Barry Hertz

Yet for a number of reasons, The Favourite is the first Yorgos Lanthimos film that puts the director’s bitter instincts to good use. It’s not only his most tolerable film, it’s his most insightful, too. It even approaches, well, fun.

The only truly shocking thing about this new work, though, is the fact it took this long for von Trier to make a movie about a serial killer. For a man who loves blunt provocation, the subject should’ve been first on his hit list.

Any sports film, no matter its scale or handicap, has to land its narrative and aesthetic punches – and Tiger clings to the ropes more often than not.

Although Abbasi and his co-writers fall into a slight genre trap toward the end – one familiar to any fan of traditional crime thrillers – Border is otherwise a work of spectacular, unclassifiable artistry. Don’t read another word about it: just go.

It’s a stew so thick with brand loyalty that you just might choke on all the intellectual property and consequential commerce.

Whatever you normally do during the rousing finale of a Rocky movie. It will feel familiar, but just go with it.

The entire endeavour is so crass, sloppy, and infuriating (especially the “twist” ending, although the film contains no real ending at all) that it treads close to zero-star, brand-killing territory. But then Jude Law pops up all-too-briefly as a younger, sexier version of Albus Dumbledore, and everything seems mostly right with the Potter-verse. But the magic, it’s fleeting.

However Buster Scruggs came to be, it highlights the best of the Coens' mordant minds, but not without tripping over a few unintended obstacles. Which probably suits the pair, always in awe of things never going right, just fine.

Farrelly’s film is worth witnessing, especially given how it is now all but destined to dominate the awards conversation. But do yourself a favour: Each time your fellow moviegoers burst into applause, ask just who it is they’re clapping for.

It’s an intense and sharp opening that would impress Spielberg, if he could hear the dang thing. Nearly the entire movie is torpedoed by its cranked-to-11 sound mix, with a good chunk of dialogue drowned out by whirring airplanes and myriad explosions.

It isn’t hard to find all the many ways in which this film exhausts both itself and Lisbeth. It is time, already, to give this Girl a rest.

Focused on one cocky white student’s foray into the world of California battle rap, Bodied is at times vile in its content and bananas in its execution. But Kahn is not a mere shock artist, and as the film progresses and twists its perspective, it’s clear the director is playing a much deeper, more complicated and extremely messy game.

The film is rich in such positive messaging, and its subjects quickly endear themselves to the camera.

Although Von Trotta skips around Bergman’s filmography a bit haphazardly, and touches upon his romantic proclivities in a frustratingly brief manner, there’s little room to go wrong when a film is seemingly 50 per cent composed of Bergman’s own footage.

There are a lot of words that come to mind when watching Luca Guadagnino’s remake of Suspiria: beautiful, gross, overwhelming, frustrating, disturbing, powerful, long, gross, audacious, baffling, explicit, extravagant and did I mention gross?

The action, when it does arrive, is quiet enough to send the most insomnia-plagued of audiences to sleep.

Watanabe and Moore acquit themselves well (although the latter’s lip-syncing is questionable), but Bel Canto falls short of the operatic notes Weitz attempts to hit.

By exploiting the raw physical power of the Indonesian martial art called silat and then emptying buckets and buckets of fake blood upon your cast for kicks, filmmaker Timo Tjahjanto has birthed a monster of a movie, as brutal as it is hypnotic.

Cedergren excels at balancing Asger’s cynical cool with his desire to help (or perhaps simply help himself), and the entire endeavour will leave you with a new-found respect for 911 operators.

Most of all, though, it comes off as unsure, even afraid, of just what it wants to say about America today, resulting in a sometimes amusing, sometimes stilted lecture that indicts everyone, and no one.

Touching, if by-the-books, documentary.

A rags-to-riches tale that is inspirational in the most sentimental and predictable of fashions, Bigger squanders most of the potential that comes with dissecting such an underexplored world as the nascent body-building industry. At least he nails the casting, with the intimidatingly fit Tyler Hoechlin and Aneurin Barnard as the Weider brothers, the charismatic Julianne Hough as Joe’s wife.

All About Nina is a compelling, honest and occasionally messy middle finger to the expectations placed on female entertainers – or just simply women at all.

It makes for intriguing and often gripping viewing, but delivers a more confounding experience than is necessary. Still, the director knows how to break those bones real good.

Its mystery elements are infused with a uniquely Feig-ian sensibility, equal parts broad comedy and ironic winks. The genre-meld shouldn’t work as well as it does, but Feig wrangles all the disparate elements under his control.

There is a strange emotional detachment to Felix van Groeningen’s adaptation, which renders the tale needlessly cold.

A majestic feat of filmmaking, an intimate portrait of a family that also serves as a broad portrait of a changing nation.

Mandy is, if it’s not clear yet, not for everyone. But for those who think nothing of staying up past midnight to devour the strange and fantastic, it hits the sweetest of spots.