The plot of Everybody Loves Touda is sensually expressed in Erradi’s whirling, energetic performance, and visually told by the brilliant, soft camerawork of Virginie Surdej, expressing the character’s ups and downs.

Fortunately, Harvest recounts this pre-historical fall from grace not as dry socio-economic history, but as a sort of universal myth.

Maybe the center of the drama is the obsession — love? passion? — Mathias has with Claude, and their rendezvous plays out in a rather melodramatic way. But the music imposes its presence. Strangely enough, Claude does not seem interested in music or the pianist´s career. And the film limits itself to offering a compromise in this impossible love.

F1 doggedly follows the expected ups and downs of most sports-movie narratives, and it’s clearly more interested in recreating the experience of racing than telling a story or crafting a character piece.

The pleasurable jolt of a silent scare has given way to predictability.

The miracle of Superman is that, in 2025, it’s a superhero movie that inspires genuine delight.

For those of us who come to these movies wondering what Tom Cruise will be climbing, clinging onto, or falling off of, this sequel delivers the goods.

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.

Blink Twice emerges as a true late-summer surprise, a witty genre film with more on its mind than surface excitement, that draws its sense of dread out of real-world pain without ever exploiting that pain, that serves as an evergreen reminder that if the party seems too good to be true, it is.

Boasting a barnstorming performance from Yuumi Kawai (Plan 75), Desert of Namibia takes a seemingly banal love-triangle premise and runs with it in the most surprising, gripping and anarchic fashion possible.

Wonka stands as an effective reimagining of a beloved literary and cinematic character — so long as you don’t mind a little extra sweetness.

For all its craft, though, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes never finds the “aha” moment that justifies returning to the well for reasons more pressing than branding and global markets.

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.

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.

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.”

Search for SquarePants comes down vigorously on the side of exuberance.

As did King before him, Wilson revels in whimsy without drowning in it, and he finds the franchise’s sweet spot of cleverness, poignancy, elaborate physical comedy, witty wordplay, goofy musicality, and just the right amount of sentiment.

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 entertaining and occasionally over-the-top The Housemaid returns Feig to A Simple Favor territory, serving up aspirational, glossy wealth-porn with one hand and the dark underbelly of the glamorous life with the other.

For most crime capers, shooting is funny but killing isn’t; the always-divisive Aronofsky obliterates the line between comedy and realism, and the result is a farce that’s both literally and figuratively explosive

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

It proves that this mechanized world and its inhabitants are better suited to cartoon form than the headache-inducing Michael Bay movies, but it’s ultimately another piece of elaborate fan service that will bore the uninitiated.

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.

It’s entirely possible that Benny Safdie was out to craft a different kind of underdog sports movie, one where the audience isn’t manipulated into raising a triumphant fist at the end. But surely the writer-director-editor hoped for more than a disinterested shrug.

There’s a lot to like about the world of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, from the mid-century kitsch to the progressive social ethos to its generally upbeat demeanor, but the movie itself lacks the nerve to carve out a memorable personality. Bespoke costumes and vintage Lucky Charms boxes are the empty props of a timid movie.

Last Breath was made by someone who clearly connects with this material, but somewhere between the non-fiction and fiction versions, the emotional impact has been rendered unfathomable.

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.

The film’s epic nature embraces not only size and scope but also the exquisite craftsmanship on display, from the detail work of Janty Yates and Dave Crossman’s costumes to cinematographer Dariusz Wolski’s ability to differentiate a successful battle from a disastrous one simply through his lighting choices.

One of the film’s best features is that it does a minimum of seeding the ground for the next five MCU sequels; one of its worst is that it generates little enthusiasm for ever seeing these characters again.

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.

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.

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

On a pure craft level, The Creator delivers as a sweeping, big-screen science-fiction experience. What dazzles the eye, unfortunately, fails to connect with either the head or the heart.

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 first movie, for all its fluff, gave Miranda that eminently quotable “cerulean sweater” monologue, but this follow-up has nothing as interesting to say about fashion, or journalism, or life as anyone leads it. It’s sending nostalgia down the runway and expecting us to wear it, when the perfectly comfortable original already fits just right.

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.

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.

Perhaps most miraculously, it represents Tim Burton getting his groove back, successfully returning to the dark comedy and outrageous visuals that marked his extraordinary early work.

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.

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

Cuckoo would have benefited from explaining itself much less or much, much more; as it is, it lives in the atmospheric middle of the road, confused by itself.

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.

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.

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.

Hawke remains delightfully disturbing, however, and some fans of the original may find the character’s return worthwhile, even if Black Phone 2 twists itself into narrative knots to make it happen.

The conflict is pretty obvious and the film’s naturalistic shooting style can’t take it to another symbolic level, so as drama, what you see is what you get.

Blue Beetle is so singularly fresh and fun that Jaime Reyes and his family deserve to be front and center of whatever comes next.

Conceptually staggering.

With so many potential crises underfoot, Saturday Night manages to pass the Apollo 13 sniff-test of historical dramas: we know everything’s going to come out all right, but the film nonetheless generates enough suspense to make us think that it might not.

Between Lohan’s impressive return to the movies and Curtis’ defiance of the Best Supporting Oscar curse, Freakier Friday represents an all-too-rare opportunity for talented women on both sides of the camera to demonstrate their chops at big-screen comedy. Long may they freak.

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.

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.

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.

It’s always applause-worthy when a biopic focuses on a few key years rather than try to tackle the span of a notable life, but Cooper never fully captures the mental anguish or the artistic glory tied up in Nebraska’s creation. It’s as spare as the album it chronicles, but never as subtle or satisfying.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

At nearly every juncture, the filmmakers display a lack of nerve, exercising restraint precisely when restraint is anathema to their goals. They’re cautious rather than crazed.

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.

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

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.

Balagov‘s latest outing is a warm, colour-saturated and sporadically magical and comical family drama set in a tightly-knit community in Newark, but with tension and trauma looming ever close on its seemingly happy-go-lucky protagonists.

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

Any evolution should be appreciated, perhaps, as the story chugs its way to the finish line. Wicked fans can delight in one final visit to Oz, while those of us less enamored can hope that the yellow brick road ends here. For good.

Visual delights, a sweet love story, and that potent Pixar sentimentality carry this animated feature past a periodic table's worth of script flaws.

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.

A small-town coming-of-age story blown up to rock-opera dimensions, And Their Children After Them puts a roaringly romantic widescreen frame around some well-worn dramatic themes, but never quite hits the epic emotional high notes it strains to reach.

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?

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.

Drive-Away Dolls is, at its core, a comedy about eccentric people contending with inept but still deadly criminals. But neither the eccentrics nor the criminals feel remotely like real people, and their hijinks never summon up much hilarity or suspense.

If you’re still on board for what these movies have to offer — and the global box office indicates that quite a few people are — Fast X deliriously overdelivers its delights.

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.

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.

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

Drunk on its own noble aims and rich ingredients, Megalopolis is a muddled misfire of overcooked kitsch and undercooked ideas.

If The Flash proves anything, it’s that the fans won, and that’s a loss for everyone else.

“Mexico for me is a state of mind,” Iñárritu has said, and Bardo is his own idiosyncratic vision of it. It is a handsomely produced creation in which the director has clearly exercised great control and his stamp is to be found on almost every credit.

Veers off in so many exhausting directions that it ultimately amounts to little more than sound and fury. She’s alive, alive, but she can’t maintain this pace.

With The Conjuring: Last Rites, this venerable franchise finally (one hopes) gives up the ghost, not with a bang, but a whimper.

There’s an argument to be made, and I’m willing to make it, that Kung Fu Panda 4 is the best film in this series.

The fourth film of a franchise that probably should have packed it in at least two movies ago, this by-the-numbers sequel offers absolutely nothing unexpected, starting with its opening beaches-and-bikinis montage to the climactic standoff with the villain.

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.

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.

It’s the absence of Lawrence — or at least of any young performer matching her charisma — that’s a key part of the problem here.

The film’s intentions are unquestionably noble, but the execution falls wildly short, even with so many talented artists involved.

For Favreau, philosophy and world-building is obviously the stuff of the TV show; now that it’s a movie, it’s time for fun and thrills.

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

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.

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.

Sorrentino somehow makes it work in a film that is truly a sensual pleasure to watch.

Usually, the architecture of a thriller involves introducing a complicated scenario and then slowly but surely ratcheting up the tension; with Trap, Shyamalan has chosen to set it and forget it, spelling out the circumstances of the titular snare and then rarely bothering to introduce new elements or to elevate the suspense.

Despicable Me 4 plays like an assemblage of note cards that have been stapled together in a rough approximation of a screenplay. There are about 20 different plot threads that aren’t woven together as much as they’re shoved into one ungainly knot.

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.

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.

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.

The film’s best moments are an outlandish pleasure, far outshining the highlights of the similarly-plotted and mostly by-the-numbers sequel Ready or Not 2: Here I Come. But the latter at least maintains a consistent level of energy from start to finish. The initial dynamism on display in They Will Kill You contracts and collapses. Death be not dull.