Andrew Pulver

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.

People are unlikely to charge out of the cinema with quite the same level of glee as they did in 2009; but this is certainly an astute, exhilarating concoction.

Black's performance is a revelation: foregoing his usual repertoire of jiggling, tics and head-waggling craziness, Black ensures Tiede is a satirical creation of considerable substance. Really impressive.

Bujalski really has pulled off something extraordinary here.

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.

Let's hope Klayman gets to make a sequel.

It's the successul synthesis of the two – action and emotion – that means this Spider-Man is as enjoyable as it is impressive: Webb's control of mood and texture is near faultless as his film switches from teenage sulks to exhilarating airborne pyrotechnics.

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.

What results is an immensely detailed overview of Marley's life and times, from the hillside Jamaican shack where he grew up to the snowy Bavarian clinic where he spent his last weeks in a fruitless attempt to cure the cancer that killed him in 1981, aged 36.

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

It's set on the suitably exotic locale of a Spanish fishing village – shortly before its obliteration by hotel development, you have to assume – and although everyone moves and speaks at about half normal pace, it all works wonderfully well: Gardner, especially, just glows on the screen.

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.

This 1987 adaptation of John Lahr's biography of rebel playwright Joe Orton still stands up extraordinarily well: mostly because of two outstanding central performances, Gary Oldman as the talented, blase Orton, and Alfred Molina as his thwarted, Hancock-esque murderer Kenneth Halliwell.

Few British film-makers have dared to attempt such a thoroughly poetic treatment of their native land, and Terence Davies is the only one to have succeeded so spectacularly.

It's not exactly a documentary, more a lovingly-filmed homage, but some candid interview material allows scraps of Baker's story to emerge.

The development of Bond films in the early 1960s brought a new dimension to espionage-oriented cinema. Where Eagles Dare brings these strands together - fusing the spy story with war action - and helped create a wave of patriotic cold war thrillers that arguably climaxed with The Spy Who Loved Me.

Despite the opaque story line, their film is a glittering, perfectly honed artifice; but what pushes it into the Coen premier league is the sense that, as with Fargo, there's something very personal going on here.

If you want a genuinely Millerian cinematic experience, the best way to go is to get hold of Salesman, a 1968 documentary made by Albert and David Maysles, along with Charlotte Zwerin. 

The Sting is the most purely enjoyable film in Oscar history – and that, I think, puts it in the most valuable American film-making tradition of all.