Wendy Ide

For all the impressive qualities of the picture, it does feel as though there is a rigid upper-age limit for its audience.

Buckley, as always, is terrific, bringing the picture more emotional potency than it perhaps warrants.

It’s possibly the most Russian thing ever created, and it’s most certainly not a soothing viewing experience. But there’s something grimly fascinating about it nonetheless.

It may be big, brawling and somewhat inelegant in approach, but this Gerard Butler vehicle is an aviation fuel-powered good time.

The picture, a big-budget spectacle guided by the sure hand of action director Seung-wan Ryu (Crying Fist), is at its most effective when the hurtling camera is strafed by bullets. It’s less successful when the headlong pace falters to allow the screenplay to hammer home its message of collaboration and tolerance.

It’s perfectly watchable but a film with this puttering pace is never going to get the blood racing.

The descent into melodrama in the final act increases the tension but, in relying on some unexpected actions by several characters, also damages the film’s credibility.

It’s all fairly predictable. Anyone who has seen more than a couple of serial killer movies will have no problem assembling a list of possible masked murderers. But Josh Ruben’s film goes above and beyond when it comes to squelchy, visceral gore.

Provocative and challenging, if not the most subtle piece of political commentary, the film certainly cements Kaouther Ben Hania as a name to watch in Arab cinema.

Anderson’s backdrop, a kind of steroidally enhanced Frenchness reminiscent of films such as Belleville Rendez-Vous and Amélie, is rather lovely, if ultimately as far removed from reality as is the film’s romanticised view of journalism.

This perky computer-animated adventure leans a little heavily on its meta self-aware storytelling devices (expect numerous fourth-wall-smashing to camera asides), but it’s a fun, if slightly macabre option for family audiences.

Sara Forestier is likable enough as the somewhat hapless Sophie, who dreams of working as an artist but whose main preoccupation is finding a man.

While the bracingly bleak climax will come as a surprise to pretty much nobody, it still comes with an efficiently grisly pay off.

It’s a droll, perceptive and shamelessly sentimental look at generational tensions.

Rather than a slick, high-concept fantasy action picture in the vein of Everything Everywhere All at Once, here is a B-movie throwback with its roots in the pulpy creature features of the 1950s. Viewed from this perspective, the shonky special effects are just part of the fun.

The force of Fuhrman’s performance – as she demonstrated in last year’s The Novice, she can be a remarkable and unsettling presence in front of a camera – goes a considerable way towards reclaiming the role of the malevolent mini psychopath Esther. Even more impressive is Julia Stiles, a supremely talented yet underused actor who dominates this film from a gloriously unexpected midpoint twist onwards.

It’s a handsome film, but a conventional one, rather missing the opportunity of allowing Salomon’s thrilling uninhibited style to inform the film’s aesthetic.

Billy’s inane babbling gets a little wearing, but the action sequences, featuring dragon-based mayhem, cyclopes and an army of formidable hell unicorns hopped up on candy, are pacy and fun.

Flashbacks to Mariam’s technicolour youth in 1969 Karachi are gorgeously realised, and the design department (in particular wardrobe) gets to revel in an eye-popping kaleidoscope of primary hues.

And while the story of the film lacks some of the sinuous inventiveness of its predecessor [Your Name], it shares the striking animation style, romantic sensibility and a similar poppy score.

It’s affecting enough, with both Harris and Stevenson capturing the wrenching, protracted grief of not knowing, but I found myself wishing that the film had maintained a sense of mystery rather than dumping a chunk of inelegant exposition at the end.

A terrific Penélope Cruz makes up for the lack of colour with her enjoyably strident turn as Ferrari’s permanently furious wife, Laura.

There’s a feverish wildness to Corrin’s performance, while O’Connell unleashes the full force of his considerable charisma.

Milocco’s performance manages to walk a thin line between credibility and delusion, a line which is less successfully negotiated by other aspects of the film.

It’s silkily enigmatic and unpredictable, and certainly unlike anything else you will see this year.

With Bird Box: Barcelona, as with any film of this outlandish ilk, suspension of disbelief and an appreciation of propulsively destructive action sequences is key. Just don’t expect too many fresh ideas.

This is filmmaking which echoes Cohen’s music style – it’s contemplative, searching and stripped back, but it can also be somewhat navel gazing, ponderous and very slow.

The picture comes armed to the teeth with slick action sequences . . . and genuinely funny lines. It’s just a pity that both the action and the dialogue are occasionally obscured by the frenzied editing.

It doesn’t all work; the flashbacks are unwieldy and the pacing falters in the second half. It’s also rather coy in addressing some of the more damning elements in recent Catholic history. But there’s something disarming about a scene of papal bonding over beer and footy.

This sequel is so derivative of its predecessor, it’s practically a remake.

An impenetrable plot doesn’t entirely hold together, but the film is worth a look for fans of wigged-out sci-fi, gorgeous framing and lush, orchestral, Bernard Herrmann-inspired soundtracks.

Typically delicate and as gentle as a balm, the film’s well-intentioned earnestness will not endear it to the more cynical end of the audience spectrum. But fans of Kawase’s small scale personal dramas will respond to the film’s wistful tone, as well as the plaintive prettiness of the photography.

What keeps it from top-tier animation status is that, while the relentless killer drone army usually hits its targets, the jokes don’t always connect.

Given the emotive subject matter, the film chooses to keep the potential mothers at arm’s length as characters, losing tear-jerking opportunities as a consequence.

Kramer’s vision is distinctive: playful and jarringly lurid. Give Me Pity! is a one-off – and that’s probably a good thing.

This gentle comedy trades heavily on Tsai Chin’s deliciously abrasive central performance, but stumbles when it comes to the execution of the action sequences

Southcombe deftly threads together the two stories with echoes in the dialogue and in the location.

It’s not uninvolving. The picture takes its own sweet time getting going, but a satisfying momentum builds through the multiple, interlinked storylines.

It’s impossible to endure all this – the film is sporadically funny but it’s also emotionally arid, mannered, and overlong – without making a link between the power plays on screen and Lanthimos’s approach as a film-maker.

Although it may not bring revelations, there’s an informality and intimacy to this portrait that is unexpectedly pleasing.

The early potency of this macabre fairytale becomes increasingly diluted however, as the film progresses and the story broadens.

Nightbitch would have worked better if it had been pushed further in either direction – as an intimate interrogation, or as a full-bore bestial freakout. This uneasy middle ground feels like a missed opportunity.

The shared experience between the filmmaker and the subject of the film allows for a character study of depth and intimacy. However, the story itself – a slightly soapy ‘romance against the odds’ narrative – presents few surprises.

It’s predictable but glossily watchable. The main redeeming feature is the crackling charisma of Emily Blunt, in the central role of a down-on-her-luck single mum turned pharma marketing genius.

Mescal and Ronan are captivating: her watchful, raw-nerved longing; his stinging sense of betrayal. It almost eases us past an overwrought final twist. Almost, but not quite.

Gore addicts will be sated – the prosthetics and makeup are robustly grisly – but the story feels rather too glib and predictable to be fully satisfying.

Ayushmann Khurrana, playing the good cop who can’t bring himself to look away to preserve “society’s balance”, combines soulful Bollywood heartthrob charisma with an arrestingly intense performance.

It’s a film that cries out to be seen in the cinema. Disney’s decision to bypass a theatrical release in favour of streaming does a disservice to both the film and its audience.

The film’s actual pay off – the truth exhumed from this tainted earth – is ultimately not quite as satisfying as the picture’s elegantly constructed mood.

A gentle, unassuming picture, it does have a satisfying, feelgood trajectory and empathetic central performance from Marie Leuenberger.

The Feast requires a degree of commitment; it avoids jump scares in favour of a long, slow build of tension – so slow that at times the characters appear to be in the grip of a kind of paralysis – that pays off with an explosively grisly final act.

Whatever else could be said about this competent and generally pretty entertaining latest addition to the series, surprising it is not.

Tinder-dry delivery bolsters the film’s gentle humour, and while the momentum sags a little in the second half, the natural chemistry between Matafeo and Lewis keeps the audience invested and the story relatable.

The emotional impact is true and clean. The fractious bond between the brothers and their aching anger at the loss of a parent are evoked with exquisite sorrow and clarity.

It’s just a pity that the movie that introduces her is so unremarkable.

From the earnest score to the breathless talking heads to the atmosphere of awestruck reverence, this is a film which takes itself every bit as seriously as its subjects.

It’s certainly informative and affecting, but the limited use of early archive footage and the emphasis on Williams’s decline and suffering make for bleak viewing.

A film of two halves, Cloud’s excessive, bullet-strafed second section is more effective than the restrained and sluggish first part. The themes it explores are uncomfortably of the moment.

A pacy screenplay, co-written by director Francis Annan and adapted from a book by Jenkin, rarely flags, but it’s the nervy camera, hugging the characters at hip height, the better to scrutinise each locked barrier to freedom, that most successfully builds the tension.

Blending science fiction and magical realism, environmental catastrophe and family secrets, Francisca Alegría’s heady mystery is an ambitious and murkily atmospheric debut.

There are pacing issues in a brooding, cautious middle section, but nothing terminal. There is also the problem that this elusive supernatural mystery has been mismarketed as a horror – unfortunate, certainly, but not the fault of the film.

The running time is an issue – a punchy seven-inch single approach would have been preferable, rather than this jam session of a screenplay, which doesn’t know how to end. But the tonal blend of goofy and gory is oddly endearing.

Weighty themes are handled with a refreshing lightness of touch.

LaKeith Stanfield and Issa Rae light up a beautiful-looking movie that weaves together love stories from the past and present.

The film works its showy magic. Or perhaps enforces its magic would be more accurate.

We Live in Time is let down by the jarring product placement (take a bow, Weetabix and Jaffa Cakes) and by the aggressively anodyne score, which sounds like the kind of reassuring, hand-holding mulch that might be played in a dentist’s waiting room.

While it’s an enjoyable family romp that should charm younger audiences, the action onslaught can’t conceal that this sequel lacks the inventive agility, wit, comic timing and, most crucially, the magic of its predecessors.

The directorial debut of Viggo Mortensen, which he also wrote and stars in, is an empathetic but gruelling account of a father-son relationship.

It’s a tricky balance, and one that the film doesn’t always quite pull off, between sounding a warning and screaming with existential terror; between galvanising the audience into action and plunging them into despair.

And here’s the problem for Statham’s super spy: for all the Ukrainian gangsters he nuts and helicopters he pilots, Orson Fortune is just not particularly interesting or fleshed out as a character. Plaza and Grant, meanwhile, steal every scene they touch.

As the detectives start to lose the plot, so does the film, fizzling into an unravelling tangle of loose ends.

What’s impressive about this psychological thriller, the debut feature film from director Mary Nighy, is how tuned in it is to the dynamics of female friendship.

Rory Kinnear gives a robustly likable performance as Dave, somewhat redeeming this unashamedly formulaic crowd-pleaser.

It’s a fun watch, and the technique allows film-maker Morgan Neville to visually represent Williams’s form of synaesthesia, which turns music into colours, and to explore his musical process in a suitably playful and creative manner.

It’s a handsome production, and an impressive debut from first-time director Malcolm Washington, Denzel’s son. But like the previous two pictures, it’s stagey and mannered – a film that never quite sheds its theatrical roots.

But for all the feverish visual invention, there’s a sluggishness to the storytelling that seems at odds with the frenzied creativity of the film’s subject.

It’s mildly amusing, and Evan Rachel Wood is great fun as an evil Madonna. But one joke – even a joke as bizarre as this – is not enough to sustain a whole movie.

The very watchable combination of Elizabeth Banks, as a suburban Chicago housewife turned illegal abortion technician, and Sigourney Weaver, as the founder of Call Jane, brings a force of charisma that overrides the picture’s occasional frothiness.

While Winton’s achievements and his dedication were remarkable, the film-making here is less so. There’s little to set One Life apart from the very crowded field of films exploring equally laudable tales of second world war heroism.

Although a little too performatively Scottish at times, this is a competently made weepie that should please fans of the book.

This odd-couple comedy road movie paints its characters in brushstrokes so broad you could land a jumbo jet on them, while the intrusively affable score lurches into every scene like a drunk with no concept of personal space. And yet Colman saves the picture, her thorny performance gradually revealing a well of pain.

It’s a gently inoffensive little comedy from Marc Turtletaub (producer of Little Miss Sunshine and director of Puzzle), with an amiably jovial score. But the picture is elevated by its handling of melancholy themes of ageing and loneliness, and a superb gruff-yet-vulnerable performance from Kingsley.

Although the gags hit home throughout – as they should, with such a broad target – the script loses focus slightly in the final twenty minutes.

Like the mismatched team from the Pacific Island, the picture is big-hearted and sweet-natured, but it is also rather lacking in polish and staying power.

Fans of the enduringly popular ITV period drama series will no doubt embrace this feature film spin-off, which represents a step up in lavish visual spectacle while retaining a comforting familiarity of themes and storytelling style.

The teasing, tricky structure adds intrigue to a fairly rudimentary horror premise and the cinematography – actor Giovanni Ribisi steps behind the camera as the DOP – is suitably strident, with reds and yellows screaming from the screen.

Peel back the cliches and there’s something interesting here: a gnawing sense of injustice and biting social commentary.

The scene-stealing standout is Avantika, playing sweet-natured Plastic dimwit Karen. Her comic timing is impeccable; her musical number, a boisterous Halloween party romp titled Sexy, is worth the price of admission alone.

Robinson and Bannerman are excellent, warily stepping around each other’s expectations and weighing up the cost of allowing themselves to care.

Personally, I would have preferred a little more Wheatley edge, a little less Country Living.

As an account of a notable moment in French legal history, it’s undeniably compelling stuff.

Reygadas has made a career out of a confrontational lyricism, finding poetry in images that could be considered mundane or even ugly – but the film is nearly three hours long. You have to question how much time spent loitering next to the carburettor is actually justified.

A mosaic portrait of Hong Kong’s older gay community is pieced together, but the film loses some of its energy and focus as it drifts to its close.

This Grand Guignol riot of rotting animal and Godless creations is great fun. However, of the cast, it is only McAvoy, walking the line between madman and genius, who fully manages to hold his own against the spectacle with which he shares the screen.

Meandering but richly detailed drama.

Memories of My Father is a touch overlong and soapy and awkwardly structured. But it’s still an engrossingly watchable drama.

Zeller explores how sadness repels; how people involuntarily recoil from depression, perpetuating the isolation of the sufferer.

The film’s main appeal is not what it appropriates from other Ghostbusters pictures, but that it’s a nostalgic nod to the Spielbergian family adventures of the same period.