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.

Despite what redemption there ultimately is, The Whale is a feel-bad movie. But in a movie marketplace saturated with homogeneity, at least it inspires you to feel something.

While The Way of Water could have easily lost an hour from its three-hour-plus running time, it would have been a shame to lose its most magic moments, the stuff that makes it different.

Despite the talent of the voice actors and the success of the previous franchise films, this fails to attract the attention that I think it deserves because it’s a shortcut.

A slave-on-the-run movie that uses every bit of its star’s modest acting ability and ticks all the award boxes, Antoine Fuqua’s Emancipation would be a shoo-in in a world where Smith was not banned from the Oscars for 10 years.

In terms of its setting and plot, The Eternal Daughter is quite spare. But what Hogg and Swinton patiently coax out of it is affecting.

It’s possible to leave the theatre unaffected only to look back at Empire of Light with affection. And it’s the movie’s ability to linger unnoticed until surfacing with a revised and unexpected understanding that is at the heart of movie magic.

There is plenty of opportunity to embrace the film for its wanton display of Christmas gone wild and a bleak reminder that despite charity being its own reward, the reward is not always worth the effort.

Ultimately, Spoiler Alert is earnest, emotional, good-hearted and edgeless.

Ignore the nay-sleighers. Violent Night is the counter-Christmas B-movie that ditches the ho-ho-wholesomeness of the season for a damn good, bad Santa.

The ideas are there. You can see why Baumbach would take this on. In the end, what we’re left feels like more of a sincere and heartfelt attempt than a successful movie.

Both complex and rawly immediate, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Laura Poitras’s film about the 69-year-old photographic artist and activist Nan Goldin, is a great documentary and maybe the most essential film of the year.

Without having spent enough time to establish the background of the characters and their conflicted motives, Hunt leaves us bystanders to the mayhem.

Please Baby Please has one thing going for it: A chance to watch gifted actors do some daredevil freestyling. In moments, it’s almost enough.

There are too many cute influences, too many perfect musical numbers and even the physical rendering of the characters themselves belie the gritty human struggle that has remained at the core of this story for this to render the true story of Ebenezer Scrooge.

What draws us in is the inventive and luminous cinematography from Michal Dymek (with additional footage by Pawel Edelman and Michal Englert), using drone shots, fish-eye lenses and red and blue filters. Accompanied by an unsettling electronic score, the donkey-in-a-disco effect is trippy, a hallucinogenic projection of what it might be like to live in an animal’s consciousness, including its dreams and flashbacks.

The movie feels like a novel with well-developed characters weaved through the story without feeling like segmented excerpts from a more extensive work. The film's love story is made more palatable by casting two beautiful people as the leads. And Kajganich's script finds all the right words and tone to tell the story.

The documentary, Goodnight Oppy, is the sort of film you expect to see at your local museum or science center for school-age children. It’s a real-life Wall-E story, that’s easy to follow, full of emotion and Hollywood budget, and intended to elicit wonder and admiration for the National Aeronautics and Space Association.

Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, which won the coveted People’s Choice award at the most recent Toronto International Film Festival, is a warm and easygoing family drama and coming-of-age story based on the director’s life. But you’re out of luck if you’re looking for deep insights into how a boy seized by movies, grew up to be one of the most successful directors in Hollywood.

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.

Director Sarin plays around a little with the candy-coloured palette, with lots of quick snapshots and backdrops (shot in Montreal and Mexico), giving the film a sort of photoplay episodic structure. But there’s little dramatic build-up.

It’s high minded stuff, but Iñárritu, has a knack for wrapping these ideas in movies that are well crafted and exciting to watch.

Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams is a study of a man who found his passion early in life and lived it with commitment.

She Said is about cracking the code of silence, and the flood that follows when it breaks.

Much like the nature of the park which Mickey calls home, the film is a glossed-over and superficial history.

Once again, [Pugh] brings a determined energy to her performance that almost compensates for the often unpersuasive, sometimes stilted, film built around her.

The Menu is the most entertaining ensemble film since Knives Out, and the most engaging horror-satire since Get Out. But no matter what comparisons and assumptions are made, The Menu will not be the movie you expect.

Wakanda Forever is far from a failure, except that where there should be excellence, there is a middling feeling of watching something spectacularly competent.