Angie Errigo

Cheesy? Certainly. But strong performances and a heart-warming storyline make this a winner.

Philip Seymour Hoffman puts his oar in with a tender, thoughtful adaption of Robert Glaudini's stage play. A little too measured to deliver an emotional punch, it's nevertheless beautifully acted and at times rather lovely.

Okay, but it lacks conviction.

A curious mix of Britpop music cues and moppet-bait storytelling makes for a diverting, if derivative kids' animation.

Occasionally irritating farce but inventive and boasting an endearing as well as laugh-out-loud performance from Murphy in and out of fat suit.

The cute puppy almost steals the show but Hardy is ace and quite the watchable chameleon in his surprising switch from lovable dumb ox to cannier-than-we-thought.

If it weren't so darned "sincere" this would be an unmitigated bird-brained delight, but it undoubtedly remains a genial crowd pleaser.

Holly Hunter goes toe-to-toe nicely with the superbly understated Al Pacino loner obsessed with a long-lost love — one of his most rewarding outings in a very long time.

Funny, agreeable and thoroughly enjoyable, if a little bit too neat and fortuitous in sorting out its entangled strands.

As elegant as the man's clothes, this handsome biopic traces 20 incident-filled years in the life of the designer.

Minus delightful stars, this would be laboured indeed. Thanks to them, it scrapes along as modestly appealing fluff.

If not a star-making turn, Mbatha-Raw's tough, tender performances should give her plenty of opportunities in sharper fare.

It's just like a spectacularly excessive and melodramatically daft Cantonese crime opus, but in English, with a thumpingly trendy soundtrack.

Happily, Jamie Lee Curtis gurning through a guitar solo (she is Lady Spinal Tap, after all) while her floundering ‘mother’ mimes on stage is amusing.

Against the odds, perhaps, but part three injects a tiring franchise with new life and some surprisingly dark jokes. Some fun cameos and another winning Dan Stevens turn also add much needed unpredictability to the miniature goings-on.

It delivers in fits and starts but mostly baffles.

Despite Lumet's home-spun pincer movement on the espionage/conspiracy genres, cliché still sneaks up and nips the film into submission.

An, at-times, marvellous muddle of high farce and low-brow chuckles.

Terrific effects and considerable charm, but, once again, you can't help wishing the filmmakers had been bolder with the adaptation.

Entertaining while you're watching it but, as deceptive as a party's election promises, there's less to it than meets the eye.

Ryan and Broderick, while individually first-rate, don't combine as sexily as they ought, making the inevitable outcome a little too pat in an otherwise genre-bucking affair.

Handsomely crafted, with meticulous performances, yet it plays out drily and in monotone.

Sadly Lewis lite and not without flaws but this is as Burtonesque as one could wish for, a real treat for fans of his twisted imagination and great British character actors.

Not for anyone with a sensitive gag reflex. Joshua Marston provides a harrowing depiction of drug- muling for dummies. The raw, revolting, dangerous details of such an undertaking are graphic.

If you're looking for sophisticated wit keep going, but Major League is pleasant, undemanding fun and the most likely of the baseball movies to hit over here. You don't need to know what they're doing on the field, there are some amusing supporting performances, and everybody likes to see losers make a dream come true.

One of those rare things...a sequel that's funnier and more successful.

Compelling performances and some stand-out scenes but this lacks the cohesive language of "Elephant," for example.

Unapologetically preposterous, but it is a (very sweet) fairy tale and Highmore is captivating.

Measured performances from the seasoned cast balance out a script that errs towards the melodramatic. Hours sweating over those instruments pay dividends too.

This is actually better than it may sound, though rather less charming than it would like to, and needs to be.

Madonna knocks herself out and deserves cheers for the emotional range and humanity with which she sings in Alan Parker's spectacular film. But whether you think the movie is great or grisly, rests in large part on your palate for Andrew Lloyd Webber's music.

The three lead characters end the film as isolated as they began it. As with the plot, there isn't quite enough in the throwaway humour to hold them together.

It’s always a good story, this time told more creepily than usual. Good, but not as good as The Muppets’ Christmas Carol, Scrooged, Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol or some great, classic live action classic versions.

We've seen it all a million times before, but there are abundant (foul-mouthed) funnies, and debut director Michael Bay shows his commercials expertise propelling the noisy nonsense into a frantically slick and thoroughly enjoyable extravaganza.

The script is weak and obvious and the direction disappointingly unimaginative. But stars are stars, and the old boys are terrific - enough to make this a funny and sometimes moving buddy picture.

Quite a nice little relationship comedy-drama, but essentially for an audience of what the French charmingly call ‘women of a certain age’. Totally not the Superbad set, then.

Cute, clean, camp fun, full of sunshine and toe tappers. Guaranteed to put grins on tweenies who are in to High School Musical, grans with a pair of platforms still at the back of the wardrobe, and a lot of people in between tone.

That this is a patchwork quilt of a screenplay (written by five credited writers) is apparent in its use of little bits of this and little bits of that. Did none of them notice, looking at the big picture, that it's unbelievable?

Cute and sweet, and if it lacks great wit or magic, at least it has the courage to remain faithful to the gentle sadness and 'realism' of the original material.

It’s genial, with appealing stars and fair giggles.

A typical 90's comedy featuring staples Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez who re-hash their 'cheeky cops' schtick from the first picture and are now joined by O'Donnell who tries to inject more humour allowing us to forgive the lack of an engaging story. Sadly this is where all three fail.

Relatively speaking it's nonsense, but very cute.

Deliciously sick and delightfully cast.

What lifts this at key moments is the outstanding Phoenix's simpatico performance and we can add to the credit side happy casting that for once has assembled actresses and actors who really do resemble each other and present plausible siblings.

Like a late ’60s satire played embarrassingly seriously.

Although its politics may be shaky, this comedy still works thank to the charm of Kline and an excellent supporting cast. But it's more likely to provide warm, fuzzy smiles than belly laughs.

Political chicanery and psychological mystery entwine with some stunning underwater sequences but don’t gel entirely satisfactorily.

It’s absolute nonsense, of course, but does quite nicely as knockabout Friday night fun. We can smell a sequel if Travolta can be bothered.

Reasonably gripping.

Not one of Altman’s masterpieces, but aficionados will find pleasures in a bittersweet swansong from the grand old man.

There are brilliant, bewitching moments allied to hilarious and touching ones. Just not enough of them in what veers, at length, between the clever, the terrifying and the bit tiring.

Like Saudi Arabia's "Wadjda," Burshtein's film is a groundbreaking first - the first Israeli film to be directed by a woman - and although it lacks a little of the emotional heft of Haifaa al-Mansour's work, it's a well acted and delicately told tale.

Meat and potatoes teen drama.

Very amusing fun.

Far-out touches and liberal application of metaphor are compensated for by intensity and two mesmerising performances.

There may not be a laugh every minute, but there are enough to satisfy most devotees of the relentlessly silly, tasteless school of parody.

Sir Richard Attenborough's long-in-the-making account of the life of Sir Charles Chaplin is a film you desperately want to like, but it emerges as a big, shiny, old-fashioned biopic that ultimately fails either to illuminate the genius of its subject or to excite as a story.

Not Lee's finest but intriguing nonetheless.

We're marking time before the final battle between Good and Evil, with the promised darkness sitting somewhat clumsily with teen romance and humour.

It is a rare feat to make a sequel better than its predecessor but here Sonnenfeld manages to do just that. With such a strong adult cast, it comes as a surprise when the children steal the show. With such dry and morbid humour, it feels that at times he was filming more for the parental viewers than the childrens.

Formulaic but uplifting, positive and accessible. Fairly graphic sex is handled as tastefully as one is ever likely to see in a crowdpleaser.

It tootles along being cute and fluffy like a twentysomethings' version of Sabrina The Teenage Witch, but to further its notions of sisterhood and the power of women, it also takes a spin through Thelma And Louise territory, then revisits The Exorcist to up the supernatural content. It's enough to make your head spin.

It's all totally farfetched and skates imperturbably over several questions of logic that will spring unbidden to the most accepting mind. But it's entertaining, inconsequential fun.

It's like "The Bridges Of Madison County" with more shouting, only not nearly as good. No surprises whatsoever, but nice scenery, attractive stars and another credible, affecting performance from Lane that hoiks it up an extra star.

Tougher than a box of nails, this is a brassy revenge thriller that refuses to pull its punches.

Not quite Four Weddings-funny but always entertaining and endearing in equal measure.

At moments hilarious and others touching, it's a sweet, slight affair, more pretty pageant than pithy biographical drama. Expect awards nominations to stack up for Williams and Branagh.

This is brutal, gory, at times downright sickening stuff, and somewhat twisted types are likely to laugh like a drain.

Unfortunately, left alone on the big screen, distinctly thin characterisation and a plot that looks like a distended television episode, let the new crew down slightly but there are still enough classic moments to keep fans happy.

Cute, cute, cute. No bouquets for originality, but it pushes all the buttons of this mini-genre, and Heigl and Marsden ring dem bells.

The tennis itself is ridiculously far-fetched, and yet this may still be the best tennis movie ever made.

A very unfocused, sporadically funny film, lifted by its (predictable) visual splendour.

Lovely, engaging performances keep the film’s heart beating in a sweet if sometimes listless search for Eden.

Unnervingly, it is both hilariously funny and quite disturbing, with Allen's neuroses and fixations manifested in some shocking ugliness and intimately personal revelations we'd rather not have seen confirmed.

We expect oddball wit of a higher calibre from Guest and co., although their inherent, zany likeability means plenty of laughs.

Those who find men in feathers inherently divine will have a high old time here, and there are enough hilarious cinematic moments for the gob-smacked rest.

A superb Kidman takes off the handbrake, and most everything else, in Daniels' southern-fried follow-up to "Precious." Watch it with "Killer Joe" for the ultimate sweaty, twisted double-bill.

Disappointingly dull given the explosive subject matter, this at least attempts to get a message into the mainstream. An extra star for effort rather than execution.

Could have been a little more darkly comic in places but the performances are superb.

The result never comes close to being hilarious, merely cute in the corniest way. That it is more of a pleasure than it deserves, is down to the light, bright leads. Cage and Fonda are both charming, though he’s particularly endearing in his uncharacteristic but welcome turn as a soft-hearted, irresistable darling. The slightness is a disappointment, but the concoction is still very sweet indeed.

The sum of the parts is a cautiously optimistic view of love's power to re-shape lives, propounded with considerable appeal.

Despite superb performances by Kathy Bates and Jennifer Jason Leigh, a limp, almost TV movie trite, climax never comes near delivering the shocks it should. A shame, as what could have been superb, is merely average.

Missing the punchy plotting of the Coens thriller it resembles, the early chuckles don't quite translate into a satisfying whole.

This slight, modestly sweet and mildly charming affair squarely aimed at the older cinemagoer is just the bill for those seniors’ matinées where the ticket comes with a cuppa and a biscuit.

A solid, child-friendly work which will keep little ones content, if not mesmerised.

Determinedly quirky and cool, arresting and ultimately too baffling to be satisfying, although Penn is priceless. Cultdom beckons.

Despite its hopeless predictability, this is one of those preposterous and sweet-natured family frolics that you find yourself enjoying in spite of yourself. Check your critical faculties in at the door and get stuck in.

Tedious Western, that's a disappointment given the talent involved.

Cringe-making fun for survivors of the '70s. For the younger majority: a familiar rise and fall of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll enlivened by the gender reversal and performances.

C'mon, it's Fred and Bing! Depending on your disposition, you can take that as a recommendation or a warning.

Conventional to an almost eye-watering degree, this could have used a little more effort to subvert the genre - and a little more Terence Stamp.

Swank’s moving performance, the period dressing and beautiful planes all appeal, but dramatically it doesn’t really soar.

Despite the schmaltz this reviewer lapped it up, not least for the engaging teens, including Alicia Witt, and the spectacle of Dreyfuss strutting his wily stuff to Louie, Louie.

Crude, patronising and mawkish, but rescued by excellent performances, beautiful landscape photography, and hard-to-argue-with themes of natural justice, delivered with a punch.

This comedy holds few surprises, bar the realisation that Hal is Zora's father. After that it's dysfunctional family comedy all the way. But this proves to be no bad thing. Goldberg and Danson handle the material with their usual panache, while a young Smith gives a steady post-Fresh Prince supporting role.

A gripping modern morality tale with a credible cast and a compelling premise. The film is heavy on self examination and will make you think: what would you do?

There’s beautiful visual and verbal comedy, and the film has the creative spontaneity of a dream, foreshadowing Spirited Away (it influenced Miyazaki). However, the lack of momentum and focus may end up boring children, while the English dub actors sound a little stilted.

Good fun, and though it breathes hard in the second half, the ensemble has charisma to spare.