Even those more neutral about Pearl Jam will find it impossible not to enjoy director Cameron Crowe's driving retrospective of the band's stage-diving 20 years, at least on some level.

With a fine balance of winking absurdity and wry humour – Cohen would tip his fedora to the born-and-raised Montrealer Bissonnette on that score – Death of a Ladies’ Man is a charming study of a man in crisis. It’s serious here and funny there.

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

Not too surprisingly, Fincher doesn't bring his auteur A-game here, though his crafty B-game is better than most. As well, the break-out performance of Rooney Mara as the semi-feral computer hacker, Lisbeth Salander, gives the film a residue of authentic anguish.

The rare sequel that is better than the original.

The film is not about the audience's shared experience, and a lot more about how cool it is to have a backstage pass.

It makes for a compelling story and some thrilling music.

Says the actor Jeff Bridges, a long-time and articulate soldier in the campaign against hunger: “It’s a problem that our government is ashamed of acknowledging. We’re in denial.”

Reserved yet still suspenseful and hugely ambitious, Syriana sets out to prove what many have come to suspect -- that oil money is the root of all contemporary evil.

Like a book we want to keep reading, despite the compression of pages telling us the end is near, it’s hard not to want A Most Wanted Man to go on forever, if only to spend time in the company of Hoffman – one of the great actors of his, or any, generation.

Knuckleball does not flutter; its pace and tone is lean, mean and eerie. Luca Villacis plays the home-alone little hero, a Rambo MacGyver Jr. in the making. Not all the kid’s ingenuity and wits are plausible, though, and a late-plot throw-in is a bit much. Still, there’s Ironside and enough cold-weather tension to make Knuckleball a swing-and-hit deal.

Just when the movie seems set to soar, there's a drag factor -- it keeps getting weighed down, if not sunk, by an anchor of ponderousness.

Eventually, the film, shot on location in Spain by a director with an innate understanding of how to stylize without becoming self-conscious, asks to be seen as a comic but moving meditation on the ways we do, or do not, go gently into that good night. [05 Apr 1985]

What it is, is a delicious black-widow mystery, in which the deep-gazing actress Rachel Weisz rocks the veil.

Bitter Moon isn't perfection, but this truly creepy story of obsessive love and even more obsessive hatred is deliciously, horribly, compellingly watchable. [22 Mar 1994]

For the kids, the action is always lively and, for the rest of us, the dialogue has a witty and even caustic edge.

Absence of Malice is lively, provocative and intelligent, three qualities in short supply this Christmas. It simplifies, but it rarely distorts, and it doggedly picks at sores journalists would just as soon banish by Band-aid. [19 Dec 1981]

Despite its hastily tacked-on resolution, Mississippi Masala is still a lesson well delivered - flecked with humour and never pedantic. [28 Feb 1992]

Actually a pretty entertaining movie, in a kick-you-in-the-pants kind of way. A relative rarity -- a solid no-brow comedy.

Sometimes, when you least expect it, Hollywood is so Hollywood good, serving up a flick guaranteed to answer the clarion call of the multitudes. "I just want to be entertained," you say? Well, fork out then, because The Italian Job does the job.

Right from its opening frame, there’s a lyrical, dreamlike quality to Payal Kapadia’s debut feature.

Smart, anxious and weirdly funny, the first feature from Toronto video artist Daniel Cockburn connects a series of scenarios that gradually begin to loop into each other.

It is a highly entertaining romp that doesn’t take itself too seriously and is unapologetic in both its self-awareness and sense of humour.

The meta-fiction may be overdone, but that and the director’s feeling for tone create the expansive atmosphere in which a talented multiracial cast lead by Dev Patel can master everything from pure melodrama to high comedy.

More honourable than "amazing," the latest reboot of the Spider-man franchise brings Marvel Comics web-slinging super-hero down to earth, in a mostly satisfactory way.

From its haunting opening in Derry's gently flooded streets to its nightmarish finale in the forsaken sewers underneath, this new version of It stands as a solid execution of King's modus operandi.

First Love is neither a return to form for Miike nor is it a groundbreaking new leap into the unknown. The film rests instead in the mushy, bloody Miike middle – a pleasant diversion for the director’s faithful fans and an easy-ish entry for those eager to jump on the man’s over-the-top-is-not-good-enough wavelength. Your Miike mileage may vary – but rest assured, there’s no barf bag required.

The trouble with Cosmopolis, David Cronenberg's faithful-to-a-fault adaptation from Don DeLillo's 2003 novel, is that it's more metaphor than meat.