Tara Brady

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.

Mostly the film is a showcase for Jude Law’s increasingly impressive late-career metamorphosis. The actor, who has spent recent years successfully probing wounded masculinities (The Young Pope, Firebrand), brings a strikingly controlled energy to his portrayal of Vladimir Putin as a lofty and weaponised civil servant.

All of these parties try hard with a script that, while credited to Jen D’Angelo, doesn’t appear to have been entirely written as yet.

The Croods: New Age remains a sequel that no one was crying out for. It’s busy. It’s well-staffed. It passes the time.

Keeping up with the many, many characters and their peccadillos is dizzying.

The Pale Blue Eye is beautifully shot and absurdly plotted.

The convention of jumping between time periods can make the plot a little cluttered but the film’s worth as an educational tool for pre-teen audiences is inarguable.

Sandler’s performance, Jan Houllevigue’s post-Soviet production designs and Max Richter’s soaring score enliven a handsome if dreary drama. The pacing, alas, is painfully slow, and every character save the spider is underwritten.

It’s loud, it’s silly, it’s over-saturated; the smaller viewers at the family screening I attended were wildly impressed. Adults may be somewhat impressed that the word “bollocks” makes the final cut.

At its core, however, this is a big-hearted family drama about acceptance and a love story between an older married couple. It falls to the terrific Yeoh to hold all the subplots and occasional comic misfires together.

The idiosyncratic Beasts of the Southern Wild is a tough act to follow, but Wendy’s similarly anthropological approach reinvigorates its overworked source material where others have floundered.