Pitch Perfect pitches itself between "Bridesmaids" and "Glee," which is to say it celebrates the low-down raunchiness of girls being girls among girls, while delivering a snap-crackle-and-pop music catharsis. Yes, folks, rock is dead, but long live showbiz.

The heart and mind of Maudie are always in the right place.

The symbolism is about as subtle as a fang to the neck. Really, Daybreakers is more fun than foreboding; it's fright-lite, yet that's par for the bloody course in these busy apocalyptic days.

Timeliness aside, it's an electrifying and erotic film-noir thriller in the Hitchcock tradition - James Stewart could have been cast as Tom Farrell - right up to the final five minutes, which feature a surprise ending that is a shock primarily because it makes little logical sense; surprise endings should click satisfyingly into place once the shock has worn off, but this one stirs up questions that refuse to settle. [14 Aug 1987]

Headhunters is slick and spritely, a mixture of corporate skullduggery and low-life slapstick that plays like "The Firm" meets "Blood Simple."

The result is a film where blisteringly naturalistic drama bumps up against sentimentally arch melodrama (that's the biggest collision in Crash). Haggis showed the same tendency in his script for "Million Dollar Baby," yet there it was better hidden under a simpler narrative. Here, the tendency has gotten magnified right along with his thematic ambitions.

Kajillionaire is certainly not operating on a familiar wavelength, but it is also more than, say, Wes Anderson cosplay. In its quizzical, candy-coloured, sideways view of the world – one that normalizes apartments that regularly flood with pink sludge – the film is offering a challenge to its audience. Accept it, or move along.

Jojo Rabbit excels with at least a sincerely attempted – if not exactly precise – balance of humour and horror, absurdity and tragedy.

Mamet's stylized dialogue, elaborate plot puzzles and the angry cleverness of his characterization makes for an invigorating, if not exactly likeable, mix.

What we see is admirable, but what we feel is minimal.

Because of its patently commercial instincts, this is basically a black knock-off of a popular genre. Yet, despite those instincts, and despite the sophomoric moralizing, the movie has zest. The edges are sharp; it holds our attention by holding on to the vestiges of its unique black perspective. In that sense, House Party doesn't so much sell out as buy in - there are worse faults. [11 May 1990]

The film’s real triumph is in how accurately it captures the intricacies of human relationships, especially when tested.

Budreau constructs with imagination and pleasing fluidity, painting a portrait with a soft, sympathetic focus while steering clear of worship.

Supporting turns by Bill Nighy, Rachael Stirling, Jack Lacy and Helen McCrory work to make Their Finest a testament to the familial nature that defined the film industry during the Second World War, as well as proof that it’s possible to breed joy in the midst of bleakness.

WHEN you go to see a film by those wild and crazy filmmakers who brought you Airplane!, Police Squad!, The Naked Gun and The Naked Gun 2, you pretty much know what you're going to get: puns visual and spoken, sight gags and pratfalls, parodies of other films and mockery of film conventions. It's just a question of how well they do it this time, and in Hot Shots!, which opens today in theatres across Canada, the answer is: not bad, not bad at all. The plot is the usual silly trifle, but the actors are good and the production is slick.[31 July 1991]

Arthur constantly flirts with the trite and dallies with the excessive. But it goes steady with neither, and so makes for a very pleasant companion on a warm summer eve. [17 July 1981]

Predators never gives us the satisfaction of knowing what motivates the alien hunters to use humans for sport, but at least it has fun showing us that humans can, indeed, be the most dangerous game.

Land of the Dead is a horror flick, but not a screamy one -- the booming soundtrack pumps up the drama, and the gore induces squirms, but zombies more titillate than anything.

As much as Stanley wants to believe in binaries – good honest work versus cheating, respect versus irresponsibility – Cohn’s low-key narrative undercuts such disingenuous naivety. Combine that with Jenkins’s slow-burn performance, and you have a film that speaks to, rather than talks down to, its audience.

When Jallikattu lets it rip, it’s as exciting and unusual an experience as you’re likely to get this year. Grab it by its horns and don’t dare let go.

Director Kathryn Bigelow, who earlier proved in the vampire movie Near Dark that she has a thing for denim, leather and blood, is merely the overture to the violent shocks and severe sexual confusions (dozens of them) that give Blue Steel its dissonant, disruptive power. [16 Mar 1990]

A rollicking good story set a millennium ago among Australian aborigines, Ten Canoes is one of those cultural-building exercises that genuinely entertains.

It's Duvall and Murray who make Get Low a small, wonderful thing.

For those who have been waiting for movies to catch up with the graphic possibilities of comic books, wait no longer: The Matrix is among us.

This is a blockbuster busting out of the block; this is a Hollywood staple served up on a European platter; this is summertime fare with a wintry verve.

Glassland is a small film with an emotional punch that wallops above its weight class.

Sharp drawing-room repartee interrogates the same decorum and morality as her poems, although the frequently epigrammatic dialogue is mannered, even for a period film.

It's one of those imperfect pictures that manages to command and hold our attention straight from the opening frames.

Throughout the film, Cheadle's eyes are constantly scanning his environment for opportunities or anything that may be amiss.

Working mostly with non-professional actors, Zagar also wrings some heartbreaking performances out of his young cast, especially Rosado, whose Jonah seems teetering at the edge of something he may never understand.

Just sit back, plug in, and enjoy the shocks - so adroitly administered, so sweetly sensational. [24 Feb 1995]

Overnuanced, a world of delicate cruelty, where most of the wounds take place without breaking the skin or even a sweat.

The wry observations of precocious pal Mary (Lena Dunham) and fierce Lunch Lady Lorraine (Susan Sarandon as a gruff optimist) make for a charming – and occasionally gruesome – disaster movie.

The lanky action star of the cult television series "Alias" is assigned a tired playbook in this film, but she finds room to manoeuvre in a performance that exceeds expectations.

Everything about Mid-August Lunch is simple and unpretentious, from the black-out scene transitions to the folk-dance score, as the four isolated, elderly women, over a couple of days and meals, become a circle of companions.

When Dougherty is able to keep these intelligent-ish impulses at bay, King of the Monsters is stupendous stupidity.

It’s a blockbuster movie with a shiny veneer for sure, but it also gives its story the benefit of the doubt with care in its development that seems to be missing from several recently released women-led movies looking to cash in on vague overtures to female solidarity.

Clearly, Costa-Gavras has lost none of his kinetic pacing or his cerebral way with thrills. Unfortunately, the script later gets corrupted itself by a sexual melodrama that lacks both sense and sultriness.

English director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz), takes the approach that movies have been far too reticent. His new film, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, is as vibrant as a cluttered wall of graffiti, jumpy enough to risk retina damage.

There's a lot to like in this film. As in the original, it has more than a few echoes of Animal Farm in its portrayal of humanity as the exploiter species. It respects both its child audience, by permitting Babe and his sunny decency to win out, and its adult audience, by generating more wit than the average dozen Hollywood films.

A splendid adventure sure to thrill children and fantasy buffs, while leaving everyone else passably entertained.

There’s nothing subtle about The Finest Hours, but much that is satisfying.

As for the winner and new champion, it has to be Kuosmanen, who never met a boxing-film cliché he couldn’t discreetly avoid.

It's a film that will both captivate and divide audiences.

While the visuals aren't nearly as eye-popping as those of the underwater movies, the film is more inspiring thanks to its human heroines.

Despite Marber's sardonic wit and Nichols's intelligent direction, the film winds up in the ironic position of practising exactly what it preaches: Closer invites and even gains our intimacy, only to finish by driving us ever farther away.

Films about single film scenes, however, represent unexplored territory. Which is why 78/52 is such an enticing prospect – a deep dive into one of the most influential moments in cinema history: the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.

Permanent Midnight is a slick, entertaining, show-biz saga whose worst fault may be that it has a happy ending. Stahl has not only recovered from debauchery, he's making a ton of cash with his book and the movie. In fact, this may be as quintessential a morality tale for the nineties as the Monica Lewinsky story. [25 Sep 1998, p.D9]

[A] tender but untimid drama.

Tetro is Coppola's best film since Apocalypse Now because the filmmaker has abandoned conventional drama – what for him had become a straightjacket – indulging in a collage style that allows him to honour favourite filmmakers.

In its mocking but acutely observed style, Hobo is a well-designed cinematic mess: There are whiplash jump cuts, patches where the sound almost disappears, and the whole thing is projected in a queasy, faded Technicolor.

Cronenberg offers a light touch to the material, spiking the deeply depressing dystopia with a sibling-rivalry battle royale that eagerly, if sometimes wobblily, shifts between sharp humour and slippery sentimentality.

Patricio Guzmán's documentary, Nostalgia for the Light, pays equal attention to the astronomers and searchers, regarding their quest as the same – a search for life.

Whatever you normally do during the rousing finale of a Rocky movie. It will feel familiar, but just go with it.

Alice Tate seems at first to be no more than a grimly sweet nothing, but she evolves into a giddily sweet something. So does her movie. [25 Jan 1991]

Peaches Does Herself is constantly inventive, from the Road Warrior/Rocky Horror fantasy costumes, to the hump-happy choreography.

Animal Kingdom isn't perfect: Some performance moments are over-ripe, and there's an episode of arbitrary cruelty that's excessively creepy.

For all its ballyhoo'd full access to Vogue's inner workings, the movie's cinéma-vérité approach feels perilously close to advertorial.

Maybe arguing the merits of a quote-unquote bad movie through the means of an imperfect documentary is the only option that makes sense. I have the distinct feeling, though, that somewhere in Europe, Verhoeven is laughing his ass off.

A bold, if sometimes preachy, film that is stylistically daring, improbably entertaining and politically supercharged.

What really distinguishes it from any number of drug-escapade stories is the unusual and welcome sense of Dostoyevskian moral gravity of the narrative.

The quickest and easiest way to humanize an unlikeable movie character is to give him a lovable dog, and so it goes with Riddick.

The best Brit noir since "Croupier" is a complex, marvellously twisty thriller.

In God's ghetto, as in so many of the world's forsaken places, warring armies of infants brandish their weapons of self-destruction, while politicians bluster and inspectors sleep.

Myers's sheer fertility of invention is of a different order, and even if he misses as often as he hits, he's definitely a swinger.

Music, naturally, is a big part of this movie -- Disney has a soundtrack to sell -- with both Cyruses, Taylor Swift and Rascal Flatts performing.

So much cinematic majesty perched precariously atop so little common sense. But, hell, maybe Quentin's right; relax, enjoy -- a castle with a shaky foundation is still quite a sight.

Precious is a bit like having a piano dropped on your head: messy but memorable.

Cody’s third-act twist threatens to unravel Theron’s hard work; yet, somehow, the power of Tully remains firmly in Theron’s skilled and capable hands.

Part patrician WASP, part Lady Macbeth and revealing more than a little of Hilary Clinton steel, Streep crackles with neurotic energy and barely checked sexuality, sublimated into an addiction to power and an unhealthy devotion to her son.

A film with enough sexy one-liners to tempt Mae West from the grave.

Peggy Sue is by no means a masterpiece of movie art, but it is an example of the sort of thoroughly enjoyable middle-brow Hollywood picture - clever, thoughtful, literate - that went missing about the time Peggy Sue got married. [10 Oct 1986]

They’re coming of age amidst violence and imperialism, but the film’s heart lies in the wide-eyed wonder of adolescence, so compellingly depicted by the first-time actors.

With Incendies, Villeneuve attempts to balance moment-by-moment authenticity and operatic emotional impact. Much of the time, he succeeds.

If the publicity release can be believed, he worked an entire year "undercover as a student to research teenage life". On the basis of what surfaces here - one stock phrase (the kids say "Go for it]" a lot) and a multitude of stock characters - Crowe might better have spent the time curled up with re-runs of Ozzie and Harriet. Give this intrepid researcher 12 months at General Motors and he might just discover the wheel.

In the end, the spectacular martial-arts epic seems to signify nothing much more than its own beauty, as brilliant and ephemeral as a fireworks display.

A happy surprise, a sweet and silly combination of the cheesy special effects of Japanese sci-fi movies and the witty slapstick of American silent films. [20 Apr 1981]

Fittingly, given that the film from Broomfield (who was also a former lover of Marianne’s) is nothing if not a love letter itself. So long, Marianne. So long, Leonard.

Despite its sometimes overwhelming sense of familiarity – including a conceit that feels lifted from last year’s Game Night, an impossible feat given both productions’ development timelines – Ready or Not is still energetic, inventive and bloody enough to permissibly coast on its influences’ fumes.

Greengrass's reluctance to unduly demonize the villains or overly sentimentalize the victims is commendable on the surface, but it tends to blur the two sides and to mask the gulf that separates them.

Not much happens in Drinking Buddies, which, frankly, is refreshing.

The Lost Boys mixes comedy and horror with a dexterity that augments each. Dracula and Peter Pan were antipodal products of the same society: bringing them together has resulted in a marriage that would make Bram Stoker snicker and J.M. Barrie bawl. [1 Aug 1987, p.C5]

Succeeds because the subject knows she's a showbiz monster and plays her role to the hilt. She's Norma Desmond in "Sunset Blvd." or "Mommie Dearest's" Joan Crawford up from the grave.

This is one of those solo turns where the star performance matters more than the story, and Renee Zellweger, playing the legendary singer Judy Garland in her sad last months – broke, anxious, drunk, rueful, but still in it – gives it everything she’s got.

What a fine, tender, delicate, funny, gender-bending-and-rebending performance this is.

It is the platonic ideal of big, smart-dumb B-movie filmmaking – and, like Kong himself, it must be seen to be believed.

Its war scenes are plenty thrilling, but the film’s real achievement is its quiet authenticity.

It’s an edge-of-your-seat crowd-pleaser that cares enough to develop its story world and characters just as well as its jump-scares and tension.

The picture's charm lies in the continuing by-play between the filmmakers and their subject, with each side doing its best to deconstruct the other.

A serene, existential experience from the Canadian filmmaker Alison McAlpine, who takes to Chile’s Atacama Desert to look both skyward and inward.

The restaurant story is wonderfully taut, with Egoyan in full control of his always extravagant imagery.

Humanistic and anti-war, Memphis Belle is predictably uplifting, as is the wont of producer Puttnam, but not at the expense of good sense. These were fine kids, this exciting and intelligent film says, and it wasn't their fault society couldn't find anything better for them to do than kill or be killed. Memphis Belle is a dance of life tapped out on a tombstone. [12 Oct 1990]

Perhaps Gabriadze has created a new genre here, but do we want to sit all day in front of an office computer and then go out and spend dollars to watch a small screen on a bigger screen for entertainment?

Men may be gay by nature, but women are lesbians by choice -- for them, it's a simple matter of trading up. Such is the implied message of Kissing Jessica Stein.

The movie is pretty damned funny in its insubstantial, gratuitously violent, gratuitously everything way.

The whistling was originally developed to more conveniently communicate across great distances and that gives Porumboiu the perfect excuse to repeatedly frame the assorted players dwarfed by vast cityscapes and spectacular nature vistas.

A flashy nineties flick with a campy fifties feel -- it's playful, naive, clever, silly, often inventive, occasionally uneven and, compared to studio offerings to date, the best present under this year's cinematic tree.

An energetic, cockeyed, bloody, and sometimes delightfully vicious skewering of Millennial culture – or, more accurately, what Instagram-less tsk-tsk’ers imagine millennial culture to be – director Halina Reijn’s new film exists not only to meet late-summer slasher expectations, but to ever so slightly subvert them.