Leslie Felperin

Stubby’s minimal anthropomorphism makes him a believably doggy sort of dog, whose expressions and behaviour clearly indicate that the animators spent many hours studying the real thing.

While there’s much to admire here . . . the drama too often lacks the subtlety that distinguishes the British writer-director’s work at its best. Two hours long, practically to the second, this feels like a project that’s been excessively trimmed, snipped and tapered to fit an arbitrary running time.

As a bit of anthropology offering a glimpse into Tibetan life today, it’s perfectly serviceable.

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.

Freyne draws out fizzy, gutsy performances from his two leads, who have a genuine, charming chemistry. The authenticity of their performances is perhaps slightly out of tune with the broad caricatures on display elsewhere, such as the mean classmates, but it's ultimately forgivable given how winning the film is overall.

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

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 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.

With such an elliptical tease of a plot, which jumps back and forth temporally disdaining explication, some may feel a little of this travelogue goes a long way.

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.

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.

The whole shebang is quite bizarre but sort of works, thanks to the brisk pacing of the editing and the joie de vivre that directors Zoya Akhtar and Ryan Brophy inject into the proceedings.

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.

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.

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 script’s twists are a little predictable and some might query the way the Jewish characters are essentially noble ciphers. But, given the rise of the far right in Hungary at the moment, this is a timely tussle with a nation’s collective sense of shame.

It’s all quite lovely to look at or even just listen to, making for something that can easily be experienced at home while the viewer is knitting or chopping vegetables.

Although many of the stories told here are deeply harrowing and the film sometimes seems to be trying to bite off too much, at least there’s a happy ending of sorts.

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.

The look is cute, deceptively simple and suggestive of the illustrations in children’s books, however, the 2D minimalism is executed with a high degree of craft. It is hard to make something like this look so easy and effortless.

This woman, for all her flaws, is clearly a warrior first and foremost.

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

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

This is a fan-servicing but not necessarily hagiographic documentary.

It’s sort of impressive how much director Simone Scafidi allows Argento’s dark side to show through all the hype about his genius.

Director Joshua Erkman’s feature debut manages to deliver an impressively creepy horror exercise that’s also a bit of a send-up of horror conventions.

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

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.