The Age (Australia)

The Hollywood Teen Titans Go! initially looks more progressive than its real-life counterpart - but the climax gives this a rather different spin.

Posted Sep 17, 2018

C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005)

Philippa Hawker

There's a warmth and detail to the way father, mother and son are depicted and explored.

Posted Sep 17, 2018

Kenny (2008)

Jim Schembri

Few comic characters come with that degree of wit, let alone a philosophy.

Posted Sep 17, 2018

Kenny (2008)

It's a risky strategy, but one that pays off triumphantly here.

Posted Sep 17, 2018

Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

Michelle Yeoh takes the acting honours as the heroine's steely prospective mother-in-law.

Posted Sep 14, 2018

Paper Moon (1973)

Shot in black and white by the versatile cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs, this has a mix of folksiness and precise craft that anticipates the Coen brothers, aiming to charm and succeeding.

Posted Sep 14, 2018

Dumbo (1941)

Though the character's eventual comic triumph is never in doubt, there are traumatic moments along the way, including an extraordinary, nightmarish drunk sequence that suggests the animators had early access to LSD.

Posted Sep 14, 2018

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

Colin Trevorrow's belated follow-up to Jurassic Park is one of the most intriguing of recent reboots, since the premise of a theme park inhabited by actual dinosaurs directly dramatises the dangers of bringing the past back to life.

Posted Sep 14, 2018

Alice in Wonderland (1951)

Carroll's dream logic seems to liberate the animators: everything is constantly transforming, including prim Alice herself.

Posted Sep 14, 2018

2/5

Luis and The Aliens (2018)

The actual plot is thin to the point of absurdity, much of it hinging on the aliens stumbling on an Earth infomercial and conceiving the desire to buy a certain kind of vibrating mat.

Posted Sep 14, 2018

BlacKkKlansman (2018)

There's nobody left in Hollywood making broad, sweeping, lively political melodramas like Spike Lee.

Posted Sep 14, 2018

Phantom Thread (2018)

As visual music grounded in a feeling of preposterous luxury, this is as enveloping and experimental as anything Anderson has done.

Posted Sep 14, 2018

Yellow Submarine (1968)

The animators let their imaginations run wild, the script is full of inventive wordplay - and obviously, the songs don't hurt either.

Posted Sep 14, 2018

Rebecca (1940)

An enduring template for Gothic tales of women in peril.

Posted Sep 14, 2018

Grease (1978)

Randall Kleiser's 1978 spoof of '50s iconography [is] so consciously cheesy from the outset that it hardly seems dated today.

Posted Sep 14, 2018

Sisters (1973)

De Palma's 1972 thriller is the first of his films to assemble all his signature traits ― Gothic excess, stylistic bravado, a freewheeling approach to plot construction, and a manner of borrowing from Hitchcock that is as much parody as homage.

Posted Sep 14, 2018

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

The conception owes something to Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, but the film builds a myth of its own, one that taps into something essential about stardom.

Posted Sep 14, 2018

3/5

Three Identical Strangers (2018)

Like Morris's work, the film has an abstract side as well as a concrete one, carrying a unique story to a point where broader philosophical issues open up.

Posted Sep 14, 2018

3.5/5

Beast (2018)

This is a film of some power, and one that doesn't flinch from following its more disturbing implications through to the end.

Posted Sep 14, 2018

3/5

The Predator (2018)

In this instance, Black seems intent on catering to as many different types of nostalgia as possible.

Posted Sep 14, 2018

A Simple Favor (2018)

[A Simple Favor is an] uneven but quite engaging domestic thriller - a variant on Gone Girl given a comic spin by director Paul Feig...whose real interest, as often, lies in the unlikely bond between two contrasting women.

Posted Sep 14, 2018

Won't You Be My Neighbor? (2018)

You don't need to have grown up with [Rogers] to be fascinated and moved by Morgan Neville's documentary portrait, made in a spirit of admiration, which on the evidence presented here seems well-deserved.

Posted Sep 14, 2018

Happy as Lazzaro (Lazzaro felice) (2018)

The third feature from Italian director Alice Rohrwacher is an ambitious magic-realist fantasia with a political edge and a number of surprises up its sleeve.

Posted Sep 14, 2018

4/5

You Were Never Really Here (2018)

Enough information is provided to let us discern the rudiments of a conventional plot - but our understanding of this remains tentative, hypothetical, shadowed by the possibility that all is not as it seems.

Posted Sep 7, 2018

2/5

The Nun (2018)

[The Nun] handles sacred iconography with kid gloves, taking pains not to offend the orthodox - and delivering neither the shock of blasphemy nor the conviction of true belief.

Posted Sep 5, 2018

2/5

Mile 22 (2018)

For all the pretense of gritty realism, the film is weirdly unreal: the clock may be ticking, but everyone has a lot of time to kick back and talk.

Posted Aug 29, 2018

3.5/5

Mirai (2018)

Mirai can be recommended to both adults and children...Those aged around eight and up may be amused to recognise aspects of their younger selves.

Posted Aug 22, 2018

4/5

Leave No Trace (2018)

Sandra Hall

Granik's star-making instincts are as sharp as ever.

Posted Aug 22, 2018

2/5

The Happytime Murders (2018)

That script, by Todd Berger, is the film's biggest problem. Various promising themes are introduced without being followed through.

Posted Aug 22, 2018

2/5

Paths of the Soul (Kang rinpoche) (2016)

This is, in short, a blandly soothing film with little substance of any sort.

Posted Aug 22, 2018

1.5/5

The Meg (2018)

If there's any sense of menace in The Meg, it lies in the prospect that many more such films may be on the way. All that said, I hope there are bigger opportunities in store for whoever edited the trailer.

Posted Aug 15, 2018

Capernaum (Capharnaüm) (2018)

It's a tear-jerker, all right -- but then, it's hard to see how it could remain true to reality and be anything else.

Posted Aug 15, 2018

Diamantino (2018)

A witty, gender-bending fairytale for adults, complete with a Cinderella protagonist.

Posted Aug 9, 2018

West of Sunshine (2017)

A conventional but touching social-realist drama.

Posted Aug 9, 2018

Cold War (Zimna wojna) (2018)

Full of aching, ecstasy and anger, this is a remarkable and beautiful film about a love that is possible only when it borders on the impossible.

Posted Aug 8, 2018

3/5

The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018)

Beneath the film's pop feminism bubbles an anger that might potentially have more than one target - and which leaves you wondering what this genre will look like in another couple of years.

Posted Aug 8, 2018

3/5

Submergence (2018)

This is the film of an old man who has retained a humble, almost naive attitude to experience, an awareness there are depths he has left unplumbed. There is something quite moving about this.

Posted Aug 8, 2018

Ash Is Purest White (2019)

Through all this, Jia is a keen observer, sympathetic to human passions but never nostalgic; the new China may be cold and acquisitive, but the old ways were rotten too.

Posted Aug 8, 2018

Tyrel (2018)

With his usual malice, Silva forces us to consider what social faultlines might be evident in the banter and bonding rituals...

Posted Aug 8, 2018

Birds of Passage (Pájaros de verano) (2018)

An explosively imaginative riposte to the macho posturings of Narcos.

Posted Aug 8, 2018

Our New President (2018)

It's a scattergun approach that all adds up to compelling evidence of an orchestrated campaign led from the very top.

Posted Aug 8, 2018

Woman at War (Kona fer í stríð) (2018)

With this mini-saga about a middle-aged choir mistress with a sideline in eco-terrorism, [Benedikt Erlingsson] has ventured into more traditional storytelling territory but retained a wacky sort of outsider humor.

Posted Aug 8, 2018

Acute Misfortune (2019)

While Thomas M. Wright's adaptation of Jensen's memoir of the same name attempts to frame this as an encounter from which both gained, it never quite becomes explicable as anything other than a bully-victim relationship.

Posted Aug 6, 2018

3/5

Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018)

With the Resident Evil saga apparently complete and no further Mad Max adventures on the immediate horizon, Mission: Impossible must qualify as the best Hollywood action series now going.

Posted Aug 2, 2018

Bisbee '17 (2018)

It's a shameful episode that Greene contends has never been properly acknowledged in the town... It's a good story, but despite his command of camera, music and mood, the film plays a little like a protracted rehearsal for a cosplay re-enactment.

Posted Jul 27, 2018

Nico, 1988 (2018)

As a self-obsessed junkie, spectacularly failed mother and demanding diva, there should be nothing sympathetic about her, but Susanna Nicchiarelli's biopic effectively evokes the melancholy of missed greatness.

Posted Jul 27, 2018

The Raft (2018)

Fascinating.

Posted Jul 27, 2018

Notes on an Appearance (2018)

Outwardly the film comes off as a fussy exercise, holding emotion as well as spectacle at bay. Within the academic approach, however, is a desire for purity which has its apocalyptic side.

Posted Jul 27, 2018

Shoplifters (Manbiki kazoku) (2018)