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.

A vital cinematic document. ... The conversations could not be more stimulating, offering a glimpse of Black America past and present that is joyous, defiant and sobering.

In truth, Buddy is not especially scary, its many kill scenes staged for laughs. But if this horror-comedy makes an obvious point — television shows meant for kids sure are weird — Kelly finds enough fresh ways to exploit the idea.

The film refuses to go in predictable directions, unveiling bizarre side characters and travelling down odd narrative backroads. But that occasional bagginess also allows for a richly textured picture bursting with energy.

This heartfelt picture can be overly familiar, but Poulter’s intensely interior performance lends the proceedings sufficient edge and fascination.

Consistently intriguing and filled with tender interludes, this elliptical drama is the filmmaker’s most experimental work – although it frustrates as much as it enraptures.

The picture deftly blends genres to create an arresting snapshot of the ricocheting carnage of sexual violence.

The film struggles to juggle its combination of rage and humour, satire and sadness, but the game performances mostly help gloss over the material’s familiarity.

I Want Your Sex ends up being more fizzle than sizzle.

Wilson sometimes struggles to make this feature-length documentary as consistently entertaining as his old series’ half-hour episodes. But he continues to mine surprisingly emotional moments from his wryly comic approach.

Such questions are central to this elusive marvel, which invites the viewer to complete the drawing that Schilinski evocatively sketches.

Despite their clear affection for these women, the Dardenne brothers never sugarcoat their characters’ unenviable circumstance or latch onto phony bromides to alleviate our anxiety. And yet Young Mothers contains its share of sweetness and light.

A Private Life offers plenty of fizzy pleasures alongside somber reflections on the passage of time and the regrets you have to live with.

Homegrown never makes excuses for its subjects — there’s no blaming their ugly views on economic disparity — but the disturbing ordinariness of these men is chilling.

Primate is often a blunt instrument, but these set pieces exude a little elegance in their sustained dread.

The movie is most cutting when it moves away from the big set pieces and, instead, examines the small ways that employees lose their humanity to a capitalist system that’s out to destroy them.

Each new segment of All That’s Left of You is its own self-contained drama, but they build on one another, the past’s invisible weight bearing down on children who cannot fully comprehend the sorrow that came before, but have grown up knowing nothing else.

The movie glides by so unassumingly, you may be stunned how moved you are by the end.

The beloved animated character’s latest big-screen adventure is an amusing romp full of the expected horrible puns, dopey slapstick and generally cheerful vibe.

The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent director Tom Gormican once again latches on to a meta-movie idea with great comic potential, but this limp satire of vain actors, deluded filmmakers and shamelessly recycled IP quickly starts to sputter.

It is as visually extraordinary as its predecessors and, while the film contains some of those earlier pictures’ weaknesses, the deficiencies are starting to feel like charming quirks in an otherwise transporting series.

With Resurrection, Bi delivers something uncommonly rich, boldly conceiving his latest as a salute to the history of film. Still, his focus remains on people — whether they be in his stories or watching in the theater.

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.

If Mendonça Filho overstuffs his accomplished picture, it’s a fitting rebuke to a violent regime that would have tried to tamp down his voice. He finds a worthy partner in Moura, who embodies the rugged sex appeal and muffled anguish of a principled individual in a world gone mad.

What makes this adult animation so affecting is the writer-director’s commitment to fortifying his spectacle with a deep emotional undercurrent.

The killer mascots may spring the coop, but this sequel never breaks free of its own conventionality.

La Grazia salutes simple, humble decency, and writer-director Paolo Sorrentino follows the example of his protagonist, largely avoiding the usual array of visual flourishes that have marked his previous collaborations with Servillo. The result is a decidedly reflective film that’s among the director’s most affecting.

This propulsively entertaining, bracingly amoral character study is powered by Timothee Chalamet’s performance as a despicable egoist who happily manipulates those around him.

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.

“My Undesirable Friends” captures dark times with some of the funniest people you’d ever hope to have as sisters-in-arms. Defiant, emotional and life-affirming, the film presents us with endearing patriots who love their country but hate its leaders, sucking us into a riveting tale with a powerful undertow.

White lands on an organic happy ending that doesn’t negate Gibson’s sad circumstance but, instead, reinforces everything that was so inspirational about their poetry and worldview.

While Walker-Silverman couldn’t have imagined his movie’s jarring real-world parallels, Rebuilding is as much a character study as it is a warning about our increasingly fragile planet and the beloved places we call home.

If the Zootopia series is about looking past our biased assumptions about others, the new film makes the point most effectively as its two leads open up about their own shortcomings, allowing themselves to be vulnerable. Goodwin and Bateman are certainly most appealing when their characters are at their most genuine.

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.

Ultimately director Jon M. Chu’s more-is-more approach has a numbing effect, the endless spectacle leaving little room for nuance, depth or genuine feeling.

Ultimately, one suspects Perkins views Liz’s dilemma as little more than an excuse to construct a fun exercise in nightmare inducement that possesses the same craftsmanship that Malcolm clearly put into his swanky cabin. Each is a sight to see and neither is worth visiting for too long.

Unfortunately, this heartfelt film resonates most strongly through those majestic landscapes, not via the story that unfolds.

Fraser walks through this aggressively sappy drama with the aura of simple goodness that has served him well. But such concentrated radiance starts to feel like a denial of the painful reality Rental Family ignores. The movie wants to give you a hug, but you may be tempted to slap it across the face.

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

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.

The film has much to say about peer pressure and male rites of passage, although Polinger’s points can become repetitive and his insights not especially deep. Still, this uneven mixture of coming-of-age drama and psychological horror suggests a filmmaker with a flair for unsettling atmosphere.

Reconceiving the iconic sci-fi villain as an underdog hero, Predator: Badlands is a consistently entertaining action-thriller filled with propulsive set pieces.

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.

Del Toro’s undying adoration for his fantastical creatures leaves us hungry to learn more about the inner workings of the man who brought them to life.

The picture affirms Nebraska’s stature without shedding much light on the man who brought it to life.

Of the many artists Hawke has honored on screen, he has never depicted one so touchingly diminished — someone so consumed with envy who nonetheless cannot lie to himself about the beauty of the art around him.

If It Was Just an Accident lacks the conceptual audacity of Panahi’s This Is Not a Film or 2022’s No Bears, the film’s straightforward narrative proves to be just another feint, disguising the writer-director’s anger and sorrow at his own mistreatment and that of so many Iranians

Unfortunately, the sharp point of view and creative risk-taking present in Ansari’s acclaimed series Master Of None (co-created with Alan Yang) are nowhere to be seen in this pedestrian comedy full of convoluted plot points.

On the whole Is This Thing On? settles comfortably into a melancholy register, watching Alex and Tess negotiate their new normal, with or without punchlines.

There’s reason to celebrate that Daniel Day-Lewis has chosen, at least temporarily, to cancel his retirement, but “Anemone” as a whole strains for a greatness that its star effortlessly conveys. Amid the film’s self-conscious depiction of a brewing tempest, he remains a true force of nature.

For all the creativity on display in Tron: Ares, it’s in service of a story with scant signs of life.

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.

The Ugly is less concerned with the machinations of the whodunit and more invested in how physical appearance defines both ourselves and our feelings about others.

This audacious action-thriller is the filmmaker’s most purely entertaining vehicle, but underneath its adrenalised set pieces are quieter concerns about how best to make lasting change in a corrupt world.

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.

Seeking to be a nonstop adrenaline jolt, Fuze starts off strongly but eventually fizzles, its high-octane ambitions soon becoming mechanical and rote.

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

With its restrained tone and measured performances, The Sun Rises creates a fragile world populated by characters who don’t know how to move forward — either separately or, perhaps, together.

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.

A delicate exploration of how art can address (but never fully heal) personal pain, Hamnet is a potent love story anchored by Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal’s expertly modulated performances.

Those laudable intentions can too often result in a lethargic narrative. The characters may contain degrees of shading, but they rarely come to life, leaving Nuremberg feeling like a professional but dusty reenactment.

Unfortunately, no matter the initial electricity DaCosta brings to the material, the crackle gradually starts to wane, the momentum diluted by extraneous subplots and slack pacing.

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.

Roofman sidesteps this tale’s most potentially fascinating elements to sell a more conventional narrative.

Donzelli’s observations on the working poor don’t dig deep enough, resulting in an overly polished glimpse at the struggles of making ends meet.

Amidst Wake Up Dead Man’s more sombre atmosphere and grimmer sense of humour, Craig and O’Connor add additional emotional shading to a film that, like the series as a whole, is still primarily meant to be an entertaining puzzle.

The Smashing Machine may not always transcend genre conventions, but is a consistently idiosyncratic and candid look at a working-class athlete with a complicated romantic relationship and a crippling opioid addiction. Despite his hulking physique, Dwayne Johnson plays Kerr with real vulnerability as his championship aspirations slip away.

As is often the case with del Toro’s pictures, Frankenstein is frequently a triumph of spectacle over nuance — grand gestures over precise character insights. Still, by envisioning this confrontation between its paired protagonists as an epic metaphor for humanity’s hubris at trying to play God, the filmmaker knows who the novel’s true monster is.

Although Jay Kelly explores familiar thematic terrain of an ageing man wrestling with regret, this tender film is mildly radical in its insistence that celebrities were once just everyday people — and might still be during unguarded moments.

By depicting Coppola simply as a diligent director at work, Megadoc is ennobling without being hagiographic.

For as much as Huang tries to go for a more freewheeling approach, treating his interviews like off-the-cuff conversations taking place in bars and restaurants, Vice Is Broke isn’t that intimate or revealing.

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.

The deceptively straightforward package actually benefits a band that enjoys coloring outside the lines. Devo allows Devo the space to be its idiosyncratic self, both in the present-day interviews and the wealth of archival footage. Devo’s reign may have been relatively short, but Smith gives the band the fond memorializing it deserves.

The film’s intermittent charms come thanks to some of the voice actors.

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.

Marked by strong, reserved performances — and deeply compassionate to its soulsick characters — this quietly absorbing drama has secrets in store, each of them revealed with uncommon elegance.

Late Night director Nisha Ganatra brings a bighearted sincerity and more than a few touching moments, and it is a pleasure to see Lohan back in a major big-screen role. But her charming performance cannot compensate fully for a perhaps unavoidably convoluted plot.

Like the filmmaker’s 2022 feature Barbarian, Weapons takes its time laying out an elaborate story, repeatedly shifting perspectives and main characters until the myriad strands come together in immensely satisfying fashion.

This film may seem stupid, but it takes real smarts — and a lot of joy — to keep the crowdpleasing silliness zipping along.

Oh, Hi! is an ambitious, thought-provoking look at modern romance that starts with the terror of weekend getaways before dissecting the gender stereotypes that keep people from finding their happily-ever-after.

Viewers are left with some likeable, grounded performances from Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby and Ebon Moss-Bachrach — and a gnawing sense that this visually appealing sci-fi adventure is a missed opportunity.

Director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson brings some stylishness to the killings, but I Know What You Did Last Summer’s lack of compelling characters robs the story of its juiciest hook: these brutal slayings are cosmic comeuppance for their duplicity.

Although overstuffed and uneven, at its best Gunn’s Superman combines the most admirable attributes of both character and director, resulting in an ambitious, occasionally stirring film that is weirder, nervier and more thoughtful than most blockbusters.

As an action-comedy, Heads Of State is more successful at the former than the latter. It’s a junky, diverting movie, one with major tonal issues and a completely predictable storyline, no matter how many twists and red herrings the filmmakers throw at us. Not sharp enough to be memorable but just well-crafted enough that you wish everyone involved had tried a little harder.

This sequel’s real sin is the fact the usually fearsome beasts are not suitably terrifying, resulting in some mildly effective action sequences but nothing that suggests the series is in the throes of a creative renewal.

The 59-year-old actor’s legacy may indeed be one of perseverance, but “Not Alone Anymore” touchingly details just how much more challenging her battles with addiction and sexual abuse have been than those of other famous people.

Caught by the Tides serves as a handy primer on Jia’s fascination with China’s political, cultural and economic evolution, amplifying those dependable themes with the benefit of working across a larger canvas of a quarter-century.

Don’t think of The Damned as an antiwar film — consider it an origin story for Minervini’s perceptive, understated exploration of an America still in conflict.

Scintillating on the track but not as agile away from the races, F1 is a thrilling sports film susceptible to every cliché of its genre, confident that its expert setpieces will outrun all that is otherwise derivative about this underdog story.

The best Pixar films make their dexterous mixture of humour, emotion and spectacle feel effortless but the ingredients do not blend as smoothly in Elio.

On its surface, Materialists tackles familiar romantic-comedy debates — contentment versus passion, money versus happiness — but Song approaches these themes with a frankness that makes them feel fresh.

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.

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.

Action fans should savour the spectacularly violent set pieces, but a bland villain and an underwhelming narrative ultimately prove even more lethal than de Armas’s fighting skills.

This new instalment knows which story beats to hit, but it has little grasp of the emotional undercurrents that made the original resonate — how it touched on adolescent insecurities, first love, and the scourge of school bullies.

Josh O’Connor is marvelous as this sputtering soul with no aptitude for illegality — or, frankly, anything else — as he drifts through an unremarkable life that’s slowly slipping through his fingers.

With modest ambitions and a slender runtime, the film proves to be a sexy, amusing time – despite being fairly forgettable.

A wry smackdown of four insanely rich bros hanging out at a gaudy estate in the Utah mountains, the movie generates a decent amount of laughs, but it’s best when Armstrong puts satire aside for rage, seething at the tech kingpins destroying our society to increase their profits.

On its surface, the film may touch on the familiar theme of how artists draw from their own lives, but Renate Reinsve and Stellan Skarsgard bring incredible tenderness to a story that is ultimately about what children and parents never say to one another — and whether those lifelong silences can ever be broken.

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.

Eagles Of The Republic reunites Saleh with Fares Fares, the lead in the earlier pictures, to mock film industry egos while delivering a chilling commentary about a tyrannical government which imposes its will both through media propaganda and deadly force.

Case 137’s no-frills style can leave the film feeling a tad generic, and one wishes that Moll resisted underlining some of his thematic points so strenuously. But there’s a laudable awareness of the racial, class and gender issues at play in this story of a dogged middle-aged woman going into battle against a heavily male police force.

Ultimately, the picture’s energetic swirl comes across as slightly hollow, its barrage of themes and impulses never finding harmony.

Although The Phoenician Scheme is transporting — an effect amplified by Alexandre Desplat’s lilting orchestral score, supplemented by selections from Stravinsky and Beethoven — the narrative proves to be fussy rather than delightful.

The Oscar-winning actress gives a volcanic performance that is nonetheless very controlled, avoiding melodramatic theatrics. Pattinson plays off his costar superbly, giving us an inattentive husband who comes to realise how little he understands about his wife.

Despite an honourable commitment to exploring how severe adolescent trauma casts a long shadow over a person’s life, the film’s patina of pain eventually grows repetitive, undercutting the sensitivity Stewart and her lead bring to the proceedings.

In certain moments, the film’s absurdism recalls that era’s paranoia and volcanic anger, but too often Aster overshoots the mark, collecting the period’s signature elements without finding much that is smart to say about them.

As a meticulously coiled study of nasty doings under one roof, Bring Her Back convincingly argues that terror starts at home.

Deaf President Now! honors that struggle, even if the polished packaging doesn’t always possess a similar righteous fury.

Not quite a thriller and not quite a horror movie, April is all the more haunting for never pinning down the roots of Nina’s retreat from life while dedicating herself to improving the lives of others.

If the film cannot entirely shake the suspicion that the creative peaks of this franchise are in the past, the depth of feeling in the performances suggests Marvel still has compelling tales to tell.

Each of the three leads in Blue Sun Palace dreams of a transcendence that may never come — Tsang’s superb debut puts viewers on their side, even though we see how long the odds are against them.

“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.

Although sometimes a little overstuffed, the picture consistently gets under the skin thanks to its expertly-staged fright sequences that reverberate with insidious societal ills.

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.

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

Shannon laudably offers no easy solutions, although his sincerely crafted dead end feels insufficient in its own way.

The characters’ dilemma may, ultimately, be meaningless set against the ebbs and flows of history, but Gomes, who won the directing prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, invests it with such elegance that it becomes nearly mythic: a touching fable of cowardice and devotion with tragic undertones. The scenes may be dreamlike, but they’re our shared dream of being swept away by the movies.

In its more diverting moments, A Working Man echoes its no-fuss protagonist, executing compact action set pieces that eschew flashy CGI in favour of good-old-fashioned shootouts and hand-to-hand fighting. But that spareness too often belies the lack of ingenuity elsewhere.

This lack of sparkle can be felt throughout the remake which, like so many of the studio’s recent redos, feels stiff and reverential — a cynical reproduction suffused with deadening CGI.

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.

The sci-fi horror-thriller Ash makes the most of a minimal budget, casting Eiza Gonzalez as the lone survivor on a distant planet whois unsure how she got there or who she is. With Aaron Paul playing a fellow astronaut trying to help jog her memory about a massacre that occurred at the base, the film quickly establishes an aura of paranoia and bad vibes, paving the way for deft twists and an appreciably gory finale.

Unfortunately, the film’s off-kilter tone and the characters’ beguiling opacity only enrapture for so long. The constant commentary about the banality of suburbia deadens the story, and a couple of late-reel twists fail to satisfy.

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.

There’s a B-movie purity to how this franchise conducts its business, eschewing the flash of modern blockbusters for a more pummelling, elemental approach to its shootouts and hand-to-hand fight scenes. On top of that, The Accountant 2 has added a winning sense of humour to the equation.

Unfortunately, the ending, like so much of what came before, is missing that certain magic, which not even a unicorn can provide.

Highly entertaining from start to finish, the film benefits from David Koepp’s inventive screenplay and Soderbergh’s storytelling swagger.

Filmmaker Jessica Palud’s second feature may be uneven, but it hits on something fundamental about its troubled, defiant subject.

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.

Last Breath honours the constant possibility in work like this that the worst could happen at any moment — and that the line between living and dying is always frighteningly slender.

What emerges is a history lesson but also a personal journey of sorts for Koch and Schachmann, grandchildren of Jewish immigrants who discover an emotional connection to their cultural roots along the way.

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

To experience this film is to be overcome with melancholy. The love story’s fragility makes such a sentiment inescapable, but so is the sight of so many faces who are no longer with us.

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.

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.

For all its unpredictability and nerve, the film too often feels snarky rather than subversive.

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

No Other Land’s sense of grim futility is very much the point — it’s what the strong count on in order to suppress those who oppose them. Anyone who sees this devastating film may share in that sense of hopelessness. But we can no longer say we had no idea what was going on.

The perfunctory martial-arts sequences and convoluted plotting conspire to make this a painfully uninspired proposition.

Many Americans recognise the injustices within the country’s prison system, but the case has rarely been laid out as comprehensively as it is in The Alabama Solution.

Ewing and Grady want to leave viewers with a heartwarming message about the capacity of people to discover their true selves.

Sometimes overwhelming but always penetrating, the film practically demands multiple viewings to absorb its rich collection of ideas, images and music.

The actors’ on-screen rapport is sweet and loving, and they lean into deadpan once Together gets bloodier and increasingly more outrageous.

Director Clint Bentley sculpts a sentimental story whose gentle ironies and modest design have a cumulative power.

Delicately segueing from deadpan humour to delicate poignancy, Sorry, Baby is guided by the filmmaker’s graceful lead performance, which captures the guilt, anger and sadness of a woman who once seemingly had a bright future — until, suddenly, everything changed.

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.

Music-video director Isaiah Saxon’s feature debut sometimes wobbles when balancing its impish sense of humour with darker tone, but ultimately, the picture’s peculiarity becomes part of its charm — as difficult to resist as that adorable titular critter.

This twisted fable suggests a filmmaker who gleefully goes to extremes, but the story’s shocks and stomach-churning gags prove more memorable than the underlying observations about the way in which women are pitted against one another in a patriarchal society.

Thompson reveals his deep love for this musician by looking past the rock-doc cliches, searching for the soul of a man who put every ounce of it into his songs.

The Perfect Neighbor’s sombrely objective approach invites audiences to discover how this tragedy unfolded and speculate what, if anything, could have prevented it.

Hyde’s fifth feature is an affectionate, perceptive observation about the quiet difficulties of family, even if the picture overstays its welcome with a melodramatic, predictable final third.

Byrne is raw, brittle and believably volatile, bringing such immediacy and nervous energy to every scene that we understand why Linda cannot think straight — and why the seemingly most simple tasks (like making an appointment with the doctor) are beyond her.

Kwedar never denies the harsh realities of the penitentiary system but, by preferring an ultimately hopeful tone, he eventually falls victim to some of the tropes of the prison drama which his thoughtful picture had, until that point, mostly sidestepped.

Despite the comforting pleasures of watching old-fashioned battle scenes waged with swords, axes and crossbows, Bafta-winning director Nick Hamm’s action film recycles the stirring spectacle of bygone epics without having much new to tell.

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

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.

Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language feature travels across the landscape of that most potentially treacly of genres, the cancer drama, locating something tough, tender and brittlely funny in this portrait of two women facing their own impasses.

Whether it’s Jim Carrey playing not one but two supervillains, or the introduction of even more supporting characters, Sonic 3 wears out its welcome, resulting in an entertaining but exhausting affair.

The CG images still impress, and there are gripping moments during the film’s second half as the insecure Mufasa embraces his destiny. But like too many origin stories, Mufasa often rehashes what was once stirring about this materia

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.

The film manages to illuminate precisely what makes Dylan’s opaqueness so captivating.

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.

Eggers gives us a gothic horror that teeters on the edge of madness, resulting in an elegantly woven tapestry of encroaching evil. Led by Bill Skarsgard as the unholy titular monster, this Nosferatu leaves its mark as one of the most memorable of vampire tales.

By making the political personal, Rasoulof warns us that repression starts at home.

Moana 2 boasts such beautiful visuals, it’s all the more disappointing that the sequel’s story and songs struggle to keep pace.

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.

Ridley Scott has lost none of his flair for grandeur, but ultimately Gladiator II is diminished by a nagging recognition that this material felt fresher in the first film — and that Denzel Washington’s devilish schemer steals the picture from Mescal.

In the fun but strained Red One, director Jake Kasdan serves up an effects-heavy action comedy with a disarming sweetness that is undone by an overly complicated plot and some tired blockbuster conventions.

The film builds to a conclusion that is unexpected but surprisingly effective in its understatement, suggesting that this veteran director can still find new ways to explore what everyday courage looks like.

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

Conclave is most effective when it’s as shamelessly entertaining as its ambitious characters.

What works best is the dopey charm of Hardy opposite his CGI sidekick. Their grouchy rapport is almost enough to make up for a slapdash script and some predictable genre elements.

The film simmers with rage at the cruelty of one nation toward another, although the plotting grows increasingly convoluted, undermining the story’s righteous anger.

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.

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

It is a testament to this deeply moving film that Lacorazza has laid bare her own complicated feelings about her father while acknowledging that, as shown in a silently shattering final scene, sometimes words fail.

While Morris’s attempt to personalise this humanitarian crisis by casting actors to play a mother and son crossing the border proves less than effective, Separated’s criticism of America’s dismissive attitude towards immigrants is sufficiently scathing.

[A] very entertaining, surprisingly moving film.

The picture has been worked out on a visual level — the immaculately sterile images evoke a future in which life’s pleasures, like having a family, have been wiped clean — but the script never explores those deeper themes.

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

The Wild Robot’s nicely modulated ending packs a wallop, hinting that a mother’s job is never done — that’s just not in her programming.

Heretic has been crafted with expert care, and the strong performances help carry this dialogue-driven thriller. The problem is that the film’s ideas are not particularly stimulating.

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.

A mixture of domestic drama, apocalyptic fable and old-fashioned (and unironic) Hollywood musical, The End is an audacious and frequently enrapturing experience, with superb performances at its emotional heart.

Marielle Heller’s fourth feature is a gently observant comedy-drama about the perils of motherhood that could use a little more bite.

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.

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.

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.

September 5 recounts that tragic day with a combination of electricity and dread, drawing on strong performances for a meditation on the media’s responsibilities during such a volatile situation.

There are conventional elements to this story, but also a level of craft that keep the proceedings reliably taut — especially when Kurzel unleashes another excellent chase sequence or shootout.

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 Crow longs to be edgy and sobering, but the shallow, melodramatic treatment constantly calls to mind an insecure adolescent male who is trying to prove how dark and deep he is by dressing all in black and talking ponderously about death.

Romulus achieves its goal of being nothing more than a well-executed monster movie, but that modest ambition leaves this sequel feeling a little hollow and mechanical — a sufficient thrill ride that largely reminds the viewer how masterful the first two instalments were.

It’s fleetingly amusing to watch Blanchett flex her wit and grace amidst this motley crew of outsiders and reprobates. But Lilith so easily outclasses everything around her that Borderlands is that rare would-be blockbuster where you wish the main character could get her own standalone feature, just so she can escape this meagre adventure.

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

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.

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.

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.

Hugh Jackman demonstrates again what a fine Wolverine he is but this comic-book pairing ultimately underwhelms, resulting in some touching moments and some anarchic humour in a picture otherwise dragged down by convoluted multiverse logistics and drab fan service.

The New Zealand landscapes could not be more enchanting, although the story lacks a similar magic.

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.

Myriad horror films create a sense of dread, but few manage to evoke the palpable evil that emanates from Longlegs.

What lingers is a collective misery and the invisibly masterful choreography of chaos, rage and death.

Day One never reaches the inspired heights of what came before, but Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn are compelling as strangers forced to work together in a devastated New York.

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.

Inside Out 2 is strongest when harnessing the essence of how our emotions define us and, occasionally, lead us astray. But Mann never condemns any of Riley’s feelings, recognising that each has its place.

Ultraman: Rising lacks sophistication in its storytelling, but the film nevertheless achieves a quiet poignancy.

The documentary is a work of earnest advocacy, pleading with viewers to see their stake in Taiwan’s fight. The results may not be gripping cinema, but the passion behind the project is undeniable.

By shying away from demonstrating the degree of hardship Ederle underwent to make history, the film shortchanges the catharsis it seeks in its final passages.

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.

Baseball is just a game, but Lund recognises why some need it so badly. On the diamond, these ageing men feel young again – if only for a few hours.

Generously mixing comedy, nostalgia, pathos and misanthropy, Christmas Eve In Miller’s Point embraces its brood’s rambunctious spirit, resisting the temptation to let any character become the central protagonist.

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

This potent body horror is executed with skill and compassion, bringing fresh insights alongside generous helpings of graphic gore.

Finnegan continues to demonstrate a passion for upending the banality of the everyday, but The Surfer gets as lost as its protagonist, unable to ride the wave of its own mad design.

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.

Lea Seydoux, Vincent Lindon, Louis Garrel and Raphael Quenard commit fully to this cheeky postmodern exercise, but neither the humour nor the commentary is incisive enough to sustain such a strained bauble.

This ripping action-adventure features stellar effects and a superb lead performance from Owen Teague as a timid simian who must rescue his clan from the clutches of a warlike tribe.

As diverting and gleefully disgusting as it can be, Abigail ultimately has more gore than brains, its funhouse escapism fleeting rather than ferocious.

The result is a smirking, shallow action-comedy — a total mission failure.

A scintillating romantic triangle paired with a gripping sports drama, Challengers finds Luca Guadagnino in crowd-pleasing mode, delivering his most purely entertaining film.

The film’s Lynchian surrealism and time-jumping adventurousness, although occasionally hobbled by narrative digressions, are lifted up by the two leads.

As punishing as some of The First Omen’s terrors are, they are quickly forgotten in service of answering questions about Damien (and leaving the door open for further sequels) that undercut Free’s gripping turn.

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.

For all the punches thrown and buildings pulverised, The New Empire barely leaves an impact.

A corrosive rage courses through this 163-minute odyssey that’s matched by a leavening absurdism, Jude aghast at the comical stupidity of our inauthentic, greed-driven world.

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

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.

Cabrini is a respectful biopic designed to shed light on a forgotten woman whose charitable acts deserve recognition. It’s also so stultifyingly dutiful you may find yourself missing Sound of Freedom’s tawdry watchability.

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

The effortlessly orchestrated dialogue scenes are riveting, but what’s remarkable is that, no matter how talkative Samet and his cohorts are, they often don’t say what they mean. The characters argue politics, worldviews or how to handle the disturbing accusations leveled against Samet and Kenan at school, but their rhetorical jousting masks unspoken resentments and disappointments.

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

As Hans Zimmer’s propulsive score juices the drama and thrill of Paul’s quest, Part Two achieves the sort of big-screen momentousness that is too rarely dared in contemporary cinema. Anyone swept away by the 2021 film will hunger to return for a second helping — and be richly rewarded.

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

No matter how likeable Cassie and her friends are, they are powerless in the face of a plot that goes through the motions, revealing ‘shocking’ twists about her past and building to an overblown finale. Madame Web argues that no one’s future is written, but it is very easy to see exactly where this film is going.

The central performance has a likeable, modest charm, and King Richard director Reinaldo Marcus Green resists the typical, unwieldy cradle-to-grave biopic narrative approach. Yet he fails to breathe much life into this underwhelming drama.

It is to Jacobsen’s credit that she highlights how apparently minor decisions can suddenly feel weighty.

Writer-directors David Zellner and Nathan Zellner’s fifth feature is easily their finest, a portrait of a Bigfoot community that starts out as an absurdist comedy before slowly transforming into a moving study of survival and loss.