Benjamin Lee

Frank & Louis is a solidly made drama, but Ben-Adir and Morgan are something special.

The “more is more” approach (hallucinations, orgies, pissing, stabbing, shooting, splitting, piercing etc) is attention-securing in the moment but oddly forgettable after, like waking up from a nightmare you can’t remember. Infinity Pool is too hectic to truly haunt.

As compelling and as complicated as this fraught friendship might be, Hall’s script can’t quite find a way to take it – and the other pieces of Larsen’s novel – and turn them into something deservedly substantial.

There remains a remove though still, Spielberg giving us a slightly too stage-managed version of himself and his family, some gristle missing from the darkest moments.

It’s an earnest tribute to a lot of things – a city, a time, a genre, a mentality, an actor in Turturro – and while we’ve definitely been here before, it’s nice to come back.

The journey is slick and diverting, and at times incisive, but Turning Red is yet another Pixar film that coasts rather than glides. Hopefully its next offering can turn into something more.

There’s probably a semi-decent creature feature here and maybe, with a hefty amount of redrafting, a semi-decent human drama but as it stands it fails at both, a satisfying, coherent film buried underneath copious amounts of animal guts.

It’s a goofy, drunken scrap of escapism and while the romantic comedy is not fully back, despite think pieces assuring us that it is, Palm Springs energetically reminds us, yet again, that it’s never really going away.

Cage is remarkably restrained (bar one unnecessary scream), delicately deconstructing what we’ve come to expect from him. His trademark tics are gone, his voice that much softer, his swagger replaced by an unsureness, an aggressive blare that’s faded into calm.

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.

Blunt remains committed to the end but even she can’t add a shine to the drab last act, the pleasure of seeing her on screen replaced with the pain of another undeserving project.

It might drift out of the memory just as easily as it drifted in, but there’s a goofy likability to Pacific Rim: Uprising, a primal thrill to be had, and a confident slickness behind it that means, despite a nearly two-hour running time, it doesn’t outstay its welcome.

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.

Johnson’s more extravagant and often indulgent sequel will likely find those who prefer it to the original, it’s so stuffed with so much that it’ll surely prove more fun to those who appreciate getting more bang for their buck. It’s hard not to have fun when Johnson pulls the strings, I just wish he’d not pulled quite so many and quite so hard.

So there are two films here: one is frightening and poignant and the other tender but slight. The first one will haunt me even if the second will fade.

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.

It’s a slight movie at times, unfocused at others, even plodding in parts, and I didn’t leave the cinema entirely convinced that it was the most satisfying way to tell this particular story but I did leave feeling confident in both Jackman’s prowess and Finley’s promise, yet to be fully realised.

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.

The eye-popping gloss of Vivo will probably lure in impressive numbers for Netflix (the animation itself is generic but impressive) but in a genre that promises so much magic, the spell cast by Miranda and co is a brief one.

[Colman] knows how to oscillate between broad comedy and heart-wrenching drama but the film around her isn’t as adept. Like the dream husband at its centre, Wicker looks the part but there’s nothing underneath.

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.

There are depressingly few pleasures to be had here, and one of them is at least, for a while, playing detective trying to figure out just what on earth is buried at its centre.

In just under two hours with a plate filled a little too high, not everything here quite works as well as Byrne, but Bronstein clearly hasn’t made something to be liked, she’s made something to be experienced. I can’t say I’ll forget that experience easily.

This isn’t Perkins’ first shot but it’s his biggest swing and ultimately his clumsiest miss, a grab bag of ideas and tricks that can’t be coerced into anything resembling a whole.

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.

It’s all unavoidably stagey, with talky, tense scenes weighing the pros and cons of the decisions, and while Polley does make some attempts to take us outside the barn, to widen the canvas, there’s still an artificiality to some of the construct that makes us wish we were sitting watching this in the theatre instead.

At a baggy, over-stretched two hours, its welcome is close to being overstayed, but there’s just about enough charm to keep Disenchanted from living up to its title.

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.