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

Maybe giant robots that turn into cars, or in this case, animals, isn’t your deal. But despite the goofy premise and the formulaic nature of the story in Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, it isn’t that bad.

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.

Aside from a few cleverly executed jump-scares—which are to horror what tickling is to comedy—The Boogeyman drags with G-rated scares and an appropriately dreary atmosphere, but dreary nonetheless.

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.

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.

Director Laura Terruso overlooks several comedic opportunities in About My Father. It’s as though she’s working from a script that’s been edited by someone who got the situations but not the jokes.

Kandahar is standard entertainment that pushes for more than what they can deliver. Slight entertainment is the best it can be.

While not an instruction manual, in an economical 93 minutes, You Hurt My Feelings is a lovely little encouraging slice of life.

A warm-hearted look back at one of professional sport’s most colourful folk heroes, the late Yogi Berra, the documentary, It Ain’ Over, is also a film with a score to settle.

Penélope Cruz anchors a lightly drawn drama about a family in a quiet state of turmoil in the Italian film L’Immensitá.

Yeah, the movie does noticeably follow the formula. But still, it got to me. I rooted for the couple who didn't yet know what we knew from the beginning, and I even welled up towards the end, just when the film wanted me to. Predictable reaction. But then, it’s a rom com after all.

The Starling Girl is a film that highlights remarkable performances in a story that travels down familiar territory.

Led by Reisman’s deadpan, uningratiating performance, Retrograde is a funny, uncomfortable portrait of young millennial, struggling with her loss of status and clinging to the wreckage of her past aspirations.

At just under two-and-a-half hours and spanning three decades, The Eight Mountains feels thorough, as well as sensitively acted and moving. Its weakness is a tendency toward grandiosity, treating an anecdotal drama as though it were an epic.

Fast X dials in every living character (with some post-mortem appearances) to wrap up the decades-long franchise. If you’re not caught up on your F&F history, you are liable to find yourself reaching for a GPS to guide you through the plot.

The writer-director behind The Card Counter and First Reformed makes a misstep here, courtesy unlikely characters and sometimes mystifying plot changes. Luckily, stars Joel Edgerton and Sigourney Weaver are in top form, which is enough to keep a viewer happily occupied for the first hour.

The archival clips are an enjoyable reminder of Fox’s ‘80s onscreen persona, as a 5’4’’whirlwind of mental and physical energy, with dazzling comic timing.

Director Kyle Patrick Alvarez and screenwriter John Griffin’s Crater is a sweet story about friendship lasting a lifetime but set in the year 2257. Kinda like Stand by Me, but nicer… and in space.

It’s clever and backed up by enough tech-speak to give viewers a sense of the nuts and bolts of things without wandering into the weeds.

To be clear, Book Club: The Next Chapter is not a good movie by any standards except for its appeal to audiences old enough to fondly remember every cast member in their prime (I’m raising my hand here). Anyone born after Murphy Brown will see a predictable, forgettable series of non-adventures.

Unquestionably, it’s a beautiful film, shot in 16 mm, with grainy, almost tactile, images and sounds. There is an inky sky, strewn with stars; the silhouette of a horse, mane blowing in the wind, water droplets and scampering bugs, the rustling of the wind and the rumble of waves. It weaves together themes of women’s life choices, our fraught relationship to nature, the art of archiving and the power of awe.

Carmen, the debut film from French dancer-choreographer Benjamin Millepied, is an example of a work that flagrantly colours outside the recognized lines, blending melodrama, myth, dance and stagey spectacle. The result doesn’t coalesce into a neat bundle, but at moments, it’s peculiarly exciting.

There’s fun and excitement in good measure as well, but Rocket’s story brings the audience in closer and in doing so, it enables the other characters’ stories to matter to the audience as well.

The movie looks great. The casting is wonderful.

A hybrid action/war/revenge film with enough octane to blast Michael Bay out of competition.

The film adaptation of this treasured novel is absolutely delightful. Written and directed by Kelly Fremon Craig (The Edge of Seventeen), it’s honest, realistic, heartfelt and captures the emotions of Margaret and her young friends perfectly.

The humour remains, only now there is an added charm missing from previous installments. That charm is courtesy of the movie’s protagonists, a typically atypical family, and their equally quirky neighbours. Including a lovelorn teen boy and an old dude with a shotgun.