Phil de Semlyen

Fennell has captured something real about these unreal people and the world they live in. Her film slices with a scalpel, peels back the layers and finds only hollowness beneath. Maybe that’s the real twist.

Grab your nan, put the kettle on and enjoy some exceedingly fine thesps hamming it up royally.

A groundbreaking view of the horror and pity of war, I can’t remember a cinematic experience quite like it. It’s devastating and extraordinary.

You’d call it Tarantino-esque but for the pacing and lack of a soundtrack. (Even Tarantino might have cut a couple of these baggy subplots.)

A busier proposition than its HBO forefather, this sets up more than it can pay off. But it does manage to balance fan-service with plenty of rich, original, complex material.

Zemeckis’ old-school romance has its moments and Cotillard gives it her all, but it lacks the zip and chemistry to truly spark.

Sure, it gets a bit silly towards the end, and the promised post-credits scene is for the truly dedicated. But in a year when the cinemagoing experience could be categorised as ‘much too little’, you can’t really blame it for giving us a bit too much.

As with his first directorial effort, the ace meta-horror The Cabin in the Woods, Goddard has a blast toying with genre expectations, although here the payoff is a lot less satisfying.

Measured rather than playing to the gallery, The Choral is Brassed Off in a minor key – an elegant, Yorkshire-set exploration of music as a spiritual morale-boost in the darkest times. With Ralph Fiennes gravely essaying the controversial choirmaster at its heart, it does a lovely job of swerving the obvious notes but misplaces its stirring crescendo.

A romantic fantasia set in Istanbul, George Miller’s mystical confection operates like the genie at its heart: it’s full of visual sleight-of-hand and boasts plenty of storytelling power, but soon disappears from your mind in a puff of smoke.

Gardening has never been so creepy.

It’s often enthralling – especially with Murphy at its heart – though rarely explosive.

In its quieter moments, No Hard Feelings gestures towards real emotion. More often than not, though, it gets sidetracked by chaotic set pieces, with naked fistfights (the actress, surprisingly, goes full frontal here), mace sprayings and even an ingenious homage to The Shining, working Lawrence’s knack for slapstick to the funny bone. It’s fleeting fun, when a bit more honesty and candor might have made it her answer to Young Adult.

Joaquin Phoenix is devastating as the villain-in-the-making in this incendiary tale of psychological escape and psychopathy.

Ultimately, Cruella ends up feeling like a film torn between being daring and sticking to convention: a helium balloon that keeps getting dragged back under the weight of its own narrative ballast. Like Cruella’s occasionally piebald hair, it’s very much a movie of two halves: fun to look at, if a little fleeting.

For brain-free Friday night viewing, you could do much worse than spend 90 blood-soaked minutes with not-so-gentle Ben.

Newton is a fun addition as the bubbly Faith, but the game Weaving is MVP again: a sharp finger in the eye of the one percent. This is a broader sequel, though, that only has more of the same for her to do. It’ll pass an evening but it won’t blow your mind.

Generic, sure, but gripping enough, Apex has located a corner of God’s own country where the devil reigns.

Serenity, wonderment and worry mix in this awe-inspiring, musical tour of the Earth’s waterways.

The songwriting verve of Lin-Manuel Miranda is missed, too. Composers Barlow and Bear chip in with some catchy ditties, but there’s nothing to match How Far I’ll Go and You’re Welcome.

Ultimately, though, there’s not enough story to fuel a three-hour musical stretched across nearly five hours. What once was brisk and bright becomes a bit of a slog. Fans will be obsessified; everyone else, ossified.

The sheer ambition is still there, but the storytelling rigour – Lasseter’s great forte – is again missing in Elemental, the studio’s latest big-screen offering.

The Cure’ has to be the first to reanimate corpses as a means of examining Ireland’s post-Troubles tensions. It’s a bold idea – and a good one – even if it never fully pays off in a ploddingly predictable final act.

It’s all watchable enough but hardly a giant leap for documentary making.

Apart from the confetti-cannon finale, this isn’t the hackneyed stereoscopic where things burst through the screen, but an immersive front row and on-stage spot at Billie Eilish’s 2025 world tour.

The tonal lurches – from jokey to earnest and back again – will have whiplash setting in by the time its eccentric fourth-wall-breaking coda comes around, while some odd casting choices (and accents) drain gravity from the serious moments.

The combination of Gyllenhaal’s easy charm, some Florida sunshine and at least one fight scene for the ages make this Road House worth stopping by. Just try to grab a seat in a quiet corner.

The action here is visceral and slickly handled, especially in the kind of expository opening credits sequence that Snyder is a master of (see also: Watchmen), but the patter is perfunctory and there's little grab to hold onto in this cadre of underdeveloped expendables as they negotiate the Vegas Strip, hotel corridors and the odd dull family dispute. Aliens is also a showcase for the kind of cut-to-the-bone editing Army of the Dead could have really done with. The zombies are fast here; the pacing definitely isn’t.

Occasionally, the dizzying filmmaking style, a mix of practical stunt work and invisible VFX, feels like a video-game cutscene. More often, it just sucks the air from your lungs. The ending gestures pretty firmly at another sequel to come. It’ll have a tough job upping the ante on this.

The odd duff fight scene aside, Waititi is so good at this stuff, and he directs it all like a circus master eager to keep the entertainment coming.

With The Fall Guy, stuntman-turned-filmmaker David Leitch and his bang-on-form stars, Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, have nestled a frisky, winsome romantic comedy inside the framework of an old-school, full-throttle action movie and conjured up a pretty perfect Friday night at the movies in the process.

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.

Short on plot, long on silliness, the return of the little yellow troublemakers is a fun but fleeting helium high.

The performances are solid, with an excellent Jude Law all inscrutable psychopathy as a younger Vladimir Putin and Alicia Vikander the perfect embodiment of an amoral post-Soviet arrivista, and the chilly world-building works well enough, but there’s a missing ingredient – actual Russians.

It’s a movie that got up on the wrong side of the bed and compensated with four quadruple espressos.

Another dazzling Jennifer Lawrence performance anchors a blue-collar parable that boasts some inspired moments but never quite gels.

Hunt is a film stuck entirely in fifth, racing from one sudden shootout to another at the expense of the labyrinthine plot.

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.

If you’re not a #ReleasetheSnyderCut signee, you’re still better off watching the original, patchy as it is. At least it’s short.

It’s hampered by a pedestrian script and an improbable ending, but always catches fire when the supercharged Law is on screen.

The predictable fish-out-of-water comedy gradually gives way to something deeper, as conflicting world views are exchanged, homespun wisdom dispensed and minds broadened.

M3GAN 2.0 continues to offer up a goofy brand of cautionary tale, too: against AI, tech dependence, and Silicon Valley types who want to stick a chip in their brains. You can take that seriously as you want to, just don’t be surprised to find yourself watching it again on your cellphone one day.

Slick but forgettable, Fuqua’s suicide squad is a macho posse movie that could use a jab of fun. It’s The Magnificent Seven, but the “magnificent” is silent.

Even with the original stars returning, the sequel feels weightless, disposable and hardly the stuff of Skynet nightmares.

For all its inspired moments, this is a movie content to coast on the charms of its terrific cast of comedic actors. Welcome to Night of the Living Deadpan.

There’s something deeply moving, almost tragic, about a good man being slowly enveloped by the dark times around him. Munich captures it nicely.

After the nuance of what comes before, it’s annoying that the knottiness vanishes in an ending that wraps everything up in a neat bow.

This visually epic, but monotonous collaboration between James Cameron and Robert Rodriguez is less than the sum of its slick parts.

Terrence Malick’s Hollywood tale is a frustratingly fleeting experience, a sleepwalk through Tinseltown that beguiles you with its visual artistry but leaves only the faintest of impressions when the curtain falls.

If the final act is a bit dull and the anarchic Reynolds factor ends up muzzled, director Rob Letterman makes sure not to lose that self-aware edge altogether, while providing enough Pokémon Easter eggs to satisfy the most demanding fan. He’s also helped invent a whole new movie genre: cuddly noir.

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.

The Fallen Sun is a satisfying enough way to kick off a Luther Cinematic Universe.

This take on Alan Bennett’s pre-pandemic play, a love letter to the NHS set on a geriatric ward in Wakefield’s beloved-but-threatened Bethlehem Hospital (‘The Beth’), ticks along amiably enough for an hour or so. Then, like a hand grenade in a tombola, a harrowing third-act twist detonates beneath it and narrative and tonal destruction ensues.

It’s an old cliché about biopics that if the story wasn’t true, you probably wouldn’t believe it. The Keeper takes it a step further: you know it’s true and you still don’t believe it.

The film’s themes of inclusion, family and multiculturalism may be broadly delivered, but they definitely don’t all miss the mark.

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.

You can see the sweat on stage, but it’s harder to detect in the filmmaking.

It’s oh-so-familiar terrain, yet writer-director Scott Wiper lets a deadening sense of inertia creep in, leaving the payoff feeling like a Guy Ritchie movie played at the wrong speed.

The acting is a bubbling fondue of clashing styles.

This fun, pacy addition to the dino disaster franchise doesn’t do much that’s particularly new – though what it does, it does with a fair whack of panache.

It has a kernel of raw torment and an unforgiving streak that hints at still-unreconciled wounds, too. It’s not the best film of the year, but it’s definitely one of the most personal.

It feels a little too skin deep; a film content to get by on its vicarious thrills. And the rush eventually wears off.

After the self-satisfied The Gentlemen and the slick but sparkless Wrath of Man, it’s a nice reminder that at his best, Ritchie remains an accomplished teller of tall tales.

Diehl and Pachner are both terrific, mastering Malick’s improvisational style and bringing earthy authenticity to its playful family moments.

A more restrained effort from Araki than the headrush of Kaboom, there’s plenty of fun to be had in Eva Green’s Joan Crawford-esque turn as the vanished lady

A curveball from the man who made "2012" and "Independence Day" and probably only a brief respite for the world's major cities.It's more of an interesting curio to a blockbuster career but there's fun to be had here if you look hard enough.

As it is, it’s an atmospheric, sporadically disquieting depiction of fatherhood in freefall.

If Last Christmas isn’t quite irresistible in its emotional moments and the cheesiest bits are borderline indigestible, its effervescence makes it a fun enough watch. At the very least, it’ll make you fall hard for its other romantic lead: London.

An early twist means that the bloodletting develops a repetitive feel, and there are unfortunate parallels with the recent Ready or Not 2, but the wincing and guilty laughs never quite dry up. Cult status may await.

Writer-actors Tim Key and Tom Basden’s three-hander, set on a remote British isle, have delivered a rare blend of unkempt charm, emotional precision and soulful folk music with this feature-length expansion of their own 2007 short, The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island.

It starts strongly, with the gory deaths coming thick, fast and often unexpectedly, and Damon Lindelof and Nick Cuse’s script giving the viewer no purchase on the unfolding mayhem. The underrated Gilpin is a steely, lib-owning presence, too. But the surprises soon dry up.

It’s not going to win too many trophies, but Champions is still a cheering watch.

While the tartness and wit is missing to elevate this anywhere near the romantic-comedy canon, the overall vibe is so cosy and frothy, you’d need a heart of steel to hate it.

For all its freedom to reimagine her life and rescue her from cultural victimhood, Blonde is just a bit too willing to chuck her overboard and watch her flounder.

What Sing 2 does offer is more big musical numbers (‘Bad Guy’ by Billie Eilish backdrops a great visual gag involving a floor polisher), lots of eye-popping animation and a sugar-high ending that will delight kids and U2 fans alike

What’s missing is a bit of heart to make you care, or at least, a sense of knowing how to wrap it up quickly enough, and smartly enough, for it not to matter if you don’t. An amped-up Friday night audience might have fun with Bullet Train once, but it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to ride it again.

Cramming Amsterdam’s myriad subplots and political angles into a coherent two hours ultimately proves beyond Russell. But tight narrative isn’t really what fuels the writer-director. He’s more about arming electric performers with offbeat, talky scenes and catching the lightning that sparks in a bottle. And the bottle here is full to the brim.

The class satire, the strongest suit of its Ealing ancestor, is blunter than a burglar’s cosh. The murders should be the juice in this devilish cocktail, especially with Zach Woods, Topher Grace and Ed Harris as the marks. But the deaths are throwaway affairs.

It’s a patchy but sincerely felt spy thriller that could be harshly described as The 39 Missteps.

But while it may not be strong on nuance and the story moves with all the careful pacing of a human cannonball, it’s got gusto and verve in abundance. An old-fashioned musical with a none-more-zeitgeisty songsheet, it may not be a flawless piece of storytelling, but it’s a pretty decent show.

You have to hope that Hardy is not this annoying in real life, because by the time Dashcam’s supernatural menace reveals itself, you’re firmly on Team Blood-Spewing-Zombie. Maybe that’s the point. It’s hard to tell.

More damagingly, director William Eubank (‘The Signal’) can’t decide if Underwate’ is a disaster flick or a monster movie. It ends up sinking between the two stalls: too unfocused for the former; not scary enough for the latter. All that early promise vanishes into the murk.

Gran Turismo may ultimately be a glossy marketing exercise, but there are moments that’ll leave you with the right kind of whiplash.

Despite the best efforts of its committed young cast, and especially a game (if suspiciously old-looking) Nicholas Hoult as Tolkien in his late teens and early twenties, it’s a plodding and polite portrayal that holds few surprises.

Burdened with an underwritten part, the curiously flavourless Styles struggles to match Pugh for intensity as husband and wife fly at each other – one’s ambition at risk from the other’s intuition – and the couple’s chemistry fizzles out. It’s a crucial flaw in a film that needs to sell us at least one thing that feels real in its world of artifice.

The overall effect is glassy and inert, with Rooney Mara’s Mary an oddly elusive presence in the film that carries her name.

A high-altitude horror – think a Bram Stoker reworking of *The Shining* or Shutter Highland – of real craft. Ultimately, though, the plot turns out to be thinner than the air.

It’s just got enough fresh ideas, laughs (mostly intentional) and queasy jump scares to make for a raucous Friday night at the movies.

When even Alan Tudyk can’t rinse laughs from a sidekick role, your script probably needs another sprinkle of magic.

Best of all is the reliably brilliant Rose Byrne, whose scathing Republican strategist turns up to torment Zimmer.

Candy-coloured fun for greying gamers and fresh-faced wee’uns that does the basics well but not much more.

If this is the end of the road for a British filmmaking great, it’s a thoughtful, heart-filled finale. British cinema’s old oak still stands tall.

In the mood for two hours of relentless fights, gory kills, clichéd McGuffins and unmemorable characters, all served up in a weightless CG environment? Mortal Kombat II punches a hole in all those boxes.

Playwright-turned-fillmaker Florian Zeller continues his one-man war on the world’s tear ducts with another hard-hitting portrait of domestic life in extremis.

A winning double act never quite gels in a fish-out-of-water road-trip caper — think ‘National Lampoon’s Gringo Vacation’ — that leans hard on its stars’ charms and very lightly on coherent plotting.

A movie that knows exactly what its audience wants and dishes it out in big ectoplasmic dollops, Ghostbusters: Afterlife manages to be full of surprises and completely unsurprising all at once.

A humdrum remake of a crackerjack thriller, this never gets out of second gear despite a classy cast and intriguing premise. Credit to Dean Norris for playing a character called Bumpy with an entirely straight face.

It’s frenetic, brashly executed and so full of shooting, you’ll stagger away with tinnitus.