McKay’s movie is bold and impertinent and perhaps won’t be for audiences that want a film to play by the rules, but his chutzpah and ambition is something to behold.

The greatest pitfall of Mary Poppins Returns isn’t the familiarity; it’s the cohesion, specifically the lack thereof. The narrative tissue is merely an excuse to set up each extravagant musical number, but the best musicals don’t forget to make the non-musical moments count.

With well-staged action, good character work, and believable progressions from the previous installment, The Quake is the sequel that fans of “The Wave” deserve.

A crowd-pleaser for sure, Bumblebee can feel a little corny and on-the-nose when it comes to ingratiating itself to the decade and formula it idolizes, but overall, it’s a strong adaptation of what many wanted in the first place: a live-action version of the cherished 1980s animated cartoon.

If you come looking for an effective drama with heavy ideas about family and justice, The Mule will likely disappoint. However, if the idea of an oddball road trip with Clint Eastwood toting a few kilos in the back sounds appealing, you’re in for a treat.

This visually clumsy and gauche, but spectacular, movie knows what it wants to be when it grows up for better or worse.

Song of Back and Neck is worth a watch—even if you’ll scratch your head more often than you’ll laugh.

Creed II is exactly what you want from a ‘Rocky’/’Creed’ film: it’s engaging, emotional, gripping, and entertaining and as a part two nudges the characters forward in all the right ways.

Despite its ruff collars and Elizabethan English, Mary Queen of Scots is no staid, stuffy period drama, as restrained as the breathing of corseted women. Instead, this a vital film, whose lace-trimmed bosom heaves with life.

It’s a very watchable — if occasionally frustrating— first effort, but one hopes that the director will carve out more original territory with his second film, regardless of where he settles.

Elgort does great work juggling what is essentially a dual performance, while Oliver, making his feature directorial debut, here, keeps things clipping along at a taut, engaging pace. Small in scope, yet successful in just about every aspect of its unspooling, Jonathan stands tall.

It’s not only a realistic portrait of a conservative Middle America but a devastating portrayal of what happens when a family goes murderously awry.

Van Gogh (Willem Dafoe) is returned to his human dimensions, by a keen script and wonderful lead performance, while still being held up as an example of the artist’s ability to transcend time.

For all its little issues, “Anchor and Hope” is tremendously aided by three fine performances.

While the first film was jarring and clumsy, the sequel finds itself settling into a groove; it’s darker, weirder, more relevant and, yes, way more magical.

Brewer, of course, is the glue that holds the puzzle together. If we didn’t care for her surreal plight, then the film would just not work, but the actress builds a thoroughly believable character in Alice.

If you took “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” mashed it up with some gonzo grindhouse pics, doused it in shaken-up cans of original Four Loko and then lit it on fire, laughing while it burned, you might begin to approach the craziness that is Overlord.

It’s not a terrible time at the movies, but after Coogan & Pope’s previous collaboration on “Philomena” proved to be such a genuinely satisfying example of this kind of drama, it’s hard not to feel like there’s something of a missed opportunity here, a film truly deserving of the excellent performances at its centre.

Outlaw King plays like the kind of passion project that a filmmaker just gets lost in; its bloated running time and narrative tedium bespeak a director watching a movie in his head for so long, he can no longer see its flaws.

Despite its intentions to get close to Mercury, Bohemian Rhapsody is as intimate as a sold-out stadium show, with none of the accompanying power.

If part of the great power of cinema is in being a visual medium that can somehow give form to the intangible, Esparza’s sophomore film is exemplary: it makes manifest such enormous, politicized intangibles as race, class and gender relations through the authentic portrayal of real lives, real people, vividly played.

Charm City may not be an easy watch, but Ness argues that through empathy, progress can be made.

What we are left with is far from a perfect film, but Laurent is a confident director who elevates the pulpy plot of Pizzolato’s novel into a unique reflection of characters on the margins of society. It, also, probably doesn’t hurt that she has Foster and Fanning at the top of their game to deliver the material.

It’s a cast full of the sort of faces that regularly pop up on ones-to-watch lists, and it’s the biggest thing that Been So Long has going for it. “Chewing Gum” fans will know how talented Coel is, but she’s particularly good here with a role that’s more adult and serious than her breakout turn (while still letting her have some fun occasionally).

The film is all at once a genuine, crowd-pleasing barnstormer and an uncomfortably identifiable personal theme park 4D experience.

The young couple exists in a bubble of love that has an air of reality sucked right out of it.

An interesting, but ultimately light and frothy, Parisian rom-com that flies by at a breezy 73 minutes, A Faithful Man does alright for itself despite a few baked in flaws.

When all’s said and done, Wobble Palace is trying so hard you can’t help but like it.