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Scream
(1996)
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Marc Lee
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A slasher movie so self-referential it disappears up it own He's-behind-you.
Posted Oct 11, 2024
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3/5
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Conclave
(2024)
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Tim Robey
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Conclave is briskly enjoyable, but once you’ve wafted the white smoke away, it leaves you with frustratingly little to chew on.
Posted Oct 10, 2024
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4/5
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Elton John: Never Too Late
(2024)
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Neil McCormick
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With its glossy Disney aesthetic, it is not as intimate and revealing... Yet it does have a weird energy of its own that is ultimately quite moving, that comes from Elton’s honesty about his legacy of unhappiness.
Posted Oct 10, 2024
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2/5
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Salem's Lot
(2024)
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Tim Robey
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At best, this Salem milks a couple of set-pieces for crowd-pleasing kicks.
Posted Oct 10, 2024
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5/5
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Blitz
(2024)
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Robbie Collin
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... A thrilling, moving, morally provoking odyssey through Britain at war, with a flock of vividly sketched supporting characters that buffet George from one adventure to the next.
Posted Oct 10, 2024
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5/5
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A Different Man
(2024)
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Robbie Collin
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Schimberg brilliantly anticipates every ethical qualm you might have, and every artistic parallel you might spot from Beauty and the Beast to The Elephant Man, and lobs them all back at the audience like water bombs.
Posted Oct 07, 2024
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4/5
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Transformers One
(2024)
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Robbie Collin
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Transformers One does not belong to a franchise that could ever be accused of subtlety, but these stylistic choices make Josh Cooley’s film far more thoughtful and ingenious than the average reboot.
Posted Oct 02, 2024
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3/5
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Apartment 7A
(2024)
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Robbie Collin
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... A diverting appendix to an indisputable classic.
Posted Oct 01, 2024
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The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
(1974)
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Eric Shorter
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The foreground becomes comically absurd in its congested derivation of gags to make our flesh creep. So the film is neither sickening nor thrilling nor artistically interesting.
Posted Sep 30, 2024
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2/5
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My Old Ass
(2024)
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Robbie Collin
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Your reward for weathering all this is Plaza’s second and final big scene, which the Parks and Recreation star plays so skilfully... Worth watching for? On balance, no. But at least the note it ends on isn’t a bum one.
Posted Sep 26, 2024
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2/5
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Never Let Go
(2024)
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Tim Robey
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Wiser advice than the title: simply don’t go.
Posted Sep 26, 2024
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Bram Stoker's Dracula
(1992)
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Hugo Davenport
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At times the film seems like a gigantic peepshow; a delirious magic lantern display... Given this hectic profusion, it is scarcely surprising that the film should also contain some thunderous misjudgments.
Posted Sep 26, 2024
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The Conversation
(1974)
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Patrick Gibbs
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The trouble is a division of aim; the initial comedy holds up beautifully, but not the latter attempts to add something significant in the way of social comment.
Posted Sep 24, 2024
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Apocalypse Now
(1979)
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Patrick Gibbs
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Although he is far too fond pink smoke and fire, Mr. Coppola's control of actors and scene, finely photographed by Vittorio Storaro and backed by Wagnerian-like music, is never in doubt -- until the final stages.
Posted Sep 23, 2024
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2/5
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His Three Daughters
(2023)
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Tim Robey
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Most of the cast feel stuck on a stage, doing the modern equivalent of cut-rate Chekhov. They could have picked a much stronger text for their exertions.
Posted Sep 20, 2024
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4/5
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The Goldman Case
(2023)
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Robbie Collin
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As far as the film is concerned, Goldman’s guilt is beside the point: the real trial is the messy scrap in the defence between pragmatism and principle.
Posted Sep 19, 2024
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4/5
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Gary
(2024)
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Anita Singh
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It is a cautionary tale of child stardom, familiar in many respects: disappearing millions, parents and advisors who did not always appear to have his best interests at heart, the job offers drying up in adulthood.
Posted Sep 14, 2024
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3/5
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Will & Harper
(2024)
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Ed Power
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Yet for all these quibbles, the interludes when Harper opens up are raw and devastating.
Posted Sep 14, 2024
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2/5
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The Critic
(2023)
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Alexander Larman
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[McKellen] at least manages to be both appropriately theatrical and wickedly entertaining in a way that the rest of this well-intentioned but haphazard picture cannot manage.
Posted Sep 14, 2024
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4/5
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Speak No Evil
(2024)
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Robbie Collin
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Here is a British psychological thriller with a valuable lesson for us all: if a couple from Devon ever ask you to their place for the weekend, run 100 miles the other way...
Posted Sep 14, 2024
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3/5
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Lee
(2023)
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Robbie Collin
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Lee certainly celebrates Miller as a difficult woman – one who energetically defies every feminine-propriety rule of the age and more. But it gives both its subject and audience the easiest of rides.
Posted Sep 14, 2024
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3/5
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Starve Acre
(2023)
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Tim Robey
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The terrain between pagan folklore and psychodrama is turned over here by hand fork: it’s delicately developed as metaphor, but lacks the crazed tilt into shock it needs for major impact.
Posted Sep 06, 2024
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4/5
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Rebel Ridge
(2024)
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Tim Robey
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This is not Road-House-style Thug Cinema, seizing any excuse to ratchet up the bloodshed. Instead, it keeps pausing and de-escalating: without any dissipation, the body count is impressively close to zero.
Posted Sep 06, 2024
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5/5
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Queer
(2024)
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Robbie Collin
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Queer doesn’t scrimp on provocation and pleasure, but it’s also a beautiful film about male loneliness, and the way a solitary life can so easily shade into a life sentence.
Posted Sep 05, 2024
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2/5
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2073
(2024)
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Robbie Collin
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The conceit of a film as a warning from the future is a promising one, but 2073 feels more like political signalling for the present.
Posted Sep 05, 2024
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4/5
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Harvest
(2024)
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Robbie Collin
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Melling, who has grown from Dudley Dursley in Harry Potter into one of our finest young character actors, is tremendous.
Posted Sep 05, 2024
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2/5
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The Room Next Door
(2024)
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Robbie Collin
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The result – an adaptation of the novel What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez – is depressingly thin, and not only for linguistic reasons.
Posted Sep 05, 2024
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1/5
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Wolfs
(2024)
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Robbie Collin
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... A series of effortfully wacky crises, during which Clooney and Pitt keep repeating themselves and swearing where the funny dialogue should be.
Posted Sep 05, 2024
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4/5
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From Darkness to Light
(2024)
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Robbie Collin
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But from a place of affection and respect, Lurie and Friedler also give a compelling account of the way this beloved light entertainer went about tackling the darkest of subjects.
Posted Sep 05, 2024
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4/5
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Joker: Folie à Deux
(2024)
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Robbie Collin
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Folie à Deux can’t quite match its predecessor for dizzying impact. But it matches it for horrible tinderbox tension: it’s a film you feel might burst into flames at any given moment.
Posted Sep 04, 2024
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5/5
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The Brutalist
(2024)
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Robbie Collin
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As a state-of-the-US historical epic, it boasts all the thematic heft of Once Upon a Time in America or There Will Be Blood. But it’s also acted with the colour and fizz of a classical Hollywood comic drama.
Posted Sep 01, 2024
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1/5
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Baby Invasion
(2024)
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Robbie Collin
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[Baby Invasion] may be the stupidest film I have ever seen. And I use the word “may” only because I’m not entirely sure this thing actually is a film in the first place.
Posted Sep 01, 2024
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4/5
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The Order
(2024)
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Robbie Collin
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Kurzel’s film is part hard-bitten character study... But The Order also works as a gripping procedural in its own right – a long-form game of investigative join-the-dots, built around a series of lethally disciplined action scenes.
Posted Sep 01, 2024
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5/5
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Babygirl
(2024)
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Robbie Collin
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Kidman is ferociously good, convincing utterly as this formerly level-headed careerist whose deeply buried, long-denied appetites are simultaneously proving her making and downfall.
Posted Aug 31, 2024
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1/5
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The Deliverance
(2024)
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Tim Robey
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The film succumbs to being undiluted tripe yet still has the gall to bolster itself with a dedication to Latoya, aiming to be taken seriously by simply inventing the gospel truth.
Posted Aug 31, 2024
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4/5
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Maria
(2024)
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Robbie Collin
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As in Jackie and Spencer, Maria offers a wide-open vista of its subject through an arrow-slit of a temporal window.
Posted Aug 29, 2024
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2/5
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Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
(2024)
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Robbie Collin
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Everyone knows that to summon Betelgeuse, you simply have to say his name three times aloud. This belated follow-up left me wondering how many times you’d have to say it to make him go away for good.
Posted Aug 28, 2024
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4/5
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Kneecap
(2024)
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Ed Power
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Hard-punching and cheerfully riotous, the film directs a well-placed kick at the nether regions to anyone who insists music, politics and cinema cannot mix.
Posted Aug 23, 2024
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2/5
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Blink Twice
(2024)
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Robbie Collin
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Not every jab misses, and a few induce a decent satirical twinge, but such moments are typically over in a blink.
Posted Aug 22, 2024
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Beetlejuice
(1988)
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Victoria Mather
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The film is splendid fun, bizarre, original and consistently entertaining.
Posted Aug 21, 2024
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3/5
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Faye
(2024)
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Tim Robey
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Respectful if not revelatory, Bouzereau’s film gives her legacy a massage, gently probing, but also leaving her in peace.
Posted Aug 19, 2024
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5/5
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Sing Sing
(2023)
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Robbie Collin
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[Domingo and Raci's] interplay flows naturally, but is underpinned by a robust, punchy wit – imagine The Shawshank Redemption directed by Mike Leigh.
Posted Aug 19, 2024
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2/5
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Jackpot!
(2024)
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Ed Power
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The film’s writer Rob Yescombe has a background in video games, and much of the story unfolds out like a cut Playstation scene that never gets to the point.
Posted Aug 16, 2024
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4/5
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Alien: Romulus
(2024)
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Robbie Collin
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Romulus might inject an appalling new life into the Alien franchise, but it won’t do much good for the national birth rate.
Posted Aug 14, 2024
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Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes
(2024)
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Anita Singh
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The tapes do lend an intimacy.
Posted Aug 12, 2024
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4/5
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Wild Wild Space
(2024)
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Anita Singh
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The documentary is as entertaining as it is informative, because people who devote their careers to building rockets tend to be quite interesting.
Posted Aug 12, 2024
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3/5
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Trap
(2024)
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Tim Robey
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The whole film is a stunt, and a goof – sometimes simply too silly to get suspense ticking at all, but often cheekily outrageous.
Posted Aug 12, 2024
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1/5
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Duchess
(2024)
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Tim Robey
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The sub-sub-Scarface bursts of bullet-ridden action just about keep this thing from grinding to a halt, but it’s leering, cruddy and retrograde to the bitter end.
Posted Aug 12, 2024
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3/5
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Sky Peals
(2023)
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Ed Power
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Hussain extracts maximum value from the setting – a liminal zone where stopping off for chicken nuggets and a petrol refill comes with a side-serving of Kubrickian angst.
Posted Aug 12, 2024
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Babes
(2024)
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Tim Robey
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You needn’t have the faintest idea who Ilana Glazer or Michelle Buteau are. It’s enough that this pair of US comics spark and connect, hilariously, as two lifelong friends who complete each other’s sentences.
Posted Aug 12, 2024
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