Benjamin Lee

The focus on the job at hand works until it doesn’t as with just the slightest of characterisation, we’re invested in the problem rather than those solving it and the grip of the first two acts loosens as the finale beckons.

Inspiring until the end if not entirely entertaining.

In a fun, glossy take down of age-old genre tropes, Rebel Wilson wakes up in an alternate universe, dominated by romantic comedy cliches.

Killian’s spiral is intense and unpleasant but we’re not left at the end with much other than respect for technique. The film, like Killian, is all muscle.

Another, more textured film might have tried to paint him as more than just lovable rogue but Roofman is too focused on making us feel good rather than bad. I would have settled for conflicted.

It’s [Del Toro’s] most strikingly beautiful film yet, a velvety, precisely styled noir with the year’s most impressively stacked cast (two Oscar winners and six nominees, all bringing their A game) but its sleek shell is sadly as duplicitous as its untrustworthy conman protagonist, blinding us with dazzle but leaving us tricked.

Like the film around him, [Ritchson] does what he needs to do, everything here just about serviceable for the moment yet never memorable enough for the moment after.

Against considerable odds, a very, very low bar has been met and then shuffled over with this mostly effective and incredibly nasty update, a jolting little slasher that should repulse and satisfy those with a suitably depraved idea of what they are clicking into.

The Intruder isn’t bringing much that’s new to the table but what it does, it does well, and there’s something to admire about its stark efficiency, dragging us along with full force, even if we know exactly where we’re going.

Recovery is shown to be a tough, jagged process and while Rebuilding might not offer much in the way of specifics, it offers a wealth of hope which might be enough for now.

There are enough crafty surprises buried within The Night House to just about outweigh the elements that don’t work quite as well, mainly because it’s all delivered with such fiery conviction by Hall. The house might be built on shaky foundations but its inhabitant is utterly unshakable.

An immensely charming Hewson makes it all seem effortless, though, even as Carney’s manipulative string-pulling threatens to get a bit too forceful, an instinctive and quick-witted actor who drags the film’s sillier, flightier moments back to earth.

It’s neither a rousing success nor an embarrassing failure, falling somewhere in between, closer to admirable attempt.

It's nowhere near as good as many of the films it so wants to be positioned next to, but it's nasty enough to leave an impression.

Brightly animated and with moments of surprising insight, there’s a warm likability to Leo that radiates, for those still in the classroom and those who left it long ago.

The subdued carefulness of the buildup gives way to rote, poorly staged action and a twist that might fill in a few plot-holes but leaves us otherwise dissatisfied.

The graphic novel-inspired world of Gunpowder Milkshake isn’t unique, but it’s admirably committed and Papushado edges his film away from the danger of pastiche thanks to an equally committed cast.

The script could have done without the odd bout of heavy-handed chess symbolism (“a king for a king”) but it’s a solidly entertaining drama with an intriguingly unconventional lead.

Let It Snow is a prime example of what happens when the Netflix algorithm machine spews out something that actually feels like a real movie. It ticks all the right buzzword boxes for the platform (YA, Christmas, romcom, cast filled with recognisable faces) but does so with such ebullience that you’ll fail to notice, or at least care about, the many strings being pulled throughout.

Work It is a fun, mostly entertaining and easily digestible concoction that does everything you expect but well enough for its lack of ingenuity not to matter.

There’s something rather dusty about The Promise as George pushes his characters through a string of soapy machinations that feel incredibly familiar.

We didn’t need a Predator prequel (have we ever really needed any prequel?) but Prey is a nimble beast, far nimbler than it could have been and while it’s not quite enough to make us crave more from a franchise that’s already given us too much, it’s enough to justify the journey way back.

Even at a brief 73 minutes, Good Boy can feel stretched, a film that never quite convinces you that a short wouldn’t have worked better. Even though Indy is a remarkably expressive dog, there are only so many variations on dialogue-free scenes of him checking out a weird noise in the dark and the cycle soon gets repetitive, exposing a script that’s a bit on the thin side.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye’s focus might be all over the place, but our eyes remain trained directly on Chastain.

The real win here is watching Witherspoon and Ferrell show off, both unrestrained by a harder rating and a more raucous script than the norm and while their escalation of bad behaviour might not be quite as bad as it could have been, they both make for wonderfully petty antiheroes.

Roommates might not rival the fizzy, formative teen films it both references (Clueless) and often directly cribs from (Mean Girls) but it still belongs in a different league to what we’re mostly served right now. Could someone possibly tell that to Netflix?

We’re in safest hands with Lopez and Condon when he’s playing in that sandbox as the cell-based scenes can be a little stagey and rushed in comparison.

It’s held together by Sandberg, a director who has mastered the art of totally competent studio horror with slick, equally forgettable films like Lights Out and Annabelle: Creation and he again shows himself to be a crisply efficient commercial film-maker again let down by a far less effective script. For a film all about repetition, one viewing will suffice.

It’s the sort of old-fashioned string-puller that when done well is hard to resist even if we know the strings are being pulled, like we’re aware of the bait but powerless to resist.

While it doesn’t have the same tense grip of Spellbound, it’s an amiable enough diversion.

It’s a generous, sensitive study of allyship and what that really means in the day-to-day with Ferrell working out in different, often potentially dangerous, situations how to do the right thing.

The hoary sub-genre that is “attractive American tourists find something nefarious on their travels” is given a vigorous polish in thoughtful thriller The Royal Hotel, a film light on exploitation and heavy on interrogation.

Rob is turned from stereotype to person, thanks to Will’s incredible work and Ejiofor’s unwavering commitment to capturing a full life, supported by Rob’s mother off screen. It’s an involving yet troubling tribute.

It’s not quite on par with Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, the film it undoubtedly wants to be likened to, but it’s infinitely better than it had any right to be.

Cregger might be expanding and improving his arsenal, using his skills more effectively than he did in Barbarian, but there’s still something crucial missing. Something sharper.

For LaBeouf, the script was quite literally a form of therapy for deep-rooted issues he still struggles with and as such, it’s an inventive and admirably introspective exercise. As a film though, it’s only half as successful, not quite as involving or as stirring for us as it surely is for him.

There won’t be many viewers who’ll remember it by this time next month but within its swift running time, it just about fits the brief, zipping along at speed buoyed by the charm of its leads, like almost guaranteed instead.

It’s flawed for sure but still moves with more deftness than most (arriving after Eternals is a blessing for any Marvel film) and there’s an ending that suggests an awareness of its roots (post-credits scene aside), hinting at a promising way forward rather than back. Consider the curse of sorts sort of broken.

There are moments of creaky comedy and some bluntly emotional dialogue that one can more easily picture in front of a specifically catered-to live audience.

Brad’s Status is a frustrating concoction. There’s a script full of insight but also inanity and while the performances might jump out, the direction falls flat. Stiller is back on the right route but, like Brad, he could afford to take a more daring detour every now and then.

Alba hasn’t always made the strongest impression as an actor but this mode works well for her, convincing both in her many hand-to-hand combat scenes (her weapon of choice is a knife rather than a gun) and as an old-fashioned movie star, light on emotional depth but heavy on charisma.

A movie to be enjoyed on Friday night and forgotten all about by Saturday morning.

As stylishly made as these films might be, there’s still not enough of a distinctive identity away from its inspirations and not enough away from the (very loud) sound and fury to give us hope that this is a story worth retelling time and time again.

The film is at its best when words are secondary to action.

It’s string-pulling Pixar formula but done with just about enough effectiveness to work (do their films ever truly fail?). It doesn’t have that emotional kicker of an ending we might expect and hope for, it’s far too slight to evoke an ugly cry, but it’s breezily watchable, low stakes stuff, handsomely animated (on dry land, in water less so) and, like Disney’s spring adventure Raya and the Last Dragon, refreshingly free of romantic diversion, prioritising friendship and self-discovery over getting the boy, girl or sea monster.

The director, Jeff Wadlow, has a puppyish eagerness to impress, shock and entertain and as silly as the film might get, it’s never dull.

But as effective as the film might be in the moment, Singer’s increasingly sloppy plotting starts to get in the way of the bigger picture by the frantic last act, which is both strangely filled with exposition info dumps yet still lacking in much sense.

Nothing here is to be taken very seriously at all but it is mostly devoid of the suffocating, and often nihilistic, smugness one has come to expect from modern action films.

It’s a film so light that it barely exists but Huppert makes it worth remembering.

There’s more of the same in Enola Holmes 2, an equally boisterous romp that’s equally as hard to remember once it’s over but one that should keep its many fans engaged enough to warrant further sequels.

There’s fun to be had here, thanks to Moss and an involving set-up, and given the state of multiplex horror, especially at this time of year, this is a striking diversion. But Whannell gives us just enough to make us want more and despite the stretched 125-minute runtime, he can’t quite deliver what he loosely promises.

It’s about misogyny and abuse and memory and materialism and gender performance and many other things that would be a spoiler to mention. It’s therefore less of a plate and more of a buffet, and while it might be beautifully served, it’s a film about excess that suffers from it too, a case of too much leaving us with too little.

An inoffensive time-filler that’s hard to love but easy to like.

There’s something refreshingly blunt about what Together is trying to say about the dangers of codependency, a film too busy having fun to waste time writing a self-satisfied dissertation.

The film is in need of an edge that Peter Straughan’s screenplay fails to deliver.... Yet Sandra Bullock seems blissfully unaware of the film’s faults and delivers a performance that expertly plays on her strengths.

It succeeds in fits and starts – I laughed more than I have at many a comedy in the past year – but its wild, scattershot humour is so hit and miss, too many jokes going nowhere, that it’s not quite the rousing win I wanted it to be.

It’s in many ways a minor, almost mundane, story with an ending that chooses the small over the big but it resonates just about enough, a quiet scream in the darkness, now able to be heard in living rooms across the world.

A fun night will be had, but you’ll have trouble remembering it in the morning.

The sweeping, full-throated romance of the last act might not work for some, who could conceivably argue its dominance leaves gaps in Sérgio’s professional life, but it makes for an emotionally satisfying ending.

Soderbergh operating at a lower level is still higher than many of his peers. Presence just never fully comes together in the way we hope, a ghost story haunted more by the possibility of what it could have been.

It exists in Netflix festive movie world, an ever-expanding place of ever-diminishing returns, and while this won’t be a film someone would consider returning to next Christmas, it’ll just about do for now.

Coda is a mostly likable concoction, but one that’s just too formulaic and ultimately rather calculated to secure the emotional response it so desperately wants by the big finale.

It would be difficult to invest in if not for its two main stars who work hard to elevate the overly engineered plot, filling in the emotional gaps left by the haphazard script.

Whodunnits require so many moving parts to be expertly placed and played with, and, ultimately, the script isn’t as sleek as it needs to be with a board as ambitious as this. The game is a fun one, but you might feel a little cheated once it’s over.

It’s made just-about-watchable by Sandler and Aniston again, whose combined movie star charm proves magnetic enough to carry us through the flatter moments, both nailing some effectively chaotic physical comedy and maintaining a warm, relaxed chemistry.

It doesn’t always work – a two-hour runtime that’s a little too long, world-saving stakes that are a little too big, funny lines that are a little too not funny – but it’s a mostly watchable second-tier event movie that, in a world of inconsequential sequels that fail to justify their existence, will do.

This is an unrepentant midnight movie, dirty and violent and best enjoyed with a steady supply of alcohol.

In a genre plagued by a lack of effort, I’ll take a solid try.

If Union County serves as proof that Poulter deserves more substantive work and shines a light on people in a remarkable system, then it’s more than worth the choice to go docudrama over drama. But I still craved more of the real people.

Lowery’s film mostly plays it safe, only slightly remixing the beats we know a little too well, wrapping them up in a pretty enough package that will get tossed aside and forgotten about once opened. It’s by no means the rockiest trip we’ve taken to Neverland but let’s all pray it’s the last.

The pair share an easy, spiky chemistry and Reeves in particular shows himself to be surprisingly skilled at delivering such bile-filled dialogue.

Even if much of Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is in need of a rethink, it’s hard not to enjoy the scrappy, animated brainstorm taking place in front of us. The mess of it all is at least a very human one.

It’s a low-budget effort with high ambitions, something that’s hard not to admire, and while it often feels like the teaser for a bigger and better movie, it’s perhaps a sign that Hardiman is setting sail for Hollywood next.

It’s a shaggy, wistful film that acts as a heartfelt tribute to both a city and a friendship and when the cutesy quirk that surrounds it is dialled down, we’re able to appreciate the underpinning earnestness.

It doesn’t always work, and at times it really really doesn’t, but it feels confident and unfettered in a way that so many horror films don’t these days.

If Damsel doesn’t exactly rewrite the storybook, it makes for a competent rework of it, a rousing revenge saga that provides a thin yet encouraging message for its younger female audience and a balm for those older viewers who grew up being spoon-fed the same old gendered cliches.

Actor turned writer-director Jillian Bell’s naked, and sometimes literally naked, attempt to craft a new rewatchable comfort food favourite with notes of both sweet and salt is charming when it works but distractingly effortful when it doesn’t.

With Hathaway at its centre, The Idea of You is on far surer footing, in small moments almost threatening to be something far greater but settling into being perfectly acceptable instead, a plane movie par excellence.

The Jason Bateman comedy model hasn’t quite been radically altered in Game Night but it’s one of his more entertaining outings. Just don’t count on remembering much of it once the night is over.

It’s a still fun yet far sloppier outing, a second round that’s less of a win for us and more of a draw.

Perhaps the film’s overwhelming ace is an overarching awareness of just how pointless it really is, made with the same disposability with which it should be consumed.

While the shifts in genre, plot and location do prove intriguing for much of the film, they ultimately result in a feeling of mild dissatisfaction, the whole never quite the sum of its parts.

There are tasty moments here, but genre fans looking for a full meal might leave a little hungry.

When the first-time director Bishal Dutta does try to add freshness to the familiarity of formula, he manages to carve his film its own place within two overstuffed subgenres, flashes of intrigue as he veers between schlocky curse and even schlockier monster movie.

The first-time writer-director Laura Chinn can’t quite muster enough genuine emotion to get us there, her so-so debut working best when investment is at its lowest.

The Twitter-to-screen adaptation of Zola is as scrappy and imperfect as the original story but just as likable. There’s something unusually compelling about what Bravo does with the material that makes up for its missteps.

Arguably the film’s biggest problem is that it’s less laugh-out-loud hilarious and more deserving of the odd casual smirk.

It’s carried through by an all-in Hawke who is really put through the wringer, arguably his most physically gruelling role to date (the upside of a low budget is that his hardships are made to look that much harder), a muscular and entirely persuasive performance that continues his winning streak.

There’s intermittent fun to be had in this throwaway relaunch of the female secret agent franchise but the party is cut short by incoherent action and a clunky script.

It’s the problem faced when one of these films is raised just above the gutter-level norm, you end up wanting it to be that much better. As it stands, Jingle Bell Heist is as good as it’s getting for now.

It’s perilously close to being overstuffed (one more introduction would have tipped it over the edge) but a controlled and nimble script justifies the large ensemble, using each thread to quickly switch back and forth between the anger, ecstasy, disbelief and fear that seeped from conference to dorm room at the time.

This odd, nasty yet rather funny little film tears apart ideas of sisterhood and female friendship and replaces them with burning hate and gratuitous violence.

I Am Mother is undoubtedly a strong calling card with plenty on its mind. I just wish it had figured out what to do with it all.

As another one of the director’s mid-budget, mid-level crowd-pleasers, it mostly works – well-made enough to distract in the moment but not quite enough to last in the many after, unlikely to catapult him to the top or sink him to the bottom.

Lady and the Tramp works well enough on its own simple terms as watchable, competently made home viewing.

It all remains refreshingly and unusually old-fashioned. A gentle film aimed at the younger end of young audiences that will also find the approval of those that much older.

This is stupid but it’s also mostly entertaining, thanks to Johnson and a plot that moves fast enough to retain our attention yet without enough, ahem, the originality to ensure it lingers in our minds once the fire has been extinguished.

It’s a calm, crisply made film (one can again see how it matches the Apple aesthetic) but one about heartache and tumult, and I found myself craving something that felt as difficult and stinging as the feelings it was trying to stir up.