Barry Hertz

At nearly every turn, Dead Reckoning aims for something more than the sum of its Evel Knievel parts. In an already strong year for breakneck, throat-kick, punch-out cinema, this adrenaline-pumped fever dream from Cruise and his regular enabler-slash-director Christopher McQuarrie represents a brutally thrilling action-film apotheosis.

Joy Ride is as fantastically filthy as they come, providing enough glorious gags about gagging to carry audiences through the cold, hard winter to come.

There is only one Spielberg, so the result is an adventure that sands away the edges of its own taste for danger, with the destination – those gobs of cash – mattering far more than the journey.

No Hard Feelings tries so very hard to shock – to score that collective audience gasp – that it ends up clutching its own pearls.

Asteroid City proves, once again, that there is so much more to the filmmaker than casual detractors assume.

This is spaghetti-brained moviemaking, more interested in goosing empty-calorie nostalgia than telling an original or thrilling story.

Heartfelt in tone, imaginative in scope and rendered with a seemingly endless well of aesthetic wit, the romantic-comedy is a worthy addition to the Pixar canon … until the characters start speaking.

This is a film containing oceans of truth, centuries of longing and vast feelings of open-hearted tenderness.

There are jump-scares aplenty, and a great deal of barely visible shots of its monster, culminating in a full-on creature reveal that’s nicely gross. The characters are sketched out just enough to make you care whether they live or die, with solid performances from all involved, including a rare star turn from Messina.

The dialogue is to the point without being eye-rolling, the action is meaty and mostly CGI-free (the highlight is a night-vision firefight) and the performances are committed, even touching.

Nearly every performance here is excellent, a beautiful balance of nerves and neuroses.

A thoroughly pointless cash grab of a thing, this new Little Mermaid is one of the most uninspired films to slither out of Disney since the company started raiding its own vault.

In Schrader’s strong, meditative hands, everything gels together to create an entrancing work that is serious and, very nearly, profound.

If family is everything to the Fast & Furious films – as lead lunkhead Vin Diesel would surely posit – then Fast X is a nuclear family reunion that goes atomic.

In keeping with Lucas’s general life philosophy, Mills’s film doesn’t attempt to paint a portrait of one woman, but rather a capturing of the land that woman calls home.

At around the hundred-minute mark, everything in Gunn’s perfect little cinematic galaxy falls apart in a magnificently depressing fashion. It is as if the MCU higher-ups got wind of what was going down and quickly engineered a black hole of studio notes to suck the Guardians into a tesseract of meaningless set-pieces and prolonged B-plot detours.

Carmen is a wild and unrestrained attempt to empty its director’s entire brain onto the screen, and for that it deserves recognition. But the ultimate result slips too easily between heroic effort and hot mess.

If watching mass-murdering maniacs get absolutely destroyed on-screen is your thing – and it very much is mine – then Sisu is a perfectly depraved night out.

The film is all the more frustrating an experience given that it inches so close to greatness.

Its visual imagination is wonderfully unrestrained, compelling in its extremes even when it is so clearly indebted to every movie that Aster hoovered up to get here. Its tone is impressively steadfast in its desire to repel one moment, entrance the next. And its performances are across-the-board astounding in their commitment.

The trouble with Renfield, though, is the fact that it’s called Renfield and not Dracula. Snivelling when not stiff, the title character is a bore, as is Hoult’s shoulder-shrug of a performance.

Incendiary and furious, confident and courageous, the new thriller How to Blow Up a Pipeline boasts not only the best title of the year so far but also the best score, cast and itchy, charged, electric directorial vision – all of it only ever-so-slightly goosed by a political softening that perhaps says more about contemporary American filmmaking than the storytellers working within it.

The movie is so across-the-board charming that even the most hardcore of socialists will find themselves rooting for Nike – that bastion of global corporate responsibility – to make gobs and gobs of money off the hard work of a young Black athlete.

Ultimately Murder Mystery 2 is the most business-as-usual kind of Sandler shtick, its only real surprise being how the production manages to pull off one solitary, very lonely surprise toward its end (it involves a quick appearance from Jillian Bell, bless her heart).

Unfortunately, despite Egerton’s most dedicated efforts to pump some life into his hero, Rogers is the blandest kind of capitalist hero. Meanwhile, the various Soviets and Brits caught up in the Tetris antics are just one graphics card away from being Super Mario Bros.-ready boss-level villains.

Clocking in at a severely bloated 165 minutes, Chapter 4 is both a thrill and a slog, an all-you-can-eat buffet that insists on stuffing your guts before it spills them.

The experience of watching this new Shazam! is akin to watching an exceptionally wealthy but ultimately sweet and innocent child smash their toys together for 130 minutes. There’s little point in it all, but hey, at least the kid is happy.

While the film’s ending expects audiences to untie some impossible fan-theory knots, the climax is also packed to the rafters with murder and mayhem and even a little on-the-nose movie-theatre nostalgia, resulting in moments that demand fits of laughter, gasps and, of course, screams.

Dafoe is captivating as always, but not even his slinking, slippery presence can save the film from turning into a rather torturous endurance test.

The actor is as engaging and captivating as ever on-screen as Adonis, yet he’s just as present and committed behind the camera, delivering a stirring string of heartwarming and jaw-breaking moments that add up to something if not exactly unique, than certainly rousing, effective and entertaining.

The film is simply operating at a speed constantly one click ahead of expectations, never satisfied that any one viewer could know where it might all be heading.

Return to Seoul is not a dour, sombre thing – it is intense, electric and confrontational.

We Have a Ghost is a desperate mix of feel-good sentimentality, watered-down surreality, and comedy as transparent in its hackiness as the film’s title spook.

BlackBerry is funny, fast and nerve-rattling. And it is always – always – intensely entertaining.

When the narrative knife is as dull as it is here, there is just no fun in bleeding out. If Caron and his collaborators don’t learn their lesson, though, at least we will. Work smarter, not Sharper.

Coloured wall-to-fake-wall with cheap-looking CGI, the film looks like it was shot from inside the guts of a first-generation iPhone – there is an aesthetic emptiness to it all that is soul-crushing.

Alice, Darling does so much right that it is acutely painful when it goes wrong.

Finally, by tethering his story’s uneasiness to the rock that is Bautista, Shyamalan delivers a star vehicle built for two. It isn’t quite right to say that the director and his star deserve each other – more like they need one another. Just as we do. To the end of the world, fellas.

There are so many elements that seduce and beguile – including the rusted-out Brutalism of the Li Tolqan prison where the cloning procedure takes place, and Goth’s supremely unhinged work as James’s seductress, a performance more Looney Tunes than human – that the entire thing swallows you whole. There is no more delightful way to drown.

The familiar and facile elements are drowned out – often, and loudly – by the impeccable comedic talents of Hill and Murphy, two performers whose very different styles clash and complement one another.

Whether, in making Saint Omer, Diop has found the answers that she’s been searching for since 2016 remains an open question. But the truth of the film is that she has certainly compelled her audience to take a complicated, fraught, and harrowing journey of their own.

Living just doesn’t quite vault over its self-imposed challenges. Except, that is, when it comes to Nighy.

It is all such gloriously smart stupidity that you cannot help but applaud everyone involved for sticking the landing.

It is as if every time Forster is presented with an opportunity to do something mildly unconventional – or even, gasp, European in sensibility – he defaults to the easy and cheap Hollywood option.

Broker too frequently goes broad and wide, resulting in a story that doesn’t earn the happiness that its flawed characters desire, and eventually achieve.

If watching a Jafar Panahi film is something of a political act, then it is also a soul-nourishing one.

The one overwhelmingly positive thing that you’ve heard about The Whale is true: Fraser does a remarkable job.

The kind of full-throated, barrel-chested, more-more-more exercise in gusto and ambition that comes around once a decade, Babylon might either take Chazelle’s impressive career to new heights, or sink it to the bottom of the La Brea Tar Pits. Either way, the filmmaker deserves attention for throwing his entire self into making a delirious, lurid and sprawling concoction whose magnificent reach just about meets its grasp.

The Way of Water is the kind of tremendously entertaining, spectacularly ambitious, not-a-little-bit-silly epic that only James Cameron can, and should, make.

Through it all, Smith’s performance grounds the horror in a place of courage, heart and soul.

From the projectionist played by Toby Jones who regularly pops up to vocalize what everyone onscreen and the audience is already well aware of – movies are an escape, of course! – to its eye-rolling treatment of Hilary’s mental health, Empire of Light is the most noxious kind of faux-benevolent “prestige” cinema.

While there is an early sense in Joynt’s film that it is simply fun to ape the environs of bygone television eras, the re-enactments ultimately work on a narrative level, too. There are intersecting layers to Joynt’s film whose thematic and contextual conversations with one another would be lost were he to simply line one conventional talking head up after another.

There is a distinct, and welcome, lack of sentimentality here, too, with Baumbach able to swerve the tone into a more cerebral version of National Lampoon’s Vacation franchise, of all things. Imagine if Clark Griswold studied fascism and carried around a teeny-tiny pistol, and you’ll start to get the idea.

The director wisely dives with her whole heart and soul into Goldin’s life, which makes seeing her almost destroyed by an addiction to painkillers so painful. And then, when Goldin resurrects her energies into waging a David versus Goliath war, there is a distinct sense of against-all-odds triumph that hits hard, and lingers long.

The Fabelmans contains reels’ worth of beauty and wit, all delivered with the honest and enthusiastic drive to entertain that has become Spielberg’s signature. But you will learn more about Steven Spielberg by watching almost any other Steven Spielberg film.

Frightening and romantic, dreamy and dreary, the film laces the gore of a zombie movie with the magic-hour sunsets of a Terrence Malick film, plus a healthy amount of 1980s needle-drops. It is, in so many ways, one of the most unusually beautiful and violently sensual films in recent memory.

Just when you think that you have figured out which rug will next be pulled out from under you, Johnson reveals that there are rugs woven inside rugs woven inside even tinier rugs – and that the floor beneath those many carpets isn’t actually a floor at all, but a ceiling.

Despite all the wonder that Strange World has going for it, the film cannot help but land with the softest of thuds.

An eat-the-rich satire that would go rotten without its supremely overqualified cast, The Menu is as much fun as it is ephemeral.

Set aside the fact that Sugar’s screenplay is filled with holes, that its characters are as loathsome as they are thinly sketched, that its budget is as bare-bones as your local No Frills, and we are still left with a movie that is barely competent on a technical level.

Even when the maximalist visuals grab hold – as in, by your collar with an unpleasant yank – it is hard to feel much but exhaustion.

There are several ways to make a serial killer movie, and in the sometimes compelling and sometimes repellent Holy Spider, filmmaker Ali Abbasi has chosen all of them. At once exploitative and contemplative, thrilling and disgusting, the film makes a bloody mess of itself before coming close to solving its own case.

More than any other MCU outing over the past three years, though, there is more to appreciate here than not. The performances are all filled with sorrow and spirit, a true melding of real-life emotion and whatever heightened reactions are typically required for an expensive play session in a superpowered sandbox.

There are enough secrets, lies and tepidly chaste sex scenes – both of the straight and same-sex variety – to fill a hundred kitchen sinks. But the resulting drama is all drips and drops, no deluge.

Every detail and narrative swerve are stacked on top of the other to build a monumental story of compromises and consequences. This is a brave film, bracing and thoughtful. It is also, at times, painfully funny.

Aftersun cuts you in two with such emotional intensity, such impressive dramatic force, that I could only sit and fight back the inevitable tears.

Regrettably, both director and star are constantly fighting uphill battles in Till, which is saddled with a thoroughly conventional screenplay whose narrative energies only rarely attempt to match the incendiary intensity of the history that it obviously cares so much about retelling.

This is meticulous, beautiful filmmaking that is rich in meaning and fat with detail. Surrender to Park’s smoky, dangerous romance – vengeance can wait.

Johnson, who is also a producer here, having shepherded Black Adam through a decade and a half of development, gets off relatively easy. The real victim, or perhaps perpetrator, is Collet-Serra.

This new version of an old tale has the capacity to horrify you into shell-shocked pacifism, while delivering a few minor-key surprises along the way.

An engrossing and stylistically exacting work of cinema, Tár teases our political (as in: identity) sentiments with such a ferocious artistic confidence that you will leave the theatre with questions, arguments, demands – but most of all a supremely fulfilling sense of satisfaction. Here is a film that not only starts a debate but almost ends it, too.

There are movies that are on-the-nose and then there is Ruben Ostlund’s Triangle of Sadness, a satire™ that is so pharyngeal that it is the cinematic equivalent of a COVID-19 swab.

Blonde is a precisely engineered nightmare. From Monroe’s childhood to superstardom, Dominik presents her as a passive victim of never-ending tragedy: neglect, abuse, heartbreak, addiction. And in doing so, Dominik creates a cinematic experience so repellent that it is destined to be loathed and misunderstood, written off as crass and opportunistic just like those who profited off Monroe’s body during her own life.

Russell’s film is not remotely playable. Amsterdam so badly wants to be a light romp with heavy-duty meaning that it cannot help but be flattened by a sagging self-exhaustion. It is an exercise in interminable madcappery.

Bros is a genuinely hilarious, wonderful movie: heartfelt, slick and crafted with such careful comedic care that a good deal of jokes will inevitably be drowned out by audiences still laughing over the punchlines that came just before.

It is at times brash and thick-headed in its characters and politics, but it is engineered with such an electric ferocity – a beautiful marriage of high-performance technical expertise and gonzo aesthetic imagination – that it cannot help but knock you out.

Miller’s go-for-broke visuals and his stars’ fiercely committed work allow Three Thousand to speed by on wit, energy, and gushy, bleeding-heart passion.

Crimes of the Future is a dirty little thing because it dives deep into the muck of humanity, where Cronenberg finds a perverted pleasure in the absence of pain. Every millimetre of this film is filthy, decayed, polluted. And thank god for that.

Prey is exactly the type of late-summer nastiness that deserves to be enjoyed with fellow hooters and hollerers. But by this point, Predator fans are used to playing the victim.

Ford’s film cannot be entirely discounted – the director knows a star when he sees one, and seems to retroactively contort his screenplay around the talents of Plaza as much as he can. The actress makes Emily’s plight seem relatable, unrelenting and never ever precious.

An energetic, cockeyed, bloody, and sometimes delightfully vicious skewering of Millennial culture – or, more accurately, what Instagram-less tsk-tsk’ers imagine millennial culture to be – director Halina Reijn’s new film exists not only to meet late-summer slasher expectations, but to ever so slightly subvert them.

The director fumbles frequently, but at least he is confident enough in his uneven vision to push through all (warranted) doubts and deliver a story that is every bit awful as it is uncompromising.

Burdened with a needlessly complex conceit, flat character design, limp jokes, and a soundtrack completely absent a single ear-worm (unless you count an overreliance on Madonna’s Lucky Star), Luck feels dredged from the bottom of Pixar’s few lows (Cars comes to mind) than plucked from its many highs (Inside Out would like a word).

Bullet Train’s biggest weapon, of the secretly funny variety, rests in the chiselled form of star Brad Pitt, who once again proves that he is as charming a buff-and-tough movie god as he is a wry, self-deprecating comedy star.

The filmmaker is obviously toying with what horror films can be, with what audiences expect of both cheap thrills and high-priced performers. But I can’t admire, and don’t take much pleasure in, being tossed into Semans’s cinematic sandbox along with his well-compensated cast and crew.

When Howard focuses on the head-scratching mechanics of the mission itself, Thirteen Lives excels – and its many claustrophobic underwater scenes likely play excellently inside the confines of a darkened theatre. But by the time we’re in pure rescue mode, it is almost too late. What should be the highest of high-stakes dramas arrives with a drippy thud.

While Dosa has a talent, and perhaps a fascination equalling her subjects, for illustrating the hidden beauty of the natural world, she ultimately crafts a film that is too neatly packaged.

This is flat, flaccid action that makes the wan green-screenery of the MCU look like the delirious highs of Mad Max: Fury Road.

The film is neither heartbreaking nor thrilling, often feeling like a blown-up version of a Hallmark flick-of-the-week, its ambitions far greater than its capabilities.

This film is a dud all on its own, a watered down Woody Allen facsimile that is long on F-bombs and short on wit, with an internal logic that falls apart with barely a half-cocked glance.

Ultimately, Thor: Love and Thunder will leave you feeling sad, empty, deadened. Which is what frequently happens in the MCU these days – it is an enterprise built with an Axl Rose-sized appetite for destruction, but no stomach for genuine risk or imagination.

The Rise of Gru is the weakest entry by far. But with just enough semi-inspired moments of weirdness to skate by.

There is real emotion and purpose pumped into the tiny picture – it has a heart as big as its title character is small.

After all its blood is spilled – on perfectly white sheets of ice and snow, of course – Slash/Back still announces the arrival of a major talent in Innuksuk. Here is hoping that she gets to kill bigger and better Canadian actors for many years to come.

A stupendously dull action-comedy that is devoid of both thrills and humour.

Elvis is as much a ride following the highs and lows of the musician’s fabulously rich and sad life as it is a one-way journey into the extremities of its director’s exhaustive imagination. For better, and worse.

S#!%house genuinely engaged with the complexities of insecure, imbalanced romantic relationships, and the flawed men who pursued them. Cha Cha Real Smooth settles for a sickly sweet sitcom approach. As Andrew might sigh during a bar-mitzvah shift: oy vey.

If you can divorce Lightyear’s shareholder-appeasing origins from its actual cinematic accomplishments, then we’re left with a rather beautiful, often thrilling, sometimes devastating adventure.