Hannah Strong

It’s a shame the film that exists around this technical experiment oscillates between ludicrous and tedious, undermining any scares that might be generated through the wonder of creative foley and effective mixing.

The resulting film is an uneven one – occasional flashes of intrigue are hampered by Fuze​’s strange structure and uncertainty about how funny it wants to be. Although the 90 minute runtime is welcome during an age of ill-advised action film bloat, there’s not much good in a film being short if it’s also largely unremarkable.

The Drama wants you to believe it’s outrageous, but this unnecessary posturing gets in the way of a black comedy that is otherwise well-observed and amusing about the prickly nature of relationships, both sexual and platonic.

There’s nothing subtle about these films, from their Eat The Rich messaging to the just-go-with-it in-world lore, but in all of their schlock they strike a welcome tone between winking self-awareness and retro absurdity.

It’s a crowd-pleasing package, and Gosling is likeable enough to sell even the corniest jokes.

Wheatley captures the volatility of emotions during the festive period, where every familial anxiety seems to come to a head, and does so with compassion and humour.

It’s a song and dance we’ve seen before, with both Powell and Qualley operating on cruise control.

The Bride! doesn’t have a single original thought worth pursuing. The fact that this film appears so shrilly convinced of its radical praxis speaks to a bizarre disconnection from reality.

One can’t help but long for something a little more exciting than ​“pleasant” – Pixar used to lead the animation industry, and they’ve been treading water for far too long.

Refusing to take itself too seriously, this spirited contemporary period piece captures some of the insanity that was brat summer – but crucially reminds us there’s something to be said for knowing when to leave the party.

It’s a film not without occasional moments of spark, and flits along quite happily, but Splitsville seems continually intent on undermining itself, and in the process becomes totally forgettable.

The desire to create a web of characters as complexly mapped as the LA road network is to the film’s detriment; much like a good heist crew, you’ve got to know when the cut the dead weight.

There is nothing that resonates below the surface here; this is a half-remembered story dressed in a beautiful gown that seems destined for TikTok fan edits and Pinterest mood boards rather than soul-stirring emotional catharsis. We are guided by the hand, instructed on how to feel at every moment, and trusted with nothing.

There’s a potent earnestness about The Chronology of Water – Stewart shows a deep empathy for her subject, and Yuknavitch’s memoir is transformed with an unapologetic confidence.

A horror film about the brazen folly of attempting to domesticate a chimpanzee, or even about the terrifying reality of rabies (which is almost always fatal once a patient is symptomatic) should work. Unfortunately Primate has little interest in its own subject matter – technical plot holes and interchangeable characters aside, there’s no consideration given to Ben’s role within the Pinborough family, let alone the macabre history of domestic chimp attacks in America.

Even as the death roll of capitalism continues to clutch Hollywood in its jaws, No Other Choice proves that, in the hands of a master, there’s still fertile ground to be found. His biting, incendiary dramedy calls into question how much we’re willing to accept – and how far we’re willing to go – in the name of preserving our own comfort.

The Bone Temple offers a heady mix of stomach-churning violence, absurdist humour and surprising glimmers of tenderness.

The Housemaid lacks the guile to transform its flaws into future camp classic material – it feels like a sign of the times: a film which holds the audience’s hand at every turn while gesturing at the very real issue of domestic violence, yet keeping things just light and sexy enough that no one will be bummed out this holiday season.

Although the third act sags a little under the weight of Marty’s hubris, it’s impossible to deny Safdie is working at a remarkable technical level. Just as Good Time and Uncut Gems played to the strengths of their stars while also transforming them, Marty Supreme challenges Chalamet and he meets the play with fleet footwork.

Skarsgård is the best he’s been in years as a father fundamentally unable to articulate himself in any way other than his work, and oblivious as to why his daughters feel such frustration with him for a lifetime of distance, and there’s keen wisdom in Sentimental Value’s observation of the gulf between who our parents are and who we wish they were.

The images within the film are too general and familiar – there is nothing new about what Johansson is attempting in her directorial debut, which leads one to wonder why she bothered making it at all. It’s not a disastrous film – in fact, it’s quite inoffensive. But this glaring niceness reflects a crucial lack of ambition, and that seems more egregious than taking a big swing.

Lurker is an excellent showcase for the talents of Théodore Pellerin (quietly marvellous in every role he takes) and an intriguing first step as a feature filmmaker for Alex Russell.

With no substance and no style to be found, all that is left in Wicked: For Good is two actresses, doing more than just belting their hearts out by giving genuinely compelling performances.

It’s uncomfortable and often disturbing viewing, but Osit’s unsentimental, self-critical and refreshingly thoughtful approach makes Predators one of the most valuable entries into a saturated genre, prioritising ethics over emotion.

Alpha is as thorny as her previous two features, but there’s something lonely and longing here too.

It’s a testament to the smartness of this casting that Jay Kelly works as well as it does, even if the echos of Hollywood mythmaking are unavoidable.

Ramsay articulates the inarticulate, here through her saturated blues, yellows, browns and greens, the colours of grief and sickness and rot…but also new life, summer skies, and hope.

Perhaps it’s his fidelity to this team of collaborators that creates such a fluid vision; much like the honey bees that Teddy lovingly tends to in his garden, every artist moves in service of a grand design.

The smart, keenly observed and undoubtedly thorny power play of After the Hunt make it an arresting psychodrama, confronting our willingness to swallow our own suffering in the name of self-preservation as well as what we owe to ourselves and each other in an imperfect, cheerfully cutthroat society.

It’s a film that understands there’s nothing to be gained from making oneself an island, but remains stoic and unsentimental in its vision of the past.

Dillane is a remarkable discovery.

It’s a film that feels gloriously alive, earnest in its depiction of masculinity that is fragile rather than toxic while still grappling with the question of why anyone would choose to make a living in such a barbaric way.

It’s the banality of enduring a sexual assault that Victor captures so well in her film; how the trauma lingers long in the body, even when you keep insisting to everyone (including yourself) that you’re fine.

It’s a shame that the film falls back on old ideas, because Weapons’ first half is genuinely intriguing and some of the film’s scares are effective in both shock value and bewilderment. It’s clear that Cregger has a cinematic spark, and his sick sense of humour is most welcome in these trying times, but two films in, it’s time to find a new boogeyman.

Friendship arguably is a horror movie, evident in more than just its score and high wire tension between characters. The excruciating act of being vulnerable with another human being and the sweaty discomfort of realising a new friend is a bit off are mundane but relatable terrors, after all.

There’s no hope of Final Destination: Bloodlines converting any franchise agnostics – this is a supersize portion of what fans have come to know and love. Yet somehow, where fan service is usually considered a negative, here it feels affectionate and satisfying.

Ultimately the mash-up of genres doesn’t quite come together in a satisfactory manner, clashing to the point of whiplash.

The film’s creative gore alone cannot paper over the ultimate flimsiness of Blichfeldt’s concept, which amounts to an adolescent scrawl of fairytale satire, somehow less interesting and transgressive than Angela Carter’s ‘The Bloody Chamber’ which predates it by 46 years.

Exaggerated misdirections do nothing to prevent Drop‘s eventual reveal from feeling obvious and contrived, to the extent that even a svelte 90 minute runtime starts to feel like a stretch.

The filmmaking is raw and tense, with the young cast suitably disappearing into their roles as anonymous SEALs and the filmmakers seeking to get as close to reality as one can get without projecting literal bodycam footage of a war zone onto a cinema screen.

It’s not all choreographed chaos, either – La Cocina soars in its quiet moments.

It’s a truly forgettable slab of action filmmaking with little respect for its audience’s intelligence or even their time, and one has to hope Ayer and co don’t make good on their threat of producing more.

Beyond the creative stunt choreography, Novocaine doesn’t leave much of an impression full stop, and its saccharine ending relegates it to a category of films with intriguing premises that end up ultimately forgettable.

There’s not enough here to sustain even a slim sub-90 minute runtime, and Collet-Serra seems lost when tasked with a project that provides little opportunity for dynamic action sequences or wild plot twists.

Despite being an obvious meditation on the potential for impending climate catastrophe, the film is never cloying or condescending – instead Flow feels warm and delicate, like the fur of a cat who’s been lying in a sun spot all morning.

Director Bong returns to familiar territory, but with no less ambition or heart than he has shown throughout his career.

Evoking the strange combination of brutal British realism and light fantasy of Jacqueline Wilson’s iconic young adult novels (particularly Double Act), it’s a promising debut for Labed, who moves between the uncanny and the tender with ease.

It’s a good time, but not a great time – though within the canon of Stephen King adaptations, it’s definitely among the more fruitful offerings to make it to screen.

The bite that made the first Bridget Jones’ Diary such a delight isn’t really here. Perhaps that’s a sign of the maturing protagonist, but it doesn’t leave much for us to get excited about.

The most shocking element of Bring Them Down is the emotional truth at its core; Andrews’ observation of how difficult the cycles of abuse are to break is astute, and even the most sensational elements of the plot have a grim plausibility to them. But this is balanced by the empathy that Andrews and his cast show.

At a time when the tech industry is continually attempting to force AI down our throats, there’s something cloying about a film so nakedly insistent that a robot can replace a human being it portrays almost all the humans in the story as self-serving and villainous.

It is, like those beautiful concrete monstrosities which are revered and reviled in equal measure, a film that towers across the Venice line-up this year, tragic and wry and gorgeous and disturbing – any number of hyperbolic terms might apply to the beast that Corbet has created in The Brutalist.

There’s an ethereal quality to Jolie’s performance that matches Callas’ legendary persona, and despite the deep sense of melancholy that pervades the film like a ghostly veil, this is still a love story – and one where the heroine lives forever.

Babygirl joins a limited canon of films that takes the much-maligned subsect of female sexual desire seriously, while also serving as a compelling psychodrama about the intricacies of trust and understanding, even in a long-standing relationship.

It’s a cosy, classic Aardman treat, perfect for Wallace and Gromit fans of any age – and Feathers McGraw remains as menacing as ever.

Better Man works because it is that rare biopic which acknowledges its inherent ridiculousness, poking fun not only at the star machine but Williams himself (who, regardless of your opinion of his music, has always been quite open about his shortcomings).

Burroughs believed in magic, and watching Queer, one has an inkling that Guadagnino does too.

It’s all desperately silly.

While it would be unfair to suggest Hausner is condoning Novak’s actions, there is a sort of nihilistic glibness about the film which leaves a sour taste.

Anchored by Susan Chardy’s restrained performance, On Becoming A Guinea Fowl might touch on hot-button themes of sexual violence, misogyny and familial cycles of abuse, but Rungano Nyoni finds her own intriguing language to explore them.

It’s a film with an affection for the past, but one that also acknowledges you can never go back to how things were when you were younger – and that while everything about the holidays seems perfectly exciting and straightforward as a kid, the older you get, the more the fault lines start to appear.

Tension between characters seems to evaporate all too easily, meaning it’s hard to really see any weight in their words or actions. This, combined with the flimsy conceit that a fundamentally corrupt institution can be changed from the inside out with a few good men, means that Gladiator II lacks both the gravitas and simple but satisfying narrative arc which made its foundation such a refreshing epic.

This is no kitchen sink drama; those most marginalised by years of British austerity are making do, and they’re as entitled to magic as the rest.

The naturalistic camerawork and performances ground the film in realism, creating a wry dramedy that refuses to placate us with easy answers or condescension.

It’s an elegant film, reckoning empathetically with an extremely complex topic, but there’s a slight sense that something is missing, keeping The Room Next Door from ever really becoming truly great.

It’s all exceptionally silly, and fans of the first film might find the first hour little more than a rehash of Smile, but there’s still something admirable about Parker Finn’s gusto.

Although A Different Man slightly runs out of steam in its second half, it’s an effectively atmospheric and idiosyncratic thriller, deftly examining the patronising attitudes that prevail regarding difference and disability, and the knotty topics of authorship and entitlement to other peoples’ stories.

This is a film of half-measures, lacking ambition in a way that is at least mildly more entertaining than its predecessor, but that’s down to the pleasures of songs written half a century ago rather than any talent Phillips has to offer as a filmmaker. Send in the clowns indeed.

While the mysterious finer details of Clooney and Pitt’s characters are willfully obscured on account of their guarded professionalism, it’s a shame that the film paints in such broad strokes more widely, as this doesn’t leave much room for substantial character development or emotional investment.

The Substance’s presentation is as shallow as the very thing it’s critiquing. There’s no compassion, and certainly no catharsis – just more hagsploitation and a sense of déjà vu.

Better overambitious than the opposite, and hopefully In Camera provides plenty more opportunities for Khalid and Rizwan, who so richly deserve them based on the strength of this feature.

Blending courtroom drama and claustrophobic tech-tinged nightmare, Red Rooms is a striking and austere examination of the true-crime industrial complex that benefits from its formality and disturbingly removed protagonist.

Although Beetlejuice Beetlejuice suffers a little from an overabundance of ideas leading to a bit of a third-act scramble, and its plot points are sign-posted so large you can see them a mile away, it’s a much better-executed and enjoyable film than it has any right to be, charmingly reverent and referential to the point that even its cliche story beats can be mostly excused.

Hussain’s film deftly explores the emotional toll of existing as a modern man who feels out of step with the world around him.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Blink Twice is that its message of female solidarity feels sincere without being cynically corporate. Rather than patting itself on the back for highlighting the importance of women’s relationships, there’s an understanding that women are not a monolith, and embracing each other’s complexities enables us to fight structural inequality better.

While Hunter Schafer makes for a great Final Girl and Dan Stevens is on top form leaning into his knack for playing offputting weirdos, Cuckoo suffers from an ambiguity that hinders the story, unable to reconcile the comedic elements of the plot with the unsettling.

It’s a wonderfully observed and extremely witty film about the faith we have in a higher power and each other, and its uncertain conclusion mirrors the apprehension both Ben and Carla have about where they’re going in life.

Although he’s no stranger to IP-based films (his last two were adaptations) Trap is a reminder that Shyamalan is one of the few A-List directors who still seems dedicated to original storytelling, and even when the scripts don’t quite fully deliver on their elaborate premises, his knack for creating interesting characters and casting the right actors to play them picks up the slack.

Sweet without being cloying, it’s a love letter to the commonalities between Georgian and Turkish culture; one that encourages empathy and reminds us it’s never too late to change for the better.

That emotional core is missing in Twisters, even with a few stabs at highlighting the human cost of America’s inadequate tornado warning and damage mitigation systems.

There’s no doubting June Squibb’s charisma, and it’s refreshing to see her in a lead role at the grand age of 94.

The film’s final scene is also a chilling subversion of normal expectations for the climax of a campground slasher, but the lacklustre 90 minutes that precede it mean that by the time we trudge to the forest’s boundaries, there’s little reason to care who comes out of the blood bath on top.

There are many hallmarks of the psychological horror at play (a creepy killer, a traumatised survivor, a parent with dark secrets) but under Perkins’ careful hand, the familiar feels unnerving all the same, a puzzle box dripping with bright red blood.

It’s a film about the necessity of holding onto small, precious things in the face of all-consuming fear. Whether that’s an authentic New York slice or your beloved, curiously bombproof cat.

It’s a timid offering from a once-bold studio, and although it’s better conceived and more enjoyable than many of the studio’s recent projects, retaining the charming design style and thoughtful touches which have made Pixar one of the world’s most beloved animation studios, it – ironically enough – lacks the emotional gravitas of its predecessor.

Razooli clearly has ambition and imagination, and this simple but sweet fairytale is an exuberant adventure with charm to spare.

Although the first 40 minutes in the buttoned-up period setting do drag a little, once The Beast finds its groove, its imaginative and melodramatic spirit are hard to resist. It’s a big swing for the fences from a singular French filmmaker, and one that absolutely pays off.

While it’s absolutely a blast at the cinema, the dizzying heights that Miller drove us back in 2015 aren’t quite matched a second time around. But all is not lost: Furiosa is still miles better than the dreck Hollywood usually treats us to over the summer, and provided it doesn’t take another decade to get the Fury Road sequel that Miller has been promising, perhaps we’ll reach Valhalla yet.

Frenetic and obsessive, this is still a love story amid the gore and slick of body oil – a heart-pounding, iron-pumping descent into the heady heart of obsession and desire.

There is something sweet about The Idea of You, even if it is a total fantasy. Perhaps it’s simply the winning charm of Hathaway and Galitzine or the novelty of a rom-com featuring a leading lady over the age of 25. More of that, please!

But while The Fall Guy is an affectionate and occasionally entertaining tribute to the people professionally flipping cars and taking punches, it neglects the other crucial aspects of what makes a film enjoyable, resulting in a popcorn flick that quickly fades from the memory once the credits roll, sadly lacking the staying power of any of the action greats it references.

The film is fun. It’s smart and sexy and engaging.

Despite its myopic politics, it’s hard to deny that Civil War is an engrossing film. The performances given by the central cast are quite remarkable, with Moura and Dunst operating as foils and McKinley Henderson providing his characteristic brand of steely gravitas (he also delivers one of the film’s best moments).

Despite the best efforts of DoP Elisha Christian to create a striking visual identity, the film ultimately brings little to well-trodden cinematic ground, even in its hell-for-leather finale.

Road House’s limp, jokeless dialogue leaves the viewer plenty of time to consider how lazy the whole affair feels.

Renck’s film floats along with a unique grace, reckoning with the weight of paternal legacy and human folly with sincerity, achieving something quite profound in the process.

Perfect Days encourages a sort of radical presentness in our own lives – learning how to truly connect with our existence, even when it’s difficult or causes us to confront unpleasant truths.

There’s just something gratingly cheap about the affair, from script to cinematography to performances, as if no one involved wanted to be there.