The Way of Water is the kind of tremendously entertaining, spectacularly ambitious, not-a-little-bit-silly epic that only James Cameron can, and should, make.

There are so many elements that seduce and beguile – including the rusted-out Brutalism of the Li Tolqan prison where the cloning procedure takes place, and Goth’s supremely unhinged work as James’s seductress, a performance more Looney Tunes than human – that the entire thing swallows you whole. There is no more delightful way to drown.

Once you surrender yourself to what King Richard is doing, and what it’s not doing, that’s okay. It’s especially easy to shut up and go along with whatever rosy view the Williams family wishes to preserve because Smith is here the whole time, helping sell the story.

Regrettably, both director and star are constantly fighting uphill battles in Till, which is saddled with a thoroughly conventional screenplay whose narrative energies only rarely attempt to match the incendiary intensity of the history that it obviously cares so much about retelling.

The real charm of Boxcutter is just how Dahya and his cinematographer James Klopko capture the city as Rome criss-crosses it. Without jackhammering the point home, the film’s vision of Toronto is one of a city shedding one skin to wear another, in the process forcing all the creative forces who make it so special further and further outside its boundaries.

Director Michael Sarnoski’s feature debut is more like a Nicolas Cage supercut: alternately ridiculous, bare-bones, heartfelt, puzzling and what-in-god’s-name-y. And more often than not, it works.

If you want a movie to nail-gun you to your seat, then you must visit Greenland.

Although the movie’s energies dip slightly toward its end, when Mia’s plan to rid the world of the cursed hand requires superhuman acts of strength and derring-do, Talk to Me delivers a series of slash-and-burn shocks that last far longer than 90 seconds.

The jokes arrive fast and plentifully, knowing just what will tickle both younger viewers and adults.

The real trick of the film, though, is how it constantly steadies itself in the face of ever-mounting absurdity. This is a movie of such sexual outrageousness and stylized depravity that it should topple over every few minutes. And yet Glowicki and Petrie (who plays multiple roles) ride the razor’s edge of delirium to create something fantastical, even beautiful.

At almost every turn, Project Hail Mary attempts to convince you that it is groundbreaking, innovative filmmaking. But in actuality, the movie lands as a grand act of cinematic recycling – the fusing together of familiar, comforting bits and pieces into something determined to please crowds and warm hearts.

By handing the spotlight, and even the camera, over to the bold and beautiful Zeytin without guiding the viewer too aggressively, Lo has created something worth seeking out for anyone who wants to expand their world view – and perhaps also lower it a few feet.

Pelé is a terrific examination of the player, the man and his status in recent Brazilian history. It’s about his astonishing skill, his World Cup victories and defeats, and his celebrity. But at its core it’s about how Pele legitimized the dictatorship that governed Brazil during the later portion of his career.

Frankie Freako is designed to melt your brain. The only question is whether you might welcome such cerebral liquefaction or not.

There is an urgency to these stylistic choices which ask us how we might best realize, through image and sound, both the memory and feeling of violence, of hope, of salvation for the damned. As in life, the grotesque and the beautiful exist concurrently and are each given fair weight.

The actor is as engaging and captivating as ever on-screen as Adonis, yet he’s just as present and committed behind the camera, delivering a stirring string of heartwarming and jaw-breaking moments that add up to something if not exactly unique, than certainly rousing, effective and entertaining.

Simply but smoothly animated, and featuring no dialogue whatsoever, director Pablo Berger’s film is a charming fable that rides the line between sentimentality and schmaltz just right.

If you can walk away from a movie with a tune in your heart and a bounce in your step, then it’s safe to say that the film clicked in just the ways that were intended.

Prey is exactly the type of late-summer nastiness that deserves to be enjoyed with fellow hooters and hollerers. But by this point, Predator fans are used to playing the victim.

40 Acres is a top-tier genre film that Trojan-horses a flood of knotty, provocative conversations into multiplexes via the best kind of speculative fiction.

In terms of musical-theatre bona fides and genuine, soaring emotion, Tick, Tick … Boom! drowns out its contemporaries all the way up to the rafters.

The familiar and facile elements are drowned out – often, and loudly – by the impeccable comedic talents of Hill and Murphy, two performers whose very different styles clash and complement one another.

Denis Villeneuve’s Dune is, at its best moments, pure and gigantic cinematic madness.

The deeper that Resurrection goes, the more that Gan’s vision delicately, meticulously, and, of course, slowly envelopes you, no matter your level of comprehension.

Joy Ride is as fantastically filthy as they come, providing enough glorious gags about gagging to carry audiences through the cold, hard winter to come.

The many stumbling blocks, setbacks and eventual (spoiler alert for a three-quarters-of-a-century-old war) triumphs of Operation Mincemeat are handled by a deft crew of real-life stiff-upper-lip types played by the finest U.K. actors working today.

This is a picture as severe as the real-life generational abuse that its director is chronicling, even if a few false steps mean that The Iron Claw ultimately lands as a technical knock-out.

Safdie recognizes that The Smashing Machine is a single-purpose invention, one built to run on the blood, sweat and sometimes even the tears of Dwayne Johnson. Consider the act of watching the movie a double dose of cinematic benevolence: rewarding yourself, and saving the star from his own worst Hollywood instincts. Two birds, one Rock.

Ultimately, The Promised Land is a testament to not only the resilience of Denmark’s agricultural homesteaders . . . but also to the fierce power of Mikkelsen’s presence.

Any excuse to tune out the real world and escape into a fantasy land is welcome – especially through a film that’s about trust and the loving bond between family and friends, and also manages to deliver a couple of solid laughs in between.

Mostly, Falling succeeds because Mortensen is playing by his own uncompromising rules. The result is a vision that may grate, but will never be lost to memory

The director wisely dives with her whole heart and soul into Goldin’s life, which makes seeing her almost destroyed by an addiction to painkillers so painful. And then, when Goldin resurrects her energies into waging a David versus Goliath war, there is a distinct sense of against-all-odds triumph that hits hard, and lingers long.

Bring Her Back feels less like a movie than a finely tuned instrument of doom. In the devilish hands of Australian filmmaking brothers Danny and Michael Philippou, evil has been concentrated into an exceptionally and impressively nasty 104 minutes.

It is all such gloriously smart stupidity that you cannot help but applaud everyone involved for sticking the landing.

By the time Marguerite’s chapter concludes, laying bare the wrenching source of the story’s tensions, The Last Duel will have you in the palm of its calloused hand, whether you like it or not. It is as ambitious and memorable and impressively messy a storytelling experiment as major-studio films come these days.

Thanks to Lee’s smooth construction and her performers’ carefully calibrated performances – Beirne is particularly engaging in a role that doesn’t automatically earn sympathy – it all clicks together.

If family is everything to the Fast & Furious films – as lead lunkhead Vin Diesel would surely posit – then Fast X is a nuclear family reunion that goes atomic.

It is tender, true and – depending on your interpretation, or understanding, of the finale – intensely heartbreaking.

Atkins, a multidisciplinary artist, proudly doesn’t obey the almost obligatory rhythms of documentary filmmaking. There are no talking heads, no manufactured narrative momentum.

Rapp, who originated the role of Regina on Broadway, is a force-of-nature knockout, honouring but not imitating Rachel McAdams’s beautiful bullying from the first film with a sly kind of menace.

What I can say, without angering (almost) anyone, is that Spider-Man: No Way Home is both a gigantic act of franchise-mad hubris, and a ridiculous amount of fun.

In Schrader’s strong, meditative hands, everything gels together to create an entrancing work that is serious and, very nearly, profound.

As the two women clash in the film’s final moments, Tjahjanto executes a truly glorious extravaganza of choreographed carnage, as impressive as it is overwhelming.

This is meticulous, beautiful filmmaking that is rich in meaning and fat with detail. Surrender to Park’s smoky, dangerous romance – vengeance can wait.

Grimy, slick and genuinely frightening in true horror-movie fashion, Reeves’ new film reassembles the best elements of Batman lore into one overwhelming and epic-length package. Almost everything here works – not despite our current overload of Batman culture, but because of it.

The Exchange flips the script – and it’s funny, because it’s true.

As intense and rigorous and thoroughly impressive a work Maestro is, the triple-threat Cooper cannot quite summon the nerve, or verve, to go completely off-book.

Ritchie pulls together an impressively determined thriller that sticks. Ideal for both a certain generation of viewer who gets excited when hearing the line, “We’ve got eight weeks of recon” and for those who will watch absolutely anything starring Statham (hi!), Wrath of Man is the best, bloodiest surprise of the year so far.

This is not a film to easily swoon over, but mournfully contemplate.

It is both eager to distinguish itself from the series’ shaggiest shenanigans but also happy to embrace them whenever it feels things threaten to get too heavy. The result is an overlong and conceptually loopy thing – but when it works, which let’s say is, oh, I dunno, 83 per cent of the time, it offers one helluva view … to kill!

The film is neither a stern lecture nor cheap entertainment, with Domont instead threading the needle somewhere in-between to create a tense guessing game of just how far she will push her characters.

As with every summer – even this supremely strange one – there are a ton of horror movies coming down the pike. But no matter how scary the new Conjuring or how disgusting the new Saw may be, I can guarantee that you won’t see as soul-shaking a film this season as The Amusement Park.

While there is an early sense in Joynt’s film that it is simply fun to ape the environs of bygone television eras, the re-enactments ultimately work on a narrative level, too. There are intersecting layers to Joynt’s film whose thematic and contextual conversations with one another would be lost were he to simply line one conventional talking head up after another.

The fact that The Royal Hotel keeps its audience as captive as its leads until that final moment is an impressive and ultimately incendiary feat.

If Olson and his game cast weren’t so determined to shade their characters with delicate, sometimes tremendous layers of humanity, Bone Cage’s fatalism might be impossible to digest.

F9 is a welcome blast of fizzy action glee. You won’t come out of it a better or smarter person – quite possibly dumber! – but you will leave satisfied that your summer movie season wasn’t a completely life- and joy-less bore.

Like her first film, 2016′s fine-young cannibals tale Raw, Ducournau is tracing taboos to sketch a messy but compelling treatise on life’s endless growing pains. Ride or die.

Based on the 2015 book of the same title, The Hidden Life of Trees is a documentary both simple and startling.

A bold, raw, bordering-on-manic mashup of Eyes Wide Shut, Ivans XTC and HBO’s Entourage, the new thriller-cum-satire The Beta Test is here to test your limits.

The dramatic set-up courtesy of director and co-writer Clint Bentley (whose family has a long history on the track) isn’t exactly novel, but the film’s acute sense of place and specificity of profession lends Jockey an authenticity that is irresistible.

Take three hours out of your life, and enjoy one of the most fulfilling cinematic rides of the year.

When In Flames premiered at Cannes last year, I compared it with Ari Aster’s Hereditary, but suggested Kahn’s film has more heart and conviction. I stand by that.

A deceptively simple and concise narrative structure allows Ford to parse her subject and characters with a graceful internal complexity that shows rather than tells.

By refining both the plot and the theme, the film redeems the clunkier aspects of the book. The blatant foreshadowing (doomed mice and rabbits and puppy dogs everywhere), the unadulterated villainy (that nasty Curley, the boss's son), the calculated repetition and the oh-so-pat parallels - it's all here, but less obtrusively than in most adaptations. Sinise is intent on not allowing the mediocre poetry to get in the way of a great parable, and the climax is a testament to how well he succeeds. Because, there, the poetry is genuine. You know exactly what's coming and it still hits you hard, simultaneously laid low and buoyed up - felled by the certainty that none can prevail and cheered by the knowledge that some will endure. [2 Oct 1992]

Laxe stages a deathly pas de deux between humanity and nature, with technology – embodied here by worn-down speakers and rusted vehicles – as a mediator that begets both agony and ecstasy.

Denied a second act, Shane is recognized with a heartfelt film that celebrates an undersung icon who lived her authentic self, sparkled on her own terms and defied the squares.

The Fantastic Four is here for a proper reset – a buoyant and frequently dazzling one at that, which sort of makes up for the failed movie adaptations of Marvel’s first family from the past.

With his film, Bogosian remembers a springboard venue in the evolution of the uniquely American artforms of jazz and comedy.

The dialogue is to the point without being eye-rolling, the action is meaty and mostly CGI-free (the highlight is a night-vision firefight) and the performances are committed, even touching.

If Anderson fits like a glove in the new Naked Gun, it’s because her durability is as pleasantly unexpected as this franchise that’s refusing to heed the memo that reboots suck and studio comedy is dead.

When Lee puts Washington in just the right scene, with just the right power dynamics and just the right nerve-rattling dialogue, the result is a thing of high art. Forget the film’s initial low points – just keep aiming toward the top. And keep watching King David’s throne.

Soderbergh, once again acting as his own cinematographer under the alias Peter Andrews (and editor, with the nom de plume Mary Ann Bernard), finds his own way of keeping the camera swirling and twirling, electrifying lengthy, densely composed monologues that require some visual energy to keep them from landing with a cinematic thud.

Triumphantly, Young’s work with her ever-changing (and aging) character succeeds in bringing a complicated and resilient character to life.

It is all fairly silly and sometimes wildly uneven stuff, with Ansari’s rather dark socioeconomic themes often colliding uneasily with a barrage of lighthearted zingers. But the laughs rarely let up, with Ansari committed to ensuring that barely a minute passes by without a wry observation or sharp gag.

West’s direction is exacting and rigorous. From the filmmaker’s more formal experimentations right down to the soundtrack, which is perfect, X feels like the exact movie its maker set out to create. Also on the money is Mia Goth’s performance as Maxine, a starry-eyed ingenue who is equal parts ordinary and glittering in her ambition and sexuality.

Director Christopher Landon injects the entire affair with so much stylistic verve and narrative propulsion that, like the best kind of first date, it whips by almost too quickly.

Much like the heroes of this story, The Retreat manages to defy expectations. And while some gory clichés still abound, it makes for a gruesome, gritty thriller that lets its leads shine.

As the central characters, Helms and Harrison play their parts with empathy.

It is respectful and smooth filmmaking that never loses sight of its one and only goal: keeping its audience hooked.

Drifting Snow is almost a tribute to what the past year has been for so many of us, fumbling our way toward something less lonely and waiting for the snow to pass.

Pathaan is by no means flawless. It tries to marry a Hollywood-style action film with Bollywood camp. Sometimes it delivers, and sometimes the script is just too banal. It could also be edited more judiciously. But the film entertains and leaves you grooving to an infectious tune at the end.

Tender, topical and well-crafted, No Ordinary Man is no ordinary film.

Daley and Goldstein aren’t here to reinvent. They love the tropes too much. It’s that fondness for what they mock with so much silly and snappy humour that makes Honor Among Thieves so charming. That affection is obvious especially when they punch up the familiar beats with inventive action and uncommonly stylistic direction.

Director and screenwriter Kelly Fremon Craig does not mess this up. She has created a film that is true to the book’s heart, but is also its own thing. And it is a (mostly) wonderful thing.

Mourning her only child, her marriage, and very likely her fortune as the betrayed and sidelined Laura, Cruz goes scorched-earth, incinerating any performer sharing her space.

Better Man is a triumph of cheek and imagination. Gracey attempts much but actually manages to accomplish all that he set out to do.

Finally, by tethering his story’s uneasiness to the rock that is Bautista, Shyamalan delivers a star vehicle built for two. It isn’t quite right to say that the director and his star deserve each other – more like they need one another. Just as we do. To the end of the world, fellas.

Mutant Mayhem is a giddily fun and relentlessly eye-pleasing rebranding for the Turtles, which, like the Spider-Verse movies, mixes up daring and inventive animation styles while embracing visual imperfections as part of its soulful artistry.

Yep, just like a good meal - you feel satisfied without feeling stuffed. There's also a pleasant, lingering aftertaste - deceptively clever, even wise moments that sneak back up on you, demanding re-examination. [16 Sep 1994]

You will leave the film as hungry for Simpson’s food as you will be full from his emotional journey.

Pugh’s fierceness and Garfield’s ready access to emotion make them a good match; the dialogue is witty and it’s a pleasure just to listen to them talk. Most importantly, everyone involved is serious about and committed to and yes, in love with the story.

Missing packs in enough mystery and intrigue that the film never feels boring. It ends up working as good, light and thrilling entertainment.

There is a delicate touch deployed here, and not only with Julie, but those surrounding her. Depression, Koppleman seems to be saying, is not a one-person battle. It can swallow everyone in a victim’s orbit.

I can sympathize with the skeptics who take one look at Jackass’s cultural durability and shake their heads in disgust over the state of the world. But, as ever, there is a subversive method to Knoxville’s madness: an obsessive, and impressive, drive to tease the forever-blurry lines between comedy and pain.

The first 90 minutes is an audacious shock, petering out with an exceptionally messy and chaotic climax. But while Fresh takes obvious cues from Get Out and Promising Young Woman, it’s something unique, a balm to any singleton that promises to turn you off online dating and red meat forever.

She Came to Me is overstuffed to be sure, but in an admirable way that underlines Miller’s fierce desire to enchant and entertain an audience looking for stories about people, not intellectual property.

Whereas Michael Mann gave Heat the perfect narrative offramp, Crime 101 tends to circle the block toward the end.

While it may depict events of the past, its relevance to the present couldn’t be more striking.