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.

Pushing too hard to give The Death Of Robin Hood a sense of gravitas, Sarnoski suffocates his story rather than letting its palpable agony envelop the viewer. This Robin Hood subverts our expectations, but he never gets to breathe.

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.

At nearly two-and-a-half hours, the film ultimately succumbs to blockbuster conventionality and the stifling demands of brand management. But like the timid Adam transforming into the swaggering He-Man, occasionally the picture transcends those confining strictures to become something a little more confident and carefree.

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.

To be sure, there are moments when one can be amused by the shameless showiness of Refn’s pretentious design. But like that mist enveloping the city, Her Private Hell’s charms dissipate fairly quickly.

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.

When Parallel Tales shifts tones near the end to unveil an unsettling surprise, the film’s confectionery construction cannot bear the jolt. Like Sylvie, Farhadi wants to mine riveting fiction from the flotsam of the everyday, but his imagination proves to be not as formidable as hers.

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.

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.

If One Spoon of Chocolate ultimately fails as a grindhouse banger, you still might understand why RZA developed this project for more than a decade. His rage at this inequitable country has only grown more acute as America’s racial divides widen and codify. But like Unique, RZA doesn’t know how to fight his way out of the hell that surrounds him.

Despite Segel and Weaver’s best efforts, they can’t make this bickering duo deliciously awful, the characters proving more grating than hilariously combustible.

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.

Although the film’s musical performances galvanise, director Antoine Fuqua reduces The King Of Pop to a blandly inspirational cipher.

Lee Cronin knows how to construct suspense sequences and ramp up tension, and there are moments in his portrait of a couple dealing with the traumatic return of their missing child that are legitimately frightening. But the film’s ambitious scope is betrayed by derivative genre ideas that make this tale of the dead disappointingly listless.

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.

The life lessons Reef learns aren’t meaningful, and the movie’s message about making amends is patronizing. In the end, it’s the audience that deserves an apology.

Although the follow-up to the 2023 original boasts colourful animation, too often this Illumination production mistakes visual and narrative busyness for genuine excitement. As a result the film, based on the venerable Nintendo property, suffers from strained humour and cluttered action sequences — issues that will hardly discourage young audiences from coming out in droves.

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.

While her previous pictures never shied away from tenderness despite their outré scenarios, her latest is a far more melancholy affair. Sadly, it’s also easily her least accomplished.

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.