Barry Hertz

Matt Johnson creates a film that bridges the faux-doc jitteriness of his earlier work with the richness of classic one-perfect-summer cinema.

A tonally uneven, blandly shot and rather unoriginally imagined riff on Steven Spielberg’s A.I. (not to mention a half-dozen other films), Sheep in the Box is a true head-scratcher – as if Kore-eda himself had been replaced by some digitally conceived facsimile.

As a character, Spider-Man is above all vigilant. But the crushing length of his adventure this time around makes it a challenge to stay even passively alert.

Occasionally, Araki will punctuate the rather by-the-book story with loopy animation and surreal flashes of fantasy. Yet the bulk of the film is so staid that the effect is like slathering a handful of lube on top of the King James Bible: theoretically provocative, but more so empty-headed.

Her Private Hell is a remarkably worthless creation.

When the film comes back to focusing on Daniel and Michelle, and when O’Brien and Wu are able to fire sparks at one another over grand cosmic questions, the dark forest of The Outer Threat feels rather bright.

The result is a film that is haunting and singular – a furnace-blast of the past reshaped and refashioned for our modern times.

It is all delightfully nonsensical stuff, but conceived and executed with neurosurgeon-level care.

Toy Story 5 is the must-have item of the summer: a poignant, beautiful, imaginative and massively entertaining adventure for anyone who either has children or retains a semblance of memories from their own youth.

There is something stubbornly singular about director Adrian Chiarella’s film that resists easy comparisons to the likes of Obsession and Backrooms.