Tim Grierson

Wielding the same grim power as his most obsessive, tormented work, Jack is deeply embedded within its creator’s psyche, and while the results may be cathartic for him, the movie is only intermittently arresting for the rest of us.

If, somehow, you’re just now getting into Saturday Night Live and haven’t already ingested endless lore about the most enduring of sketch shows, Lorne might be a meaningful primer. For everyone else, you’ve heard this joke before.

Slavishly obeying the rules of a would-be franchise starter — including crafting an open-ended finale that leaves room for sequels — Snake Eyes features plenty of martial-arts mayhem but very little actual excitement.

Poker Face ends up being a cautionary tale about appreciating what you have — ironic since this thriller doesn’t have a sufficient grip on any of its myriad elements to fully engage.

Since so much of Creed’s emotional oomph comes from audience familiarity with the past films, the movie mostly shadowboxes with its past.

In the end, Marry Me can’t wed its conflicting ambitions, resulting in a likeable picture that’s hard to love.

Hits all the expected emotional beats but doesn’t take many risks or glean sufficient insights about our fascination with the double-edged sword of eternal youth.

The film follows a slick, predictable rise-then-fall narrative structure full of boisterous montages when things are going well and sombre music once the good times end.

Ridley’s spiky sense of humour is a balm, especially early on when Joey interacts with her brother, but the script’s formulaic nature proves too much.

Pacific Rim Uprising’s jokey tone fails to leaven the movie’s leaden clatter, and so any attempt on Boyega’s part to be heroic feels a bit shrouded in irony. But at least he registers: Eastwood may be even duller than Charlie Hunnam was in the first installment, and Spaeny plays the spunky Amara with maximum attitude and a paucity of charm.

In its zeal to pay proper respect to Mexican traditions and to avoid any hint of appropriation, Coco fails to give as much attention to its perfunctory characters or mediocre plotting, resulting in a family film which is reverent rather than inspired.

Director Marc Forster lends this lightweight comedy-drama a crowd-pleasing breeziness, but the picture never cuts particularly deep, especially noticeable when it tries to tackle some darker subject matter. Audiences simply wanting an undemanding, reassuring entertainment may not mind, but Hanks’ change-of-pace role is intriguing enough to wish the material wasn’t quite so mawkish.

The comedic sparks and emotional stirrings simply aren’t as potent this time around, despite some colourful animation and an occasionally inspired silly streak.

Although Nitram is a thoughtful exploration of mental illness, highlighted by a strong cast, Kurzel can’t fully transcend what is familiar about this handwringing portrait of a ticking time bomb set to go off.

Wanting to honour history, Midway proves to be an oddly polite war film, afraid to be too exciting lest it interfere with the solemn tone.

Despite a stellar cast led by Julianne Moore and Michelle Williams, After The Wedding never cuts very deeply, staying on the surface of a tale that ought to tear into the viewer’s soul the way it does these tormented characters.

Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson shine as these troubled souls drawn to each other as much as they are to their shared love of the venerable singer-songwriter, and the film’s musical sequences are easily its high point. But writer-director Craig Brewer stumbles when the couple step away from the stage, falling victim to an overly melodramatic approach that’s out of rhythm with the rest of the picture.

As sunny as Eddie The Eagle is, its greatest liability is that it never pushes itself, content to let an amiable true-life tale be turned into a generic genre exercise.

Hugh Jackman commits fully to his role as a vain superintendent trying to stay two steps ahead of his lies and self-delusion. Ultimately, though, the character and themes feel a little too simplistic — a movie’s paltry attempt to explain the inscrutability of human nature, which is so interesting precisely because it’s so mysterious.

Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga play the Lovings as refreshingly ordinary people caught up in the swirl of history, but a benign tastefulness overcomes Loving, smothering chances of a meaningful engagement with the material.

Offering predictably heartfelt messages about seizing the day, The Last Word can be very sweet and funny, but its lightness starts to feel cloying rather than ebullient.

A smoothly executed but decidedly drab crime drama. Checking all the necessary narrative boxes for its target audience and asking little of stars Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson other than to bring their well-established onscreen personas to the characters, the latest from director John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side, Saving Mr. Banks) dabbles in familiar dramatic ironies and rather obvious observations about violence, celebrity and ageing. The Highwaymen never puts a foot wrong, but it fails to elicit much passion or fascination.

Featuring a rousing finale — two of them, actually — and substantial nostalgic pleasures, the new film can’t quite balance its desire to be both wistful and escapist, knowingly cheesy and surprisingly touching.

Sometimes sexy, sometimes campy, Fifty Shades Darker is a smorgasbord of silliness, its dopey pleasures indistinguishable from its many awkwardly melodramatic moments.

Whether it’s Skarsgard’s cartoonish villain or the director’s showy nods to Lawrence Of Arabia and Sergio Leone, Chapter 4 plays dress-up rather than feeling like a legitimately rich, involving epic.

Although compelling ideas float through High Flying Bird, the film is neither well crafted or intellectually rigorous enough to compensate for a generally lacklustre presentation.

Despite an honourable commitment to exploring how severe adolescent trauma casts a long shadow over a person’s life, the film’s patina of pain eventually grows repetitive, undercutting the sensitivity Stewart and her lead bring to the proceedings.

Rather than truly being inspiring or moving, Arthur The King manipulates and frustrates. Adventure racers may be encouraged to forge their own path, but this film is far from trailblazing.

Ritchie’s tendency for swaggering overkill proves especially ill-advised for the serious story he wants to tell about how the US turned its back on those who helped its War On Terror, resulting in a hollow paean that’s far more convincing as a generic shoot-’em-up.

Although Neeson has a nice rapport with young costar Jacob Perez, there’s no escaping the formulaic storyline featuring uncomplicated good guys and abundantly villainous bad guys.

Love Lies Bleeding makes no apologies for its stylistic boldness or its rising body count, but its swagger cannot hide a nagging hollowness underneath.

The film struggles to juggle its combination of rage and humour, satire and sadness, but the game performances mostly help gloss over the material’s familiarity.

Director Martin Campbell (Casino Royale) applies his usual slick professionalism to a genre piece that touches on mortality, regret and child abuse without much emotional resonance or riveting action sequences.

Fremon Craig doesn’t radically alter the conventions of the coming-of-age narrative, and so a general predictability settles over the proceedings pretty quickly. With that said, though, she does a good job observing the relationships between her central characters.

Boasting a few nifty action sequences and the always-compelling Jackman, Logan self-consciously aspires to retire this iteration of the steel-clawed hero with epic grandeur, and the results are often rousingly bleak. And yet, the risks taken...only make the formulaic redemption story and clichéd emotional underpinnings increasingly frustrating.

Despite some clever moments and a similar commitment to gloriously over-the-top violence, the follow-up lacks the inspiration and sheer fun that defined the original.

Although director David Gordon Green commendably opts for a realistic, unfussy depiction of Bauman and his on-again/off-again girlfriend (played with welcome grit by Tatiana Maslany), Stronger feels more perfunctory than lived-in.

The picture’s just-a-lark tone, emphasised by the quick turnaround from script to final product, proves to be a double-edged sword: Locked Down feels like a fleetingly fun experiment that would have benefited from more time.

The Amateur mostly tries to upend genre conventions without offering anything exciting in their place.

Unfortunately, the film tends to underline its points, turning a clever idea into a fairly obvious one, and Love Me’s self-consciously innocent/sweet tone can become grating. But what holds the film together is the intelligence and commitment the two stars bring to this occasionally mawkish tale.

Grant Singer’s feature directorial debut suffers from an overinflated sense of grandeur and a frustratingly convoluted story, reaching for dramatic heights that it hasn’t earned.

Oh, Hi! is an ambitious, thought-provoking look at modern romance that starts with the terror of weekend getaways before dissecting the gender stereotypes that keep people from finding their happily-ever-after.

Hoping to be a stylish, witty conman thriller, The Good Liar starts out as an amusing lark but fails to stay ahead of its audience, piling on the ludicrousness until it’s impossible to take the proceedings seriously.

Neither a broad farce nor a scathing evisceration of sexism (both then and now), Catherine Called Birdy ends up trapped in a dissatisfying middle ground between those two extremes, a tonal decision that results in only mild laughs and somewhat engaging characters.

Everything in Hidden Figures is smoothly efficient but also a little anticlimactic and frictionless — the story’s happy ending a little too easily achieved.

To be sure, there are meaningful observations here about the ways that money warps relationships and how children struggle with their heritage. But by trying so hard to concoct a blowout party, the movie exhausts and frustrates as much as it enlightens and delights.

Ultimately, the picture’s energetic swirl comes across as slightly hollow, its barrage of themes and impulses never finding harmony.

Grappling with serious themes, this wistful comedy opts for a sentimental tone that’s out of rhythm with the more realistic, tough-minded story that occasionally asserts itself.

While Eye In The Sky is effective in building suspense and making a talk-y drama compelling, these techniques are in service to high-minded, heavy-handed filmmaking that buries troubling wartime questions in simplistic rhetoric.

An inability to crack the movie’s central mystery — why abandon your dreams to help facilitate someone else’s? — leaves the project feeling a bit like a missed opportunity.

Perhaps it’s simplistic to say that director Mira Nair has fashioned a good-looking but Disney-fied version of actual events, and yet the studio’s predictably uplifting-at-all-costs blandness slowly but methodically drains the material of its richness.

As a director, Jordan has produced polished, briskly paced entertainment but what’s disappointing is that, quite often, Creed III hints at being something more.

One can feel Williams’ anger at an America that imperils young Black and Latino men, viewing them only as potential threats, but the picture never fully gets a handle on its mixture of satire and seriousness.

Directors David Alvarado and Jason Sussberg don’t dig deeply enough into their complex subject, while spending too much time on the same distractions that are compromising Nye’s focus.

Although this action-adventure moves briskly enough, audiences may ultimately crave a film whose storytelling is as inventive as the vibrant images that splash across the screen. But as Puss will learn, some wishes don’t come true

Despite committed performances from LaBeouf, Lucas Hedges and Noah Jupe, Honey Boy ends up feeling indulgent rather than searing, settling into its anguish rather than translating it into trenchant drama.

While this new film is that rare visually striking indie comedy, the clever dialogue and potentially provocative scenarios eventually fizzle, resulting in an unfocused commentary on the absurdity of modern love that is, itself, far removed from reality.

Wielding an ambitious visual strategy and volatile political commentary, Athena explodes but then fizzles, its often arresting images slowly undone by fuzzy ideas and a self-important air.

Despite a twisty, juicy and compelling story, there remains a staid conventionality that keeps the political and thematic undercurrents from being explored as satisfyingly as one might hope.

By unsuccessfully splitting the difference between being frightening and funny, the picture ends up residing in the same bizarre uncanny valley as its creepy title character, proving to be somewhat menacing but also awfully artificial.

Allynne and Notaro’s film is suffused with sweetness, but the slim, conventional story keeps the directors and their capable cast from really exploring the bonds that connect people, whether as friends or lovers. It’s an OK debut that, like Lucy herself, struggles a bit to find its footing.

The best Pixar films make their dexterous mixture of humour, emotion and spectacle feel effortless but the ingredients do not blend as smoothly in Elio.

Unfortunately, David Gordon Green’s wholesome throwback to rambunctious family films like The Bad News Bears strains to sell the openhearted spirit of this Christmas-themed lark.

In presenting its story as a portrait of a budding great statesman discovering his destiny, Barry is neither insightful nor poetic enough to justify its increasingly didactic approach.

Whannell is so invested in unloading juicy surprises that this initially realistic story becomes increasingly preposterous, but Moss keeps the film anchored in plausibility; although sometimes just barely.

Chappie is a bucket of bolts, Blomkamp’s desire to say meaningful things outdistancing his ability to say them compellingly.

Heretic has been crafted with expert care, and the strong performances help carry this dialogue-driven thriller. The problem is that the film’s ideas are not particularly stimulating.

The sequel to 2012’s Wreck-It Ralph boasts a big heart and some clever comedic set pieces, and yet this follow-up fails to match the original’s balance of savvy pop-culture nostalgia and genuine emotional stakes. Ralph and Vanellope are still fun company, but their latest adventure is full of glitches.

Burdened with a drab quest narrative and populated by sweet but unmemorable characters, the studio’s 22nd feature still delivers glorious animation and the occasional tear-jerking sequence. But whether it’s the pedestrian design of this mythical realm or the simplistic story of squabbling brothers in search of their long-lost father, Onward never feels like much of an advancement.

While the story’s sturdy, familiar structure remains resonant, this version never feels particularly inspired or revelatory, despite some lovely moments scattered throughout.

The ceaseless stupidity of men is lamented but also dissected in Sleeping Giant, a thoughtful, well-observed but also familiar coming-of-age drama.

A mixed bag that doesn’t quite work — it’s too jokey, and too tonally erratic — and yet there’s real sweetness, as well as a genuine attempt to not just be another comic-book movie.

Theater Camp is ultimately too uneven and unfocused to earn a curtain call, but like its marginally talented protagonists, it does its best with what it has.

The escalating cat-and-mouse game between Pike’s schemer and Peter Dinklage’s Russian mobster has its pulpy pleasures, but the script’s arch cleverness and heavy-handed message about the corruption of the American dream make it hard to care as much as we should about who ends up on top.

Not without its bluntly funny bits, this nasty, programmatic comedy wants to be outlandish but, oddly enough, it’s the movie’s lack of realism that really hurts it.

Unfortunately, no matter the initial electricity DaCosta brings to the material, the crackle gradually starts to wane, the momentum diluted by extraneous subplots and slack pacing.

The period details are impeccable, the look and feel are seductive, but the muddled script lacks the killer instinct of its central figures.

As arresting as this speculative portrait can be at times, the film is ultimately both galvanised and limited by how unknowable its protagonist turns out to be.

Unlike Yankovic’s best songs, Weird’s inspired goofiness eventually runs out of gas, growing more and more outrageous without coming up with comparably choice gags.

A film drunk on its own trashy, lurid aesthetic, Knife + Heart (Un Couteau Dans Le Coeur) has style to burn but not as much sense.

This twisted fable suggests a filmmaker who gleefully goes to extremes, but the story’s shocks and stomach-churning gags prove more memorable than the underlying observations about the way in which women are pitted against one another in a patriarchal society.

Although The Phoenician Scheme is transporting — an effect amplified by Alexandre Desplat’s lilting orchestral score, supplemented by selections from Stravinsky and Beethoven — the narrative proves to be fussy rather than delightful.

Rocketman is so energetic that it’s possible to be swept away by its enthusiasm for putting Reg on a pedestal. Too often, though, the film just flattens you, demanding fealty to Sir Elton.

With modest ambitions and a slender runtime, the film proves to be a sexy, amusing time – despite being fairly forgettable.

Green Book is a thoroughly predictable and conventional true-life drama, but at least Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali make for decent company along the road.

Although Blue Jay is a warm, likable film, it doesn’t offer anything new to say about nostalgia, the passage of time or living with regret.

The results are more dutiful than absorbing.

Although the film’s different realms are all imaginatively designed — as are the looks of the characters themselves — Wendell & Wild gets a little bogged down explaining the logistics of how these worlds work.

Boasting a breezy spirit and Tom Holland’s likeable turn as the titular web-slinger, this new film is adequately rousing and jokey, but too often it has the feel of a transitional chapter which is meant to pivot away from Endgame to whatever producer Kevin Feige has next in store for these heroes.

As exciting as the film may be, Berg too easily undercuts the human element of his story.

As is often the case with Moore’s impassioned documentaries, 11/9 frustrates as much as it rouses, bouncing from topic to topic without fully digging into any of them. As such, it’s a highlight reel of grievances against government, corporations and the status quo that preaches to the choir.

Stewart and Davis have such adorable chemistry as the central couple — playful and flirty one moment, touchingly sincere the next — that it’s a shame DuVall has stranded them in such an unsatisfying story. Granted, Happiest Season is meant to be cheesy in the comforting way that cable-television Christmas films often are, but all too frequently the actresses seem smarter than the material, forced to navigate preposterous twists and increasingly silly plot complications.

Like the fleeting highs and crushing lows experienced by gambling addicts, Treat Me Like Fire (Joueurs) starts off with energy and confidence, only to slowly succumb to cliché and implausibility once the initial adrenaline rush subsides.

Writer-director Angela Robinson chronicles a complex love story that investigates kinkiness, social mores and the impetus for art, resulting in a drama that’s far more intellectually intriguing than emotionally engaging.

Hustle lives up to its title by going all out — especially Sandler, who brings some heart to his predictable character, and director Jeremiah Zagar, who fights against the story’s cliched elements.

This likeable, terribly contrived charmer is helped by a game cast that almost gets away clean, ultimately hampered by a script that impishly (but not always confidently) switches between tones.

Hugh Jackman demonstrates again what a fine Wolverine he is but this comic-book pairing ultimately underwhelms, resulting in some touching moments and some anarchic humour in a picture otherwise dragged down by convoluted multiverse logistics and drab fan service.

Swedish director Jonatan Etzler, making his English-language debut, cannot keep this daring story plausible enough to offer meaningful insights into our broken education system.