Tim Grierson

An initially captivating drama that loses steam once predictability starts to take hold.

No matter Linklater’s efforts to keep the proceedings grounded in a light realism, this inherently melodramatic, sometimes absurdist material resists his naturalistic tendencies.

Despite a potentially daring twist at the mid-mark, though, the film lacks sufficient chills, or a satisfactory payoff.

As sympathetic as Vikander is in the role, this queen remains a bit opaque, her inner life never brought into sharp focus. Katherine may have survived, but she’s still not fully known.

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

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.

Directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman have crafted a knowingly cheesy action movie that flaunts its adrenalised excessiveness, while Jamie Foxx and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, playing two very different men in search of the pills, never manage to transcend the project’s fundamentally generic, cartoonish design.

The proceedings are often stifling, but not without their prickly pleasures.

In the early going, the film delivers plenty of chills alongside some sly commentary about the music industry, but eventually Finn succumbs to the trite horror tropes the original picture so nimbly avoided.

Like many would-be debaucherous evenings, Rough Night starts off with great promise, only to devolve into a series of poor decisions, regretful moments and a general sense of disappointment.

Rose Byrne is appealing as a sympathetic, patient person finally sensing she deserves more from her life. But for a film that critiques men’s inability to let go of childish things, this cutesy adaptation of the Nick Hornby novel feels a bit like a fantasy version of how adulthood really is.

Despite some sweetness and playful absurdity, this big-screen outing feels mostly like derivative, fussed-over product.

The clumsy mixture of nostalgia, scares, set pieces, sincerity and wisecracks never gels.

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.

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.

The movie is delightfully odd but not consistently inspired, often straining to rewrite the rules of superhero cinema, a mixture of good and bad ideas all mashed together. Where other comic-book movies lumber along with self-importance, this film is a breezy, amoral lark, which proves somewhat refreshing. But that’s not enough to allow Birds’ hit-or-miss pleasure to soar.

Pixar’s latest boasts the company’s reliably cheerful disposition and gorgeous visuals, but otherwise this meandering, pedestrian affair is never particularly funny or poignant — the hallmarks that once made this studio the gold standard for Hollywood animation.

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

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.

Director Adam Wingard embraces the towering scale of these showdowns, and a stellar cast that includes Alexander Skarsgard and Rebecca Hall tries to add some gravitas to the proceedings. Unfortunately, the actors fight a losing battle against some impressive special effects to command our attention.

An overly precious tone ultimately sinks the writer-director’s attempt to recapture the enchantment of adolescence.

Rambunctiously riffing on celebrity, activism, technology and economic inequality, this dark satire works best when the director’s swirl of images achieves a hypnotic, primal rush. At other times, Sacrifice is as muddled as the terrorists’ plan.

Very rarely do you get the sense that anyone involved in Christopher Robin had a really strong take on the material or an innate understanding of why these characters have resonated for nearly a century.

Director Jay Duplass crafts a sensitive portrait of loss and forgiveness but ,for a picture based on actual events, there is an artificiality to the proceedings that undercuts the material’s inherent poignancy.

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.

Not quite thrilling or hilarious enough, writer-director Elizabeth Banks’ take on the 1970s television series preaches empowerment and gender equality, and leads Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott and Ella Balinska prove to be fun company. But this fizzy entertainment is yoked to a dull spy story which recycles genre tropes without adding much that is new to the mix.

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.

Garfield and Pugh have such instant chemistry that one never doubts why their characters would end up together. But ultimately, We Live In Time views Tobias and Almut as abstractions, and by jumping back and forth in time, it never makes them very present.

Outside of its admiration for mothers, Bier’s film seems to only vaguely hint at other ephemeral ideas, and as a result Bird Box is a curiously hollow experience.

Rob Peace is buoyed by Jay Will’s touching lead performance as the titular aspiring scientist, but the film struggles to bring coherence to this cautionary tale, ambitiously tackling several themes and tones but never quite bringing them together into an engrossing whole.

For all its breezy animation, the film can’t match the vividness of its subject.

Cutting-edge performance-capture technology gives us a remarkably lifelike Alita, but although Robert Rodriguez clearly loves this pulpy genre material, that affection rarely translates into anything more than an impressive display of technical might.

Hyena Road may be a bit underwhelming in its action set pieces and storytelling urgency, but its heart is certainly in the right place.

Tag is all strained sentimentality and obvious observations about men’s inability to leave childish things behind.

Outside of Vikander’s performance, Tomb Raider tends to go on autopilot, either too scared or uninspired to reimagine this blah action-adventure material.

Like many movies set in colourfully bleak futures, Hotel Artemis can’t sustain the novelty of its initial world-building.

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.

Because The Little Things is so indebted to the tenets of its genre, it can only succeed by bringing originality and a fresh perspective to the whodunit. Unfortunately, this film becomes a victim of its uninspired construction — which ends up being no small thing.

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.

Shyamalan and Hartnett struggle to fashion a convincingly layered murderer whose mental unravelling and inner anguish are sufficiently captivating. Instead, the performance is a muddled melding of serial-killer types audiences have seen before.

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.

Whether it’s the hit-or-miss jokes or the familiar action beats, the film too often plays down to its young audience, valuing rambunctious energy over wit or heart.

Because of the quality of the performances and the sincerity of the execution, Wonder doesn’t need to artificially stir our emotions, so it’s a shame that Chbosky lets the tone get away from him, badgering viewers with his points rather than simply letting the material speak for itself.

Anyone expecting a shred of originality from this Dwayne Johnson vehicle will be disappointed, but writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber tries his best to compensate by amping up the over-the-top spectacle, hoping sheer gusto will keep viewers from minding his film’s shaky foundation.

Tongue firmly in cheek and sporting a taste for blood, The Predator has some nasty down-and-dirty pleasures, but director Shane Black can’t entirely reconcile his lightly self-mocking tone with the film’s muscular B-movie action.

The latest from director Gavin O’Connor (Warrior) is part character study and part airport-novel nonsense, and the film’s utter chutzpah gives the proceedings an agreeable kick. But The Accountant can’t balance its B-movie instincts with its more artistic aspirations, ultimately hamstringing a potentially juicy, escapist shoot-‘em-up.

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.

The result is an old-fashioned action-adventure replete with battle scenes and hearty proclamations such as “We will paint the dawn red with the blood of our foes!” But the hand-drawn animation style has its limitations, and the film’s central figures are not as magnetic as before.

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

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.

Abbott and costar Julia Garner give grounded, emotional performances in this occasionally thoughtful chiller ultimately undone by its grander ambitions.

Too often, Fallen Kingdom has all the soul and grace of a well-prepared business proposal—you can sense all the money being invested into an intellectual property in order to reap a sizable windfall and ensure the franchise’s continued commercial viability. It’s as scintillating as a retirement plan.

The Shallows is diverting escapism one wishes could have cut a little deeper.

Because the characters are so thinly drawn and the drama so unconvincingly developed, the third-act operatics don’t dazzle the way they should, leaving Run very much stuck in place.

Despite its Chinese setting and characters, the movie doesn’t feel appreciably different from so many other previous tales of lost young people who learn friendship through a pet or extra-terrestrial, and the story’s broad humour and pedestrian plotting don’t add much to this perfunctory fable.

Chung’s desire to add a touch of realism runs counter to what is, essentially, a low-nutrition entertainment about massive storms wreaking havoc on small towns and scooping up anything in their path. The more Twisters aims for gravitas, the more hot air it generates.

Wittrock and Chao have such a spark that it’s disappointing that Long Weekend is ultimately one more picture about how an amazing woman helps a nice but ordinary guy turn his life around. Chao’s lively performance — not to mention the audience — deserves better.

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.

Roland and Vanessa simply aren’t sufficiently compelling to provoke us to fill in the blanks. Pitt brings his usual weathered charm, and Jolie Pitt makes her character’s all-consuming melancholy occasionally ravishing, but there’s not enough depth underneath.

Unfortunately, Howard fails to modulate this wickedness and, at over two hours, the picture becomes monotonous and unwieldy. Indeed, the malicious proceedings lose their power to unnerve, to diminishing returns.

There’s no question that director Liesl Tommy and star Jennifer Hudson have approached this project with reverence, hoping to highlight the late singer’s importance both as a cultural figure and a symbol of her era. But the cliches that usually attend such biopics — specifically, the need to simplify an individual’s demons and traumas into easily digestible dramatic beats — are especially frustrating here, leaving this overly earnest picture lacking the vibrancy of its dynamic subject.

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.

Doubling down on the giddily ridiculous tone of its predecessor, Now You See Me 2 is diverting, but the film’s rampant, cheeky cleverness — its ‘can you guess what’s going on?” coyness — ultimately proves tiresome.

Director Jay Roach’s adaptation proves too broad and tonally erratic. In the process, he undermines game work from Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman as a husband and wife who can still sometimes see past their animosity to remember the love that once seemed indomitable.

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.

In between the nudity and four-letter words, the film looks seriously at grief, arrested development and economic inequality, and there’s a sweet rapport between the two leads. A series of irritating plot twists and a predictable trajectory ultimately undercut Lawrence’s bravely brash portrait of a woman going nowhere fast.

Stone’s mixture of paranoid thriller, political commentary and romantic drama keeps Snowden feeling busy without ever being particularly engrossing or enlightening. Frustratingly, Snowden remains a ghost in the machine.

When Now You Don’t tries to be poignant while pondering the passage of time and the loss of loved ones, the franchise’s glib construction cannot withstand the tonal shift. And the story’s relentless razzle-dazzle eventually feels laboured, sapping the fizzy fun.

Director Paul Feig brings the same sly approach to this lavish follow-up, but the results feel even more strained than the original, which was often more stylish than deliciously diabolical.

Although occasionally stirring, the film rarely rises above the level of intriguing anecdote, resulting in a deeply drab drama enlivened somewhat by Matthew McConaughey’s empathetic performance.

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.

An aggressively cute family film that’s also a spectacle-driven sci-fi noir-mystery with hints of Blade Runner and the third act of every Marvel movie, this adaptation of the popular 2016 video game throws everything at the audience with such vehemence that the sum effect is overwhelming more than it is entertaining.

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.

Branagh, in his direction and especially in his performance, can’t help but overdo the cheeky artificiality, which keeps Murder feeling more like a well-designed exercise than a delectable thriller.

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.

Failing to be incisive or moving, Marshall is content to be genial and unthreatening—two adjectives that have never been used to describe the long, hard, ongoing fight for equality.

The solo directorial debut of Bobby Farrelly goes for broad laughs and a crowd-pleasing spirit, never mocking its disabled characters but, instead, celebrating their irreverent sense of humour and athletic skill. Unfortunately, that does not keep Champions from feeling patronising and cloying at times.

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.

Will Ferrell and Jamie Foxx are clearly enjoying themselves voicing their very different characters — Ferrell naive and energetic, Foxx cynical and streetwise — but apart from a few inspired moments, the outrageousness soon drags.

The trouble with Miss Americana is that, although there is honesty and vulnerability, there’s also something rehearsed and distant about it. Swift invites us in, but she only lets us see so much.

Uneven but not without its charming, touching and even kinky moments, the film salutes the oddballs lucky enough to find like-minded souls – but the story’s invitingly bizarre vibe isn’t captivating enough to overcome some clear narrative flaws.

Fatman has its wicked charms, but ultimately this cheeky action-comedy is a lot of buildup without sufficient payoff.

The Fast & Furious movies always possess a certain amount of eye-rolling histrionics, but Kirby finds just the right mix of sincerity and snark, understanding that these films are meant to be knowingly ridiculous.

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.

Unlike its zonked-out predator, Banks’ film rarely feels similarly energised.

The sense of narrative deja vu — the nagging recognition that the film draws from disparate, familiar parts, rarely gelling into a coherent whole — cannot help but make the proceedings feel derivative. This is especially apparent in the humdrum animation style, which is bright and energetic but unspectacular.

It is a shame that director Catherine Hardwicke’s film cannot match its star’s inspired turn, settling for a likeable but strained fish-out-of-water tale.

The directorial debut of Orphanage screenwriter Sergio G. Sánchez is powerfully frustrating, undone by an ornate storytelling style in which twists only beget more twists, all in service of some fairly obvious observations about guilt, self-deception and devotion.

Packed with better action sequences and a smidgeon more emotional resonance, this sequel may be more engaging than its predecessor, but the franchise remains a rather clattering and crude affair.

Emma Mackey gives a heartfelt performance as the titular protagonist, whose marriage is collapsing just as she’s about to be named her state’s new governor, and this comedy-drama contains some of the crackling dialogue and disarming candour of Brooks’ best work. Ultimately, however, this disjointed character study ultimately feels as messy as its heroine’s life.

Commercial considerations strangle the vitality from the movie, but Ritchie does his best to bring a bit of impish wit to the proceedings.

Critical Thinking has plenty of heart, which unfortunately can’t make up for its fairly uninspired design and predictable trajectory.

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.

What ultimately hampers the film is that, once the agonising dilemma is introduced, the script quickly becomes a standard survival-in-space saga, recalling everything from Gravity to The Midnight Sky. The performances are nicely modulated, though, resisting the story’s inherently melodramatic qualities and instead focusing on trying to solve the problem at hand.

Elemental contains hints of the studio’s wit and poignancy while lacking the inspired execution that once seemed so effortless.

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.

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.

Timur Bekmambetov’s Ben-Hur remake offers robust spectacle and some decent performances. But ultimately, the director of Wanted and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is, perhaps unsurprisingly, not the ideal filmmaker to capture this timeless story’s more nuanced emotional range.

Playfully, almost proudly shallow as it feeds off the feverish highs and lows of its addicted protagonist, this neo-noir offers plenty of buzzy delight — that is, until the story’s pretensions bring down the whole house of cards.

Rather than being thought-provoking or streamlined, instead Dark Phoenix is a frustratingly anticlimactic, familiar tale of misunderstood mutants.

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.

The film finds an unexpected way to reach its happy ending, but ultimately Quiz Lady is a fun premise seeking a sharper execution — unlike the brilliant Anne, Yu and her cast don’t have all the answers.

As thoughtfully rendered as much of Hologram is, the film eventually succumbs to the material’s fundamental triteness, offering done-to-death life lessons about second chances and the value of broadening one’s perspective.

The remake of Papillon doesn’t lack for potential metaphorical riches, yet this brutal, bruising film never quite connects with its deeper themes, resulting in a story full of suffering but not enough transcendence.

While there’s no denying the picture’s ferocious forward momentum and skilful execution, the empty swagger leaves the whole enterprise feeling a bit mechanical — a heist without the faintest whiff of escapist pleasure.

Spurlock again proves to be fascinated by the art of salesmanship, but too often Super Size Me 2 feels like its own hustle, peddling a slick, self-promotional investigation into a world that’s already fairly well covered.

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.

The film ultimately feels like a superficial examination of rich subject matter.

The picture’s initial comic energy proves hard to sustain even with a short runtime, though, as the jokes start to feel strained and the numbers grow uninspired.

Though suitably moving in parts, Desert Dancer is more dutiful than inspired, reducing a worthy message to lukewarm sermonising.

Aiming to be a blistering examination of America’s unwinnable War on Drugs, the high-octane King Ivory is intense without being insightful.

Drive-Away Dolls is frantic rather than inspired, a caper with no sense of the truly madcap.

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.

A so-so stoner film where the premise is almost always better than the execution.

While there’s energy and edge to the picture, Cruella feels stitched together from different influences in order to justify a rather blatant attempt to renew interest in a moribund property.

A solid but forgettable crime thriller whose best asset is Boseman’s commanding presence.

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.

Once that narrative path becomes clear, Penguin Bloom never really surprises, delivering a series of heartfelt but predictable story beats.

Starting off as a strained farce before segueing into a sappy family film, How To Be A Latin Lover has its likeable, goofy moments, although it is consistently undercut by a main character who is very difficult to love.

Rather than fleshing out its characters, the picture uses them as props to mock our obsession with our phones and, predictably, young people’s inability to interact with the real world.. For a film about the evils of artificial intelligence, Good Luck doesn’t have enough of a human element.

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.

For a spell, this sequel to the 2014 hit intrigues because of its insistence on taking time to establish melancholy themes and thoughtful tone. But no amount of Denzel Washington’s weary authority is enough to distract from the fact that this overstuffed, ultimately unsatisfying potboiler merely dresses up its clichés in strained gravitas.

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.

Neill Blomkamp puts the pedal to the metal with Gran Turismo, a high-octane underdog sports drama that boasts electrifying race-car sequences but a badly cliched narrative away from the track.

This fitfully funny comedy — in which they must come up with the perfect song to stop reality from folding in on itself — offers little beyond nostalgia for an onscreen friendship that was once far more excellent.

Certainly, The Mauritanian doesn’t lack for sincerity or muted rage. But the earnest, pat execution ultimately does a disservice to Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s arduous odyssey. His is a story that needs to be told, but with a little more urgency and ingenuity than what’s brought to bear here.

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.

A heartfelt but ultimately hobbled coming-of-age drama.

Comic-book fans have seen much of this film before, but Levi at least tries to make it soar.

Whatever mild pleasure can be derived from seeing Batman and Wonder Woman team up with other costumed crime-fighters quickly dissipates as it becomes clear that director Zack Snyder has again crafted a lumbering blockbuster that dilutes what’s so stirring about these fabled fictional champions.

While it’s impossible not to be somewhat caught up in these climbers’ life-or-death struggle, Everest is oddly uninvolving — it depicts a horrific scenario in an underwhelming, distancing way.

Silent Night works best as a grim chamber piece that subverts the season’s usual good cheer — or, depending on one’s temperament, serves as a tart distillation of the nagging gloom those who hate the holidays often feel.

More frustrating than nerve-wracking, Old is hampered by its one-dimensional characterisations within an intriguing set-up.

The Angry Birds Movie is fitfully funny but tends towards a madcap mixture of comedy and action which never develops much forward momentum. The joke-a-minute approach misses more than it hits, although the bright animation and adorably-rendered characters are decent compensation.

Lister-Jones gives a heartfelt performance as this unhappy woman coming to terms with her disappointments, and she’s assisted by Cailee Spaeny as her character’s younger self. But the slim story and wobbly execution ultimately undermine some deft observations about depression, forgiveness and the inner child who needs to be heard.

Director Nash Edgerton never really sinks his teeth into the delectable darkness of his hero’s nemeses, struggling to maintain the right acidic tone.

The fitfully amusing Werewolves Within tries to wring some laughs from that satiric premise, but this horror-comedy isn’t inspired enough in either its commentary or its collection of colourful characters to have much bite.

There are laughs and clever bits of business in “The Instigators,” but there’s never a reason to care.

After the sorry spectacle and blatant xenophobia of London Has Fallen, it’s almost a relief that Angel is merely a competent, second-rate action vehicle. This trilogy’s ambitions have never been particularly high, but at least this third chapter’s fleeting junk-food pleasures aren’t undermined by base pandering.

Trying to split the difference between trashy and classy, Red Sparrow is a sleek, juiced-up espionage thriller that overdoes everything: its brutal violence, its dramatic flourishes, its hairpin plot twists, and most certainly its sexpot shamelessness.

A heartfelt performance from Chris Evans as the conscientious caretaker of his brilliant niece isn’t ample compensation for a film lacking the same intelligence and inquisitiveness that its young protagonist possesses in abundance.

Despite how personally the filmmaker connects with this ambitious riff on the Cervantes novel, the long-time passion project succumbs to the same indulgences and weaknesses that have plagued his recent movies.

For all the big themes rustling around in Hunted, they lack the startling ferocity that develops on Eve’s face — for her, there’s nothing theoretical about this study of predatory male behaviour.

A girl-and-her-horse adventure that never really hits its stride, Spirit Untamed offers undemanding family entertainment alongside some easily digestible life lessons.

Annabelle Comes Home has effective scare sequences, especially as the film ratchets up the tension in its final reels, but this sequel ultimately feels too mechanical, and too familiar, to unnerve as proficiently as previous entries.

Neither the humour nor the script is particularly sharp, although younger viewers may not mind the slapstick simplicity.

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.

The adrenaline never stops pumping in Mile 22, a superficially kinetic thriller that simultaneously attempts to be politically savvy and an ultra-macho shoot-‘em-up. That juggling act proves too sophisticated for director Peter Berg who, in his fourth collaboration with Mark Wahlberg, again demonstrates his sufficient skill at crafting dynamic suspense sequences.

Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg are a likeable duo, and there are some spectacularly overblown set pieces, but this video-game adaptation ultimately feels too familiar, borrowing heavily from Raiders Of The Lost Ark and National Treasure when it’s not riffing on heist films and buddy comedies.

An overly self-conscious somberness infuses the film, keeping this heartrending tale from being as poignant as it could be.

By sidestepping the sharper, tougher questions about matters of the heart, the film still plays it too safe. Freyne may love all three characters, but what he doesn’t do is make his audience care deeply enough about which of them will get their happy ending—and which one won’t.

Although there are plenty of lyrical moments, Zemeckis’ lack of restraint and some questionable narrative choices undo what should be a moving affair.

Adele Exarchopoulos and Francois Civil may be top-billed, but this unapologetically sentimental drama actually works better in its first half when their adolescent counterparts take centre stage, seizing on the irrepressible excitement of first love.

The elegant tone undercuts the material’s inherent bite, ultimately defanging a picture that eventually shifts into a twisty thriller.

Taron Egerton brings a desperate energy to his role as one of those entrepreneurs who discovers how business was conducted behind the Iron Curtain. But director Jon S. Baird fumbles the narrative’s tricky tonal balance, resulting in a glib, convoluted film that is never as engrossing as the game these characters are fighting over.

Neither director Stephen Hopkins nor star Stephan James can bring Owens’ story to passionate life, resulting in a drama that’s well-meaning rather than riveting.

The gargantuan critters are dwarfed only by the derivativeness in Rampage, a clunky spectacle that, like many Dwayne Johnson vehicles, is elevated by his charismatic presence but not enough to recommend it.

Jokey rather than funny, and a bit forced when it’s trying to be sincere, Ant-Man has plenty of enthusiasm but not a lot of inspiration.

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.

This live-action remake of the 1941 Disney animated classic finds the eccentric, inconsistent filmmaker tapping into his career’s core emotional themes and, on occasion, Dumbo has the magic and wonder of his best work. (And that blue-eyed baby elephant is awfully cute.) But there remains a frustrating impersonality — not to mention an audience familiarity with his well-worn aesthetic — that keeps the film from soaring all that high.

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.

It’s to Ficarra and Requa’s credit that they try to juggle romance and political commentary, daring to make a studio movie that doesn’t fall into cookie-cutter genre rules. But the overriding problem is that Whiskey doesn’t go far enough in its risk-taking, settling for a story that gets more predictable as it rolls along.

The Kitchen may prove to be a meaningful time-capsule document, but is far less successful as broad entertainment.

Despite some initial swagger, this 1980s-set picture lacks the ingenuity of the previous two chapters – a disappointment made worse by West’s wan attempts to satirise the film industry’s shallowness.

When the film thoughtfully dissects the fable’s patriarchal attitude, this Cinderella can be touching and light on its feet. But too often, whether because of the subpar songs or the hit-or-miss comedy, Cannon’s rethink struggles to consistently dazzle — it’s a glass slipper that doesn’t quite fit.

Ryan Reynolds is endearingly wholesome as this likeable digital nonentity, but once the story’s initial burst of cleverness fades, director Shawn Levy becomes bogged down in convoluted plotting and the overfamiliarity of his seize-the-day message.

Poignant and frustrating in equal measure, The Light Between Oceans aspires to be an elegant melodrama, but the intelligence that director Derek Cianfrance and his capable cast bring to bear eventually becomes overwhelmed by the story’s emotional manipulations.

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.

Suburbicon warns of the dangers of moral rot infesting our communities. No word yet on the effect that chronic smugness might have.

Best appreciated as a sensory experience whose deeper meanings aren’t nearly as profound as the filmmaker and cast believe, Song To Song demonstrates that Malick remains a singular artist — albeit one in a palpable rut.

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

Boasting some strong performances and clever writing, this breezy overview of the author and his magnum opus, The Catcher In The Rye, fails to fully capture the magnitude of this brilliant author’s struggle for greatness and then, later, his decision to walk away from literary stardom.

Told mostly through the screens that consume the characters’ lives, the feature debut of director Carey Williams has its superficial pleasures as a riff on our media-soaked moment, but the novelty of the approach is hard to sustain, and a fresh-faced cast fails to capitalise on the play’s enduring appeal.

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.

Twenty years after The Fifth Element, writer-director Luc Besson has once again delivered a widescreen, sci-fi spectacle full of rampant whimsy, lavish effects and creaky social commentary, resulting in a nervy, go-for-broke opus whose audacity is more laudable than its execution.

The Next Level lacks the gleeful inventiveness of Jungle, in which three well-known stars slyly subverted their personas while embodying the insecurities and naivety of their teenage players. Absent that, it mostly feels gimmicky; the cast straining to recapture the hilarious rapport that once seemed so effortless.

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.

Qualley brings the required smoky-sexpot energy, but Julia is so underwritten that the actress turns her into an unintentional parody of a familiar character. Also disappointing is Powell’s glib portrayal of Beckett.

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.

The film’s down-and-dirty nastiness does have its merits, but the bloodshed isn’t nearly as interesting when the characters are as exciting as a spreadsheet.

Despite the clear compassion the filmmakers have for the title character and those in her orbit, the result is an oddly alienating movie that treats every plot point with hyperbolic life-or-death stakes.

This tonally tricky comedy-drama tackles aging, loss, the Holocaust, Jewishness, and the difficulty of determining the truth in a fake-news world. But Johansson’s well-meaning film couldn’t be more aggravating, and its biggest problem is its insistence that we find Eleanor so damn endearing, no matter what.

All Eyez on Me risks little, and as a result it’s not worthy of his complicated legacy.

If G20 barely registers as original, its star remains commanding. Even when Davis dutifully goes through the motions as stern government official Amanda Waller in the recent DC films, she seems incapable of phoning in a role or winking to the audience.

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.

Last Knights is little more than a dutifully compiled collection of genre conventions, its tale of a group of brave knights seeking vengeance for their fallen leader so undemanding that it’s almost charmingly pedestrian.

Taking the reins from Michael Bay, directing duo Adil & Bilall supply loads of energised style, but without the panache or shamelessness of their predecessor. As for stars Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, they don’t seem rejuvenated by this reunion, mostly re-creating the forced back-and-forth quipping that wasn’t even fresh back when they were younger men.

Despite the potentially fun pairing of Ayo Edebiri and John Malkovich as, respectively, the writer and her messiah-like subject, neither the film’s commentary on celebrity nor its escalating body count pack much punch.

To be sure, Tjahjanto provides these sequences with bruising action, mixed with a touch of dark comedy, but they are shot and staged without much distinction. And because the audience is now no longer startled to learn that nerdy Hutch can kill people, his ability to dispatch dozens of baddies feels anticlimactic.

Wheatley’s hyperbolic set pieces feel perfunctory rather than euphoric or hilariously bombastic.

Terry George buries a worthy subject in a stuffy story of unrequited love and selfless heroism that gives off a strong scent of mustiness.

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.

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.

Jones, never winking at the rampant absurdity, gives the proceedings a little grounding. But Besson wants off the leash and his instincts lead him astray.

On the whole, 15:17’s slavish adherence to reality ends up arguing that, sometimes, a little Hollywood phoniness can go a long way.

While Jurassic World boasts a few efficient sequences...mostly it’s a grim affair that’s not leavened by adequate humour or a palpable romantic spark between Pratt and Howard.

Jojo Rabbit doesn’t lack for ambition or sincerity of purpose — which only makes it more disappointing that the film proves to be so meagre. ... Rather than being bracing or dangerous, this comedy ends up feeling a little too safe, a little too scattered, and a little too inconsequential.

Although Moonfall is packed with such giddy good cheer that its abundant narrative cliches and dismal dialogue are almost part of the charm, even game performances from Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson aren’t enough to save the day.

Unlike The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, which were energised by the prospect of returning to Lucas’ galaxy, Rise feels obligatory and uninspired. Rey may learn who she really is, but this unengaging franchise finale remains disappointingly nondescript.

The only thing saving the film from utter catastrophe is Watts.

While the actors and puppeteers are committed to The Happytime Murders’ surreal reality, they almost do too good a job: This world’s authenticity is so complete that you’re left mostly slogging through how inanimate most everything else about the movie is.

A grab bag of vulgarities, sex jokes, slapstick, nudity and chase scenes, the action-comedy CHIPS holds together better than expected, thanks largely to the goofy, dim-bulb rapport between stars Dax Shepard and Michael Peña.

A bullet-riddled tale of unlikely female empowerment, Miss Bala toys with exploitation and social commentary but doesn’t have the ingenuity or nerve to successfully pull off either.

Lacking the freshness of the original trilogy or the meticulous, insidious tone of Fincher’s film, Spider’s Web mostly feels like a holding action to ensure that more sequels can be made in the future. That timidity flies in the face of this series’ inherent edginess.

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

For a movie that’s meant to have some magic in it, Peculiar Children displays little buoyancy, the proceedings weighed down by tedious world-building and perfunctory thematic lip-service about the need for community and the power that comes from finding one’s voice.

Lacking the killer instinct of its ferocious titular beasts, Meg 2: The Trench lumbers through the waters, failing as both a gripping thriller and a cheeky ’so bad it’s good’ piece of late-summer escapism.

The more that Nalluri tries to connect Dickens’ personal breakthroughs to those of his fictional character, the less authentic it feels. Inadvertently, this forgettable bauble ends up illustrating just how rare and precious true inspiration is.

Sarandon is as close as The Fabulous Four gets to touching on genuine emotion or comedy. . . but the prevailing sentiment is what a shame it is to bring together such entertaining women and then strand them with material so beneath them.

Audiences familiar with this kind of story — and the inevitable complications that ensue once characters try to hide a brutal crime — will be ahead of the overheated storytelling.

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.

With more than a dash of Jason Bourne and Mission: Impossible, director Stefano Sollima’s undistinguished shoot-‘em-up feels so indebted to its influences that it never establishes much of a personality of its own.

Thurber spends so much time referencing films he loves that Red Notice feels more like an elaborate game of dress-up than a worthy heir to their greatness.

A Simple Favor wants it both ways, hoping to be a stylish, twisty, trashy thriller while simultaneously acting superior to the genre’s slinky pleasures. Those conflicting strategies do the film no favours.

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

The Curse Of La Llorona is haunted by a reliance on musty horror tropes. This competent but derivative exorcism film feels like multiplex filler for undemanding audiences who will happily sample any new addition to the Conjuring cinematic universe.

This Prohibition-era drama deals limply with themes of loyalty, love, power and redemption, but not in any unique way, its emotional punch as vague as its cipher of a main character.

Despite an appealing cast and some nicely executed moments (not to mention some direct references to the original attraction) Dear White People director Justin Simien’s third feature is mostly a dispiriting experience.

The directorial debut of Australian filmmaker Kim Farrant is undone by a series of overwrought, miscalculated scenes that can’t be redeemed by an expert cast that’s fully committed to the heavy-handedness.

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.

And while the events depicted in The Alto Knights will result in a major law-enforcement action that profoundly shaped the American mafia, Levinson’s sombre, pedestrian approach captures neither the excitement nor the momentousness of the incident.

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

Joaquin Phoenix demonstrates again his willingness to take risks — in this case, singing alongside the far more technically skilled Lady Gaga — but a performance that was once so attuned to his character’s fragile mental state is, in Folie A Deux, littered with familiar flourishes.

A frustrating drama that struggles to be either a thoughtful character study or a slow-burn thriller.

This gentle comedy has some touching moments between Crystal and Tiffany Haddish, playing a struggling singer who befriends his character, but Here Today ultimately proves too saccharine and manipulative to elicit the tearjerking reaction it so strenuously strives to achieve.

It’s no spoiler to report that not everyone in Army Of The Dead will make it out alive — what is surprising is how little you’ll care who does.

Jack Black’s mildly theatrical, knowingly hammy performance is but one of this horror-comedy’s overdone elements, and the film fails to rise above the level of perfunctory effects-driven spectacle.

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.

On occasion, the sincerity and unabashed emotion can be bracing, but more often this rambunctiously enthusiastic writer-director overestimates how compelling his protagonists’ plight is, giving us a florid melodrama without enough grit underneath the operatics.

The filmmakers rarely go beyond being pleased with how strange this convergence of pop-culture and political figures must have been, and so Elvis & Nixon comes across as both thimble-deep and distractingly self-satisfied.

By striving for realism, The Apprentice ends up dramatically flat, the recitation of Trump’s most infamous incidents ... playing out perfunctorily.

Clearly a commentary on global warming, which folds neatly into a treatise on our ongoing Covid-19 crisis, Don’t Look Up takes aim at plenty of ills — especially the scourge of science-deniers. But a smug, self-satisfied approach proves insufficient at addressing the legitimate woes at core of this picture.

What proves irritating throughout the movie is the sense that Fogelman has chosen the easiest, least interesting execution of a rich premise.

A ripe, bittersweet romantic tragedy lies at the heart of Tulip Fever, but director Justin Chadwick’s aggressive tastefulness smothers the life from this potentially lusty melodrama.

The director doesn’t draw well-rounded performances from Bruno or Eastick, failing to capture the awe or confusion of youth. What we get instead are adrenalised chase scenes and needlessly showy special effects that lack charm.

Despite that juicy setup, Dangerous Animals is a disappointingly straightforward and ultimately underwhelming horror movie, offering little of the grim poetry of Byrne’s previous work and far too much of the narrative predictability that in the past he astutely sidestepped.

One wouldn’t expect A Walk In The Woods to be a rat-a-tat-tat 1930s comedy, but between the stars’ rusty comic timing and the script’s stale setups, the movie simply isn’t that funny, more likely to produce a smile than even a chuckle.

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.

Kraven The Hunter is, by far, the most graphic and violent of the Spider-Man Universe pictures, but that extra bloodshed does little to quicken the pulse.

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.

The stakes are higher, the action is bigger, the ambitions are grander, the jokes are appreciably less funny. Like many comedy sequels, Zoolander 2 supersizes everything in such a way that it’s that much more apparent how few of the jokes are connecting.

While this medium-budgeted action film clearly hopes to launch a cinematic series, the YA trappings feel familiar, despite some intriguing ideas about toxic masculinity and adolescent insecurity.

The Hunt is the cinematic equivalent of watching strangers argue on the internet about politics: It’s fleetingly amusing but, ultimately, not the best use of anyone’s time.

Unfortunately, the film often feels as unremarkable as its protagonists, evincing little of the impressive spectacle or snarky wit of Marvel’s best installments.

Although it is initially intriguing to see Nick and Donnie put aside their differences to form a fragile truce, their wary partnership does not generate much spark.

This strained musical is content to play to the cheap seats. Earnest in the extreme and armed with lethal amounts of razzle-dazzle, the feature debut of commercial director Michael Gracey is an all-out assault of sentiment, pop songs and dime-store psychology that’s somewhat held together by Hugh Jackman’s likably shameless portrayal of this striving charmer.

Though it’s laudable that Vallée and his cast tried not to make just another story about someone wallowing in his grief, their alternative coddles Davis’s mourning with a rampant colourfulness that’s suffocating.

The movie is competently made, but also perfunctory, telling us things about the greed of rich business executives and the shallowness of cable TV that we already know.

Despite the occasional cheeky moment and brutal slaying, a property that once satirised horror cliches has largely succumbed to them.

Adam Driver brings a brooding energy to the role of a tortured genius architect seeking to craft a modern utopia in a city threatened by mindless spectacle and rampant greed, but Megalopolis is stymied by arbitrary plotting and numbing excess. One can feel Coppola’s anger and sorrow over the decline of his beloved America, but narrative coherence is far less apparent.

The first Transporter film in seven years is moderately entertaining and reliably ludicrous in all the predictable ways, but the film’s new sharp-dressed driver doesn’t possess the effortless stoic wit of the original trilogy’s Jason Statham, which ends up making all the difference.

Bloodier but not better, the rebooted Mortal Kombat is a far more violent affair than the 1995 original, hewing closer in spirit to the gory video game which inspired the film franchise. And while there’s some fleeting gross-out glee in watching the martial-arts carnage — pulverised heads, severed limbs, a beating heart torn from a victim’s chest — the overkill only underlines how feeble the storytelling is otherwise.

The whole endeavour ends up feeling fussy and clever rather than incisive and nuanced — especially when a late twist seriously jeopardises plausibility.

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

Boasting a darker, more nihilistic streak than the typical comic-book film, this Warner Bros. release has its kinky pleasures and some amusing nastiness, but in the final analysis there’s simply too much flexing of empty attitude — and far too much self-congratulation for how edgy it thinks it is.

It’s not a good sign that, as the film crosscuts between its different story threads, Jolie’s becomes the least interesting.

As kinetic as its predecessor — and just as belaboured — Kingsman: The Golden Circle serves up another batch of hyper-stylised action, irreverent humour and sharp threads, resulting in a film that’s not nearly as cool as it thinks it is.

This iconic archaeologist has spent his life digging for the treasures of the past — sadly, Dial Of Destiny does the same thing, pillaging our collective fond memories of a once-great franchise.

Creed II director Steven Caple Jr. brings a little playfulness and emotion to the series but, unfortunately, the clattering action and self-important tone remains.

There’s very little that’s shocking — and not nearly enough that is funny — about this romantic comedy.

Idris Elba makes for a dashing, haunted gunslinger assigned to safeguard the universe, but whether it’s Matthew McConaughey’s hammy turn as an all-powerful villain or the generic effects work, The Dark Tower proves to be a movie filled with faint ambitions and an even weaker pulse.

Between the strained punchlines and the unsurprising plot twists, the picture feels obligatory rather than inspired.

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.

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.

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.