Tim Grierson

This story of two strangers who take a job on a fishing boat — their lives are irrevocably altered once they return to shore — slowly pulls you inside its disquieting design. By the time you get your bearings, you’re ensnared in its net.

With Toy Story 5, Pixar reaffirms what has always made this franchise so beloved, resulting in another delightful adventure that mines fresh emotional terrain while producing plenty of hearty laughs.

Despite the character’s rocky path to sexual awakening, Herzi navigates toward a hopeful conclusion that doesn’t peddle phony uplift.

Renoir may be a delicate wisp of a film, but it’s flecked with thoughtful questioning about whether childhood’s sorrows leave permanent scars on us as adults.

Without getting too sappy or strident, Jim Queen explores how sexual fluidity can open up exciting possibilities but also break people’s hearts. In the case of this cheeky picture, it can be pretty funny, too.

The Diary Of A Chambermaid’s outward prettiness merely emphasises the melancholy and quiet anger at its core, as Jude reveals his disdain for how rich families (and countries) treat poor immigrant labour. Marguerite and Pierre are never outwardly cruel, but their repeated microaggressions are a comparable torture.

A compassionate, clear-eyed study of a young woman searching for a place to call home, Ashes is driven by Anna Diaz’s evocative performance which expresses a world of discontent through the simplest of glances.

Exhibiting an emotional restraint sometimes missing from his previous films Girl (2018) and Close (2022), Dhont’s latest proves to be an affecting, familiar drama.

As is often the case with this writer-director, Gray’s film has a dim view of the American Dream but, if some of the script’s contours are familiar, Paper Tiger’s quiet intensity and growing sibling tension make it a compelling experience.

All Of A Sudden never stoops to treacly melodrama, instead preferring a restrained approach that allows the film’s most emotional scenes to hit with full force.

A dizzyingly ambitious meta-satire about Hollywood, IP, hacky horror, and gender and sexual identity, Teenage Sex And Death cannot help but occasionally misstep, but the rush of ideas and the confidence of the filmmaking never waver.

Thanks to the latest impressive turn from rising star David Jonsson, “Wasteman” even finds a few new notes to play within a familiar stark melody.

Jokes may fall flat, and the movie might get a bit treacly, but The Sheep Detectives‘ big heart is never in question.

While the film’s balance of thorny laughs and thought-provoking themes is not always smoothly executed, Borgli’s provocation succeeds thanks to the grounded performances of his stars.

There are many ways to portray authoritarianism, but Two Prosecutors is penetrating in its depiction of a society being slowly poisoned. The film might be too much to bear if it wasn’t so brilliantly conceived and executed.

This Hamlet sticks to the narrative essentials to produce a terse, pitiless retelling.

The tonal balance between life-and-death stakes and buddy-comedy bonding is sometimes wobbly, but Ryan Gosling gives an open-hearted performance as our planet’s unlikely saviour.

Sometimes the convoluted story forces its emotional beats, but Hoppers is a largely successful animation that introduces a refreshingly darker strain of humour alongside its paeans to the natural world.

Kokuho is a hearty melodrama with a little bit of everything — sex scandals, betrayals, unlikely comebacks, health scares — but the film’s gaudy plot twists (which shouldn’t be spoiled) belie the filmmaker’s unsentimental attitude regarding stardom’s perils.

The film stands in the shadow of Michael Mann’s influential Southern California pictures, but a cast led by Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo add extra crackle to a story that salutes characters who are very good at their job – no matter what side of the law they are on.

By illuminating the passion and creativity shared by two Iranian friends, The Friend’s House Is Here both celebrates and worries about an emerging generation of women activists yearning to defy a dictatorship. Its rebellious spirit isn’t fiery but, rather, quiet and confident — and all the more inspiring as a result.

Padraic McKinley’s feature directorial debut is a hugely confident survivalist tale that’s as bluntly effective as the primitive weapons employed in this bare-knuckle saga.

Filmed across the city’s boroughs, the thriller has a wonderful sense of place as this solitary man must rely on his savvy after one of his victims seeks deadly payback.

A vital cinematic document. ... The conversations could not be more stimulating, offering a glimpse of Black America past and present that is joyous, defiant and sobering.

In truth, Buddy is not especially scary, its many kill scenes staged for laughs. But if this horror-comedy makes an obvious point — television shows meant for kids sure are weird — Kelly finds enough fresh ways to exploit the idea.

The film refuses to go in predictable directions, unveiling bizarre side characters and travelling down odd narrative backroads. But that occasional bagginess also allows for a richly textured picture bursting with energy.

This heartfelt picture can be overly familiar, but Poulter’s intensely interior performance lends the proceedings sufficient edge and fascination.

The picture deftly blends genres to create an arresting snapshot of the ricocheting carnage of sexual violence.