Leslie Felperin

Ups the self-parody so much that it's practically a Wayans Brothers spoof, albeit with fewer jokes.

In light of the strange, brutal ending that’s more foreshadowed than it seems, it’s hard to work out where Weisse wants to land on issues around the best way to coax talent, especially in fields such as music where you have to put in a relentless amount of hours to achieve the highest results.

Interviews with various journalists, local law enforcers, politicians and FBI agents lay out the nitty-gritty of the story. Lashings of onscreen text spell out the statistics and figures, which is helpful. The caricatures of the various grifters are distractingly tacky, though, and somewhat lower the film’s tone.

For the most part it manages an adept balance between satire, sincerity and sheer silliness that’s ultimately winning.

It’s predictable but tightly staged and well paced, and if you’re scrolling through the streaming platform looking for something fresh, it’s not a bad choice for switch-your-brain-off entertainment.

Amusingly tacky and offensive though it is, proceedings grow a bit monotonous, because all the tunes have pretty much the same beat and everything is pitched at the same hysterical, OTT level.

Smart, funny and endearingly sweary even when he loses the power to speak without computer assistance, Barkan is a charismatic character who’s easy to like, although one wonders how much the documentary crew resisted showing anything that might dent the halo the film sets round his head.

It’s watchable and even occasionally amusing.

Sonomura was the action director for three Baby Assassins features, which might explain that this, his third gig as a main director, feels more weighted towards scenes that showcase fisticuffs and fancy fight choreography rather than character development and emotional nuance.

A whimsical, good-natured romp, sure, but one that’s only mildly amusing.

It all playfully flirts with horror film conventions, offering up a winking orgy of patently fake gore and irony that’s for the most part pretty fun. At least the cast seem well in on the joke and are clearly having a blast, although the package could have been improved with a fewer sharper one-liners and tauter comic timing.

The team manages to hit most of the right notes with this perky, peculiar adaptation. Or maybe the film has just enough bright shiny objects and tightly synchronized dancing-child chorus lines to stop anyone from caring about all that problematic whatnot. In any case, it mostly works.

The suspense-building and denouement are adequate enough, but what makes this more interesting is how director Rodger Griffiths weaves in a subtle dissection of how abuse can damage families in different ways.

There’s something admirably honest about the meta-method Amalric and co-writer Philippe Di Folco have chosen.

A committed, intensely physical lead performance by German actor Franz Rogowski (recently seen in Ira Sachs’ Passages), luminous cinematography courtesy of ace DP Helene Louvart, and stirring electronic music by composer Vitalic all come together to make this a sensuous, striking film experience. But, yeesh, that script by director-screenwriter Giacomo Abbruzzese is a mess.

Squint a bit, relax your mind and you might find in it a touching allegory that accidentally corresponds to our own, collective emergence from the oneiric, mesmeric lull of lockdown life, in which sleeping too much and dreaming about dead loved ones could have become the new going out.

The main thing consumers will be looking for from Resurgence is bang-for-buck entertainment, and that it delivers reasonably successfully.

Back to Black is, like its heroine, flawed and fallible but frequently very affecting.

There’s a ton of plot crammed tightly into the running time, but director Edward Bazalgette manages the storytelling efficiently, helped by the display of place names at the beginning of each scene explaining which castle we’re at now, as well as how it was known in 900-something, and the name it goes by now.

Blades of the Guardians offers a duly impressive spectacle, chock-full of epic set-pieces that lean more on physical effects than CGI, and of course lashings of exquisitely choreographed fight scenes mostly using – as the title suggests – swords.

Although engaging enough to hold interest, the just slightly off casting of Ewan McGregor and Stellan Skarsgard...dampens plausibility.

Managing to get access to some of the biggest names in the industry, including De Beers CEO Stephen Lussier (who perhaps not coincidentally retired this month), Kohn opens up a bijou microcosm of capitalism in the age of quantum reproduction.

There are also some well-observed touches, especially concerning the fleeting friendships dog-walkers make with each other and the diversity of London’s population.

The dry, strictly observational shooting style means the doc stays in the moment and rarely ventures out of the room where the programme unfolds, adding immediacy.

It feels ineffably slight even if it’s a consistent pleasure to spend time in the company of these three likeable women.

Part delicious satire of Hollywood culture and part frustratingly muddled thriller. But the good bits are sufficiently impressive it wouldn’t be fair to hold its flaws against it too much. We mustn’t be greedy for perfection.

The package is all tightly assembled but sticks to the traditional talking heads and archive clips format.

There are some tonal problems here, particularly around the way the film tends to homogenize very disparate views and opinions into one sweet, easily digestible polemical smoothie.