Leslie Felperin

Corsage . . . although a late entry to the disaffected royalty subcategory, is arguably one of the most interesting so far, much closer to the ludic, imaginative queen of the genre, Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (2006).

There are also good bits in this based-on-a-true-story drama, including the aforementioned performances and a commitment to theology so sincere it’s not afraid to bore an audience with lots of pin-head-fine debates about Godhood. If Gibson weren’t part of the package it might be possible to like it more.

The film engages with Cave and Warren Ellis’ creative bond, one that’s produced some sublime work but also self-indulgent noodling (of which there’s a little too much here). Indeed, some might wish the spotlight was on Ellis more, a fascinating character who may be the more musically gifted of the pair, but not as capable of holding the spotlight like Cave – who has his suits, rumbly baritone and carefully coiffed too-black hair.

It’s a very tolerable watch, if somewhat interminable and rather lacking in proper drama. But perhaps that’s just what an audience of hardened Dion fans would want from a viewing.

Most welcome of all is the generous sprinkling of good one-liners thanks to screenwriter Max Taxe’s witty script, solid direction from Christopher Winterbauer, and a cast with nippy comic timing.

The lonely, uncanny and sometimes unthinkingly violent world of childhood is explored with chilling candor and exceptional skill in writer-director Eskil Vogt’s arthouse horror feature The Innocents.

Writer-director Brendan Muldowney is better at contriving striking images of horror, filmed with umbral gloom by cinematographer Tom Comerford, than at the character and story stuff.

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.

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.

It takes proper acting talent, boosted by strong direction from Wladyka, to pull the film along the way Reis does. She’s vulnerable, frightening and relentlessly physical.

It all sort of comes together in the end, but there’s no earthly reason that it should all have taken two hours. Maybe the spoiler is the unfeasible length of the running time.

It’s best not to think too hard about it and just let the striking imagery and saturated colours wash over your retinas.

Although the focus is on one particular nightclub and its owner, the film acts as an accessible slice of jazz history that might usefully entice viewers to learn more.

Although made on a tiny budget, this highly original exercise in folk horror punches well above its weight with snappy dialogue, trippy visual effects and impressive camerawork.

This stands as one of Austrian director Ulrich Seidl’s better but not quite best features in a pretty consistent career, not as scurrilously seedy as him at his worst, or as merciless, but not as ambitious or startlingly insightful as his best.

Andini and her collaborators, especially lead actor Happy Salma, offer a precisely calibrated, emotionally nuanced exploration of one woman going through a mid-life crisis in rural Indonesia during the 1960s that both looks and sounds stunning thanks to above-and-beyond craft contributions.

In a way the film’s best bits are the quiet scenes where the audience is primed to expect something awful is about to happen, only to find the point is not a jump scare but a harrowing emotional insight.

If you prefer to riff on the garment-making angle central to its story, the film is flatteringly and economically cut from fine cloth, cleverly constructed, and only a little marred by flaws in the finishing.

All the corny romance stuff is about as intrinsic to the film’s soft appeal as the scrupulously well-made frocks, encompassing late Edwardian lace and flapper-style dropwaist numbers, and dozens of well-turned cloche hats.

It should be noted that sometimes this feels like just weirdness for weirdness’ sake. Nevertheless, Strickland builds his own worlds with such a distinctive style — down to the fonts, the bilious shades of green and the textures of the silks — that the viewer can’t help feeling pulled into his crazy maelstrom of quirk.

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.

It has risibly cliched dialogue and wooden, poorly directed acting from a B-to-G list cast, but it appears to be shot in one continuous take and strictly as an example of choreography and technical skill it’s pretty nifty.

Intimate in every sense, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande represents an affirming, immensely likable British comedy-drama.

Not only is the story compelling, but thanks to how much the event captured the interest of the world’s media, there is a lot of archive footage to splice in among the generous wodges of talking-heads narration from the main participants.

Edited with minute attentiveness, the film switches back and forth between time periods adroitly in a way that always moves the story forward, while the outstanding performances from the whole ensemble, especially the watchful Vauthier and the fierce Issa, anchor the film.

Bruce Willis continues his campaign of reputation self-ruin – not that he has that far to fall – with this cruddy, derivative action thriller.

Although it’s always a treat to see veteran character actor Danny Trejo doing his stuff – playing an ambiguous figure attached to the hotel – both he and most of the rest of the cast deliver their lines with the flat, enthusiasm-free cadences of an ensemble cheesed off with the size of their paycheques and the quality of the catering.

The Commando contains a number of egregious implausibilities and cliches.

With its really smart deep dives into cultural criticism, this is a seasonal stocking overflowing with spooky fun.

Although arguably a smidge too ponderous and self-serious for its own good, Nine Days still represents a reasonably promising debut for its writer-director Edson Oda.

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.

It’s watchable and even occasionally amusing.

A judicious mix of new-minted interviews, home video footage and charming animation by Shanahan makes for a delightful, well-tempered package.

The competence of the action sequences compensates somewhat for the underlying lack of wit or humour throughout, unless you count the smile-inducing call backs to ancient 90s technology.

[A] televisual but still touching documentary tribute.

[A] cheap and cheerless sci-fi action film.

The production values are a bit too pedestrian to elevate this much above the ordinary.

It all works up to an only mildly surprising “shock” ending, which is bad news for all concerned, a twist that would be more tragic if it were possible to feel sorry for any of them.

While a certain disarming naivety infuses the work, it nevertheless packs an evocative punch, with a moral message about intolerance and the need to protect more vulnerable species. It’s also one of the few films that could potentially induce a psychedelic trip with its visuals alone.

The performances make this worthwhile.

This is another film about a white European mixed up in a Middle Eastern war they barely seem to understand, but on its own terms it’s a story well told.

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 head of steam Keeyes endeavours to build up gets drained away by the endless barely relevant flashbacks.

Thai writer-director Lee Thongkham’s horror feature is a giddy, gory little treat

The whole thing is a bit bonkers but very beautiful too.

The cast has chemistry in all directions, between the romantic matchups but just as much among the menfolk as they bicker, bond and berate one another.

Even for those who know about the Auschwitz Protocols – a report to which the pair contributed that has a weighty legacy in Holocaust history – the film is still intensely impactful. Inevitably, it is profoundly upsetting and disturbing.

Walken keeps you watching thanks to his inherent charisma, still undimmed in his late 70s.

The film-makers’ enthusiasm for his clarity of purpose is all well and good, but it does leave the film prone to hyperbole, and perhaps a more measured, sideways look at the weird dropout culture around climbing would have been more interesting.

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.

Propulsive and tightly constructed ... Flecks of jet-black humor add a wicked sparkle to an essentially tragic narrative.

The result is predictably excessive, noisy and more than a little exhausting. But mostly in a fun way, as long as you’re not bothered by gratuitous violence, incoherence and a deep streak of silly.

This extraordinary documentary by director Sebastien Lifshitz, who has made many films about the LGBTQ+ experience (Wild Side, Bambi, Open Bodies), achieves a remarkable degree of intimacy with its young subject and her family.

Together Together suffers a little from being too polite, as a comedy it lacks snarl, and as a drama it lacks, well, event. Nothing much really happens – but maybe that’s the point.

It’s a surprisingly meaty work that works on several levels at once.

Where the first few Hellraisers had an interesting if somewhat icky erotic tang to them – alluding to S&M/fetish culture as much as horror, and featuring female protagonists – Judgment is less about desire than just straight-up misogyny and gory, gross-out money shots.

Tran adroitly layers the fight sequences, filmed with fluidity and at least substantially performed by the main actors themselves, between frothy layers of blokey banter.

Both actors contribute knife-sharp timing and the kind of intensity needed to make this essentially two-man setup work.

This small, delicate, late-blooming film is quite lovely, and a throwback to the 1990s/2000s craze for semi-improvised, rough and ready indie film-making.

Even though Whishaw is mesmeric, by the end of the 105-minute running time the whole experience starts to feel like being trapped in a broken-down subway car with a violent mental patient.

Crampton and Fessenden’s easy, credible chemistry keeps up a steady baseline of bickering banter that’s charming throughout. The film could have been a bit more audacious about tweaking Christian pieties, but you can’t have everything.

Even though it’s largely deeply undistinguished work, credit is due to whoever rustled up some great supporting actors for little roles around the edges, such as Welker White as the mother of one murdered kid, and Samiah Alexander, who is a hoot as a punctilious trucking company secretary.

Moses’ story circumnavigates a relationship between two women, one that is charged with an intensity that’s more than platonic but less than erotic, and inflected by an unequal power distribution.

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

Money can’t buy you good comic instincts, inventiveness or a sense of playful whimsy, but, fortunately, Taylor and his handful of collaborators have all that for free.

Altogether, this is flyweight fun.

The last half hour, so finely underplayed, is quietly devastating.

The whole shooting match is pretty bloody, and as cheesy as the dairy aisle, but decent fun to watch.

This hallucinatory, deeply confusing but skillfully executed and mesmeric work flows back and forth across time periods, parts of the city of Yekaterinburg and its characters’ memories, often literally within the space of a single shot.

Odd though the film is and full of peculiar needle drops showcasing classic tunes that don’t especially fit the action, the whole thing looks pretty good thanks to cinematographer Sean Price Williams.

This goofy horror comedy, based on an online game of the same name, just goes to prove that if you have a great cast, smart direction and witty script you can just about get away with murder.

Although the main characters in this romantic tale are meant to be just over 18, this Sky Movies release is manifestly aimed at a much younger market with its sex-free storyline and nice-girls-finish-first morality.

Even the lush world-building of the visuals here, committed performances especially from Young, and stream-of-consciousness editing aren’t enough to conjure the wry, melancholy, and, above all, intensely literary interior voice of the book’s protagonist.

No one is a bad guy here, while all of them are also flawed, and the movie keeps the viewer wondering right up to the end what Jess will finally decide.

Once the bloodletting starts, Calahan interleaves it with witty asides and the pacing picks up a lot, all combining to make this impish if flyweight entertainment.

It all feels very dated and artless, like someone’s grandpa wrote the script 50 years ago and it was found in a drawer, then financed and made with a not inconsiderable budget for extras, vintage tanks and lots of old uniforms.

Director Rocha de Sousa here wants to ensure the audience stays on the side of the protagonists. But if you stack the deck too hard, the whole house of cards risks collapse.

Despite a few modish touches, this feels fundamentally very old-school, and not necessarily in a good way, right down to the repeated shots of people running away from fireballs in the background.

Even viewers who might find 6ix9ine and his gangbanger nonsense repugnant can still find much to admire in this well-made film essay.

This pulpy multiverse brain-teaser is reasonably compelling to watch – at least in this reality. In another, it’s straight to video garbage, and in yet another, it’s won the Palme d’Or.

The final endgame is a little unsatisfying, but this is a very interesting debut for McCarthy.

It succeeds in walking the tonal high beam without falling into soul-destroying bleakness on one side or a saccharinely fake happy ending on the other. That’s no mean feat.

It’s no surprise to learn Kostanski has worked as a special makeup artist on bigger budget projects such as Suicide Squad and It, but this proves he has a way with actors as much as a knack for latex and fake blood.

When it’s all over and the big twist you saw coming in the first 15 minutes has been revealed, you feel empty, a bit depressed, and like you need another cup of coffee.

Although some might argue that not mentioning anyone's difference is a kind of erasure in itself, it's hard not to get swept up in the cast and crew's joyful insouciance. Plus, the cheeky showtunes, co-written by onscreen villain MuMu and executive producer Peter Halby, are a hoot.

There’s no doubting that this film was more fun to make than it is to watch, although there is a sort of guilty pleasure in the spectacle of ruins and decay and wondering whether the film-makers actually found a real abandoned resort, or if it’s all a set.

The gags don’t always land, and some of the line deliveries plod painfully on, but there are moments that nail the strange comedy of sexual manners that must be navigated these days.

Lisa Rovner’s superb documentary pays a deeply deserved, seldom-expressed tribute to the female composers, musicians and inventors from the brief history of electronic music.

Writer-director Justin P Lange finds a satisfying way to update the possession-exorcist theme for a new generation grown wary of the Catholic church’s old ways, particularly in the wake of the abuse scandals that have shredded the clergy’s credibility in recent years.

Altogether, it’s a richer devil’s brew than you would expect, crisply edited and moodily shot – even if the last act doesn’t quite hit the spot.

Leisurely pacing rather draws it all out a bit, but there’s real inventiveness to the way Park wrong-foots the viewer and handles the operatic displays of gunfire and death – and the leads are rather charming.

With a running time of 107 minutes, the film goes on just a little longer than it really needs to before it gets predictably violent, grotesque and reasonably scary at last. But Milburn and Kennedy certainly know how to build a unique atmosphere.

At last, just what world cinema really needs right now: an exquisitely made film about street dogs in Istanbul, satiating that universal desire to see distant lands, coo over beautiful, noble animals, and satisfy the audience’s need to feel guilty about the misfortune of poorer, unluckier people.

It has its own peculiar spirit and casts a very witchy spell, thanks particularly to Gregg's adept handling of both experienced and young, less proven performers.

First time director Martin Krejci draws lovely performances from his cast, and the whole thing looks dreamy and splendid thanks to Andrew Droz Palermo’s cinematography – but the last act could have done with some serious workshopping to smooth out the motivational kinks and deflationary resolution.

Strictly in terms of generating jumpscares and gross-out moments this is efficient enough as a cinematic machine, but the script credited to four different people including Lauder hasn’t got a lot of finesse or subtlety.

There is a palpable sense that this was made by someone who knows Mumbai backwards and truly loves its ochre-colored streets, cluttered sidewalks and peeling billboards advertising old movie releases, right down to every frayed shred of paper.

If you have 152 minutes to sink into this morass of moral complexity and finely observed period detail, then it may well be worth it, although the ending is bizarrely, perplexingly abrupt. Perhaps there will be a follow-up feature.