There is magic in French writer/director Céline Sciamma’s beautiful new film Petite Maman. Running just 72 minutes, this spare and gentle little film has an emotional core that feels true and authentic.

Jensen is a master at finding that sweet spot between oddness and pathos. Mikkelsen makes you believe it’s all possible.

Is Glass Onion fun? Yes, it is. It's a lot of fun. More fun and more comedic than its predecessor. The twists resonate stronger than the original and are not as easy to see coming. Plus, the reveals (of which there are a few) resonate with the satisfaction of a game well played.

American drama Jockey is superb, the perfect confluence of a great story expertly directed, with outstanding performances, stunning cinematography, and a dazzling score.

The good news is that director James Mangold has made a rich, vibrant movie chronicling four key years in Dylan’s life and career without demystifying either the man or his creative process. Together with a uniformly brilliant cast, he’s made one of the best films of 2024.

There are some very funny lines in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, much of it predicated on the outwardly ludicrous meeting of profound cynicism and hope. Lloyd’s character arc is well handled by Rhys (The Americans), and the denouement is one only a Scrooge could call humbug.

Mendonça, a former film critic, has crafted a film steeped in seventies’ cinematic references, especially Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, David Cronenberg’s body horrors, and the paranoid American political thrillers of the era, stuffed with affectionate care for depicting the fashion, cars, décor and music of the era.

Fuze’s denouement is terrific, completely unpredictable and surprisingly funny. It’s as if summer blockbuster season came early. Fuze is… wait for it… a must-see blast.

The title is titillating enough to grab young ears. Yet the story at its core — about three college-age British women looking for thrills on holiday in Crete but instead finding some hard truths — would surely prompt discussion about consent, optics, and forethought that should be happening everywhere all the time and not just among women.

What makes Marriage Story so profound and affecting is its tenderness. Although there are points where one character’s choices puts the other into serious difficulty, Baumbach doesn’t demonize Charlie or Nicole, and never ever asks us to judge either of them.

The Rescue will take your breath away. It’s an incredible chronicle of a true impossible mission, of how the world can come together to save life.

The focus of [Germina's] story is rebellion and liberation and treating his story as a sombre fable of a soul’s journey through time, he turns the luridly familiar to something poetic and tragic.

Deadpool & Wolverine is enjoyable on its merits: R-rated, horribly violent juvenile fantasy loaded with nostalgic references from the glory days of comic reading that fans, new and old, will thoroughly enjoy as it drags you down to its irreverently funny level.

Behind the shell game of motives between the three main characters, there are subtle perceptions about class, youth alienation, and disposable people in contemporary Korea.

Helped along by a fantastic cast, the storytelling is so rich and vibrant and the characters so well drawn that the film never flags.

The film is kinetic and elliptical, with clips from different eras juxtaposed in panels, moving back to a single frame of dancers’ feet, or artfully posed in instants of euphoria. This is a film that makes you want to absorb the language of dance or, at least, immerse yourself in more Merce, which makes this an exemplary introduction to a major twentieth century artist.

It’s a powerfully emotional story built on a foundation of surprising historical accuracy. This film treats us to a cross-section of the civilian experience of World War II that isn’t typically thought about.

Like sequels of beloved movies, puberty can either be terrific, passable or really suck. So, while Riley, the lead character in Pixar’s Inside Out, has a rough-ish start to adolescence, the sequel Inside Out 2 — I’m relieved to say — is terrific.

McDonagh’s sumptuous version of the novel —which premiered at TIFF last year — is utterly faithful and thus note perfect, capturing its resonant ruminations on social inequity, racism, and cultural tourism in a sweeping Moroccan desert Sheltering Sky novelist Paul Bowles would recognize.

If you’re not at all familiar with the originals, but you know and/or love Back to the Future, that should be enough to guarantee you a good time at this almost-lawsuit-worthy homage/parody to the 1980s time travel classic. And if perchance you already love both Nirvanna and BTTF, then strap in, because when this movie hits 88 kilometres an hour…

Thelma is really entertaining. The cast (which includes Malcolm McDowell) is very strong. The performance from Squibb, a 70-year vet of the industry and Oscar-nominated for her work in Nebraska, is fantastic, and Roundtree is likewise magnetic.

In a word, it’s terrific.

On the Rocks is a delight.

You don’t need to be a comic book nerd to enjoy the film though. It stands on its own merits well enough. But, go see it with one anyway. Watching them enjoy the film is almost as fun.

What it took to put together one of the most highly acclaimed exhibits ever on the art world calendar is captured in Close to Vermeer, a documentary brimming with passion, intrigue, history and beauty from director Suzanne Raes.

Squaring the Circle is a gripping true story told with towering visual panache.

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.

Mary Poppins Returns is a rare treat. It’s an old fashioned movie musical with an old-fashioned message that works perfectly in the modern world.