Donald Clarke

The closest thing to a decent joke comes (I think) in a closing reference, at one or two removes, to a popular television show of the early 1970s. This bewildering exercise’s only other notable achievement is to make Willy’s Wonderland seem an underappreciated masterpiece. It really wasn’t.

For all the cast’s best efforts, however, Foe never seems more than a theoretical exercise, a sketch for an uncompleted project.

The wan characters never find the profane spark we know they would have possessed. One longs for the late Maeve Binchy to give the thing a vigorous shake. She knew how to make such people live.

Almost entirely set in the island community, The Road Dance delivers on its mission to entertain without defying any long-standing conventions. A pleasant slice of afternoon telly for the big screen.

As in Green’s latter two Halloween films, we sense a desperate attempt to cut together random footage that stubbornly resists any such amalgamation. One is ultimately left wondering what exactly has been retained from the original project.

It has the precision of retooled memory. It speaks to experienced time and place.

As in the best of Anderson’s work, there is a lesson in here about the addictive balm of storytelling.

The Creator sticks to a strong, pulpy narrative that never lets up in pace. There are vast action sequences and intimate, scruffy fight scenes. The film is, however, as memorable for its cinematic texture as its twists and turns.

It doesn’t exactly subvert expectations, but the sharp writing and subtle acting make for a more satisfying experience than a bald synopsis promises.

Hewson confirms her capacity to fill every square inch of a screen. Kinlan deftly hints at the vulnerability behind performative aggression. Helped out by fine support from Carney stock company members such as Jack Reynor, Marcella Plunkett, Don Wycherley and Keith McErlean, the leads confidently bring home a smallish film with a sizeable heart.

For all its undeniable pleasures, Dumb Money, derived from Ben Mezrich’s book The Antisocial Network, feels just a little shallow.

Branagh’s decent performance and Christie’s indestructible reputation may just be enough to see the film through to a modest profit and, later, decent figures on Disney+. But A Haunting in Venice feels like a misguided experimental sprig from an already compromised operation.

A gentle, complex film that will pay rewatching.

For the most part...A Life on the Farm is a warm-hearted celebration of an oddity for the ages.

It is a film of high emotions and quiet conversations. It is a film that embraces blended nationalities while acknowledging the pull of one’s earliest home. One leaves aware of unavoidable open-endedness but sated by a work that has achieved all its lofty ambitions.

Though it doesn’t have the complexity of Zodiac or the resonance of The Social Network, this may be Fincher’s sleekest and most uncomplicatedly entertaining film of the current century.

It amounts to a dizzying feast of cinematic excess. But there is intellectual traction and psychological grit to the project.

What emerges is a torrid, gripping drama that acknowledges not just what damage the careless can wreak but also to what extent the responsible often conspire in their own annihilation.

Theater Camp is itself shamelessly infatuated with the great American musical, but it also enjoys poking affectionate fun at the kids’ creative tunnel vision.

Are we supposed to be scared or are we supposed to be laughing at the absurdity of it all? Happily, the actors throw enough energy at the screen to deflect any incoming frustration. An odd beast.

Too drippy and half-cocked to bother defending.

Sarandon is, sad to say, not the best thing in a film that only occasionally rises above the anarchic mediocrity we expect from the DC Extended Universe.

There is some spirited work from a consistently fine cast. DeVito cannot fail to be funny. Stanfield delivers a performance more suited to a less-compromised film. Even they cannot save this fatally compromised farrago from sinking into the swamp.

One can offer no greater compliment to D Smith’s examination of the black transgender experience than that it makes the viewer, however they identify, feel a welcomed part of the busy conversation.

This remains a top-notch effort that implicitly pleads for invention and sincerity in family entertainment.

Having honed their film-making through endless online pastiches, the directors know just how to time the stomach-jolting jump scares. There is forever a hand ready to grab your unsuspecting ankle.