Tim Grierson

Rockwell respects her audience enough to trust that we’ll be invested in Inez and Terry’s odyssey because of the nuanced performances.

Brandon Cronenberg’s third feature is best appreciated as a singularly unnerving experience, one punctuated with enough outlandish and disquieting moments to compensate for a script that can be episodic and thematically repetitive.

Earth Mama offers no falsely encouraging happy ending, but its clear-eyed humanity nonetheless feels like a balm. In a society that often tries to sweep the poor away so that they’re out of sight, this film encourages us to see — and to care.

Rambunctious and playful, writer-director Nida Manzoor’s feature debut radiates fizzy delight, showing audiences a breezy good time.

There are three superb performances at the picture’s centre, but none is more radiant than that of Greta Lee, gracefully capturing the spirit of a searching soul who seems to understand things about the nuances of love that are beyond the grasp of the rest of us.

Wilfully provocative — and going to extremes to make its points — this psychological drama sometimes strains credibility, but its poisonous cauldron of greed and contempt proves arresting.

Emilia Jones and Nicholas Braun let the tension build between their characters and, although director Susanna Fogel doesn’t always navigate the film’s tricky tonal shifts well, Cat Person pokes at larger issues about modern courtship that don’t seem likely to disappear anytime soon.

Far from presenting Michael J. Fox as a tragic case, Still is uplifting but also clear-eyed — as piercing as the look Fox gives the camera as he stares straight into the lens.

Writer-director Elijah Bynum’s second feature is often riveting, its heartbreak and pain amplified by Jonathan Majors’ brilliantly anguished performance. But just as its subject risks imploding at any moment, this confident drama eventually starts to unravel, fumbling its final third while trying to find the right ending for such a damaged, raging soul.

Aided by Owen Pallett’s occasionally jittery score, Alice, Darling can sometimes possess the faint air of a thriller, albeit one in which the central menace is offscreen, far removed from Alice and her friends. But Kendrick, who has said she’s experienced psychological abuse in a past relationship, wrings dramas from Alice’s internal trauma.

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.

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.

This biopic reaches its high point early on, as Bafta-winner Naomi Ackie vividly portrays the pop star during her meteoric ascent. But once the film reaches Houston’s later career, when drugs and a difficult marriage began to take their toll, the story doesn’t just become more downbeat but also more of a slog, falling to find an insightful angle into this slow-motion tragedy.

Running over three hours, and swamped with sex, drugs and over-the-top set pieces, this swaggering drama seems infused with the impetuous energy of its characters, resulting in a film that’s drunk on its own ambition, wildly uneven but never, ever boring.

The Way Of Water’s resplendent presentation couldn’t be more breathtaking — the drama unfolding inside that world isn’t always as masterfully rendered.

The picture is irreverent yet oddly touching, never especially great but often disreputable fun.

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.

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

What gives Strange World some forward momentum, however, is the clear affection the filmmakers have for their characters — and that they have for each other - giving the film ample modest charms in its portrayal of basically decent people coming to accept each other’s differences.

More often than not, the stirring tunes and the genuineness of the proceedings help paper over Spirited’s rough spots. A couple of twists are well-handled, and Ferrell’s performance as a dutiful ghost who suddenly questions his (after)life choices reveals a vulnerability which is disarming.

Coogler frequently harnesses these tragic circumstances for a rousing, politically pointed spectacle, which also touches on xenophobia and the cruelty of endless wars over dwindling natural resources. But the film is powered by its vibrant supporting cast, which now takes centre stage.

Featuring vivid animation inspired by Daxiong’s drawings, the film is somber and hushed, able to stir emotions without resorting to manipulative tricks.

Writer-director Dean Craig gathers a winning ensemble for his dark comedy and, intermittently, the characters’ rank awfulness is a joy to behold. But despite boasting a fair amount of snide one-liners and a general air of gleeful misanthropy, the film ends up becoming strained and predictable, not quite liberating or shocking enough.

Built around excerpts from Armstrong’s home audio recordings, which he made in private over the decades, the documentary is far from exhaustive and yet, as a primer for why Armstrong remains influential, this inquisitive portrait successfully manages to render him as both a titan and a nuanced human being.

Despite a few touching scenes in which Sophie and Agatha reassert their bond amidst handsome suiters and devious spells, Good And Evil ends up feeling both too busy and too underdeveloped to let their relationship blossom. There’s no happily ever after awaiting audiences at the film’s end.

The latest instalment in the DC Extended Universe too often succumbs to the conventions of its genre — it’s a film suffused with hokey punchlines and predictably gaudy action set pieces — but some compelling performances and director Jaume Collet-Serra’s ebullient B-movie flourishes prove to be sufficient compensation.

Jamie Lee Curtis brings a regal bearing to her performance, but the prevailing feeling is of a cinematic series that’s probably best left for dead.

This inherently melodramatic material has an undeniable emotional sincerity, although the story ends up being so gentle that it barely makes a ripple.

Following up her Sundance prizewinner Clemency, director Chinonye Chukwu brings intelligence, sorrow and rage to what eventually becomes a courtroom drama, but the film is most effective when it pushes against its conventionality, locating the psychic scars within this woman and the nation.

Although stuffed with ambition and the occasionally arresting moment, this 1930s mystery flaunts a freewheeling spirit that far outpaces its convoluted story and dramatically thin protagonists.

Daliland dials up the actorly pyrotechnics, but it’s all spectacle without insight, failing to lay a foundation for why this long-running marriage, despite its volatility, endured.

Despite the film’s slightness and unexplored themes, White caters to our shared wonder about the solar system and our penchant to seek connection — even if it’s with our robot rovers. Those basic human drives are potent enough to make this trip worthwhile.

Despite Nicolas Cage’s committed performance as the imposing, hardheaded leader of the expedition, this mournful yarn can’t quite transcend what’s familiar about its study of masculinity and the unforgiving spirit of the natural world.

Feels manipulative and glib ... Farrelly’s tendency toward simplistic bromides in Green Book is even more egregious here.

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.

The director of The Lure has a knack for peculiar protagonists — not to mention mixing whimsy with darker textures — but her latest provocation wouldn’t be so affecting if not for the committed performances of Wright and Tamara Lawrance, who play sisters who understand one another when no one else does.

This adaptation of Bethan Roberts’ novel is full of repressed emotions and the occasional tearful recrimination, but the stateliness of the proceedings eventually becomes stifling rather than absorbing, draining this doomed love affair of its potential to break the heart.

For all its showy, whirring machinations, the film isn’t especially light on its feet — and its murder mystery isn’t very engrossing.

Women Talking is a challenging work that requires a little patience from the audience, which is rewarded with a troubling, provocative story that lingers in the mind long after the film is over.

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.

Semi-autobiographical and dedicated to his late mom and dad, the film is a potent memory piece guided by remarkable performances from Michelle Williams and Paul Dano, who are asked to walk a delicate tonal tightrope, delivering a portrait of an imperfect marriage that’s heartbreaking in its tenderness.

The Woman King doesn’t always successfully juggle its myriad narrative ambitions, but director Gina Prince-Bythewood has crafted battle sequences that are exciting and moving at the same time.

A winning romantic comedy about two men whose emotional intimacy issues may jeopardise the good thing they’ve got going, Bros is frequently funny but also quite touching, spearheaded by the dynamite chemistry between co-writer Billy Eichner and Luke Macfarlane.

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 Compassionate Spy is intimate and modest, more about a marriage than geopolitical tensions.

Bratton’s depth of feeling elevates the material, suggesting that, for the filmmaker, there’s something intensely cathartic and therapeutic in this retelling.

Dancing across multiple themes and frequently upending expectations, Barbarian keeps us wonderfully uncertain about where it’s going — or even what it’s ultimately about — which only makes the picture that much more gripping.

Trying to recapture the magic of the 1940 animated classic, Robert Zemeckis’ live-action Pinocchio is a wooden, laboured affair.

Crafted with style, and led by Florence Pugh’s redoubtable performance as a picture-perfect housewife who learns a horrifying truth, this glossy thriller draws unfavourable comparisons to a whole swath of different bygone films, cribbing their unsettling undertones without adding much new to the mixture.

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.

This new instalment stands on its own unsettlingly odd merits.

TÁR’s engrossing spell starts to dissipate over its final third, and yet this is that rare film about a creative person that feels neither self-pitying nor self-aggrandising. Indeed, one of the picture’s great strengths is that it’s never entirely clear what Field thinks of his complicated heroine.

Although Sierra Pettengill’s film will perhaps be most notable for its inclusion of startling scenes from Riotsvilles, model towns built by the US Army to train for actual riots, there’s much here to consider about the American worship of law enforcement and demonisation of dissent.

Everest director Baltasar Kormakur crafts his man-versus-wild-animal drama with some niftily tense suspense sequences that split the difference between compelling and cheesy. But whether it’s the so-so CGI or the threadbare character development, Beast frustratingly refuses to aspire to be more than a competent, disposable actioner.

Howard honours the collective heroism above all else, resulting in a well-crafted procedural that’s a little impersonal. Like the brave men who ultimately saved the day, Thirteen Lives gets the job done.

Director Dan Trachtenberg delivers gripping suspense sequences, complete with agreeably gruesome kills, which juxtapose the landscape’s rugged beauty with this extraterrestrial hunter’s brute savagery. Amber Midthunder gives this sometimes cheesy affair welcome grit, staring down the Predator with compelling ferocity.

This tale of repression and injustice is potent enough to overcome the inevitable distancing that occurs because of the animation process.

Juliette Binoche may play a seasoned truck driver with a firm grip on the wheel, but Paradise Highway proves to be an unsteady ride, guided by intriguing ideas but hampered by generic tendencies.

Bullet Train has no shortage of giddy, madcap gusto, hoping to satiate hardcore genre fans with its bloody, over-the-top violence and rising body count. But this lumbering locomotive proves to be neither hilariously amoral nor liberatingly violent — it makes quite a commotion, but mostly just spins its wheels.

Some adorable animals and a snarky sense of humour about superheroes aren’t quite enough to save the day with DC League Of Super-Pets, an intermittently amusing and touching animation.

The film is adrenalised but familiar, sporting a sarcastic sense of humour in an attempt to mitigate what’s so threadbare about the premise and increasingly over-the-top fight sequences.

It would be unsporting to say more but, simply put, there are moments of unalloyed terror (juxtaposed with a crowd-pleasing giddiness) that make Nope worth not just seeing on the big screen but with as huge a crowd as possible.

This adaptation of the Delia Owens bestseller proves to be an unconvincing, melodramatic affair that only occasionally locates the story’s mournful heart.

Lit from within by the sunny disposition of its main character, Mrs Harris Goes To Paris is a lovely, modest ode to kindness, anchored by Lesley Manville’s considered performance as a housekeeper who is tired of feeling invisible.

Love And Thunder doesn’t always gracefully execute its balance of light and dark but when the film focuses on the unshakeable bond between Thor and Jane, the results can be mighty moving.

The results are both engaging and disposable, offering game viewers an exercise in suspense and off-kilter atmosphere.

One of Pixar’s most beloved characters gets an origin story with Lightyear, a lacklustre sci-fi adventure which misses the wit and wonder that have been the studio’s hallmarks for decades.

The result is a picture with gripping sequences and clever byplay, even if there’s a sense that it’s merely repeating past strengths, only not quite as ingeniously.

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.

Coen draws from existing interviews and performance footage to create a portrait that is far from definitive, and yet the film’s snapshot quality manages to amplify what is so mythic about the 86-year-old legend — and also what remains so vexing.

The prickly protagonists of Funny Pages would not be pleasant company in real life, but writer-director Owen Kline’s proudly dyspeptic feature debut gives his characters a scruffy integrity that makes them perversely fascinating.

Like the distinctive artwork made by Showing Up’s sculptor protagonist, Kelly Reichardt’s eighth feature is beautifully crafted, a modest gem that grows in impact the more one examines it.

As often with Kore-eda’s pictures, Broker is about family, but it extends beyond that theme to talk about fundamental aspects of life — the need to belong, the hope of connecting with likeminded souls, and the desire to find a place called home.

The plotting may sometimes be convoluted, but the picture rolls along so forcefully that its familiar genre trappings hardly hamper the proceedings.

If Elvis suffers from a familiar Luhrmann weakness — style outpacing substance — the concert sequences effortlessly illuminate why Presley remains a revered musical figure, Luhrmann and Butler delivering one euphoric set piece after another.

Although the film doesn’t always deftly balance sentiment and broad humour, it is fun to spend time with such raucous company.

Hardly lacking ambition or verve, this amped-up fairy tale comes complete with social commentary and a grownup examination of the consequences of seeking connection, but the episodic, intermittently engaging saga frustrates more than it enchants.

Exceedingly thoughtful and self-critical rather than lazily nostalgic, this well-acted coming-of-age tale can sometimes be predictable and muddled, but is steeped in the filmmaker’s sorrow for not recognising the ways in which he and those he loved contributed to an inequitable society that shows no signs of becoming less stratified.

Fans of zombie spoofs and films-about-films should enjoy this bauble, which is elevated by the cheery ensemble.

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.

When Raimi is allowed to indulge his weird streak — especially during an audacious third act — the picture pushes past the franchise’s predictably polished sheen to arrive at sequences that are livelier and odder than Marvel normally permits.

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.

A satire of Hollywood ego, a loving tribute to Cage’s hair-trigger intensity and a consistently funny bromance, Massive Talent doesn’t overstay its welcome or ever get too pleased with its premise, finding humour and sweetness in the notion that sometimes even Nicolas Cage can’t live up to being Nicolas Cage.

Intermittently, Father Stu hints at Long’s fascinating contradictions — his earthy bluntness mixing with his sensitive belief in the divine — but the film is not sharp enough to give those contradictions vivid dimension.

Murina is a superb study in sustained subliminal menace, with Gracija Filipovic especially skilled playing a young woman learning how to utilise her sensuality to secure her freedom

Impeccably crafted but only intermittently gripping, the third instalment in the Fantastic Beasts franchise has the scope and sweep of an epic while suffering from some of the same weaknesses as the first two chapters.

This horror-action picture offers modest genre pleasures and a consistently spooky vibe, resulting in a film that has been designed chiefly to ensure future sequels, although the story includes enough emotional shading and robust set pieces to be an engaging standalone feature.

From a technical standpoint, Sonic The Hedgehog 2 is fairly impressive in its merging of live-action and animation, a reminder of the technological advancements since the days of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Too bad it is in service to one more story of a scrappy young male hero on a search for powerful talismans in order to defeat increasingly more formidable villains. For a film about a character who is incredibly speedy, this sequel feels behind the curve, chasing after blockbuster trends but only falling farther behind.

This unfussy action-thriller has a lot of Jason Bourne in its bloodstream, with director Tarik Saleh focusing on taut pacing and crisp sequences. But despite some solid craftsmanship, the film never fully transcends what is familiar about the setup — much like the titular hero, The Contractor gives its all, possibly in vain.

For all its showy excesses, sophomoric humour and strained gravitas, Ambulance is often riveting, the film speeding along as recklessly as that ambulance. This popcorn thriller certainly is not brainy, but its escapism has a muscular precision.

Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum have a great, flirtatious rapport in The Lost City, yet something is missing in this romantic-comedy action-adventure, which sports a funny premise but slipshod execution.

Director Gail Lerner’s Cheaper By The Dozen is aggressively cutesy while trying to address real-world issues such as race and class. Lerner’s version feels busy and laboured, its sitcom treatment straining equally for laughs and pathos.

Despite some resonant themes, this playful thriller grows increasingly implausible, relying on twists that neither shock nor deepen the film’s exploration of unhappiness and regret.

By this point, the 1960s have been sufficiently chronicled and celebrated, but the specificity of Linklater’s portrait nevertheless has a poignancy to it.

Ultimately, though, Everything Everywhere is best appreciated for its grandiose ambitions, bombarding the viewer with its frenetic style while telling a poignant story about an older woman trying to make peace with her not-so-wonderful life.

Turning Red is often very funny thanks to the fact that Shi lets her main character be smart and three-dimensional — the filmmaker doesn’t talk down to her adolescent audience by burdening the script with juvenile jokes.

As much as is possible considering all the Dark Knight films that came before, The Batman feels like its own creation, not beholden to past instalments while still honouring what remains riveting about this character’s milieu.

Gory rather than scary and goofy instead of very funny, this fitfully amusing horror-comedy will be embraced by fans of the popular band, who demonstrate that, while they’re adept musicians, they’re not similarly gifted at delivering killer punchlines.