Tara Brady

The script, written by the director and Tibério Azul, occasionally fumbles its dystopian framework. But the journey has enough vigour, underpinned by ideas on autonomy and ageing, to sustain its adventure.

For all the gloom, this is a lovely, heartfelt creation from the Oscar-winning animator.

Director McLeod — another of Lee’s fellow students — has fun with contradictory accounts, tall tales and faulty memories in a film that pulls the rug just as effectively as its subject and inscrutable star do.

La Cocina makes watching The Bear feel like listening to Enya in a garden centre.

Between Kurtz and Stigter – a Dutch journalist who authored Atlas Of An Occupied City: Amsterdam 1940-1945 – no stone is left unturned.

Colin Farrell’s central turn, a lovely, soulful study of melancholy, is one of his best performances to date.

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.

A lively, coming-of-age fable featuring Rockwell’s family – including wife and former Fresh Prince star Karyn Parsons, daughter Lana and son Nico – Sweet Thing has been described by Tarantino as one of the most powerful new films to emerge in years. It’s certainly memorable.

Following on from Harry Wootliff’s infertility romance, Only You, this confirms the British writer-director as an unmissable talent.

By the time we finally see the leading lady, La Panthère des Neiges – as the film was called at home – has long since privileged the journey over the destination.

Working from a script composed of real-life testimonies and dramatised with youthful verve and extravagant flights of fancy, the director’s follow-up to the exquisite Pinocchio is a true adventure.

At the heart of the film is 11-year-old Lidia, raised within this fiercely loving queer household. Through her eyes, Céspedes captures the tenderness and volatility of a family under siege.

Whispered myths about periods and cleanliness coalesce into a perfect accidental riposte to Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

Cinematographer Matias Penachino opts for a wistful aesthetic, one that complements Bernal’s quieter moments in this irresistible drama.

How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies, the debut feature from the writer and director Pat Boonnitipat, is a warm, witty tear-jerker improbably rooted in elder exploitation.

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

Stanfield and Peck movingly channel their late subject against the sweep of history: “The total man does not live one experience.”

Though not quite as extravagantly imaginative as The Girl Who Leapt Through Time or Wolf Children, the eighth feature from Mamoru Hosada marries dazzling spectacle, high-octane action and social commentary.

The Caméra d’Or-winner Marie Amachoukeli-Barsacq’s affecting quasi-autobiographical drama is sweetly reminiscent of Céline Sciamma’s childcentric will-o’-the-wisps Petite Maman and My Life as a Courgette.

A series of indelible images coalesce into a powerful chronicle of institutional abuse and racial inequality.

Archival footage of King, including a lively interview with Merv Griffin, allows the late activist to talk us through his rise to prominence. Whatever is on those sealed tapes, there’s no quibbling with his charisma or his humanity. Pollard’s questioning, vital chronicle is a fitting tribute.

Lawrence Michael Levine’s blisteringly original, provocative, often hilarious screenplay lurches between familiar tropes – “I saw the way you were looking at her!” – and jagged edges. It’ll keep you guessing long after the credits roll.

The Nicolas Cage renaissance rages on and this unsettling Ozpoiltation thriller provides a perfect sandbox for “Nicolas Cage”, the actor who enjoys a good metatextual jape.

Eugene Jarecki’s The Six Billion Dollar Man may be the most chilling film of 2025, not simply because of the notoriety of Julian Assange, its subject, but also as a clinical exposé of the elaborate machinery of state power, media hostility and private opportunism.

There’s nary a dull moment – nor a dull character – in this gripping history.

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.

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

We salute the costume and continuity departments (Betty Austin) on Iris’s consistently bloody frills as she runs, fights and reasons for her “life”. We are with her every step of the way.

More than 100 artists contributed to the homeschool green screen and rough-hewn post-Minecraft animation. The anarchic and imaginative world-building around Batman’s hood is impressive.

Just when you think the folk-horror vogue is all played out, along comes Aislinn Clarke’s textured delve into Celtic mythology and intergenerational trauma.

Every beautiful frame casts a spell.

This handsome Nordic demi-western, inspired by real events and adapted from Ida Jessen’s 2020 novel, The Captain and Ann Barbara, is powered along by Mikkelsen’s rugged charisma and various rustic and maggoty scene partners, including the married runaway serfs Ann Barbara (Amanda Collin, quietly expressive) and Johannes (Morten Hee Andersen), and the self-possessed Romani orphan Anmai Mus (Hagberg Melina).

Extravagant horrors and psychological torments ensue. James Vandewater’s edits and Karim Hussain’s phantasmagoric visuals add to the anxiety and chaos.

With the cinematographer David Gallego, the sound designer Olivier Dandré and a superb ensemble cast, Nyoni has crafted indelible tableaux, powered by dark survivors’ humour, blistering originality and retaliatory fury.

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.

Page’s closeness to the material grafts a fascinating biographical dimension to this intimate drama. The story may lack conflict and clout. But it’s great to see Page back on the big screen.

Arjona brings heat to an undeveloped character. Powell, who manages to wring a moment of magnetism from iPhone notes, inevitably steals the show.

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

Fair Play was acquired by Netflix following a bidding war at Sundance. It’s a fitting home for Chloe Domont’s debut feature, which pivots around a star-making turn from Bridgerton’s Dynevor, with a keen line in eroticised gaslighting that will sit nicely beside three seasons of stalker soap, You. Brian McOmber’s angular score adds to the anxiety.

In common with LeMond’s career, during which the interloping Yank won over spectators and rivals alike, The Last Rider proves a charm offensive.

Pierre, who replaced John Boyega after the latter’s controversial departure, is a convincing and charismatic action hero. The supporting cast, particularly Robb, Emory Cohen, and Johnson, make for good company. The film’s cinematographer, David Gallego, does some nifty footwork around a thrilling Mexican standoff. Worth the wait.

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

This meandering, mysterious 164-minute meditation on French imperialism is not for everyone.

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.

For all the interesting biographical details unpacked here, Harris remains a strangely elusive presence, as if he’s refusing to co-operate from beyond the grave.

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

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.

Mortensen’s script tussles between feminist revision and old-school male showdowns, imagining Vivienne as a Joan of Arc-inspired frontierswoman yet subject to the degradations of the era.

Romantic comedies typically demand an easy reconciliation. The Other Way Around, although ponderous in places, is skilful enough to leave the viewer rooting for precisely the opposite. It’s a neat trick: like pulling a tablecloth from under dishes in reverse.

George Lechaptois’s sunny cinematography and ROB’s lively score add bright notes to a film that is consistently light on its feet, despite its potentially weighty subject matter.

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.

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

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?

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.

An entirely non-professional cast makes it seem as if the director-editor Ana Pfaff and cinematographer Daniela Cajias simply happened upon every beautifully composed sequence. The effects can be slow-burning and occasionally a little shapeless, but they cast their dappled spell as the summer wears on.

Mulligan brings heart to Basden’s wistful folk compositions, and Key babbles amiably, as this crowd-pleaser salutes the redemptive power of a singsong.

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.

It’s a lovely thing to behold, but who exactly is this for? Unlike Matteo Garrone’s sublime 2019 fantasy, a version that managed to be faithful, wildly imaginative and all-ages in appeal, this brooding musical veers wildly between primary school scatology, repeated journeys to the underworld and darkest history.

The results are uneven yet pioneering and important.

At its best The Return recalls Pier Paolo Pasolini’s sublime, pared-back Medea, even if the gritty realism of Uberto Pasolini (no relation) does leave one yearning for the magic of that earlier film and the source material.

A carefully modulated tone allows zombie cows, end-of-life care and jokes about furious masturbation to coexist, sometimes in the same scene.

A triumvirate of superb performances and the warmth of Maryam Touzani and Nabil Ayouch’s screenplay offset the clumsier tropes. Virginie Surdej’s cinematography bathes daylit scenes in golden light to match the thread Halim uses on his petroleum-blue creation.

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

A subplot or twist might have elevated Andrew Kevin Walker’s script above speech bubbles, but a shadowy fight set-piece, Erik Messerschmidt’s cinematography, and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s score make for sleek entertainment.

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

Recent cinematic representations of Jehovah’s Witnesses, notably in Dea Kulumbegashvili’s Beginning, Richard Eyre’s The Children Act and Daniel Kokotajlo’s Apostasy, have not been kind to the Christian denomination. This compassionate story of puppy love – co-written and codirected by the former Witness Sarah Watts – shows more understanding towards the community, through conversations.

Adri’s gorgeously staged fantasies offer a happy detour that ultimately undermines the film’s emotional gravitas. This remains, nonetheless, a charming coming-of-age portrait with a poignant sense of time and place.

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”.

The lack of geopolitical context is questionable, but the film-making is sound. The movie’s editor, Hansjörg Weissbrich, maintains a brisk pace. Deftly used snippets of archive footage amplify the documentary realism. A sure-footed ensemble propels the story towards its harrowing conclusion.

The grander schemes of those who seek to monopolise elder care add weight. Mostly though, this is just tremendous fun.

What begins as a twisted riff on Hansel and Gretel spirals into a grisly meditation on trauma, punctuated by unsettling dark-web videos, gaslighting and a supernatural ritual that is never satisfactorily explained.

Gran Turismo, a spectacular new racing film from the Oscar-nominated writer and director Neill Blomkamp, wisely sidesteps the pitfalls of many dreadful screen outings (often from the perennial game-ruiner Uwe Boll) by finding a big-hearted human-interest story to better explore the racing environment.

The zingers could be zippier. But what makes the film feel radical is its welcome and unwavering confidence in 2D animation as a comedic anvil. Sight gags pile up, frames stretch and snap, and the fourth wall is wobbly. In a genre increasingly marred by CG realism, Looney Tunes revels in its cartoonish artifice.

The first half of the film is spellbinding; Eggers and his cinematographer, Jarin Blaschke, brilliantly redeploy the grammar of German expressionism to make Dracula (or thereabouts) scary again.

Despite a scene that can only be described as “robust wereman and werewoman sex”, Gabriele Mainetti’s bouncy, carnivalesque alternate history is closer in tone to Hellboy than throwaway Syfy-channel Naziploitation.

With its 1980s neon fonts, strangely sanitised storytelling, expositionary dialogue, wrongly aged cast and terrible wigs, The Iron Claw looks and feels like a prestreaming TV movie – and not just any old TV movie but a strangely entertaining, darkly tragic, completely gripping TV movie.

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.

The big narrative rug-pull isn’t quite as smooth as it ought to be, but there’s plenty to admire here, including Monáe’s expressive eyes, Pedro Luque Briozzo’s unsettling camerawork, and a thrillingly vicious turn by Jena Malone.

Straddling the current revival of the picaresque in US indie cinema (The Sweet East, Riddle of Fire) and cinéma vérité, this is a pleasing meander, skilfully directed, shot, and edited by the upcoming auteur siblings.

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

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.

It’s a ravishing spectacle. The trouble is that the unremitting gorgeousness robs the material of all its grit, of its satire, of the sense of precariousness that one experiences on the characters’ behalf, of the fear of hunger, and of the dread that any chill or fever might be a death sentence.

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

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

Kielty, an accomplished comedian, firmly sits on his jazz hands and performs some of the worst stand-up routines in the history of comedy. Kerslake brings an edge and unpredictability that animates a carefully shaded story. The specifics of place have their own texture; seldom has a script encompassed such a variety of uses for the great Ulster standard: ballbag.

Pugh’s emblematic, muddy-hemmed blue dress — designed by Odile Dicks-Mireaux — marks her out against the windswept exteriors. Not for the first time this year, she’s the standout in a film that, given the remarkable personnel involved, really ought to pack a greater punch.

It’s good fun. The critters are cute. The landscapes are burnt orange dystopian or pretty and pink. The action sequences – some utilising the Philippines’ national martial art, arnis – are staged with aplomb. The central conceit, however, feels unwieldy.

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.

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

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

Co-written with Blomkamp’s District 9 collaborator Terri Tatchell, the film has agreeably creepy blurred ideas about the human experience and the simulated experience. And it’s never dull.

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.

With looming grace and the fluffy heart of a Golden Labrador, Elordi, standing in for a departing Andrew Garfield, turns out to be the most swooning Goth heart-throb since Edward Scissorhands emerged from Vincent Price’s laboratory.

Gore, who directs with her partner, Damian Kulash, maintains a giddy tone that sometimes sits uneasily with temporal shifts that mirror the narrative complexities of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. The needlessly busy structure is easily offset by appealing performances from Banks, Snook and Viswanathan and by a keen critical eye for the mad free-for-all economics of the Bill Clinton era.

We’re never properly spooked. The presence, ironically, lacks presence. An excellent cast and flashy film-making ensure we are entertained, nonetheless.

Husbands longueurs and wobbly shots of improvised tangents never congeal into anything as satisfying as Cassavetes s The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Gloria or A Woman Under the Influence. But, in contrast with director s mean-spirited inheritors, the film does own that husbands even rubbish ones are people too. [28 Sep 2012, p.13]

Working on a small budget, writer-director Alison Locke puts the confinement of one location in service of her claustrophobic script. A promising first feature.

There’s plenty of razzle dazzle here but little that passes for oomph.

The Spielberg film casts a long shadow over the stage musical, which too often feels like a retread of that film interrupted by songs. The musical number as narrative speed bump is a flaw that carries over to the big screen.

The Eternal Daughter remains a dazzling double-header for Swinton, who, against all odds, disappears into both roles.

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.

Not atypically for a portmanteau picture, this surprise winner from last year’s Venice film festival is intermittently arresting and wildly uneven.

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

Edebiri works hard, but her notebook-clutching Nancy Drew asks dimwitted questions, even after the guests start to “disappear”.

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

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.

This is a fond requiem from a Bowie fan, made with reverence for his art and respect for his privacy.

Watchable, if a bit lopsided, it’s far from the catastrophe that some of the more unkind reviews have suggested.

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

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

Blitz lacks the emotional heft of Hunger or the director’s Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave, but it’s an absorbing, reliable depiction of a much-mythologised historical moment.

Like the village it depicts, the film is meticulously crafted yet oddly two-dimensional: a map, not a place.

The appearance of Malik Zidi rounds off a fine cast and introduces intriguing echoes of the amnesiac romance of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. That and decent tech specs, including some nifty shots from veteran horror cinematographer Maxime Alexandre, offset the slightly cobbled-together feel of the material.

It’s a fascinating delve or “kaleidoscope” as the film-makers have it. The film is as complete a portrait as we may ever get.

The emotional pyrotechnics that scaffold most cancer dramas, give way to something that is as honest as it is understated.

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

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.

Will Gluck, who presided over the disastrous 2014 adaptation of Annie and the misfiring comedies Friends with Benefits and Easy A, makes for a competent presence in the director’s chair. It’s the human stars, however, who truly shine.

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.

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.

Onward falls well short of magical.

Has Denis Villeneuve succeeded where others – most notably Alejandro Jodorowsky – have floundered? Given the extensive runtime, it’s impossible not to think of Chinese premier Zhou Enlai’s alleged assessment of the French revolution: “Too early to say.”

In common with Edgar Wright’s recent portrait of Sparks, Tornatore’s film largely eschews such niceties as documentary structure in favour of enthusiastic chronology. And then Ennio worked with Pasolini; and then he worked with Dario Argento. And so on. It’s an interesting biography, nonetheless.

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

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

There are interesting notes on the intersection between love, mental illness, obsession, performance, and fandom. If only the movie were a little better.

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

The camera dutifully records esteemed actors – including one Corrie veteran, as it happens – talking in beautifully appointed rooms, but it seldom finds the cinematic spark that might elevate the drama beyond a polished theatrical exercise.

There are qualities to admire here even if it always feels like a movie manufactured by a committee.

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.

A perennially sun-dappled kitchen. Cast-iron pans. Belle-époque bustles. Gastroporn doesn’t come more XXX-rated than this insanely pretty, airily vacant livre de recettes.

Afterlife is fine. It passes the time. But somewhere between the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man recycled as hundreds of Tribble-alike menaces and Muncher, a fatter variant of Slimer, one finds oneself wishing that studios might use their vast resources for something more than the repackaging of old rope.

The storytelling is routine. It warrants neither its hard-core disciples nor its worst enemies. Ignore the dishonest huffing and puffing.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

LeBron has charm to burn, even if his performance is unlikely to keep Denzel awake at night. It’s a shame this messy film can’t keep pace with his likability or mad skills.

The moon is square and the action is so daft that it makes the Sonic the Hedgehog sequence feel like the work of Ingmar Bergman.

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.

Affleck has made no secret of his struggles with alcohol and has talked about the catharsis he experienced shooting Finding the Way Back. It’s a career-best performance, one that marries hulking physicality and internalised demons, as Jack battles grief and addiction.

The Fire Inside has enough quality to please genre and sports enthusiasts even if it feels like an undercard fixture. For all the talent on both sides of the camera, the nuts-and-bolts script lacks innovation and the pacing neither bobs nor weaves.

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

For all Joachim Philippe and Virginie Surdue’s handsome cinematography, this lyrical documentary lacks focus and, more disappointingly, historical context. A missed opportunity.

Watching anonymous child after anonymous child arrive for treatment makes for grim and frustrating viewing. We want to know who these kids are, but the film does not. It’s the very antithesis of how hospital drama – narrational or otherwise – are supposed to function.

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.

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

Expect head-scratching, some non-sequiturs and lots of quirks and Bliss will mostly entertain and consistently baffle.

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.

It is unfortunate that two directors and a screenwriter (Matthew Fogel) felt the need to shoehorn in an extended family and – groan – Oedipal crisis for both Mario and Donkey Kong. Despite this misstep, the film belts along with an assault of candy colours and a commendable command of canonical detail.

The animation remains enchanting and is punctuated by exciting swords-and-sandals action, even if the finished film is not quite the classic we might have anticipated from the talents attached.

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.

As a Liverpool fan, this critic is hardly the target audience. But if this consistently engaging film has a flaw – here are words I did not expect to write – it’s the truncation of the Man United years. It’s the only shock in a fond, fast-moving tribute.

Die My Love is uncompromising, hypnotic, brave and often indelible looking, even when the theatricality and fractured structure erode any emotional weight. The result is an impressively punishing, intermittently brilliant bad trip that may be the worst date movie ever made.

It’s tricky material, but what the script loses by making an actual monster it gains in small, poignant details.

This already improbable dream boasts an interesting supporting cast.

This later timeline, featuring two of the planet’s most wonderful actors, adds clout to a film that, in stark contrast to most faith-based fodder, is gorgeously shot and designed.

In common with My Neighbour Totoro, there is no menace here, only strange fun aimed squarely at younger viewers.

Based on the novel by Elena Ferrante, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s opening gambit as a writer-director is a brave charge at source material defined by flashbacks and far too many subplots.

Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon features a luminous ensemble and arguably a career-high performance from Ethan Hawke, yet it’s hobbled by an aesthetic gamble so distracting, so patently absurd, that it nearly sinks the enterprise.

Production designer Tamara Deverell and costume designer Luis Sequeira make for an arresting spectacle, one that is, ultimately, too luxurious for the sleazy travelling show and 1940s hoboism at the heart of the movie.

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

For all that structural uncertainty, Ella McCay is difficult to dislike. It’s old-fashioned and undeniably heartfelt. There’s a compelling sweetness in its rooting for good public service, and a refreshing optimism that feels almost radical in 2025.

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

The central father-son plotline feels a little too modest to accommodate Wyatt Garfield’s impressively shot action set pieces, Nathan Parker’s ambitious production design and scathing social commentary, but this remains an impressive and visually innovative directorial debut for the film-makers.

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.

The sins and injustices of the outside world find terrible expression in St Pio of Pietrelcina’s body and imperfect expression in Ferrara’s 22nd feature.

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.

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

The machinations find a charming focus in the thawing between Del Toro and Threapleton. Both actors bring a jouissance to the slightly jaded milieu.

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

Unrequited love is seldom so much fun.

Wells Tower’s screenplay creates a compelling, compromised hero in Eliza, one matched by Blunt’s charm and commitment. But the film is ultimately torn between raucous satire and social conscience.

Arriving as part of the recent vogue for historical lesbian romances, The World to Come is better than Ammonite and rather more carnal than the chilly Carol, if not nearly as swooning as Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, nor as fascinating as Fastvold’s own writing.

At times, Here Today feels like looking at a tableau vivant or courtly fool antics. No matter: Crystal is still the jester to beat.

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.

It takes a while for Winocour’s gentle drama to consolidate into a satisfying detective story as Mia pieces together the events of that fateful evening. The denouement is dramatically convenient but undeniably moving.

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 a fascinating news story, but the film’s additional, if entertaining speculations remain just that.

Access and subplots are occasionally inconsistent against the political turmoil. Still, what it lacks in context and shape it makes up for with a sense of urgency and indignation.

The final act descends into chaotic silliness, but watching Dinklage and Pike attempting to out-villain one another is never dull. Deborah Newhall’s costumes would look intimidatingly power-hungry on a clothes hanger, let alone Ms Pike. And there’s a terrifying subject lurking under the dark humour.

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.

Anderson’s 11th movie is simultaneously furiously busy and curiously uneventful.

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.

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

It falls to the charming cast to outshine the flimsy material. Gladstone and Tran are as warm and well-worn as a much-loved bed sweater. Bowen Yang thrums with millennial angst. Joan Chen steals scenes as Angela’s loudly gay-positive mother.

Save for some Skittle-coloured CG and cartoon violence, the original West End director Matthew Warchus puts a filmed version of the stage show onscreen. Theatre fans will be delighted; movie fans will wonder where the wide-angle chorus lines went to.

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.

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.

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.

This isn’t as funny as Blades of Glory or The Other Guys or premier league Ferrell outings. It is, however, amusing and good-natured.

It’s certainly something to see – especially Malgosia Turzanska’s costumes and Jade Healy’s production design – and plenty to mull over but both the viewer and the film-maker should have guessed from the offset that there can only be one Barry Lyndon.

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

Under the satire, there’s an authentic sense of emotional uncertainty.

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

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.

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 sustained twitchy energy of the script amplifies the jangling nerves of Hanna’s fight-or-flight dilemma. But Liv’s weak-mindedness can feel implausible and the grandstanding denouement feels jarring and unearned.

From Wim Wenders’s Hammett to Hirokazu Kore-eda’s The Truth, the English-language debut is a rock on which many directors have run aground. So it proves with Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door, a picture stuffed with good performances, pretty things and weighty dialogue that nonetheless fails to coalesce into the shape of an Almodóvar film.

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

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.

This French-made documentary, though not nearly as much fun as Banksy’s own Oscar- nominated doc Exit Through the Gift Shop, presents a decent potted history of Bristol’s (?) most famous export since Cary Grant. Various art correspondents and dealers pop up to discuss Banksy’s cultural significance while a number of investigators put forward their theories.

The triumvirate of actors at the heart of the film are so committed and so good. The songs are pleasing. The script is clever. There’s a charming Aristilean intimacy about the fixed location. Conversely, there are too many ideas and ambitions here to fit into a low-budget picture.

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.

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.

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.

Bjerg’s central performance is a lumbering delight and Youssef’s comparatively straight-man routine makes one pine for a spin-off sitcom.

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

An engaging chronicle, nonetheless.

It feels almost like a pitch to direct Bond and – in common with the recent 007 spoof scenes in Minions – it’s a better Bond film than (at least) the last two entries from that franchise, save for a couple of things.

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 Pale Blue Eye is beautifully shot and absurdly plotted.

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

Elio is a half-formed thing. The basic story beats suggest that subplots and jokes have gone missing. Even the buddy comedy between Elio and Glordon is curiously marginalised. The candy-coloured character designs will please younger viewers, but the all-ages pleasures of peak Pixar are in short supply.

Thankfully, Tron: Ares is less ponderous than Tron: Legacy, and the music is turned up to 11 in the hope you won’t notice all the shortcomings.

It’ll do well enough for summer-break popcorn-lovers, but as DreamWorks Animations go, it’s no How to Train Your Dragon.

The film attempts both an in-depth portrait of the late author and a scattershot meditation on the persistence of his ideas.

Screamboat is no classic, but it knows its audience.

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.

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.

The real issue is the distracting and disturbing “digital fur technology”. Every time Cats settles into an admittedly avant-garde shape, an ear twitches or a tail flicks and you’re back thinking about how ghastly the actual cats look.

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.

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 messy romantic phantasmagoria is a hinterland for no one: a musical without musical numbers, a romcom without comedy. Sincerity saves it from collapse.

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.

Among the undercooked female parts, Cruz converts a nothing wife role into fabulous distress. Even she can’t save Ferrari. Who knew a film about fast cars could be such a slog?

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.

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.

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.

Laurent Tangy’s slick cinematography adds to the sense that we’re watching a luxe commercial. But for what? It’s impossible to figure out who this empty film is for or why it exists in the first place.

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.

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.

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

Astaire’s dancing and Audrey’s charm sweeten a bitter pill. But unearthing this vicious artefact is not unlike exhibiting a medieval chastity belt.

Collet-Serra, who directed The Shallows and the Liam Neeson thrillers Unknown, Non-Stop, and The Commuter, keeps up a lively pace. That, and the capable cast, ensure that Jungle Cruise passes the time, much like the old-fashioned, uneventful ride that inspired it.

Trashy stories need plots and character development, too.

Backed by the kind of production budget normally reserved for resurrected dinosaurs running amok in a theme park, this long-gestating biopic of Michael Jackson offers two solid hours of cosplay karaoke.

Two directors and four credited screenwriters signed off on a lazy screenplay that a starry cast and an Oscar-winner can do little to enliven.

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.

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

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.

We’ll say one thing for Boss Baby 2: its untidy, unpredictable, and unmannerly form does, indeed, evoke the exhausting, mucky business of baby tending, albeit with nothing like the familial rewards.

The details and atmospherics are diverting. The blindingly obvious plot twist is less impressive.

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.

The kind of kids who hide behind the couch during Scooby-Doo may well feel emboldened by the fuzzy feelings, silly quips and toothless villains. But it all feels rather pointless for the non-meek community.

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

Frustratingly, there are some good jokes and ideas buried in the aesthetically displeasing Scoob!.

A good-looking waste, but a waste nonetheless.

Maintaining a giddy tone through murder and mayhem is a tricky business, even if the Coen brothers can, on occasion, make it look easy. Maggie Moores(s) is way off the pace, however.

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.

The dynamic between Bowser and his son, and the Frozen-like sisterhood between Peach and Rosalina, are jettisoned as quickly as they are introduced. Subplots remain half-formed. New additions – especially Glen Powell’s inexplicably underused Fox McCloud – barely register. The abrupt conclusion feels like an abandonment. At least it’s short.

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.

To add to the viewer’s distress, the picture is as deafeningly loud as it is tiresomely provocative.

Baumbach’s characteristically barbed wit too often makes way for self-indulgence and sentimentality. Ruminations on fame as a hollow, unfulfilling enterprise have all the depth of a disposable contact lens.

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.

Potentially interesting religious and philosophical dimensions – novenas in the dashboard, Jesus on the telly, the notion that the ghost evidences an afterlife – are swiftly discarded by this wholly redundant reboot.