Benjamin Lee

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.

There’s a lingering sense of familiarity that persists and what felt fresh in the first film, and tweaked in The Lego Batman Movie, is at risk of feeling tired here.

Even before the dramatic left turn, all the way over the cliff and into flames, this ho-hum road trip comedy drama was already hard to like, an unspecific sitcom of eye-rolls and finger-wagging.

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

August might be a washout so far for the industry but Beast couldn’t be arriving at a more apt time, a thrilling, if throwaway, reminder of the fun to be had while watching a B-movie bringing its A-game.

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 an airport novel that’s now an airplane movie.

The more accomplished the film-making becomes, the more we then expect the script to level up too.

Clumsy attempts at comedy are weaved in to try and alleviate the remarkable grimness but all it really does it add to an uneven tone.

Laurent, to her credit as director, is less interested in how a shootout can work as an aphrodisiac, and more invested in how it would affect a female friendship.

As the film crashes to a conclusion, early promise fading away, the film has the feeling of a valiant, but misguided, post-Get Out attempt to infuse social commentary within the framework of well-worn genre territory, aiming high but landing low.

The fizz of the first half might not go completely flat in the second but that’s only because of McKellen, who relishes another devious character to sink his teeth into, devouring every scene, a deliciously caustic turn that will provide him with nothing but the finest notices.

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.

Captive State is imperfectly constructed, at times frustratingly so, but it’s trying, doggedly, to do something different and given the bland efficiency of so many wide-releasing sci-fi movies, that’s hard to fault.

It never really feels like we’re on a journey anywhere we haven’t been before, with Spellbound far too bewitched with the past to create any of its own magic.

It’s everything and nothing, a familiar regurgitation of a formula with precious little to add.

There’s ultimately too much in the film’s rushed 94-minute runtime for anything to really breathe.

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.

It all goes off the rails in the worst way in the chaotic final act, as Schlesinger invents a farcical, and increasingly ludicrous, way to wrap things up, the truth of what happened proving far too pedestrian for the framework she’s created.

It’s a film trapped between a low- and a highbrow version of a story we know all too well, landing firmly in the middle of the road.

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.

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

His to-the-point revenge thriller Silent Night isn’t good enough for us to erupt into the applause Woo has so often deserved, but it’s also not bad enough for us to mourn the film-maker that he once was, a mostly competent exercise that serves less as a victory lap and more as a warm-up.

There’s a grubby, late-night appeal to his dialled-up trash aesthetic and The Beekeeper mostly works because of it. Bee prepared for a sequel.

The life lessons being taught here about self-acceptance, self-love and self-worth might be a little pat and some of the darker elements could have afforded a tad more darkness, but It Ends with Us leads with heart first, everything else later. It’s a film of huge, sometimes hugely unsubtle, emotion but it has an effectively forceful sweep to it.

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

There’s little in the way of dramatic conflict or base wit to keep us hanging around to see what happens within each.

Even if some of the late-stage plotting seems sloppy and increasingly preposterous, there’s a callousness to the brutal last act that, together with the far patchier, yet similarly hard-edged First Purge, feels like a definite product of the time we’re in, as war on terror-era torture porn did in the mid-2000s.

Annabelle Comes Home is hopelessly light on scares.

It’s a pulpy slab of exploitation masquerading as an important treatise on the struggles faced by the working class in rural America, thumping us in the face with its shallow viewpoint until we beg for mercy. Or at least the credits.

It’s hard to know how seriously we’re supposed to take any of this when it’s so unclear what the makers’ intention is and so the film’s deeper cuts fail to truly wound because so much of it is mired in silliness.

Spencer works hard to keep us on her side and it’s her messy, melancholic character work that endures, a portrait of a woman broken and breaking those around her that’s really quite hard to shake. Ma is a few more drafts from perfection but the actor playing her is the real deal.

Within the first 15 or so minutes of Apple TV+’s Palmer, something clicks in, a feeling of overwhelming familiarity, an inner voice quietly realising, “Ohhh, it’s that movie.”

It’s not that its heart isn’t in the right place, it’s just that its heart has been transplanted from somewhere else.

A bafflingly botched misfire ... Quite what the film is and who it’s for remains a head-scratcher, a stilted jumble of somethings boiling down to nothing.

What none of the tonal shifts and story tweaks can do is distract us from his boringly flat direction, failing to justify why something so drab and cheap-looking would warrant the surprisingly wide theatrical release it’s receiving this weekend.

A handsomely made return to form for a series that had been showing signs of fatigue.

The goofier it all gets, the more one starts to warm to it, leaning further away from its initial A-trappings and nestling into a far more likable B-movie mode.

The aimless and unfunny shenanigans of Atropia never really lead to anything and they certainly don’t lead us anywhere that demands the sudden level of dramatic seriousness that the ending brings about.

It’s just a film that never really finds its footing, a problem that would have been noticeable with or without the increased frame rate. It’s just that at 120 frames a second, it’s so much more noticeable.

It doesn’t entirely work, but there’s something about its full-throttle nastiness that lingers, and it’s refreshing to see something that exists in the studio system that possesses so many queasily perverse elements. It’s just not quite as seductive as it thinks it is.

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’s an undemanding watch, easily digestible while on in the background, but even easier to forget.

It’s a star vehicle that starts and ends with its star, the film around him struggling to justify its existence. Efron is wicked, the film less so.

It feels like a short that was expanded without enough thought for how it might work as a whole movie and by the end, even that curiosity has faded too.

The inept script... makes for a perfect bedfellow with Egoyan’s flat TV movie direction and an overwrought score that sounds like a drunk impression of Bernard Herrmann.

Trap is a thriller that incorrectly thinks it’s fiendishly smart. Maybe if it was more aware of how stupid it actually is, it might have been a lot more fun.

Horror director Michelle Garza Cervera opts for the muted slow-burn (it’s a convincing argument for more studio work) and Winstead gives an earnest performance, the film for the most part existing in a recognisably grounded dramatic universe. But the plotting is often laughably hokey and its flashes of violence so distractingly grotesque that it’s never quite clear how seriously we should be taking any of this, a campy good time masquerading as prestige drama.

The action is serviceable enough, enjoyment based less on deftly staged choreography and more on the catharsis offered to Davis, as president and actor (she has spoken in recent press about the pleasure and freedom the role has provided).

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.

There’s never really enough for the underserved trio of actors to sink their teeth into, although they all manage to coast comfortably enough.

The pair never convincingly hate or even mildly dislike each other, there’s no bite there, it’s more like watching a happy couple playfully rag on each other for an audience and we’re never given enough of a reason as to why they wouldn’t be together from the outset.

It’s ultimately a doomed voyage: for the crew, for the audience and for Universal’s monster movie strategy at large.

Like Beckett trying to escape his pursuers, it’s a scrappy little film but one worth keeping up with.

There’s a whiff of the plane movie emanating from ho-hum Paramount+ comedy Jerry and Marge Go Large, an acceptable half-awake diversion when one has run out of other, better options in the sky but something that’s a little harder to justify on the ground.

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.

When a writer-director of some undeniable talent throws so much at the wall, it’s inevitable that elements will stick and in Vengeance, there’s just about enough to make us curious to see what happens when Novak learns to tighten his focus. Vengeance is less the film we need right now and more the one he thinks we do but hopefully next time, he’ll figure out how to make something we want instead.

It’s an unsatisfying and head-scratchingly empty drama that in its final meaningless moments, as shreds of drab voiceover are matched with a dramatically overstylised rainstorm, starts to feel as creatively pointless as the sort of vapid, brand-commissioned film Jolie’s director was hired to make. It makes the fashion world seem deathly dull, as if Winocour dislikes it as much as her protagonist allegedly does.

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.

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.

The film’s old-fashioned nature is a plus and a minus, delivering us the satisfying beats we’ve come to expect from such a story, yet also giving it a dusty, dated feel, playing like a mid-90s TV movie stumbled upon late at night.

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

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 slick in one moment and a little too scrappy the next but Ritchie’s puppyish insistence that you have as much as fun as his stars is hard to resist. The film’s bizarrely reticent rollout might have already killed any chance of further operations but there have been far, far worse franchise-starters in recent years.

The performers are left with very little to work with and while Hammer does find away of making the most of his haunted alcoholic, Johnson and Zazie Beetz, two wonderful actors, are stranded with hopelessly one-dimensional roles.

While it’s not going to make a star of Pataky or anyone watching a sudden convert to Netflix’s mockbuster oeuvre, it’ll make for a decent summer snack until something better lands.

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.

The sheer existence of Lou might be a step in the right direction for women over 50 in action movies, but it’s a misstep everywhere else.

The more British director Sean Ellis prods and provokes, the hokier it all gets, a film about cutting weight that could have benefited from a leaner edit.

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.

It’s a film about wanderlust and romance that should be a breezy sojourn for those of us who need it right now. Why then does it feel like such a slog?

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.

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.

While the story of an old flame coming alight again can be a very poignant one, especially with an older age attached, there’s very little here to move us; a crippling dearth of chemistry between two likable enough leads who are forced into thin, circumstantial conflicts and overdramatic reactions that feel unearned and at times baffling.

The stinging tragedy of being gay at the wrong time in history is something that will always prove ripe for emotive, painful drama but director Michael Grandage struggles to pull our heart-strings, an easy target easily missed.

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.

Even the fantastical elements don’t make that much sense, magic with rules that are loose and undefined, leaving us with an eye-roll of an ending we can see from a mile away.

Against the Ice is a Danish story flattened for a global audience.

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.

The word “messy” is bandied around by its characters but The Life List is far too clean.

Curiously flat ... From the opening few frames through to a clunky introductory sequence, there’s something frustratingly off-balance about Georgetown.

The base ingredients are here – a charming, comically adept cast, a fun culture clash set-up, idyllic scenery! – but they’re carelessly tossed together rather than combined with any thought, care or even slickness.

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.

Even as glossy run-of-the-mill formula, it’s never even close to being as funny or romantic as it needs to be, devoid of fizzy one-liners and hampered by the pair struggling to muster up chemistry during phone conversations that never feel as lived-in as they would for friends with such extensive history.

James had impressed with her debut, the dementia horror Relic, but any of that film’s texture or creepiness has dissolved on a larger scale.

Shelley’s mistreatment by the literary elite because of her gender is a compelling, uniquely frustrating element and the film deprives us of the suitably grand exploration that it deserves.

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.

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

There’s also no real satire here either (moneyed folk are apparently bad, did you realise?) and at this stage of the rich-eating cycle, I just want it to be over. Forget a killing, Ford has made a real mess instead.

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

It’s pure mass market Christmas cookie cutter stuff that’s only made vaguely interesting in very short bursts because of its queerness.

It’s at least a short film, clocking it at around 90 minutes, Serkis chopping off any extraneous fat, but it floats by and floats on without ever causing us to sit up and pay attention. Let there be no more.

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.

There’s nothing markedly necessary about universe expander Army of Thieves, niche fan service that gives backstory to a character who we know dies later on, but Schweighöfer, also acting as director, keeps his frothy caper afloat with a light knockabout tone, never insisting the film as anything that it isn’t.

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

Even when it’s trying too hard, the very fact that it’s trying at all makes it hard to dislike. The rules might not make any sense but you’ll have fun playing along regardless.

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

There’s definite fun to be had here and franchise fans will surely appreciate both Black’s nods to the past and his plan for the future but there’s something forgettable about its freneticism, and I struggle to imagine in 31 years if it will be thought of at all.