The combination of provincial accents and Stormare's patented creepiness make "Fargo" comparisons inevitable, though Canadian filmmaker Ed Gass-Donnelly's tongue isn't anywhere near his cheek.

Often has the feel of a film-school exercise in which the object is to wring maximum suspense from rudimentary tools.

Overflowing with super-slow motion, color filters and the clunkiest of flashbacks, The Last Lions frequently amplifies the melodrama to borderline-excessive proportions.

Bana’s taut lead performance is an apt match for the film’s haunted spirit. Forbidding visuals like vast, weather-worn boulders split in two by mighty gum trees grant this dark tale just enough Australian gothic to conjure up the ghost of Picnic at Hanging Rock.

Watching the elder statesman spin ring-a-ding wisdom is one thing; witnessing his generosity to another artist who couldn't handle her own talent, however, speaks volumes about what actually lurks under his placid, seemingly imperturbable surface.

The performances are, of course, magnificent: Webb owns her largely thankless role, while Oldman snarls, spits and staggers like he means it, maaan. But we’re never given a reason to care about their characters, beyond the fact they were famous.

While these ninnies' antics and banter are remarkably entertaining, the quality of the satire depends on when the movie is sending up ludicrous extremist logic and when it's just engaging in repetitive buffoonery.

Fulkerson's out to tweak the medical establishment, as well as offer dietary tips, and his film makes effective use of case studies and graphs to build a convincing, if inevitably simplified, argument for better living through fresh produce.

An absurd script, without a hint of self-parody, and a nicely equipped set (moving walls, a razor-sharp pendulum that slowly lowers itself on to victims) make for entertaining if undemanding viewing.

Those euphoric moments, scored to Black Sabbath, show the brothers sneaking out in their masks, discovering activism and growing into individuals. You’ll wish Moselle had started, not ended, there.

Like Disney’s other recent reboots, this version of The Little Mermaid fails to live up to its Oscar-winning predecessor (how could it?). But it adds just enough to be an enjoyable, though hardly groundbreaking, return to that magical world.

It probably would have helped if Walker (who credits two other codirectors) had chosen just one of those avenues for deeper study; her doc has a vertiginous way of feeling arty and ephemeral at one moment, humane and maybe too earthbound the next.

Once the murderer starts relying on the lad’s kindness, all the preceding kid stuff starts to take on a purposefully sour tang.

Perhaps to the relief of many, Lewis (in his bellboy character) remains entirely mute for most of the movie.

Two monologues-one in which the Hobo compares himself to a bear, the other a Travis Bickle–like screed delivered to a roomful of increasingly distressed babies-are damn near Shakespearean. It's a shame the performance is contained in a Z-movie patchwork that's a bit too knowingly repugnant.

Platt’s fluid, emotional tenor voice is as beautiful as ever, and it’s easy to understand the desire to preserve his original performance. But the very mannerisms that were well scaled to a 1,000-seat house – the hunched posture, the tics, the blurts of speech – are off-putting in cinematic close-up.

There's so much right with Gareth Edwards's low-budget alien invasion tale that you almost want to brush aside everything that's not up to snuff.

You just wish the moviemaking were as consistently graceful and momentum-fixated as the film's rail-grinding subjects.

The first half, unfortunately, is poor: the producers (Casablanca Record) have lumbered it with undigested lumps from the company rock catalogue; there is some pretty variable comedy, dreary travelogue footage, and a very ugly use of filters and soft focus. But gradually a much more interesting film takes over.

Cocteau's last film is as personal and private as its title suggests, and it makes little sense for viewers unfamiliar with his other work.

The second in a proposed self-reflective doc trilogy, director Doug Block's embarrassingly honest follow-up to "51 Birch Street" (2005) is a neurotic, occasionally poignant rumination on his teenage daughter doing just what the title says.

The songs are routine, but the inconsequential plot leaves plenty of time for engaging asides like the blandly silly dinner-table dialogue between a well-bred couple (Cleese and Sanderson) determined not to notice that their home has been invaded by little furry creatures.

The big challenge for The Last Duel is to depict a world in which women are marginalised and disempowered without doing the same thing to its female characters. Maybe it should have ceded more of its cold stone floor to Marguerite.

The theatrical and sometimes overcooked dialogue doesn’t always convince; and despite moments of masterfully staged suspense, the film’s feature-length take on this ethical dilemma – the so-called ‘trolley problem’ – feels a little too decompressed and repetitive.

The two parallel stories never quite gel, more often pulling focus from each other just a major revelation seems to be in the offing.

Jason Momoa's surf-bro superhero is a welcome addition to a ponderously serious genre, but his movie as a whole feels waterlogged.

Nothing here will blow you away—think of this one as taking baby steps away from what's formulaic.

Heady with cordite fumes and high on its violent spectacle, this Chris Hemsworth-fronted action-thriller makes for a surprise-free but passable lockdown watch.

Even if it lacks the multiversal flexes of Everything Everywhere All at Once and feels just as busy, Polite Society is bundles of fun and announces Manzoor as an exciting, energetic filmmaker to watch.

The gorgeous cinematography and generosity to Plummer’s emotive gifts almost make up for the mumbo-jumboness of it all. Almost.

Ultimately Miss You Already feels like chick lit for the big screen: a frothy, contrived confection with careful doses of sexy, silly and sad. But those sad bits will get you in the end.

Moment to moment, the film is gripping and beautiful to behold (props to cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi for the mesmerizingly grainy, achromatic visuals). But caveat emptor to those expecting a hinterlands gloss on "Taken" with rapacious curs in place of nefarious Albanians.

Cliché piles on cliché to the strains of a garbled '60s soundtrack, but the movie's ending goes some way to recognising its failure. Fonda is magnificent.

Writer-director Gary Ross (Pleasantville, Seabiscuit) knows how to please crowds, so there's fascination in his consistently wrongheaded impulse to add more historical details: lengthy scenes of exposition, even a leap decades into the future for a courtroom drama involving Knight's persecuted offspring. He's lost sight of the powerful drama at this story's heart, about the ennobling swirl of momentous events.

The result may occasionally be more of a journalistic scrapbook than a Wisemanian all-points portrait, but the impact of seeing such unvarnished public activism in the raw can't be overestimated.

The sincere director, Oliver Schmitz, injects too much movie into his movie; life (above all) would have been enough.

Guerrero's handling of the bond between these two teens feels too coy by half; the film thankfully resists being either a typical coming-out movie or an ethnocultural curio, but it doesn't offer much insight into the twosome's attraction, platonic or otherwise, to each other.

Its story is accordingly old-hat...but Hitch makes the most of his locations (although the film is set on the Isle of Man, it was shot in Cornwall), while the frequent use of shots taken through windows anticipates the interest in voyeurism in his later work.

It also benefits from some engaging supporting characters.

What begins as a tense, inventive suspense film becomes, to paraphrase Doctor Who, a wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, mushy-wushy mess. That's decidedly NOT fantastic.

Even though Unfriended begins to cheat, springing loud noises and gory cutaways that can’t be explained, there’s a rigor to its dopey, blood-simple conception that you might smile at.

But even though tear-jerking has never been so blatant, your tears of laughter are replaced, dammit, by tears of grief.

Jim Henson's Creature Shop has created splendid animatronic characters (including a four-foot talking rat), though extra distinguishing marks between the turtles would be appreciated. Between the dubbed dialogue and the dark visuals, the cumulative effect is curiously dislocating.

Tolerably gripping in its old-fashioned way, thanks chiefly to old pro performances from Tracy and March as the rival lawyers and ideologists, but rather let down by Kelly's inadequacy as the cynical journalist who is comfortably denounced as the real villain of the piece.

Ignore the documentary's regrettable low-rent look and that kitschy "Love, American Style" soundtrack, and just focus on how this portrait turns a work of art into a sociological flash point.

Trumbo goes for a tone that’s more scrappy and inspirational, as this ousted ex-A-lister enlists his kids as couriers, builds a network of collaborators and wins two Academy Awards undercover.

Gran Turismo may ultimately be a glossy marketing exercise, but there are moments that’ll leave you with the right kind of whiplash.

Most delightful of the Super-series for its good-natured disregard of narrative considerations.

Put your fingers in your ears when the talking starts, and you might enjoy the view.

he entire cast speaks in horribly intrusive American accents, but Forman makes some perceptive connections between Mozart's life and work.

Comedy-adventure with a hit-and-miss list of Disney ingredients: street-smart (formerly 'spunky') Jodie Foster, Uncle David Niven wearing eccentric disguises, sweet Ms Hayes, winsome orphans, a slapstick climax.

This attempted follow-up to Carrie almost entirely lacks its predecessor's narrative thrust and suspense.

A financially successful exercise in target-marketing, but not much of a movie.

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.

Suspect remains a routine Jagged Edge follow-up.

A first-person Faustian detective novel presents quite a problem to the screenwriter, and Parker's alterations to William Hjortsberg's Falling Angel slacken the cunning weave of strands.

A hammed-up version of the old chestnut about the ventriloquist who is 'taken over' by his dummy, clumsily adapted by William Goldman from his own novel and infinitely better done in The Great Gabbo and Dead of Night.

The kind of comedy thriller which cancels itself out, this is pitched too close to caricature to engender suspense, but lacks the crisp, acerbic wit which distinguishes Hiaasen's prose.

Problems arise from an uncharacteristically loose structure, which frequently brings the movie to the brink of narrative collapse; Craven's visual flair and enthusiastic pacing nevertheless deliver ample (if sometimes frustrating) rewards.

The material strung together in a script about urban police work is so familiar from countless cop shows that it's difficult to see who needs this movie.

Unfortunately, in trying to rein in the material and impose some kind of closure, the film-makers plump for an inadequate, bourgeois sit-com mode and the movie evaporates before your eyes. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted, and hats off to Michael Keaton, Michael Keaton, Michael Keaton and - very funny in a supporting turn - Michael Keaton.

Foley has opted for a mixture of documentary realism and set pieces which have clearly escaped from over-lit pop promos. Mingle this with Penn and Walken going heavily over the top in usual Method fashion, and the brew is less than intoxicating.

For the undemanding, it may seem a fair stand-off; but compared to Hill's best work, it's merely a jerk-off.

It does mark a return of sorts to the stylishness of The Omen after the tackiness of Damien - Omen II.

The sense of location is strong, emphasising a hostile, nightmarish terrain; but Winner's recourse to caricature when dealing with police and thugs, and his virtually overt sympathies with the confused, violent Bronson, make for uncritical, simplistic viewing.

A predictable plot and cheapskate effects deaden Elvira's occasional witty lines, while references to the horror genre make the film busy without going anywhere. Vamp high camp, where Elvira is more mistress of the dork.

Amiable but half-baked remake of what was anyway one of Preston Sturges' least satisfactory comedies.

Carradine is good value as a garrulous doctor; but in general the direction tends to get bogged down in not very interesting characters and relationships while neglecting to deliver the action.

It comprises documentary footage from 1967 of the great pianist in transit, in the studio and playing live, intercut with interviews with relevant dudes; a downbeat, often dull, but unfailingly honest imprint of a singular mystique.

Writer/director Hanson has created a plausible thriller with several neat twists; but the last half-hour, while never quite losing its grip, degenerates into pure flapdoodle.

The film offers several entertaining sequences, but Splash it ain't, for while that film took a similar scenario and beautifully conveyed romantic notions of innocence, this is marred by cruel and juvenile gags.

Bertolucci's epic is a disappointment. With its once-upon-a-time structure, it has the feeling of a beautiful but very expensive kids' movie, intercut with a '50s 'Scope sandal-saga.

This is in the 'never trust appearances' mould popularised by Fatal Attraction and Pacific Heights.

Poor songs (Hello Young Lovers, Getting to Know You), fair choreography, poor script, nice photography.

The script - Wilder's first with IAL Diamond - has its moments, but by and large it's conspicuously lacking in insight or originality, while Hepburn's fresh-faced infatuation for her all too visibly ageing guide to the adult, sensual world comes across as faintly implausible.

There are a few extreme auteurists who claim that everything Siegel shoots is wonderful, but some of his more recent efforts have been frankly disappointing, few more so than this glossy, shallow comic heist movie.

Director Medak goes off the rails in high style with this dementedly doleful exercise in pop noir. But the film plays out the battle of the sexes at such an unflinchingly amoral pitch it really isn't funny anymore. Like Oldman's deluded operator - playing both ends and getting caught in the middle - Hilary Henkin's script isn't as smart as it thinks it is, and only Olin's breathtakingly excessive femme fatale hits the right note of campy panache.

Winner directs with typically crass abandon, wasting a solid performance from Lancaster and a story that a director like Jean-Pierre Melville might have made something of.

There are a few piquant ironies at work, but the selling point is Ryder, again doing her coming-of-age turn for the camera, with a performance that wavers between gangling fragility and a tough-girl Matt Dillonism. Otherwise, the movie falls flat, because of its leaden pacing, and because deep down it believes in the moral imperative of having perfect hair and teeth.

Shot in black-and-white in an attempt to evoke the sophisticated burr of '40s films, its intent is hamstrung by over-familiar gags, though the script comes more to life when Prince and Benton lapse into black street talk during their pursuit of moneyed women.

The somewhat heavy-handed direction and the ultimately two-dimensional characters leave you admiring the workmanship without plucking at the necessary emotional/romantic heart-strings.

Not a patch on Cocoon; what merit this sequel has comes entirely from the superb cast of veterans, with very little help from a script which seems to have been ghosted by Justice Shallow. The story is so badly recapitulated that anyone not familiar with the situation will wonder why some of the cast seem fitter than others.

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.

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

The pace is so plodding, and the general effect so stultifyingly unsubtle, that one is left impressed only by the fine landscape photography and Dean's surprisingly convincing portrayal of a middle-aged man.

Sturges turns in a tired study of Cherman and Oirish accents, and little else.

Something of a mess, both in terms of the wayward plot which rambles all over the place, and in terms of the rather muddled juggling of audience sympathies.

Joanou, later to find greater exposure with the concert picture U2 Rattle and Hum and the Oldman/Penn crime movie State of Grace, directs with a lot of energy, but the material just isn't there.

John Osborne's quirky indictment of '50s stagnation still looks stagebound, despite extensive location shooting and the cool, inventive photography of Oswald Morris. Too many words, too many tantrums, too much kitchen-sink sentimentality; yet there are moments when this looks like a good film.

Apprenticed under Corman, Wynorski is well-versed in double-bluffing his audience, denying them the chance of balking at dreadful special effects by implying that the ineptitude is deliberate. He opts for cheap nostalgic laughs and camp '50s sci-fi scenery; depending on whether you find this funny, you'll either smile knowingly or gasp in disbelief.

When Van Damme is doing what he does best - narcissistically displaying his body and thumping the bad guys - the film works reasonably well. By contrast his attempts to lighten up and play quieter dramatic scenes offer an embarrassing array of boyish smiles, dumb looks and stilted dialogue.

A melodramatic thriller which did surprisingly well in the US given its implausible straight-to-video scenario. Undistinguished.

It is pleasant enough, but somehow - despite excellent performances by Poitier (the intrepid wagonmaster) and Belafonte (a roguish preacher) - it never quite clicks.

There isn't a half decent performance to be found here, and his own daughter in the female lead is particularly awful. Also, a barely credible plot and uneven pacing don't help. Yet Argento's occasionally brilliant camerawork and the evident glee with which he sets about the decapitation scenes make this just about worthwhile.

Made for cable with many has-beens from hell.

A bland, so-so romantic comedy without the charm to see it through.

Despite its reputation, a rather overrated police-procedure thriller which has gained its seminal status simply by its accent on ordinariness and by its adherence to the ideal of shooting on location.

A glossy, violent, pointless movie from the team who later perpetrated Death Wish; mildly entertaining if you want to watch Bronson suggesting silent, brooding menace for the umpteenth time.