Tara Brady

It remains something to see, interestingly atrocious, misfiring on the grandest scale, and often best watched through the fingers. Megaflopolis might be a better name for it.

The director comes seriously close to re-creating the elegiac spell of In the Mood for Love, but, unlike Wong Kar-Wai’s film, the emotional core remains frustratingly out of reach.

Named for a Buddhist concept referencing the transition between birth and death, Bardo may transport the viewer to a dream space but not perhaps the one Iñárritu intended. Zzzzz.

This is the kind of post-Goonies family-oriented schmaltz that plays very well on Netflix (see all of Stranger Things, a show sometimes directed by Levy) and not so well in cinemas.

The balance between humour and heart that defined the carefully calibrated earlier films is slightly off.

As a love letter from grown-up Riot grrrls to their growing-up daughters, it’s a lovely cross-generational gesture.

The beats ought to form a more compelling narrative than they do.

The film never attains the Shakespearean-sized tragedy of the Korean director’s Decision to Leave or the bludgeoning impact of OldBoy.

The quality of the staff only sets the viewer wondering why they all signed up for this. And that’s before the late, sigh-making twist. It’ll do well enough for fans of 1990s artefacts.

Mendes’s script, though it contains some memorable scenes, tries to do too much, as it takes on racial and sexual inequality, mental-health issues and, incongruously, the romance of cinema.

Ironically, the project’s occasional attempts to pass itself off as a political thriller slow the material down. The run time doesn’t help. A worthwhile historical curio, nonetheless.

There’s a half-hearted plot twist that doesn’t land. Mostly, however, this is a film about explosions and bad guys getting their comeuppance. Fast cuts and more than 50 credited stuntmen and stuntwomen make for, well, buzzy spectacle.

Loyal fans will be pleased. Untold millions of BookTok users can’t be wrong, surely.

In common with too many modern thrillers, the set-up spooks more than the climax and rather less than the real-life Warren exorcism tapes that play over the end credits.

There are few reveals, but narrative restraint is commendable in the telling of this almost unbearably unhappy tale.

The script is as indulgent as it is compelling, which is fair considering its depiction of two riled people who know each other’s weaknesses. Marcell Rév’s crystalline high-contrast black and white cinematography is gorgeous enough to transform a domestic dispute into something wonderfullycinematic.

It seems churlish to complain that a film about a global serial killer is unnecessarily brutal and nasty. But between blackmail victims splatting on the pavements of Piccadilly Circus to bodies frozen under snowy lakes, Luther: The Fallen Sun is as distasteful as it is silly.

Occasionally, the narrative is almost as wilfully undisciplined as its commendably rebellious heroine.

This underpowered, $100-million-budgeted space oddity was originally intended for streaming. And it shows.

Technically impressive and anchored by two terrific turns, Copilot walks a fine line as it attempts to delve into the humanity under extremism.

These picaresque and picturesque adventures fail to coalesce into a movie. But it’s impossible to argue with Daria D’Antonio’s ravishing cinematography and an unexpectedly moving coda featuring Stefania Sandrelli as an older Parthenope.

Coming 2 America understands its relationship with nostalgia and by golly, it wrings every last warm feeling for the end of cultural history.

The film frantically tries to juggle farce, family comedy and the inherited trauma of the Holocaust. The results are not as egregious as Life Is Beautiful, but too much feels unearned and wildly inappropriate.

Conveniently set against the fraught contemporary environs of Yale University’s philosophy department, After the Hunt offers a dull retread of the PC-gone-mad arguments that have dominated the culture wars since the 1990s.

Malmkrog is a talky, challenging slog, but it’s seldom short of ideas. One is unlikely to find greater consideration of pelagianism in any other film this year. Or decade.

Neither as fun as the early seasons of Cobra Kai nor as effective as the 2010 reboot, Karate Kid: Legends relies heavily on franchise favourites while bringing nothing new to the party.

From the moment My Chemical Romance’s Welcome to the Black Parade blasts across the opening credits, this is the unexpectedly moving, nostalgia-soundtracked class reunion that you’ll enjoy despite yourself.

The chronological leaping around to pop tunes by Taylor Swift, Boygenius and Billie Eilish is the most interesting thing about Brett Haley’s sunny, saccharine film. The rest is flimsy.