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.

My Old Ass sensitively and sweetly negotiates coming-of-age themes, first love, wistful summer recollections and wise-cracking dialogue.

Horror aficionados will find much to admire, but everything about this wild project defies generic expectations. It’s a thriller; it’s a cat-and-mouse game; it’s a truly messed-up love story.

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

A late narrative development swerves the meet-cute into less sure-footed terrain. But this remains an encounter to treasure, jollied along by quiet political protest and poignant notes on widowhood.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

McCarthy’s directorial precision is complemented by wit and an imaginative backstory that deserves an expanded universe.

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 most anxious Jewish comedy since the Coen brothers visited Jobian trauma on Michael Stuhlbarg in A Serious Man stars Carol Kane as an adult bat-mitzvah student. This alone would justify the admission price, but there’s more.

A jigsaw puzzle, dream sequences and continuous snatches of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata build towards an uneasy denouement that will leave the viewer guessing and obsessing long after the final credits roll.

In Swan Song, feathers, synchronicity and sheer graft define the world’s most popular ballet.

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

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

Niasari, who writes and produces as well as directing, racks up the tension to match his psychopathy in this sure-footed debut feature.

The unlikely friendship between Michael and Kensuke is the heart of a film that touches lightly on environmental themes, loss and history.

The vigorous, masterful script, written by the director his wife and frequent collaborator Ebru Ceylan, counterpoints the extended runtime. The director says he could have made the film longer; remarkably, most viewers will agree.

It’s a haunting spectacle that will leave you reeling, even before a heartbreaking aftermath.

Following on from Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry, Crossing gifts us the second essential Georgian screen heroine of 2024.

Writer-director Josh Margolin, making his feature debut, based the eponymous character on his grandmother. The script, accordingly, is never patronising.

Hardwicke and O’Hara make for forbidding facades with unexpected depths, but impressive newcomer Ollie West, who appears in every scene, shoulders most of the emotional heft.

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

Völker’s sensitive film brings together these two wounded families to sit down for tea. It’s a fascinating encounter defined by guilt and unspeakable hurt. There is no sense of absolution or cathartic breakthrough. There is only imperfect reckoning.

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.

“If you had the chance to talk to someone that died, that you love, would you take it?” asks Christi Angel in this apprehensive documentary portrait of dead-raising digital capitalism.