Benjamin Lee

Coco is a rousing, affecting, fun and much-needed return to form after underwhelming Finding Nemo and Cars sequels and will help to ensure that Pixar’s legacy remains intact.

It’s just a rare joy to see a film-maker scrambling together overused tropes and making something so vibrant and vital as a result, an exciting and unexpected studio movie with a brain, some guts and a heart.

At a game-length 91 minutes, Saipan smartly comes and goes with speed (for all of its anger, it’s also a breezy, funny time) but it’s the rare football movie that’s worth a replay.

Sarandon’s force and confidence are undeniable, and she easily holds her own against Burt Lancaster.

It’s such a joy to watch two such assured and natural performers allowed the room to exercise both movie star and actor muscles as well as showcase their ease with both comedy and drama.

In writer-director Evan Morgan’s unusual neo-noir The Kid Detective, it’s not just a suspect or a motive that’s a red herring, it’s an entire genre, a strange rug-pull of a movie that starts in the middle of the road before ending up off a cliff, in a way that both works and doesn’t, a fascinating gambit 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.

It’s a film of many, many high-volume arguments but Dynevor and Ehrenreich remarkably avoid even the slightest sign of histrionic excess, expertly carrying over their sexual chemistry to the couple’s more horrible moments – a pair you buy in moments of love as much as you do in moments of hate.

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 surprisingly grand emotional punch, arriving suddenly and landing with force.

Eye in the Sky aims to thrill and covertly manages to inform simultaneously.

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.

It’s a carefully balanced and frightening film with Knox a terrifyingly unknowable character at the grisly centre.

It’s the goriest movie of the series so far but without veering into grimness, again that tonal balance perfectly modulated. The last act reveal is as goofy as one would expect but satisfyingly so for reasons impossible to explain without entering spoiler territory.

Annihilation is more than mere visuals and it will shock, fascinate and haunt whatever screen it’s watched on.

Rather like its central relationship, the film is messy and flawed yet painfully familiar.

For those who like their dating movies with a bit of gristle, Fresh is a perfect match.

Given the nudity on show, some are already quick to criticise Park’s direction as gratuitous and to claim that his male gaze is affecting the depiction of lesbian romance. But the impotency of the male characters helps to counter this while the sex scenes themselves, as lovingly shot as they might be, feel vital to the narrative.

The much-hyped battles deliver the giddy thrills we demand but in the moments when the pair aren’t at war there’s also a staggeringly well-built and extensive universe to explore and one that’s barely been teased in the trailers we’ve seen.

There’s no clumsy exposition here to explain motivations but delicately scattered crumbs involving status, family and the crippling strain of competitive masculinity.

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.

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

Roberts, who also directed hit shark thriller 47 Metres Down and its superior follow-up, is mostly at his savviest and most ruthlessly efficient here, a confident leveling up for a genre film-maker finding his sweet spot. After a lacklustre year for horror, Primate makes for a wildly entertaining start to 2026.

Happiest Season exists within well-worn framework but still feels fresh, a sprightly and substantial comedy that will be an immediate addition to the Christmas movie rotation for many, including myself.

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.

Holofcener and Louis-Dreyfus again make for perfectly pitched partners.

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.