Ben Nicholson

That Sy and Gainsbourg's love story never quite inflames the heart ultimately means that Samba remains a pleasant, rather than an enduring watch.

The measured narrative and anti-climactic finale do mean that Mystery Road doesn’t pander to all tastes, and it never conforms to thriller conventions, but Sen has undoubtedly succeeded in fashioning a thoroughly engrossing journey into a modern Australian wilderness that’s well worth seeking out.

The politics serves as footnote to the aesthetic for Wheatley and High-Rise is certainly style over substance. For fans of the British director, that may well be more than enough.

For a film that vocally questions convention, it's perhaps a shame that Miller and co. played it so safe with a fairly cookie-cutter origin story, but it's really just there to give Reynolds ammunition to riff on. Whether the studio might be willing to push the character further into the leftfield in the future will depend on whether Deadpool warrants sequels.

It might seem unlikely that something so narratively simplistic and ultimately childish could sustain its runtime but the chaos and comedy of the haphazard gunplay is such that it only suffers from a handful of lulls.

Kelly eschews talking heads or expert testimony, and only rarely to characters flesh out the skeleton provided by occasional intertitles. When this style is employed for a single, short-term conflict, it can be incredibly powerful (just think of Sergei Loznitsa’s Maïdan) but Kelly’s film effectively drops the audience in situ at specific events within a much broader six-year framework without any context.

Certain sequences are handled exceptionally... but others feel overblown and some characters underwhelm. That’s not to say that Black Sea is not an enjoyable – and at times, enthralling – aquatic adventure, it just never quite thrills as much as it spills, and flounders during some of its more emotional beats.

Husson sketches teenage ennui well, and crafts complicated and watchable characters around which to base the core of her drama. The slip-up comes in a final act that bows out of the previously constructed conflict in disappointingly obvious fashion.

The two stars stay on their game but their relationship is largely sidetracked in favour of fending off ghouls. While the heart rate may increase the creepiness dissipates, though The Autopsy of Jane Doe remains good genre fun - if little more.

Though it is clearly a work of great empathy and respect, Bobby Sands: 66 Days takes pains to offer alternative perspectives and as such makes for a richly textured and complex portrait of man, myth and movement.

By focusing on the family, James makes Abacus about resilience and humility rather than the mechanics of litigation and in doing so underscores - perhaps more strongly than in other louder films on similar subjects - the injustice of the situation.

The Whispering Star may not be Sono at his most assertive - it certainly suffers in its middle section from the lack of thrust - but its imbued with tremendous resonance.

While there is hardship and anguish, Davies' deliberate and treatment of the source material ultimately lessens the dramatic impact even while it retains its splendour.

For all of the perfection of the period-detail browns and greys, Afterimage could have done with a touch more colour.

A deliberate almost-thriller that provokes many questions, but leaves answers equivocally out of focus right through to its conclusion.

Striking a balance between the dark and combative religious humour and its more saccharine elements proves difficult.

Winterbottom's The Face of an Angel makes for compelling viewing, painting an arresting character portrait even if it avoids the direct engagement with the original (and much-discussed) crime that some people may have been expecting.

It makes for entertaining viewing but its power is undermined by a ultimate lack of insight amongst the debauchery.

It's impossible not to be sucked into, but it's equally impossible not to imagine how much more significant No Home Movie might have been.

This is the fourth instalment in the Guest mockumentary 'canon' and it's evidence that the format has now solidified into a template that needs refreshing, as much gentle enjoyment as it might bring.

Louis Black and Karen Bernstein pay warm tribute to the filmmaker in what is a fitting ode to independent spirit more than a penetrating portrait.

Despite a delicate handling of Kyle's internal struggles on home soil, deeper complexity appears to lie just out of frame throughout.

With no fun to be had, The Gunman also lacks essential thrills. If Sean Penn is winging for an action-hero renaissance like Neeson's, he'll be in need of material a lot more compelling than this.

Like much of his recent scripted work, it's a mannered affair that's vague and clumsy.

It's an undeniable hoot that plays very much to a specific audience but a word of warning: even those that are fans of this kind of ridiculous and farcical actioner might find themselves checking out of Yakuza Apocalypse before their stay is up. Again, with emphasis on the word 'might'.

An uneven blend of melodrama and the horrors of civil war, it should be anchored by strong leads but instead remains listless and adrift.

The period atmosphere isn't alive with bold ideas as much as decay.

Woman in Gold is ultimately a worthy endeavour even when it is not entirely successful.

It's a rancid cocktail of misogyny, homophobia, and much more besides, that never convinces as scathing satire as much as back-slapping celebration.

Everything looks incredible, but the players are all just ciphers for ideas that Snyder lacks the wherewithal to execute.

Gordon-Levitt is perfectly fine as Snowden, getting the voice and cadence fairly spot on and he looks almost right. The problem is that he's such an introvert and blank slate - that's pretty good for espionage but not especially compelling for a character arc.

The problem is that Apocalypse's highlights feel like moments of serenity amidst two-and-a-half-hours of lumbering, inconsequential chaos.

Despite its claims to zaniness and colouring outside the lines, probably the most damning indictment of the silly Suicide Squad is that it's unrelentingly bland.

Richard Wenk and Nic Pizzolatto's screenplay completely lacks the interpersonal vibrancy that a film like this needs and this is glaring given that it maintains the slow-build tension of the original.

Neither player wins the audience's allegiance during the oft-strained game of seduction - much less convinces as a human being.

The visuals are undeniably impressive at times, as Henry parkours around the city or during a particularly tense shoot-out, but they also struggle with inevitable motion sickness of the frenetic handheld camerawork.

There's no doubt that the people that Fox singles out are worthy of his cameras attention, but it doesn't equate to a coherent feature film as much as an enormously wasted opportunity.

As an entry into the Scandi police procedural genre, The Keeper of Lost Causes disappoints. As a TV pilot, however, it's serviceable yet unremarkable; the kind of thing that you'd probably give a couple more episodes in the vain hope that things will pick up.

A drab and airless affair, it effectively ignores the substantial political commentaries inherent in its story, and fails to land the emotional punches of the one it's intent on telling.