, the constraints of a 105-minute runtime means the stories feel underdone in places, including anything about that furiously entitled man in the subway.

After The Hunt is elusive, but you won’t stop thinking about it after you see it — that’s a good thing.

Grindelwald is a movie that seems to want to recreate the Potter universe and does it in the most plodding way, crowding it with characters and plot points, many of which go nowhere.

You could think of it as a 98-minute ad for the Super Bowl, opening as it is a week before this year’s edition. These words do not sound like the description of the GOAT of movies. And 80 for Brady is not that.

The film brings great heart while underscoring ties between family, friends and, crucially, between humans and the wider environmental world in a way likely to resonate with tweens and teens in North America as it has already successfully done internationally.

Typically, action films benefit from a standout villain in an unexpected role. But with A Working Man, Ayer, along with Stallone and Chuck Dixon as co-screenwriters, dilutes the role of the villain so much and so often, that it becomes challenging to determine whom to harbour a grudge against and to what extent.

The movie that can contain McKinnon, or the movie where she’s willing to be contained, has yet to be made.

Returning director Chris Renaud, co-director of parts one and two, knows his way around the characters, and he knows what his audience wants: cartoon mayhem, mild naughtiness from the Minions, social awkwardness from Gru.

Better and more candid than anticipated yet still weirdly underwhelming, big-budget Whitney Houston biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody achieves the filmmakers’ stated goal of shining a light squarely on the late American singer’s towering talent without camouflaging her also-towering struggles.

Here’s yet another incident-packed, steroid-pumped, dumb airport novel of a movie, with a few flourishes of Spielberg-inspired titanic imagery (though the director is J.A. Bayona) and a wall-to-wall John Williams-like orchestral score (by Michael Giacchino), with scenes that echo from the previous Jurassic Park movies.

The Last Full Measure stands as a fascinating document of how truly messed up every aspect of the Vietnam War was. It’s also a touching if occasionally syrupy rumination on the nature and provenance of valor.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that I enjoy violent films, but The Wrath of Becky is an example of a film that disappoints its audience with a failed promise. Given the extreme violence of the last film, we aren’t just shocked enough by the battle between her and the group of antagonists who have a veritable arsenal in their barn to start a small war.

The pieces are there for a profound piece of work, and The Song of Names’ high points are worth the occasional narrative slog.

Despite Oh’s solid fear-filled performance, Amanda’s inevitable possession seems to take forever in an 87-minute movie, and the inevitable maternal-love-powered dispossession seems rushed.

For all its cinematic bell and whistles, something about Dumbo feels hollow (I wrote that word three times in my notebook during the screening) as if it’s mouthing the proverbial words phonetically without knowing their meaning. Perhaps I walked into the theatre with too-high expectations. I slinked out with shoulders bowed.

It’s not always a comfortable place to be, but with Linklater explores it here with humour, rather than pathos. And once again, with his persistent humanism, he offers us a question worth exploring.

McCabe-Loko substitutes erratic behaviour and raised voices for tension. But Stanleyville does seem to have something to say. Just because I cannot decipher any significant meaning doesn't mean you won't. Then again, in the words of someone wiser than me, some films are merely meant to be experienced. That could be the case with Stanleyville. I only wish the experience was a bit more enjoyable.

The film chronicles suicide in a surprisingly forthright and unflinching way, and it takes an unexpectedly long time to reach its foregone conclusion. Still, Otto’s sweet, sentimental tone is not unwelcomed in the depths of a winter dogged by troublesome headlines on all fronts.

It's clear the formula for the last film is the expectation for this one, but what’s missing is the believability behind it.

Falling for Figaro is a small story about big dreams that soft-peddles through familiar territory. Figaro can be as fluffy as the fur on a blow-dried angora cat but it scores big on its ready-and willing-to-please charm.