Part meditative exploration of grief in the wake of the sudden loss of her father, part exhaustive detailing of the process of training a complicated and challenging creature, the film adaptation hews closely to the same description.

Reducing an influential genius to a bohemian Zelig with a firearm fetish misses the forest for the flaming metal trees; in Leyser's biographical interzone, the superficial trumps the truly subversive.

What Lilti’s cinematic mural does is remind us that the political is always personal—and in Israel’s case, vise versa.

Bacon scores strongly, but it is Streep's beautifully natural, unshowy performance which keeps the film on course, even when the machinations of the plot become very rocky indeed.

Unsane's script is marred by faulty trip wires and too many clichés, but director Steven Soderbergh, the alchemist of American movies, is interested in the plot only as a means to experiment with style.

There are a million coming-out stories in various naked cities, and filmmaker Bavo Defume's contribution to the genre initially differentiates itself with a vibrant, creatively campy color scheme. Once the visual touches fade away, however, there's nothing to stop the parade of clichés.

Scott Lee is an unexpectedly appealing hero, partly because he's never indulged, and his dialogue is kept to a minimum.

Schroeder signposts the imminent homicidal carnage right from the start (stay out of that laundry room!). If his two leads are adequate to the slick mechanisms of a formulaic thriller, neither they nor Don Roos' script (based on the novel by John Lutz) offer any original insights into insatiable emotional dependence.

Spring Breakers is either an inspired satire of the youth movie or the most irresponsible comedy mainstream Hollywood will never make. The bros in your crowd will call it rad — and radical it is.

It's a strong theme, unfortunately undercut by faulty pacing and odd lapses in the tension. Still worth seeing for its latently political story and its gory special effects.

Nikou’s film is brimming of humour and excellent ideas, but is mostly a rebuke to anyone who thinks algorithms and technology are the answer to human problems.

Thanks to an intelligent script, partly by Lorenzo Semple Jr (Pretty Poison, The Parallax View), the action rarely falters, and at its best the film offers an intriguing slice of neo-Hitchcock.

Sinatra is excellent as the ex-con junkie trying to make it as a jazz drummer but pulled into a world of pushing, and Kim Novak convinces as his enigmatic mistress; but the casting of Eleanor Parker as his supposedly wheelchair-ridden wife is miscalculated, and Preminger's evocation of the social milieu of the drug user/pusher shows little sign of first-hand observation. 

Compared to Pixar's "Up," a much more organic and heartfelt story about making friends in far-flung places, Rio simply feels rote.

For the majority of the film, Östlund’s combination of sledgehammer and scalpel work a treat. They’re fast becoming the hallmarks of a satirist who’s unlikely to run short of subject matter any time soon.

The documentary soon becomes just a chronologically structured update of continuing progress, one that functions like a mildly engaging but generally inconclusive "Time" magazine feature. Anybody throwing the word revenge around right now is being a tad premature.

In the aggressive self-confidence, the use of rock music, and the perceptive observation, Scorsese reveals an anthropological feel for street life and the attitudes of male adolescence, particularly how introversion and weakness are reserved for moments with the opposite sex, kept carefully apart from the mainstream of life.

Typically over-the-top murder mystery from Argento, neglecting its rather straightforward plot about a series of killings connected with a genetics research institute in favour of gruesome set pieces, bravura camera-work and set design (one character has some truly amazing wallpaper, seemingly spattered with blood), heavy symbolism, and a strong sound-track by Ennio Morricone. Reason doesn't come into it; gorgeous, grisly style is all.

Replete with a thumpingly good soundtrack mixing old standards with modern pastiches, this is Waters' finest film to date, a worthy successor to Hairspray which exudes teen angst and young lust from every pore...Seriously sexy stuff.

Go big or go home, they say; World War Z picks the wrong choice for its slow fade-out, and, instead of leaving you in fear of being chomped upon as you exit the theater, makes you feel enraged that you’ve been more than a little cheated.

This enjoyable biopic offers a loving and affectionate portrait of Callas that never airbrushes her foibles.

For a man so singular, the film’s chronological approach feels conventional and there’s little of the spark or fantasy he infused into his work in evidence.

What unfolds in Andrews’ screenplay, co-written with Jonathan Hourigan, has the grim inevitability of a Greek tragedy, no less violent than the feud at the centre of The Banshees of Inisherin, albeit without that film’s Irish black humour.

Puiu offers zero insight into his character; only suckers will find the pose artful or nourishing. Skip it.

Split trots out many of Shyamalan’s pet moves (it’s amazing how well we know this filmmaker), including his tendency to infuse genre nonsense with the deeper trauma of child abuse.

Admittedly, the dialogue could be sharper – a few too many zingers zonk out – but Normal goes about its carnage with such sincerity, it’s impossible to resist.

Despite a few felicitous moments, the film is turgid, pretentious, and dramatically lifeless.

The film works best during its (too-brief) getting-to-know-you section, which balances humor against snarly danger.

As engrossing as it is maddening, Pierre Thoretton's documentary on the sale of Yves Saint Laurent's extensive art collection is perched somewhere between a sanded-edged official portrait and a keen examination of affluence run amok.

Bogie's considerable charisma is visibly weakened by his tired appearance, and the strong cast is never really allowed full rein by Dmytryk, whose abiding concern that fair play be seen to be done, with regard to all the characters' various motivations, makes for a stodgily liberal courtroom drama.

The opening half-hour is outrageously brilliant, but descends into a pot-boiler of repetitive, if animated, soapbox preaching about the manipulation of punters by the denziens of Madison Avenue and their international brotherhood.

While the weight of Roeg's success is usually stylistic, this is more of a harkback to the cosmic scale of The Man Who Fell to Earth, with enormous themes streaming through a strange tale.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 is one of those nice surprises, a so-called legacy sequel made with love and executed with flair. Think Top Gun: Maverick with better hats.

A too-pleased-with-itself action comedy.

It’s ironic, but Keanu might be a better movie if it was more like TV: 90 plotless minutes of Key and Peele just goofing around on the mean streets might’ve been something really special.

The result is a soil-under-the-fingernails, forest-bound mindmelter – with bonus pagan chills.

The horror-lite element gives it a boost, with Branagh’s direction conjuring up a few jumps, but this gently entertaining mystery could have used far more scares. If he’d gone the full leering Hammer Horror, rather than tastefully occult, this could have been a scream.

This routine animated feature is a perfectly fine thing to waste.

Wachowski is still full of ideas, even if she doesn’t always wrangle them into a strong plot, and there is much to enjoy in this revisit to one of cinema’s most original worlds.

Shutter Island is slumming: minor but enjoyably nuts.

Never is the material excited into the kind of playful uncertainty that Rivette all but trademarked; the inertness of the performances robs the movie of spirit.

While the movie meanders a tad too much and suffers from J. Ralph's wretchedly literal-minded folk-rock soundtrack, Wretches succeeds in communicating both the daily struggles and the determination of its autistic subjects, whether American or international.

Amigo's penchant for polemics keeps upsetting any semblance of balance; how can anyone hear the grace notes when the soapboxing is so deafening?

The unveiling is unnerving, and suggests that some dangers are now permanently beyond our control.

For all the undeniable imaginativeness and visual dazzle (this is Maddin's first entirely digital feature, and it positively glistens), Keyhole ultimately comes off like a feature-length private joke that revels a bit too gleefully in its overall inscrutability. Close, Guy. But no Double Yahtzee.

A sense of existential dread that would make the Russkie novelist beam is channeled beautifully, but for a filmmaker lauded for his minimalist aesthetic, Omirbayev sure loves broad-stroke symbolism and sloganeering.

Likeable.

Set against this is the blithe humour of the proceedings, a welcome shortage of love interest, Dolph's minimalist wit, and two arch-villainesses attired in black plastic and other form-fitting fabrics. Destructive, reprehensible, and marvellous fun.

Miller dolls up a routine passage-to-manhood saga with widescreen mountain locations and a camera that only moves to show off the expensive production values. The presence of Kirk Douglas in two roles (his scallywag performance and his gritted one) attempts to give the film the gloss of an American Western, fooling no one.

As a night out this is as good a piece of solid, down-the-line schlock as anything to come along since Halloween III.

The accent is more on musical extravaganza than horror, with endless operatic snippets for Eddy and Foster to warble, making it all a somewhat tiresome waste of Rains' performance.

Long-time fans will love it, even if its charms wear a bit thin for anyone who doesn’t already have Kurupt FM on their dial.

More confusing than illuminating, it's a film which will rely more on its reputation than its achievement.

Like a zip-gun, cheap and effective.

It’s a kick to see Cera cut loose from his patented befuddled-nerd routine, even if the film’s caricatured performances and fish-in-a-barrel scorn are sure to be monotonous for some.

Mayhem is an energetic genre flick that looks stunning and moves at a ferocious pace...But contrived dialogue and a bewildering narrative tarnish this otherwise enjoyable pulp effort.

A fairly routine thriller, noted chiefly for its cheating flashback, though with much more to enjoy than its detractors - including Hitchcock - make out.

By the end of Pray’s skin-deep love letter, only one sweeping reaction seems appropriate: “A pox on all your houses.”

The longer this profile of the mixed Muslim-Jewish crew follows players over the course of a difficult season, the more it establishes the difficulty of burdening one team to serve as a national symbol of reconciliation—and how hard it is to break free from triumph-of-the-underdog clichés with even the best of intentions

There are a few nicely turned moments... but they're scattered plums in a starchy, flavorless pudding.

A soap for the slack generation, that'll strike a chord way outside the confines of the New Queer Cinema.

The film never finds the right mix of the epic and the intimate - the personal as seen through the 20th century's Euro-geopolitical turmoil - that it aims for.

As an argument for how urgent and powerful photography can be, and the debt we owe Miller for the lengths she went to take those images, Lee wins hands down.

Ron Howard has come through with a frisky space caper that zips along like a speeder on a bed of air. It’s far from perfect, but it’s much better than it has any right to be.

Siegel devotees will find much to enjoy in the languid but not unexciting story by Budd Boetticher.

A curate's egg with more than its share of longueurs, but its comically surreal viewpoint is infectious.

Given the keys to the franchise and a role in the writing, Black has massively upped the verbal sparring and kept the broad inventiveness of comic-book malleability in mind. “I’m a mechanic,” Stark says to the boy in a moment of self-doubt. That’s 100% Black, that line, a tidy code of craft, and the jitters pass.

The escalating tension largely compensates for the lack of character involvement, and the climax will have you reaching for your safety belt.

While you know the stakes are high, Call Jane never seems particularly interested in proving it.

It’s an extremely moving and deeply affecting drama about a woman’s persistence in the face of overwhelming odds.

The intense heist sequences show a command of thriller dynamics that's right up there with the best of them, but director Gray is equally convincing on the character front, eliciting funny, grounded performances from the four women (Latifah notably refuses to caricature her lesbian role).

The story is too rich in incident for Fabian, whose episodic TV-movie approach speeds through Laing’s lifetime of abuse.

The style of the film, lush and traditional, is nothing special, but the takeaway, a daily struggle for dignity, is impossibly moving.

Marshall Lewy's film functions largely as a delivery system for Carlyle's performance. Luckily, Carlyle's tough, tender turn is strong enough to carry the load.

There are subtler, more allusive films about stormy conflicts of the heart, but A Burning Hot Summer wisely knows when and how to surgically slice directly to the bone. It's a bad romance of the highest order.

It feels too flabby for the company it keeps.

Some moments of Gothic atmosphere though, don't quite dispel the feeling that much of the plot is devoted to developing situations where its leading ladies might be disrobed for the camera.

Rhetoric apart, the film offers some stirring entertainment, and a memorable ham sandwich from Richardson, allowed to steal the show as the grandfather in what proved to be his last film.

It’s always fun to watch scaly, skyscraper-size behemoths lay waste to civilization, but a bit more human drama wouldn’t have gone amiss.

It's McConaughey who is the real revelation: All Grim Reaper strut and cutthroat stare, he savors each of Letts's vividly ghoulish lines.

Very sticky.

It's a film of unrelieved blackness, from the seedy photographer who snaps his junkie wife cowering in the bath to homicidal babies, from mongol child at a petrol station to Kennedy's brutal sergeant. It's all the more absurdly fatalistic for refusing to draw political, moral or social conclusions.

Rich and darkly disturbing, it's also wickedly entertaining.

Directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg are unusually committed to maritime mechanics, and the excitement grows as steadily as the sailors’ beards.

Despite moments of bravura and shameless tugs at the heart-strings, the film simply meanders towards a resolution.

False moments far outweigh the genuine ones, be it smarmy Dan’s indisputable genius (he’s such a stubble-sporting rebel, he refuses to wear suits) or the bogus anticorporate finale that leaves an especially slick aftertaste.

The whole thing badly lacks any sort of central thematic focus, and the strangely obsessive Englishness of Greene's world is altogether missing. Craftsmanlike rather than inspired, it's watchable thanks largely to its solid performances.

With the faintest debt to The Exorcist and HR Giger, and a barnstorming turn from Imelda Staunton turn as a nun with some dark secrets of her own, Garai has found an arresting way to position male sexual violence: as an age-old curse that brings with it the bitterest of consequences.

Newlyweeds looks and sounds primo. Storytelling-wise, however, it’s more than one toke over the line.

The latest addition to the booming library of docs archiving the Nixon-Nam era, this magnetic pop-history memorial has everything: free sex, celebrity, psychedelic rock, polygamy and beyond.

Richardson brings terrific dedication to the role including a perfect American accent, but it's an airless, exhausting film.

It’s a shame that Toe to Toe adheres so stridently to Indiewood clichés.

It's undeniably humanistic; resourceful and well managed, however, are a different story.

Parents will feel heard by this movie in a way that few other films have tried. Everyone else should go for the kid, who's a rocket taking off. You want to be able to say you were there when it happened.

Still, powered by its own helter-skelter momentum and the wild-eyed Keaton, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice just about holds all its macabre threads together. It’s not Burton at his very best, but like its fiendish antihero, it does the trick.

If, though, you’re looking for a more probing look at the man behind the balls of fire, or a pan back to place him in a broader context, Coen’s rockumentary will fall just a little short of satisfying.

It's all a brave try, though Gibson is perhaps not up to the demands of a Christian's progress from naive rating to self-loathing exile, and Donaldson's direction often verges on the stolid.

For all its episodic, gleeful inappropriateness, the movie Klown most resembles - not that it tries to or anything - is Alexander Payne's half-soused flight from maturity, "Sideways."