Benjamin Lee

It works for the most part because of Ruben and Cash and the spiky chemistry they share.

Good Joe Bell is a generous film about an outsider travelling across the country realising the importance of listening and learning from others (as well as his own guilty conscience).

It’s a handsomely made and sturdy little movie, mercifully devoid of cloying sentimentality, an old-fashioned throwback for families in search of something safe and superhero-free that might not sing quite as loud as it could have but flies just about high enough nonetheless.

Pike is astonishingly good, tearing into her role with the same icy menace that made her Oscar-nominated performance in Gone Girl so indelible and like the script she’s working from, there’s such restraint with her venom that it makes her all the more terrifying.

Unlike the woozy love at its centre, Summer of 85 doesn’t haunt in the way that it should. It fades when it should burn.

It’s an uneven ride, rocky in places, but it’s one that’s also unquestionably worthwhile, a progressive, witty and timely way of reminding many of us how antiquated women’s healthcare still is while also alerting a younger audience that there’s more to the teen movie than Netflix.

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.

An awkward misfire at best and an uneasy and irresponsible one at worst.

Rather than a heartwarming family favourite-in-the-making, The One and Only Ivan is just a vaguely watchable cookie-cutter caper thrown together by people who should know how to make something far sweeter and substantial, a fleeting attraction for undiscerning young kids and a whelming waste for anyone older.

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.

Host is a lean, nasty little exercise that might not linger for very long but it shows what can be done during this difficult time. Once regular shooting resumes, we should look forward to whatever Savage comes up with next.

It’s mostly kind of tolerable in a low stakes, rosé-wine-swigging way, inoffensively middling rather than rotten, an easy, undemanding afternoon watch with nothing of note other than a few laughably dumb moments..

There are no left turns or bumps along the way, just a smooth straightforward journey from cliche to cliche, boredom setting in fast.

It’s an intimate portrait that at times borders on meandering but it remains free of judgment throughout, with Einhorn and Davis using their background as journalists to let the story happen without coercion or commentary.

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.

It’s imperfect, sometimes frustratingly so, but also just about fun enough for yet another tipsy Friday night locked down indoors, its sun-drenched setting proving alluring and yet cruelly out of reach.

You Should Have Left should have left our nerves frayed and our dreams haunted but instead, it leaves us cold.

For fans of joyless screaming and stabbing, there might be something here worth your time but for those who expect more thrills from their thrillers or at least something close to a purpose, 7500 is a flight worth missing.

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

What propels us past the cliches of Intuition is a desire to see just how it all ties together, an assumption that a story as busily plotted as this must have an ace up its sleeve. But the last act is all fizzle, played out predictably with a mundanity that no amount of sweeping aerial shots can disguise.

While it’s far from the firestarter it could have been, there’s more to this than its release would suggest, an angry, slickly directed thriller that still manages to generate enough of a spark.

While a younger audience might be enthralled by the fast pace and bright colour palette, those understandably curious adults sitting nearby will find themselves watching in horror, a deep, sorrowful howl emerging.

Like the structure at its centre, Spaceship Earth is a smart concept that never really takes off.

All Day and a Night is a weightier alternative to the average Netflix original and while imperfectly realised and scrappily plotted at times, it’s another promising sign that, away from the easy-to-digest content, there’s room on the platform for much much more.

It’s pacy enough to secure at least our divided attention, competently trotting along in the background revealing surprises that aren’t really that surprising, like a pulpy, well-worn airplane novel that you guiltily devour in a day.

The Half of It is a strong, warm-hearted and quietly progressive addition to the expanding Netflix teen movie pack which treats its target audience with the respect they deserve.

Barnaby’s colonialist take on the formula is far from subtle, and at times a little too bluntly on the nose, but he’s a film-maker with both something to say and the skillset to say it in a distinctive way, offering up an initially engaging alternative to mere guts and shock tactics.

While The Willoughbys might not boast the slick structure or beating heart of a Pixar animation, there’s enough offbeat charm to make it an easily digestible watch and for any concerned parents, the practice of “orphaning” involves so much work, your kids will likely be scared off.

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.

The film’s drunken lurch into earnest romance near the end, after leaning on bawdy humour for the most part, requires us to see these characters as something other than farcical chess pieces, an uphill battle for all involved.

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 strange movie that can seem mildly interested in tackling bigger issues before swiftly backing down.

Gliding close to genre tropes but moving more comfortably as an uneasy drama about the alarming power of blind faith, The Other Lamb is an intriguing mood piece, strikingly made and well-performed if not quite as powerful as it could have been.

It’s a gentle, predictable film that doesn’t exactly put any steps wrong in its depiction of adolescence but Orley doesn’t quite do enough right for it to linger in the memory for longer than the credits.

Lost Girls is sorely lacking and, ironically, one wonders what a Garbus docuseries could have found instead.

Inspiring until the end if not entirely entertaining.

The formula is so well-trodden that it needed a sparkling jolt of energy to justify Penny traipsing his way through it again. Uncorked isn’t exactly corked but it’s definitely flat.

It’s as involving as it is necessary, a rare ray of sunshine on yet another cloudy day.

There’s a brutal efficiency to the storytelling, swiftly, heartlessly propelling us up and down the building, forcing us to bear witness to a great many horrors.

A clumsy, unfunny adaptation of a much-loved literary crime series

An odd attempt at genre-surfing that ends up well out of its depth.

It sleepily hits the beats we expect but without the emotion or passion required to make them land, a by-the-numbers exercise from someone with barely enough energy to count.

Haley, who last directed the sweet and underseen Hearts Beat Loud, gives the film a stronger aesthetic than most Netflix teen offerings, and Fanning and Smith work hard at charming us into submission, but their hard-to-buy relationship isn’t quite the immersive ride-or-die love connection it needs to be, given the melodrama of the last act.

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 so punishingly dull to watch, filled with dry, perfunctory dialogue from Stacey Menear’s consistently uninventive script and shot without even a glimmer of style, that even at a brisk 86 minutes, it feels like unending torture.

It’s a bruising movie, being sold on the promise that it’s “scary as hell”, a quote that I worry will mislead expectant horror fans. The scariest thing about The Lodge is how human it all is.

It’s a difficult, often quite brutal, viewing experience, as it needs to be given the subject matter, not only because of the fractured storytelling but because of the devastating lead performance from Hopkins.

Chung’s nuanced portrait of a family figuring out their place in the world is both small and somehow rather grand.

The Last Thing He Wanted is a thing that no one wanted.

It’s elegantly constructed and precisely composed, with Durkin painstakingly recreating an era without falling into nostalgic overload. But it’s also a drama about a family that keeps us at a distance for the most part.

It’s all so human and messy and it’s refreshing to see a director that doesn’t shy away from such complexity with Colangelo crafting a film that’s every bit as nuanced as the subject at hand.

There’s a lived-in chemistry that’s missing from the pairing and the film’s great many awkward moments between them don’t feel quite as cutting or as uncomfortable as they should. It’s a dark comedy that feels too light.

There’s a lot here to digest, a bitter cocktail with many confounding flavours and its abrasiveness will prove tough-going for some, especially those in search of a more polite and familiarly structured literary biopic. But for those willing to sink into the depths with Shirley, it’s a delicious journey down.

There’s a whiff of familiarity haunting almost every scene and while it would have been rewarding to see Cooke and O’Conner take a few chances or add some more emotional depth, it’s a satisfying enough watch, best viewed with little investment and low expectations.

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.

It’s brand management dressed up as insight and while it’s not not entertaining, it’s certainly far from particularly revealing, playing more like a PR exercise then a festival-worthy feature.

It’s ultimately a miracle that despite the tortured production process, Dolittle can most generously be described as passable for young, undiscerning viewers. It won’t charm or amuse you particularly but it’s not a catastrophe, the highest praise I can muster.

What frustrates me most about Underwater is just how very little it brings to the table. It’s a solid, competently directed regurgitation of an oft-told tale that never manages to justify its own existence

It’s an unwieldy and messy thing, drearily directed and boringly written, taking its agenda seriously yet not providing a robust enough framework to surround it.

It’s a film with something to say but it’s not all that good at saying it.

It’s a given that Hanks will nab at least a best supporting actor nomination but it would be all too easy to forget his co-star. The cynic-becomes-a-believer arc is age old but it unfolds here without cliche thanks to an emotionally intelligent script from Noah Harpster and Micah Fitzerman-Blue, but mainly because of a marvelous, prickly turn from Rhys.

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

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.

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.

It might look the part, with the director Paul Feig successfully capturing the glossy, tourist-friendly London one would crave from such a film, but the script feels like a rejected first draft with unfunny filler one-liners and a scrappy, ill-thought through narrative. It’s a beautifully wrapped Christmas gift that’s filled with rotten turkey leftovers.

Rather than screaming for them to go the other way, you'll be urging them to accept fate and die instead.

As dated as its slow-mo zombie-killing opening credits, at times Zombieland: Double Tap feels like it was made directly after the original yet carelessly forgotten about. It’s rushed and dusty, a film more belonging on Crackle than the big screen, more expensively budgeted than the first yet mostly creatively bankrupt.

The film is just a machine, slick but soulless and with parts in need of a touch-up. Not broken exactly, but more, ahem, fractured.

While some of the nastier lurches in the third act will appease genre fans, the guff that surrounds them will probably confuse and ultimately alienate them, the film’s moving parts never really moving in unison.

There’s an almost meta-maturity, as if Scorsese is also looking back on his own career, the film leaving us with a haunting reminder not to glamorise violent men and the wreckage they leave behind.

There’s little room to breathe in writer-director Chinonye Chukwu’s constricting, devastating drama Clemency, an intentionally airless film processing a tough subject through an unusual viewpoint.

There’s a slicker, more coherent and ultimately more thematically audacious film to be made from the disparate elements that make up In the Shadow of the Moon but what we have is a lovable mess nonetheless. Its ambitions are easy to criticise but hard not to admire, a mad little movie with big ideas on its mind.

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 screenwriter, Brad Ingelsby, does root us in the minutiae of the trio’s day-to-day, it’s never in particularly interesting ways, and over an indulgent 135-minute runtime, we gradually grow tired of them, often questioning exactly why we need to know so much about their lives.

We’re in safe, formulaic territory here, think Calendar Girls with less nudity and more harmonising, and it’s the film’s strict adherence to the rules of the subgenre that proves to be both a blessing and a curse. It works for the most part because, when done well, there’s something irresistible about the formula ... But there are also times when Military Wives starts to creak.

It’s a remarkable match-up between film-makers and actor and reaffirms the importance of that partnership, especially for a movie star stuck in a profitable rut. Sandler deserves more, and if he wants us to keep watching, then so do we.

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.

Throughout the film, the cast engage in so many wonderfully measured scenes of mayhem that the fun they’re clearly having radiates from the screen.

It’s oddly safe, given the subject matter, and the humour is similarly sanitised. What Waititi thinks is shockingly audacious is in fact frustratingly timid, he opts for a gentle prod when maybe a punch would do.

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.

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

Cretton ... can’t quite rise to the material or his performers, choosing anonymity over ferocity, making the dullest, safest decision at every turn. It’s not enough to topple the fascinating true story at his film’s centre but it does have a frustrating, flattening effect.

Nicholson fails to give his film the specificity and emotional depth required to make it seem necessary. We’ve been here before and nothing in the film’s 100-minute length truly justifies why we’re back here again.

It’s less of a film and more of an actors’ workshop, an exercise for everyone involved but meaningless to us.

Lopez slinks through Hustlers with a deceptive ease, as in control of the film as her character is of her situation. It’s the sort of role that only a true movie star could pull off, so much of it reliant on a rare, intoxicating magnetism.

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.

A contemporary whodunnit that both respects and revises the subgenre. ... It’s such a rare pleasure to see a director so in love with a genre without slipping into Tarantinoesque fanboy indulgence, remembering his audience is bigger than himself and also that his film requires both head and heart.

As a comedy, it’s simply not funny and as a horror, it works better in pieces but not with the consistency a film set over one night would require.

It’s the kind of adaptation that is so misjudged that you end up struggling to see why anyone thought it a good idea to adapt in the first place.

It’s refreshing to see a genre film-maker do more than rely on simple tricks and although his knack for dialogue might be questionable, he’s more than capable of constructing a nifty set-piece.

The Kitchen, a late summer, female-led adaptation of a little-known DC comic, is the worst kind of bad movie. That’s because it has all the ingredients of a good movie, from a juicy premise to a stellar cast, yet it’s assembled with such staggering incompetency that from the very first scene it boils over into one star territory, all promise evaporating from the screen. The boredom and confusion that then follows is backgrounded by an almost angry frustration that someone could get something so potentially thrilling so very, very wrong.

Even though Share wraps up within a slim 90 minutes, Bianco does struggle to sustain her premise until the end, especially in the final act, as beats start to feel repeated and our investment starts to waver.

It’s a direct, nasty, entirely unpretentious B-movie and while this remains faint, faint, faint praise given the state of the genre, it’s one of the year’s sturdiest horror films. I wouldn’t exactly urge you to run rather then crawl to see it, but a brisk walk should do.

Its undemanding nature and flat aesthetic making it an adequate background watch at best. Yet there’s also just enough here to make me wish it had been that bit better, a serviceable watch with a frustrating throughline teasing what could have been.

Anna is not quite pedestrian but it never really feels like the work of someone with anything to say or prove. It’s competent and even complacent at times, a million miles from what one would expect from the director of The Fifth Element.

Annabelle Comes Home is hopelessly light on scares.

Even outside of the script’s aggressively repetitive bigotry, the shambolic Scooby Doo plot struggles to grab even the slightest amount of attention.

A surprisingly nimble summer comedy that finds both Aniston and Sandler at their most charming.