Simran Hans

There are some gory moments (a man’s leg is sliced, the flesh falling off like meat from a rotisserie, and a sleazy character has a grisly encounter with a lawnmower), but the film extracts more laughs than genuine scares.

In its attempts to provide an antidote to the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s catalogue of liberal fantasies, the film swings too far in the other direction.

There’s comedy in its depiction of the Swedish prime minister as a caricature of even-temperedness, but from its gaudy 70s costuming to its goofy, wobbling tone, everything about this film feels uncomfortably broad.

Indeed, I’d have happily watched Cox flirt with Rosanna Arquette’s museum curator for 90 minutes; her game attempts to parrot his Gaelic and a tentative kiss while gardening, knee-deep in soil, are strangely charming.

Those who enjoy Blumhouse productions for their unabashed silliness will be pleased to discover a sticky slice of schlock, with both household appliances and prosthetic genitals given their genre moments.

The ugly visual effects are outdone only by the sound design, which is relentlessly loud and thunderingly tedious. Verbal exchanges between the humans are devoid of wit and barely functional in communicating the story.

The film’s formal qualities obscure Nemes’s intentions instead of illuminating them. It’s all too vague to function effectively as either a commentary on the build-up to the Great War or as the story of a woman looking to find her place in a city predicated on rigid, gender-determined hierarchies.

Hawkins seems beguiled by Manning’s natural charisma, and more interested in the highs and lows of her personal reckoning. These are fascinating in their own right, yet more context might have made this feel like more of a definitive portrait.

Mena Massoud’s boyband haircut brings a certain charm, but like the rest of the film, he’s blandly competent.

[A] charming sequel.

Wilde expertly modulates the giddy highs and bittersweet lows of being a teenager, as demonstrated in the way the film’s house party climax crests and then crashes.

The film lurches into conventional horror-thriller territory as it progresses, though there are interesting moments.

The CGI critters are seamlessly integrated with the 35mm cinematography, the film stock’s grain smoothing the visual tackiness.

The gravitational pull of sex, death and the void is palpable.

Writer-director Victor Levin’s caustic take on the romcom works better as a treatise on the genre than as an example of it. The staging of the individual scenes feels like an afterthought, with the stars and script doing all the heavy lifting. Still, the scaffolding is there.

Clearly, it’s intended as a vehicle for Wilson, who is credited as co-producer, but it’s Hathaway who steals the show.

The dilemma she presents is ethical: is it fair to ask someone to traumatise (or retraumatise) themselves for the sake of art? Rather boldly, it seems as though Decker is also asking the question of herself.

This one hits its stride somewhere in the middle, bounding confidently towards its hopeless, poetic conclusion.

There’s a tepid, cross-cultural romantic comedy trapped inside this televisual hostage drama. The reliable Moore is trapped too. Even she can’t animate the material, leaving the graphic denouement feeling like a bum note.

The final battle is giddily cathartic, but the catharsis arises from prioritising character development over plot and spectacle. This, I imagine, will be the Avengers’ legacy.

Mostly, though, as a B-movie, Greta works; the moments in which it leans into its own silliness are its best.

Directed by Tina Gordon Chism, co-writer of What Men Want, the film is cute enough, even if key ideas aren’t especially novel: it’s lonely at the top; we need to connect with our inner child; everyone is insecure as a teenager.

The attempts at authentic stoner dialogue soon become tedious, with too little plot or character development grounding the inanity (Hill’s self-written script also features an eyebrow-raising overuse of the N-word).

Inviolata is Italian for “unspoiled”, and the word could apply to its people as much as their straw-gold land.

The film feels more like an elbow in the ribs than a slap on the wrist, revelling in the miscommunications between Susan the Sasquatch’s literal-minded monkey brain.

The film’s sometimes tiresome sense of humour is laddish in its embrace of viscera (blood, boils, vomit and live spiders all feature), but as the narrative trots (or, rather, plods) along, its men are revealed to be endearingly less so.

There’s a sense of Stranger Things camaraderie among Billy and his foster siblings, who are actually fun to spend time with, and the film’s message of found family is a sweet one. Still, its overblown finale overstays its welcome, teeing up the team as mainstays in the inevitable sequel.

Cameos from Pete Davidson and 30 Rock’s Tracy Morgan are enjoyable diversions but the jokes themselves are less high-concept, hinging on the men’s thoughts, which are mostly predictable (and predictably crass).