Caryn James

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.