An eat-the-rich satire that would go rotten without its supremely overqualified cast, The Menu is as much fun as it is ephemeral.

Set aside the fact that Sugar’s screenplay is filled with holes, that its characters are as loathsome as they are thinly sketched, that its budget is as bare-bones as your local No Frills, and we are still left with a movie that is barely competent on a technical level.

Even when the maximalist visuals grab hold – as in, by your collar with an unpleasant yank – it is hard to feel much but exhaustion.

There are several ways to make a serial killer movie, and in the sometimes compelling and sometimes repellent Holy Spider, filmmaker Ali Abbasi has chosen all of them. At once exploitative and contemplative, thrilling and disgusting, the film makes a bloody mess of itself before coming close to solving its own case.

More than any other MCU outing over the past three years, though, there is more to appreciate here than not. The performances are all filled with sorrow and spirit, a true melding of real-life emotion and whatever heightened reactions are typically required for an expensive play session in a superpowered sandbox.

From the very first scenes of the Canadian documentary Eternal Spring, you’re thrust into a thrilling, all-consuming film that challenges traditional documentary tropes and finds a way to tell a winding, difficult story with brilliant ease.

Call Jane delivers a striking and affecting message that self-autonomy is crucial to survival, and that the fight for reproductive health is one that we can under no circumstances back down from.

There are enough secrets, lies and tepidly chaste sex scenes – both of the straight and same-sex variety – to fill a hundred kitchen sinks. But the resulting drama is all drips and drops, no deluge.

Every detail and narrative swerve are stacked on top of the other to build a monumental story of compromises and consequences. This is a brave film, bracing and thoughtful. It is also, at times, painfully funny.

Aftersun cuts you in two with such emotional intensity, such impressive dramatic force, that I could only sit and fight back the inevitable tears.

Regrettably, both director and star are constantly fighting uphill battles in Till, which is saddled with a thoroughly conventional screenplay whose narrative energies only rarely attempt to match the incendiary intensity of the history that it obviously cares so much about retelling.

Even if the effect of watching two mega-screen icons banter back and forth for an hour and change doesn’t add up to much, Clooney and Roberts still have a sort of sparkle between them. It is the exact sort of wholly inoffensive, if bland, charisma that’s perfect for low-key, weekend watching (made even better in your pyjamas and on your couch).

Both Colm’s initial rejection of Padraic and Padraic’s final crazed reaction are not the stuff of realism or reason but of fairy tales and nightmares, yet Gleeson and Farrell make the film a delight.

This is meticulous, beautiful filmmaking that is rich in meaning and fat with detail. Surrender to Park’s smoky, dangerous romance – vengeance can wait.

Johnson, who is also a producer here, having shepherded Black Adam through a decade and a half of development, gets off relatively easy. The real victim, or perhaps perpetrator, is Collet-Serra.

Rosaline ultimately sparkles in this cheeky telling of the greatest love story never told.

This new version of an old tale has the capacity to horrify you into shell-shocked pacifism, while delivering a few minor-key surprises along the way.

An engrossing and stylistically exacting work of cinema, Tár teases our political (as in: identity) sentiments with such a ferocious artistic confidence that you will leave the theatre with questions, arguments, demands – but most of all a supremely fulfilling sense of satisfaction. Here is a film that not only starts a debate but almost ends it, too.

There are movies that are on-the-nose and then there is Ruben Ostlund’s Triangle of Sadness, a satire™ that is so pharyngeal that it is the cinematic equivalent of a COVID-19 swab.

Blonde is a precisely engineered nightmare. From Monroe’s childhood to superstardom, Dominik presents her as a passive victim of never-ending tragedy: neglect, abuse, heartbreak, addiction. And in doing so, Dominik creates a cinematic experience so repellent that it is destined to be loathed and misunderstood, written off as crass and opportunistic just like those who profited off Monroe’s body during her own life.

Russell’s film is not remotely playable. Amsterdam so badly wants to be a light romp with heavy-duty meaning that it cannot help but be flattened by a sagging self-exhaustion. It is an exercise in interminable madcappery.

Bros is a genuinely hilarious, wonderful movie: heartfelt, slick and crafted with such careful comedic care that a good deal of jokes will inevitably be drowned out by audiences still laughing over the punchlines that came just before.

It is at times brash and thick-headed in its characters and politics, but it is engineered with such an electric ferocity – a beautiful marriage of high-performance technical expertise and gonzo aesthetic imagination – that it cannot help but knock you out.

There is a sincerity here that is unafraid of itself and – in what is most certainly a love letter to the beguiling and tumultuous affair that is girlhood – Catherine Called Birdy feels unique and special in a way that speaks directly to Birdy and other uncontainable girls like her.

Luckily, Pugh is captivating as Alice, enriching this otherwise rote thriller with as much turmoil and betrayal as she can. Styles does his best to keep pace but it’s hardly a fair ask.

What Cregger best accomplishes with Barbarian is an unhinged sort of storytelling that nevertheless feels calculated in its design. It knows that comedy and horror are two sides of the same coin, and synthesizes both while also playfully knocking loose a screw or two.

The film's bitter exposé of life under a theocracy is unforgettable

Bardem gives the kind of stately, anchoring performance that can just about make up for any shortcomings the film might otherwise face.

Miller’s go-for-broke visuals and his stars’ fiercely committed work allow Three Thousand to speed by on wit, energy, and gushy, bleeding-heart passion.

Crimes of the Future is a dirty little thing because it dives deep into the muck of humanity, where Cronenberg finds a perverted pleasure in the absence of pain. Every millimetre of this film is filthy, decayed, polluted. And thank god for that.

The Black Phone is an enjoyable watch, for sure, but it lacks a certain agility, which keeps it from being as great as we want it to be.

This Spanish-language satire of the film industry, from the Argentinian duo Mariano Cohn and Gaston Duprat, is one big and delightful inside joke for the art-house aficionado.

Luckily for us, the flawed but charming Mr. Malcolm’s List has Indian actress Freida Pinto as a winsome romantic lead, finally receiving her flowers in a perfectly matched role.

There are occasional moments when the film is so close to feeling like it is accomplishing its goals – to be seen as a sharp and comedic critique of the cost of storytelling, with a fun little whodunnit at its core – but it never quite gets there.

Prey is exactly the type of late-summer nastiness that deserves to be enjoyed with fellow hooters and hollerers. But by this point, Predator fans are used to playing the victim.

It’s disappointing that the film takes that well-worn trope of a big family get-together and just lazily adds a Filipino layer to it.

Ford’s film cannot be entirely discounted – the director knows a star when he sees one, and seems to retroactively contort his screenplay around the talents of Plaza as much as he can. The actress makes Emily’s plight seem relatable, unrelenting and never ever precious.

An energetic, cockeyed, bloody, and sometimes delightfully vicious skewering of Millennial culture – or, more accurately, what Instagram-less tsk-tsk’ers imagine millennial culture to be – director Halina Reijn’s new film exists not only to meet late-summer slasher expectations, but to ever so slightly subvert them.

The scriptwriters did Perry no favours. Lengthy swaths of dialogue are consumed by tedious exposition on vampire types and the ways they can be killed.

At its best points, Sharp Stick functions like a cinematic mixtape of every Taylor Swift song, presenting romantic clichés and immediately pulverizing them into dust. At its worst points, Sharp Stick is a twee, porn-ified Napoleon Dynamite, humiliating the very heroine who we should empathize with the most.

It’s an edge-of-your-seat crowd-pleaser that cares enough to develop its story world and characters just as well as its jump-scares and tension.

Pritz has managed to make this often abstract and far-away subject feel anything but removed. It’s urgent, desperate and terrifying and the words of the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau ask us not to look away.

It’s the tortured artist trope, handled in unexpected ways.

While the tone and feel of Nope is wonderfully atmospheric and expansive, it also feels as if it comes at the expense of characters possessing deep interior lives or a story world that is well and evenly plotted.

The director fumbles frequently, but at least he is confident enough in his uneven vision to push through all (warranted) doubts and deliver a story that is every bit awful as it is uncompromising.

Burdened with a needlessly complex conceit, flat character design, limp jokes, and a soundtrack completely absent a single ear-worm (unless you count an overreliance on Madonna’s Lucky Star), Luck feels dredged from the bottom of Pixar’s few lows (Cars comes to mind) than plucked from its many highs (Inside Out would like a word).

Bullet Train’s biggest weapon, of the secretly funny variety, rests in the chiselled form of star Brad Pitt, who once again proves that he is as charming a buff-and-tough movie god as he is a wry, self-deprecating comedy star.

The filmmaker is obviously toying with what horror films can be, with what audiences expect of both cheap thrills and high-priced performers. But I can’t admire, and don’t take much pleasure in, being tossed into Semans’s cinematic sandbox along with his well-compensated cast and crew.

When Howard focuses on the head-scratching mechanics of the mission itself, Thirteen Lives excels – and its many claustrophobic underwater scenes likely play excellently inside the confines of a darkened theatre. But by the time we’re in pure rescue mode, it is almost too late. What should be the highest of high-stakes dramas arrives with a drippy thud.

It is a rare song that deserves its own book, but Hallelujah is one of them. The story is a doozy.

If I may persuade you, however: Watch the film for whimsy. Read the book for passion.

While Dosa has a talent, and perhaps a fascination equalling her subjects, for illustrating the hidden beauty of the natural world, she ultimately crafts a film that is too neatly packaged.

This is flat, flaccid action that makes the wan green-screenery of the MCU look like the delirious highs of Mad Max: Fury Road.

The film is neither heartbreaking nor thrilling, often feeling like a blown-up version of a Hallmark flick-of-the-week, its ambitions far greater than its capabilities.

The bargain-basement knock-off of this movie, minus Manville and Dior, would not look out of place on Lifetime or Hallmark.

This film is a dud all on its own, a watered down Woody Allen facsimile that is long on F-bombs and short on wit, with an internal logic that falls apart with barely a half-cocked glance.

Ultimately, Thor: Love and Thunder will leave you feeling sad, empty, deadened. Which is what frequently happens in the MCU these days – it is an enterprise built with an Axl Rose-sized appetite for destruction, but no stomach for genuine risk or imagination.

The Rise of Gru is the weakest entry by far. But with just enough semi-inspired moments of weirdness to skate by.

There is real emotion and purpose pumped into the tiny picture – it has a heart as big as its title character is small.

After all its blood is spilled – on perfectly white sheets of ice and snow, of course – Slash/Back still announces the arrival of a major talent in Innuksuk. Here is hoping that she gets to kill bigger and better Canadian actors for many years to come.

A stupendously dull action-comedy that is devoid of both thrills and humour.

Elvis is as much a ride following the highs and lows of the musician’s fabulously rich and sad life as it is a one-way journey into the extremities of its director’s exhaustive imagination. For better, and worse.

S#!%house genuinely engaged with the complexities of insecure, imbalanced romantic relationships, and the flawed men who pursued them. Cha Cha Real Smooth settles for a sickly sweet sitcom approach. As Andrew might sigh during a bar-mitzvah shift: oy vey.

If you can divorce Lightyear’s shareholder-appeasing origins from its actual cinematic accomplishments, then we’re left with a rather beautiful, often thrilling, sometimes devastating adventure.

Perhaps sensing that the film needs all the toe-tapping energy it can get, Spiderhead’s cast make the most out of their thin material.

Visually exhilarating as it may be, it’s worthwhile to remember that RRR is inspired by true events. It’s a work of historical fiction that’s just as inventive as its thrilling special effects.

There is something undeniably charming about the film in spite of itself, its familiar but pleasant narrative momentum and tense on-court action wrapped around a lovably scruffy lead performance from a man who knows how to turn it on when he wants to.

After almost two and a half hours, all of it glued together with plot-vomiting dialogue and characters that only vaguely resemble the ones Spielberg carefully built, Dominion becomes its very own Jurassic Park: Designed to thrill and enchant, it instead becomes a ride to survive.

Maverick works its wonders thanks to the perfect match of star power, source material ripe for retrofitting, and a director who knows how to wring the best out of his leading man and, more importantly, when to get the heck out of his way.

It is a small story told with slightly greater ambition than the small-screen affords. The animation is slicker, the original-songs budget more generous (the movie is, like the series, half-comedy and half-musical), and the guest stars are plentiful. It is ideal lazy summer Saturday matinee viewing.

The new Chip ‘N Dale: Rescue Rangers movie is a delightful, zippy and genuinely fun thing

With Men, the British filmmaker is stubbornly needling his audience with a never-ending barrage of pointy-ended questions that he has neither the inclination nor intention of vaguely addressing or even thinking through on his own terms. Men is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, all scrawled in crayon.

As a conversation-starter, though, Pleasure hits all the spots – and sometimes soars far beyond thanks to the work of Kappel, whose performance is absolutely committed, fearless and entrancing.

The many stumbling blocks, setbacks and eventual (spoiler alert for a three-quarters-of-a-century-old war) triumphs of Operation Mincemeat are handled by a deft crew of real-life stiff-upper-lip types played by the finest U.K. actors working today.

Happening is set in the sixties, but Diwan’s stark, unwavering direction, coupled with sparing costumes and cinematographer Laurent Tangy’s intimate lens, lend the film a sense of timelessness. The power of Happening is in the terrifying knowledge that Anne’s struggles could be happening to anyone, at any time.

There may be a universe in which I feel the barest thread of emotional connection to even one thing that happens during the 126 minutes of loud, smeary nonsense that is Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. But I doubt it.

The brutal, bloody and bare-chested revenge thriller is essentially one big, long war cry – a guttural, primal grunt of a movie that is all raging testosterone and incendiary machismo. And I loved nearly every minute of it.

There are great things to be found in little packages, and Islands offers tremendous evidence that, if Edralin might ever be given more than the bare minimum of resources, the director will create something gigantic.

A cheap, crass and ruthlessly sloppy skewering of celebrity culture that is barely a millimetre above the material it thinks it is so sharply satirizing, Gormican’s new film is the definition of disappointment.

I love this movie like a person. It pierced my heart the way certain paintings or pieces of music do. The way standing at the foot of a mountain does. The first time I saw it, I had to stay in my cinema seat for five minutes after it ended, to finish crying. The second time, I vowed to watch it more analytically, but ended up crying all over again.

Paris, 13th District is not a revelation of a film, but it is a charismatic collection of moments worth spending time with.

Ross’s formulaic direction could have been delivered by a robot or algorithm and nobody would have noticed. Watching Father Stu feels like enduring a B-movie that would never see the inside of a cinema (the film is playing exclusively in theatres) and be instead relegated to the bottom of a streaming or VOD queue – only it holds the star power and charisma of Wahlberg.

Unlike the first movie, where aspects of the video game were more seamlessly integrated into the plot, Sonic 2 relies more on generic themes such as friendship and loyalty, as well as what makes a hero.

It takes you on an emotional, uplifting journey across many countries and through civil unrest, with music ultimately winning out over dark forces that would otherwise challenge and limit free expression and art.

Ambulance is here to remind you of the head-spinning delights of watching a genuine cinematic madman at work. This is eye-popping, ear-splitting, guffaw-inducing stuff that makes Red Notice look like the dumpster juice it truly is.

The viewer is left feeling like they’ve been sitting in a double-decker tour bus: You’re exposed to a lot, but it’s all surface level.

Triumphantly, Young’s work with her ever-changing (and aging) character succeeds in bringing a complicated and resilient character to life.

The nostalgia quotient might be indulgent overload for some, though catnip for others.

It is a film that asks audiences to take the plunge into chaos and confusion, so that we’re able to fully see the innate humanity of what remains when the dust of it all settles.

The White Fortress is a startling, hypnotizing, but above all haunting work destined to linger.

Roth (who reunites here with his Chronic director) manages to find a peculiar amount of pain in a man sleepwalking through life. It might be the best work of the actor’s long career – or at least the most carefully controlled.

Knives has just enough expensive style, steamy sex, and wild plot contrivances to hold your attention.

While his character is intended to be lost and powerless, Pine seems adrift in another way, too – a star without a proper star vehicle.

Featuring standout performances from Landry Jones and Davis, Nitram is uncomfortable, demanding viewing. It is the kind of work that presses on a nerve, begging you to stand up or tune out, but compelling you forward nonetheless – with its haunting portrayal of our all too boring capacity for inflicting pain.

It is all extraordinarily interminable, even if Yates and company had the good sense to swap out Johnny Depp for Mikkelsen this time around.

There is semi-purpose and not insignificant pleasure to be had in Apatow’s experiment. The Netflix production isn’t the comedy kingmaker’s best film by a wide margin (though it is his shortest, which still isn’t saying much), but it works in spite of itself.

It is charmless, incoherent, ugly and so aggressively stupid that it defies any attempt to shove it into the desperate “guilty pleasure” box.

The Lost City believes it is a lot more fun than it actually is. The movie isn’t a guilty pleasure so much as a pleasure-lite guilt trip – a relentlessly and eventually exhausting middle-ground effort that is made all the more frustrating because it is so very close to reaching the platonic ideal of shlock.