Wendy Ide

The cumulative stress of the pandemic is everywhere, as pervasive and ubiquitous as the omicron variant. Beth’s lonely home-working set-up; the eerie quiet in the predawn hours; the brittle desperation in the callers’ voices; the sheer volume of cries for help: it all captures the sense of teetering on the brink, the uncertainty, the unfamiliar anxieties of the first lockdown.

Plus points include a punchy soundtrack of 90s hip-hop, and Anthony Ramos and Dominique Fishback, heroically holding their own as the hapless humans roped into the Transformers’ thunderous mess.

While its ideas might fail to fully coalesce, the film is unnervingly beautiful; an immersive and mesmeric aural and visual experience.

There’s not a frame of this rich, kaleidoscopically detailed animation that isn’t dazzling.

Writer-director Carolina Cavalli (with the considerable contribution of Benedetta Porcaroli in the title role) crafts a refreshingly unconventional and acidic deadpan comic portrait of an offbeat female friendship.

Despite the suitably transgressive nature of the subject matter, Catherine Breillat’s first film in a decade is an oddly muted affair: uncomfortable, certainly, but lacking the disruptive, confrontational jab and genuine shock factor of her earlier pictures.

It looks terrific – as always Hausner’s use of colour and costume is striking and eloquent – but this is a thinly-written picture that operates on a largely superficial level.

It’s frequently an uncomfortable watch and, at points, prompts prickly ethical questions about the potential for the re-traumatisation of documentary subjects. But, perhaps more unexpectedly, this bold and confrontational film is also joyous, playful and in some ways even empowering.

This sparse, atmospheric fable grows markedly in power in the second half, as Banel’s passion takes on an edge of violence and insanity.

It’s an intriguing idea that might, perhaps, have sustained a short film.

It’s not the kind of film that nails the audience to its seats; rather, it’s a quiet, observational piece of storytelling that pieces together the budding relationships between the labourers.

With a smile that frays a little around the edges, and a peppy enthusiasm that can’t quite hide the doubts, McAdams wrings every last drop of pathos from her scenes, almost upstaging her screen daughter in the process.

It’s slick, unchallenging and perfectly enjoyable, but it’s hard to see the point of a remake of Ron Shelton’s 1992 mismatched buddy movie about a pair of basketball hustlers who reluctantly team up.

This very enjoyable film explores his extensive body of work, much of it daringly ahead of its time; it was Paik who, long before the concept of the internet had taken root, first broached the idea of an electronic superhighway.

This is subdued storytelling that, while it drags a little in its pacing, asks tough questions about society’s relationship with elderly people.

If anything, the writing in this chocolate-box travelogue of a sequel is even lazier than that of the first film, with much cackling innuendo and sparkly narcissism, a couple of clumsily engineered long-distance domestic crises and interminable heartfelt speeches that made me cringe so hard I nearly dislocated my spine.

Sweeping and novelistic in scope, the film, adapted from an Italian bestseller by Paolo Cognetti, combines the earthy, rooted grit of Jack London with the vivid emotional landscapes of Elena Ferrante.

As this terrific and very moving documentary shows, the society, fuelled by bickering, biscuits and cinephilia, is a lifeline for its members, who weather bereavements, loneliness and fiercely argued creative differences within its peeling walls. Lovely stuff.

It’s a bold, arresting debut from writer-director Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk, who balances muscular, crime-thriller tropes against moments of striking, unsettling beauty, tension and urgency against knottily complex character development. Highly recommended.

The combination of a unique personality and a fascinating place makes for a beguiling and poetic film, which blurs the lines between science and art.

It’s a gentle piece of Arabic-language storytelling, one that softly, slowly enfolds the audience rather than propels them on a journey.

While the symbolism can land a little heavily at times, Bessa’s fiercely committed performance and the palpable anger in the storytelling are the picture’s driving force.

Classic rock needle drops and showy, snaking, single-shot action sequences – both GOTG trademarks – abound in a picture that balances a slightly overstuffed storyline with mischief, humour and the biggest of hearts.

Rather like the ill-fated plane, the comedy struggles to land.

While it could be described as being more of a filmed play than a piece of cinema, it’s also a riveting, raw work which, in its stripped-back simplicity, magnifies the power of tucker green’s fiercely compelling writing.

An investment on the part of the audience is required, to focus in on the characters and to follow the dialogue. It’s not quite as dry as it sounds. There is a subtle humour in this singular approach, but like the dialogue and the drama (such that it is), it is sidelined.

This handsome biopic by Lasse Hallström, with his daughter Tora Hallström in the role of the younger Hilma, attempts to redress the balance.

The Super Mario Bros Movie is a frantic Easter egg hunt of a film that does the bare minimum to please its loyal existing fanbase. Those less enthralled by the antics of the moustachioed Italian plumber will wonder which of Donkey Kong’s weaponised barrels this joyless, noisy mess was scraped from.

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.

For all its affable charm, there’s something slippery and disingenuous about this film.

This solid but familiar drama is acted with conviction; Watson and Mescal are equally compelling. But there’s only so much a quality performance can do – and the film leans heavily on shots of Watson’s troubled face – when the material is a well-meaning but dourly rote exploration of cycles of violence.

Földes’s matter-of-fact approach to storytelling balances the tendency towards quirkiness in the material. Dream logic coexists with the crushingly mundane, in a picture that also showcases the director’s musical talents with an intricate and involving score.

This crime caper has a certain frenzied energy, but it’s sloppily plotted, crass and so dumb, you wouldn’t trust it to use cutlery unsupervised.

When the film is this much fun, who cares if Grant recycles some of the greatest hits from his gag repertoire?

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

Küppenheim is terrific, her precision and restraint in the role drawing us into the story.

Aside from the mother-daughter relationship angle, this splashy, showy assassin picture doesn’t really cover any new ground. But the lack of imagination elsewhere is offset by some impressively slick tailoring – Boksoon really does dress to kill – and extravagantly athletic fight sequences.

The latest from Spanish director Rodrigo Sorogoyen is a terrific psychological thriller and a brooding, muscular piece of filmmaking which makes the most of both the Galician backdrop and the imposing physicality of Menochet and, as his nemesis Xan, the remarkable Luis Zahera.

Deftly written, directed with a light hand and acted with honesty and heart, the picture captures moments of acute sadness without ever sinking into sentimentality.

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.

Goth is riotously entertaining throughout, but two specific scenes, in both of which the camera rests solely on her face for an extended shot, capture the full force of her unnerving talent.

The only notable development is just how rapidly a satirical skewering of genre formulas can become thuddingly formulaic.

Lunana’s appeal is hard to miss: though rather naive in its messaging and unashamedly sentimental, the film is so pure of spirit and so open-hearted, you want to breathe it in, to fill your lungs with it.

The latest picture from husband and wife team Ryuji Otsuka and Huang Ji is an engrossing and thoughtful, if slightly meandering, portrait of contemporary China which straddles the impact of Tik Tok, the self-commodification of a whole generation of ambitious young people and the social and shadow of the pandemic.

Approach with a strong stomach, and don’t bother trying to keep a tally of the body count.

Jordan is doing double duty here, directing as well as starring in this solidly by-numbers chapter in the ongoing Creed saga. He does a workmanlike job – the fight sequences are thrillingly visceral, but his weakness for cheesy montages and the film’s formulaic screenplay ensure that the picture was never going to take the franchise anywhere new.

Shipton is a fascinating character – abrupt, ill at ease with the voracious press attention, but also possessed of a sharp, unusual intelligence that tends to veer off at jarring tangents.

Some of the picture’s taut focus and pacing are lost to an unnecessary cancer subplot involving Eli’s family; like the journalists it follows, the film works best when it is tenaciously single-minded.

The sparky chemistry between James and Latif leaves few surprises in how it all pans out, but it’s an unexpectedly, disarmingly sweet film.

Richly detailed and superbly acted across the board, the film cast a scathing eye over the rigid social constraints that ensnare anyone who fails to conform.

It’s a film that requires considerable investment from the audience, and one that rations its rewards even to those who fully commit to the experience. Still, Schanelec’s approach draws the audience in, even as it holds them at arm’s length; she is uncommonly fond of wide shots. It’s an oddly fascinating endeavour.

It’s a distinctive work, both visually – the stark black and white photography accentuates the uncanny, almost lunar pockmarks on this scarred terrain – and in terms of its intriguingly detached outback noir storytelling.

The directors’ first joint feature is a tremendously effective revenge movie; a picture that reframes the neo-noir by harnessing a hate crime and diverting its power into a thrillingly transgressive erotic thriller.