Andrew Pulver

It’s a pleasant enough watch, listening in as these various acts grapple with whichever Bolan masterwork they’ve opted to try – though there’s not much in the way of on-screen fireworks on show, and in any case the film doesn’t get to linger on any single performance; you’ve barely got to grips with one song before it’s off to another.

Here’s a fascinating time-capsule of a documentary about an admittedly niche-interest band who achieved their most valuable cultural currency during the politically-charged 1980s, and who achieved a subsequent second act that achieves considerable emotional heft.

This film is a capable, wholesome tribute to a project that is about as warm and fuzzy as space travel gets.

This film (and Liggett) is likable and charming enough.

Director-producer team David Bickerstaff and Phil Grabsky are past masters at putting this kind of film together, and Sunflowers has the usual mix of smoothly impressive visuals and authoritatively informed comment.

This is a documentary about Australian motor sports legend Jack Brabham that aims to finesse the usual greatest-hits highlights by including some darker material: family strife, on-track bad behaviour, behind-the-scenes fallouts.

An illuminating, affecting piece of work.

After a somewhat breathless opening section – yes, we get it, Pierre Cardin was a genius – this genuflecting documentary settles down into a watchable portrait of the late fashion designer that astutely showcases Cardin’s ease in front of the camera.

This valedictory film allows sober recognition for all that he did.

An interesting, grown-up musical profile.

This is a charming and thoroughly likable film.

Thomas and Pilcher are determined to avoid making a flashy war epic, and stress the sacrifices of everyone involved; the downside of this is that A Call to Spy has a stolid pacing that makes you feel every minute of its two-hours-plus running time. But it’s still an interesting story that’s yet to fully come into the light.

Crispian Mills directs with zip, throwing things together with a breathlessness that largely distracts from the fact that, for a horror-comedy, Slaughterhouse Rulez is neither particularly scary nor especially funny. But it does have an amiable sort of charm.

Despicable Me 3 will certainly keep the younger elements of its audience happy, with its dose of aspartame-rush hyperactivity. But for everyone else it may prove decent rather than captivating.

It comes across as twee, comfy-cardigan film-making. And, Eddie Izzard’s best efforts notwithstanding, it simply isn’t very funny.

In the end, it’s Lowden’s fresh-faced enthusiasm and Mullan’s gravitas – operating at about a quarter of the level we know he’s capable of – keeping things afloat.

Brimstone is hampered somewhat by its ponderous, doom-laden pace, and resultant bloated running time, but remains an intriguing slant on the spaghetti western.

Filmed with competence rather than actual verve, Alone in Berlin works – just about. There’s enough of a thriller about it to hold the interest, even if it’s a bit on the stodgy side.

It’s not exactly hard-hitting stuff, and isn’t meant to be, but it spins an entertaining yarn.

Stalking tactics bolstering romantic comedies are by no means new, and over the decades, film-makers have proved adept at somehow planing down real-world nastiness, but here it’s gruesomely inescapable.

Here is a sensitive, intelligent portrait of film director Howard Brookner.

In all honesty The Untamed doesn’t seem to go anywhere special. But connoisseurs of oddness may cherish it.

The film doesn’t quite live up to its creepy, savage opening, or carry through its best ideas.

As a collection, The Seasons in Quincy certainly hangs together; it’s also an absolutely inspired way of approaching its subject. If the outcome is a little uneven; well, that’s the price that sometimes has to be paid.

Inevitably, perhaps, it pulls its punches, and soft-pedals on any authentic misery that its scenarios might evoke. But its essential amiability and decency comes through.

Margarita, With a Straw is a sturdily conceived, emotionally direct drama.

It’s tough to take all the hardcore emoting seriously, particularly as the emotional heavy lifting is designed to be done by the occasional maudlin line in brief pauses between the explosions. For a film so concerned with its characters’ inner lives, there’s a fundamental disconnect going on here – enough to make you yearn for the lighter touch of the Marvel films.

Despite the surface sheen, and some enterprising plot twists, it doesn’t entirely convince.

Equals doesn’t really work as either a plausible attempt at rendering some sort of future society, nor as a really convincing thwarted-love story.

For all its berserk energy, you will need a very particular sense of humour not to lose patience with the prolific Takashi Miike’s latest.

This is a very good-looking film that represents a brave attempt to do justice to a very popular book; it manages it, just.

Portman has made a film with something serious and interesting to say about Israel, a nuanced portrait of the place that demonstrates a commitment to, and connection with, her home country. This is an assured, heartfelt debut.

Like Agatha Christie’s detective novels, there would appear little in the way of aesthetic – as opposed to technological – progression; having set the tone so definitively at the outset, each film delivered exactly what it promised.

Though high-minded and well-intentioned – as well as being conceived on an epic scale – there’s something faintly stodgy and safety-first about the endeavour.

[A] blundering jackhammer of a film.

I'd never want to stand in the way of artists pushing things, but messing with Postman Pat is probably a step too far.

Impressive as much of his film is, however, Aronofsky never quite solves the main challenge of the semi-literal biblical adaptation: what is so economical, and beautifully expressed, on the page can become a heavy, lumbering beast when translated into conventional narrative.

A genial, lightweight farce, which largely approximates Hornby's distinctively bittersweet tone.

This is basically a studied and serious film, but there's a feyness to its tone, and a lethargy to its pacing that make it difficult to warm to, even if the principal actors give it their all.

Filmed in what you might call the international hotel style, Tornatore's idiotic premise is entertaining if you don't inspect it too carefully, or look for anything beneath the portentousness.

This Anchorman sequel knows who its fans are, and does its best to keep them happy. No one will be complaining.

For Cash devotees who want a hitherto-hidden perspective on their man, though, this is invaluable viewing.

Like the first one, it's played for laughs in-between bouts of mayhem; most of the gags are off-target, though Mirren's Nancy Mitfordesque assassin gets a pretty good kill ratio.

Pacific Rim's wafer-thin psychodrama and plot-generator dialogue provides little for the human component to get their teeth into.

By itself, this would just be one of those workmanlike relationship films the French turn out by the yard; but all the Allen stuff throws its mediocrity into sharp relief.

The sisters themselves reveal a little, mostly because of Serena's unguarded imperiousness; but as a study of sports supercelebrity it's a tad subdued.

The whole film ends up feeling weighed down: though Man of Steel bounds from one epic setpiece to another, you're left with the nagging feeling that you just can't work out what the central twosome see in each other. And for Superman and Lois Lane, that's hardly ideal.

There's undoubtedly a good film to be made out of the scramble for oil in the Arabian desert in the 1920s – but this, for all its herculean efforts, is not it.

Promised Land seems to lose its nerve a little politically: as it goes on, you realise it isn't about fracking at all, but a tract on machiavellian corporate behaviour and their employees' self-deception.

She's entertaining enough, and like most fashion documentaries, it's a mine of pop-cultural history, but the unswervingly generous assessment of her achievements and permanently arch vocal style become a little wearying.

This fantastically depressing film ought to be shown in school assemblies, or wherever impressionable pre-teens gather to discuss their dreams of media stardom.

All in all, this is a carefully modulated plea for tolerance and mutual understanding.

It's a slight, attractive tale: a childlike fable of a little girl and her preternaturally intelligent cat that swiftly devolves into a very old-school cops and robbers yarn.

A clotted, knotted, twisty noir that is, unfortunately, short on the required atmosphere.

Binoche rises above the lubricious material by giving a thoroughly detailed and committed performance as the journalist.

It's not terrible, by any means: just not nearly as funny or cruel as its killer premise suggests.

The 1954 film version of Oscar Hammerstein's all-black Broadway musical now feels like a relic from the gruesome social straitjacket that was segregation; every frame, you feel, is freighted with the tension imposed by the never-appearing white folks. It was, however, laudable in its desire to showcase the talents of African-American performers who were denied opportunities in Hollywood.

As a performer, Biller is fearless in her pursuit of perfectly recreated cheesecake, but is a twitchy and not especially charismatic presence. Where her film lets itself down, though, is it's simply not funny.

You have to admire the ambition, even if Elliot doesn't always seem certain if he's laughing with or at his creations.

The furrowed-brow seriousness of X-Men is its least attractive quality, but that is the mood that dominates in this film. It's hard to see how anyone other than hardcore fans will find much to entertain them.