What holds all this, mostly, together to the presence of Mulligan (An Education, Shame) and her own ambiguous performance.

The writing in The Coffee Table is almost acrobatic in its delivery, manipulating feelings and ideas by rendering deep guttural emotions in the all too familiar ways. The terror in Casas’ film is linked to the unknown. But differing from other horror films, the unknown in Casas’ film is neither ethereal nor otherworldly.

Johnstone knows his way around dark comedy, and camouflages much of the film's humour in whimsical, sometimes uneasy, encounters between M3GAN and Cady. But in directing the film's most comedic characters — an overtly judgmental childcare worker, a nosy neighbour (Lori Dungey) with an unruly dog, and a schoolyard bully—he sets a tone that feels incompatible with the rest of the characters.

Mickey 17 is a long ride with a running time of about two hours and twenty minutes, with unexpected twists and turns. It’s a lot of fun, and as previously noted, is stuffed with ideas.

If His House doesn’t quite achieve the deeply unsettling tone that makes a good horror movie hard to shake, it still succeeds as an exploration of trauma, and the way it can shape and challenge the human psyche.

There’s a lot more going on than meets the eye in Steven Soderbergh’s wise and deceptively breezy new film Let Them All Talk.

Because the potential is extraordinary, it’s a surprise that the film, co-directed by Herzog and Andre Singer, is so conventional and enthusiastic, bordering on adoring.

This is arthouse vacation horror. As such, Infinity Pool scrapes closer to Spring Breakers than Hostel. But it's also science-fiction, and it's the science fiction that moves the horror beyond shock.

It’s not accurate to say the film stars Saoirse Ronan. Saoirse Ronan is the movie, the luminous north star of every scene.

On the surface, Luce is a study of race and privilege in contemporary America. But it’s more broadly and more subtly about family relationships and the psychological deals we make with others and ourselves.

From the first act straight through to the third, the film engages on a level far higher than it needs to. Which is what happens when you put real craft behind a premise that could have coasted on novelty.

The Color Purple is an intense and complicated story about race, gender and history and wrestling that tale into a two-hours-plus musical is a daunting task. This version, while plot-heavy and occasionally confusing, has its own epic sweep. It’s moving, but given current events, the final celebratory spirit rings false.

Craig is easily the best thing in Queer, which grows a little maudlin at the end. Burroughs himself never properly completed the story, having lost interest along the way. But that’s not to say that his performance is the sole reason to see it.

Bugonia is not Lanthimos’s best, but it is likely off-kilter enough for fans, or maybe introductory-weird for newcomers to his genre.

The studio set recreation of Hong Kong’s famous Bar Street, along with the gaudily delectable costumes throughout, give Master Z a dreamy heightened artifice. More than once, the film seems on the verge of breaking into a vintage Hollywood musical.

There may be a lot of questions unanswered in Possessor, but there’s feverish imagination at work.

What the film lacks in traditional scares, it makes up for with an unsettling scenario that plays slowly throughout the film, indicating harsher realities even legends can't compete with. And DaCosta's vision is highly stylized, accented with performances that resonate with disquieting accuracy.

Into the Weeds: Dewayne “Lee” Johnson vs. Monsanto Company is a cautionary environmental story, that raises unsettling questions about what’s in the food we eat, and how our farming practices are affecting the biosphere.

If there was anything missing from the lives of swords ‘n’ sorcery-loving nerds, it would be a proper Dungeons & Dragons movie. Now we have one.

A chamber-sized display of cinematic razzle-dazzle, and convoluted political allegory filled with gallows humour and broad polemics, Pablo Larraín’s El Conde re-imagines the Chilean dictator as the 250-year-old vampire star of a 1930s horror movie.

In contrast to the complex psychodrama of Nolan’s opus, A Compassionate Spy is a gentle and intimate film, largely narrated by Hall’s wife, Joan, who was 90 at the time of filming. She tells a love story.

From very early in the film, we have a sense where it’s all going. With no real narrative surprises then, the movie becomes all about the characters and the journey. Aster’s playing out of the journey is problematic.

Die My Love has gorgeous cinematography, delicious nudity, way-cool music and Robert Pattinson, but the irresistible urge to check one’s watch kicked in early — at the one-hour mark. That’s not a good sign.

It’s, ironically enough, a terrific, serious performance by Will Arnett, arguably the best of his career.

Watcher is a successful thriller, good enough to hold viewers through its three acts and into the final scene. But the reward for sticking around might not be the payoff viewers were waiting for. Neither is it all that original.

The Suicide Squad, Gunn’s sequel to David Ayer’s poorly reviewed first try at the tale of a group of super-villains forced to be good guys, is a nihilistic orgy of brightly coloured gore and violence apparently envisioned while on mushrooms. If you’re sitting near the front of an IMAX theatre, it plays like being in the “splash-zone” of a GWAR concert.

For a movie that lazily spins its wheels, Fantasy Life is oddly amiable. The only wholly dislikable character is David, and he’s so great at being dislikable, you almost like him for it.

In a streaming universe glutted with accounts of bizarre and brutal crimes, Rosemead risks being just another example of the terrible things that people do and have done to them.