Cath Clarke

Jolie has assembled an A-list team – Roger Deakins behind the camera, the Coen brothers in charge of the script - but while her film is perfectly competent, it hardly dazzles.

It’s a mouth-puckeringly tart movie that’s tonally in a world of its own – darkly disturbing, absurd, brutal and silly, with a batsqueak of bonkers.

As the daughter of director Ron Howard, widely regarded as one of nicest men in Hollywood, Howard is herself blessed in the dad department; he is very likable here. His only parenting crime seems to have been to film the birth of all four of his kids. But the rest of the Hollywood contributions are irritatingly platitudinous.

In Firth’s every grimace and flinch you feel the torment of Lomax’s private world, but emotionally ‘The Railway Man’ feels trimmed and tidied up.

I’ve never liked Renée Zellweger more as a warmer and wiser Bridget Jones – but still capable of making a total prat of herself.

There are more than a few false notes here.... Still, the sight of Emma Thompson, wearing old-lady prosthetics and a leopard skin coat as Barney’s mum...is not to be missed.

The fish-out-of water moments are great fun, watching arthouse gods Depardieu and Huppert in tacky tourist hell.

The cleverness of Kingsley’s performance is the twinkle in his eye that leaves you wondering whether Dalí has disappeared entirely up his own myth. How much of the eccentricity is a put-on, brazen self-publicity to maximise sales? Disappointingly, the script invents a fictional art school dropout to be our guide to Dalí’s universe.

It’s a striking, ambitious film, but there is something about the tone – both glossy and grittily real, stylising everything to mythic proportions – that left me a bit cold.

Welcome to the Jungle is mostly great fun, with Jack Black outrageously entertaining as a teenage girl. But we need to talk about Karen. As Ruby Roundhouse, Gillan is stuck in less clothes than one of Rihanna’s backing dancers. It’s a dig at the hypersexualization of women in video games, apparently. If so, perhaps the male director (or one of the four male writers) can explain how fixing the camera on a skimpily dressed female character makes the point.

The trouble with Nick Frost’s knowingly cartoonish and silly comedy paying homage to folk horrors such as The Wicker Man and Midsommar is that Frost has done this kind of movie before, and better.

Sisters is too strained for a comedy starring two of the funniest people alive.

My Best Friend’s Exorcism could perhaps do with one or two genuine scares. But for anyone old enough to remember Tiffany and advice columns in teenage girls’ magazines, this is going to deliver a pleasing shot of nostalgia.

It's très chic and charming but a bit disappointing when you see where it's headed.

When it’s playing for laughs, ‘A Royal Night Out’ is harmless good fun.

There’s a kind of blunt brute force to [Bloom's] performance – and he looks almost unrecognisable, as if he’s using certain muscles in his face for the first time.

This Neil Armstrong documentary feels like unrequired viewing coming so soon after two cracking moon landing movies.

The impossibility of ever really knowing our parents is a familiar storyline, but it’s told here with real generosity and warmth. Malik slyly pokes fun, but never meanly. This is satire with the thermostat turned up to 22 degrees.

It is something of a letdown: a funny but conventional glossy romcom. But there is no messing with Viswanathan, who is undoubtedly the main attraction.

Kevin Macdonald’s slightly drab adaptation of Meg Rosoff’s popular teen novel would be nothing without Saoirse Ronan.

Entertaining but never quite thrilling, this actually feels like the second film in a franchise, coasting along, but saving the best bits for the next episode.

What follows is a race against the clock, cleverly constructed by director Maximilian Erlenwein and co-writer Joachim Hedén. Their script throws in plenty of calamities to nobble the diver’s escape, but didn’t quite manage – for me at least – to spark a vertiginous clammy terror.

The performances are thoughtful, and like a pinch of chilli, heat things up from time to time. But director Oren Moverman’s portrait of smug, toxic privilege misses its mark – and at the end of two long hours, this feels about as fresh as last night’s chips.

Sting, black with a lethal red stripe, is never silly looking, though some of horror references feel a bit obvious and fanboy-ish.

Mélanie Thierry does her best in the lead as Duras, but her character is maddeningly flat and dull.

A perfectly acceptable family animation.

The history that emerges here is of a band yo-yoing between attempts to be taken seriously as artists, then coming back for more boyband fame and adulation. An air of collective self-loathing and regret hangs over them.

After Blue is a preposterous film, easy to ridicule. But it’s surely already halfway to cult classic status – destined to play midnight slots, watched by students smuggling bottles of red wine into the cinema under their coats.

I enjoyed the jolt of strangeness delivered by this world of demons stalking the Earth. But the action is hit-and-miss.

There is just too much going on, and the movie doubles in hecticness with every minute that passes, which may have you rummaging around for a couple of paracetamol.

It’s perfectly adequate for little kids but with little character of its own and a straight-to-download-style blandness.

Pacino gives his most natural performance in years.

Lawrence is gritty, real and totally genuine. And, after ‘Brooklyn’ and ‘Carol’, here’s another film that passes the Bechdel Test for proper female characters with flying colours.

It’s not reasonable to ask that the film keeps Tina safe, but a sense from the start that things might end badly for her made me wince a little even during the lovely, authentic-feeling scenes of her life.

The movie noodles along amiably, but in the cold light of day, its quirks begin to feel like flaws.

This snore-bore doc follows the year-long world tour of Kevin Spacey’s Old Vic production of 'Richard III’ directed by Sam Mendes ('Skyfall'). Critics dusted off all their big words to praise the play. But we don’t get to see much of it.

It’s a nail-biting story, but this doc isn’t as gripping as it should be.

Trolls is not break-the-mould brilliant like The Lego Movie or Toy Story, or a keeper like Frozen. But it’s a lovable and giddy guilty pleasure.

It’s an interesting concept, but the characters are thin and nothing here feels insightful.

Here’s that Hollywood rarity – a sequel that’s better than the original. It’s wittier, less frenetic and introduces fresh characters and a nice scene of strategic furball vomming.

The ending is unforgivably mawkish, though, and the running time of two-and-a-quarter hours is simply too long.

It is a thing of beauty: too beautiful perhaps, running a real danger of prettifying poverty.

It’s a bit indulgent but, still, a gentle watch.

Wade’s dialogue is totally convincing, all in-jokes and boarding school banter... The trouble with The Riot Club is that dramatically it never quite comes together.

Like so many campaigning doc-makers he’s much more interested in throwing darts at the other guys – the anti-nuclear brigade (who have better slogans: ‘Hell, no, we won't glow’) – than giving us a balanced film.

It’s a hurricane of slapstick (some of it in fact very funny) and age-appropriate energetic fight scenes, but lacks the sweetness and charm of the franchise at its best.

As a war movie written by a soldier this material feels oddly lacking in authenticity and authority. And yet it’s a noble attempt to honour the resilience of Ukrainians and the courage of ordinary people like Voronin, fighting for freedom.

It’s a thoughtful, well-acted and perceptive drama. However, for a film about a love triangle the sparks don’t exactly fly.

It’s overripe and improbable, but you’d need a flinty heart to resist the message of solidarity, that if you spend time with someone, anyone, you’ll find common ground.

It’s sentimental, though the way Kirsty is helped by women boiling with fury at the injustice does feel modern.

If you’re a parent whose screen-time rules have crumbled in lockdown, under no circumstances watch this film until normal service resumes.

Becky’s crazed kills get more and more gimmicky, and there’s nothing in the script to indicate what has turned her into a pint-sized death-dealer.

The film can’t match the novel’s elegant, startlingly excellent Booker-Prize-winning writing, but a first-class cast (including Charlotte Rampling and Sinéad Cusack) make this an absorbing watch.

What the film does very well is show how doping became so normalised. It’s as much a part of the team’s routine as a post-race rubdown.

A lairy, likable film.

Brilliantly acted but never entirely credible and not quite the force for feminism it wants to be.

It feels worthwhile – funny and true about growing up and getting a life.

It’s refreshing to see a movie like this directed by a woman, Eva Husson, so boys and girls are objectified equally. Which is not to say this passes the feminism test.

This is a film with a lot of charm, and gives cinema its most lovable rats since Ratatouille. But I did wonder at points who the audience is.

The film is frantic and silly and our biggest gripe is that all the penguins look the same.

It’s a forgettable film, with a fair few gags that strike a depressingly sexist note.

It’s heartfelt and sweetly earnest, but humdrum and disappointingly unmagical. The animation doesn’t help: characters speak with blank paralysed faces as if they’ve had botched Botox.

Five Feet Apart, with its phoney emotions and baloney contrivances — these love-struck kids can’t even hold hands let alone get to first base because two people with cystic fibrosis aren’t allowed to touch — just didn’t do the job for me.

Chao is the standout here. She deserves more – a leading role of her own, at the very least, and a character with an inner life and interests of her own.

ISS does deliver one knock-out terrific death in space: a screwdriver to the neck, perfect little bubbles of blood floating prettily away in zero gravity.

Moretz is unnervingly talented, but Carrie is not a role she was born to play. She hasn’t a victim’s bone in her body and fluffs the early scenes when the mean girls pick on her.

There’s nothing to fault in the performances, but the characters are filo pastry thin and slightly bland-tasting – like less complicated, less interesting versions of actual people.

It's silly rather than scary, more insipid than insidious.

You’ll walk out of this electrifying documentary about the Arab Spring with your blood boiling.

This is anaemic stuff, though perhaps its target audience won’t care.

The trouble with the film is that beneath the surface lurks … well, perhaps not quite enough to keep the momentum going.

What keeps this out of Nicholas Sparks bumper-paperback territory are terrific performances and Reitman’s control of the drama.

The problem with the film is that Potts’s life story has been put through the Hollywood meatgrinder. Awkward details have been changed or erased – they’ve made Potts Welsh (he grew up in Bristol) and eliminated his siblings.

Love, Marilyn blows out of the water the impression of Monroe as the helpless dumb blonde.

There are some gorgeous Disney touches, rabble-rousing songs on the pirate ship and the usual ‘best friends for ever’ message.

Here’s a true story about a young soldier’s exceptional bravery and sacrifice made into a pretty average war movie, insubstantial and TV-ish despite the appearance of some decorated Hollywood veterans.

As modern dating movies go, How to Be Single gets a lot right.

More bah-humbuggery – which is a rational response to the wall-to-wall Christmas jumpers – and less zany antics here would have done the job better.

You’ll be left scratching your head wondering what a naked girl draped in a purple net curtain in a cemetery has got to do with frocks. Not many revelations here.

Sadly, this polite film, though touching in places, is so desperate not to offend, it’s the film equivalent of sensible shoes. Diehard fashionistas may disagree.

The film’s good-natured warmth wins the day, just.

It’s a political thriller that tells the story matter-of-factly, and is perhaps a little lacking in the pace department. But Isabelle Huppert carries it along with a performance every bit as gripping as you’d expect.

The Water Diviner is solid and old-fashioned.

Some people will hate Trash for being not grittily real enough, but Daldry’s point – a hope-against-hope optimistic one – is that the energy of young people can change Brazil.

Even with an intelligent, credible performance by David Oyelowo, the daftness and utter implausibility of a smartphone so smart it can make calls to the future is overwhelming.

How much you love this low-budget British effort will depend on your tolerance to quirkiness.

It’s a sweet, undemanding film that, despite the title, is tamer than a sedated bunny. That said, the four-year-old I watched with spontaneously yelped “this is the best!” 20 minutes in. So really, what do I know?

[A] thin, slightly exasperating documentary.

Making her feature-film debut, Elliott handles their story gently, with patience – though it might feel a bit slow for some.

Like a fridge whose door’s been left open overnight, the film doesn’t feel chilly enough. It’s not terrible, but fans of the book may well be disappointed.

There is a message here about celebrating differences, which would be a bit more convincing if they’d cast a smaller actor in the role – instead of using distracting CG effects on Dujardin.

Any of Dahl’s gruesome sense of fun is obliterated by a bulldozing message of empathy and kindness, thanks to a plucky orphan Beesha (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) and her pals pulling together an opposition to the Twits. This is vile and revolting in all the wrong ways.

To me this feels like a silly smirking film with zero insights into abuse or conspiracy theories.

What Morgan lacks in philosophy and ideas, it makes up for in bone-crunching violence.

There’s really not much for the humans to do, other than flash brilliant white smiles, making the film feel like the world’s longest toothpaste advert. And it’s a toothbrush you’ll be reaching for after all so much sugary sentimentality.

Leung Chiu-wai has a predatory glint behind the salesman’s grin, and Lau has the beaten look of a man bested for much of the movie. What’s really missing is a Leung/Lau face off, an epic confrontation.

Like watching a statue for two-and-a-half hours, there’s nothing to do but sit back and yawn.

The 3D effects are dazzling, but the script creaks and the characters are thin.