Perhaps the film could have done with a little more conversation and a little more action, but it's still a quietly affecting, sympathetic tribute to the kind of person who is a supporting character in most biopics.

On one level, I realise, the dullness is the point. . . But I'm not sure that justifies the film's own efficiently plodding approach because it never seems as if Fincher is giving us the inside track on how assassins actually operate.

Maestro is a warm yet melancholy portrait of someone who is the life and soul of every party not just because he loves company but because he fears being alone.

Lanthimos may get carried away, but the results are daringly outrageous and often hilarious.

The racing sequences have enough energy and jeopardy to raise the pulse rate, but the rest of Ferrari... well, surely a film about high-speed cars shouldn't pootle along as slowly as this one does.

The film has its entertaining, off-the-wall comic moments.

Nearly everything about it is stale and derivative, all the way to the teasing extra scenes during and after the end credits. Instead of feeling like the birth of a thrilling new franchise, it feels like the last gasp of a worn-out old one.

When a gigantic octopus tentacle reached out of the ocean to grab Meiying, it suddenly made me think of a very good octopus dish at a local restaurant. I wasn't even hungry. It's just that easy to lose interest in anything going on in this movie.

It's boldly imaginative and his most mature work yet.

It may be a comedy about a mass-produced plastic doll, but Barbie breaks the mould.

Tom Cruise's seventh Mission: Impossible film is an unusual mix of high-tech and low-tech, of ultra-modern and defiantly traditional.

Across the Spider-Verse leans into the artificiality of its world: its central, postmodern concern is how the multiverse will be affected by the tangled web of various Spider-Man narratives. If you don't happen to be a universe-hopping comic-book superhero, it's hard to relate to any of it.

It remains what it always was: a charming, escapist fairy tale.

In some ways, the film resembles an abyss-black absurdist comedy sketch or a video art installation. It could be said that its sole observation is the continual co-existence of grotesque cruelty and blithe workaday life, but it makes that observation with such rigorous formal control and unblinking dedication that its power to shock never diminishes.

The deliberate pacing and sometimes confusing narrative make Monster less engrossing than some of Kore-eda's work, and less likely to win prizes. But it is still a marvel: a minutely observed, profoundly compassionate chronicle of untidy contemporary lives. It's a Hirokazu Kore-eda film, in other words.

The combination of Depp and Maïwenn may have seemed like a dangerous one, but on this occasion they're playing it safe.

Leterrier's achievement in assembling such a gargantuan, multi-stranded, globe-trotting, head-spinning blockbuster is impressive, but however many gruff sermons Dom makes about his family, it's impossible to care about any of it.

Polite Society is an action-packed, genre-blending delight that fires on all cylinders. Everything – from the writing to the cinematography, the performances, the choreography and the soundtrack – is on point, and it has all the requisite ingredients to be an exhilarating experience for audiences that come along for the ride.

This one may be the most unruly and excessive of the trilogy, but it is as sweetly touching as any film with so many slimy, tentacled monsters in it could be.

Viewers are sure to be impressed by Aster's prodigious imagination and technical skill, amused by his gallows humour, and amazed by some of the outrageous images he puts on screen. But whether they will be enthralled by the film is another matter.

Renfield is worth watching for Cage, Hoult and Awkwafina's entertaining performances, and not much more.

The film-makers are obviously so sure that they have a can't-fail franchise on their hands that they haven't even bothered with world-building.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves is no masterpiece, but it's warm, upbeat, unpretentious entertainment, and it's bound to be popular. We certainly won't have to wait another 23 years before the next Dungeons & Dragons film comes out.

Running at 2 hours and 49 minutes, it is bigger than the previous films in every way ­– not better or worse, just more.

It might be best to watch Cocaine Bear at home, where you can skip past the rambling sections and go straight to the laughs and screams. In the cinema, most viewers will wish that it was wittier, faster, and more willing to fulfil the gonzo potential of its in-your-face title. It's definitely better than Banks's last film, Charlie's Angels, but you can't help feeling that she has done the bear minimum.

Bill Murray has a single scene as Lord Krylar, an amalgam of all droll Bill Murray characters. William Jackson Harper is wry as a sympathetic telepath, who unfortunately disappears for much of the film.

While Channing Tatum is charismatic, and there are a few flashes of wit in the script, the latest Magic Mike sequel is 'tepid'.

Knock at the Cabin ends up being no more than a passably tense, low-budget chamber piece that doesn't do justice to its Old Testament conceit.

The chilling fact is that the real world has overtaken the one in the film. If you read any article about how AI is creeping into our lives these days, then M3GAN's killing spree will seem quaintly innocuous in comparison.

At its best, Chazelle's film is a cinematic marvel, evidence enough that movies are magical, as it sweeps us into the beautiful, terrible world we recognise as Hollywood even now.

The stage is set for a rip-roaring adventure, a space opera sprinkled with debates on the ethics of colonialism and assimilation. But then Cameron takes the film in a new direction - and The Way of Water becomes a damp squib.

It has the ring of a tall tale that has been told in pub after pub, gathering weird new details every time, until it has become a part of Irish folklore. It's a story that you'll want to hear – and tell – again and again.

The deepest flaw in My Policeman is that we grasp too little of the characters' inner lives.

Bros races along almost until the end when it embraces romcom elements, including a montage, that land as more clichéd than subversive. But that doesn't make the rest of this charming film any less entertaining and effective.

Craig's performance is wily and joyful, and the film's biggest flaw is that there is too little of him, as Johnson often turns the spotlight from Blanc to other characters.

The Woman King leans toward fantasy in its heroic moments, but is rooted in truth about war, brutality and freedom. It is a splashy popcorn movie with a social conscience.

Blonde is less preoccupied with building a faithful portrayal of the real-life figure than with translating the brutal ruthlessness of celebrity, holding an uncomfortable mirror up to the people who enjoy dabbling in voyeurism neatly packaged as entertainment.

It is a flawed film with a kind heart, but a significantly less impressive progeny of The Father's talky triumph. Like father, like son? Sadly, that doesn't seem to be the case.

It is frequently rudimentary and repetitious – hammering home the same basic point about gender politics while a dulled supporting cast fails to add much colour to the story's margins.

The Whale retains the pacing, structure and conventions of a solid but clichéd melodrama.

What's captivating about Bones & All is that it is so understated. The first few gory scenes suggest that Guadagnino has made an outrageous black comedy that gets its startled laughs and screams by contrasting the conventions of a coming-of-age romance with those of an X-rated monster movie. But soon Bones & All becomes entirely straight-faced. It isn't a horror film or a comedy, it's a sincere, sweet indie road movie that happens to feature bloodthirsty serial killers.

White Noise has so much crammed into its two-and-a-quarter hours that it will take multiple viewings to unpack it all. Luckily, it's all so entertaining that the prospect of those multiple viewings is an enticing one indeed.

Be warned. Triangle of Sadness rants and smirks at the state of the world over two-and-a-half hours, which is quite some running time for a satirical comedy. But it is never boring. Partly that's because the political commentary is so shrewd, and partly it's because it has a surprising amount of warmth and nuance, too. Östlund ensures that while the situations may be absurd, the people in them are as human as any of us.

Despite a brief lull midway through the 83 minutes, The Magician largely succeeds as a good short story, thanks to Ryan's captivating performance in the lead role. An unlikely road movie/buddy movie hybrid, it has all the makings of a cult hit among discerning DVD collectors.

And as always in Peele films, clues and echoes are so detailed and carefully planted that it's hard to spot everything the first time through. He is still a master filmmaker, and even a mediocre Jordan Peele film is better than the strongest film of an ordinary director. Nope is that mediocre film.

The Russos clearly couldn't decide which tone to go for, so they made a zany farce about cheerful super-spies, and then they made a cynical conspiracy drama about death and trauma, and they kept cutting between them. The result is a film that never seems to know what it's doing, or why.

It's hard to create tension when the stakes are so low. But the film's breezy tone and ultimately strong emotional depths make up for that flaw. This big-hearted Thor, thundering and sensitive, may be just the diverting hero we need right now.

The story is thin, repetitive, and almost entirely dependent on the heroes being clumsy.

The film's only major fault is Trevorrow's desperation to ensure that viewers get their money's worth. Jam-packed with silliness, spectacle, intrigue, romance and just about everything else, Jurassic World Dominion has regular popcorn-spilling scares, exhilarating, expertly choreographed action set pieces that would earn a tip of the baseball cap from Spielberg himself, and the numerous characters all have plenty to do.

The script is so economical, and the acting so beautifully natural (especially by Dambrine, a remarkable discovery), that Close feels less like a drama than a tapestry of fragments from a candid documentary.

Broker keeps on getting funnier and knottier as secret motives are revealed, sympathies shift, mysteries deepen and dangers multiply. It is, on one level, a farcical crime caper, but it is so elegantly plotted that it never seems contrived.

Partly because the characters look so healthily pretty, and partly because the mood is so woozy, The Stars at Noon feels more like a stylish pastiche of a Graham Greene novel than the story of real people battling their way out of a difficult, potentially deadly situation. It's beautifully made, but to enjoy it you have to relax, and let it wash over you.

Structured as a hardboiled detective thriller, Crimes of the Future has plenty of provocative concepts and images that will put a grin on your face (not least the dancer who has several ears on his face), but you may find yourself willing the plot to pick up momentum, and the ickiness to get a whole lot ickier.

The investigation is exquisitely constructed, with a stream of revelations, some pulse-pounding action and continuous glimmers of wry humour. It's also a model of elegance and restraint.

If a screenplay is going to be fixated on the history and purpose of storytelling, the stories within it have to be better.

The new film improves on the old one in every respect. The story is cleverer and more gripping, the dialogue is sharper and funnier, the relationships are richer, the aerial stunts are more likely to make you queasy.

A glib misreading of Men might reduce it to: "Ha! Men! They're all alike." But the film's ending emphasises how much Harper's trials and Garland's film have been about her profound tangle of love, grief and understanding.

Some people will dismiss the film as nonsense, and they could have a point. But Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is a huge amount of fun.

Compared to most US action adventures, The Northman is adventurous and distinctive. It feels compromised, but the great stuff outweighs the not-so-great stuff. To see or not to see? If that is the question, the answer is: see it.

For many of us, especially in the West, the film is likely to be confusing here and there. It would have been helpful, for example, if the subtitles had let us know who's speaking Russian and who's speaking Ukrainian. But it is worth a bit of confusion for a film so powerful and immediate, and made with such a lucid artistic vision.

Even before the panda-monium begins, the film is a hilarious, life-affirming treat.

The story also ends on a touchingly optimistic note, which is unusual for a Batman film. Who knows, maybe the next one won't be quite as gloomy. Pattinson might even crack a smile. But I wouldn't bet on it.

The story has its moments of suspense, especially when Nina's child wanders off from the beach. But the soul of the film exists in the small exchanges and tensions between characters.

The film's real superpowers are its endearing performances, and a screenplay by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers that interweaves teen-angst soap opera and cosmic calamity with all the goofy logic and tonal nimbleness that make the best superhero comics so appealing.

Full of energy, wit, passion and tragedy, looking backward and forward at once, it is one of the most moving films of the year.

Eternals is more serious in tone and more deliberate in its pacing than the average Marvel movie, with less of the usual banter and no cameo appearances by other superheroes. But, if you're looking for the humanity and originality of Zhao's other films, you won't find much of it here.

In general No Time To Die does exactly what it was intended to do, which is to round off the Craig era with tremendous ambition and aplomb. Beyond that, it somehow succeeds in taking something from every single other Bond film, and sticking them all together.

Stewart is such inspired casting that she makes all this eccentric nonsense watchable.

A film with this scope and richness is a splendid achievement, but it's easier to admire than to love. There is some humanity in there somewhere: at heart it's a coming-of-age story about a boy becoming tougher and more cynical on his way to becoming a leader. But will anyone care about the shallow, po-faced characters? They've got exotic names and elaborate costumes, but none of them has much warmth or personality compared to those in a certain other space opera which I won't mention.

It's a film which shimmers with intelligence, and if the plot isn't clear until the very last scene, well, it's worth the wait. When that scene arrives, the purpose of every previous scene snaps into sharp focus, leaving you with the urge to go back to the beginning and watch the whole thing again.

Ducournau's beautiful, dark, twisted fantasy is a nightmarish yet mischievously comic barrage of sex, violence, lurid lighting and pounding music. It's also impossible to predict where it's going to go next.

His craftsmanship is so overwhelming that unless you're already allergic to his tics and trademarks, you should get a buzz from the film's many, many incidental pleasures. One thing's for sure: there is nothing quite like The French Dispatch – except Anderson's other films, of course.

Far from being a steamy nun-sploitation thriller about women with bad habits – well, it's partly that, to be honest – Benedetta is a substantial, sophisticated, yet briskly paced and always highly entertaining drama, which balances quiet scenes of shrewd backroom politicking with lurid scenes of wild religious madness.

It's kitsch at times and transcendent at others, but the delicate puppetry and the gonzo ambition will guarantee Annette a cult following.

There are great concert movies and great socio-political documentaries, but Summer of Soul combines both in one gloriously entertaining and intellectually astute film.

Black Widow does become typically Avengers at the end, with an overwrought, too-long action scene that plays like a festival of stunt doubles tossing each other around a Russian lab. The real ending is better: a post-credit sequence brings back Pugh as Yelena in a tease that is not terribly surprising but is extremely welcome.

Casarosa has crafted a modest and gentle yarn about a few good-natured people in a small area, and their enviably simple way of life. His cartoon is aimed at the heart – and the tastebuds – rather than the brain. And it's no less of a delight for that.

Beavan's costumes are dazzling throughout, including Cruella's glittering red dress at the Baroness's gala. But when the costumes overwhelm the characters and story, there's something hollow at the film's centre.

This is a film that is undoubtedly more effective in the dark, with a top-notch sound system and a huge screen, than it would be on a laptop or a television. If, like Evelyn and her family, you are willing to venture out of your home and into the outside world, you could hardly ask for more suitable or more exhilarating entertainment.

Sensitively written and acted, beautifully shot, and with a charming, sparingly used score, Minari is so engaging that it's easy to forget how radical it is.

Writer and director Sam Levinson, who also created the audacious and enthralling HBO series Euphoria, gives the familiar story a makeover with dynamic, sensitive performances from its hugely talented stars, and a story that broadens to include race and the new Hollywood.

This new Rebecca feels as if someone at Downton Abbey were having a bad day.

The more you think about it, the more of a muddle Soul seems to be. But what a gorgeous muddle it is. It may not be wholly satisfying, but it is exhilarating in its ambition, superbly animated, and brimming with affection for its characters and their milieu.

McDormand’s commanding, deeply empathetic performance holds the film together. She is so convincing and unaffected that it feels as if Fern is another non-actor whom Zhao magically gets to be natural on screen.

Jenkins has said that she would have liked the film to be 15 minutes longer. Some viewers might have liked it to be 15 minutes shorter. But, for most of the running time, they will be happy to be in Wonder Woman's uplifting company. In its old-fashioned, uncynical way, WW84 is one of the most enjoyable blockbusters to be released since 1984.

Although the individual episodes are gripping, the plot trajectory is obvious, especially when we arrive at an ending that's easy to see from the start. But it works because there is something quietly miraculous about the way Hanks embodies this character, making him the stirring and fresh emotional centre of a beautifully old-fashioned Western.

If The Midnight Sky has the sombre tone of a high-minded art-house project, it has the bland design, sentimental characterisation and flimsy plotting of a children's TV movie. The story may have links with today's reality, but it never feels real.

The film takes place largely in two down and dirty rooms, the recording studio and a basement where the band rehearses, but it doesn’t feel stage bound. Wolfe finds the right balance between letting Wilson’s trademark monologues flow and shooting them in a cinematic way that keeps the film moving.

Having been made with a specific political purpose, Subsequent MovieFilm won’t age as well as the previous Borat did. Whereas that one will stand as an evergreen comedy, this one might be as ephemeral as a newspaper’s editorial cartoon or an episode of Spitting Image. But it’s the ripped-from-the-headlines relevance that makes it so fascinating, and it’s the boiling rage at current politics that makes it so bracing. There aren’t many films as urgently satirical as this one. You might not want to re-watch it in a few years’ time, but you should definitely watch it now.

On the Rocks is practically a distillation of Coppola’s Lost in Translation style. Each scene is compact and feels lived in, without any urgent narrative drive. That elegant surface makes it seem like a trifle, but there are layers beneath.

As unbalanced as it might be, One Night in Miami is a well-acted history lesson and a sincere tribute to the men, their friendship, and their inspiring cultural importance. It’s just that King and Powers’ treatment of that outstanding premise hasn’t quite made the leap from stage play to big-screen film; it has landed in TV-movie territory instead.

One of Lee’s brilliant choices is to refuse to put a soppy romantic gloss on the affair. He suggests instead that passion can blind lovers to a true understanding of each other as easily as it can open their eyes.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things draws constant attention to its own artifice, and to the things that can only happen in films. But it seems completely sincere in its concern about ageing, illness, pain, regret, and the connections we make to art and other people. Whichever universe it may be set in, it has a lot to say about our own.

Niki Caro’s film is a well-constructed family-friendly wuxia drama, with bright colours, grand scenery, and commendable themes. But it’s best enjoyed if you’re expecting a solid tween movie rather than a monumental cinematic landmark.

You have to hand it to Nolan. To use the old expression, he puts the money on the screen, delivering the kind of noisy, extravagant and fundamentally ridiculous pulp fiction which reminds you why you go to the cinema. But it collapses under the weight of all the plot strands and concepts stuffed into it. You don’t get the impression, which you usually get from his films, that every element is precisely where it should be. Some parts of it go on too long, others not long enough. It’s a treat to see a really big film again, but a smaller one might have been better.

Lee’s film takes a deep dive into the music, and it succeeds in making that aural nostalgia exhilarating. But a movie called Michael Jackson’s Journey that leaves out the personal dimension of that transformation is missing a key part of the story.

Da 5 Bloods is Spike Lee at his mature best, made with his distinctive, passionate voice and kinetic artistry.

The Hunt is a smart satire that uses genre tropes to explore volatile social issues.