Leslie Felperin

Nattiv's bio-drama has its flaws, but the performances across the board are outstanding. ... Nevertheless, there's something a bit queasy-making about the film's full-on plunge into melodrama in the last act.

All the characters are rounded, fallible and likable in equal measure, and even if the score is a bit syrupy, it’s a pleasant, engaging watch.

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.

The performances are terrific, especially from Bening who adds yet another deeply nuanced study to her gallery of complicated, smart women of a certain age.

While the core conceit is sort of cute, Razooli really can’t direct actors who aren’t already seasoned with prior experience.

The flavorful cast inhabit vividly drawn characters, and, perhaps most of all, the film exudes wall-to-wall, high-grunge atmosphere. That’s a lot of checked-off boxes, and yet the effect is efficiently wild rather than wildly involving, entertaining but not indelible.

There will be viewers out there who will recoil from these two crazy kids' wild, exhibitionistic carnality, their druggy hedonism and their cavalier attitude toward interior decoration. But anyone else who's ever been in a relationship like this — especially the kind of that starts to feel like a codependent bipolar disorder trapped on a rollercoaster by the end — will painfully relate to Monday's sensual, funny and above all honest look at amour fou.

Despite it’s entirely predictable, cliché-embracing script, executed with a shrewd mix of forelock-tugging rectitude and cheekiness by director Julian Jarrold (Brideshead Revisited, Kinky Boots), it remains an eminently watchable diversion.

A film that feels short on real passion, but big on banter and sharp suiting.

Other viewers are likely to be more entranced by the film’s borderline magical realist elements, but for this viewer the story felt rote, on the verge of trivializing and exploiting the horrors of the Holocaust. Mileage will certainly vary, but for me there’s very little that’s either original or artistically interesting about The Most Precious of Cargoes.

Part bromance, part sci-fi spoof and all a bit disappointing.

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

Sacrifice is practically a chamber piece, and duly draws its strength from its performances, especially those of Ge and Wang.

For anyone not in the very specific demographic group depicted, the experience of watching this is like being trapped in a tiny downtown club, where the food isn't that good and the portions are tiny.

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

Small, imperfectly formed but quite entertaining all the same.

Even if you go into this film knowing absolutely nothing about the true story on which it’s based...you’ll sense something dreadful is going to happen because so much of it is crushingly dull.

This making-of-a-star drama is old-fashioned and corny, and not in a good way.

There’s no doubting Brook and the performers’ commitment to their craft, even if the end result is somewhat repetitive.

Like the lemon meringue pies and shrimp cocktails it features throughout, Brit comedy-drama Toast is tasty, hearty and rather conventional.

The picture works best as a vehicle for the likable talents of thesp Aasif Mandvi, arguably best known for his occasional "reporting" on the Middle East on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart."

Robert Redford’s unabashedly heartfelt but competent tribute to 1960s idealism.

The cast commit gamely to the material, although the script is a bit underwritten, making sudden shifts in character a little odd and a bit random.

Garneau with his Smeg fridge and smug affect grows more irksome over the course. Moreover, engagement with issues around poverty, capitalism and public policy kicks in a bit too late.

The back half is all over the place and doesn’t seem to know what to say – but Connelly never ceases to be anything less than mesmerising as the kind of older woman full of spit, vinegar and shrapnel who could go off at any second.

It’s as inoffensive and pleasant as a primetime sitcom, although a bit more bite — and interest in food, given the heroine’s profession — might have added some plausibility and verisimilitude.

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

This computer animated work has strikingly designed characters, and some good isolated sequences, but the script’s un bordel (French for shambolic mess).

Strong on lush cinematography, period knitwear and sincerity, but less effective in terms of historical plausibility, the mostly second world war-set drama Summerland is a mixed bag – a blend of fizzy sherbet lemons and humbug.

The semi-improvised dialogue has the juicy tang of authenticity in the hands of this highly competent cast, and the players and Shelton never sneer at the characters' new-agey beliefs.

Some shocking twists go off like well-timed bombs in the back half of the film, somewhat compensating for what is, in all honesty, a bit of a slog.

It’s watchable and even occasionally amusing.

This ungainly portrait strikes a lot of poses, as if inviting the viewer to admire its impressive cast list, fine period detailing, "cheeky" British humor, and insouciant attitude towards violence. But none of it disguises the fact that the film is also tonally incoherent, vacuous and structurally a bleedin' mess.

Curtis ends up making a virtue out of the narrative’s episodic quality, a tendency that’s been criticized in his previous work; the film, like life, is just one damn thing after another, and that’s really the rather lovely point.

Eminently entertaining ... Sure, it shamelessly panders to our collective sense of duty to support the troops — and, of course, also support the families that support the troops — and maybe it's more than a little manipulative and formulaic. But gosh darn it, it's hard not to warm to a film that features an a cappella version of Yazoo's "Only You," a near-derelict car that may or may not be called Shite Rider and Kristin Scott Thomas having a verbal catfight in a parking lot.

Sergey Shnyryov is superb as Petrov’s fictional counterpart, and the present and the past are smoothly sutured together by deft editing and an insistently mournful string score, although it’s sometimes a bit repetitive.

The film is more than a little repetitious, especially as it twice shows the black-and-white archive clip of Fleming explaining how he chose the name James Bond.

Perhaps fittingly given the downturn in the repetitive final act, over the long haul the joke starts getting old in every sense.

The Fundamentals of Caring cleaves so closely to the stereotypes of indie filmmaking, it’s as if it were created by some demonic cinematic algorithm.

It’s thrilling to see the iconically ugly Transamerica Pyramid skyscraper get trashed in the finale, but otherwise the look of the film is pretty generic.

Energetically lurid, gratuitously violent and a hell of a lot of fun, horror-satire Assassination Nation is a throwback to black-comedy teen flicks of yore, but with a bitingly timely feel.

A film that admirably tries to remain true to the slightly gritty spirit of its source material. Unfortunately, it also occasionally sprays the wall with maudlin touches and misjudged additions to the story.

Although director Alan Taylor manages to get things going properly for the final battle in London, the long stretches before that on Asgard and the other branches of Yggdrasil are a drag.

Movements are very fluid, but expressions limited and there are buckets of cartoon gore, in a deep ruddy red that recalls mass-produced tonalities of fake Persian carpets.

Ultimately it is all a bit repetitive, derivative (particularly of other Asian horror pics) and somewhat sleep-inducing.

Hands of Stone is far from perfect, but it punches above its weight enough to prevent it from being easily dismissed.

Director George Kane keeps the energy up throughout, helped along by a game-for-it cast that know exactly how to pitch the material.

What We Did On Our Holiday could be used as a textbook example of how to ruin a movie with a bad third act.

Visually ravishing, emotionally wise, and kinky as a coiled rope, writer-director Peter Strickland’s third feature The Duke of Burgundy is a delight.

The end result is nowhere near as persuasive or grounded in solid screenwriting as Leo Grande is, but Phillips has always been a charmer onscreen and, like Grande’s Emma Thompson, she’s more than willing to use her talent here to make a case for women learning to manage and take charge of their own pleasure.

The package has a nasty little swagger that makes it a nice counterpoint to all the holiday cheer coming our way.

The most disappointing thing about the film is that it has none of the spark or originality of the first one and just parasitically drains its source material, incorporating details like the creepy black-light drawings and the borderline paedophilic subtext without adding anything substantial.

If you were programming a season of the best of the worst from Nicolas Cage’s filmography – in other words, his most interesting/outlandish/crazed performances in low-budget films – this kooky thriller would certainly be a good candidate.

A banal and credulity-stretching finale that feels like a bad Twilight Zone episode, but the first hour or so is terrific.

There almost isn't a single shot in it where every member of the cast isn't Acting ... The result is, at times, insufferably pleased with itself.

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.

It's so preoccupied with hammering home the point that Armstrong was a liar and a cheat, it can't risk giving him any credit for having charisma to spare, or at least enough cunning to know how to manipulate our current fantasies about heroic sportsmen.

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.

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.

If the plot is a little sketchy, the action, conversely, is drum tight.

It’s all a bit too sanctified and safe – lacking in rock’n’roll edge perhaps – but Fortune-Lloyd’s core performance is deeply empathic and buoys the film up as it races through the stations of Epstein’s short, sharp shock of a life.

This low-key oddity has the potential for some proper horsepower given the odd but intriguing casting of Peter Dinklage and Shirley MacLaine, but it never manages to build up much comic or dramatic speed – much like Dinklage’s electric scooter, his main mode of transport throughout.

The plot gets itself tangled up in multiple villain strands, but in the main this installment is emotionally weightier and more satisfying than its predecessor.

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

Although there is some insightful observational work, and the dancing itself is aces, pic feels overcrowded with characters.

The extemporized feel to some of the dialogue makes their rapport seem all the more credible and consequently there is something open-hearted and friendly about the performers that keeps the film watchable, for all its faults.

It’s all very 2021, and you can’t help wondering how it will age, but as a launching pad for the director and her cast, it’s a very serviceable platform.

Final Score puts a cheeky British spin on the set-up.

There are some neat, borderline gory animations to illustrate how concussions work, which for this viewer were a lot more interesting than the endless stretches of racing footage. The anonymous, off-the-peg score of backing music and flat editing, however, still make this a bit of a slog.

The incessant bloodshed is delivered with imaginative aplomb in this witty reboot of the 90s trash franchise.

Technically this is competent if not remarkable film-making.

Those who might be able to put aside despair and absorb this strictly as a work of persuasive rhetoric will be impressed with its intellectual scope, the economy of the storytelling in its fictional narrative, the bravura editing and visual panache as it builds a world full of dust, detritus and debased morals.

By far the best thing in the film is Ken Jeong as the theatre manager, preening and ridiculous, dispensing putdowns with surgically precise comic timing.

The result is a superficially handsome crime thriller that doesn't tick, although it's got a pretty, jeweled face, and some clever scripting by William Monahan (scribe of "The Departed"), making his directorial debut here.

Even though director Benjamin Ree has accessed the family archive of footage showing young Magnus as a socially awkward prodigy through the years and interviewed him directly many times, the film barely dents his inviolate wall of polite reticence.

The picture still tells a riveting story about contempo Russia's darkest side.

Fuzzy-headed biopic, which glosses over the former British prime minister's politics in favor of a glib, breakneck whirl around her career and marriage.

Some parts – the solid cast, a few well-turned one-liners – are really quite good indeed, although viewers have to wade through a moderate fug of reindeer fart jokes to get to them.

A little more nuance and historical depth would have been welcome, but this will be serviceable entertainment when it gets to streaming, as long as viewers have a supply on hand.

At its worst, the film oozes the sickly smugness of a self-help pamphlet, but when it relaxes its didactic grip and lets the actors take control it can be quite charming.

The stars are toothsome and have a fizzy chemistry, while the ending is surprisingly poignant for all its corniness.

Gorehounds will appreciate the film’s many beheadings and bloody murders.

In some ways, the thoughtful, dense script marks an improvement on the original, and the cast is certainly tonier this time around. What’s missing is the original’s evil wit, amoral misanthropy and subversive slipperiness.

It plays like several plots, genres and mood boards all mashed together, which makes the end result interesting but not entirely successful.

So much better than one would expect for a fifth installment in a franchise, this tribute to female friendship and girl power is a kick.

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is a sluggish also-ran compared to its predecessor.

If the metrics by which you want to measure Love are its brute sexiness and technical panache, then the film is indeed rather extraordinary. Thanks to Noe's regular collaborator Benoit Debie (who also shot such recent visually bravura films as Spring Breakers and Lost River), Love contains some of the prettiest shagging scenes in cinematic history.

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.

A somewhat claggy, uneven work with stiff performances from the leads, both of whom seem to be sleep-talking lines as if they learned them in Yiddish first.

There’s something so fluid, almost nebulous, about its construction that a chasm starts to open up where you would expect to find some kind of unifying thesis.

But we’re not fooled. This is an elaborate Dadaist joke, the funniest part of which is that it’s not in the least bit funny.

Cabrini’s story is rather absorbing and the film offers a lushly mounted portrait of life in 1880s New York, when immigration was just as much of a contentious issue as it is today.

It's as if a bunch of horny grad students decided to loot a costume store and then remake Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom with camera phones, but less fun.

It ticks nearly every box in the checklist of films you wish you could like more than you actually do.

Ultimately, "Renee" feels less like a walk away than a retread.

Half of a Yellow Sun is the kind of ambitious literary adaptation that wants it all kinds of ways, not all of them compatible.

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 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.

Like the junk food that the central characters sell in their convenience store, it’s a strangely moreish brew that you enjoy but feel faintly guilty about consuming, like nachos with cheese-flavoured sauce or a blue slushy ice drink.

If the emotional mathematics don’t quite add up, enough diversion is provided by pic’s broader comic setpieces to paper over the cracks.

Director Jill Soloway's comedy-drama isn't perfect – the leitmotif about open eyes feels over-workshopped, and the ending's a bit pat – but it nails with self-lacerating precision the manners and mores of a certain type of hipster parent, the bourgeoisie's muddled attitudes towards sex workers, and the precarious foundations of friendship.

The mechanics of revealing who’s behind it all creak like under-oiled hinges.

It’s hard to dislike this pleasant, earnest work.

Quite watchable, even sort of plot-driven — for a Serra film.

A sci-fi confection that, at best, momentarily recalls the dystopian whimsy of the director’s best-loved effort, “Brazil,” but ends up dissolving into a muddle of unfunny jokes and half-baked ideas, all served up with that painful, herky-jerky Gilliam rhythm.

Honestly, there isn’t a single step in Shelter’s plot that isn’t entirely predictable, but to the film’s credit the fight choreography is solid (Waugh was a stuntman himself once) and young Breathnach proves, after her turn as Susanna Shakespeare in Hamnet, that she is a find with a future.

Thinly scripted rom-com Ticket to Paradise puffs its way through 104 minutes mostly on the vapors of its lead actors gassing around together, albeit with an assist from spectacular Australian scenery standing in for Bali.

The performances are strong and full of passionate conviction, which somewhat moderates the problematic aspects, while the use of natural light and tacky seaside textures does succeed in generating some atmosphere.

Franco offers up a competently acted, technically adequate Cliff Notes take on Faulkner’s narratively refracted tale of dirt-poor Mississippi folk in mourning.

Much less convincing are the shots involving a malevolent maine coon that attacks a drug dealer and turns into a blur of fake cat and visual effects. But the moment is so gloriously cheesy and ridiculous that on its own it almost makes this something worth paying for.

Tedious stretches of vulgar banter are interspersed with equally dull interludes during which people melt. Then it finally gets resolved after 85 very long minutes.

This is a portrait of Monroe that accentuates her suffering and anguish, canonising her into a feminist saint who died for our scopophilic sins, that we might feast on her beauty and talent. Maybe it’s not an opera but a kind of religious ritual for the modern age, visiting the stations of the crosses Monroe bore, the Passion of the Marilyn.

Words can't do justice to the truly lavish sets and costumes on display here which are so dazzling, intricate and bizarre they serve as a useful distraction from the awkward dialogue and plot holes.

Out of Blue is one of those films you're not sure if you really enjoyed viewing, but you're immensely glad that it exists, cheered to know the film industry still has room for maverick, boundary-smudging work like this.

While the ensuing sense of despair that overwhelms the drama is credible, it does bring with it a certain sense of torpor that makes the film a bit of a grind in the midsection.

Script by former DEA officer Don Ferrarone isn't that bad in itself, but matters aren't helped by the mumbled performances and poor sound, which make it hard to hear what anyone's saying, while sloppy editing wreaks havoc on the story.

There must be some limit to how much content you can generate from the franchise’s core formula, which always finds the titular pack of talking puppy heroes saving their perpetually endangered home town, Adventure City, from an assortment of perils.

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.

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.

Chapter 2 proves to be more fun to watch than 1, at least for this critic.

Altogether it would be pretty bouncy and fun if it didn’t have the wretched Gibson in it. Isn’t the industry awash with ageing stars that could fill the role just as well?

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.

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.

What's ultimately very endearing about Swift is her intelligence and self-awareness, qualities that also make her music compelling, sophisticated and capable of appealing both to adolescent kids and hipster musicologists.

McGregor, who is having a bit of comeback moment right now, is kind of great as the ruthless antihero, and the action set pieces have plenty of fizz.

Aniston submits an honest, sturdy performance. However, the film, directed by Daniel Barnz (Phoebe in Wonderland, Beastly) and written by Patrick Tobin, is less emotionally potent than it wants to be.

Despite being entombed in all that prop flesh and wrinkles, Mirren manages to emote very effectively with her voice, mimicking Meir’s midwestern twang, gait and posture.

Neither scary, funny, nor anywhere near as clever as it seems to think it is, picture offers audiences few reasons to want to see it beyond its one-joke premise.

Ultimately, the characters’ motivations, like their titular instinct, are weakly delineated, but viewers are well-advised not to worry their pretty little heads about any of that and just concentrate on the pantsuits.

Nasty, brutish and mercifully short, but occasionally mildly amusing, Dashcam represents another dollop of pandemic-themed shock schlock from writer-director Rob Savage, recently renowned for his lockdown-set horror pic Host.

It ends up playing like a shoddy blend of V for Vendetta and Mr. Robot but without the budget bandwidth or style of either.

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.

Saucily thumbing its nose at the insipid teen love of the "Twilight" franchise, Kiss reimagines its bloodsuckers as horny, supercilious Eurotrash with addiction issues, sucking the life blood from naive American thrill-seekers.

An utterly fascinating experiment that apparently blends real and faked material to examine notions of celebrity, mental stability and friendship.

Without revealing which one wins out, I can assure you that a huge amount of murderous mayhem is unleashed, including death by woodchipper.

Altogether, this is flyweight fun.

The cast’s enthusiasm, especially that of Coolidge and Murray who are willing to play the most loathsome of people, makes up for a lot.

Some viewers might find that very cognitive dissonance interesting in itself, but many others may struggle to connect with a story that's essentially about an assortment of extremely entitled, self-absorbed people who ultimately have little new to say about addiction, families or the process of recovery.

Viewers and critics versed in golf lore can pass judgment on how well this documentary about caddies enhances their knowledge of the sport itself. But on the behalf of those utterly uninterested in golf, I can report that it is moderately interesting.

Thankfully, we only see glimpses of the footage of tortured women on the hideously believable nemesis’s camera, so ultimately the movie – just about – feels more like a critique of the character’s woman-hating mindset rather than a vehicle for it.

This dull and humorless production won't reap the same critical support as the work of Miyazaki Senior.

What's singularly lacking here is any sense of how to use the underage characters, who, apart from one or two, are a barely distinguishable gaggle.

Sometimes it feels like a cross between a film studies lecture and what happens when you leave YouTube to keep autoplaying while the all-powerful algorithm suggests more and more content.

Amiable if predictable.

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.

By sticking so slavishly to the original Blair Witch film’s template, the result is a dull retread rather than a full-on reinvention, enlarging the cast numbers this time but sticking to the same basic beats.

Sie elicits mostly spontaneous, credible performances from the younger cast, who deliver their wisecracks and banter with aplomb and only occasionally edge into annoying child-actor pertness.

The picture draws only slight entertainment value from the spectacle of youngsters warbling 1970s pop tunes, like a retro version of “High School Musical” with less charm.

The film’s best decision is to cast the great Ralph Ineson as an ambiguous local figure of note. With his basso profundo rumble of a voice and air of rough-hewn potency, he’s always a striking figure on stage and screen.

Baker, with his scrawny frame and ratty features, can actually act, although he’s consistently upstaged by young Reid, as the stronger performer and the one with the more interesting character story here.

Here the actual transitions are quite nifty, featuring lots of bulging veins and grisly-looking in-between stages as people turn into different kinds of snarling mammalian creatures. However, once they are done transforming, the masks or make-up or whatever the actors are clad in are so ineffectual they end up looking like a bunch of underlit extras in Halloween costumes recreating The Purge while howling.

It’s a bit of a snooze, but Therese is very good at channelling terror and distress.

So if current hit Violent Night sounds a little too classy and mainstream, then here is this shoddily made but tinsel-bright gift for you, the cinematic equivalent of a cheap soap and body lotion set bought at the last minute. It’s serviceable, but not a lot of thought went into it.

Salty, sweet and fun to chew over — sort of like taffy, but not so hard on the dental work — Fun Mom Dinner is a palatable addition to that growing subgenre of bawdy, female-centric comedies.

A regular beat of tension and release plays out as people get saved only to face new dangers, following the template of disaster films since the beginning of cinema, but it’s done well here. The visual effects are impressive, especially the water, which is so notoriously hard to animate.

Taking liberties with journalist Neil McCormick's memoir to create narrative tension, screenwriters Simon Maxwell and prolific scribe team Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais ("The Commitments") overstuff the story with subplots and trite character arcs.

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.

Playing off intense, uncomfortably tight close-ups where the actors show off finely tuned displays of flickering emotions with long shots that emphasize the plush interiors and tidy suburban gardens that surround them, Sud ratchets up the tension expertly.

It’s an instant camp classic, especially because it takes itself so adorably seriously.

The parody versions of the songs here are pretty funny, as is Cage’s solemn devotion to his job, down to his insistence that he takes a pinball game break at intervals throughout the film.

Alas, the film is an inept, ill-made mess — or as my grandmother would call it, a mishegoss, so muddled and misbegotten it’s hard to perform an evidential postmortem, based strictly on one viewing, of where it all goes wrong.

No amount of budget could make up for the sputtering mess of a script, or the dead-on-the-inside expressions of the cast – apart from Rudolph who is consistently watchable.

Baron Cohen and Strong are both robustly physical performers, and their finest moments are when they’re grappling with each other, producing a great tangle of limbs and teeth. But the script, credited to Baron Cohen, Phil Johnston and Peter Baynham (based on a story by Baron Cohen and Johnston), is not especially generous to the other members of the cast.

Apart from the occasional bit of voiceover from Clean, our hero barely says much at all, leaving it to Brody to do a lot of acting with those big sad eyes. It makes the film feel a bit like a silent movie but not one of the good ones.

The Raven is a squawking, silly picture that never takes flight.

An airy, prettily accoutered but essentially vapid feature debut for writer-director Stephanie De Giusto.

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.

The screenplay leaves it to the audience to map the psychological terrain, which will frustrate some but thrill others who prefer oblique storytelling.

A Tempest so kitschy, yet curiously drab and banal.

The animation punches well above its weight with properly Looney Tunes-standard sight gags, polished, highly expressive character design, and rendering so intensely computed nearly every barbule and rachis on each individual feather is visible.

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.

Don't tell anyone I said this, but the result is not only pleasingly emotionally purgative, but also has some elements worthy of genuine admiration, despite the fact that the third word in the title is one that should now be entirely banished from the English language for its precious, psychobabble connotations.

A lot of True Grit-style grizzled-guy-smart-kid bonding that’s hackily written but reasonably watchable thanks to Cage and Armstrong’s screen chemistry.

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

It takes a good hour or so to get going, but then it builds up some watchable spectacle – although Gray goes way overboard with the moody, fireside lighting, and the rousing orchestral score gets all ceilidh-cutesy for the happy montages.

Ironclad might be the perfect actioner for gorehound fanboys gaga for medieval trappings, but all others may find this British-American-German co-production a bit of a drag.

Although some of the film’s many twists are not that surprising, they’re satisfyingly delivered, and with a strong supporting cast ...plus striking dream imagery, this adds up to arguably the best in the franchise so far.

Whatever the filmmakers' subtextual intentions may be, the film certainly gets stronger and more compelling as it goes on, thanks in part to intense emoting on the part of its cast, with Harris, Keeley and especially Soller standing out particularly.

A chirpy, tween-skewing, snowboarding-themed romantic comedy, Chalet Girl slaloms exuberantly down a predictable path, kicking up regular flurries of fun along the way.

The producers have clearly paid up for the extras, sets and visual effects making this a lavish work, never dull for a second of its ample running time – even if some viewers may find the sentimentality a little hard to digest.

The film’s thudding shocks and predictability dull its edge.

Picture may not be Scots helmer David Mackenzie's best effort, but it's easily his most lighthearted, a cheery trifle that reps a contrast to his recent pictures, the apocalyptic "Perfect Sense" and U.S.-set comic misfire "Spread."

The action sequences, which are what made the original Sonja so indelible (especially since Nielsen had Arnold Schwarzenegger as a co-star), are a bit more rote. But someone somewhere must have done a punch-up on the script, because every now and then a reasonably witty quip arrives out of nowhere before the dialogue reverts to faux medieval speak.

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.

Writer-director Rowan Joffe’s adaptation of S.J. Watson’s bestseller honors the lurid spirit of the page-turner enough to satisfy fans, but he doesn’t transmute the material into something richer and deeper the way.

Traucki manipulates the suspense competently enough, but this film mostly depends on tedious jump-scares for its effect, and has a few too many scenes where someone looks around in terror at the water with a worried expression.

Nearly every element here is wildly off-target, from Jonathan Lynn's ("The Whole Nine Yards") lazy helming and Lucinda Coxon's shambolic script to the embarrassed-looking perfs from usually excellent lead thesps Bill Nighy and Emily Blunt.

Not exactly an unholy mess, but still a rather too pious retread of classic sci-fi/action/horror riffs that lacks originality or pizzazz.

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

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.

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.

In the end, the film is so guilelessly unabashed about its hokum that it becomes sort of endearing in a way, and one can’t but admire the likes of Cox, McElhone and Toby Stephens as the boo-hiss bad guy for fully committing to the corn.

It plays as pseudo-feminist horror for viewers who don’t really like women, or, for that matter, men. Or people of any gender. It’s all curdled but not in an especially interesting way, although there is no denying that Thorne has a basic charisma that holds the screen, and Ryan Phillippe is well cast as a grouchy cop whose agenda doesn’t mesh with Clare’s.

Ripe, borderline hammy turns from Javier Bardem, Ray Winstone, Idris Elba and Mark Rylance add some spice.

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.

This effort is similarly infuriating and entertaining by turns, and features pretty good performances from a handful of up-and-coming young male actors, including Brenton Thwaites and Kyle Gallner, along with lovable old ham Billy Zane putting in a last-act cameo.

This dorky, silly sci-fi feature offers a weird blend of high-grade craftsmanship (especially from the visual effects, cinematography and music departments), and guileless ineptitude, especially in the crucial realms of screenwriting, acting and editing.

Burdened with risible dialogue and weak performances, picture doesn't have much going for it apart from lavish production design and terrific, well-researched costumes -- and it's in focus, which is more than can be said for the script.

Picture has some redeeming features, like its glossy, fashion-shoot-inspired black-and-white look, and a clutch of respectable performances among some very poor ones from the toothsome young cast, but the script is a mess, the characters barely sympathetic.

It’s passably entertaining, and like the last one breathtakingly crafted, especially Colleen Atwood’s microscopically detailed costumes.

Sure, it’s entirely possible that the film will find a constituency who will love its mirthless, shouty performances, its tortured random plot twists and its appallingly shonky-looking CGI. But there is also a distinct possibility audiences will turn up their noses at this like it’s a fresh litter box deposit.

The corny, eventually rather contrived result doesn't end up doing justice to either its cast's talents or the quality of Winton's acclaimed prose.

If it’s lucky, Emmanuelle might find an afterlife as a kind of Showgirls for its generation, a great-bad movie that’s undeniably craptacular yet strangely endearing, a shameful pleasure in every sense.

A very 2011 take on Alexandre Dumas' classic that feels weirdly dated already. Although adequately entertaining thanks to lavish production values and game supporting perfs, this anodyne adaptation lacks a killer hook that would help it cross over to a demographic beyond action buffs and fanboys.

It’s flabby and repetitive, but peppered with moments of exquisite sonic lusciousness – not unlike the album itself.

The film forms a near-perfect storm of misjudged decisions, with its implausible plot, irritating or outright-dislikeable characters, and strained attempts at “wacky” British humor that fall so flat they’re below sea level.

The dialogue is at times embarrassingly bad.... On the other hand, the period details are impressive and must have cost a pretty kopiyka or two, and the film benefits visually from being shot on location.

The whole thing is really waxy and sad, like the immobile face of co-star Sylvester Stallone; although the chance to enjoy the always interesting, never-as-big-as-he-should-have-been Matthew Modine, still looking pretty fly with a shock of white-and-gold hair, is very welcome.

In sartorial terms, the fabric is to die for, but helmer Whitney Sudler-Smith's documentary follows a banal pattern, while the finishing lacks finesse.

At least Pacino doesn’t seem to be taking any of it seriously as he phones in an uncharacteristically low-volume performance whose most distinguishing feature is the Mitteleuropean accent that makes him sound as if he’s reprising his performance as Shylock from The Merchant of Venice.

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

Like so many pictures about artists, be they visual artists or composers or even writers, Modi, Three Days on the Wing of Madness doesn’t dare to engage with any seriousness about craft, application and technique or any of the nitty-gritty stuff that truly makes their creations important.

This is such twaddle it becomes kind of fun, except that there’s an uncomfortable feeling – as with many vigilante movies – that the film is revelling in the sexual violence and covering itself with the fig leaf of justice-seeking.

It is a story seemingly meant to be funny but only fitfully successful in this mission, and way too pleased with its own brand of deadpan wisecracking.

For all the faith-based platitudes baked into the script, it has to be conceded that directing brothers Andrew and Jon Erwin steer the ship steadily and draw out sincere and persuasive performances from Finley, who really can sing gloriously well, and Quaid, who even with a now ravaged visage is still just as dangerous, compelling and sexy as ever.

In the hands of director Christopher N Rowley and an assortment of screenwriters (including Byng), the result is a rebarbative mess – mirthless and shoddy like a disposable Christmas stocking novelty.

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.

Somehow the tacky piano score amplifies the ineptitude of Mary McGuckian’s direction, but even so one can’t fail to be impressed by a scene where Brady’s Gray literally dances about architecture, proving that it really is possible.

It’s not a problem there’s a hole, as it were, in the common-sense logic of the film’s world; it’s that there’s a big, gaping hole where the illogic should be, a whole lot of nothing where there should be metaphor, playfulness, all that juicy, enigmatic, magical-realism stuff that helps films like Being John Malkovich and its many knockoffs become fodder for film-studies essays.

The film manages, impressively, to be both crushingly banal and offensive in its use of cultural stereotypes. Watching it is like being brutally violated by a greeting card.

The rhetoric here is slippery as a Pentecostal snake bathed in holy snake oil, to the point where you almost have to admire the film-makers’ tenacity – especially when it comes to swirly-whirly visual effects showing near-abstract pearly gates and deities presenting themselves as rays of luminosity, like celestial lightbulbs.

This splatterfest horror feature is better than its predecessor much in the same way succeeding Covid variants are better than the early, more lethal strains.

The package as a whole, with its sun-bleached palette and colour correction that makes its blues pop, is reasonably entertaining, perfectly suited to watching on an airplane while flying to your next holiday destination.

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

Too often the pic feels as if it’s killing time to pad itself out into feature length.

The problem with The Pyramid is that it doesn't have a single new idea in its arsenal. All the shocks are cribbed from the likes of Alien, The Descent and a ghostly host of other horror films, but they're not even very effectively done here.

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.

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.

While it has a few incidental felicities to admire, by and large Music is a sentimental atrocity so cringe-inducing it should come with an advisory warning for anyone with preexisting shoulder or back injuries.

Marshall goes big on the use of freeze-frames, onscreen graphics deployed when introducing characters, and wink-wink meta jokes, all of which feel pretty tired and early noughties British crime drama by this point.

It’s a nonsensical premise and a pretty incoherent, painfully inept film.

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.

It would be risible if it weren’t so offensive, mean-spirited and, frankly, nasty.

An only fitfully convincing Hudson leads a strong-on-paper cast, but most of the actors look uncomfortable here, particularly Gael Garcia Bernal as her love interest.

Much more amusing in theory than in execution.

Fashioned out of well-worn, if not hackneyed, horror tropes, Demonic is no meta-level deconstruction of the genre, but it’s a more than competent, fugue-like manipulation that freshens familiar components with a tricky structure.

Utterly absorbing all the way through, this showcase for Bercot’s skill with large casts and intellectually rigorous storytelling may be her best yet.

This is a conversation starter, not especially distinguished as film-making but vital and deeply felt.

[An] affecting and sincere documentary.

Davis and Kaye’s script lacks the black humor and high-wire comic timing that made The Celebration such a breakthrough, and the antics of the three main leads just become a bit sordid, inexplicable and oddly tiresome by the end, even though the performances are admirably committed.

Kore-eda keeps the tone mostly light and frothy, infusing the proceedings even at their darkest moments with humor. Although at times it feels like two or three characters too many have been crammed into its two-hour running time, every one of them is likable to some degree, maintaining the generosity of spirit Kore-eda displayed in his previous films.

With its creepy music and only-just-adequate performances, this will serve nicely at future slumber parties for thrill-seeking tweens.

Dvortsevoy deserves praise for making a film willing to show a woman ready to do anything she can to live, unafraid if those choices make her character unsympathetic.

Our kids deserve storytelling that has more wit, and animation with better design, but I suppose this will do at a pinch.

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

With well-timed rhythms and backchat, the ensemble is quite credible as a gaggle of slightly obnoxious, mildly likable millennials on the brink of middle age.

As a meditation on bereavement, parenting and the burden and blessing of inheritances, Love & Stuff is about as universally accessible as it gets.

Given how much CGI has come along since 2010, you’d expect a more convincing presentation of moving animals’ lips and eye muscles mimicking human expressions, but clearly the budget didn’t reach much beyond the tea budget for Tenet.

Slow paced and deploying minimal sound – apart from gentle bursts of voiceover and the sound of wings and planes taking off – this Swiss-set quasi-documentary about a bird sanctuary is relaxing to watch, like one of those machines that plays the sound of waves breaking to help you fall asleep.

Luridly coloured, handheld cinematography seems designed to distract from the shabbiness of the sets, while the muffled dialogue and too-loud backing tracks make it nigh on impossible to work out what the hell is going on.

Chock full of delightful narrative surprises, imaginative genre tweaks, and warming performances from its two leads, this low-budget romcom-horror story is worth seeking out.

In all honesty, the path towards the film’s final feeble twist is as discernible as a neon pink jacket on the ski slopes. But Let It Snow is well put together, from the spectacular location work to the strong use of sound to the sort of arresting imagery that recalls the haute body horror of Midsommar.

The script is full of such daft coincidences you keep expecting there will be a clever twist to explain – but no, it really is that lazily written. At least the cinematography (by Andrew Wheeler) has atmosphere and the Parisian shots are pretty.

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’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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

This romcom set in a Manhattan publishing house is about as bland and as easily consumed as a cone of soft-serve ice-cream on a hot day. It’s essentially a sticky extrusion of sugar, trans fats and trapped air in cinematic form.

The Commando contains a number of egregious implausibilities and cliches.

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.

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.

Amid all this dross there is a charming scene in where a young couple, played by Natalie Burn and Michael Sirow, banter and giggle: their screen chemistry is like something out of a Richard Linklater movie. What a shame one of the characters gets murdered not long after.

This pious work is clearly designed to send believers into a state of ecstasy, but it may be a bit of a slog for the secular.

The script and direction by prolific low-budget film-maker James Cullen Bressack do spring a few mild surprises and minor twists to spice things up. That doesn’t quite make up for the tackiness elsewhere.

A film that tries to empathise with everybody runs the risk of pleasing no one, and no doubt there will be viewers enraged by this or that detail or unspoken perspective, but the ambition is nevertheless pretty impressive and on the whole well executed.

The most surprising among them being Gary Oldman. The actor, an English emigrant to California like Muybridge himself, makes some acute observations about Muybridge’s style, technique and mien and adds a bit of Hollywood pizzazz to a story that’s crying out for a biopic.

This schematic but sweet-natured comedy drama drives down a narrative track as straight and comfortingly predictable as an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine.

Calamy gets to show off her astonishing dynamic range as an actor, adept at comedy, anxiety, maternal rage and kittenish coquetry, all in the space of a single scene.

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

In short, this is not very good but there are worse things you could be watching as you fall asleep on the sofa after a heavy night’s drinking, which is exactly what it feels like this was designed for.

Unfortunately, the dialogue sounds as if it was written by one of those newfangled AI chatbots, or maybe an actual human being who aspires to write as well as an AI chatbot but is not there yet.

Shadowy it is indeed, but mastery is more questionable.

In the end this feels a bit too much like a knockoff of a superior product, like something one of these guys would sell out of the boot of their car.

A few more passes through the editing suite have improved things, but the film is still a raggedy-assed mess, with apparently significant characters’ stories pruned back to stubs and loose endings like blasted shards.

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.

This is very bizarre stuff, even within the traditionally weird parameters of cultural representation in cartoons, but kids won’t mind as it’s one non-stop riot of colour and vroom-vroom movement.

Some viewers may find it a little too pulpy, reliant as it is on boilerplate dialogue, and it is not exactly rich in subtlety. All the nuance is in the grace of the fight scenes, as lovingly choreographed as a production of Swan Lake.

There’s a certain amount of nasty fun to be had watching the assorted couples get drunk and tear strips off each other, in a metaphoric sense at least, before the violence kicks off – as if Greene were aiming to make a cross between Scream and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

The direction by Nadine Crocker has all the authenticity of a daytime soap opera. But all the same, there’s no denying that Hedlund and, to a lesser extent, Fitzgerald are pretty good, offering better performances than the film surrounding them deserves.