Tim Grierson

Helped enormously by deeply-felt performances from Ellen Page and Allison Janney, this film mostly overcomes its unevenness by finding rich pockets of emotion and insight.

The movie sometimes overstates its ideas, but Poots keeps Vivarium from being just a coy, chilly intellectual exercise. She adds flesh and soul to what might be the film’s most disturbing notion: In some ways, we all become encased in the lives we have stumbled into.

El Planeta writer-director Amalia Ulman’s second feature tackles exploitation and cultural tourism, the film’s genial surface belying a quiet anger underneath.

Blessed with some excellent voice performances, this new King is familiar but still lively enough to encourage audiences to emotionally invest again in story they are already so familiar with.

Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson are excellent as these carnal combatants, each of their characters jockeying for control. But the writer-director’s larger ideas — about sexism in the workplace and the feelings of shame surrounding sexual kinks — fail to burn as hot as the two leads’ fiery chemistry.

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

This sequel to the unlikely 2012 male-stripper sensation has an agreeably ramshackle spirit and another winning turn from star and producer Channing Tatum. As for the dancing, it’s as deliciously spirited as ever.

Although Downsizing is often thoughtful, funny and poignant, ultimately it really is just another movie about a middle-aged white dude pondering his insignificance—with the added demerit being that he learns valuable life lessons thanks to a marginalized woman of color.

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

Director M. Night Shyamalan crafts an exercise in tense claustrophobia, teasing the audience with the question of whether their preposterous beliefs are correct — a riddle complicated by our familiarity with this filmmaker’s fondness for third-act twists.

The film’s scattershot humour doesn’t always land, but even when it does it’s merely masking what is ultimately a gloomy portrait of our walking-dead existence.

What saves this uneven material is the actors’ committed, anguished turns.

This intense psychodrama about buried trauma and doomed romance demonstrates an unapologetic operatic flair which entrances and over-reaches in equal measure. Seyfried exudes a stark intensity that grounds the proceedings — whenever Egoyan risks losing control, she keeps the production on course.

This action-romance provides the requisite thrills while offering new characters and narrative turns, creating a portrait of blossoming evil that is thoughtfully executed.

Equity is a smart Wall Street thriller which is most engaging when it’s exploring the obstacles facing its female protagonists specifically because of their gender.

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.

This fragile, frank film chronicles its subjects with stripped-down intimacy, which can sometimes border on feeling like simple gawking. But it’s impossible not to care deeply about these anxious lovebirds, especially as we begin to understand the obstacles threatening their relationship.

A polished, engrossing procedural, Spotlight offers plenty of old-fashioned pleasures — chiefly, the sight of smart, scrappy muckraking journalists stopping at nothing to uncover systematic corruption.

Queen & Slim’s cumulative impact mostly justifies the tonal inconsistencies, leaving the viewer with a troubling look at a society in which the marginalised always feel hunted.

The X-Men adventures keep getting bigger, but Singer works extremely hard to ensure that, even when they’re not always better, they continue to thrill sufficiently.

“One to One” isn’t a salute to the Beatles’ brilliance or Lennon’s genius. Despite the large screens this film will play on, the movie renders its subjects as touchingly life-sized.

Unquestionably uneven and only occasionally inspired, Hail, Caesar! is nonetheless engrossing and funny thanks to its off-kilter energy and a lead performance from Coens regular Josh Brolin that’s a model of quietly controlled chaos.

Mickey 17 sometimes wobbles balancing its different tones. But what holds Bong’s eighth feature together is his palpable rage at humanity’s cruelty mixed with his compassion for a protagonist who cannot die – and, therefore, cannot truly live.

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.

There’s a gentle, lived-in quality to the material that’s a departure for Soderbergh, whose films would rarely be called heartfelt. But by his standards, the unhurried Let Them All Talk is an unusually compassionate examination of a group of characters, across different generations, who find themselves at a crossroads.

Considering it’s geared towards children — although not afraid to show some of the harsher realities of the animal kingdom — Penguins is more instructional tool than scintillating nonfiction investigation. But resistance to these sweet, wobbly critters is futile.

The movie takes some risks near the end that underline the story’s central themes while also undercutting them. But Tully is at its best when it’s simply moving intuitively from one negotiated respite to the next.

It may play a little flatly, but its sincerity of purpose remains affecting throughout.