Barry Hertz

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.