Paul Bradshaw

The Naked Gun isn’t big or clever and that’s just fine – silliness has been missing from comedy cinema for far too long now. It might not smell quite as ripe as the original trilogy but it’s never not wonderful to hear Frank Drebin let ‘er rip on the big screen.

It’s a marriage drama, corporate comedy, domestic farce and international surveillance thriller in a tight 90-minute package.

A three hour and thirty minute biopic about art, history, money, sex, trauma and concrete, it’s heavyweight in every sense: a monument to its own greatness that stands a good distance from anything else you’re likely to see at the cinema this year.

The first two Deadpool films were funny and violent and original, but this one shows Marvel’s most gloriously inappropriate superhero at his very best and worst.

Three films into Ti West’s extraordinary trilogy, Goth proves yet again what a force she is to be reckoned with – and West proves that funny, dark, smart schlock horror still has a lot to say.

It might be brutally upsetting at times, but Haigh’s film disarms you with its tenderness – leaving you with something much more profound to say about the connections we make and break along the way.

Dawn Of The Nugget might have a bit too much Netflix polish in places, and the spark of the original film doesn’t ever burn as brightly here, but there’s still a lot to love about a family film pitched for the post-Christmas dinner funk that’s all about the horrors of the poultry industry.

Not just the definitive account of the man behind the atom bomb, Oppenheimer is a monumental achievement in grown-up filmmaking. For years, Nolan has been perfecting the art of the serious blockbuster – crafting smart, finely-tuned multiplex epics that demand attention; that can’t be watched anywhere other than in a cinema, uninterrupted, without distractions. But this, somehow, feels bigger.

When Momoa isn’t on screen and stuff isn’t exploding, the daft dialogue almost sinks the film into parody. Sure, no one’s ever watched a Fast film for the talking, but so much time spent between set-pieces means we only really get half of a film a here – the big final cliffhanger stopping just as it’s getting going.

As honest about his ups as he is his downs, it’s a rare thing to see a movie star being so earnest and grounded on camera. Through the film, Guggenheim helps Fox paint an endearing self-portrait of one of Hollywood’s last few nice guys.

Tetris tells a cracking story, but it suffers from The Big Short effect – the thinking that no mildly complicated script is palatable without throwing every gimmick possible at it.

Less a horror than an occasionally bloodthirsty character portrait, West dances us through the mind of a serial killer with a visual flair that soars on the big screen.

Fury Of The Gods gets a big, silly ending which is occasionally fun, but there’s a cheap and clumsy feel to everything – a superhero sequel made in the same vague shape as a dozen others.

Hopkins steals the film with a wonderfully unlikeable cameo, but it’s the triple-header of Jackman, Dern and Kirby that really lifts the film far above its own script.

Almost completely built out of clichés and corn, there’s very little in Plane that hasn’t been seen before, but it very rarely matters. Exciting without ever really thrilling, it’s an immovably solid actioner – a fun Friday night pizza movie packing a handful of relentlessly unfussy action scenes that deliver exactly what they promise.

This isn’t anyone’s personal story – it’s just the most filmable bits of a fake past, awkwardly, beautifully, pointlessly patched together at 24-frames per second.

Turning an awful true story about a serial killer into an awful true story about the system that let it happen, The Good Nurse is an important lesson for anyone who tries to package Cullen’s crimes too neatly. Better still though, it gives us one of Chastain’s best performances; one of the year’s most believable superheroes.

Fizzing along nicely, even as it tips the two-hour mark, Enola Holmes 2 fits the mould it broke two years ago with a twisty murder mystery that’s well worth solving.

Genuinely moving from the very beginning, expect to leave After Yang in a flood of tears. Expect, also, to spend the rest of the night questioning all the things that no one really likes thinking about. And, of course, to want to keep rewatching that dance scene on repeat.

Made with bubblegum bite by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (writer on MTV’s Sweet/Vicious and Marvel’s Thor: Love And Thunder), the film takes its place in the cult yearbook with an ironic wink – dropping movie references as fast as it does one-liners.

Endlessly silly, and hampered by a lousy script, Fall somehow still manages to be almost unbearably tense – the equivalent of spending two hours watching those stomach-churning YouTube videos of mad freerunners hanging off tall buildings for fun.

It might not be much of an Owen Wilson movie, or even that much of a superhero flick, but if you ignore the poster and trailer and the casting and premise, there’s a fun little Sunday afternoon family film here just begging for a sequel.

Ending up in a CG mess that tries to say something about karma, Bullet Train isn’t the Pulp Fiction on rails it thinks it is. What it is, though, is a whole dollop of fun. Buoyed by Leitch’s expert eye for action as well as one of the most hilariously disposable A-list casts around, the film has Friday night written all over it.

Bristling with good ideas and two great performances, a rushed ending that dips into daftness ends up killing off what could have been a great pitch for an offbeat little TV show that we’re now never going to get to watch.

Fortunately, Hawke is fantastic. Over-acting like his life depends on it, his mad kabuki mugging somehow works perfectly.

Condemned in Australia by two of the victim’s families, there’s an argument to be made for Nitram not being watched at all. But by refusing to paint Nitram as an out-and-out monster, the film’s masterstroke is its compassion. It exposes politicians as the real criminals in an unspeakable tragedy that we still haven’t learned from today.

Archer’s film always feels utterly unique. Looking as handmade as its loveable leads and carrying enough odd wit and subtle warmth to put the multiplex to shame, this is British indie cinema at its weird best. See it before it all falls apart at the seams.

Kids are scary. If you didn’t think so before, you definitely will after watching The Innocents – one of the year’s most quietly unsettling horror films.