Caryn James

Despite all the insider’s access, though, in the end the behind-the-scenes episodes offer the illusion of intimacy, rather than anything really illuminating.

At times it's as if the film itself was stitched together from the parts of other movies, but collecting all those bits and pieces is a sign of Gyllenhaal's huge scope and ambition.

Although Manville and Hinds are always worth watching, it’s obviously a problem when the actors and the scenery so thoroughly overshadow a film’s story.

Starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, Emerald Fennell's new take on the classic romance is far from faithful to the original book – but it is "utterly absorbing" in its own right.

The film’s first-person approach and dynamic visual style make it more engaging and livelier than you might expect such a well-researched documentary about this serious subject to be.

Josef Kubota Wladyka, the director and co-writer, shifts from poignant emotion to comedy to surreal scenes that take us inside Haru’s fantasies just as gracefully as the dialogue shifts from Japanese to Spanish and English.

With strong performances and a fresh premise about an unexpected friendship in middle age, but far too many creaky comic tropes, the uneven film is always watchable but never pops off the screen in a gripping way.

The film is lovely in the graceful way it executes its unsurprising content, and the actors make it soar even at its most predictable.

Marty Supreme has such scope, ambition and humour that its flaws, as with those off-screen Timmy exploits, are easy to overlook.

This film is as slick and shiny as Glinda's lip gloss, but it may also be just what its many fans want.

Selena y Los Dinos remains a slick doc most likely to appeal to her fans.

The Lost Bus doesn't have to bludgeon viewers with a message or with its timely resonance. Greengrass lets us feel it.

Its humane message is potent even though it comes in the offbeat package of this gleeful, violent but entirely successful dark comedy.

American society, in all its strengths and missteps, has been a major theme for both Pynchon and Anderson, and it grounds Anderson's dazzler of a film, giving it an emphatic, unmistakable political charge.

A ghostly story that’s not exactly a ghost story, Rose of Nevada is a typically imaginative film from the director Mark Jenkin.

Karia’s attempts to make the play cinematic work well at times.

With its Gothic atmosphere and deeper themes, Wake Up Dead Man has a darker tone than the previous Knives Out films. Yet it is also the funniest and most playful so far.

For now, Sweeney's celebrity still overshadows her acting.

Caught Stealing is an anomaly, a dark soap bubble of an entertainment. And that weirdness makes this unlikely film sparkle.

Throughout, Colman and Cumberbatch's performances make the dialogue much funnier than it sounds in print.

A mystery about retirees who solve cold cases for fun, it is as gentle as a game of Clue and as cozy as an Agatha Christie novel, but its glittering cast and a touch of self-awareness make up for that lack of originality. This modestly entertaining film is uncool and filled with stock tropes, but it doesn’t pretend to be anything more.

The best superhero movies let you ignore how ludicrous the plots are, but the silliness of The Fantastic Four is always in your face.

If you can't improve on Spielberg – and really, when it comes to this kind of film, who can? – better to try something bold to prevent any waning dino-interest.

The film, from Nobody director Ilya Naishuller, is a typical action-comedy that benefits greatly from its two stars, and slightly from their unexpected characters, before plunging fast into explosive but trite set-pieces.

But it takes on a quieter, more psychological tone and becomes infinitely better when Fiennes arrives.

Without for a minute undermining Ride’s importance, this clear-eyed film doesn’t sugarcoat her sometimes prickly personality.

The film approaches its action tropes with an effective sense of absurdity, but it’s the stars’ kinetic commitment to the bit that makes this relentlessly silly film work.

Moving on from its cynical beginning, Materialists takes the long way around to an ending that is decidedly hopeful. It offers an unblinkered, earned romanticism that suits this moment, and bolsters Song's reputation as one of our most astute observers of relationships.

Mountainhead may seem to be an argument for fast-turnaround films, but few writers and directors could do it with Armstrong's sharp eye and intelligence, as he entertains us with these heartless, all-too-convincing megalomaniacs.

Together, Garland's virtuosity and Mendoza's first-hand experience create a masterful technical achievement that is, more important, emotionally harrowing.

That interplay between work and life gives the project its distinctive perspective and offers the most acute revelations. The lack of talking heads commenting on her enhances the intimate feel.

Chalamet gives Dylan a defiant look in his eyes and through these later scenes creates a visceral sense of his restlessness, of how important it is for him to break free of the public assumptions about him, both musically and as the spokesman of a generation. You can finally feel an energy that can't be restrained and that should have been in the film all along.

Under its crowd-pleasing surface, though, the film's theme of political power, of who wields it and how, is strong and purposeful, even if Scott cagily weaves it into the colourful show.

There is more of Fuller’s memoir that might be a source for other adaptations. It is hard to imagine any would be more beautifully realized than this.

On Swift Horses isn't a disaster, but given its stars and potential, it is a disappointment.

Chew-Bose’s screenplay doesn’t explore the characters deeply enough to replace the book’s jaw-dropping quality with any psychological depth.

The film’s slow-burn pace is an asset, not a flaw. Speak No Evil works best when it focuses on the Americans’ escalating fears, and collapses near the end when the psychological horror story turns into a predictable potboiler. But for a good three-quarters of the way, this Blumhouse production is an entertainingly elevated genre piece.

Coppola depicts their lives with sympathy but also with clear-eyed honesty about the dreams they never achieved and the youth that's impossible to reclaim.

Leigh's strategy of taking us into his characters' world without prelude or explanation, letting the revelations and backstory waft out, help make his films feel authentic. He seems to have a magical ability to make the everyday captivating to watch

This story of corruption and conspiracy in a small Louisiana town might have passed as a taut if familiar action thriller — if it had actually been taut.

This is a fresh, unsentimental yet touching story.

Chris Weitz (most famously About a Boy and most recently Operation Finale) works hard to make Afraid a smarter-than-average horror movie, but the effort is conspicuous, and in the end the film is bland and obvious. And if horror can’t make us feel frightened in a way we couldn’t imagine ourselves, why bother?

Walker and her editors have created an absorbing narrative, so the film never feels as cobbled together as it actually is.

The movie star Taylor is the one who most often comes through in the film, but that is engaging enough.

The fights are about as sophisticated as watching kids in a playground, and they rely heavily on slow motion, as if that will instantly create tension.

It is a small movie with steep odds against it, but it is also extraordinarily accomplished.

As an emotional journey Day One has its moments. For a supposedly scary movie, it's a little bit sloppy.

That story deserves a great documentary. This well-meaning film is far from that. Rebel Nun is pedestrian at its best and cringe-worthy at its faux-arty worst.

Despite that ominous theme, The Great Lillian Hall is a lovely tribute to life in the theater, with all its personal compromises, and a showcase for Lange, who deftly shows the character as a vulnerable woman and also displays the distinct style of Lillian the bravura actress.

Even when it chooses to put the rosiest gloss on things, though, the film is bracing and inspiring, giving some talented conductors much-deserved visibility.

Behind the impressive CGI, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is the definition of generic, all two hours and 25 minutes of it. The ending teases a sequel that offers a more intriguing conflict ahead, but that doesn't help us now.

The actors keep the film going, at times by sheer magnetic on-screen presence even when the screenplay lets them down.

Some films can re-energise a genre, like last year's huge hit Godzilla Minus One . . . Godzilla x Kong is the opposite, a dazzling visual accomplishment that already feels old.

It’s an intriguing premise. ... But The Greatest Hits is the kind of film that should sweep you away with its charm and emotion. Instead, it’s too transparently button-pushing to go beyond the stale tropes of the weepy drama.

Full of affection for big Broadway-style tunes, with a heroine whose dream man is soft-hearted but also not human, it is a sharp, witty confection.

Haigh and his cast, including Paul Mescal as Adam's new lover, give this film about loss, enduring love and hope for the future such truth and poignance that it is easily among the best of the year.

The Color Purple is a big, brash spectacle, an extravaganza blending the styles of Broadway musicals, Hollywood studio movies and music videos, with a mix of gospel, pop, blues and ballads, all of that coming together smoothly in one exuberant film.

The Iron Claw's shallowness and eventual treacliness are especially disappointing.

Esmail's adaptation of Rumaan Alam's 2020 novel adds a playful Hitchcockian spin and the starry cast of Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke and Mahershala Ali to create a psychological thriller about family, technology and life in the 21st Century.

This absorbing film is likely to stay with you. It's a compliment to say that you may walk away with the off-kilter feeling that you have been in another person's dream the whole time.

Foe plays to the strengths of its actors, two of the most natural and subtle on screen, and is endlessly engaging even though it eventually stumbles into head-spinning narrative problems.

Graceful but slight, in the end The Movie Teller tries to do too much and accomplishes too little to fulfill its big ambitions.

While Pain Hustlers is a perfectly fine title, the film probably should have been called Liza Drake, the name of the sales rep played by Emily Blunt, who single-handedly almost saves this tone-deaf drama from itself.

The war scenes speak loudly on their own, with no need to add dramatic emphasis. Alexandre Desplat's score matches that style, with a subtle, piercing beauty. If the first half of Lee had been as dazzlingly effective as the second, it might have been a great film instead of a very good one.

It is funny, irreverent and crowd-pleasing, with a kaleidoscope of likeable characters and actors. Director Craig Gillespie (Cruella and I, Tonya) has turned a saga that ended up before a Congressional finance committee into a breezy entertainment.

The new film is much pokier in its pacing, with duller characters. Despite some highlights, including Branagh in top form as an even more somber than usual Poirot, the film is watchable but it is also something lethal to a mystery: uninvolving.

Finally Dawn is uneven, and at 2 hours and 20 minutes indulgently long, but it is also full of texture, wit and a few done-to-perfection set pieces.

This may be Miyazaki's most expansive and magisterial film. If it is not the most instantly stunning, that might be because he takes the time to deliver worlds within worlds, layers under layers, to create an overwhelming experience by the end.

The film has its entertaining, off-the-wall comic moments.

When a gigantic octopus tentacle reached out of the ocean to grab Meiying, it suddenly made me think of a very good octopus dish at a local restaurant. I wasn't even hungry. It's just that easy to lose interest in anything going on in this movie.

Like other love stories of the period, Gueule d'Amour has a melodramatic surface, yet it hits a nerve in anyone who has ever spent too much time thinking about the wrong person.

It's boldly imaginative and his most mature work yet.

Directed with pedestrian competence by Thaddeus O’Sullivan, The Miracle Club is about secrets that are all too obvious, and forgiveness you can see coming from the start.

It remains what it always was: a charming, escapist fairy tale.

Renfield is worth watching for Cage, Hoult and Awkwafina's entertaining performances, and not much more.

Defying any logical narrative, the film relies on poetic images and associations. It suggests that the most frightening thing in the world can be in your own mind.

Running at 2 hours and 49 minutes, it is bigger than the previous films in every way ­– not better or worse, just more.

Bill Murray has a single scene as Lord Krylar, an amalgam of all droll Bill Murray characters. William Jackson Harper is wry as a sympathetic telepath, who unfortunately disappears for much of the film.

While Channing Tatum is charismatic, and there are a few flashes of wit in the script, the latest Magic Mike sequel is 'tepid'.

In poetic fashion, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt asks for interpretation, making ordinary explanations unnecessary.

Hewson takes a flawed but good-hearted mess of a character and makes her sympathetic, likable and fully human.

Alice Englert expertly finds the line between satire and sincerity, mocking the slipperiness of the spiritual-enlightenment industry while acknowledging the serious intentions of the people — in this case very well-heeled customers — who think it’s at least worth a try.

At its best, Chazelle's film is a cinematic marvel, evidence enough that movies are magical, as it sweeps us into the beautiful, terrible world we recognise as Hollywood even now.

The deepest flaw in My Policeman is that we grasp too little of the characters' inner lives.

The film’s immersion into the anti-abortion movement — with a smattering of pro-choice voices woven in — is consistently fascinating. But Lowen’s measured approach also raises a question: How loud does a warning cry have to be to register? Eye-opening though it is, at times Battleground is muted to a fault.

Bros races along almost until the end when it embraces romcom elements, including a montage, that land as more clichéd than subversive. But that doesn't make the rest of this charming film any less entertaining and effective.

Craig's performance is wily and joyful, and the film's biggest flaw is that there is too little of him, as Johnson often turns the spotlight from Blanc to other characters.

The Woman King leans toward fantasy in its heroic moments, but is rooted in truth about war, brutality and freedom. It is a splashy popcorn movie with a social conscience.

An eloquent meditation on loss, memory and how film can shape them.

And as always in Peele films, clues and echoes are so detailed and carefully planted that it's hard to spot everything the first time through. He is still a master filmmaker, and even a mediocre Jordan Peele film is better than the strongest film of an ordinary director. Nope is that mediocre film.

It's hard to create tension when the stakes are so low. But the film's breezy tone and ultimately strong emotional depths make up for that flaw. This big-hearted Thor, thundering and sensitive, may be just the diverting hero we need right now.

A glib misreading of Men might reduce it to: "Ha! Men! They're all alike." But the film's ending emphasises how much Harper's trials and Garland's film have been about her profound tangle of love, grief and understanding.

For many of us, especially in the West, the film is likely to be confusing here and there. It would have been helpful, for example, if the subtitles had let us know who's speaking Russian and who's speaking Ukrainian. But it is worth a bit of confusion for a film so powerful and immediate, and made with such a lucid artistic vision.

Writer and director Andrew Semans puts Hall in every scene of this modest but effective thriller, and she comes through with a stunning, charismatic performance.

A flawed little time capsule, the doc veers uneasily between kindly character portrait and shallow attempt at media studies.

Stolevski depicts the young creature’s journey toward humanity with sensitivity and increasing investment.

The story has its moments of suspense, especially when Nina's child wanders off from the beach. But the soul of the film exists in the small exchanges and tensions between characters.

Full of energy, wit, passion and tragedy, looking backward and forward at once, it is one of the most moving films of the year.