Blunt works hard to flesh out an underwritten role, but Safdie seems more interested in Kerr’s silences than his partner’s complaints. The relationship is too ill-defined to land an emotional punch.

To emphasise the absurdity of war, Kusturica shapes Underground as a wild, intense tragic comedy that is as black humoured as it is upsetting. [25 Oct 1996, p.13]

Mortensen’s script tussles between feminist revision and old-school male showdowns, imagining Vivienne as a Joan of Arc-inspired frontierswoman yet subject to the degradations of the era.

Romantic comedies typically demand an easy reconciliation. The Other Way Around, although ponderous in places, is skilful enough to leave the viewer rooting for precisely the opposite. It’s a neat trick: like pulling a tablecloth from under dishes in reverse.

George Lechaptois’s sunny cinematography and ROB’s lively score add bright notes to a film that is consistently light on its feet, despite its potentially weighty subject matter.

Sean Byrne’s third feature is neither as gripping as The Loved Ones, his prom-night horror, nor as intriguing as The Devil’s Candy, his supernatural heavy-metal thriller, but it rattles along as effective B-movie gore.

Jurassic World: Rebirth plays, nonetheless, as a refreshing blast of matinee exuberance after the pomposity of the previous three films. Yes, third best in the series. For whatever little that is worth.

It makes no grand claims for itself, gesturing briefly at ethical complexity before pegging it towards efficient, blood-soaked mayhem.

Franchise fans will appreciate another glimpse of Plankton’s unlikely hillbilly clan. And there’s plenty of room for traditional SpongeBob bungling. Who knew marital discord could be so much fun for all ages?

Good old-fashioned disgusting fun. I had a blast.

The final reveal is as unnecessary as it is predictable, and the pace can be as glacial as the setting. No matter. The Damned is powered along by suspicion, atmospherics and an unforgettable landscape.

An entirely non-professional cast makes it seem as if the director-editor Ana Pfaff and cinematographer Daniela Cajias simply happened upon every beautifully composed sequence. The effects can be slow-burning and occasionally a little shapeless, but they cast their dappled spell as the summer wears on.

Mulligan brings heart to Basden’s wistful folk compositions, and Key babbles amiably, as this crowd-pleaser salutes the redemptive power of a singsong.

Along Came Love (which has a deceptive title) does not torture the emotion or tax the brain, but, well acted and easy on the eye, it just about delivers on its early promise of knotty personal drama. It also has important things to say – implicitly for the most part – about the unjust expectations placed on women in French society.

Working from Julia Cox’s agreeably prickly script, the Oscar-winning filmmakers revel in Nyad’s reputation as a thundering wagon. They are aided in no small way by Annette Bening’s fierce performance, work that trumpets the arrival of awards season.

Philippe brings few stylistic flourishes to the film, but the fascinating conversation, punctuated by delving into her personal archives, should be more than enough to satisfy the serious cinephile. She is kinder about Hitchcock than some of his other female leads. She is realistic about the rigours of the studio system.

This is ultimately an inspirational yarn focused on the value of standing by convictions.

For all its confusion, Babylon really does function as celebration of an increasingly threatened medium.

It’s a lovely thing to behold, but who exactly is this for? Unlike Matteo Garrone’s sublime 2019 fantasy, a version that managed to be faithful, wildly imaginative and all-ages in appeal, this brooding musical veers wildly between primary school scatology, repeated journeys to the underworld and darkest history.

The results are uneven yet pioneering and important.

At its best The Return recalls Pier Paolo Pasolini’s sublime, pared-back Medea, even if the gritty realism of Uberto Pasolini (no relation) does leave one yearning for the magic of that earlier film and the source material.

A carefully modulated tone allows zombie cows, end-of-life care and jokes about furious masturbation to coexist, sometimes in the same scene.

A triumvirate of superb performances and the warmth of Maryam Touzani and Nabil Ayouch’s screenplay offset the clumsier tropes. Virginie Surdej’s cinematography bathes daylit scenes in golden light to match the thread Halim uses on his petroleum-blue creation.

Fine lessons about good manners and decency are wrapped up in fun and fur.

A subplot or twist might have elevated Andrew Kevin Walker’s script above speech bubbles, but a shadowy fight set-piece, Erik Messerschmidt’s cinematography, and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s score make for sleek entertainment.

Her words are clear, unsentimental and so evocative that you can almost smell the weed.

It must be admitted that, against the odds, the team do a largely satisfactory job of reanimating the corpse. I’m not sure audiences will have quite as much fun watching the thing as the writers plainly had getting it on to the page. But they have certainly stuck to the brief with admirable diligence.

Recent cinematic representations of Jehovah’s Witnesses, notably in Dea Kulumbegashvili’s Beginning, Richard Eyre’s The Children Act and Daniel Kokotajlo’s Apostasy, have not been kind to the Christian denomination. This compassionate story of puppy love – co-written and codirected by the former Witness Sarah Watts – shows more understanding towards the community, through conversations.

The Palestinian submission for international picture at the incoming Academy Awards is a handsome, old-fashioned production that, even when it is telling us things we didn’t know, confirms all our worst suspicions about the British colonial experience in the Holy Land.

Adri’s gorgeously staged fantasies offer a happy detour that ultimately undermines the film’s emotional gravitas. This remains, nonetheless, a charming coming-of-age portrait with a poignant sense of time and place.

For all the Hollywood gloss, Vanderbilt sounds an alarming relevance in Göring’s sneering claim that Hitler “made us feel German again” and Triest’s warning that “it happened because people let it happen”.

The lack of geopolitical context is questionable, but the film-making is sound. The movie’s editor, Hansjörg Weissbrich, maintains a brisk pace. Deftly used snippets of archive footage amplify the documentary realism. A sure-footed ensemble propels the story towards its harrowing conclusion.

The grander schemes of those who seek to monopolise elder care add weight. Mostly though, this is just tremendous fun.

What begins as a twisted riff on Hansel and Gretel spirals into a grisly meditation on trauma, punctuated by unsettling dark-web videos, gaslighting and a supernatural ritual that is never satisfactorily explained.

Gran Turismo, a spectacular new racing film from the Oscar-nominated writer and director Neill Blomkamp, wisely sidesteps the pitfalls of many dreadful screen outings (often from the perennial game-ruiner Uwe Boll) by finding a big-hearted human-interest story to better explore the racing environment.

The zingers could be zippier. But what makes the film feel radical is its welcome and unwavering confidence in 2D animation as a comedic anvil. Sight gags pile up, frames stretch and snap, and the fourth wall is wobbly. In a genre increasingly marred by CG realism, Looney Tunes revels in its cartoonish artifice.

The first half of the film is spellbinding; Eggers and his cinematographer, Jarin Blaschke, brilliantly redeploy the grammar of German expressionism to make Dracula (or thereabouts) scary again.

Before Amongst the Wolves resolves itself into a familiar genre (I was much reminded of a particular British film from the noughties), we get a grim survey of stubborn urban discontents.

The dialogue in one pathetically desperate audition sequence is withering in its authenticity. But credit must go to Anderson for turning this staple of drama – like Olivier in The Entertainer, a hopeless victim of changing fashion – into a living, breathing human being.

Despite a scene that can only be described as “robust wereman and werewoman sex”, Gabriele Mainetti’s bouncy, carnivalesque alternate history is closer in tone to Hellboy than throwaway Syfy-channel Naziploitation.

With its 1980s neon fonts, strangely sanitised storytelling, expositionary dialogue, wrongly aged cast and terrible wigs, The Iron Claw looks and feels like a prestreaming TV movie – and not just any old TV movie but a strangely entertaining, darkly tragic, completely gripping TV movie.

The new film, evocatively shot by Sean Bobbitt, feels like a trivial, if entertaining, diversion on the way to a more substantial closing fall.

Though the final act regains some manic energy with ambitious, large-scale action, the composer Michael Abels’s relentless strings, overly extended gunplay and an unkillable creature become exhausting. And that’s before we are promised a sequel. It’s fun. But make the fun stop.

It’s certainly not the film we were expecting from the talented Augustine Frizzell, writer-director of the giddy stoner-girl comedy Never Goin’ Back and the pilot episode of Euphoria. It is, rather, a moneyed, sumptuous diptych of temporal-jumping love stories.

At its best, The Devil Wears Prada 2 engages saltily with the social and economic changes that have set in since the 2006 original. One yearns for a little more of Miranda’s amusingly half-hearted attempts to accommodate woke restrictions on her acidic put-downs.

Cracknell’s romp is, despite what the purists say, a perfectly pleasant variation of a text that could endure worse, but it feels stranded between two competing approaches. An honourable effort for all the bellyaching.

The unreal feels real. The real feels even more real. A decidedly decent slice of bog horror.

Carrey’s antic madness – elsewhere often too much to digest – is just what the Sonic films needed to balance out the digital gloss.

Sadly, the film runs out of steam as it develops into a detective story with a solution that will surprise nobody.

The big narrative rug-pull isn’t quite as smooth as it ought to be, but there’s plenty to admire here, including Monáe’s expressive eyes, Pedro Luque Briozzo’s unsettling camerawork, and a thrillingly vicious turn by Jena Malone.

Happily, the screenplay is a model of design and economy. The dilemmas remain clear. The solutions mostly make sense.

Though immaculately made in every respect, Paradise Is Burning never quite finds its narrative rhythms. The story is happily fussing over here and then gets distracted by something over there. But Sine Vadstrup Brooker’s lovely cinematography, drifting in the liminal spaces between city and country, keeps the viewer uneasily gripped throughout.

There are reminders of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours and Sean Baker’s incoming Palme d’Or winner Anora in that urban chaos, but Watts’s bland style washes out all the grime to leave us with, well, something you might expect from a streaming release.

The Cellar does sag just a little in the middle, but its spooky beginning and apocalyptic denouement set it aside from the horror pack.

Straddling the current revival of the picaresque in US indie cinema (The Sweet East, Riddle of Fire) and cinéma vérité, this is a pleasing meander, skilfully directed, shot, and edited by the upcoming auteur siblings.

All in all, a diverting entertainment that, unlike so much contemporary horror, is prepared to have a good time. Fun for all the family.

It’s not for everyone. Please Baby Please often forgets that it’s a musical, and the action is increasingly chaotic.

The tricky father-daughter pairing at the centre of Charlotte Regan’s surefooted debut feature marks Scrapper as the poppier, knockabout cousin of last year’s Aftersun. In common with Charlotte Wells’s award-winning film, this drama pitches a knowing pre-adolescent against an uncertain parent. But the tone, colours and flights of fancy make Scrapper lighter and sparkier viewing.

The film has its flaws, but worriers will find much with which to identify.

It’s a ravishing spectacle. The trouble is that the unremitting gorgeousness robs the material of all its grit, of its satire, of the sense of precariousness that one experiences on the characters’ behalf, of the fear of hunger, and of the dread that any chill or fever might be a death sentence.

Some of the stylistic flourishes are delightful. Others work too hard for their own good.

A strange, strange film. Often in a good way. Sometimes not.

The amiable big-screen spin-off will satisfy fans but – unlike, say, The Inbetweeners Movie – is unlikely to win over those unfamiliar with the show’s pianissimo pleasures.

This pleasant dramedy is jollied along by its talented veteran ensemble and the odd narrative curveball: a subplot about dead cats yields macabre surprises.

The two lead actors are strong. The conversations around the museum amusingly tease out tensions between factions in the LGBT community. But Bros fails to satisfactorily map out its own space. Passes the time well enough. Doesn’t quite pull down the barriers.

The film – like its subject – lets the pomp and circumstance do the talking.

Kielty, an accomplished comedian, firmly sits on his jazz hands and performs some of the worst stand-up routines in the history of comedy. Kerslake brings an edge and unpredictability that animates a carefully shaded story. The specifics of place have their own texture; seldom has a script encompassed such a variety of uses for the great Ulster standard: ballbag.

Pugh’s emblematic, muddy-hemmed blue dress — designed by Odile Dicks-Mireaux — marks her out against the windswept exteriors. Not for the first time this year, she’s the standout in a film that, given the remarkable personnel involved, really ought to pack a greater punch.

All this delicious incident has the makings of a gung-ho entertainment – Ian Fleming as mounted by Nasa. Unfortunately that’s not what we get. Even if we were brave enough to try, we would not be capable of spoiling a plot so wilfully obtuse it demands repeat viewings to disentangle.

It’s good fun. The critters are cute. The landscapes are burnt orange dystopian or pretty and pink. The action sequences – some utilising the Philippines’ national martial art, arnis – are staged with aplomb. The central conceit, however, feels unwieldy.

These picaresque and picturesque adventures fail to coalesce into a movie. But it’s impossible to argue with Daria D’Antonio’s ravishing cinematography and an unexpectedly moving coda featuring Stefania Sandrelli as an older Parthenope.

Mostly, this is a film of intriguing, maddening loose ends.

There are few reveals, but narrative restraint is commendable in the telling of this almost unbearably unhappy tale.

Co-written with Blomkamp’s District 9 collaborator Terri Tatchell, the film has agreeably creepy blurred ideas about the human experience and the simulated experience. And it’s never dull.

The dialogue is yellow-pack, the set-up is so silly you wonder why they didn’t parachute in a dinosaur or set off a volcanic explosion for good measure, and the sparsely populated commercial flight screams budgetary constraints. Still, it ticks along, makes merry, and everyone works hard and sweatily to put the “AAAAAAH” back into action.

With looming grace and the fluffy heart of a Golden Labrador, Elordi, standing in for a departing Andrew Garfield, turns out to be the most swooning Goth heart-throb since Edward Scissorhands emerged from Vincent Price’s laboratory.

Murphy reminds us, albeit at a lower temperature, what caused so many heads to laugh themselves off shoulders during his pomp.

Are we supposed to be scared or are we supposed to be laughing at the absurdity of it all? Happily, the actors throw enough energy at the screen to deflect any incoming frustration. An odd beast.

Gore, who directs with her partner, Damian Kulash, maintains a giddy tone that sometimes sits uneasily with temporal shifts that mirror the narrative complexities of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. The needlessly busy structure is easily offset by appealing performances from Banks, Snook and Viswanathan and by a keen critical eye for the mad free-for-all economics of the Bill Clinton era.

We’re never properly spooked. The presence, ironically, lacks presence. An excellent cast and flashy film-making ensure we are entertained, nonetheless.

Husbands longueurs and wobbly shots of improvised tangents never congeal into anything as satisfying as Cassavetes s The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Gloria or A Woman Under the Influence. But, in contrast with director s mean-spirited inheritors, the film does own that husbands even rubbish ones are people too. [28 Sep 2012, p.13]

Miller has, as directors often will, followed up a succès d’estime — this is his first film since Mad Max: Fury Road — with something of a personal folly. Better that than bland boilerplate, but Three Thousand Years of Longing grates as often as it charms.

Not everything works in the admirably bizarre In the Earth, but nobody can deny Wheatley is back in his freak-folk wheelhouse.

It could be enormously clunky, but the quiet warmth of Fraser’s performance, the delicacy of Hikari’s direction and the ravishing location work just about distract from the teeth-smarting sentimentality. Soothing balm to kick off the cinematic year.

It’s well-meaning. It’s lively. It’s moderately funny. But it is no Finding Nemo.

Working on a small budget, writer-director Alison Locke puts the confinement of one location in service of her claustrophobic script. A promising first feature.

Adaptations of Ivanhoe have imagined the past less romantically.

Sadly, the film itself is not quite as silly as it should be (something of an achievement given what you’ve just read). Everyone is taking it very seriously. We don’t get enough characters pulling their limbs together after being hacked to pieces by combine harvester. Some very good actors have been cast in the wrong roles. No matter. Theron makes it work.

With the best will in the world, this is thin stuff. The dialogue is written in the awkward, stilted style of a radio play – first-person pronouns dropped in a fashion that never really happens in everyday speech – and the confrontations are too often clunkily contrived.

There’s plenty of razzle dazzle here but little that passes for oomph.

Occasionally frustrating, but worth getting frustrated about.

The Spielberg film casts a long shadow over the stage musical, which too often feels like a retread of that film interrupted by songs. The musical number as narrative speed bump is a flaw that carries over to the big screen.

The film does a good job of dragging us from the darkest valleys of tragedy towards the gently sunlit uplands.

The Eternal Daughter remains a dazzling double-header for Swinton, who, against all odds, disappears into both roles.

The film does indeed reflect how megastardom goes about its business. The script, by the director and Emily Mortimer, piles on the irony with admirable diligence. But this is about as cutting-edge as making fun of Donald Trump for being orange.

It’s loud, it’s silly, it’s over-saturated; the smaller viewers at the family screening I attended were wildly impressed. Adults may be somewhat impressed that the word “bollocks” makes the final cut.

The screenplay blows it at the close with an absurdly clunky flashback that ties up every loose end with improbable neatness, but this remains a decent class of red-meat actioner for a now underserved audience.

Alien: Romulus remains a shapeless beast that never so much as hints at the disciplined elegance of Scott’s founding text. The action progresses rather than builds.