Nicholas Barber

It's refreshing to see a grown-up Hollywood film that takes on contemporary issues: feminism, cancel culture, identity politics, and the generation gap. But After the Hunt is more of an admirable project than an engaging drama, because it never stops reminding you of how clever it wants to be.

The first in DC's new cinematic universe starring David Corenswet is "glib and flimsy". Comic fans will love it, but this curio feels like "an eccentric sci-fi B-movie".

Formula One enthusiasts may disagree, and they may be delighted that their beloved motorsport has been put on the big screen in such a laudatory fashion. Everyone else: this is not where you want to be.

Mescal and O'Connor are nuanced and charismatic, and it's amazing that an Irish actor and English actor should play these most American of roles so flawlessly, but The History of Sound doesn't probe beneath the attractive surface of its star-crossed lovers.

A disorientating, maddening whirlwind of haunting sights, thunderous music and fiercely intense performances, Alpha confirms that Ducournau is a visionary artist. But once you've recovered from the brain-bashing experience of watching her latest film, it comes to seem a lot less satisfying and stimulating than Titane was.

It's good fun, but unless your tolerance for the director's idiosyncrasies is stratospherically high, the chances are that the story will seem too random for you to care about by the halfway point.

Ramsay's film-making flair lights up scene after scene, but as the narrative fragments, and reality and fantasy blur, you're left with the urge to read the novel to find out what's actually happening. The film may have communicated its heroine's boredom and bewilderment a little too effectively.

It's just a shame that the series' farewell had to be so solemn – and so silly.

The story is cluttered, the tone is muddled, and the pacing is off. Again, that doesn't make the film a disaster. In some ways, the identity crisis is what makes it worth seeing. But this muddled production will be enjoyed more by politics and cinema students than by children who are hoping to be enchanted by Disney magic.

The worst part of the production is the dull screenplay by Jeff Nathanson, which has Mufasa plodding through Africa, bumping into various members of the supporting cast, and having tedious soul-searching conversations that sound like therapy sessions.

Despite all this Moana moaning, though, it's still a high-quality piece of work: a hurtling Disneyland rollercoaster ride that small children, especially, are bound to enjoy. The irony is that if it had been a television series, viewers might well have gushed about how spectacular it was. But as a film, Moana 2 wouldn't be near the top of any list of Disney's finest.

As it is, I have a strong suspicion that Wicked will work much better as the first part of a double bill, with Wicked Part 2 being shown after an interval. But we'll have to wait another year to know for sure.

The film is interesting and informative, but all those bomb blasts don't leave you as shaken as they should.

Depending on how you look at it, this demythologising exercise is either daring or it's irritatingly smug, but it's definitely not much fun. Phillips seems to be saying that if you fell for Fleck's Messianic self-image the last time around, then the joke's on you.

Craig's soul-baring, skin-baring turn aside, Queer is a proudly artificial curio.

This laidback crime caper doesn't have a great deal more to offer, but there is something to be said for seeing the pals from Ocean's Eleven on the same screen again.

The Order is a sombre, steadily paced, conventional drama. It's superbly acted by its charismatic cast, the locations and the period are evoked beautifully, and, best of all, the violent robberies and shoot-outs are staged with a nerve-jangling ferocity that recalls Michael Mann's Heat. But it isn't quite as gripping as the events deserve.

Throughout the film, various people draw a distinction between "Maria" the woman and "La Callas" the superhuman diva. Its title notwithstanding, Maria is definitely about "La Callas".

As cluttered as it is, though, Blink Twice is stylish and savage enough to gain a cult following. And it is undoubtedly the work of a skilled writer-director, rather than an actor who is having a go at directing.

Twisters isn't bad, but a braver film might have admitted that addressing the causes of extreme weather might be more useful than throwing nappies at it.

The film is fun enough in its chaotic, grungy, rough and ready way. It may not propel Smith back to the top of the A-list, but it proves that he can get through a B-movie. At this stage in his career, that counts as a win.

They're all beautifully performed, and they all sparkle with Lanthimos's deadpan genius: in his world, everything is just off-kilter enough to be funny, but just real enough to be horrifying.

With all due respect to Miller's bonkers vision, and his incredible ability to put that vision on screen, Furiosa seems like one of those spin-off graphic novels that plug the gaps between two films in a franchise, but which don't quite match up to the films themselves.

Like the first Road House, it's a guilty pleasure, but it's not as pleasurable as it should be.

Parts of Dune: Part 2 seem just as monumental, lavishly bizarre and downright disturbing as anything that Jodorowsky and Giger can have had in mind.

The one Vaughn trademark that Argylle is lacking is the director's usual adolescent offensiveness. He's taken out all the sex, gore and swearing, which may be a sign of belated maturity, but which leaves Argylle seeming all too close to Ghosted, Shotgun Wedding, Freelance, Murder Mystery, and the other sort-of action, sort-of romance, sort-of comedy films which have been dumped on streaming services over the last couple of years. They're all vapid, anonymous blocks of content, but at least the others offer something vaguely glamorous to slump in front of in your living room when you can't settle on anything more nourishing to watch. Argylle, on the other hand, is being released in cinemas, so the shoddy and derivative nature of the enterprise is harder to forgive.

There is nothing in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom that's fun or thrilling or moving enough to make you wish for any further sequels.

Nothing exciting happens. There are no challenges to meet, no obstacles to overcome, no Death Stars to destroy.

Overall, then, Wonka seems to be straining every sinew to be the best possible family entertainment at cinemas this Christmas.

And so it is that a film that was shaping up to be an intelligent and respectful homage to The Exorcist descends to the depths of a cheesy, straight-to-streaming rip-off. Viewers should do what Victor advises, and leave.

On one level, I realise, the dullness is the point. . . But I'm not sure that justifies the film's own efficiently plodding approach because it never seems as if Fincher is giving us the inside track on how assassins actually operate.

The racing sequences have enough energy and jeopardy to raise the pulse rate, but the rest of Ferrari... well, surely a film about high-speed cars shouldn't pootle along as slowly as this one does.

Nearly everything about it is stale and derivative, all the way to the teasing extra scenes during and after the end credits. Instead of feeling like the birth of a thrilling new franchise, it feels like the last gasp of a worn-out old one.

Across the Spider-Verse leans into the artificiality of its world: its central, postmodern concern is how the multiverse will be affected by the tangled web of various Spider-Man narratives. If you don't happen to be a universe-hopping comic-book superhero, it's hard to relate to any of it.

The combination of Depp and Maïwenn may have seemed like a dangerous one, but on this occasion they're playing it safe.

Leterrier's achievement in assembling such a gargantuan, multi-stranded, globe-trotting, head-spinning blockbuster is impressive, but however many gruff sermons Dom makes about his family, it's impossible to care about any of it.

This one may be the most unruly and excessive of the trilogy, but it is as sweetly touching as any film with so many slimy, tentacled monsters in it could be.

Viewers are sure to be impressed by Aster's prodigious imagination and technical skill, amused by his gallows humour, and amazed by some of the outrageous images he puts on screen. But whether they will be enthralled by the film is another matter.

The film-makers are obviously so sure that they have a can't-fail franchise on their hands that they haven't even bothered with world-building.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves is no masterpiece, but it's warm, upbeat, unpretentious entertainment, and it's bound to be popular. We certainly won't have to wait another 23 years before the next Dungeons & Dragons film comes out.

It might be best to watch Cocaine Bear at home, where you can skip past the rambling sections and go straight to the laughs and screams. In the cinema, most viewers will wish that it was wittier, faster, and more willing to fulfil the gonzo potential of its in-your-face title. It's definitely better than Banks's last film, Charlie's Angels, but you can't help feeling that she has done the bear minimum.

Knock at the Cabin ends up being no more than a passably tense, low-budget chamber piece that doesn't do justice to its Old Testament conceit.

The chilling fact is that the real world has overtaken the one in the film. If you read any article about how AI is creeping into our lives these days, then M3GAN's killing spree will seem quaintly innocuous in comparison.

The stage is set for a rip-roaring adventure, a space opera sprinkled with debates on the ethics of colonialism and assimilation. But then Cameron takes the film in a new direction - and The Way of Water becomes a damp squib.

The film’s director and co-writer, Ol Parker, is so committed to light, feel-good escapism that he leaves out all of the requisite tension and twists — and, for that matter, the requisite jokes.

The Whale retains the pacing, structure and conventions of a solid but clichéd melodrama.

What's captivating about Bones & All is that it is so understated. The first few gory scenes suggest that Guadagnino has made an outrageous black comedy that gets its startled laughs and screams by contrasting the conventions of a coming-of-age romance with those of an X-rated monster movie. But soon Bones & All becomes entirely straight-faced. It isn't a horror film or a comedy, it's a sincere, sweet indie road movie that happens to feature bloodthirsty serial killers.

The Russos clearly couldn't decide which tone to go for, so they made a zany farce about cheerful super-spies, and then they made a cynical conspiracy drama about death and trauma, and they kept cutting between them. The result is a film that never seems to know what it's doing, or why.

The story is thin, repetitive, and almost entirely dependent on the heroes being clumsy.

It’s always watchable, and it has a distinctively grainy, intimate look, but the vague, generic characters and incidents are the kind of thing you might scribble on the back of an envelope without having done any research at all.

Structured as a hardboiled detective thriller, Crimes of the Future has plenty of provocative concepts and images that will put a grin on your face (not least the dancer who has several ears on his face), but you may find yourself willing the plot to pick up momentum, and the ickiness to get a whole lot ickier.

If a screenplay is going to be fixated on the history and purpose of storytelling, the stories within it have to be better.

Compared to most US action adventures, The Northman is adventurous and distinctive. It feels compromised, but the great stuff outweighs the not-so-great stuff. To see or not to see? If that is the question, the answer is: see it.

The story also ends on a touchingly optimistic note, which is unusual for a Batman film. Who knows, maybe the next one won't be quite as gloomy. Pattinson might even crack a smile. But I wouldn't bet on it.

It feels as if Guiraudie had two separate ideas for a contemporary urban comedy but couldn’t figure out how to develop either of them, so he stuck them in one script and hoped for the best.

Eternals is more serious in tone and more deliberate in its pacing than the average Marvel movie, with less of the usual banter and no cameo appearances by other superheroes. But, if you're looking for the humanity and originality of Zhao's other films, you won't find much of it here.

Like all of the best rock docs, it will make you want to listen to the band’s albums. But after the second hour has come and gone, you might decide that you’ve listened enough, after all.

Stewart is such inspired casting that she makes all this eccentric nonsense watchable.

It's kitsch at times and transcendent at others, but the delicate puppetry and the gonzo ambition will guarantee Annette a cult following.

If The Midnight Sky has the sombre tone of a high-minded art-house project, it has the bland design, sentimental characterisation and flimsy plotting of a children's TV movie. The story may have links with today's reality, but it never feels real.

It’s a bold, angry, provocative indictment, but because Franco zooms back to the state-of-the-nation big picture, he loses sight of the characters who were sketched so sharply in the opening scenes. They’re still in the film, but they have so little agency and dialogue that they are reduced to counters on a board – or ants for him to scorch beneath his magnifying glass.

As unbalanced as it might be, One Night in Miami is a well-acted history lesson and a sincere tribute to the men, their friendship, and their inspiring cultural importance. It’s just that King and Powers’ treatment of that outstanding premise hasn’t quite made the leap from stage play to big-screen film; it has landed in TV-movie territory instead.

Niki Caro’s film is a well-constructed family-friendly wuxia drama, with bright colours, grand scenery, and commendable themes. But it’s best enjoyed if you’re expecting a solid tween movie rather than a monumental cinematic landmark.

You have to hand it to Nolan. To use the old expression, he puts the money on the screen, delivering the kind of noisy, extravagant and fundamentally ridiculous pulp fiction which reminds you why you go to the cinema. But it collapses under the weight of all the plot strands and concepts stuffed into it. You don’t get the impression, which you usually get from his films, that every element is precisely where it should be. Some parts of it go on too long, others not long enough. It’s a treat to see a really big film again, but a smaller one might have been better.

It’s an original and timely feminist spin on HG Wells’s concept, and a welcome riposte to those thrillers that are fascinated by homicidal maniacs at the expense of their victims. If only the film itself had been clever or scary enough to do justice to its ingenious premise.

Not that it is completely uncool or completely un-fun. Birds of Prey is certainly more coherent than Suicide Squad, and more energetic than the lacklustre Charlie’s Angels reboot, which was Hollywood’s last attempt to assemble a trio of action heroines. Perhaps it counts as progress, too, that after so many years when gory, postmodern Tarantino rip-offs were about men, there is finally one that’s about women instead. However popular the film becomes, though, I doubt that anyone will adore it as much as it evidently adores itself.

Cats needed more narrative, more comedy, more show-stopping tunes, and more choreography that hadn’t been chopped to ribbons by the editors.

The main feeling it instils in the viewer is a renewed respect for the imagination of Lucas. The Rise of Skywalker has been lovingly crafted by a host of talented people, and yet the best they can do is pay tribute to everything he did several decades ago.