The slowest of slow burns, requiring adjusting to its careful pacing. There’s no instant gratification on offer, but the second half will draw you into its bristling power games.

Frankenheimer's fascination with gadgetry is used to create a striking visual metaphor for control by the military machine. Highly enjoyable.

The third Astaire-Rogers movie (not counting Flying Down to Rio) and one of the best, with a superlative Irving Berlin score, and equally superlative Hermes Pan routines which spark a distinct sexual electricity between the pair.

On the surface it's a complete delight, with Matthau's relentlessly funny lines taking most of the honours, but underneath lies a disenchantment as bleak as The Apartment: amoral, misogynist characters (in Lemmon's case, literally spineless) racing through ever more futile efforts to outmanoeuvre each other.

Delicately placed on a sonic bedrock of chirping birds and distant traffic, Cemetery of Splendour is a whisper of a film that can only cast its spell if you let your breathing slow and give yourself over to the urgency of its spectral dimension.

The animation itself might not be the most inventive out there (this isn’t Pixar), but where Sing soars is in its one-by-one attention to its ensemble of beasts and its obvious passion for music: It’s nearly impossible to watch this film and not be humming the Beatles’ "Golden Slumbers" for days afterward.

The Tillman Story balances cynical and inspirational aspects in equal measure. Pat's demise-and the media debacle around it-seems that much more tragic and enraging.

Rather than a simple story of underdogs vs The Man, director Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya) has made a complicated, sometimes funny story that is not a comedy, and sometimes feels like a horror.

At once a lament to the ravages of age and an examination of those tiny foibles which separate reality from dramatic artifice, it’s a baffling and intricate film which, although light on conventional pleasures, still manages to provoke and beguile.

This spoof fly-on-the-wall documentary is funny, scary, provocative, and profoundly disturbing...Purely on a gut level, it may offend; but as an exploration of voyeurism, it's one of the most resonant, caustic contributions to the cinema of violence since Peeping Tom.

The actors are what save it. Not only does Johnson build on his subversive 
persona of hulking, dim-witted likability, 
but he’s joined by Neighbors’ Zac Efron, today’s reigning king of the hazy one-liner.

A thrilling film, with a head, a heart, and muscle.

A truly impressive portrait of self-destructive, smooth-talking alpha males, and a testament to an actor who waltzes across that Peter Pan–syndrome tightrope with the greatest of sleaze.

By leaning into those relatable complexities, Causeway will offer plenty for fans of thoughtful, quality dramas that touch on humanity, trauma, connection and the kindness of strangers.

The new Dev Patel is taking no prisoners in this slice of Mumbai mayhem, announcing himself as a filmmaker with possibly the most ferocious mainstream action movie since The Raid, and as an action star by sticking a knife into a goon’s neck. With his teeth.

Joyland’s quiet power comes not through melodrama, which Sadiq scrupulously avoids, but its deep affection for its characters. It’s a modern tale of changing gender roles and the patriarchal crisis that could just as easily have taken place in New York.

The sights are gorgeous—a seamless mix of archival imagery and impressively rendered digital views of our galaxy—and the science is, to layman’s eyes and ears, more than credible.

This is a brutal movie that finds unusual freedom in limitations, as do wiry bassist Pat (Anton Yelchin) and bleach-blond concert attendee Amber (Imogen Poots), who both turn out to be pretty handy with weapons. Chalk it up to their killer instincts.

Like Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, it both records and condemns the passage of time and the advent of progress; and there is a sombre, mournful quality which places the film very high up in the league of great Westerns.

The level of brainwashing, privation and systemic abuse makes for an enraging, confronting watch, but it’s refreshingly focused on the people, rather than geopolitics. Just like for its two fleeing families, Beyond Utopia is an emotional journey.

Geraghty’s performance is harrowing: Clinging to the phone and tortured by his ecstasy, he weaves empathy out of a flawed loner’s dysfunctional fetish.

The film has a thesis: hitmen must have psychopathy on their CVs; but even bad guys have souls. It's Roth's tough job to illustrate this, which, in his finest performance to date, he does magnificently.

Sally Hawkins cruises into her new movie the same way she did her breakthrough, "Happy-Go-Lucky."

If nothing else, Radical Dreamer is a never-ending stream of great anecdotes.

Granik builds her engaging, sympathetic characters in subtle increments.

The unexpectedly wonderful thing about this sequel is that it actually improves on the jokes.

Few films rival its ability to capture the danger, drama, uncertainty and energy of civil war or to respond so vitally to the urgent artistic challenges of their times.

What makes The Favourite work are its women—who rule, both literally within the movie and outwardly, dominating our enjoyment.