Radheyan Simonpillai

The film is bursting at the seams with archival photos, footage and interviews; not to mention outrageous polka dot and bedazzled costumes. The incredible access is expected since Never Too Late is produced by John’s husband and manager David Furnish, who co-directs alongside RJ Cutler. But perhaps that’s why it also feels so precious and tempered.

The movie reduces Kelley’s psychiatric insights into soundbites, manages to whittle down the proceedings at the Nuremberg trials into the familiar tropes and cliches from classic courtroom movies, and even lets Crowe’s performance surrender its nuances to hammy villainy, all for the sake of reliable entertainment.

Representation is the crutch this latest limp and derivative comic-book movie leans on – a reason for critics and audiences who want to champion diversity to simply overlook how dull and hideous-looking this latest franchise (of many) is.

As the medley of violence continues, Stone’s mugging goes from giddily sinister to hammy and exhausting. Same goes for Nobody 2, and also the post-John Wick wave of action movies it’s part of.

It helps that Quaid is so good at landing every punchline, if not punch. His Nathan may not have any sense of pain, but Quaid gives him a great sense of humour.

The big, disappointment here are the flat musical numbers that bide time between adventures and fail to sink Maui’s hook in us.

That plot gets lost in these desaturated Wicked movies. They look less like The Wizard of Oz and more like Fruit Loops that had been left sitting in a bowl of milk for too long – those bright solid colours bleeding out and leaving nothing but a soggy mess.

Liman makes the most of what most would assume are flaws. He leans into the simplicity and familiarity of Road House’s premise, keeping the space open for big personalities to make it cartoonishly good fun.

This is erratic storytelling, like a bunch of detached sketches and monologues, that leaves The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat making gestures towards the movie that it never really becomes. Let’s just hope we can see that movie some day.

Not that Harbour is the reason that Violent Night lands like a lump of coal. He does what he can in a witless movie that is too easily satisfied with its own premise and often feels like it’s elbowing you in the ribs trying to get you to laugh along with it.

War of the Rohirrim is short on fiery floating eyeballs, wizards harnessing the power of the sun and ghost armies rising from caves – the kind of stuff you’d expect anime to go ham with, but perhaps not in director Kenji Kamiyama’s case.

The movie, about a doped-up black bear, is a much more lethargic affair, as if the apex predator’s supply was swapped out for some Ativan.

As Sara and Julien bide their time in the barn, escaping into their imagination, Forster keeps himself interested by turning the movie into an ode to cinema.

Guadagnino’s film feels small and overwrought in comparison; satisfied to drag things out within the bubble of faux academia (and cinephilia, with a pointed nod in Woody Allen’s direction). But it does have its pleasures, specifically where the actors speak less and make us feel so much more in performance and action.

Fixed gets as much mileage as it can out of gags that largely centre on Bull’s gonads, with its entire narrative built around a wild night out when he discovers his owner’s plan to finally give him the snip. But that humour, and its shock value, wears thin in less time than it takes for Bull to satisfy his urges.

As sincere and sentimental as his approach is, Whannell struggles to marry the emotional beats to the schlockey thrills the genre demands. Instead, these two competing modes tend to cancel each other out, but not so much as to disregard what the ambitious director is going for.

Harrelson never seems to have his head in the game, and not because he’s playing a character just waiting for his shot to coach the NBA. He and Farrelly appear to be slumming it in much the same way that Marcus is, as if their basic efforts working with a cast with special needs is feel-good and charitable enough.

Gran Turismo can never rise above its stakeholder’s portfolios because it’s never interested enough in its human characters.

Parents seeking comfort in death to stay close to a lost child, as in Don’t Look Now, or being emotionally exhausted providing care in impossible circumstances, as in The Exorcist, feel like items being checked off in Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, not genuinely felt or grappled with.

it’s a cheeky post-Deadpool comedy – irreverent to a fault – with grindhouse aesthetics that tend to feel inspired by Quentin Tarantino rather than the movies that inspired Quentin Tarantino.

A slow and visually hideous crawl to an underwhelming brawl.

Shyamalan 2.0 is shaping up to be an elegant filmmaker whose work could use more torque. Images like Fanning’s golden locks disappearing into the cold grey fog or reflections layered upon reflections during a climactic stand off caught my eye, if not my breath.

If Minecraft is the game where kids exercise their creativity by building new digital worlds full of tunnels and fortresses, A Minecraft Movie is where that creativity goes to die.

Kogonada fills the vacuousness in the script with knowing nods to all the performance and illusion we commit to when taking the leap – whether in love or (in its meta way) at the movies.

If we’re ranking those films, the latest lands somewhere between the ‘80s-set prequel Bumblebee and Michael Bay’s 2007 original, which is pretty much as good as it gets. Rise of the Beasts splits the difference between the former’s Steven Spielberg-light likeability and the latter’s alternately thrilling and mind-numbing spectacle.

Everyone’s stumbling along in a vaguely defined universe, which really only serves as a backdrop to catchy musical numbers that evolve from folk to pop rock.

French Girl’s crude and at times infantile slapstick humour is offset by livelier beats between the cast, whose cross-cultural banter is littered with flashes of genuine wit.

Jolie also lays it on thick stylistically, as if compensating for a hollowness at her lavish, sepia-toned film’s core.