Tara Brady

Anne Robbins’s costumes are dazzling. The production designer Donal Woods makes a dull country-fair storyline look magical. But for all the nostalgic gibberish about passing the baton, this latest instalment stalls and curdles.

A worthy contender in a British revival characterised by eerie cult classics as Ben Wheatley’s A Field in England, Lee Haven Jones’s The Feast and Mark Jenkin’s Enys Men.

The visual gags are fresh, the jokes are funny, the world-building is disarmingly buoyant, and the musical cues, from Holiday in Cambodia to Carmina Burana, are playful.

Fine lessons about good manners and decency are wrapped up in fun and fur.

By focusing on human-sized and domestic drama, The End We Start From can’t match the escalating jeopardy and horrific narrative punch of such similarly themed, bigger-budgeted fare as The Road or I Am Legend.

Mr Malcolm’s List plays like Jane Austen fan-fiction, which isn’t the worst subgenre in the world, even if nobody could ever confuse the plot with that of Lady Susan, let alone Pride and Prejudice.

A trinity of exceptional performances from Booth, Mellor and Starshenbaum work to convey a moral knot as exceptional circumstances and extremism become normalised.

Inspired by a real-life Sandusky, Ohio legend, writer-director Todd Stephens crafts an impeccable odyssey that ponders love, loss, and attitudinal changes.

Sean Byrne’s third feature is neither as gripping as The Loved Ones, his prom-night horror, nor as intriguing as The Devil’s Candy, his supernatural heavy-metal thriller, but it rattles along as effective B-movie gore.

Screamboat is no classic, but it knows its audience.

It lacks the wild provocations of Schrader’s scalding recent trilogy, but Oh, Canada pokes and probes in quieter, sneakier ways.

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s movie has a strange, magical aura for cineastes.

Hawke and Thames respectively give two big performances to enact a compelling cat-and-mouse game, in a film wherein even the supporting characters are richly drawn.

Full of sound and fury, signifying something. If only we knew what that was.

Blunt works hard to flesh out an underwritten role, but Safdie seems more interested in Kerr’s silences than his partner’s complaints. The relationship is too ill-defined to land an emotional punch.

It’s not for everyone. Please Baby Please often forgets that it’s a musical, and the action is increasingly chaotic.

The final reveal is as unnecessary as it is predictable, and the pace can be as glacial as the setting. No matter. The Damned is powered along by suspicion, atmospherics and an unforgettable landscape.

Goth remains fiercely committed to the bit. West, a talented, ideas-driven film-maker, makes merry with contemporaneous tropes, yet falls well short of the substance or sleaze that defined Cruising, Hardcore, or the other films referenced throughout.

Taking cues from the lively cast, Nabil Ayouch’s third feature to make it to Cannes is scrappy, occasionally messy, prone to distractions, and never less than diverting.

The coda veers into the conceptual chaos of weaker, later Paranormal Activity instalments, but it’s a promising start for the director’s proposed trilogy. Keep ’em coming.

It is often argued that The Strokes are the last rock stars and that their Manhattan peers are the last great bohemians. It’s an Americentric view, but it’s gospel truth for this appealing if impressionistic time capsule.

The urgency of the project ironically detracts from the drama. The story is simply too recent and too fresh to yield any surprises on the big screen. The characters appear mostly fleetingly and without time and space for development. This is precisely why the genre demands recognisable faces with baggage.

The film – like its subject – lets the pomp and circumstance do the talking.

There are technical blips. Occasionally, the 3D character animation and frame-rate stutter in the margins. But the film’s approximation of temporal confines never leaves the viewer feeling stuck in a moment.

Her words are clear, unsentimental and so evocative that you can almost smell the weed.

The Apprentice lacks the gravitas or impact of [Abbasi's] earlier films, but it’s a pleasing enough doodle thanks to Stan, Strong, and a lot of period wigs.

The wafer-thin characterisation and over-reliance on musical recitals make it hard to buy into the film’s premise of enduring love.

Pitched somewhere between folk horror, ecological revenge and scathing class critique, The Feast is at its best during the elegantly atmospheric, nervy first hour, as cinematographer Bjørn Ståle Bratberg picks out ominous details.

Working from Julia Cox’s agreeably prickly script, the Oscar-winning filmmakers revel in Nyad’s reputation as a thundering wagon. They are aided in no small way by Annette Bening’s fierce performance, work that trumpets the arrival of awards season.

An appropriately monstrous hit with audiences at London’s Sundance and Dublin’s Horrorthon festivals, this is not quite a fairy tale, but it comes close enough to cast a spell.

At 76, more than 20 films into his storied career, Paul Schrader can still deliver a sucker punch.

The problem here is not insight but narrative stagnation. Too often H Is for Hawk confuses slowness with contemplation, repeating emotional beats and trumpeting parallels between Helen and Mabel.

This is a Terrifier movie: everything is bigger and scarier, including the psychological damage.

There are things to admire, but Bring Them Down is a hard film to like.

For all that emotional content, Amanda is a pleasingly unsentimental film, never more so than in its understanding of children.

Ziegler’s performance is the best thing about Music. For friends and family members of those on the spectrum, it’s a revelation and an acknowledgment that people with autism can be remarkable without having remarkable abilities like those found in Rain Man or Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.

This is a rather conventional artist’s biopic for an unconventional person and it’s a film that ends as suddenly (and frustratingly) as it begins.

The damaged, rising community depicted in Sugarland are in no mood for apologies. They want accountability.

It’s fortunate that Dylan O’Brien has just enough goofy charm to hold all the plundered Build-a-Bear bits together.

It’s just a great story, you wonder why nobody thought to make a movie before.

For a film that depicts the discovery of the Holocaust, Lee is curiously flat and uninvolving. Miller and the images she captured deserve better.

The film, which always feels like classy telly rather than a pioneering effort befitting its subjects, might have made more of this dilemma.

[Hania] carefully sidesteps ethical questions about the use of performance alongside archival evidence with a clear-headed chronicle of a tragedy and of wider Palestinian suffering.

Amulet has been billed as a feminist revenge horror. It’s a savage one, powered along by the same metaphorical heft that made The Babadook such a sensation.

It remains a fascinating, stylish, uncompromising thriller for all its repugnant prejudices: punk rock movie-making for the ruling elite.

The parallel father-and-son storylines may feel a bit too tidy, but Nabulsi’s film is powered along by terrific performances and palpable fury.

Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, for all its razzle-dazzle, never loses sight of its northern working-class roots.

Dumb, fun, and definitely not for the acrophobic. See it. Then go argue plot points with people on the internet.

The film, set within the bland, institutional corridors of a Norwegian primary school, chronicles a single afternoon that stretches into a surreal purgatory of suspicion, guilt and (finally) something like the compellingly demented choreography of Climax, Gaspar Noé’s dance horror.

Seydoux and Poupand bring plenty of emotional clout to their roles, even if the script straddles uncomfortably between verité and melodrama.

The dialogue is yellow-pack, the set-up is so silly you wonder why they didn’t parachute in a dinosaur or set off a volcanic explosion for good measure, and the sparsely populated commercial flight screams budgetary constraints. Still, it ticks along, makes merry, and everyone works hard and sweatily to put the “AAAAAAH” back into action.

Barrera is a reliable and veteran Final Girl, but even she can’t save the film from collapsing under the weight of its own silliness. Fun for a while.

The gunplay of the final act isn’t as much fun as the properly creepy build-up. No matter. This self-aware German-Hollywood coproduction atones with plenty of Teutonsploitation humour.

The tricky father-daughter pairing at the centre of Charlotte Regan’s surefooted debut feature marks Scrapper as the poppier, knockabout cousin of last year’s Aftersun. In common with Charlotte Wells’s award-winning film, this drama pitches a knowing pre-adolescent against an uncertain parent. But the tone, colours and flights of fancy make Scrapper lighter and sparkier viewing.

Nicholas and Tryhorn’s new film for Netflix, though plenty laudatory, presents a contemplative Pelé that appears human after all.

A winning cast, mostly drawn from the ranks of Gen Z, ensures that Rosaline’s spurned, sulky plans to steal Romeo back from Juliet can be fun.

There is some fun to be derived from supposedly maggoty peasants muttering rosaries against inclement weather while looking as if they’ve been styled for the Emmanuelle reboot. But not enough to justify a feature film, let alone all those paintings.

She’s a marvellous, magical character who, in this adaptation of the popular manga, takes second place to the male auteur she has plucked from obscurity.

For all the Hollywood gloss, Vanderbilt sounds an alarming relevance in Göring’s sneering claim that Hitler “made us feel German again” and Triest’s warning that “it happened because people let it happen”.

Franchise fans will appreciate another glimpse of Plankton’s unlikely hillbilly clan. And there’s plenty of room for traditional SpongeBob bungling. Who knew marital discord could be so much fun for all ages?

Hassan and Ingar deliver compelling, complementary performances: Hassan is as quiet and vulnerable as Ingar is fiery and charismatic. Clarissa Cappellani’s fluid cinematography and Fiona DeSouza’s stylish edits and inserts keep pace with the youthful exuberance. Judicious use of flashback sets up a gut-punch coda.

Directors Danny Clinch, Taryn Gould, and Colleen Hennessy have sifted through hundreds of hours of footage to fashion something that allows for a sense of the person behind the rock casualty. To this end, they do a splendid job.

Marc Evans’s film is a lovely thing.

If you found yourself internally screaming for Ryan Reynolds to shut the hell up during Deadpool, then the relentless, zany narration of Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn will likely send you gibbering and ruined towards the emergency exit after, oh, 23 seconds.

This old-school confection, smartly reuniting the original cast, delights in every silly scene.

An inspired cast jolly along Baker’s back-alley Lubitsch towards an unexpectedly circumspect denouement. Tart observations about money, class, and power are encrypted in a lumpenprole romp.

There’s enough drama to hold the film together for the uninitiated, although many fleetingly introduced characters suggest that – for all David Chase’s protests against streaming – we’re watching a pilot rather than a truly standalone project.

The script is smartly self-fulfilling. Devil’s Due co-directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett deliver jump-scares with mechanical precision. The thrill, however, is gone.

Lightyear may well feature the studio’s best opening gambit since Wall-E and Up, but the film quickly falls into, well, adequacy.

Elegant drone shots add indelible images to an otherwise forgettable action film.

It’s a pleasing enough vibe, nonetheless – Sevigny and Wolff channel Gen X-worthy self-deprecation. Del Campo and a wandering horse come close to delivering the magic promised by the title.

Marianne may learn to “pass” for a cleaner – kind of – but she can never experience the precariousness faced by her subjects. Her idea that these people are entirely invisible is bogus from the get-go. The script wrestles with these problems but it simply cannot overcome them.

Despite valiant efforts from Stephen James and Michael Kelly – playing an ill-defined hoodlum and a procurer, respectively – Lynette’s low-income hinterland feels strained and inauthentic.

As the implausible romance gives way to boardroom shenanigans, House of Gucci grinds to a dramatic halt with still more than an hour of run time to go. There’s nothing luxe about the shoddy stitching and sackcloth.

Sorkin has said that he’s not a particular fan of I Love Lucy’s brand of slapstick and Being the Ricardos goes out of its snooty way to avoid anything as vulgar as Lucille Ball’s comedy, save for a very brief glimpse of the famous grape-stomping scene. The film’s obsession with process means we’re never getting to drink the wine.

What once felt coolly stylised now seems mannered, even silly. The cufflinks gleam from the heritage cosplay: the razor has dulled.

Every pratfall, including the naked ones, is joyless and witlessly timed.

Despite the best efforts of Graham, menacing in monochrome flashbacks, the sanitised script never truly pins whatever unprocessed trauma is eating at the rising star.

It doesn’t quite work. Actors as talented as Negga and Patel can’t enliven the “zany” auxiliary friend roles. Levy’s script, more damningly, can’t quite reconcile grief with the film’s romcom ambitions. A promising first film, nonetheless.

Daliland is an entertaining if disappointingly formulaic entry into the Harron canon.

Adapted from a section of Pál Závada’s 2014 novel, from the first wintry opening shot in which hunters hack away at a dead deer, Natural Light is a chilly, unknowable film, one that repeatedly evokes brutality and the more desolate tableaux found in Andrei Tarkovsky’s work to deadening effect.

It makes no grand claims for itself, gesturing briefly at ethical complexity before pegging it towards efficient, blood-soaked mayhem.

Mostly, this is a film of intriguing, maddening loose ends.

Fair play to Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, the songwriters drafted in to replace Lin-Manuel Miranda: Moana 2 can’t quite match the showstopping highs of the original film’s How Far I’ll Go, but the songs are consistently, toe-tappingly good.

It accordingly falls to Ford to save the day. The octogenarian’s gruff charm endures against the brain-numbing CG tableaux.

The script carefully draws details from the gospels as it journeys towards an ending that is miraculous in every sense.

For all its craft and atmosphere, this is folk horror that makes the ears twitch yet rarely raises goosebumps.

The set list could use a few more upbeat numbers, but the project finds a heartfelt focus in the fans, who sob, snivel and bawl their way through loud, dramatic singalongs. Trembling manicured hands hold thousands of iPhones aloft.

It’s certainly not the film we were expecting from the talented Augustine Frizzell, writer-director of the giddy stoner-girl comedy Never Goin’ Back and the pilot episode of Euphoria. It is, rather, a moneyed, sumptuous diptych of temporal-jumping love stories.

Heartfelt performances from such terrific actors as Keri Russell and Scott Haze fail to turn this hotchpotch of competing themes into cohesive drama.

Nobody (surely) was expecting The Godfather from the director of Atomic Blonde and the writer of Hotel Artemis. Nobody (equally) could have anticipated such a dreary mess.

We’re accustomed to Dumont leapfrogging from one genre to another, but he has seldom attempted so many swerves and shifts as he manages here.

Tornado will frustrate the giblets out of anyone seeking narrative momentum or emotional catharsis. But viewers willing to sit with its stark silences and oppressive atmospherics can look forward to a singular, if rarely easy, watch.

This pleasant dramedy is jollied along by its talented veteran ensemble and the odd narrative curveball: a subplot about dead cats yields macabre surprises.

None of these skits congeals into anything like a plot.

The Bard’s most famous creation may be many things, but Scarlet’s earnest moralising about empathy and collective responsibility feels more like Polonius’s vibe.

Sadly, the film falls short of being A-ha’s Some Kind of Monster (Metallica’s cringy group therapy epic).

For all the impeccable production values – including Bakker’s outlandish 1980s costumes, all lovingly recreated by Mitchell Travers – the film’s generosity towards its controversial heroine feels like an unwarranted canonisation.