Kevin Maher

This is intellectually specious and ethically dubious. You can’t simply hide bad art underneath political messaging. Yes, we need movies, urgently, that fully address Epstein, Pelicot and all the male monsters of the world, and this week’s brilliant Sound of Falling, from the German female director Mascha Schilinski, arguably does that in spades. But slapping the phrase “Me too” onto a sloppy, ham-fisted vanity project doesn’t cut it.

There’s lots of fun here, some of the one-liners are exquisite and the helter-skelter finale is delightfully overstuffed. Frustratingly, it’s still second-grade Pixar.

Worst of all, and quite baffling for a film that was directed and cowritten by the franchise creator, Kevin Williamson, this isn’t even about articulate teens deconstructing horror films any more. There are a handful of limp references to AI deepfakes but otherwise all the sharp culture awareness, and certainly all the irony, has been removed. It’s as if nobody realised that a Scream movie without the irony is just a bad horror movie. Roll on Scream 8?

There’s a hint of repetition in the mid-section and a schmaltzy third act courtroom scene. But all flaws are overcome by Aramayo’s technically precise and heart-rending turn. It’s astonishing.

Sadly, the mockumentary Zamiri’s film most resembles — at times, eerily so — is Spice World: The Movie. No, really. Same manic energy. Same faux crises. Same shouty one-note line delivery.

It’s a testament to Nayyef’s ingenuous performance and the mesmerising sense of place that the film is always compelling and sometimes bleakly funny, although there are no happy endings.

This is all good fun but at about the midway mark (see the chunky running time) it begins to lose its vitality, ceasing to be a new Heat and becoming more of a reheat.

Yes, there is no person or inanimate object safe in a film where Fennell’s main directorial note to Elordi seems to have been, “Great, but can you also lick it?”

Ultimately this protagonist looks to nature and to Mabel in an admirable attempt to reconcile the ubiquity of death, the brevity of life and the urgent, though possibly pointless, search for meaning.

Pratt is fine, and blandly likeable in the manner of a not-especially-demanding labrador, but the prospect of his blameless heroism is always depressingly inevitable and the identity of the real villain is conspicuous from almost the first scene.

Yes, it’s just awful. Fake, puke-inducing emotional dishonesty of the most absurd kind. Nothing here makes sense.

The film is a hoot, possibly the most gloriously macho cop movie since the writer-director Joe Carnahan’s previous cop movie Copshop (2021), or his breakout cop movie Narc (2002), or the cop movie he wrote for Edward Norton, Pride and Glory (2008).

Gosh, I hope that Ralph Fiennes’s back is OK. Because the 63-year-old certainly did a lot of heavy lifting in this latest instalment of the long-running zombie franchise. I mean that metaphorically, of course, because in this movie it’s up to Fiennes to provide the emotional, intellectual and comedic fireworks.

With Bader and Blyth on quietly charismatic form throughout, [Haley's] made a film that is eminently slick, consistently palatable and instantly forgettable. The perfect Netflix product.

Sweeney proves here, after Christy, Echo Valley and Reality, that she’s a performer of versatility and, crucially, staying power.

Jackman’s tendency towards camp is hidden by glitzy outfits and silly stylings of his stage persona, while Hudson is positively unleashed by the demands that Claire places upon her. She has been quite rightly nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance, and is a credible best actress Oscar contender.

It’s difficult to convey just how little dramatic urgency there is in a film that’s effectively a computer-generated diorama, one that’s filled with fantastical flora and fauna and mystical beings who are all dressed up with nowhere to go.

You know that your comedy is in crisis when you’ve substituted actual jokes for the grating rhythms of an oompah band. Still, Pfeiffer remains charismatic till the end. She deserved better.

Eternity might have worked if the three leads conveyed anything beyond jaded inertia in each other’s company. They are supposed to be consumed by a love so passionate it propels them into adventures beyond the grave. They look, instead, as if they could barely get out of their trailers.

It’s a sobering riposte to the clickbait era.

Majors plays the central character, Killian Maddox, with subtlety and sensitivity.

Mackey is fine but wasted, and still clearly anticipating a role to top her astounding Emily from 2022. The political messaging, meanwhile, is grimly bromidic.

The narrative arrives in clumsy self-contained chunks that don’t always gel.

Arguments will rage about how much of this is staged and how much captured. The film-makers have labelled the film “a documentary fable” and that works for me. It’s that place where Ken Loach and David Attenborough meet. In the best possible sense.

There are gruesome gunfights, car chases, savage beatings and the sense by the closing frames that Safdie has delivered the narrative equivalent of an unstoppable plummet down an especially precipitous flight of stairs. You’ll emerge battered and bruised.

Erivo is extraordinary as Elphaba. Although she is known and rightly celebrated for her vocal prowess, her best scenes are wordless. She carries whole set pieces, and the wounded essence of the entire project, in her haunted looks and her mood of quiet despair.

My two stars are for [Pike] alone. She’s an utter hoot in every scene, part Miranda Priestly, part Hannibal Lecter, and it’s an unsettling testament to her power as a performer that she tilts the sympathy axis of the entire movie towards her.

Flawed to its core but never less than riveting