Chris Knight

One to talk about afterwards with your significant other — if the subject matter hasn’t made you terrified of spending too much time alone with them.

The film is a potent portrait of the heavy bootprint that colonialism left on the African continent, but the childlike point of view makes it an eminently watchable story, with moments of levity and even humour.

It has the potential to be a cracking good comedy, and the trailer suggests as much. But in the end, all this proves is that you can distill two minutes of hilarity from 96 of meh.

Two Women, for all its entertainment value, is silly and shallow, though deeper than porn, it must be said.

Disney’s Lilo & Stitch is about a dangerous alien lifeform that escapes from its creators, arrives on a backward planet and charms the inhabitants. Which is not a bad metaphor for Disney itself. It continues to remake hand-drawn animated classics as bloated live-action spectacles, hoping a nostalgic moviegoing public will continue to greet them with open arms and wallets.

In short, there is much to enjoy in Bonjour Tristesse, but the film as a whole never quite rises to the level of its best parts. And that’s a little sad.

Sacramento is a well-made, well-acted comedy drama that does just about everything right and almost nothing unexpected.

It’s a lovely, quirky tale, full of ruminations on regret, love coming from (and directed to) unexpected quarters, and a bizarre broken faucet that won’t not work.

Something about its proportions felt a little off. There was a touch too much flashback, an excess of cutaway, and a slight oversupply of innuendo in the early going that made the big emotional climax feel like it hadn’t quite earned its emotional beats.

The Penguin Lessons is a charmer: a warmer of cockles, a tugger of heartstrings, even a jerker of tears if you’re not careful. And while it may in hindsight seem a little over-engineered to do all those things, that doesn’t dampen the effect. People’s Choice material or not, I loved it.

It’s one helluva conversation starter, from one very thought-provoking story.

The Silent Planet is, at first glance, an ungainly pile of science-fiction tropes and platitudes that has no right to gel into anything cohesive or interesting. But do give it a second glance, because it does just that.

Ultimately, Grand Theft Hamlet — again, I’m referring to both the performance and the movie — is an emotional triumph. Best of all, you don’t need to be an experienced gamer to enjoy it, though I’m sure there are in-jokes for the initiated.

As written by Italy’s Paolo Sorrentino (who also directs), there is precious little going on beneath that alabaster exterior. One can only have characters ask each other “What are you thinking?” so many times before it feels as though the question is being begged.

The good news is that the whole shebang lasts just 83 minutes, stem to stern. The bad news is that you can only coast along on your love of Quan’s natural charm and screen presence for 60- or 65-minutes tops.

Companion ultimately delivers on three levels. It’s a creepy (and occasionally bloody, and also funny) thriller. It’s a whodunit, or maybe a whatdunit. And it’s a philosophical door-opener into questions to ask of ourselves when it comes to our computational creations — what to make of them, whether and how much to feel for them, whether we owe them anything.

Figuring out Nick’s motivations may be the most fun you’ll have over the film’s two-hour-plus runtime, though that isn’t saying much.

The series still has lots of heart, but its quality is moving in the wrong direction.

The End may literally be a little tone deaf, but it is not morally senseless.

Craig is easily the best thing in Queer, which grows a little maudlin at the end. Burroughs himself never properly completed the story, having lost interest along the way. But that’s not to say that his performance is the sole reason to see it.

Werewolves is of the small-movie variety, and I wish it were better. Alas, it’s not quite stupid enough to be a guilty pleasure, and not quite good enough to be an innocent one.

It tries to mine humour and a bit of horror from the era but fails to make much of an impact in either genre.

The film is long, a shade under two and a half hours, but Scott knows how to pace things so they don’t drag.

Expect deep conversations to follow your screening.

Clapin uses animated interludes to flesh out his human characters — his previous feature was 2019’s Oscar-nominated animated film J’ai Perdu Mon Corps (I Lost My Body). It’s an effective and beautiful way of turning emotions into visuals.

There’s not enough under the hood, and the screenplay sometimes strains to tell us (rather than show us) the complexities of the reality it’s creating.

Is it worth the wait? I mean, if you’ve already sat through The Last Dance — and I can’t advise that you do — then you might at well see it through to the bitter end. And I do mean bitter.

Seeds tackles topics as diverse as agri-business, colonialism, intergenerational trauma and personal grief — not to mention the enduring and often overlooked heroism of house cats. Its drama will grow on you.