Paul Bradshaw

Fury Of The Gods gets a big, silly ending which is occasionally fun, but there’s a cheap and clumsy feel to everything – a superhero sequel made in the same vague shape as a dozen others.

Hopkins steals the film with a wonderfully unlikeable cameo, but it’s the triple-header of Jackman, Dern and Kirby that really lifts the film far above its own script.

Almost completely built out of clichés and corn, there’s very little in Plane that hasn’t been seen before, but it very rarely matters. Exciting without ever really thrilling, it’s an immovably solid actioner – a fun Friday night pizza movie packing a handful of relentlessly unfussy action scenes that deliver exactly what they promise.

This isn’t anyone’s personal story – it’s just the most filmable bits of a fake past, awkwardly, beautifully, pointlessly patched together at 24-frames per second.

Turning an awful true story about a serial killer into an awful true story about the system that let it happen, The Good Nurse is an important lesson for anyone who tries to package Cullen’s crimes too neatly. Better still though, it gives us one of Chastain’s best performances; one of the year’s most believable superheroes.

Fizzing along nicely, even as it tips the two-hour mark, Enola Holmes 2 fits the mould it broke two years ago with a twisty murder mystery that’s well worth solving.

Genuinely moving from the very beginning, expect to leave After Yang in a flood of tears. Expect, also, to spend the rest of the night questioning all the things that no one really likes thinking about. And, of course, to want to keep rewatching that dance scene on repeat.

Made with bubblegum bite by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (writer on MTV’s Sweet/Vicious and Marvel’s Thor: Love And Thunder), the film takes its place in the cult yearbook with an ironic wink – dropping movie references as fast as it does one-liners.

Endlessly silly, and hampered by a lousy script, Fall somehow still manages to be almost unbearably tense – the equivalent of spending two hours watching those stomach-churning YouTube videos of mad freerunners hanging off tall buildings for fun.

It might not be much of an Owen Wilson movie, or even that much of a superhero flick, but if you ignore the poster and trailer and the casting and premise, there’s a fun little Sunday afternoon family film here just begging for a sequel.

Ending up in a CG mess that tries to say something about karma, Bullet Train isn’t the Pulp Fiction on rails it thinks it is. What it is, though, is a whole dollop of fun. Buoyed by Leitch’s expert eye for action as well as one of the most hilariously disposable A-list casts around, the film has Friday night written all over it.

Bristling with good ideas and two great performances, a rushed ending that dips into daftness ends up killing off what could have been a great pitch for an offbeat little TV show that we’re now never going to get to watch.

Fortunately, Hawke is fantastic. Over-acting like his life depends on it, his mad kabuki mugging somehow works perfectly.

Condemned in Australia by two of the victim’s families, there’s an argument to be made for Nitram not being watched at all. But by refusing to paint Nitram as an out-and-out monster, the film’s masterstroke is its compassion. It exposes politicians as the real criminals in an unspeakable tragedy that we still haven’t learned from today.

Archer’s film always feels utterly unique. Looking as handmade as its loveable leads and carrying enough odd wit and subtle warmth to put the multiplex to shame, this is British indie cinema at its weird best. See it before it all falls apart at the seams.

Kids are scary. If you didn’t think so before, you definitely will after watching The Innocents – one of the year’s most quietly unsettling horror films.

Less a balanced exposé than a tabloid scoop played for shocks, the film never even bothers to ask why any of this might have happened.

Somehow, Raimi – with strong, grounded turns from Cumberbatch and Olsen – just about keeps the film from running too far off the rails.

There’s plenty to admire in Silverton Siege, but most of it comes from the true story itself, with the film squandering every opportunity it has to make an impact.

Never quite sure enough of itself to answer its own questions, this is a fun, sweet and occasionally funny film, but it’s never going to win a battle of the band movies.

Watching Pine and Newton try and erotically spoon-feed each other bits of bacon while secretly trying to work out if they have to kill each other is more than enough to hang an entire film off. It’s just a shame the rest of the movie isn’t up to scratch.

Gyllenhaal clearly loves losing his mind as the nice-guy/bad-guy with a mad streak, and Abdul-Mateen grounds it all in some kind of sticky morality, but it’s González that holds the film together from the backseat.

Hamaguchi’s literary and densely layered drama moves slowly through its runtime, but stick with it and Drive My Car rewards patience like almost nothing else.

Apatow has assembled a fantastic cast of A-listers and friends for his take on the pandemic. Unfortunately, it’s not very funny.

Full of sex without ever being sexy, and twisted into the shape of a thriller without having any actual intrigue or suspense, it still stands up as the kind of adult relationship drama that’s gone out of fashion – just as trashy as it is complex.

Flashy enough for pantomime but lacking the sense of fun, the rest of the film follows Branagh’s journey into dull excess, with Christie’s cracking whodunnit deafened by the camerawork and deadened by lazy writing.

Just as ugly and beautiful as any classic noir, del Toro’s dark, dazzling three-ring Hollywood circus proves the old-fashioned event film still has a lot of life left.

Driven by big-truck energy and lumbered with tired sports clichés and flat jokes, Home Team feels like its target audience is bad dads who don’t like spending time with their sons.