Benjamin Lee

Like Set It Up before it, Always Be My Maybe hits all of the beats we have come to expect yet fails to do so well enough, as if the mere existence of a technically well-structured romantic comedy is better than nothing.

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.

It’s a film with too much yet somehow so very little.

There’s a rare unpredictability that initially proves alluring, at least until that confusion starts to feel less intentional.

It’s a film that’s good enough that you want it to be better, a rare genre example of less not proving to be more.

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.

Wine Country is scrappy and, at times, misjudged but it’s also very, very funny with a cast of women whose collective charm makes the patchier moments forgivable. Watching it with wine helps too.

While it’s nice to see Cardellini nab a rare lead (in the middle of an unusually fruitful time with turns in Green Book, Avengers: Endgame and Netflix comedy Dead to Me), the script fails to provide her with enough meat, despite her predicament, ultimately stranding her with a rather standard shrieking mother role.

A smart, often ingenious, new film ... What’s most exceptional about the end result is just how deftly [the director] weaves the enraging horror of a racially motivated police shooting into a zippy genre piece.

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.

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

A tense, knotty puzzle ... It’s a drama that moves like a thriller.

It’s a film in need of a tighter edit with a script in need of a sharper polish, an imperfect franchise-launcher that nonetheless represents significant progress for DC.

Her film reaches the audience-friendly highs of a studio comedy while retaining an indie sensibility, both in its visuals and its tone, and coupled with the script’s rooted awareness of the moment we’re now in, it feels fresh, a film that will be rewatched and quoted, held on a pedestal by those who understand its necessity.

As a film-maker, Larson shows promise, and as a comic actor she shows genuine talent. With a less affected, more genuine script, Larson could star in and direct a great comedy. Unicorn Store is not it.

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.

Morris handles a delicate balancing act with an expected ease, the work of a satirist with so much to say yet with an awareness that saying less leads to so much more.

An inevitable yet staggeringly unnecessary follow-up to the surprise horror hit turns a nifty concept into an exhaustingly convoluted mess.

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

It’s a fiery, flawed, often stunningly made film that provokes uncomfortable discussion, rather like the Richard Wright novel it was based on, although purists might argue over some key changes.

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.

It’s competently made but utterly vacant, a forgettable indie fading fast.

The Report is an angry, urgent film that rarely raises its voice, smartly conveying inhumanity and injustice without unnecessary drama. I found it thrilling.

Official Secrets is a well-intentioned retelling of a daunting act of courage and as a vehicle for informing more people of who Katharine Gun is, it’s effective, carefully laying out the incremental stakes as well as her noble intentions. Credit for this however lies almost solely with Knightley.

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 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’s a slight film at times but one that builds to a crescendo of emotion.

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.

Its wild nature won’t be to everyone’s taste, but that’s sort of the point. It’s not a film that cares if you find these women charming or likable – it just cares that you believe them.

It’s a conventional film in many ways but one that slowly and effectively builds to a remarkably rousing climax, displaying an act of overwhelming ingenuity that’s hard to deny.

There’s something so constructed and suffocating about watching a tried and tested formula not working, the over-sentimental string-pulling on show for all to see.

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.

Gilroy avoids the ghoulish extremes of Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals and offers up a believably pretentious battleground. He’s as invested in crafting a fully fleshed art world as he is in creating a full-on horror film and while the two often blend well, at other times, his concoction is far less effective.

As a drama, it’s frustratingly insubstantial, failing to provide enough of an emotional centre or a convincing payoff.

There’s a delicate intimacy between the characters that feels raw and authentic and like Coogler, Caple Jr’s indie beginnings seem to steer him toward filling a big film with small moments.

It is a finely constructed drama, avoiding stuffiness without slipping into camp territory and while diehard historians might disapprove, everyone else will be supremely entertained.

On the Basis of Sex is a solid, often impassioned film, but too often its worst instincts take over, and cliches stack up faster than legal documents.

It’s watchable enough but let down by a strange lack of interest in presenting Salander as anything but an engine to propel a plot. More female action heroes is by no means a bad thing but forcing Salander into Bond’s shoes feels like a misstep, her intellect and survivalism suited to far more interesting pursuits.

It’s a curiously underwhelming, muted, often plodding two hours that fails to reach the emotional highs and devastating lows one would expect from the material.

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’s clearly a more nuanced drama to be made from this story but given the scale, there’s still a lot here to praise.

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.

None of it rings remotely true and his insistence on playing out so many scenes at such a high level can make it an excruciating watch.

There are good intentions and good performances here, but they’re squandered in a movie that isn’t quite sure what it should be and how far it should go.

Kidman fearlessly commits to the filth of it all, whether it’s drunkenly fighting off her daughter’s sleazy boyfriend or jerking off a bed-ridden informant, but her radical transformation and some timeframe trickery can’t mask a plot that feels rather empty.

It’s a film entirely devoid of subtlety yet one that also fails to provide the grand emotion it yearns to deliver, despite the use of a sledgehammer.

It’s a heartbreaking, troubling film about men whose lives were cruelly deprioritised and whose families remain ever altered as a result. It ends on a note of melancholy but the burning anger also remains, the final scenes tinged with a painful awareness of wounds that may never heal.

Sometimes the shagginess of the film can make it feel a bit slight and at times it does work better as a concentrated character study, but it’s such a joy to spend this time with McCarthy, drunkenly scheming and grumbling, that it’s hard to complain.

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

It’s a film with love at its root, both familial and romantic, and Jenkins fills so much of it with a radiating warmth.

There are so many characters at play here and McQueen and Flynn’s script manages to let them all breathe, giving each actor small defining moments and given the exceptional cast involved, it makes for a richly rewarding experience.

There are some effectively nasty kills (this is no PG-13 reboot) and Green’s visual eye often results in some impressive imagery but both the look of the film and the script feel confused. Green can’t seem to decide whether he wants it to be gritty and lo-fi or slick and cinematic and so ends up awkwardly between the two, anything resembling an atmosphere sorely missing.

There are moments of crushing emotional weight but as the film progresses, they start to carry less power.

There’s an authenticity underpinning the portrayal of events in The Front Runner that lifts it above the less-than-groundbreaking set-up.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

For all of its faults, there’s still plenty here to praise, the result of so much being thrown at the wall is that some of it will stick. Pearce has a sharp creative flair and a head full of ideas but he feels somewhat hemmed in by the constraints of a short running time and a high profile release date.

The lifeless direction, the unrefined script, the underwhelming cameos, the distinct lack of fizz – there’s a slapdash nature to the assembly of Ocean’s 8 that makes it feel like the result of a rushed, often careless process. It’s made watchable thanks to the cast but star power alone cannot mask creative inadequacy. Stealing a diamond necklace is bad but wasting an opportunity like this is unforgivable.

The three leads are so strong that one wishes Netflix had granted them a whole series to live in, their everyday lives worthy of a deeper dive. Ibiza is a fun, far-fetched frippery but I’d rather see what happened to them if they’d stayed at home.

Life of the Party’s predictable and lethargic box-ticking of scenes (accidentally getting high – check; dance off – check), gives it the unremarkable stench of something you’ve half-watched on cable before.

Watching a couple bicker about the specifics of their relationship can be illuminating when done right, but here it becomes a chore, the problems they encounter feeling contrived and silly.

Even though the script might let her down, Schumer does still manage to sell a smattering of the comic moments (the opening scene has a promising knockabout tone), but when she reaches the more dramatic elements, she struggles to convince.

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.

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.

There’s something to be admired about a film that can gracefully defy simple genre categorization but Submergence feels like a clumsy melange, a confused adaptation made by people who don’t seem quite sure what they have on their hands.