This sly and clever reverse reworking of romantic drama tropes warmly suggests that there can be as much hope and connection to be found in splitting up as there is in coming together.

Send Help becomes its own unique, mischievous, horrifying creation, thanks to director Sam Raimi and his singular gift for eliciting laughter that turns into screaming (and vice versa).

Blending autobiographical elements with heartfelt homages to Iranian cinema, writer-director Matthew Rankin's charmingly surreal comic fable reimagines Canada as a Farsi-speaking dreamland.

Rian Johnson may remain the unchallenged modern master of the whodunnit, but with A Haunting in Venice, Branagh shows more affinity for the genre than ever before. Not since Dead Again has the director so successfully applied his flair for showmanship to the requirements of the murder mystery.

Maria is most truly involved with its subject when it abandons any impulse to scale her down, to reduce a titan to life-size, and opts instead to remember the singer as grandiose, allowing her memory — and Jolie’s perfectly suited performance of that memory — to fill the biggest screen.

The Equalizer 3 is a remarkably stylish entry in the series, elevating a barebones story with Washington’s gravitas and Richardson’s uncanny cinematography. All things being equal(ized), it’s a relatively satisfying thriller.

The film doesn’t stop to give the six characters time for major exposition and backstory, which would only get in the way of the film’s B-movie sensibility, accentuating scalpel-edge thrills above all else.

The use of first-time and non-professional actors gives the film an authenticity and immediacy that more seasoned performers may not have delivered.

Ullmann Tøndel deftly uses the claustrophobic setting to gradually unveil the layers of psychological chaos lurking beneath many respectable façades, particularly in the tightly constructed first half of the film, where the verbal and the visual coexist in a riveting harmony.

Director Dallas Jenkins comes from the world of faith-based media, and that world is not generally known for delicacy in its messaging, so it counts as a Christmas miracle that Best Christmas Pageant generally avoids heavy-handed sermonizing.

The challenge is to balance the mayhem with the holly-jolly, to blow stuff up while also allowing troubled characters to find the nice in themselves and in each other, and Red One fulfills both of those wish-list items with a cheeky finesse.

Sometimes silly but always propulsive, this franchise entry dares to give us an empathy-generating Predator, even if Elle Fanning’s robot steals the show.

Kinds of Kindness is lighter on jokes and visual brio than many of the director’s previous films, with an overlong runtime that weakens the twist-heavy tension and punchy rhythm of having three back-to-back stories. Despite a solid-gold cast and some deliciously bizarre fairy-tale plots, it still plays more like a fun personal stop-gap project than a major career step.

Nosferatu offers all the atmospherics and the creeping dread that it should, but this version remains locked-in and static when it might have dared to explore new ground. Like its antagonist, it’s simultaneously living and dead.

Mumenthaler’s screenplay works best when it lives and breathes in the ambiguities of Lina’s malaise and dissatisfaction, and how she balances it with her responsibilities as an entrepreneur, wife, and devoted mother. Splitting the difference between its more lyrical touches with more straightforward storytelling saps some of the power out of the film.

Urban has never been funnier, and he makes Johnny’s character arc from cynical Hollywood burnout to a champion capable of self-sacrifice a believable one. Not that many people are buying to tickets to Mortal Kombat II for the character arcs, granted, but Urban’s performance is a delightfully unexpected pleasure in a movie that winds up being full of them.

Despite a few bumpy moments, actor-director Noémie Merlant's gory feminist horror comedy paints a rowdy, richly imagined portrait of three ladies on fire.

Even if Philippe Garrell repeats himself at times, he still has a lot to say. Even some new ways to say it.

Chirpy, as colorful as Skittles, and occasionally, appropriately, acrid, Mean Girls is a pleasantly bouncy reworking of the 2004 comedy of the same name.

Ultimately, the film’s breezy attitude and calculated audience-pleasing wins out. Project Hail Mary offers plenty of laughs alongside of a dollop of sentiment, and it centers science in a tale where the apocalypse isn’t necessarily inevitable; it celebrates both humanity’s ability to save itself, and the idea that humanity might be worth saving.

This ebullient equestrian comedy thriller is effortlessly enjoyable as camp spectacle, with shades of Almodovar in the mix, even if its twist-heady screwball plot ultimately delivers more style than substance.

The Brutalist aims for symphonic grandeur and novelistic depth. It partially succeeds, though it too often mistakes pomposity for profundity, and bloated verbosity for literary nuance.

Köln 75 is an enjoyably off-beat blend of biopic, historical pageant and music-geek lecture from US writer-director Ido Fluk.

This Finale is basically one giant victory lap that takes the Crawley family and their employees into 1930 and beyond — as Cole Porter once wrote, “it’s fun/it’s fresh/it’s post-/depresh.”

[Kapadia’s] delicate touch remains very much the same, as she offers a gentle but clear critique of the challenges faced by women in India today.

Ministry works best when it chucks history out the window and leans into cinematic silliness.

Adding an extra religious dimension to an already densely packed sociopolitical soap opera, Costa tells a rich story here about the fuzzy line between democracy and theocracy, clashing spiritual values and inflammatory culture-war rhetoric.

Building slowly, the story morphs into a thriller, and finally a sort of horror film, though these parts feel more like decent imitations than real genre work.

For casually curious viewers, Scream of My Blood is a fast-moving, well-crafted primer on the band, light on background detail but generally compelling.

As it gathers to its grim conclusion with the inevitability of Greek tragedy, The Black Guelph becomes a quietly furious critique of power, corruption and lies among Ireland’s elites, from the police to the church to the upper echelons of government.

Not every joke hits the target, and not every thematic tangent is fruitfully explored, but a stellar cast and lively pacing lend comic force to even the weaker lines.

The second English-language feature by Berlin-based Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz (Futuro Beach, Motel Destino, Firebrand) is shallow and lurid and not entirely coherent. Even so, it is loaded with enough visual brio, acrid wit and WTF plot twists to hit the target as a surreal, salacious guilty pleasure.

To bring up an issue that arose when Joaquin Phoenix flaked on Todd Haynes’ latest project — is this any way to spend two years of an artist’s prime period?

What one remembers most from All of a Sudden is the uniqueness of the women’s relationship and their shining embrace of human rights — not just emotionally, but with their minds.

Clearly Aïnouz wanted to leave his mark on this alien genre, but Tudor-watchers may part ways with several characterizations, especially that of Katherine herself, updated as a political reformist and arch-feminist by a serious-looking Alicia Vikander.

Stripped of the twists and surprises that made the first one such a sleeper hit, this sequel nonetheless delivers breezy, bone-crushing entertainment for undemanding late-summer audiences.

The wisecracks could be wiser, admittedly, but there’s nothing terribly wrong with this airy, utterly innocuous, still charming Mother’s Day treat.

Bloodlines reminds us of why these hilarious horrors have been such crowd-pleasers, and why their creators might never call it quits.

If contemporary American cinema insists on having its cake and eating it when it comes to mixing the sour and the sweet, at least a film like No Hard Feelings spotlights the ability of an actor like Lawrence to deliver both with complete sincerity.

The slime and the shadows and the silences are back. Horror DNA is honored rather than pointlessly duplicated. This time, at least, IP familiarity breeds contentment.

One imagines screenwriter Shay Hatten (Rebel Moon) spinning a big Wheel of Weapons that would land on “hand grenades” or “flame-thrower” or “dishware,” leading him to craft novel ways for de Armas to implement these deadly items. The fight scenes are all Ballerina has going for it, but they’re frequent, varied, and clever enough to make watching the film a worthy summer pastime.

TRON: Ares throws in a few half-baked ideas about ethics in the tech world, but its main agenda is to be big, loud, fast, and eye-popping, and on that level — and only that level — it’s a complete success.

Is Song Sung Blue shamelessly manipulative in its assault on audiences’ tear ducts and heart strings? Absolutely. Will those qualities make it a whipping boy for contemporary reviews like this one while also turning it into a beloved classic in years to come? It’s entirely possible. Like those Neil Diamond songs, this movie might have a moment where it’s considered a joke or an embarrassment, but eventually, people will come clean about how much they love it.

If Hollywood insists on continuing its own separate monsterverse, it could do worse than GxK, a film where giant beasts wallop the tar out of each other with thrilling efficacy.

Director and co-writer James Cameron has a lot to say about colonization and guns and the environment and, while that messaging is noble and right-minded, it’s delivered with blunt force. The 3D here is stunning, but the metaphors come at your face with the same propulsion as the images.

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts defibrillates a moribund franchise; the patient may not quite be up and running, but it’s standing more solidly than it did before.

Perfect Days turns out to be a surprisingly charming, haunting, moving work with deliberate echoes of Japanese cinema legend Yasujiro Ozu.

Glossy and gripping, Czech director Robert Hloz’s ambitious and impressively polished debut feature boasts high-calibre production design and a dense, twist-heavy, techno-dystopian plot that feels at times like an extended episode of the cult Netflix series Black Mirror.

While it’s still an exercise in re-branding and revenue, the results at least provide some dazzle, some romance, and a handful of pretty good new songs with lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Is Karate Kid: Legends corny and predictable? You bet your obi. But this too-familiar tale is told with such winning spirit and brio that it works all the same. It’s merely a building block in an IP renovation, but it’s remarkably sturdy.

While Ryan Reynolds still seems to be having fun playing the cheeky mercenary, both the inside-baseball comedy and the cartoonishly bloody mayhem wear out their welcomes in the film’s final third.

Even if it starts better than it ends, Wolf Man merits a look, not only for the craft on display but also for the powerful performances from Abbott and Garner, not to mention Jaeger and Firth in smaller roles. A cast this strong deserves a script with more to tear into.

Harrison Ford's fond farewell to maverick tomb raider Indiana Jones balances formulaic blockbuster elements with soulful nostalgia and an audacious time-jumping plot.

Indian director Sreemoyee Singh's moving documentary transcends its overly relaxed editing and sometimes dispersive focus.

It’s a meaty premise, one that its talented cast digs into heartily, and the film succeeds at generating tensely uncomfortable comedy for most of its running time.

As ever with Almodóvar, the healing balms of beauty, art, friendship, love and sex offer some consolation in the darkness, including a small but obligatory queer subplot.

As a piece of investigative journalism it feels a little too fuzzy, but as an imaginative exercise in non-fiction cinema, it is consistently interesting and often hauntingly beautiful.

The film ultimately exists as a delivery device for Clooney and Pitt to engage in prickly banter and deadpan wisecracking. Any ideas deeper than that are rejected like an unsuitable liver.

Even if the screenplay stretches credulity at times, Blanc’s brisk, bouncy, twisty narrative should keep most viewers gripped.

Guadagnino has remixed an imperfect, incomplete book into an imperfect, incomplete film.

While the adventure is suitably wild and the sidekicks are at least visually appealing, Elio never quite clicks in the way that viewers have come to expect from the people behind Toy Story 3 and Finding Nemo.

Jeremy Strong’s vicious portrayal of Roy Cohn will long be remembered alongside the finest of Hollywood’s eccentric baddies.

An overlong runtime, underwritten characters and some uneasy tonal wobbles dampen the film’s punchy humour and propulsive energy.

The Shrouds feels a little unruly and unfocussed, with too many loose threads and undernourished side plots. Even so, this is still an absorbingly weird autumnal statement from one of the most consistently original screen voices of his generation, still probing away at some familiar psychosexual obsessions, this time under a gathering cloud of looming mortality.

You, Me & Tuscany has all the heft of a squash blossom, and it’s similarly tasty without being filling. But sometimes, you just want one anyway.

Civil War ultimately risks nothing and subsequently says nothing; it’s a thrilling war picture cosplaying as an examination of the zeitgeist.

He makes his way to the big screen with silliness (and a love of tennis balls) intact, but Dog Man deserves a frenetic pace to match its barrage of absurd jokes and plot twists.

Unfortunately, Scott has chosen not to fill every one of the 148 minutes of this sequel with wacky, quotable moments or with a strapping Paul Mescal taking on soldiers, sharks, or mad monkeys — rest assured, the Aftersun star does do all of those things — and when Gladiator II is being neither wild nor crazy, it’s all a little dull.

The pièce de résistance of unabashed culinary cinema, Tran Anh Hung’s The Pot au Feu serves up a French country idyll in romantic 19th century sauce for audiences whose tastes run to the fine wines and 12-course meals.

None of this would work without Johnson, whose gift for side-eye and deadpan line readings grounds what could be a very silly story into one with real human stakes (that do not, thankfully, involve the fate of the entire world).

Young Woman is a biopic with all sharp edges removed, the kind of non-threatening, inspirational Disney movie that teachers screen for fidgety students on the last day of fourth grade.

There are decades of unresolved tensions simmering away between mother and daughter in Keeping Mum, which make this Karlovy Vary world premiere almost uncomfortably voyeuristic and a little too self-indulgent in places.

For sheer horror pleasure and monster-movie squirms, this silly monkey movie delivers the goods.

There’s a lot more sex in this Wuthering Heights, but the characters are flatter, the story is duller, and by the film’s climax, any dramatic momentum has been swept away by the winds on the moors.

Low on laughs and with a thin plot, Christophe Honore's Marcello Mio is a quirky tribute to one of European cinema's most famous filial relationships.

Night Swim mostly delivers, veering from straightforward shocks to campy excess without ever hitting bottom.

This remake doesn’t desecrate the memory of that modern classic, but neither does it ever transcend it.

The Theory of Everything works best as a kind of surrealist carrousel of film influences and physics references and as such, it’s mostly enjoyable.

For all the inherent familiarity of the hit-man genre, Fincher and Walker have nonetheless crafted an absorbing tale; what it has to offer that’s any different from countless similar tales lies in the minutiae rather than the mayhem.

While this sassy cyborg with the deadpan baby voice remains a brilliant comic creation, the movie’s messaging is muddled. For all of the laughs and thrills, we’re left with a satire about technology that still wants to play nice with AI.

This very modern brand of post-Warholioan digital fame is a much-debated cultural phenomenon, and Wild Diamond adds nothing especially new or insightful to the discourse. That said, Reidinger does display a rare degree of empathy and understanding towards young women who pursue this kind of tabloid celebrity.

Moana 2 is always a joy to look at, from its shimmering blue waters to its stunning seacraft to the engaging character design of the human characters, the animals, and even the sentient coconut pirates. (Yes, they’re back, too.) But this remains firmly the kind of sequel aimed solely at people who want to watch the same movie again, only with a number in the title.

If the film works at all it is thanks to the exceptional craftsmanship of its camerawork, editing, and acting, under the direction of Asghar Farhadi.

It’s an entertaining, if shambolic, 105 minutes, yet one can only imagine how much of a treat this film would have been if given permission to fully transcend business as usual.

A movie that is neither Schrader’s best work nor his most scandalous.

What’s surprising is that Waugh and his team shine in the quieter moments.

For all the targets that director and co-writer Edgar Wright hits with the story’s political and media satire, he allows the pacing to go slack, turning what should feel like an escalating set of stakes into an episodic series of vignettes.

It’s not very clear if the director-actor-writer-producer has anything vitally important to add to his filmography in this narratively complex, generally downbeat work. What comes through most strongly is a striking sense of loss and disappointment in the character he plays, an aging man whose despair seems very personal and tinges the whole film (which is theoretically a Morettian comedy) with sadness and bitter farewells.

While the film is filled with shimmering images aplenty – including a literally sparkling trompe d’oeil – the director falls short of using the texture of his 16mm film stock to its full potential. The same could be said of his characters, who could do with more thoughtful fleshing out, while their slow-burning relationships generate more a sense of lethargy than melancholy.

The Scream series has become a horror version of That’s Entertainment!, where 21st century fans of a 1990s movie that paid homage to 1980s horror can get the kind of squishy, splattery, shocking homicides that A24 just isn’t going to deliver.

We’ve truly been down this road before, and none of Miller’s many talents can overcome the sense of familiarity that he’s already done all of this, and better.

Gran Turismo is a piece of salesmanship that never stops selling — the movie constantly reminds us how much the real races resemble the accurate simulation of the game, and even the Sony Walkman gets a fair amount of screen time — but the vroom-vroom of it all delivers enough adrenaline and character-building to make this a solidly entertaining piece of late-summer cinema.

Out-pacing most of 2024’s comedies on the laughs-per-minute scale — albeit unintentionally — Kraven the Hunter offers the spectacle of talented individuals on both sides of the camera trying to make chicken salad out of a nonsensical script.

Let’s give The Super Mario Galaxy Movie this: for a piece of intellectual-property exploitation, it’s created with far more craft and care than it had to be, with dazzlingly colorful backgrounds and action that’s constantly moving forward. At the same time, it never stops to explain the rules of the characters and their interactions for those of us not steeped in four decades of gameplay.

This adaptation of the Broadway musical – the first half, anyway – offers a lot of craft but not enough magic.

The lockdown across cities the world over was quite the inescapable slog; there’s no good reason for a film to replicate its worst feature.

As a procedural, it’s by-the-numbers. If it’s supposed to be a character study, the characters are TV-familiar.

The Phoenician Scheme sees Anderson indulging in all of his usual design fetishes (we don’t just get precisely-lettered labels on ornate boxes, we also get the yellowing cellophane tape affixed to those labels) without seeming to get around to a story or characters or themes.