How wonderful to see a movie that deals with the emotional and sexual life of two very different women north of 60, who are the sum of their lives, not bound by cultural cliches or perceptions.

Ultimately, Grand Theft Hamlet — again, I’m referring to both the performance and the movie — is an emotional triumph. Best of all, you don’t need to be an experienced gamer to enjoy it, though I’m sure there are in-jokes for the initiated.

Joyland is impressive, with an emotional world that feels true, and characters who feel complex and alive.

The Girl with The Needle is a harrowing drama based on real-life crimes that took place in Copenhagen around 1920. Directed by Magnus von Horn, the film is beautiful to look at but difficult to watch — this is dark, gripping, Bergman-esque fare.

Mann’s laidback, dramatized-reality approach to the subject is to treat Carmine Street Guitars, at 42 Carmine Street, as a village general store from another era, a place for friendly gossip and home-made goods.

The film, which is an economical 90 minutes, is a drama which, at times plays like a mystery, with incredible tension. Çatak gives us a satisfying film, but an unsettling one with unanswered questions.

Those ambivalent towards children may find the film positively tedious. Those in tune with its up-close storytelling and gentle pace may find much to enjoy.

Cillian Murphy follows up his Oscar-winning role in the epic Oppenheimer with another brilliant performance in a much smaller and more intimate film, but one that also deals with questions about morality and responsibility.

Knives Out is a charming and wonderfully crafted whodunnit that, despite the inevitable presence of a dead body, plays like a warm and cozy antidote to the winter chills.

It is to Costa’s credit that she provides a soothing, reflective tone to the subject, both in her poetic voiceover and a hypnotically smooth editing that movies from drone shots of crowds, congregations, rallies, and protest marches to handheld closeups of politicians clawing their ways through teeming throngs of admirers.

A masterpiece of squeamishly uneasy, nightmarish mood-making, the demonic-possession film, Sator is partly in the vein of The Blair Witch Project – though much more sure-handed and stylistically sophisticated.

Narratively, the film’s last two thirds feel somewhat scattered, or perhaps “shattered” is a better word to reflect the catastrophe at the center of the story. The key to holding these fragments together, and avoiding making the movie’s grim turn unbearable, is the deeply fascinating performance of Vicky Krieps as Clarisse.

Ernaux’s precise and thoughtful commentary connects the images to memories, discovering yet another harvest from the well-cultivated field of her autobiography.

It’s all freakin’ fantastic, a real all-night rave of a movie. But could we maybe just dial the whole thing down just a smidgeon? Could Challengers perhaps have given merely 100 per cent instead of 110?

If this seems like a bit of a deep dive when the subject is trendy restaurants in Portland, Pig is a serious movie with heady themes that just happens to come at you from oblique and unexpected angles.

The mostly non-professional cast do a credible job of depicting a family growing progressively more anxious under increasing pressure.

Add a bit of road movie misadventure, a la Payne’s Sideways, and you have a Christmas movie with spirit and wit, with a minimum of mawkish sentiment.

On the surface it’s a solid and and absorbing character study. But thanks to Marder’s script and masterful direction, and Ahmed’s beautiful performance, there are increasingly deeper layers that take this movie to a deeper place.

Unfortunately, Da 5 Bloods’ impassioned civics lesson is grafted on to a slapdash B-movie action plot.

The women's stories are devastating. And familiar.

Concrete Valley is a loving, lovely portrait of a corner of the city that, unless you live there, is probably either a blank spot on your map or a region you drive through to get somewhere else.

The film adds an authentic emotional resonance to an important story about an exceptional human who was singing her mind at a pivotal moment in 20th-century pop-culture history.

Though it’s impossible not to see the documentary as a kind of prequel to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, on its own, Navalny is a lively, absorbing mix of original and archival footage with elements of real-life thriller set against the backdrop of the current disinformation wars.

Odd but meaningful, Secret Mall Apartment, is an entertaining documentary about how a group of eight young artists secretly maintained an apartment — from 2003 to 2007 — in a hidden nook in the Providence Place, Rhode Island, shopping center.

Strong performances abound while sly and sometimes slapstick comedy lightens the more intense themes of betrayal and vengeance.

Oscar-nominated Iranian director Asghar Farhadi (A Separation), with his powerful and perceptive tale A Hero, shows us universalities, from the complexities of human nature to the modernized way we’ve manipulated right and wrong.

It is a wild and trippy ride that mixes “reality,” with sequences that dip into the mystical world of the Vikings, and back out again. It’s also meticulously made, with an attention to detail as close to actual 10th century Viking life as is possible.

Peck’s fleet approach briskly compresses a great deal of information without clumsy interview setups and joins the dots between Black political and artistic freedom then and now while literally gives an important activist-artist a voice again.