There is something weirdly heavy and foggy in Amsterdam that feels like it’s working against the lightness and nimbleness needed for a caper. It’s the reality of the history, which the movie makes explicit in the closing credits.

There remains a remove though still, Spielberg giving us a slightly too stage-managed version of himself and his family, some gristle missing from the darkest moments.

Despite its flaws, See You Then is an interesting opportunity to see trans talents in front of and behind the camera.

Operation Mincemeat is watchable enough, but perhaps can’t find a fictional way into the stranger-than-fiction outrageousness of the scheme itself.

Kiah Roache-Turner keeps the camera moving and the cuts regular, setting a cracking energy that’s particularly important for midnight movies like this, concerned more with relishing carnage than telling a story.

It is an absorbing, intriguing, bewildering work: often spectacular and beautiful, like a sci-fi supernatural disaster movie or an essay on nature and politics, but shot through with distinctive elements of fey and whimsical comedy.

It’s a strange film; it rattles fiercely along, but its relentless cynicism and nihilism leaves a sour taste and opinion may divide as to exactly how funny it is. Podalydès gives an entertainingly blase performance as the worldly image consultant, trying to seduce Alexandre over lunch.

The whole thing is performed with relish and high spirits, and the digital fabrications of the Tower itself, rising out of the ground in stages with hair-raisingly dangerous structural work, are entertainingly contrived.

The documentary vividness that Carol Reed brought to the streets of Vienna in The Third Man and London in The Fallen Idol, he here brings to Belfast in this fascinating but imperfect 1947 thriller.

This is a gentle-going watch, understated – underpowered even – and sometimes a little drowsy. Still, it has real sensitivity and insight into the transition to adulthood, as gradually it dawns on Nang that his parents don’t have all the answers.

It is well-acted and well directed by Mylod with tasty side plates of droll humour.

Training its crosshair on the ingrained prejudice of the military and the question of how well-meaning white allies can best support its undoing, the film compensates for relatively middling action set pieces with a stolid maturity.

While it’s not going to make a star of Pataky or anyone watching a sudden convert to Netflix’s mockbuster oeuvre, it’ll make for a decent summer snack until something better lands.

It is made with real panache – so much panache, in fact, that you can forgive much of the film’s outrageous narcissism. Iñárritu could, if he chose, tell us an equally painful but less grandiose and auto-mythic story about his own life – but he has exercised his prerogative as an artist and given us this confection instead. It is certainly spectacular.

Overall, this documentary is an exercise in frustration – especially during the rushed final half hour, in which we dart about all over the place.

Sure, this is a talky movie, big on debates and low on action, and may feel somewhat theatrical – but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, especially when the performances are this subtle, expressive and electric.

While the juxtaposition of different timelines results in occasional clunkiness, the breathtaking cinematography more than makes up for the uneven telling. In the face of global climate change, these images of the glacial otherworldliness of Alaska carry a wistful splendour and a bittersweet urgency.

Mr Malcolm’s List has no great ambitions other than to amuse. But that is always harder than it looks.

It’s a garrulous, yet almost static movie, and weirdly for a film about narrative there is no single overwhelmingly important storyline.

The recurring dependence on sexual violence as a shock tactic is, however, a desensitising misstep. Nevertheless the assured command of style situates Jabbaz as an impressive new voice in horror cinema.

It is a tough story, told with conviction.

Abbasi undoubtedly conveys the brutal attitudes which create victimhood.

Everything in Showing Up is certainly valid, but I confess I thought it lacked some perspective on Lizzie’s life, and it is sometimes a bit studied and passionless, especially compared with Reichardt’s previous film, First Cow. But there is sympathy and charm and food for thought.

This film touches on her keynote themes of sexuality and colonialism, in its 21st-century manifestation, though maybe the romantic passion and duplicity don’t come across as strongly as they might have done with leads who had a stronger chemistry.

The result is something appreciably sillier and more eccentric than the original ... It’s certainly far from the sophistication and gloss for which Hazanavicius became famous ten years ago with his silent pastiche The Artist; it’s closer to his spy spoof series OSS 117. But it’s likeable and goofy.

This is undoubtedly a vehement and very watchable drama – far superior to Serebrennikov’s previous film, the sprawling and unrewarding Petrov’s Flu. If there is a narrowness in its emotional and tonal range, that gives it force.

At a baggy, over-stretched two hours, its welcome is close to being overstayed, but there’s just about enough charm to keep Disenchanted from living up to its title.

Perhaps this film doesn’t entirely work all the way through, but it is a shard of malevolence that jabs into your skin.

It’s a shame that, as it ramps up, this generational tension isn’t dramatised with the sharpness it might have been.

The film conforms to the coming-of-age template in that romance is followed or superseded by friendship and maturing personal growth. Urzendowsky keeps it all together.

RMN is a sombre downbeat movie, whose sudden flurry of dreamlike visions at the very end is a little disconcerting. But it is seriously engaged with the dysfunction and unhappiness in Europe that goes unreported and unacknowledged.

A entertainingly nasty film for the new year.

August might be a washout so far for the industry but Beast couldn’t be arriving at a more apt time, a thrilling, if throwaway, reminder of the fun to be had while watching a B-movie bringing its A-game.

While the ensuing sense of despair that overwhelms the drama is credible, it does bring with it a certain sense of torpor that makes the film a bit of a grind in the midsection.

I’m not sure this is my favourite Skolimowski film, but it is engaging in many ways: beautifully photographed, sentimental and surreal in equal measure; and also stubborn – as stubborn as its hero – in its symbolism and stark pessimism.

There is a simplicity and clarity of purpose here that I responded to and the Dardennes have got excellent performances from their young leads.

Kokkali persuasively enacts both the emotional hurt and emotional healing.

It’s entertaining enough and you never know where the story is headed, but it doesn’t quite hold together.

The film is competently crafted, dutifully acted, clearly labored over with soul, and yet, like its star, lacks a beating heart.

The movie noodles along amiably, but in the cold light of day, its quirks begin to feel like flaws.

Anything’s Possible is another needed step in the right direction – a just-fine high school romantic comedy about an unapologetic, bold trans teenager on a major streaming platform.

Thankfully, the time away hasn’t diminished the smart-dumb comedic value of their personas; watching this latest revival, fans will probably match them chuckle for chuckle. A better sequel, though, might have found more meaningful tension between these timelessly dumb kids and the ongoing dumbing down of the America they’ve been thrust into. Heh heh, we said thrust.

It’s a melancholy, dreamy study.

It’s a film which needs an investment of attention, but there is a great observational intelligence and sympathy at work.

In fashioning a call for better sex education in the American school system, Liu is an enjoyably charismatic guide, as his doubts and questions about the birds and the bees mirror many of our own.

It’s a fetching package, which makes it all the more frustrating that the script isn’t tauter and sharper. But Krige is terrific and there should certainly be more films about angry post-menopausal women tapping into their dark side.

Michael Grandage’s new film has been coolly received by some, but I found it an interestingly fragile and Rattiganesque melodrama of repression and regret.

Johnson’s more extravagant and often indulgent sequel will likely find those who prefer it to the original, it’s so stuffed with so much that it’ll surely prove more fun to those who appreciate getting more bang for their buck. It’s hard not to have fun when Johnson pulls the strings, I just wish he’d not pulled quite so many and quite so hard.

There are fewer jokes, moment by moment, but just as much sprightliness, spectacle and fun.

Belli’s supple direction – reminiscent of Edgar Wright’s pop’n’snap – keeps its energy levels high as it roves around the living room that is its main location; it also exults in the occasional set-piece, such as the players’ Jazzercise routine. There aren’t quite enough of these zany segues, but with a larger budget, you can smell the franchise potential here.

Even if the antics shown here aren’t really your thing, it is still a hoot seeing Gwar members get interviewed by a game Joan Rivers: you can tell that beneath all the latex most of them are sweet, normal folk who remained loyal (mostly) to one another and shared a vision for the group.

The rock’n’roll bad boy of tennis is watchably if uncritically celebrated in this documentary portrait by Barney Douglas; it is a film that leaves unsolved the riddle, if it is a riddle, of John McEnroe’s confrontational on-court personality.

There are some very funny scenes and a reasonably tense shootout finale – though the sentimental ending felt to me like a bit of a cop-out.

Good Madam is an intriguing, atmospheric movie which doesn’t quite tie up all its sinister portents and implications in a satisfying ending. Yet there is something very unsettling in it.

The producers have clearly paid up for the extras, sets and visual effects making this a lavish work, never dull for a second of its ample running time – even if some viewers may find the sentimentality a little hard to digest.

As a war movie written by a soldier this material feels oddly lacking in authenticity and authority. And yet it’s a noble attempt to honour the resilience of Ukrainians and the courage of ordinary people like Voronin, fighting for freedom.

It’s spectacular and immersive, with a sensational opening. But it gets bogged down in its own one-note, one-tempo uproar and open-ended parkour camerawork – impressive though that is – and suffers from a number of sneaky false-flag get-out clauses that feel like a cop-out.

Super Hero gamely tries to explain the backstory a bit at the beginning, but trying to keep up as we are plunged into a world of bad guys with outrageous quiffs, super-skilled preschoolers and green-skinned martial arts masters with droopy forehead antennae is quite futile. If, however, you can relax and just let it wash over you, Super Hero’s eye candy animation is mesmeric.

Restricted to short line readings presumably because of his well-publicised health difficulties, Bruce Willis is not exactly in fighting shape here. But Corrective Measures is still a bracing combination of super-schlock and social commentary.

There will always be room for a good, breezy romcom, and the set-up of an Indian wedding is ripe for one. As churn-able Netflix content goes, Wedding Season is on the better end of the spectrum.

This big-hearted underdog sports comedy runs on rails, with no great surprises, but it’s likable.

If the plot is a little sketchy, the action, conversely, is drum tight.

Its affect is warm and reassuring, its methods for affirming that everything’s gonna be all right are cozy and tame, especially in regards to young motherhood.

The end result is nowhere near as persuasive or grounded in solid screenwriting as Leo Grande is, but Phillips has always been a charmer onscreen and, like Grande’s Emma Thompson, she’s more than willing to use her talent here to make a case for women learning to manage and take charge of their own pleasure.

The film really comes alive when it simply lets Donna be the star of the show. From her spontaneous dancing in the streets to a moving reunion with her sister, her warmth and vivacity towards others distils the essence of LGBTQ+ solidarity.

The raffish charisma and sinister, saturnine handsomeness of Javier Bardem is what raises this movie above the standard of soap-opera … mostly.

In his more wistful moments Kang would surely understand the main misgiving with this efficient movie product: the MCU marches inexorably onwards, through “phases” and “sagas”, but what’s the point if there’s no time to pause, reflect and enjoy a joke with old friends?

Veteran French director Jean-Jacques Annaud serves up some high-octane film-making with this old-fashioned disaster movie, composed in a docu-realist style, about the catastrophic fire that engulfed Paris’s Notre Dame cathedral in 2019.

Thunderbolts can be messy, sure. Pugh is the kind of star who can thrive in such mess.

Overall a very silly movie – though it’s keeping the superhero genre aloft.

Assiduously replicating its predecessor’s strengths and weaknesses, the one thing it risks is that a three-word summary – Hindi Forrest Gump – would tell you all you ever needed to know about it.

Parker clearly has ideas he’s aiming at, but lets his target slip in the fog of war.

My Best Friend’s Exorcism could perhaps do with one or two genuine scares. But for anyone old enough to remember Tiffany and advice columns in teenage girls’ magazines, this is going to deliver a pleasing shot of nostalgia.

While Something from Tiffany’s is unlikely to rise to the higher regions of any genre fan’s best-of list (it’s too frothy to even rise to the middle), there’s something engagingly earnest about its relative lack of meta self-awareness and robust attempts to look and feel like the studio meet-cutes so many of us were raised on.

A film that tries to empathise with everybody runs the risk of pleasing no one, and no doubt there will be viewers enraged by this or that detail or unspoken perspective, but the ambition is nevertheless pretty impressive and on the whole well executed.

Assayas uses the same fluent handheld style as Irma Vep, and there's a practised ease with which he draws fine, naturalistic performances from his ensemble. [20 Aug 1999, p.5]

The most surprising among them being Gary Oldman. The actor, an English emigrant to California like Muybridge himself, makes some acute observations about Muybridge’s style, technique and mien and adds a bit of Hollywood pizzazz to a story that’s crying out for a biopic.

The performance styles of Behrens and Hoya are quite different – Hoya is more opaque – but this is a pointed, candid drama.

Despite beings shaky in terms of tone – as well with its occasionally obtrusive handheld camera movements – Lola impresses with its refreshing blend of analogue and digital flourishes.

This schematic but sweet-natured comedy drama drives down a narrative track as straight and comfortingly predictable as an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine.

It’s in the film’s queerest moments that things feel most inventive, narratively and visually, as Bratton steps most firmly outside of the hemmed-in army drama formula and finds ways to make his film sit and thrive in the Venn diagram between military machismo and homoeroticism.

The cleverness of Kingsley’s performance is the twinkle in his eye that leaves you wondering whether Dalí has disappeared entirely up his own myth. How much of the eccentricity is a put-on, brazen self-publicity to maximise sales? Disappointingly, the script invents a fictional art school dropout to be our guide to Dalí’s universe.

Terrifier 2 is not for everyone, but this tasteless wonder meets nauseating expectations.

It doesn’t always work, and at times it really really doesn’t, but it feels confident and unfettered in a way that so many horror films don’t these days.

Evil Dead Rise is a decent little splatter movie which contains just about enough to justify the franchise resurrection although perhaps not quite enough to demand that much more of it. For all of its gristle, we’re left very little to chew on.

Mukerji’s biggest achievement is getting this relationship to flourish, Kapoor and Bhatt being among the precious few real-life couples with palpable onscreen chemistry.

At 88, Raven is still performing – perched on a stool – as his alter ego Maisie Trollette. In this affectionate if slight documentary, he tells a story or two, though perhaps not enough to fill a book.

Baker, with his scrawny frame and ratty features, can actually act, although he’s consistently upstaged by young Reid, as the stronger performer and the one with the more interesting character story here.

It’s amiable entertainment, and Hamm may well develop in the character if this becomes a franchise.

Calamy gets to show off her astonishing dynamic range as an actor, adept at comedy, anxiety, maternal rage and kittenish coquetry, all in the space of a single scene.

Perhaps the film could have got under Charlie’s bland surface more. A creepily watchable drama nonetheless.

Aided by its physical clout, Summit Fever does hit a kind of rhythm near the end – but last year’s The Summit of the Gods is a more substantial look at this kind of obsession.

The more characters Selick has to work with, the more room there is for his deliciously strange and comic visual craft.

There’s more of the same in Enola Holmes 2, an equally boisterous romp that’s equally as hard to remember once it’s over but one that should keep its many fans engaged enough to warrant further sequels.

As things turn out, this case turns on a rather ridiculous coincidence: but never mind, it’s an entertaining piece of counter-factual noir.

There’s plenty of white-knuckle footage from the archive, as well as reflections of old muckers. Fiennes says that in his darkest, diciest moments in peril he imagined his heroes – the father and grandfather he never met – watching over him.

The package is all tightly assembled but sticks to the traditional talking heads and archive clips format.

The film’s rather abstract conversation doesn’t convey much in the way of urgency or specificity. But there is a sustained moral seriousness in Polley’s work, a willingness to confront pain.