Cath Clarke

This is a sweet, fuzzy movie, possibly a little soft-hearted. Still, I dare anyone to watch the final moments without a lump in the throat.

What follows is a race against the clock, cleverly constructed by director Maximilian Erlenwein and co-writer Joachim Hedén. Their script throws in plenty of calamities to nobble the diver’s escape, but didn’t quite manage – for me at least – to spark a vertiginous clammy terror.

Dyer’s intelligent and sensitive performance does wonders for a character who, on the page, looks like a male fantasy: a cool-girl psychiatric case, fun-loving, free-spirited and up for anything.

It’s a touching film and a fascinating glimpse into one of those couples you can’t quite believe are still together.

The film is, I think, just as Cunningham would have wanted it: cerebral, highbrow and mildly frustrating, with nothing so conventional as talking heads or context.

Is there something creepy about Franny’s aggressive generosity and need to be needed? In a film with a better script, yes.

The Grand Bizarre is a film that will alienate many with its video-artiness but the focus here on looking and looking again with wonder at the everyday stuff around us may strike a chord at the moment.

What the film does very well is show how doping became so normalised. It’s as much a part of the team’s routine as a post-race rubdown.

There is just too much going on, and the movie doubles in hecticness with every minute that passes, which may have you rummaging around for a couple of paracetamol.

There’s plenty of white-knuckle footage from the archive, as well as reflections of old muckers. Fiennes says that in his darkest, diciest moments in peril he imagined his heroes – the father and grandfather he never met – watching over him.

A little of the intimacy is gone, and I have to admit to not being 100% sold on the cowboy-inflected songs, which feature quite a bit of dime-store sentimentality. But Springsteen is undoubtedly magnetic, his voice a honeyed growl.

Like watching a statue for two-and-a-half hours, there’s nothing to do but sit back and yawn.

It’s tender and poignant, but might be a bit cloying were it not for Norton, who underplays it beautifully with a performance of tremendous depth and empathy.

It’s watchable, but don’t expect your mind to be blown – more gently prodded.

It is a thing of beauty: too beautiful perhaps, running a real danger of prettifying poverty.

Loud and zappy, The Jungle Bunch trots out predictable be-kind-be-brave platitudes, but lacks anything distinctive of its own.

Their film pushes the limits of documentary filmmaking and will likely push the tolerance of viewers. This is a demanding watch, the arthouse cinema equivalent of the marshmallow experiment, testing the attention span of audiences.

Cummings presents us with a guy whose heart is in the right place – he just can’t control himself. But, like me, others may find their tolerance for a clueless white man’s anger issues has maxed out.

The movie is about how people ruin everything with their destructiveness, but also about the beauty of the human heart. It’s so inventive and imaginative that I wanted to love it more, but in the end found it a little bit psychologically uninvolving, perhaps because of its nonstop swirl of ideas and stories.

This documentary makes a pretty convincing case for the admission of the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint into the boys’ club of abstract art, alongside Kandinsky, Mondrian et al.

The film is a reminder of just what a brilliant writer Bourdain was.

It’s a disorientating, unrelaxing two-hour experience, but rewarding.

Like Bujalski’s early mumblecore work, this is sensitive and meandering – and just a little bit patience-testing. But it’s also infectiously sweet and honest-feeling.

At times, there is something almost spoofy about this film’s relentless miserableness. Its 30-minute long hallucinatory dream sequence didn’t work for me – it might be that you need a degree in Russian history to make sense of its allegory on the nature of power.

Sir Ian McKellen is a pleasure to watch as an elderly Sherlock Holmes, though the drama isn't as compelling as it might have been.

Poekel’s style is far too authentic-indie and unaffected to get slushy or sentimental about Christmas; through his lens Christmas tree lights blink like police lights. But in its own low-key way, he pitches his film just right for a little squeeze of festive warmth.

Now Breakfast at Tiffany’s is iconic in fashion circles and Holly Golightly seen as a proto-Carrie Bradshaw – a trailblazer for women who use their ovens for shoe storage. Re-released by the BFI, it’s as ditsy and delightful as ever – with charm enough to forgive it plenty. [Review of re-release]

A beautifully acted but disappointingly stiff period drama.

The focus is on his star quality and the qualities that made him a pioneer: sunniness, grit, passion for his sport, the unconditional love and support of his mother, and his unbreakable confidence to be himself. It’s undeniably heartwarming.

A difficult, depressing watch.

Sigurðsson is no misanthrope and his humane message – that everyone is muddling along as best they can – makes all the feuding and bile easier to stomach. Some may prefer a little more bite.

There are some gorgeous comic touches.

The film is fun, but, for all its inventiveness, it’s a bit tame, with its nice-but-dim hero. But Diamantino is never dull.

The movie is full of wackiness but contains only traces of comedy.

Virtually laugh-free, so-so looking with a seriously drippy musical number, it feels like a film slipped into cinemas over summer to sucker parents desperate to do something, anything, to fill a couple of hours.

The two women’s scenes together give the film its most interesting moments.

The history that emerges here is of a band yo-yoing between attempts to be taken seriously as artists, then coming back for more boyband fame and adulation. An air of collective self-loathing and regret hangs over them.

Despite featuring big-name actors – Miller, Paul and Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks as Debra’s sister – American Woman is a film with a lived-in authentic feel. And Miller plays it beautifully with psychological depth and not a jot of actorly condescension.

Deadwyler’s performance is the driving force here. Without her, the audience’s attention might drift to the predictability of a plotline that hinges on Manny’s adolescent rebellion against his mum.

It’s a gentle and superbly shot film.

Director Lance Oppenheim takes a gentle approach, capturing some hilarious moments, but there’s nothing patronising or mean-spirited about his film.

Kerr’s script doesn’t always match the quality of her interesting, layered lead performance.

What first-time feature directors Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis seem to be going for here is a Herzogian waking nightmare, but the necessary sense of horror and despair never fully comes off.

Robin’s Wish is not a wide-ranging documentary about Williams’s life. It only briefly sketches in his career, from early ambitions of serious acting at the Juilliard drama school in New York to standup stardom (“he drained every scintilla of laughter out of the crowd”) and Hollywood.

After a lifetime reporting on conflict, Fisk reflects on the capacity of human beings to cause chaos on such a scale. Is there something deep in our souls that permits it because it feels natural? His painful, deeply serious question about the inevitability of war sets the tone of this documentary about his career.

The comedy takes a bit of an IQ dip when the film crosses the Channel and the dialogue switches to English. Still, it glides along on Rutherford’s performance as Agathe – witty, warm, keenly observant, a bit clumsy and Bridget Jones-ish, but never, not even for a moment, cringy.

In the end, it’s a film with a melancholic feel, which probably has a lot to do with its timing.

As per the two previous films, Stahelski cranks up the body count with a string of fight sequences so balletic you might forget you’re watching violence – until Reeves sinks a knife into a man’s eye. But, three movies in, franchise bloat is beginning to set in; the dead dog jokes are definitely wearing thin.

The script steadily goes about its mission of freeing its characters from all forms of oppression – but it’s generous and unpatronising too.

It’s a film with charm and sweetness but a twinge of anxiety, a little gravitational pull to darker places.

There are some lovely playful moments: his favourite elf eats a magic shroom and grows to monstrous proportions. But there is a lot of padding and the decision to stick with the book’s rhyming scheme becomes annoying.

My Best Friend’s Exorcism could perhaps do with one or two genuine scares. But for anyone old enough to remember Tiffany and advice columns in teenage girls’ magazines, this is going to deliver a pleasing shot of nostalgia.

The film gives us a precious glimpse into LGBTQ+ life in the postwar period.

It is a poignant set-up but, disappointingly, Okada’s ideas about motherhood don’t cut as deep as they could.

The real chemistry here is with the four-legged ass, not the human one.

Afterwards, everyone smiles reassuringly – then one man pipes up: “Don’t take this the wrong way, but …” and a begins a pretentious intellectual takedown. Like the film it’s a funny-smart moment, witty and grownup.

This being a kids film, there is a ‘message’ – about the destruction of nature. But the eco theme genuinely works with the film’s wonder at nature.

The film’s Groundhog Day-meets-Independence Day plot is actually pretty genius.

This is a decent, intelligent, well-acted film if a little uninspired until that third act, which packs an almighty punch.

Spree is meant to comment on the shallowness of social media culture; the trouble is, it’s a film with the depth of a puddle.

The plot pings about hyperactively, so dizzying that Cosmic Princess Kaguya! may leave audiences over 15 years old feeling more ancient than the original tale.

There are some very funny scenes and a reasonably tense shootout finale – though the sentimental ending felt to me like a bit of a cop-out.

Co-directing Unicorns with James Krishna Floyd (the star of My Brother the Devil), who wrote the script, El Hosaini brings a streak of hopefulness to gritty social realism, with the added attraction of superstar drag queens.

The film also touches on Bell’s work for the British government, drawing up the boundaries of Iraq after WWI – which was to have consequences still felt today.

The film offers a fascinating glimpse into the mystery of other people, especially other people’s marriages. Friends and family still look dazed that the Alters – Rita and Jerry! – were behind the theft.

Cage dials it down nicely, keeping his freaky at a gentle 6 out 10. The film cruises along on his charm; it’s otherwise a totally disposable but mostly entertaining action comedy drama with a really stupid plot and a few good laughs.

The pressure for minimalist Simons to succeed in the ultra-feminine world of Dior is intense.

Heldenbergh and Baetens pull you in with committed performances ­– their raw pain and grief is totally believable. But all that honest, intense emotion is thrown away as the film outstays its welcome by 40 minutes or so, piling one tragedy on to another.

It’s super fun entertainment, which mostly disguises the fact it’s not going to stick in the mind for long.

I warmed to its sensitivity; it possesses an insistence that these difficult boys are vulnerable and scared kids (undermined only slightly by the fact that the actors playing them look well into their 20s).

The message to take home: put a pot of lavender on your windowsill. Save bees!

The strength of the writing is in portraying Bunny’s reality, allowing us to wonder – like the social workers – whether she really is a reliable parent. This is thoughtful film-making, though I didn’t quite buy into the explosion of drama at the end.

Like I say, there’s nothing new here for even casual followers of the food crisis. But it will make you think twice about what you put in your supermarket basket.

The tension leaks away in the second half; the film could have done with being snipped by a good 20 minutes.

Silva packs in more penises in five minutes on the beach than I’ve seen on cinema screens in a decade of movie-watching; his representation of hedonistic gay culture feels nicely casual and natural.

It’s stylishly shot by first-timer Louis-Seize, a bit reminiscent of an early Jim Jarmusch movie with its deadpan sense of humour, never trying too hard, just a little bit too cool for school.

There’s a made-by-a-mate feel to the film, which jumps around confusingly: if you’re not a fan it might help to read her Wiki page for context. Perhaps there is just too much MIA for one film to handle. One thing’s for sure, in an era of manufactured pop stars, she is resplendently unfiltered.

In Camera is the kind of ambitious intelligent cinema that invites your most mulled-over theories. It will exasperate some; others will be engrossed by an intriguing movie.

The film is essentially a legal procedural: solid, mostly entertaining and occasionally gripping.

The whole thing looks as if it was dreamed up under the influence of a quality batch of LSD. I laughed out loud at the hokiest bits. But I’ve got to admit I was sucked in and genuinely scared, too.

[An] informative documentary.

While, yes, TCWSSF is a dreamy magical realist fable with an environmental message, Alegría weaves into her tale an emotionally satisfying, gripping family drama, with singing cows – and fish too.

This is a gentle-going watch, understated – underpowered even – and sometimes a little drowsy. Still, it has real sensitivity and insight into the transition to adulthood, as gradually it dawns on Nang that his parents don’t have all the answers.

It’s a film that may be a bit sugary for some tastes, but it’s made with real care and craft.

Into the Woods starts better than it finishes but it’s a great-looking film, with a nicely old-school, easy-on-the-CG feel.

The upside to casting Bea in a comedy is that she’s an absolute hoot. When Hollywood stars play ordinary civilians, there’s often a slumming-it quality to their performances, but Bea is funny and real, sarky and very likable as Gemma, who’s feeling guilty after Nathan dies.

The script, inspired by Chomko’s grandparents’ marriage, throws up plenty of authentic-looking observations of life with Alzheimer’s.

The question of whether this is a ghost story or if Laura is experiencing a kind of psychological breakdown twists and turns in ways that lost me by the end. Still, it’s is a very accomplished debut from Gregg, and acted with subtlety and sensitivity by Riseborough.

Bell is so goofy and likeable I found myself willing the film to keep up with her. But the funny bits are never quite funny enough, and the script loses feminist points bigtime for its sour bitch ex-wife character.

Without a doubt this is easy entertainment, never dull, and it has some shrewd things to say about class and money – though the satire might have been sharper and the running time shorter by a good 20 minutes.

It’s perhaps less fun than you might have hoped for, though Shatner is undoubtedly charismatic, and a pretty decent raconteur. He’s often entertaining, if not always necessarily in the way he intended.

McKellen occasionally slips into the part of twinkly super-cool gay uncle that he tends to play in interviews these days. But mostly he’s thoughtful and self-reflective (and not at all gossipy about his theatrical chums, disappointingly).

It is solid and watchable, and Radcliffe is genuinely ace, giving a smart, understated and intelligent performance.

The more the movie explains, the less powerful it becomes – ending with a Shining-like finale in the snow that for me was a letdown.

But the storytelling is unevolved compared with the animation.

It’s a broad, enjoyable, lighthearted movie with a fair few not-insignificant plot holes, but a genuinely surprising storyline that keeps you guessing to the end.

I can’t help thinking Gillan’s superpower as a writer and performer might actually be comedy. Still, always a compelling screen presence, she’s now a film-maker to watch.

Miraculously this film is never silly. The recreation of stone age life feels unexpectedly convincing – partly I suspect, because of the sensible decision to have the actors speak a made-up stone age language instead of English (bolted together, apparently, from bits of Arabic, Basque and Sanskrit).