Nicholas Barber

Bloated by two or three elements too many, it isn't a "perfect organism", to use the phrase coined by Ian Holm's android character in Alien, but it's as close to perfect as any entry in the series since Aliens in 1986.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There is no denying that The Creator is a major new sci-fi adventure. If you're partial to such things, Edwards' ambitious, immersive film should prompt the intoxicating awe that you might have got from The Matrix and Avatar – the feeling that you're seeing a rich vision of the future unlike any that has been on the big screen before.

Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget doesn't just reach the standards of its high-flying predecessor, but it soars above them.

It was disingenuous of the filmmakers to use the phrase “A New Era”, because the film relies wholly on its viewers’ affection for characters and situations they have seen many times before.

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.

Be warned. Triangle of Sadness rants and smirks at the state of the world over two-and-a-half hours, which is quite some running time for a satirical comedy. But it is never boring. Partly that's because the political commentary is so shrewd, and partly it's because it has a surprising amount of warmth and nuance, too. Östlund ensures that while the situations may be absurd, the people in them are as human as any of us.

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".

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.

If Nakonechnyi’s low-key film had come out a year ago, it would have been received as a respectable, serious work from a promising first-time director. In the context of mid-2022, it is heart-rending, yet not quite intense enough.

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.

The nicest surprise is that Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is that rare thing, a big-budget comedy which is actually funny. The screenplay by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar is packed with knock-out punchlines, and Burton's visual gags manage to be hilarious even while pushing the boundaries of how eccentric and macabre a Hollywood blockbuster can be.

The strange thing is that, while the first Avatar seemed exhilaratingly futuristic, the third film seems like a relic of an earlier era.

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.

If you see it as a lurid pulp fantasy rather than a penetrating satire, then Saltburn is deliriously enjoyable. It's the dialogue and the performances that clinch it.

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.

As overflowing as it is with subplots and stylistic quirks, perhaps “Brother and Sister” should simply have concentrated on the brother and sister. That would have been more than enough.

Some people will dismiss the film as nonsense, and they could have a point. But Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is a huge amount of fun.

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

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

Jenkins has said that she would have liked the film to be 15 minutes longer. Some viewers might have liked it to be 15 minutes shorter. But, for most of the running time, they will be happy to be in Wonder Woman's uplifting company. In its old-fashioned, uncynical way, WW84 is one of the most enjoyable blockbusters to be released since 1984.

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

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.

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.