Andrew Pulver

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Carrey, though, is very good value, getting off a couple of lines that might actually make grownups laugh, and generally putting himself about to decent effect. Without him, this film could have been a lot, lot worse.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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's ambitious enough to aim at polished, intelligent character drama, and pulls it off successfully.

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.

Admittedly Guadagnino throws a little too much into the directorial kitchen sink, but what could have been tasteless and exploitative emerges instead as intelligent and dignified, held together by Swinton’s seriousness of purpose.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

[A] blundering jackhammer of a film.

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

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.