Tim Grierson

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.