Are audiences, who are used to having their heroic stories delivered to them in fantastically exciting packages, ready for this reined-in version of the wounded hero? In spite of its flaws, Lowery’s The Green Knight makes a case for a different sort of hero whose time may have come.

The trouble is not that the movie is exploitative but that it’s out of its depth. This tone-jumping jigsaw of a narrative (written by McCarthy and Marchus Hinchey along French screenwriters Thomas Bidegain and Noé Debré) amounts to several movies in one.

Lorelei is a lovely story told with heart and without judgment.

There’s no doubt that spotlighting Close’s reputation in our recent cultural history is worthwhile. But the documentary is unjust in ignoring such seminal figures as acting coach and academic Violin Spolin, who developed and wrote the bible on the subject (Improvisation for the Theatre).

I have not read the graphic novel Sandcastle upon which Old is based so I can’t vouch for its faithfulness to the source material. But it’s hard to believe anyone would call this a winner.

Romanticization and exploitation often converge. Stripped of its warm memories, this could be an MBA study on turning local youth trends into global lifestyle commodities, inevitably leaving casualties along the way.

The comedy in the film is spontaneous and engaging. The drama is subtle and patient, the effect of which makes it challenging to track Michael's progress with his friends, his relationship, and his sports career.

There’s a little more room for characters to breathe. This is not to last, however. The whole thing must ignite into a final act of fights, car chases and general destruction (and Snake Eyes’ discovery of honour). The battle scenes are often darkly lit and confusing (though it is a change of pace to see so much swordplay as opposed to gunplay), and the attempt to fuse the Joes and Cobra into the plot in the last act is not exactly smooth.

Beans is an ambitious film that, for the most part, works. It extends its efforts to reach a larger audience, but the story it tells is easy to admire.

A poetic drama about the lives of three Maori girls from the 1950s to the 1980s, Cousins is a heart-breaker, tempered with hope.

None of this is helped by Platt’s performance, with a petulant eye-roll to every impediment, as if he were the fussbudget Felix of The Odd Couple and Cindy his disaster-prone Oscar.

As utterly derivative action films go, Jolt has definite energy, and it’s not pretending to be original. As a time-killer, that may be enough for some.

Director Nick Moran gets the temperature of the era mostly right, and effectively weaves this extraordinary source material into a watchable if formulaic two hours.

Even those resistant to Gunda’s vegetarian message would be hard-pressed to describe these creatures cavalierly having witnessed these exquisitely framed, highly meditative moments. We see life within these beings, and we witness their undeniable will to live. And it’s beautiful. Gunda is truly one of a kind.

Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain is a carefully made film, a wonderful homage to a flawed hero. It will lift you up, it will potentially break your heart. But it will remind you that you’re not alone. We’re in this together.

The fast pace is attention-span theatre for the young’uns, and the adult-aimed quips are entertaining for a while.

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 Loneliest Whale is gripping and highly persuasive, blending hard science with real-life action/adventure sequences, talking-head interviews, and — sorry, sorry — a whale of a true story that has been headline news for years.

In sum, we have a silly Hollywood-style action movie with a Robin Hood theme, serving the ideology of an elitist authoritarian regime. In other words, a real misfit.

When the creepy conflux of the title occurs, it’s terrifying because its conclusion is unforeseeable. Like life you might say: impossible to predict but nevertheless captivating.

It's an understandable impulse for a film of this sort to hold off on divulging secrets, content to fill the story with ambiguity rather than rush to reveal anyone's agenda. But directors Martín Blousson and Macarena García Lenzi's tight clench on the film's secrets feels more like an exercise in prying out a reveal than a steady unraveling of clues and discovery.

Meander, by director Mathieu Turi, uses the device of the escape room, or tunnel in this instance, as a way of negotiating the story of a woman’s perilous journey through a debilitating sadness. It’s allegorical, no doubt. But it’s an allegory that makes excellent use of an incredibly intricate and claustrophobic set piece.

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.

Although Let Us In is billed as a science-fiction/horror for young adults, it’s hard to imagine anyone identifying as a teen or tween finding much interest beyond a rudimentary curiosity of an online urban myth getting the feature-length film treatment.

And though you can sense the influences of Mad Max, Escape from New York, and even a few influential forces from Walter Hill’s The Warriors, The Forever Purge remains an uncinematic thriller unworthy of breaking a lengthy stay away from the theatre.

Taken in micro-doses, Peter Rabbit 2 has clever moments and a relentless eagerness to please. But the movie trips over itself when it attempts to satirize what it practices.

With echoes of Starship Troopers (minus the pointed satire), The Tomorrow War, starring Chris Pratt, is the second noisy “temporal war” movie of the pandemic era, after Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. To differentiate between the two, this is the one Nolan would have written if he’d suffered a head injury.

There is a bristling, neon energy to Zola which, given its provenance as a series of real-life tweets from waitress and exotic dancer (and now executive producer) A’ziah “Zola” King, seems about right. This is a road trip movie straight outta weirdsville.