How To Get Ahead In Advertising is often an uneasy mixture of satire and parody that plunges past anarchy into the most foursquare polemic imaginable. But at least it has the courage of every one of its convictions and Grant's doughty performance at its centre almost persuades one that he was not a little miscast. [27 Jul 1989]

It’s perfectly adequate for little kids but with little character of its own and a straight-to-download-style blandness.

The Blue Trail is a generic mashup: it partly has the bittersweet tone of many films about defiant old people, and partly it has something far more subversive and disquieting. The mix of tones is interesting, like chewing cake and cheese at the same time.

Much of it consists of Plankton talking to his frenemies about his marriage. As such, it often feels more like a three-episodes-and-change filibuster than a real movie.

Over-the-top it may be, but Love’s film-making has an attacking force that some of the more respectable Brit films are lacking.

The unreality of the film never quite equates to dishonesty about what exactly happens when two people not in the first flush of youth decide to be in love, but it takes an effort of will to suspend disbelief and submit to a well-intentioned fantasy.

Even at a brief 73 minutes, Good Boy can feel stretched, a film that never quite convinces you that a short wouldn’t have worked better. Even though Indy is a remarkably expressive dog, there are only so many variations on dialogue-free scenes of him checking out a weird noise in the dark and the cycle soon gets repetitive, exposing a script that’s a bit on the thin side.

In a genre plagued by a lack of effort, I’ll take a solid try.

It is efficiently executed, though its relentless cursor-nudging will probably make older viewers want to unplug and retreat into an 18th-century novel.

For those who aren’t into golf or weren’t around for SNL at the turn of the century, Happy Gilmore 2 could well sail overhead like a drive from the man himself. But for the generations who still quote summer comedies from eons ago (ahem), Sandler’s second round offers a refreshing trip down memory lane.

When the decision is made, the final act has an almost morosely elegiac mood, as it must, as various speeches and set pieces reconcile its rather trudgingly earnest direction of travel with the witty, savvy materialism of the movie’s premise.

Perhaps the full story of the encampments has yet to be told.

Despite its somewhat diffuse centre, Collins’ film still has a straightforward poignancy, with subtle and dignified performances across the board.

Actor turned writer-director Jillian Bell’s naked, and sometimes literally naked, attempt to craft a new rewatchable comfort food favourite with notes of both sweet and salt is charming when it works but distractingly effortful when it doesn’t.

The film is elevated by the tender rapport between MacKenzie and Smith; when a film-maker is clearly captivated by their subject, the film can compel viewers to fall in love as well.

This is a Hail Mary pass that Gosling just about manages to catch.

The Running Man sometimes feels retro-futurist and steampunky, though it is always watchable and buoyant. Wright has hit a confident stride.

Jones certainly shows Mr Burton’s sad and dignified loneliness.

The pure strangeness of the movie commands attention and there is a charismatic lead performance by Japanese actor-musician Mitsuki Kimura, or Kôki.

Shot in tight closeup, Domagalska’s documentary brilliantly conveys the unseen psychological toll of this social work. At the same time, the film overflows with the joy of activism.

Nonnas has a straightforward sincerity that makes it go down easily.

Last Swim looks slightly callow sometimes, but forthright and likable and Hekmat’s performance has delicacy and intelligence.

It’s always good to witness Young’s authentic acoustic presence.

It may not stick around in your memory with the persistence demonstrated by the entity towards its victims, but it passes the time chillingly enough.

The film does not really permit the various emotional crises and issues to supersede the importance of fighting all that much, and the fighting itself is not transformed or transfigured in the drama.

Another, more textured film might have tried to paint him as more than just lovable rogue but Roofman is too focused on making us feel good rather than bad. I would have settled for conflicted.

At a time of nostalgia overload (Clueless, Legally Blonde and Urban Legend are next), Robinson finds a way to make her attempt not exactly necessary but unpretentiously pleasurable enough for that not to really matter. There might not be a next summer but this makes for an entertaining last hurrah.

Cregger might be expanding and improving his arsenal, using his skills more effectively than he did in Barbarian, but there’s still something crucial missing. Something sharper.

It’s a confident, often engaging mix of music and no-frills theatrical performance, with Bono often coming across like some forgotten character that Samuel Beckett created but then suppressed due to undue levels of rock’n’roll pizzazz.

Even if the skimpy detailing of Sal and Vince’s past leaves the finale verging on sentimentality, rather than fully exposing the self-inflicted wound it’s supposed to be, Salvable’s overall melancholic undertow is hard to resist.

Despite the franchise being nearly old enough for a legacy sequel, there’s a light musicality to its various feats of showmanship that makes it feel like a scrappy upstart. So does the perpetual feeling that it might disappear in a puff of smoke.

This is a story about the randomness of life in the big city, a melodramatic convulsion of grief, rage and pain which has a TV soap feel to its succession of escalating crises.

It borders on cliche a little, but there is compassion and storytelling ambition here.

For all that this film is about the revolutionary and disruptive business of art, it takes a pretty un-subversive view of art and artists, compatible with the museum gift shop. But I have to admit, it’s executed with brio and comic gusto – the “past” sections, anyway – and Lindon’s performance has charm.

Vie Privée canters along to a faintly silly, slightly anticlimactic conclusion and audiences might have been expecting a bigger and more sensational twist. Yet Foster’s natural charisma sells it.

There are some laughs and it’s always likable.

If following The Unholy Trinity’s various tracks is sometimes frustrating, it’s still rare enough: a red-blooded and essentially satisfying western.

It’s hard to stay mad at a movie for refusing to add things up, or resolve its mysteries in any traditionally satisfying ways, when getting lost with Qualley can be such a pleasure.

The result comes across like a cross between a buddy movie and a horror movie – a war movie without the war. Ultimately, it all comes down to the core relationships, so it’s just as well that Hoffman and Jonsson are both terrific; their stars are certain to rise further off the back of this.

The comedy takes a bit of an IQ dip when the film crosses the Channel and the dialogue switches to English. Still, it glides along on Rutherford’s performance as Agathe – witty, warm, keenly observant, a bit clumsy and Bridget Jones-ish, but never, not even for a moment, cringy.

This is a movie with, in the Scots phrase, no small opinion of itself; a movie of big scenes, big performances, big images, epiphanies and hallucinations. Not all of them work, but the presence of Day-Lewis settles and moors it.

None of this, arguably, is inaccurate. But it’s all very smooth: a slick Steadicam ride through a historic, tumultuous moment.

The only problem with this stuff is that you can’t help picturing how much more spectacular it would look in live action. The animation is all perfectly competent but it’s lacking a little something – that spark of life and ingenuity that can make even flawed animation so fascinating.

It’s high-minded, valuable work.

It’s an elegant directorial performance from Herzi.

That Splitsville stays on track to the finish is mostly credit to chemistry – that ineffable, unpredictable thing between two, or three, or maybe four people, with just enough variation for each relationship here. Splitsville may take shots at the loose-boundaried, but they’re laced with truth: partnered or single, open or closed, we’re all working with the same raw material.

It’s a baggy comedy, sentimental in ways that are not entirely intentional, but there is value, too.

This is good-natured, buoyant entertainment. It’s wearing well.

This is a serious and worthwhile film, though one that tells you what you know already, and yet somehow perhaps doesn’t tell you enough.

A calm and interesting introduction to an important dissident author.

Its fervency and its eroticism give the film its currency.

There’s a fair bit to enjoy here, with the club sometimes resembling a kind of senior-citizen X-Men group whose collective superpower is invisibility; old people can do things without people noticing them.

Making her feature-film debut, Elliott handles their story gently, with patience – though it might feel a bit slow for some.

Finally, inevitably, at the end of the protracted tale, we get to the question of which of the two is the “real” monster. The answer, in this high-minded and eventually rather sanctified romance, would appear to be – neither of them.

This is muscular stuff, with a firm grip on your attention.

Fixed gets as much mileage as it can out of gags that largely centre on Bull’s gonads, with its entire narrative built around a wild night out when he discovers his owner’s plan to finally give him the snip. But that humour, and its shock value, wears thin in less time than it takes for Bull to satisfy his urges.

The writing might be disappointingly inelegant but The Lost Bus is forthright and frightening regardless.

This docu-portrait verges on corporate promo at times, though there are a couple of telling vignettes in the second half.

Dockery maintains rigour and bite at the centre as the genial jailer, and there’s an edginess to Spielberg’s direction, the camera roving around this posse of junior desperadoes and suggesting she may have inherited a certain cinematic intuition. But, like the abomination upstairs, she takes a ragged first bite here.

The movie is not lacking in adventure, perhaps what’s missing is a sense of fun.

This is a little too slight and breezy to really make much of an impression, like a dream you’ll forget as soon as you open your eyes.

Whether its spitballing silliness will linger when the lights come up is debatable, but it’s a solid SpongeBob movie.

It has a seriousness, an unsentimental readiness to look reality in the face.

It’s a movie of big moods and grand gestures, undercut by the banal inevitability of losing.

This is a genuinely strange film, elusive in both tone and meaning, one which deploys the obvious effects and rhetorical forms of irony, while at the same time distancing itself from these effects and asking its audience to sympathise and even admire Lee, because she is not supposed to be the villain.

Rudd and Black make the new Anaconda easy enough to accept as a comedy with a dash of clunky effects-based creature action, rather than a full-blown horror-comedy.

I admired a great deal here, though, especially Freyne’s attempt to transport us back to a cinema landscape before it was dulled down by streaming. That’s an afterlife I would happily choose.

The film is at its best when it homes in on the literary criticism – bringing in articulate readers of the text such as novelist Jay McInerney, who details the effort that went into making it look thrown together in a matter of weeks.

I’d like to see a film about a comedian who, like Bishop, really does flower into being funny.

Overall, this is better and glossier than some of the Adams-Poser posse’s earlier efforts, but perhaps not quite enough of an evolution to take their vision to the next level.

A likable, admirably intentioned if slightly more predictable entertainment, in which the good guys and the bad guys are more obvious.

Where it initially threatens to be a new The Thing, it finally serves up sloppy zomcom; just about enough for a Friday night but not much else.

Benesch brings a tough, smart, credible presence.

If this hymn to love’s persistence wobbles occasionally, it’s good to see an independent British film going for broke.

It sometimes seems as if each Jude film is almost to be viewed once only; if you press play again, or go to the cinema to see it a second time, there will be only a blank screen, as if Jude and his ragged company have folded their tents and vanished.

This horror bonanza, the eighth instalment in the V/H/S anthology series, is a mixed bag, with some very high highs and regrettably poor lows.

You have to make friends with the jauntiness and zaniness of this film and to forgive its sometimes rather laborious quality, and Lara’s deadpan drollery is always watchable.

This is a movie whose absurdities need to be indulged.

For a film about the inevitable eradication of most life on Earth, Arco isn’t as depressing as you might expect, as it finds a tiny thread of optimism to hold on to.

None of these characters quite flares passionately into life but all are persuasively portrayed, and it’s a vehement reminder of what doesn’t get taught in British schools.

Gender, sexuality, status and power are all in flux here, a playful effect that is however withdrawn when we arrive at the sacrificial seriousness. It is a sweet tale which floats self-consciously out of the screen.

The movie reduces Kelley’s psychiatric insights into soundbites, manages to whittle down the proceedings at the Nuremberg trials into the familiar tropes and cliches from classic courtroom movies, and even lets Crowe’s performance surrender its nuances to hammy villainy, all for the sake of reliable entertainment.

There’s an amazing lineup of collaborators and stars, and it’s good to see Candy’s uniquely likable and buoyant screen personality, but the tone borders on the stultifyingly reverential.

Elvis is of course a tailor-made subject for Luhrmann, the Moulin Rouge director’s trademark bombast and razzle-dazzle so in tune with the singer’s rattle and roll, which comes through in both his biopic and now EPiC.

Etzler manages some nasty comedy, sourced from the bracing jolt of watching teacher and student cruelly manipulate one another. And he shows a sturdy technical command throughout.

A movie to be enjoyed on Friday night and forgotten all about by Saturday morning.

It’s entertaining and bizarre chaos, anchored by Odenkirk’s hangdog air of gloomy resignation to the violent mess which he has to clean up.

It’s refreshing for a film-maker to opt for subtlety, and there are good performances from Riley, Martin and Farthing.

California Schemin’ is, in the end, a kindhearted film about integrity, about art for art’s sake, about embracing one’s roots.

There are moments of creaky comedy and some bluntly emotional dialogue that one can more easily picture in front of a specifically catered-to live audience.

It all rattles along watchably enough, taking in more locations than just boring old London, though you’ll find your credulity stretched almost to breaking point.

An amusing vignette.

It can be a bit soppy, sometimes resembling Sunday-night TV comfort food, but this big-hearted picture wins you over, and there are certainly some marvellous panoramic shots of the Highlands.

The Astronaut has a lot going for it, but, like the lead character in the opening scenes, it doesn’t quite stick the landing.

This movie lodged in my mind a little more than Hong’s earlier films, perhaps because it is less contrived and it features a genuinely funny and complex opening scene.

This film really is a sunny delight as the weather turns cold.

Horror director Michelle Garza Cervera opts for the muted slow-burn (it’s a convincing argument for more studio work) and Winstead gives an earnest performance, the film for the most part existing in a recognisably grounded dramatic universe. But the plotting is often laughably hokey and its flashes of violence so distractingly grotesque that it’s never quite clear how seriously we should be taking any of this, a campy good time masquerading as prestige drama.

For all its clear-eyed analysis, Andreas Zerr’s film is ultimately a celebration of the mind flips, no-good kids and pelvic thrusts that really drive you insane, made for fans, by a fan.