“The barrage of ‘shocking’ or provocative plot elements- porn, drugs, grooming, the Trump election- clash with a sly, building detachment in the viewer, as Baker wordlessly establishes industrial Texas as a primal, bizarre underworld. Shots recall the Wild West or post-apocalyptic disaster zones- at least until an obese woman rolls past on a mobility scooter.”

“Comparing chubby, bespectacled Mei to twelve-year-old Matilda in Luc Besson’s Leon, it’s clear that writer-director Domee Shi has reclaimed the glorious horror of tweendom for the girls who live it.“

“Like a middle-aged man clinging to a loveless marriage, The Batman tries to spice up grim reality with a dazzling array of costumes, gadgets, and open-minded younger women. Though enjoyable, these desperate measures also point to an unfixable shift in the superhero-audience relationship, where the patriotic Ubermensch of yore finds himself dominated by the unwashed masses.”

"Imagine a time where your every move is surveilled, tracked, dished up to a bevy of advertisers slinging the latest lifestyle gizmo tailored to your specific need. The Truman Show envisioned all this and more- yet it still had the optimism to envision a world where individuality actually mattered."

“The quintessentially American fear of accidentally mincing over the fine line between ‘macho’ and ‘gay’ — the terror of someone suddenly questioning the sweaty, towel-whipping locker room rituals that make the college quarterback into an Adonis — forms the heart of Blades of Glory’s comic premise.”

“M. Night Shyamalan undulates manically between disaster and brilliance. Like a vintage kilo thrifter, the erstwhile writer-director scoops up flashy armfuls of filmic tat, veering wildly across genre and subject matter, traditionally effecting his trademark plot twist to turn the whole wobbling confection into a triumph.”

“Belfast native and ‘British’ dramatic heavyweight Kenneth Branagh uses the wide-eyed gaze of his fictionalised ten-year-old self, Buddy (Jude Hill) to depict his homeland not as a problem to be solved, or even understood, but in the way that he experienced it: a close community defined by depth of feeling.“