It’s one helluva conversation starter, from one very thought-provoking story.

Sure, The Eternal Memory is tough and occasionally relentless, but it is also affirming in ways unexpected. Significant and intense indeed, but the excursion is far from weary.

The Cleaners is a doc of remarkable access and a feast for thought.

Joyride is terrific, a storytelling and acting gem bursting with heart yet never saccharine.

Writer/director Sébastien Pilote has turned this piece of Quebec history into a visually stunning, deeply satisfying piece of cinema, a gorgeous period piece. Canadian history has rarely, if ever, looked so sumptuous on the screen, or felt so rich.

Burnham’s debut is a little gem that feels true and is surprisingly tender.

The Father is a compelling, illusionary story about aging's disorienting symptoms. It is a masterpiece of structure, narrative, editing, and performance.

In summoning the artist and his eighties’ art-scene milieu, the film also serves as memorial to the generation of creative voices silenced by the AIDS virus.

It’s a stripped-down French legal drama, with a carefully controlled, expanding emotional impact, touching on matters of motherhood, gender, immigration and race.

It’s a roiling mix of wry race comedy, economy-grade dystopian sci-fi, and Silicon Valley satire. Also, it's as funny and as caustic as hell.

The film is an indictment of law enforcement as it operates (or doesn’t) for aboriginal people.

There is not much more you can ask of a film than that it provides you with another perspective, a new angle to look at old problems. The Beasts does that.

Civil War is both premium entertainment and a cautionary tale.

While the characters and events are real, the artful design of this film and its allegorical resonances seem to put Honeyland in its own genre – that of a real-life fable.

It’s a fast-paced joyride, enlivened by great talent in even the smaller roles.

Johnson delivers a wicked satire on faith and fanaticism, a lively mockery of far-right politics cloaked in the sacred robes of a classic whodunnit. It’s feel-good entertainment with just enough spiritual cleansing to seal the deal.

There’s great writing in the screenplay (also by Ma), and fantastic music choices, including an otherworldly score by Montreal electronic music artist Marie-Helene Leclerc Delorme, and a groovy cover of the old love song “Unchained Melody.”

It’s energetic, bonkers, and very funny. It’s also two-and-a-quarter hours long, and I didn’t begrudge it a single minute.

Anora is frenetic and entertaining and sometimes very funny, but it will break your heart.

Occupied City is designed not so much to provoke emotions as to challenge our capacity for paying attention (“It’s okay to drift in and out,” recommends McQueen in the film’s production notes.) When we focus, we’re compelled to connect the double strand of the narrated past history and contemporary images in front of our eyes.

Shortland has given us a fast-paced movie with action sequences, character depth, and very subtle social and political subtexts about the way women are seen, treated and exploited in the world.

With Breakdown 1975, Neville isn’t asking us to consider whether the year was pivotal. He’s making the case that it was.

Suffice to say this Naked Gun packs an Airplane!’s worth of sight gags, non-sequiturs, malapropisms and misunderstood lines into a rapid-fire, comedy-friendly 85 minutes, the exact (and perfect!) timing of the 1988 original.

Certainly, it’s a welcome call-back to grownup movies of 1960s and 70s, about adult intimacy and meaning-of-life concerns. Shot with crisp, unfussy clarity inside a car or in boardroom offices and the streets of the modern urban Japan, it’s a drama about the intricate ways love, performance, and work merge into each other.

Led by performances by Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, the production makes this story of treachery, murder and the psychological cost of crossing moral boundaries feel both era specific, and frighteningly modern.

Two Women, for all its entertainment value, is silly and shallow, though deeper than porn, it must be said.

At times, No Bears can come across as frustratingly convoluted, but Panahi is an artful filmmaker, who surprises us by breaking the rhythms of the film with disruptions, confrontations, and plot twists.

Aside from the exquisitely executed acts of outrageous (comic-book) mayhem, KILL is fun. KILL unleashes a vicious ballet of hand-to-hand combat, all within the narrow confines of a passenger train en route to New Delhi.