Just as it is possible to make a compelling doc without telling an entire life’s story end to end, Lost Girls proves that you can make a substantial thriller that doesn’t rely on a comforting real-world conclusion.

As audiences, we lean toward demanding a near-constant auditory assault – that if we’re not hearing something, we’re missing something. Director Kelly Reichardt has no qualms with upending this, and other pieces of conventional cinematic wisdom with First Cow, a film that takes great care to remind us of the whisper-quiet bones of America’s history – a time when there wasn’t much to hear except what nature was telling us.

It’s a solid effort. There are guts here, just not quite enough glory.

Spenser Confidential makes far more narrative and visual sense than the incomprehensible "Mile 22," and carries less of an America First odour than any of the pair’s previous partnerships. But it also proves that it is finally time that Berg and Wahlberg explored a trial separation. If you really love someone, guys, set them free.

Yet after half an hour in Wendy’s world, it is clear that Zeitlin has exhausted both his visual imagination and whatever narrative interest he had in Barrie’s tale other than “kids, they grow up fast.”

Because the director weaves in enough scenes to show how deeply this family cares for one another, it never feels voyeuristic in its sadness but true to reality. This isn’t about emotional manipulation or poverty porn, it’s about showing a family as a whole.

Greed’s antihero is known as “Rich" to his intimates and his surname earns him the moniker “greedy McCreadie.” It’s not subtle stuff but then, investigative journalism, censure, documentary exposés, and empathy haven’t worked so far to cure our rapacious fast-fashion appetite – so why not a movie?

Yeah, it’s not good. Writer/director Ricky Tollman has turned the true story of Rob Ford’s crack video into a fake cris du coeur for millennials.

A delightful family movie that packs an emotional punch.

As the film progresses and positions itself closer and closer to visualizing what Adrian might look like, it also becomes more cartoonish. Adrian comes to be rendered almost as if he were a comic-book villain, which severely undermines the weight of the story.

Does every generation of moviegoers get the Emma it deserves? If so, we are in a lucky moment.

It’s just so extra in depicting a story about two gay men in love, and seeking validation from their family. It’s both its drawback and delight.

If you’re after an action-packed adventure film set against turn-of-the-century Canadian wilderness, you’ll likely come away disappointed. If you’re looking for a good ol’ yarn – the kind where bad guys sneer, good guys sigh and a big dog rescues everyone and finds its true self in the process? Jackpot!

While The Lodge isn’t as hearty as the horror films it desperately wants to emulate, the filmmakers have concocted a heavy stew of emotions, left on a low simmer. In the cold winter season of "IT" children orphan horror movies, it will have to suffice our cravings.

Here’s the thing: Joan and Tom do come back from it. The couples who stay together figure out how to do that. Ordinary Love is an argument that, as hard as that is, it’s worth it.

It’s plagued from start to finish by wavering intentions that result in an unfocused, unfunny film.

All four characters are rendered as layered, believable humans, and I especially love how each resulting relationship – Cami and Rachel, Rachel and Aster, Cami and Tallulah – has its own arc and rhythm.

Meghie’s films don’t conform to conventional plot structure; her approach is more musical, more fluid. As a result, her rhythms are sometimes a little off, as the plot wanders down this or that detour. On the plus side, she makes time for naturalistic conversations.

The movie was partially shot in beautiful British Columbia. And Carrey brings a madcap mashup of his previous avatars to this turn as Dr. Robotnik.

Despite the film’s laudatory tone, a portrait of Foster is competently painted by the veteran documentarian Avrich.

As the frequency of this particular nightmare ratchets up in volume, The Antenna proves a worthy successor to the work of David Cronenberg, Ben Wheatley and the many other filmmakers who delight in the meaty material of rancid subjects.

I’ve come around to Glass’s singular, purpose-filled vision – one that is intent on pushing its audience so far outside their comfort zones that you’d need a map to find your way back to baseline existence. Clark is also a wonder as the title character, playing a deluded and dangerous antihero with an unnerving zeal.

In writer-director Keith Thomas’s bid to add a layer of thematic novelty to a familiar genre, he has come up with a mish-mash that will satisfy only those with extremely acquired tastes.

A film I had to watch with my hands over my face at times. Part horror, suspense thriller and comedy, Come to Daddy gives us some very creative mutilation, plenty of second-hand embarrassment and laughs in a perfectly paced hour and a half.

The Traitor is an exploration of betrayal, according to Bellocchio. He seems to be asking, can a man truly change the course of his life, or is it just a pretense? Unfortunately, this account of Buscetta’s story doesn’t really give us any answers.

The film succeeds in showing how men with power can openly do essentially whatever they want as long as their company is successful, but it still left me wanting something more.

Underneath this clangy, pounding, speedy, thin, energetic confetti-shower of a movie is a collection of missed opportunities begging to be noticed.

Director Maggs tells a tough, sympathetic story in an imaginative way that makes Goalie feel like a war story.

Rabid is a limp satire with a lacklustre female protagonist, and this shallow remake of a cannibalistic rabies attack film barely leaves a mark.

Given the affordable-housing crisis in Canadian cities such as Toronto and Vancouver, there’s a lot to relate to in Rosie. One can only hope that if caught in a similar situation, one has Rosie’s grace to keep going.

Hikari’s work is well-meaning, and Kayama delivers an affecting, but not affected, performance that almost holds the story together. Eventually, though, the film loses confidence in itself.

It is fun, though, to spot the differences a female director brings to the genre.

Balagov displays the cinematic skills of an auteur at least twice his age, and both lead actresses are captivating – an especially remarkable feat given that neither had acted on-screen before. Yet as Balagov peels back the layers of Iya and Masha’s stories, Beanpole feels less like a deep cut and more like a scratch.

Everything about Gretel & Hansel is weirder, smarter and way more cinematic than I’d expected, thanks to some fascinating movie choices made by director Oz Perkins.

Panga’s strength lies in its capable cast, which brings heart to a largely contrived script that tells more than it shows.

The stellar cast manages to dignify some of it. And it’s the grizzled war veterans’ experiences that stay with you afterwards, the personal demons they keep on fighting.

Past the surface flaws of Color Out of Space, there are shiny Cage diamonds to be found.

The pacing is steady. The stories are told simply, with zero affectation or buildup by the director. The effect is astonishing.

Finally, there’s Colin Farrell, who plays a boxing coach called Coach, who tries to keep his Jamaican-English charges on, if not the straight and narrow, the straighter and narrower. He and his lads all wear plaid tracksuits, and it’s a testament to Farrell that he makes this feel entirely natural rather than stunty. He is an underrated master who can do no wrong, and I wish this movie starred him.

This film’s charm – and it does have some – lies in the fun it has with Smith and Lawrence’s aging.

If the muddled plot and aesthetic chaos of Dolittle leaves a bitter taste in your mouth, seek the antidote – an episode of "Planet Earth."

In the final act, cops and street children fight a desperate battle in an abandoned apartment block. It’s a metaphor, but it’s earned.

This is a film with an unforgettable story and performances that will edge into your DNA.

The state of modern criticism has never been so splintered. We create harsher and harsher binaries in our online response to cinema every day, so reading Kael can make you go, “Hey, remember pleasure?” While Garver’s documentary isn’t worthy of its subject’s fascinating artistic legacy, I anxiously await the one that is.

The finale is a gut-punch, but it arrives too long after Komasa has already exhausted most of his story's, and leading man's, energy.

It’s an action thriller that’s effective and never boring.

The best moments of Like a Boss are just that – moments. The film has an obvious deficit of story – instead of any sort of satisfying sense of development, the audience gets 83 minutes of the same problem repeated over and over.

If we are take Merce Cunningham at his word, and the joys of dance really are ephemeral, Cunningham makes a compelling case for the doing of it, over and over again.

It is the best anti-cat propaganda in the world. It could make you hate Garfield. Because the biggest sin of Cats, other than all its writhing sexuality and the heinous hairball filmmaking, is that it is supremely boring.

Mainly, this movie chatters when it should sing.

Through a richly layered lens of myth-building and melodrama, Ainouz manages to capture the heartbreak, solitude and resilience of women on the verge.

So much of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is pulled from what has come before, and so much of it carries the wear and tear of repetition.

The best of art makes you think of life. On that front, Michael Apted has achieved more than all but a handful of filmmakers. Cherish 63 Up, like you cherish life.

Whatever praise heads toward Sandler should be tripled in the direction of the Safdies.

Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin paints the picture of a man who was complex, complicated, talented and unparalleled. And perhaps above all, very loved.

Spies in Disguise is often amusing, and it’s especially nice to see it convey a message of anti-violence, but the film falls short of being truly memorable.

It is sublime. Better than "Lady Bird" even, and I would not, could not, say that lightly. Because it hits harder. Like someone ripping your heart out, while gently rubbing your back and telling you that it’s all going to be okay. I laughed obnoxiously loud, and I cried so hard my face formed a frozen death mask that just went, “Owww, myyyyy hearrrrttttt.”

When Malick reaches the end of Jaggerstatter’s story, A Hidden Life does reach something profound. Relief, maybe, that the film was over. But also a distinct pang that some filmmakers never change.

Ambivalent and tepid as it attempts to fashion a tick-tock thriller from Ailes’s downfall.

In the case of Sam Mendes’s First World War thriller 1917, I am willing to concede that this is indeed a cinematic experience that demands the largest canvas possible.

The Next Level works precisely for the same reasons why Welcome to the Jungle did. It’s never boring, it’s genuinely funny in a way that’s family friendly but still clever, and the cast’s chemistry is outstanding – it just works.

A riotous and gleefully delirious assault on the senses. It is vulgar. It is absurd. And it is completely enthralling.

Hauser is just as skilled and invested an actor as any of the more critically certified players alongside him here, including Sam Rockwell as Jewell’s anti-authoritarian lawyer and Kathy Bates as Jewell’s overprotective mother.

Okay, one kind word: Bill Nighy is clearly enjoying himself playing a New York businessman whose caviar restaurant improbably becomes a beacon for a host of impoverished ne’re-do-wells. But that is the only nicety I can muster for this otherwise cartoonish treacle.

In Fabric is a beautiful, unpredictable nightmare for those drawn to giggle in the dark.

LaBeouf’s script crackles with penetrating dialogue. His acting – LaBeouf portrays a version of his own father – might be the finest of his career.

It will make you mad as hell. So angry, even, that you might wonder why no one has given this opportunity to Todd Haynes before.

Queen & Slim’s ultimate route is a powerful one – a drive meant to be shared, and discussed, long after the road ends.

It’s light research, worn heavily, and the romance that ensues feels just as about as studied and slight.

I could watch the background environmental action here for hours. But then the second thought of my Frozen 2 experience hit: I really wish I was listening to Let it Go right now.

There’s enough action to keep things moving along, but the drama is ho-hum, juiced up with a turgid soundtrack and sirens howling in the night. It’s all just so average.

What has been crafted with The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open is the multitudinous reality of past and present, absent and material; a world-affirming space of narrative realization that speaks to those who exist within the efforts and “now” of survival.

A sensual and heady stew of romance, family drama, police procedural, political polemic and ghost story, Atlantics marks the debut of a ferocious talent in Diop.

Those yearning for aesthetic verve had better look elsewhere; much of The Report takes place inside cold, concrete government buildings. The occasional backdrop of mahogany wood panelling is the closest to warmth you’ll experience in two hours.

Awkwardly constructed with laughable romantic suggestions, sword-based gore and a whimsical approach to chronological accuracy, the story involves the Indian uprising against the British East India Company.

Deep inside the new Charlie’s Angels movie, there is a fun film struggling to breathe. There are momentary flashes of energy, of wit, of something sorta-kinda-maybe resembling entertainment. But every time writer-director Elizabeth Banks’s reboot threatens to come alive, it immediately falls to the floor, leaden and lifeless.

A con-artist movie that is something of a con itself.

Ford v Ferrari’s narrative and emotional beats feel assembled in a factory-floor kind of way. The characters are stock, the story’s ups and downs are easily telegraphed, and the inoffensive but not particularly inventive dialogue is spat up as if the actors were eager to move onto the next thing.

This familiar and formulaic holiday tale has its pleasures, unless your name is Ebenezer – and in the end, even he was mollified.

Ewan McGregor does a solid job as Danny, still shining (i.e. reading minds and performing other freaky feats of the head) after all these years, and Rebecca Ferguson is having a great deal of fun as his new nemesis, driving across the country sucking souls and finding new and inventive ways of wearing chapeaus.

Sachs manages this day in the life without cumbersome exposition thanks to the texture of this casting, all while keeping the disparate concerns of three generations moving.

As Playing With Fire progressed, it became increasingly clear that the target audience was not respected. This was made by people who seem to think kids are stupid.

Midway is a choppy bore, its main source of intrigue centred around whatever New Jersey-ese accent British actor Ed Skrein is attempting as dive bomber Richard Best.

It is glorious.

What should have been the trickiest parts of this enterprise – elucidating the warm relationship between Essrog (Norton) and Minna (Bruce Willis), and Essrog’s Tourette syndrome – Norton handles with aplomb. The rest is a murky mess, unnecessarily dense and confusing for two hours, and then in the last 20 minutes, way too obvious.

Not everyone is equal, though, if we’re being honest. Synonyms are words that mean similar but ultimately different things. At one point, students in the class are asked to stand individually and recite sections of La Marseillaise. Who knew the chorus of the French anthem contains the bracing nationalist lyrics, “Let us march! Let us march! So that impure blood irrigates our fields!”?

A subtext of the film is a focus on classical music, as if to ask how humans can be capable of both intense beauty and ruthless inhumanity.

Ultimately Dark Fate is nothing more than a run-duck-and-repeat production – an extraordinarily familiar, if efficiently made, exercise in Terminatorology. If the franchise pattern holds, it’ll be back.

There is such a thing as being too reverential, and too many scenes – including one where a roomful of white abolitionists applaud Tubman – insist on Tubman’s greatness, instead of letting us discover it.

A one-two punch that marks a step forward in Taylor’s brand of stylish and heightened thriller films.

It’s lovely film to look at, Springsteen confronting his past and demons in the prettiest, gently tuneful barn-and-big-sky way imaginable.

Double Tap tries to emulate the exact feelings of its predecessor, but the stakes aren’t anywhere close to high enough to warrant any real touching moments.

Maleficent 2: Mistress of Evil is a misfire, despite its wonderful title, which feels plucked straight from an Elvira movie.

Fortunately, Greener Grass is as enticing as it is bizarre, and even if you don’t immediately find yourself frolicking amidst its braces-wearing populace, give it time: you’ll eventually be lured in by their take on suburban normal.

The movie – a messy and frequently bloody blend of Shakespeare’s Henriad plays, but devoid of their language, scope and, well, drama – is forgettable.

But then, just as quickly, Jesse is back in the present-day trying to build an escape route to a new life. Without Walter, he is just another manchild with a gun and a pile of money in a garbage bag. Sometimes, the past is the past and it really is dead.

The film’s writing is unambitious; there’s little to cause adults to smile knowingly.