Nick de Semlyen

The founding of a comedy institution shot as a madcap thriller, Saturday Night glides over the surface rather than drilling deep, but it’s largely a hell of a fun 109 minutes.

While all of the signature elements are present and correct, right down to the soul-shrivelling hard stare, some of the warmth and wit and dashes of brilliant eccentricity we’ve become used to are absent.

You’ll think you know where this sun-baked serial-killer thriller is going, until you don’t. A nifty, chronologically crafty tale, fuelled by bravura acting by Willa Fitzgerald, it’s a small movie with high impact.

A tale of pelts that pelts along, with more lunacy and creativity than a brace of other films, this film dares to go full beaver. Don’t sleep on it.

Scruffy and overstuffed, but contagiously good-natured. And frankly more films need to feature showdowns at abandoned alligator-themed amusement parks.

Stylish, high-energy, smart and eye-wateringly violent. There are quibbles, for sure, but where it counts, Monkey Man goes bananas in the best possible way.

Hunham’s hero Marcus Aurelius once wrote, “Give thyself leisure to learn some good thing.” Take his advice and see this film.

A transcendent debut for South Korean-Canadian filmmaker Celine Song, this romantic drama is a masterclass in slow, simmering storytelling. It will stay with you, maybe even into your next life.

A lot more entertaining and irreverent than the film’s grandiose subtitle, “Courting A Legend”, suggests — even if it’s hardly as trailblazing as the man to whom it pays tribute.

James Cameron has surfaced with a cosmic marine epic that only he could make: eccentric, soulful, joyous, dark and very, very blue. Yes, he’s still leagues ahead of the pack.

A spry police procedural fused with an achingly intense romance, Decision To Leave keeps you off-kilter throughout, in the best possible way. Make a decision to see it.

Some summer anti-programming arrives in the form of a highly talky, at times upsetting prison drama — think Fortress meets Limitless. You can feel the strain of its expansion from novella form, but it’s just about worth a visit.

Reminiscent of The Happytime Murders but actually watchable, this zippy, highly amiable rodent noir turns out to be 
a delightful surprise. It flings a lot of ideas at the screen — and most of them stick.

A film based on a game inspired by films that are much better than this one, Uncharted is watchable enough but could have been so much better.

A fast-paced and hectic kitchen thriller that, though it tries to spin a few too many plates, pulls you deep into a fascinating, detailed world most of us know little about.

Guy Ritchie delivers a nice surprise: an LA neo-noir with high-voltage action and an ice-cube-cool Statham. If it gets a bit tangled up in its time-hopping reveals, it’s largely 
an enjoyable, rattlesnake-mean thriller.

Not quite ‘Ready Player One Star’, but this is an odd duck: a Black Mirror-ish concept played for laughs, which ends up getting tangled up in its own code.

It shouldn’t really have taken 11 years for the Widow to get her own standalone adventure. But thanks to some zesty new character dynamics and smart twists, Marvel have finally done her right.

A strange hybrid of Italian neorealism and fish-based fantasy, Luca is beautiful to behold but plays it too safe to make a real impact. Still, great CG linguine.

Hopkins is extraordinary as a man flailing against a condition that’s taking everything from him. And Zeller proves he’s a natural filmmaker, orchestrating a Wagnerian opera of emotion based entirely around an old man in a flat.

The action is sharp and imaginative, and Jordan strongly establishes his action-flick credentials. But story-wise it’s all very familiar and more than a little dour.

It’s taken a long time getting here from across the Pond, but some things are worth waiting for. A wonderful, witty and weird spin on an old favourite, which seems destined to become a classic itself.

Come for Nic Cage fighting a robot alligator with a mop. Stay for some inventive licks on the dead-by-dawn horror-movie template, though the other characters are nothing to shriek about.

Swinging between ice and space, Clooney has upped his directorial ambition and delivered a big-scale, big-hearted story, even if it struggles to match the films it riffs on.

Lord knows how it all connects, but there's a strange power in how About Endlessness flows, jumping around the whole spectrum of human experience and the ridiculous places to which our emotions push us. Andersson's pigeon is at flight once more, and cinema is a richer place for it.

A supernatural, effects-laden yarn like this is right in Robert Zemeckis' wheelhouse. Which makes it a little disheartening that it’s merely good, rather than great. Dahl's story still sings, but like a potion missing eye of newt, this new take is slightly undercooked.

The concept of combining Adam Sandler and horror is not a bad one. But this is no Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein. Instead, Hubie Halloween inspires mild dread for all the wrong reasons..

It’s not hard to tell that this Big Lebowski spin-off involved neither Coen Brother. Fair play to Turturro for going in such a strange direction, and assembling a pretty killer cast, but it’s unlikely to satisfy even the most ardent Quintana enthusiast.