Tim Grierson

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.

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

Marc By Sofia is light on probing insights, instead offering viewers a chance to see a relaxed Jacobs talk to a close friend about his inspirations and artistic philosophy. Still, the uninitiated may crave a more rigorous, extensive overview of the man’s redoubtable career.

Although the two leads have a steamy rapport, their chemistry cannot overcome a predictable and shallow saga about grief and second chances.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Very effective in its flamboyant flourishes but dialled up so high it can feel excessively brooding and melodramatic, the film makes no apologies for depicting desire as an addictive drug, inviting the audience to succumb to the story’s narcotic pull

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

Roher’s willingness to blindly accept any and all of his speakers’ pronouncements leaves The AI Doc feeling toothless. ... Clearly, the filmmakers want to present the material in an evenhanded fashion so that viewers can make up their own mind, but in the name of so-called fairness, the documentary lacks any real perspective or inquisitiveness.

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

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.

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