Ian Freer

It goes nowhere fast and Kechiche’s camera consistently ogles his female cast but he remains a terrific director of actors, the intimacy and authenticity conveying a real lust for life to sweeten the hefty running time.

A potentially trite tale of an unlikely relationship is lifted immeasurably by Sophia Loren and is best viewed as a testament to the true power of the movie star.

Jellyfish is a familiar but compassionately drawn portrait of hardscrabble lives, centred by a terrific performance by Liv Hill.

Black 47 lacks the seriousness and rigour of other displaced Westerns like The Proposition and Sweet Country. But Lance Daly’s film is gripping enough to suggest Ireland’s tragic backstory is a frontier full of resonant riches.

The film soft-peddles any sense of controversy but what emerges is an entertaining portrait of a generous, funny, larger-than-life figure. And the music is sublime.

The 50th anniversary of the moon landings has brought a welter of reminiscences and Armstrong, while entertaining enough, does little to distinguish itself from the pack.

If it doesn’t hit the Top Gun: Maverick heights of legacy sequels, Jurassic World Dominion is scattershot but entertaining, delivering fun, familiar set pieces. Come for the delight in seeing Neill, Dern and Goldblum together again, stay for the bit where a bloke on a scooter gets eaten.

The Occupant is a slow burn of a thriller that never catches fire. Looking to skewer the pursuit of perfection during late capitalism, it misses both its satiric targets and a sense of kitsch fun.

It won’t win any awards for originality but Flight Risk is a fun, unpretentious, tight 91 minutes — especially if you’ve always jonesed to see Downton Abbey’s Lady Mary cream someone with a fire extinguisher.

If Never Look Away is no The Lives Of Others, it is also a cut above The Tourist. A strongly crafted, ambitious, occasionally absorbing dissection of a fascinating period in German culture, it is perhaps too middle-brow and broad for its own good.

A thriller in the key of Woody. The “same old, same old” but still entertaining.

If it cleaves too close to convention and doesn’t land the ending, Concrete Cowboy is a striking debut, celebrating a long-overlooked tradition of Black cowboys via visually powerful filmmaking. And Caleb McLaughlin is superb.

He Dreams Of Giants never grips like Lost In La Mancha but it is an entertaining look at Gilliam’s damned-fool idealistic crusade, and an interesting portrait of a filmmaker whose eyes are way bigger than his budget.

An interesting, challenging mess. The White Crow offers lots that’s impressive — Ivenko as Nureyev, the dance sequences, a knuckle-whitening last 20 minutes — but can’t render it in a dramatically engaging way.

H Is For Happiness has more on its mind than most kids’ flicks and delivers its ideas in an attractive, if familiar, package. And who can resist a film with a character called Douglas Benson From Another Dimension?

A kind of Italian Fitzcarraldo, Rose Island persuasively argues that dreamers can move mountains. It offers little in the way of surprises, but it’s hard not to be won over by its small-scale delights.

If it thematically bites off more than it can chew, Random Acts Of Violence is a full-on, visually arresting horror. What it lacks in chills, it makes up for in ambition and style.

If you hear the Rocky theme and think '118 118', you might wonder what all the fuss is about. For the rest of us, this is a reminder of why we fell in love with the character in the first place.

A return to form for indie darling Drake Doremus, who brings his nuance, sensitivities and homespun feel to a formulaic love-triangle set-up. Jamie Dornan, Sebastian Stan and especially Shailene Woodley make it very watchable.

An interesting, well played and well made attempt to reframe Shakespeare’s most famous play through a feminist lens, Ophelia ultimately doesn’t have the boldness to deliver on its resonant idea.

It doesn’t completely work and lacks complexity, but Capone is scene-for-scene more interesting than many slicker films. Hardy’s swing-for-the-fences performance is a must-see.

Super skilled and eminently likeable, Nyong’o is a saving grace in the eye of the storm.

Prisoners Of The Ghostland is by turns brilliant and rubbish. Cage is in his element, it has visual invention to spare, and the fight scenes are fun, but it’s a shame such imagination is tethered to equally all-over-the-place storytelling.

Seize Them! turns the Dark Ages into the daft ages, delivering a mostly entertaining, female-centred comedy enlivened by winning performances.

Plot-wise Ocean’s 8 cleaves closely to the tenets of Heist Movie Lore but does little to enliven or tweak the formula. It lacks the jazzy swagger of Soderbergh’s trio but delivers a fun, likeable romp built on the charm and charisma of its cast.

The story is programmatic and the indie stylings feel tired but Handsome Devil is a winning, enjoyable call for individuality. And Nicholas Galitzine and Fionn O’Shea show promise for the future.

For its first half, Thirteen Lives feels like it is treading water, waiting for its big final act. Thankfully, the second half is a riveting depiction of a daring, foolhardy, inspired rescue.

A serious, well-intentioned slice of WWII naval history full of compelling detail and good action but lacking the dimensions and dynamics to make you truly feel it.

It’s messy, with a middle section that sags, but Birds Of Prey has vibrancy, anarchy and balls to spare. Harley and Joker are dead. Long live Harley Quinn.

The film thrives on two performances: Barbaro is terrific as Baez, hypnotic on stage and fiercely charismatic off. And Chalamet inhabits Dylan without ever feeling like a Stars In Your Eyes contestant. From the voice to the charm to the earthiness to the self-centredness (‘You’re kind of an asshole, Bob,’ Baez tells him), Chalamet nails it all. It’s a shame Mangold’s safe flick doesn’t ask just that little bit more of him.

The Neon Demon pulls off the unique feat of being both boring and bravura all at once. Like the world it depicts, it’s a feast for the eyes but little else.

By turns impressive and oppressive, Petrov’s Flu combines technical razzle-dazzle with obtuse storytelling. Bravura and baffling in equal measure.

Whilst this takes itself a little too lightly it has a lot going for it.

An enjoyable foray into JK Rowling’s imagination, bolstered by a more appealing Eddie Redmayne, but you can’t help feel The Crimes Of Grindelwald is still treading water until future chapters.

Russell Tovey gives a layered, career-best performance in an intense interior drama that never quite shakes its theatrical origins.

It's fun spotting stars under cakes of make-up and the panache, great supporting cast and good-natured, old-fashioned feel make for a better movie than you remember.

Hotel Mumbai benefits from strong filmmaking and an unflinching gaze, yet it lacks dimensions, both in its characters and take on its subject matter. Still, it’s a punchy, promising debut.

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s directorial debut is an affectionate, if flawed, Valentine to both musical theatre and the art of creativity — some bum notes, some strong moments. Tick, tick… the jury’s out.

Bad Luck Banging Or Loony Porn is a scattershot satire, wrapping its hit-and-miss point-making in a raunchy comic romp. Despite its faults, Radu Jude’s flick is one of the more audacious films of 2021.

A Boy Called Christmas is by-the-numbers Yuletide storytelling buoyed by a strong Brit cast, inventive filmmaking and a heart in the right place.

A sentimental but solid dependable retelling of an oft-told tale, it doesn’t do anything radical with the material but gets by on well mounted set-pieces and Ford’s grizzled gravitas.

Although let down by muddled plotting, The Night House is a low-key, well-made thoughtful horror flick, excellently played by Rebecca Hall.

An enjoyable World War II spy flick, Munich: The Edge Of War scores with strong performances and filmmaking craft, but is let down by a lack of dramatic heft. A Father’s Day watch in waiting.

It doesn’t all land, but The Night Before is largely a salty, sweet jingle ball.

Alice Lowe’s directorial debut may falter in its grip, especially in story and tone, but it’s a daringly evocative film that marks a filmmaker of imagination and promise.

Edwards’ film boasts great filmmaking, noble intentions and cracking monster action. Yet it never reconciles its B-movie origins — preposterous premise, clichéd characters — with its solemn, Nolanised tone. This Godzilla stomps but very rarely romps.

It’s not doing much daring or different but this delivers a fun, well-made summer theme-park ride, with fast highs and slow lows. Pleasurable, though it doesn’t linger.

Perhaps not as heart-warming or charming as the first film, The Railway Children Return is engaging and entertaining in different ways, winningly played by its fresh cast.

Whisper it. A Quiet Place Part II might lack the smarts and novelty of its predecessor but it serves up strong set- pieces, Millicent Simmonds shines and Krasinski remains a director to watch.

If it lacks filmmaking fireworks and emotional wallop, The Children Act delivers a sensitive, thoughtful drama about complicated issues. And it is another reminder, if one were needed, of the subtlety and skill of Emma Thompson’s stratospheric talent.

The film is at its most entertaining when it’s a showcase for Smith and Lawrence’s easy chemistry, whether improvising a Reba McEntire country song to appease some rednecks or bantering about Burnett’s bad eating habits during a convenience store hold-up. They’re eminently watchable. Then again, when the highlight of an action movie fourthquel comes with the two stars watching a younger man do his stuff, it might be time to call it a day.

The Man Who Killed Hitler And Then The Bigfoot is a strange but enjoyable mishmash of genres and ideas held together by the gravitas and class of Sam Elliott.

A familiar tale of a quirky childhood is delivered with little in the way of freshness or truth. Still, the performances by Larson, Harrelson and Watts rescue it.

Graced with great performances from Garfield and Stone, The Amazing Spider-Man is a rare comic-book flick that is better at examining relationships than superheroism. If it doesn't approach the current benchmark of Avengers Assemble, it still delivers a different enough, enjoyable origin story to live comfortably alongside the Raimi era.

Bob Marley: One Love is a strange mixture of the authentic and the broad. Taking place in a perma-fug of ganja smoke, director Reinaldo Marcus Green’s (King Richard) intermittently engaging portrait of the reggae superstar is shot through with sincere intentions, but too often leans into the trite.

The second half falls into familiar action tropes, but Honest Thief has some twists and turns, sly humour and a refreshing feel for its characters that raises them beyond genre types.

The talking heads aren’t particularly revealing and there are some strange filmmaking choices. But McEnroe makes for incredibly likeable company and the tennis, as ever, remains sublime.

It’s a sad, emotive, important subject but it deserves a more detailed, heartfelt film than this.

'We need an edge!' is Coach Ulbrickson’s verdict on his crew, and the same can be said about the film as a whole. But there is enough in The Boys in the Boat to keep you invested come the final showdown.

If the film never completely coheres into a satisfying whole, Days Of The Bagnold Summer has a lot going for it: a nicely judged sense of character, an eye for detail and strong performances, especially from Dolan. It also suggests Simon Bird is a filmmaker worth watching.

An enjoyable if routine period crime picture with good performances from Jason Sudeikis and Lee Pace, but it lacks a personality and style of its own.

It’s very conventional in form and dances round his famous temper, but Never Give In touches on topics (class, identity) rare in a sports documentary, etching a moving portrait of a man reflecting on his past at a point when his memory is slipping away from him.

In some senses T2 shares elements with its Terminator namesake. It’s inventive and full of surprises. But unlike Cameron’s sequel, it doesn’t reimagine the original in quite the same glorious way.

More engrossing than both "Sully" and "The 15:17 To Paris," Richard Jewell is enlivened by Paul Walter Hauser’s breakout performance yet undone by a lack of subtlety and real dramatic wallop. Solid, dependable, very late period Eastwood.

Neither a splendid phoenix from the ashes nor a complete failure, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is erratic, occasionally inspired, occasionally dull, but shot through with a grandiose sense of ambition. Plus, Driver and Pryce add some magic along the way.

It cleaves closely to the familiar, but Finding The Way Back scores points by finding different beats within the formula and from a great Ben Affleck performance.

A darker middle act, Fear Street Part Two: 1978 lacks the verve of 1994 but still delivers enjoyable summer camp-based bedlam. Next up: 1666.

The interesting world of the film doesn’t get the story it deserves.

It’s an enjoyable, super-faithful cover version but Laal Singh Chaddha is like a box of chocolates: you know exactly what you’re gonna get.

It was always going to be hit-and-miss, but Homemade flits between creativity and indulgence in documenting the current crisis. If you want to cherry-pick, Larraín, Lello, Nyoni and Sorrentino’s efforts are top of the class.

It still feels old-fashioned rather than timeless and even on its family entertainment terms, it just doesn’t quicken the pulse-rate.

A bizarrely strait-laced project for Todd Haynes, Dark Waters lacks dramatic oomph but compensates via a well-mounted telling of a terrifying story, driven by still contemporary concerns and a convincing central turn by Mark Ruffalo.