Barry Hertz

Alternately deploying twisty monologues and quick back-and-forth exchanges, Montague and Sanger are clearly having a ball. They’re not only riffing on obvious inspirations like Orson Welles’s "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast and "Twilight Zone" mastermind Rod Serling, but also the modern ubiquity of podcasts, and their propensity for devolving into audio fabulism.

This is still a light and frothy rom-com, predictable and charming in equal measure, and most comfortable when it fits the efficient mold of genre obligations. But when it wants to, it can really crank that charm up to 11.

It’s the type of film that was birthed with 1997′s "The Full Monty," which shares a director with Military Wives in Peter Cattaneo – as well as a flat, incurious sensibility that lacks any hint of complexity in the layers of its world or the inner lives of its characters.

An exercise in miserablism that, although clocking in at an ostensibly tight pace, feels never-ending.

Watching it all unfold in my sweatpants while shoving frozen pizza into my gullet, I found it deeply, unshakably depressing.

A zany mix of dark comedy, slapstick, and high-concept adventure, The Lovebirds moves fast in the hopes that no one notices how messy its construction is.

The Painter and the Thief might be the best documentary of the year, if it could be fairly called a documentary. Instead, director Benjamin Ree’s film is more a mesmerizing, and potentially transgressive, investigation into just how far the documentary form can be torn apart and put back together – and whether the audience should accept such a wild reconfiguration.

Despite its half-decade worth of aspirations to be something, Scoob! is a middle-ground of nothingness. Toss it a bone, if you wish – just know that your stay-at-home kids will be fighting over other, more interesting scraps soon enough.

Sallitt is grasping for something profound here – a portrait of friendship seen both up-close and from a distance. Fourteen may ultimately be just that – a grasp – but it is worth reaching out for all the same.

Overriding everything is a profound sense of laziness. Jokes do not land here so much as they ooze forth, slow and noxious.

The tension between trying to make something unique and trying to adhere to whatever expectations you place on yourself when you call your movie Capone (although to be fair its working title was Fonzo) is right up there onscreen. In all its glorious mess.

A documentary as inspiring as it is flat-out bizarre.

A uniquely Canadian exercise in down-and-out misery, Amy Jo Johnson’s second directorial effort, Tammy’s Always Dying, delivers a wealth of interesting talent to the table, and leaves them to fight for scraps.

All Day and a Night offers renewed hope for Wright acolytes, all while reaffirming a new star in Sanders.

The filmmaker’s narrative and visual approach isn’t especially novel in style, but it is compassionate, detailed and persuasive in its assembly.

From its lazy title down to its yes-we-all-saw-that-coming third-act twist, Dangerous Lies offers a particularly boring kind of last-resort viewing.

The film is also weighed down with a hokey record-scratch moment, a triumphant big-game sequence and a church-set finale that seems to be aping "The Graduate" but doesn’t quite have the courage to fully embrace the comedy of the moment.

If there is a one-word skeleton key to unlocking Guns Akimbo, it might simply be: “sloppy.”

This is a movie that cries out for attention, in ways both admirable and grating.

It is as much a gusty dissection of colonialism as it is a gut-spilling splatter-thon.

Add it all up, and Extraction’s many creative solutions to reinvigorating the genre nearly balance out its many generic genre problems. So, it’s good enough to take a shot on, especially after a stressful day of isolated modern life. But just one shot.

Unless you are a direct descendant of Robert the Bruce, or perhaps part of the Macfayden clan, you’re better off letting this particular version of history get lost in the sands of time.

Every now and then, Jackman dips into Serious Acting exercises but seems so visibly uncomfortable placing himself in such situations that he feels a micro-second from jumping out of his own skin, when he should instead be sinking into someone else’s (see The Fountain, Prisoners, The Front Runner).

But while first-timer mistakes abound – everyone except the three leads deliver performances so stiff I wondered if they were deliberate – Selah and the Spades is more than just a slick calling card. It’s impassioned, informed and sometimes furious work that could find Poe being name-checked herself not too long from now.

Parents might get more of a kick out of the voice-casting and darker corners of the story than school-aged children. But Vancouver’s BRON Animation studio provides a strong, often beguiling sense of tyke-hypnotizing flair to the visuals, and the zippy, synthy score by Wes Anderson favourite Mark Mothersbaugh should keep kids bouncing up and down, in a good way.

Wagner Moura (Narcos’s Pablo Escobar himself) does what he can as the sturdy Sergio, and the actor has strong, near-instant chemistry with a love interest played by Ana de Armas.

Yang’s deeply personal, imaginative work is very much its own creation, just as much as "The Farewell." Or any other movie whose producers knew that audiences are hungry for diverse stories. That representation matters as much as story and style and performance. All of which, by the way, Tigertail has in spades.

It’s zippy and distracting enough to keep you and your brood entertained for half an afternoon, but don’t get too comfortable – I can see the soundtrack eventually grating if you ever find your kids demanding to watch it over and over again. Which is inevitable.