Phil de Semlyen

Ridley Scott delivers a spectacular but flavourless French history lesson.

It’s far from a ham-fisted, tasteless Bialystocky nightmare. But neither does it avoid some jarring dissonance, as Celie, a young Black woman in 1900s Georgia, goes from a deep personal hell to some hard-won peace via slickly choreographed saloon-bar stompers, banjo-picking blues numbers, and an awkwardly-staged soul ballad framed within an RKO-style dream sequence.

Unfortunately, its 39 minutes unfold in such motor-mouthed haste, it feels like a dad belting through a bedtime story while the football’s on downstairs.

It demands patience and an open mind, but Lowery’s return to his indie roots after Pete’s Dragon is a highly unusual and, at times, emotionally shattering fable.

This is obviously a deeply personal subject for Noé, who has spoken about experiencing the fallout of dementia first-hand. But while his film gradually pummels you, it can’t match 2021’s superb dementia chamber piece The Father for impact or insight. As it grinds towards its slightly contrived ending, it does start to feel like rubbernecking.

Kangaroo has a love for the people, landscape and wildlife that leaves a warm glow. It’s not doing anything wildly different or unexpected, but it’ll put a smile on your face.

Unfolding at the American filmmaker’s measured tempo, it’s more droll than LOL-funny, though there are some big laughs along the way.

Beautiful acted by Japanese veteran Yakusho, it’s a character study with real depth. Maybe not top tier Wenders, but still one to linger over.

Even by the writer-director’s standards of naturalistic, middle-class restraint, it’s a ruminative experience that borders on slow-going. But The Eternal Daughter is also an ode to mothers and daughters that will leave a few teary messes in the stalls, and it’s beautifully acted by Tilda Swinton in not one, but two roles.

If the pay-off aims for the gut and misses, the journey to that point provides a searing microcosm of a corrupt and degrading system.

For those masters of small-scale vérité social dramas, it’s such a bracing sensation to see them tiptoeing into genre terrain, you’ll forgive the fact that the villains are two-dimensional and that the ending is jarringly abrupt.

Sharply scripted with a melancholic charm.

There’s a tonne of interesting questions raised in all this that you’re just too numbed to absorb. No matter how often Malcolm goes outside to yell his frustrations into the night sky, the drama doesn’t feel any less airless.

Thelma is neither as funny nor as Marmite-y as Little Miss Sunshine, a kindred spirit in the quirky indie realm, but its light shines in myriad little character beats.

Splicing in montage footage of marching soldiers, shots from Lawrence Olivier’s Henry V, and even archers in action, and layering in discordant sound design, Boyle reinvents the zombie movie as a bloody pop-art installation.

Not top tier Jarmusch, but still a funny, soulful anthology worth seeking out.

Compelling performances and beautifully told heroics but the pacing is flawed in terms of a thrilling cinematic experience.

Even with its cramp-preventing intermission, Occupied City’s epic runtime doesn’t deliver the same accretion of emotional power that makes, say, Claude Lanzmann’s nine-hour Holocaust doc, Shoah, so great. Instead, it begins to open itself up to monotony and worse, glibness.

Malek’s twitchy brand of anti-charm makes him an unusual lead for a film like this, and his outsider energy works better as the tormented killer-to-be than the doting husband. Heller is not always easy to root for, which can make The Amateur a chilly experience.

A brooding, muscular FBI procedural that occasionally explodes into Point Break-y action, Aussie director Justin Kurzel’s (Snowtown) true-life thriller delves, pungently and topically, into the inner workings of white nationalism in America before deciding that squealing tyres and shootouts are a lot more fun.

Heady with cordite fumes and high on its violent spectacle, this Chris Hemsworth-fronted action-thriller makes for a surprise-free but passable lockdown watch.

As a supernatural chiller, In Flames finds itself undermined by its own everyday horrors.

Much easier to admire and appreciate than it is to fall head over heels for, The French Dispatch has Wes Anderson in full megamix mode as he packs three short stories into an anthology structure that bubbles with flamboyance and ideas, before keeling over under the weight of own narrative cargo.

It’s a pungent articulation of American chaos. The problem is that it’s not telling us much that we don’t already know.

If Kidnapped aims to dive into the subconscious of its characters, it gets stuck on the surface.

Director Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters) can do this stuff with his eyes closed, and sometimes it feels like he might be doing that as the plot chugs from London to Berlin and secrets are duly uncovered. But there’s enough visual flair to elevate things above standard genre fare.

It’s all heading somewhere special as Kelly muses on masculinity and colonialism, but then coherence gives way to flashy visuals and bursts of expressionistic violence.

Motel Destino never deviates radically enough from that tried-and-tested Postman template to throw up too many surprises. The result is frisky but fleeting.