Andrea Riseborough came to Park City with two films this year, and they couldn't have been more different. In Brandon Cronenberg's blood-drenched cyber-thriller Possessor she plays a cool, calculating hit-woman who takes over other people's bodies to carry out increasingly brutal assassinations to order. In Zeina…

Following its well-received premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September, the Safdie brothers' Uncut Gems, their sixth film, proved just as successful on release, grossing a record per-venue average of $105,099 for distributor A24 before going wide Christmas Day. Set in 2012, it stars Adam Sandler as Howard…

Debuting nearly a year ago at Sundance, Alma Ha'rel's Honey Boy has been one of the indie hits of 2019. Scripted by Shia LaBeouf, it tells the story of a troubled young actor (played at different ages by Noah Jupe and Lucas Hedges) who reflects on his life as a child star while serving time in rehab for a DUI offence…

From the moment it picked up the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, Todd Phillips' Joker clearly wasn't going to be another comic-book movie. Staring Joaquin Phoenix as troubled loner Arthur Fleck, the Warner Bros film has grossed over $1 billion worldwide, making it the first R-rated film to do so. Speaking at…

Nearly 30 years after he burst onto the movie scene with Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino remains one of the few breakout directors from the 1990s to still be working at the top end of the studio system. After a brief wobble in the late 2000s with Grindhouse, his recent films have been his most successful yet…

After debuting to mass international acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival in May, Bong Joon-Ho's domestic thriller/black comedy Parasite more than managed to sustain its momentum. Since its North American release in October, the film has become the U.S.’ highest-grossing foreign-language Palme d'Or winner, and it is…

After it debuted in 2010, DreamWorks Animation's How to Train Your Dragon swept the board at the following year's Annie Awards. Four years later, the first sequel debuted in Cannes and was nominated for an Oscar in the Animated Feature category. This year’s entry, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, looks set…

Disney's Spies In Disguise is a spy movie with a difference: super-spy Lance Sterling (voiced by Will Smith) is trying to save the world from an evil tech genius when he is accidentally turned into a pigeon by a young scientist (Tom Holland). It may not sound quite like the plot of the next Mission: Impossible movie…

It's hard to believe, but the Toy Story franchise turns 25 in 2020. In that time, the original CG animation hit has only generated a modest three sequels. Luckily, in this instance less means more: the fourth outing for Woody, Buzz and company has been a hit with critics and audiences, rating over 90% fresh for both…

Genre films famously don't tend to figure in the awards conversation, but nine months after the release of Jordan Peele's sophomore horror Us, there's still a lot of talk about Lupita Nyong'o’s impressive double performance. At the beginning of the film the Oscar-winning actress plays Adelaide, a suburban mom on…

Even hard-to-please Marvel fans loved what Kiwi outsider Taika Waititi brought to Thor: Ragnarok—a joyously irreverent approach to the comic-book character, that married a keen eye for the absurd with an emotional and affectionate grounding. Waititi's long-term admirers felt vindicated; the director of such…

Coming back down to Earth after several years cocooned in the Star Wars universe, Rian Johnson proves that he hasn't lost touch with the modern world with his stylish but seriously topical black comedy Knives Out. Set in the aftermath of an apparent suicide, it finds the family of late fiction writer Harlan Thrombey…