David Jenkins

Escobar’s go-for-broke handling of the material favours fun outtakes, flip humour and nostalgic hat-tips to the days when the Philippines had real gravitational pull as a hub for maverick genre enthusiasts wanted to parlay the beautiful/desolate surroundings into their scuzzy opus. And just when you reach the point where you think that Escobar has finally lost the plot, she crops up on camera and admits just that.

Even to a viewer who’s not particularly taken by their idiosyncratic and knowingly difficult sound, it’s a pleasure to be in the company of two people who are so proficient at articulating their inner feelings.

It’s not a film that does anything particularly new, in the dutifully linear way it tells the story to the ultra-functional shooting style. Yet its satisfaction comes from its careful release of information, it’s ambience of encroaching dread and the subtle psychological twists that push Julie ever closer to that euphoric breaking point.

It’s confident, classical filmmaking, yet despite its many formal and thematic pleasures, doesn’t offer a whole lot that’s new.

The film is a celebration of her life and work, but for such a controversial figure it would have benefited from some dissenting voices on the panel of interviewees, or at least gone a little deeper into her homespun methodology.

It’s in the writing where this one shines. Less in the moment-by-moment dialogue between characters, which is functional to a tee, and more in the way in which the clever plot is constructed and vital details are gradually teased out.

There’s a sense that the makers of Mission: Impossible: The Final Reckoning are biting a thumb at the naysayers and playing the hits one more time, albeit with a little bit more focus on the previous feature installments.

Despite these subtle barbs, Return to Dust ends up as an elegiac love story as the unlikely couple form a bond built on a foundation of total understanding and empathy.

It’s refreshing to see a film like this which opts for an editorial line that’s not just wall-to-wall celebration, and actually attempts to dismantle and dissect its subject rather than merely lionise him to the hilt.

At times it’s a little too ponderous, and sometimes struggles to bring variation and surprise to its runtime. Yet this laconic, meditative drama muses on the nature of time and the revelation that, even though Muzamil’s predicament seems highly unlikely to the rational onlooker, the knowledge he accrues is pertinent to all mortals.

A wildly ambitious, idiosyncratic and very English domestic horror story baked in the mould of Clive Barker’s seminal S&M gore wig-out, Hellraiser, from 1987.

This is the western as a dried, coruscating corpse, left out for the buzzards to feed on.

A jolly throwback to a time when flip, breezy British comedies came freighted with substance, and lots of charismatic performances to boot.

What makes Sasquatch Sunset a cut above what some might perceive to be an extended Funny or Die sketch is that it’s crafted with such care and with a sense of cinematic grandeur, achieved via Mike Gioulakis’ gorgeous, mussy cinematography and the gentle pastoral sounds of The Octopus Project on the soundtrack.

It’s a film which dismantles and reconstructs the stereotypes of Black masculinity in a manner that’s both unsentimental and honest.

Bulk is a self-unravelling noir sci-fi which gleefully ties its various threads into impressive granny knots of self-referrential absurdity.

It was an exciting prospect to see what someone like Jenkins would do while up against the Hollywood machine, but it unfortunately feels like the machine won this bout, if not by knockout, then definitely on points.

Where the film suffers is in its lack of a coherent dramatic arc, as it instead chronicles a chunk of time that marks a confluence of small epiphanies and aching fallbacks.

There’s the nagging feeling that this one is very content to rake old ground rather than search for a new way to express these important, if rather boilerplate ideas. It’s laudable that these lessons are being passed on to a new generation, but it’s hardly new or exciting terrain for storytelling.

There is something a little boilerplate in how the film is structured which prevents it from offering anything particularly original. Were the visuals not so gorgeous, you might even see this as material primed for the small rather than big screen.

The film does well to capture the probing literary spirit of Murakami, even if it doesn’t quite manage to channel the intense emotional aspect of its work, instead coming across as dryly ironic and detached.

The throbbing interpersonal strains intensify with a gentle logic, even if, tonally, the film does sometimes stray into a mid-tier streaming dramady serial at times.

Its recourse to human suffering as a way to jerk a viewer to react feels tiresome after a while, and it’s not helped by an ending which serves as a quick-fix band aid suggesting that sublime happiness is just an unlikely plot twist away.

It studiously documents the various ways that Hamid makes his case, even though there’s never that much depth to the character beyond his cloak-and-dagger maschinations and a pressing desire for justice.

It’s a sweet film that hits all of its modest targets and works largely because it avoids vapid pop culture references and ironic humour that would be out of date within a month of release.

It’s a film with some decent feel-good credo (if that type of thing floats your boat), and there’s certainly value in having a film about mature characters that isn’t horrendously winsome and patronising.

We don’t hear from law enforcement as to why the raid happened in the manner it did, and why it ended in a humiliating capitulation. Yet there’s definitely a rousing prescience to a film like this at such a politically precarious moment, and perhaps we should take this rare happy ending with a pinch of salt.

Where Ozon presents as an ironist in much of his work, skewering genres and retro styles, there’s a refreshing seriousness to this mad endeavour that demands attention, even when some of the choices he makes don’t feel entirely right.

It’s a pleasant film, albeit one which makes its point fairly early on and then restates it in various, sometimes sentimental ways. The film lacks for a strong narrative arc, and instead opts to filter stories and histories through the present moment.

The film’s thesis is often a little obvious, yearning for a return to a brand of architecture whose half-life isn’t so slim, but ignoring the arduous and exploitative construction methods that were used to produce those grandiose structures of yore.

Even though it’s a story that severely lacks for surprise, in both the silly nature of the tests and the question of Anna and Amir’s latent bond, the actors take the material seriously enough for the film to remain engaging enough.

The film excels in nasty generic thrills, even if there are some fictional elements of the story which undermine its apparent allyship to the victims.

As a writer and director, Sweeney shows much promise, at times demonstrating the swaggering confidence of the Canadian upstart, Xavier Dolan – the pair even look quite similar. Yet the film works best as a showcase for exemplary range of O’Brien.

It’s a fascinating, chilling, if limited study of how the endless cycle of global warfare plays out.

It’s such a lovely set-up, you wish the filmmakers had attempted to do a little more with it.

It’s a slow, detailed procedural, one which carefully draws you into its dismal intrigue – and it’s engrossing for much of its runtime.

It’s an engaging movie about being able to control one’s destiny, but the wait continues for when this director will pull something truly heartfelt out of the bag

A couple of really random and contrived twists in the fourth quarter make it hard to invest emotionally in the climactic, must-win game, though there’s just enough humour and heart to scrape a last-second win.

The idea of finding that perfect other but having to back away due to circumstance certainly has value, though Tezel does paint Kira and Ian as the only pure souls in a world of self-involved fools. And as such, they’re never entirely likeable or relatable heroes.

Watkins’ slick direction and McAvoy’s frankly terrifying performance make this an effective, worthy if not essential entry into the “If you go out to the woods today…” creepy canon.

Dosa’s film is a slick, moving and cutely Herzogian portrait of this loving, monomaniacal couple who straddled the line between the eccentric and the earnest.

It’s superior to the stuffy, lore-obsessed recent Scott films, yet doesn’t hold an atmospherically flickering candle to the original or its sequel. It also doesn’t have the rough-and-ready, overreaching character of Fincher’s famous folly. Yet it makes for a decent time at the pictures, and the grinding first half is worth enduring for a pleasantly rip-snorting finale.

Director Blitz Bazawule does well to draw out multifaceted performances from his cast, particularly Barrino and Brooks, and with them the big emotional beats all manage to land well enough. Yet the musical flights of fancy feel creatively bound by the stage adaptation and lack a certain eccentric pizazz.

There’s something of a ​‘so what?’ aspect to the film where it all comes down to the thrill of potential escape and, eventually, a whole lot of good luck.

It’s a supremely well-made piece of work whose function and message never quite manage to transcend the prosaic. Still, in the strange times we’re currently living through, maybe it’s worth sounding that necessary siren one more time for luck.

There are points here where it feels as if Linklater was trying to make a gender-switched version of Fassbinder’s tragic The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, but without really leaning into the forceful bitterness and agency of the protagonist, and opting to have the text make a more profound point about the precarious nature of power and influence.

As a whole, the film doesn’t really work, as Mendes is far more successful in dealing with psychological issues than he is with political ones.

This is an exhaustive and lively document of a cult scene that you’re very happy it existed, but maybe don’t want to be a part of yourself.

It’s maybe disingenuous to say this, but the shift in tone and quality is so extreme that it feels as if Green has been let off his leash a little and allowed to make something far more in tune with the insightful, intimate, sensitive dramas upon which he made his name.

It offers a spitefully funny takedown of a culture which sees no differences between the acts of soul-bearing and self-abasement, and just when you think Borgli couldn’t twist the knife any further, he does just that.

It’s predictably rousing, and Tolkien heads will probably enjoy many of the callbacks to the original trilogy, but as a film in its own right, it’s all a little overblown and unnecessary.

There are some great things in this film, yet its intentions are swept up in a mire of tonal indecision and cynicism masquerading as irony.

Visually and dramatically, the film doesn’t reinvent any wheels, nor does it set out too, instead happy to splice together a satisfyingly intense period drama with some nice moments of genre pay-off.

It’s all competently performed and executed, with loud booms of sound cued to each scene change as an attempt to ramp up the tension, and lots of behind-the-head tracking shots of cardinals anxiously pacing through corridors and stairways.

It’s a model of old school screen storytelling, where the robust individual elements coalesce into the exact sum of their parts and not a single ounce out either way.

There’s a breezy panache to Wang’s direction, and he’s very good at capturing the comic skulduggery of, say, early instant messaging apps. It’s a shame, then, that it doesn’t have an original bone in its gangly, hunched frame.

It’s a creative and admirably earnest endeavour, but one that will most certainly live or die on your tolerance for Torrini’s winsome warbling.

Dreamers is slight but effective, and perhaps doesn’t quite come back from a twist that occurs about two thirds of the way in when Isio’s situation suddenly changes.

Where this film excels is in the basics – it doesn’t take any risks and just choses to do the simple things well.

One issue with here is there’s so much plot, alongside a persistent desire to frame and underscore every one of this journey’s universal resonances, that it’s hard not to feel bogged down in ideas and details.

Occasionally, the film does lack ambiguity, and there are a number of characters who, just through the casting, make-up and dress, come across as one-dimensional extremes of “goodies” and “baddies”. Yet Molly herself, and the seemingly endless string of physical and psychological trials she endures . . . makes for a satisfying emotional core.

It’s a fun little diversion that’s more interested in the salacious gossip and anecdotes than it is offering a more broad inquiry into how these artworks more generally enhance the music they’re being used to sell.

From its slow build-up comes a rousing finale, with Penelope setting an impossible feat of strength and agility as the benchmark for her new marriage material (as it should be!).

There’re no wheels being rein­vent­ed here in terms of tone or nar­ra­tive, but it is a very sol­id genre runaround that is ele­vat­ed by its occa­sion­al and wel­come laps­es into soul­ful intro­ver­sion.

It’s not that Soto has no moves in his arsenal when it comes to achieving a mere modicum of originality, it’s that the formal structure of these films is now so tired and dreary that, even with a few, nifty customisable elements, everything looks and feels like a rehash of something else.

This archive clip-driven documentary comprises Cousins’ own informed and poetic postulations on the inner-workings of the Hitchcock corpus, as he heads on a jolly, thematically-inclined ramble through one of the great artistic legacies of the 20th century.

The film plays through the scenario with plenty of moment-by-moment gusto, and there’s a lack of flab to it that makes it rather appealing when placed next to so many action blockbusters (many of the interim Predator franchise entries included) that just feel the need to ramp things up to a silly degree. And still, this is a shallow film that offers little more than superficial pleasures.

Emotional equality and the equilibrium of platonic friendship soon give way to factionalism and suggestions that two of three may peel off to form a couple. The film playfully wrong-foots the viewer as to who the two end up being.

It looks good, it sounds good, the actors are giving it their all, and yet… it never properly gels.

After a strong opening drag, there’s the feeling that the film doesn’t really have anything more to say, its revelations seeming fairly paltry in the scheme of things.

It’s a decently constructed piece of fluff that is way too soft to exert any real lasting impact. Yet the reason to see it is for Bardem’s masterful, completely committed lead turn. The real comedy gold comes from his blink-and-you’ll-miss-it expressions and mannerisms that usually come when he’s listening to other people talk.

Peter’s unflappable, occasionally unbelievable heroism is placed front and centre, and it’s nearly always at the expense of making Emancipation a richer and more varied experience as a piece of cinema.

There’s no real moral centre to the film – it’s a depth-free caper which only demonstrates negligible interest in any wider ramifications of these types of big money boardroom IP raids.

Unfortunately, much of said action is old hat (pun intended), with the bulk of this strangely peril-free offering playing like a refried compendium of golden moments from Spielberg’s original trilogy.

Shawn Levy’s Deadpool & Wolverine is a mixed (ball) bag indeed, definitely not unendurable, and even boasting a couple of nuggets of misty-eyed nostalgia that aren’t instantly undercut by playground irony, but for the most part it does boast the hit-and-miss qualities of polytechnic sketch comedy.

When Autumn Falls strays into some interesting, ethically thorny terrain, but Ozon always opts for the easy, often crowd-pleasing solution rather than to have things become too dark or alienating.

The film sorely lacks for surprise or tension, even while it does offer a likably earnest survey of the economic hole that many found themselves in while the world got sick.

There’s an interesting metaphor here for McAvoy’s own career as a Scottish man who earns a crust by perfecting a range of accents and character types. Yet its feelgood arc is all a little predictable and soft-edged.

The film is at its best when holding back details and sculpting fine character details, but the intensity is ramped up far too early and it becomes increasingly tough to take the plot seriously, or build an emotional connection with its climactic revelations.

Director Ryan White delivers an entertaining, albeit highly selective account of this project, brushing over any details that might lend this story a modicum of existential weight.

The film works best when it allows the boys to simply shoot the breeze and discuss the lives they’ve led up to this moment.

Where Gump managed to steal a nation’s heart with its hokey aphorisms and up with people outlook, Here actively repels with its generic insights into the evolution of family, society, civilisation, the whole bit.

It’s laudable that Maclean wants to breathe new life into unabashed “B” material, but unfortunately the idiosyncratic touches have usurped rather than bolstered what should be robust, time-honoured noir framework, and we’re left with a film which leaves only a superficial impression and little sense of purpose.

There’s an easy chemistry between the pair, and Hassan and Ingar do well to ping off of each other with their mouthy repartee and petty squabbles. The script, unfortunately, never really meets them where they stand, nor does it hit a level of authenticity that allows for any kind of true dramatic immersion in the occasionally farfetched situation.

On paper Stewart seemed like an eccentric casting choice, yet she slinks into the material with grace and ease, and her trademark arsenal of half-met glares and anxiety-dashed grimaces perfectly express her desperate yearning to be free of prettified toff prison.

Shields is a worthwhile subject and her accomplishments are incredible, but this film is perhaps one for underdog sports enthusiasts only.

It’s compulsively watchable hokum, sometimes earnest, sometimes daft, but always trying to reach beyond its grasp. And there’s no reason why Emelonye wouldn’t make the transition from Nollywood to Hollywood in the next decade or so.

Migration is not an ambitious film, and doesn’t seem to have anything important to say about why one might migrate and the lessons we can learn from this rather arduous but necessary endeavour.

It’s a fairly standard-issue sequel which pads out its thin-to-invisible storyline with a number of self-consciously garish animated interludes all in varying styles.

The story is not particularly forthright in articulating its themes and ideas, and while that may work in the slow-burn pages of a novel, it just feels contrived and manipulative up there on the screen.

It’s well meaning and all done with the best of intentions, but it doesn’t really say or do much more than the BBC documentary did nearly 40 years ago.

What saves the film from the sum­mer dol­drums is the typ­i­cal­ly stel­lar work by direc­tor Gareth Edwards, who, despite the qual­i­ty of the mate­ri­als he’s been giv­en to work with, proves once more that he’s one of the most inter­est­ing and orig­i­nal artists in Hol­ly­wood when it comes to cre­at­ing CG set pieces.

The film not only rejects any criticisms – and there are many! – of the first film, but doubles down on them, delivering an even more hokily disjointed narrative, ramping up the sentimental cut-aways of human/animal camaraderie, and ramming unearned, broad-brush emotion down the viewer’s throat like so much salty popcorn.

Malek’s icy performance does little to endear the viewer to Charlie, while his ultra-tactile relationship with his wife – presented in gauzy flashbacks – never feels entirely authentic.

As a feature, it all feels very rushed and dramatically inert, with the outcome of Abe’s predicament visible from many, many miles off.

What’s sad about the film is that the feather-light comic tone seems to preclude any deeper insight into what are, on paper, a set of potentially fascinating and psychologically deep characters.

While a fair majority of the scenes and set-ups lack for deeper resonance, there’s a surface-level sheen that does deliver some superficial thrills.

The stans themselves are not massively interesting, and the film is happy to frame them as whimsically eccentric nerds rather than anything more psychologically problematic (which would confirm to a truer definition of the term ​“stan”.)