Richard Whittaker

It’s trashy eurosleaze with none of the sumptuous debauchery.

It's a finely-crafted puzzle box that speaks as much to the heart and the head, with a simple but poignant message that we are only ourselves if we are complete.

All too often, in life and in cinema, systems are shown as working simply to oppress: Thirteen Lives reminds us that communal acts can be what literally save us.

Noa may not be Caesar's heir as leader of the apes, but he definitely walks in his footsteps as a worthy protagonist in the latest iteration of this ever-intriguing sci-fi classic.

There is enough of a sense of awe here, and enough scale, that it brightens up the big screen as it stares into the ebony black of space. And if one child is instilled with a sense of cosmic wonder and channels that into a career probing the mysteries and poetry of the night sky, then Elio will have truly reached the stars.

Underneath the savage occult aspects of the story remains a constant exploration of what it means to see your loved ones as flawed, rounded humans, and ultimately as mortal.

Don't let the big (but not that big) budget fool you: It's Troma, baby, just how you like it.

If it wasn't for Thorp, this would be intolerable, but as Signe she creates a fascinatingly off-putting character study of a menace to society. There's no redemptive third act here, yet she still creates a rounded depiction of a singularly minded bully.

This is still Dragon Ball, with all its quirks so well established that they're just part of the process now.

With a story built around the need to bring everyone, all the oddballs and weirdos and lost friends and new friends together with peace, understanding, and a lack of judgement, maybe now is the time we really, truly need Bill & Ted.

It's not if Michael gets out of his rut (or when he gets to chasten Pineapple a little along the way), but how, and it's a fun ride with him until he reaches that destination.

It’s rare to say about a contemporary film, but maybe it could gain from a little didacticism, a little lecturing, a little clarity to ensure that its muddied purpose becomes clearer. Instead, its idiosyncrasies obscure its insights.

Even with all the conflations and simplifications, and a middle act that verges on an extended montage of guerrilla warfare and undercover intrigue, A Call to Spy is undeniably a heartfelt take on a fascinating and heartbreaking true tale of heroism.

Pulsing up and down the arterial route of the B train from Brooklyn to the Bronx, Caught Stealing is a portrait of NYC at its most grimily charming.

Sweet, silly, with that profoundly bizarre world view that makes a snail trail gag open to everyone for a laugh, this may not change SpongeBob forever, but it's more SpongeBob as we love him, and that's all the fun you can need.

Gaunt, reserved, unexpectedly thrust into the spotlight having risked life and limb to avert nuclear war, he's a figure from a bygone time, a bygone culture, and that's what Dominic Cooke captures so perfectly.

With neither the grandiosity of pagan vision that illuminated The Green Knight, or the subversive forest horror of Ben Wheatley's In the Earth, Garland's Men is never quite a joke, but maybe that would have made it a more pointed parable.

It's chilling and tragic in equal measures.

If von Boehm adds anything to what's known of Newton's life, it's to explore his iconography, about which he was very honest. His dismissiveness of photography as insightful, his enigmatic storytelling, and the great contradiction of his work, of how a young Jewish boy who was almost murdered during Kristallnacht absorbed so much of the imagery of the Reich's most artistic propagandist, Leni Riefenstahl.

Heavy-handed and stuffed with cardboard characters, everything about Twisters save for Powell feels like a pale imitation of what made the original such an unexpected smash of a disaster movie. Lightning definitely does not strike twice.

Strange World isn't afraid of taking on a rich mix of narrative strands: After all, how do intergenerational relationships fit together with an eco-crisis? The answer is very Disney in the best ways, and a rewarding continuation of the studio's recent narrative fascination with overcoming divides rather than evil.

In its often distressing, sometimes nauseating depiction of a woman caught in weaponized co-dependence, Alice, Darling is rarely an easy watch. Yet it is always captivating, and that all comes back to Kendrick in what may well be her most powerful performance to date.

It's the period details that really make The Black Phone ring. It's not the set dressing, or the costumes, or the hairstyles (although Jeremy Davies does sport a fantastic muttonchops-mullet merger as Gwen and Finney's alcoholic, abusive father). It's that grimy sense of the era, that way that kids felt left to their own devices. This is an Amblin adventure drenched in R-rated fear.

America undoubtedly needs serious artists to explore the brain worms that the pandemic era gave the body politic, but Eddington most definitely ain’t it.

Oppenheimer never quite embraces the absurdity and madness of his own proposition, and instead engages in a surprisingly flat tragicomedy of manners.

Raging Grace is too gleefully ridiculous to live up to its didactic ambitions, and too on-the-nose to let its wings of crushed velvet madness truly spread.

Yuasa entrances the eye, but he also know how to make your heart soar with this deft, delicate, and highly entertaining story of loss, of coming to terms with grief, of moving on without ever forgetting.

Kudos to the suits for backing a horror film this provocative and spine-chilling.