Hannah Strong

Pugh has precious little to do as Alice, who is less a character and more a series of strung-together cliches, but her hardest challenge is performing opposite the vacant Harry Styles, whose acting is so stiff and self-conscious it’s impossible to take him seriously, much less believe this is a character capable of the things eventually revealed in the film’s comically predictable twist.

Even the magnetic likes of Jackman, Dern and Kirby are wasted here, to the extent that by the time The Son reaches its miserable, cloying foregone conclusion, it’s a relief to be free of the uninspired direction and paint-by-numbers interrogation of a subject that deserves much more depth.

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.

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.

It’s a film lacking originality, but also heart – it’s hard to root for a couple when you really don’t care if they end up together or not. There are a couple of funny lines in the script, but running at just under two hours, Bros drags on, lacking the effervescence that has cemented many a rom-com’s in pop culture history.

This story about growing up amid the onset of The Troubles should be more emotionally and politically potent than it is. Instead, it’s a careful, uncontroversial (and thereby unremarkable) film that fails to exert any lasting impact after the credits roll.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The heavy reliance on CGI is noticeable, particularly because the work is quite ugly (the area from which Barry is able to access the past is a jagged kaleidoscopic eyesore) and while the film benefits from not having a sludgy abundance of fight scenes, the ones it does feature are still largely indistinguishable from any other film.

What we have is a generic addition to an already oversaturated genre – one that doesn’t even have the sense to make use of Statham’s often underutilised comedic talents.

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.

Unfortunately, the cast is saddled with a half-baked script, which underdelivers on its promise of a queer, female fight club by seeming to forget that’s a crucial element of the story.

The result is a teen movie with an identity crisis.

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.

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.

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.

What begins as a genuinely entertaining and well-pitched dramedy quickly becomes ridiculous and out of touch.

Failing to capture the wit or intelligence of Christie, See How They Run instead relies on tired stereotypes about women and gay men, and in an ensemble full of talented actors, there’s barely a compelling performance to be found.

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.

Although the film avoids depicting any act of violence (aside from that which Nitram inflicts on his father and a shooting we hear but don’t see) its sympathies seem strangely weighted in favour of a man who showed none to the people he murdered.

Crowe is pleasingly game, affecting a questionable Italian accent and bearing a striking resemblance to Orson Welles as he cuts about on his scooter, and Amorth – who was the subject of a 2017 documentary by William Friedkin – is undoubtedly a fascinating character worthy of a schlocky B-movie outing. But the stilted script takes a long time to deliver on its scintillating premise, and Avery can’t seem to strike a balance between the absurd and the disturbing, with the elaborate climax coming too late to really have an impact.

To Vaughn’s credit, at least Argylle isn’t as gleefully misogynistic as the Kingsman films, but that’s a bit like saying “Well, at least the pigeon shit didn’t get in my mouth” after a pigeon has shat on your face.

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.

It’s a deeply unpleasant and reactionary film that even compelling central performances can’t save.

[Chon's] execution is heavy-handed, with the ending steering into a mawkish spectacle which undercuts the seriousness of the topic at hand.

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