Given the number of songs worked into the script, there’s a music video quality to the film. If you’re looking for some lighthearted distraction from the worries of the world right now, however, give Sing 2 a shot.

A grownup departure from the teen-romance norm -- it speaks nothing about passion and volumes about trust.

This is an affecting picture that leaves the viewer as wrung out as the protagonist. No doubt you'll be seduced but, in the end, you may also feel abandoned.

But it’s Rooney who commands the most attention. As she already proved in David Fincher’s "The Social Network" and "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," she has an oddly fascinating screen presence, suggesting both vulnerability and inscrutable levels of calculation. Few actors or actresses can make inexpressiveness look so smart.

What’s remarkable is that this fifth Terminator is worthwhile precisely because of its franchise cash-in excessiveness. It’s at once an eminently satisfying actioner, jackknifing tractor-trailers and vertiginous helicopter chases and all, as it is a passably thought-provoking comment on memory – headily engaging with the very nostalgia it intends to evoke.

Haynes and Selznick do get a bit too, well, wonderstruck by their own project, which blinds them to one central narrative pivot that is more annoying than awe-inspiring.

The film is as much about Hokusai as it is about the titular protagonist, and so she defers to her father here as she apparently did in real life.

Quitting begins to seem intriguing in concept. Now comes the best news: It's just as compelling in execution.

Even if you were never the sort who cared what goes on behind others’ closed doors, the Hawkings’ drama is catnip. And if you’ll excuse the pun, you could say it was only a matter of time before Hollywood came calling.

Essentially agenda-free, My Perestroika has the quality of a candid conversation with long-lost cousins from another country.

Top Five finds Rock in an elevated form, at 49. Things change, sometimes for the better.

No doubt, Blood Brother is narrowly focused on Braat’s needs and evolution, but in contrast to social-issue films filled with talking-head experts and bullet-point graphs, this is a portrait of a caregiver that goes to the core of motivation – in this case, the need to share love.

Sometimes, the quiet lyricism of DuVernay’s direction seems at odds with the grittiness of the subject matter, like poetry force-fed into prose.

Possibly no one else does "grim" with as much unsparing enthusiasm as the Scandinavians.

A quiet study of its characters, Ali & Ava is a fresh take on otherwise well-worn rom-com narratives.

The Clowns and the Krumpers have a rivalry that parallels the Bloods and the Crips battle for the neighbourhood, but fought out in moves, not bullets.

It's not Smith's fault that the movie can't quite pry apart the man from the myth from the metaphor. The three may well be inseparable by now and, at this point in his history and ours, that's surely the way we prefer it.

The film’s own unhurried pace might frustrate the popcorn crowd, but it is the blasé, blank-faced unconcern for expediency from judges, prosecutors and bailiffs that should prove much more infuriating.

Ultimately, the performances carry the film.

It may be a slim story, but its gentle humour, natural rhythm and above all authentic performances make Tomboy beautiful, intimate cinema.

The question subtly, craftily documented in The Swell Season is whether the fans or Hansard himself want to see the singer cast in this new role of success.

It may not go the distance, but it’s surely worth a step into the ring.

The heavy Star Wars legacy sits lightly on Ehrenreich’s shoulders in a Disney-Lucasfilm movie that is finally having fun.

Mainly, it features dramatic footage of the protests, following the protestors’ logic as a leaderless movement coalesces on social media and crowd-sources strategies on the fly.

Like Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven," the underlying tension involves the protagonist's journey to regain his humanity. Hostiles, a hotbed of hostility.

It doesn't prick the social conscience or offer insights into the human condition, but it does well what it sets out to do: tell a loopy love story and make audiences feel good. This is summer entertainment - and long-shelf-life video - of the first order. [12 June 1992]

Ultimately, Shine a Light is illuminating indeed, even fascinating, but not in the way Scorsese intended. What he has created, inadvertently, is an invaluable documentation of semi-fossilized Stones – musicologists may like it, sociologists should love it and, some distant day, anthropologists will treasure it.

Yet while last month’s Claire Denis drama "High Life" will go down as one of the year’s ultimate masterpieces, the Swedish soul-crusher Aniara will likely be remembered as an ambitious if ultimately weaker curiosity: the "Antz" to Denis’s "A Bug’s Life" (a sentence I never thought I’d be able to employ, but here we are).

As a young man he dreamed of racing cars. Now he rides a bicycle to the market each day, to negotiate with an elite fraternity of top fish dealers, who save their best for Jiri's restaurant. Like the fish that are disappearing from the oceans, they're probably the last of a breed.

Nasty in its narrative and nifty in its aesthetic, Stephen Susco’s new film is a solid argument against doing anything remotely illicit online.

A movie that is often as awkward and as filled with mixed impulses as the age it documents.

A conventional mixture of thriller and moral drama, the film is unsettling in both intentional and unintentional ways.

In a series of mini-rants with insights that range from the ho-hum to the profound, the sixtysomething Žižek, paunchy, bearded and bobbing his hands like a squirrel’s paws, rummages through what he calls the trash can of ideology.

Unlike "Being John Malkovich," which JCVD sometimes resembles, there is no secret portal to the star's head; instead, the audience gets a fleeting glimpse through the smeared window of his soul.

As torpedoes shoot through the seas and depth charges pass by, carrying their whining cargo of destruction, Das Boot brings the presence of death to within a whisper of the eardrum.

By Cinema Stathama considerations, The Beekeeper is a masterpiece – the best B(ee)-movie of this cold-hearted season.

It's rare for a documentary style to match its subject so ideally.

Throughout, Dorff is doggedly credible as an obtuse actor, but the richer performance here is from Fanning, and it might have been a stronger movie told from her character's point of view.

If children will be entertained by the unwilling roommates’ narrow escape from cats, dog catchers and the Flushed Pets, it is the mass of surrounding detail, from the glittering Manhattan skyline and Gidget’s sleek modernist pad to the animals’ remarkable mastery of domestic technology, that will impress the adults.

What do you get when you cross King Kong with E.T.? Harry And The Hendersons is what, and it's a delightful enough offspring - often funny, occasionally charming and always mighty eager to please. Too eager at times, but that's a forgivable flaw in an otherwise engaging hybrid. [5 June 1987]

Some of these passages, especially a visit to North Korea, are fascinating in their own right but the film does risk getting sidetracked by tangential stories. Nonetheless, this intersection of nature and culture is filled with insight.

Trading Places, which is wildly funny at times, is Murphy's film. [10 Jun 1983]

The effect of watching these viral videos as a "movie" feels genuinely singular – suspending the viewer somewhere between reality and documentary, between the dash-mounted long takes of Abbas Kiarostami's "10" and the combustible vehicular carnage of Michael Bay's "The Island," between cinema and something else.

If this rings distant Laurel-and-Hardy, or even Crosby-and-Hope bells, it's on purpose. Gooding's and Sanz's performances are almost a tribute to vaudeville-influenced two-guy comedy.

The combination of Hardy’s almost androgynous features and powerful physique evokes a young Marlon Brando, and while it’s premature to say he has a talent to match, he has emerged as one of the screen’s most versatile and compelling presences. Locke is what you might call his sedentary tour de force.

What's right about Horrible Bosses is less easy to identify, but it comes down to something like esprit de corps. The three principal actors click. The looseness of the structure actually proves a benefit, allowing Bateman, Sudeikis and Day, all trained on television comedy, to bounce off each other, talk over each other and apparently pull lines out of the air.

Sharply written by Billy Crystal and ably directed by Henry Winkler, Memories of Me turns out to be an enjoyably sentimental surprise - what it has going for it that the psychodramatic versions don't is a sense of humor, but it covers the same serious issues with a similar amount of depth. [07 Oct 1988]

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.

An emotionally powerful if somewhat divided experience. The grimness, the sweat, the panic are there in Saving Private Ryan-level intensity. At the same time, you never entirely lose the sense that the movie is a formal and calculated cinematic exercise, something of an illustrated argument.

Shakespeare would have delighted in the chapter, especially in the antagonist, but not at the expense of the longer and darker and still-unfinished book.

The film extends Jackie's fame beyond her allotted New York 15 minutes and keeps it alive 30 years later, thanks to a mixture of fond high-profile interviews and grainy archival clips.

A fascinating and compelling dive into an artist’s uniquely ticking parts, gives voice to a complex dude and broadens the picture.

Director Karyn Kusama shifts dexterously between the present and the past, unspooling a satisfyingly twisted piece of storytelling by writers Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi, who succeed in making both plots gripping. Kudos to Kidman for taking on an ugly role (both physically and morally) and for giving both versions of the character a convincing hardness.

There's a missing element whose absence, forgive me, I can't help but lament. This is a movie about magic that ultimately lacks the magic of movies."

A wistfulness hangs over the proceedings: Viewers can't help but realize that, just after the final scene, which takes place on the early morning of Donald Trump's inauguration, the new president's administration began to feverishly reverse all the delicate, passionate work we had just observed.

With its intricate design, sly humour and timely theme, Travellers and Magicians is a lot more than just a travelogue.

Overly sensitive pet owners, however, would be advised to take a walk.

Over all, Neil Young Journeys is a pretty solemn affair, kinda like the man himself.

As he transfers his talents to a European setting and Spanish-speaking cast, Farhadi loses none of his remarkable ability to observe close relationships collapsing under stress.

For once, the gimmick is a perfect reflection of the characters.

Great title, and the whiff of existential loneliness that it conjures up – brothers locked not in solidarity but in solitude – permeates the entire movie.

The movie's climax takes Harry Potter into territory that is much more like epic horror than most of what the series has seen before. There is more obvious religious symbolism and apocalyptic violence as Harry emerges into his role as “the chosen one.”

Odd but engaging film.

Marley the film wonderfully explains its subject's music. As for Macdonald's message, I'm just not sure.

Van Sant has some fun with the briefly time-jumping narrative, but otherwise it’s shocking how little interest he seems to have in his subject. At least the director helps his star by filling out the supporting cast with performers who do their best to match Phoenix’s dedication, including a wonderful Jonah Hill as Callahan’s skeptical AA sponsor and Rooney Mara as the cartoonist’s off-and-on love interest.

Still Mine is a measured but considerably moving celebration of things hand-crafted, traditional and built to last.

The delight of this film isn't so much in the tale as the telling.

Turn Me On, Dammit! is that rare thing: an honest coming-of-age story from the female perspective.

This unrealized focus is not to say that The Music of Strangers is not worth seeing. It is, for many reasons, not the least of which is Neville’s pacing and the beautiful camerawork, as well as the many fine performances.

Stockwell takes an especially leaden screenplay, floats the dull thing up from the depths of mediocrity, and makes it cinematically buoyant. Within limits, that is.

As directed by Renny Harlin (the director of Die Hard 2), Cliffhanger passes the principal tests of an action movie - it has truly awe-inspiring stunts and special effects and many of its suspense sequences will leave you with your heart in your mouth.

A bittersweet salute, appraisal and explanation of the early-nineties Saturday Night Live troupe mainstay.

Only after the Hollywood hypnotism wears off is it apparent that Rain Man, fundamentally an artsy sentimentalization of "The Odd Couple," is somewhat less than the sum of its perfect parts.

Surreal and hilarious.

Certainly a bizarre kind of virtuoso filmmaking, but it does not feel precocious or burdened with too many ideas.

Waters uses the tawdry in satirical celebration of itself - he's the red satin tassled plush pillow of filmmaking. [17 Sep 1981]

Leave it to Brad Pitt, producer and star of World War Z, to try to put the zip back in zombie.

Armadillo is a work of stunningly difficult filmmaking, going out on patrol with the soldiers and diving for cover amid the pop of bullets and blasts of artillery.

Like Apatow's best work, this is about friendships – only this group of loveable misfits wear matching purple gowns.

Corbet’s work is a big, sloppy wet kiss to all manner of rise-and-fall clichés. Yet it mostly works, with Corbet as eager to display his influences...as he is to prove he can handle his own gonzo-spectacle set-pieces.

Take 13 Tzameti for what it is: a tightly screwed shocker, a suspense tour de force that proceeds through a harrowing chain of events with alarming confidence.

After successfully telling a complex story, Spielberg inevitably overdramatizes its [spoiler omitted] ending.

It’s a stacked lineup, and considering the profound un-funniness of so many Hollywood comedies, the fact that the film bats somewhere around .300 for its two-hour duration makes it feel like a genuine all-star event.

Neither outrageous nor subtle as a religious satire, but here's the good news for modern viewers: With it's unusual Christian backdrop, this is one of the most intriguing rite-of-passage teen comedies in a long time.

Comes alive with the more relaxed performances from its senior set.

Jarecki picks up all sorts of celebrated people and thinkers – probably too many. I would have liked to hear more from Elvis’s Graceland cook and less from Alec Baldwin.

So despite the conventionalism of the film’s final minutes, I’d like to raise a glass of Chardonnay and toast Bridget Jones’s Baby on its (mostly) hilarious, and long-anticipated, homecoming.

Slowly, but not always confidently, Dowse and Mack begin to upend obligations of the structure, play fast and loose with the limits of good taste and wind up with, while far from a comedic masterpiece, an enjoyably reckless piece of vulgar entertainment.

Chloe is director Atom Egoyan’s foray into the realm of what might be called artful trash. This is a high-toned erotic thriller, handled with style and some emotionally raw scenes, aiming for an effect that’s pleasingly unnerving, if not outright arousing.

The characters are entertainingly contradictory, though in a somewhat predictable way: Nice people aren’t honest, and honest people aren’t nice.

The film is a sad calamity of conflicting narratives as those closest to Houston work through varying stages of honesty and denial.

Corbett (of Sex and the City fame) is oddly cast, but still a lovable, if dorky, dad, capable of saving the day.

Entire passages stretch along at a too-leisurely pace, allowing whatever anger Jia is surely carrying to too frequently cool off. Still, by the film’s New Year’s Eve-set finale, there’s little doubt Jia can create masterful cinematic moments when he so desires.

Mank is, overwhelmingly, so very interesting. But it is also something of a half-masterpiece mess: thematically scattered, awkwardly paced, overlong and curiously uninterested in the inner life of its title character.

This low-low-budget movie tells its little Romeo and Juliet story without pretension or condescension. In scratching at the surface of youth trends, Valley Girl manages to reveal the perennial innocence of teenage romance. And that, in the wake of such sexist teenage fare as Porky's and Spring Break, is a fresh and sweet achievement. [24 May 1983]

For about two-thirds of the film, The Past’s release of information and emotion is almost perfect. Then, in the last third, it begins to feel contrived, as if Farhadi is trying to show a long chain of guilt, and to see how far it will unspool. The drawn-out revelations feel like overkill, though not enough to spoil what’s very good here.

Yes, the delight of this movie lies in these devilish details, and it's clear that writer-director Greg Mottola knows them well.

The Lobster is a brilliant piece of satire, but largely fails in an attempt to build its wicked wit into a more conventional romance.