The story of former Fox News head honcho Roger Ailes and the epic downfall orchestrated by his female victims at the network is now the stuff of legend. What started off as just a single accusation from fired anchor Gretchen Carlson turned into a domino effect of Shakespearean proportions. All of this occurring during the thick of the 2016 election when candidate Donald Trump’s numbers were rising and Fox News had to juggle their loyalties to both Ailes and his female accusers.

Greta Gerwig‘s “Little Women” runs on the notion that a fresh and insightful adaptation could still be made of Louise May Alcott’s classic novel. After all, this is the fourth Hollywood adaptation of Alcott’s beloved story. The end result is somewhere between decent, passable and not that bad. You can’t help but respect Gerwig’s intentions, not to mention the stunning costume and set design, and some of the performances, but the creative decisions behind this latest adaptation of “Little Women” feel misguided and too overly obvious.

“1917,” from “American Beauty “director Sam Mendes, wants to take the war movie genre and turn it into a ride. With the help of DP extraordinaire, Roger Deakins, the film essentially unfolds via a single, unbroken shot. However, unlike, say, Alexander Sokourov’s “Russian Ark,” this experiment from Deakins and Mendes manages to find ways to make invisible cuts. It’s the same artificial one-take experiment that was used in Hitchcock’s “Rope” and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s “Birdman.” However, the result here feels more gimmick than cinema, a sort of virtual reality video game, but devoid of a beating heart.

“Richard Jewell” is a matter-of-fact, step-by-step procedural that feels so old-school, so simply but powerfully rendered to the viewer, that it could have only come from director Clint Eastwood’s just-tell-the-story brand of cinema.

The saga of Harvard grad Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan), a man who has now managed to overturn the death row sentences of over 140 inmates in America, is brought to the screen by way of Destin Daniel Cretton’s frustratingly conventional “Just Mercy.”

Adam Sandler has proven himself to be a formidable actor over the years. Yes, THAT Adam Sandler, the same actor who played the lovable H2O-loving dimwit in “The Waterboy,” and the same guy who fought Bob Barker on the golf course in “Happy Gilmore,” etc.

I had hoped that Terrence Malick‘s “A Hidden Life” would finally be the movie to bring the auteur back into tip-top shape, after a trio of bad movies (“To the Wonder,” “Knight of Cups,” “Song to Song”), however, alas, that is not the case.

I can’t recommend this movie highly enough. It will be an eye-opener for the lucky few who get a chance to see it in limited release. “Midnight Family” is one of those exceptional few, a documentary that ends up being more thrilling than any Hollywood blockbuster. It makes you forget you are even watching non-fiction filmmaking - the camera so fluid and the editing so precise.

Sexual self-discovery is at the rendez-vous in Celine Sciamma’s “Portrait of A Lady on Fire,” a sumptuously made 121 minute triumph which simmers with slow-burn until it breaks your heart ten-fold. It is, as we speak, the leading contender to win the Palme D’or next weekend in what has been a Cannes filled with good movies, but not great ones.

“Queen & Slim” is about a serious subject, but the execution doesn’t reflect that. Its intended purpose to provoke is hampered by an all-too-obvious and stretched out narrative. Of course, the issues of social justice it tackles will no doubt have writers trying to dissect its frames but trying is not succeeding and this road movie fall flat.

In 2013, progressive Cardinal Bergoglio and soon-to-be Pope Francis (Jonathan Pryce) paid a visit to conservative Pope Benedict (Anthony Hopkins) so that he could tend his letter of resignation to him. Surrounded by controversy, Benedict shunned it off, saying it was bad timing for his cohort to exit at a time when he was being accused of turning a blind eye on inner corruption at the Vatican. What followed was a debate between two very different mindsets and their particular views on the best path forward for the Catholic Church in the 21st century.

There was a time when Hollywood would churn out Agatha Christie-inspired whodunits like it was nobody else’s business. You know how it goes, a plot filled with highly suspicious characters, all connected by a mysterious murder, but who among them did the dirty deed? Eventually, this genre got tiresome and clichéd, but in an era of cinema where most big-studio movies aren’t interested in doing adult-oriented dramas, director Rian Johnson has decided to bring it back.

The toxic waters in Parkersburg, West Virginia are at the center of director Todd Haynes’ “Dark Waters,” a conventional but well-shot eco-thriller with a screenplay written by Steven Zaillian (“The Irishman”).

The late Agne Varda is a legend of cinema. After all, her career has been filled with charming, but also immaculately provocative statements. The extensive body of work she’s built up over the years, which kept going until her death to Cancer at 90, has changed the landscape for not just Narrative and non-fiction filmmaking, but female directors in general.

Films based on a teenager trying to break through the restrictive barriers of his/her parent’s religious upbringing isn’t anything new in cinema. However, Minhal Baig‘s “Hala” is unique because it tackles a gifted, hijab-wearing, skateboarding Pakistani student (Geraldine Viswanathan) who tries to navigate both her duties as a Muslim and her academic social life. The complications which eventually arise in Baig’s film can be deemed to be of the conventional kind, but, regardless, under Baig’s watchful cinematic eyes, “Hala” ends up feeling fresh and authentic.

Just a year after Morgan Neville’s indispensable documentary on Mister Rogers (“Won’t You Be My Neighbour?”), director Marielle Heller’s “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” has iconic everyman Tom Hanks playing the good-hearted children’s TV host in a role that not only perfectly suits him, but also embodies everything we love about the legendary Oscar-winning actor.

The absolutely focused and thrilling first 100 minutes of Trey Edward Shults‘ “Waves” are really something to see. Filled with an unabashed usage of the contemporary in-your-face soundtrack and swirling virtuosic camera movements, it’s a movie that takes an incalculable amount of risks - of which some pay off and others, like the sudden switch to more subtle storytelling by film’s end, just don’t.