Cath Clarke

The action is relentless and laboured with the odd pause for a sentimental lesson or moment of personal growth. StarDog may work its slight charms on young children, but older kids will feel they’ve seen smarter, funnier and cleverer before.

What an emotional, satisfying film this is – and a whopping oversized calling card for everyone involved.

Some might find her style, leaving no thought unexamined, a bit rambling, but Paula is doing something interesting here.

Deadwyler’s soulful performance really grounds The Devil to Pay even as it cranks into revenge-movie mode. That said, if you want a slice of grim Americana to hunker down with, I’d go with Winter’s Bone or Frozen River.

An intriguing, somewhat abstract drama about a country descending into chaos.

You could just as easily picture this film playing on the white walls of a gallery as a cinema – if either were open.

More like 92% generic.

The family dysfunction stuff is sensitively handled with some originality.

Here’s a tale of chest-puffing courage and one-dimensional heroism from Russia during the second world war: an old-fashioned patriotic epic with slo-mo action scenes, intestines spewed on the battlefield and a soppy sentimental romance.

There’s nothing quite so naff and depressing as a British comedy misfire, and Me, Myself and Di is the real deal: a miserably unfunny romcom about Bolton’s answer to Bridget Jones.

To begin, there are a couple of genuinely repulsive horror moments, but things get silly very quickly.

The film feels more like an authorised biography than a documentary, and for that reason it’s a little dull.

The acting is daytime-soap standard and the tasteful, softcore sex is shot in such a way as to not look like actual sex. It’s unerotic, unsweaty and performed with expressionless faces. It feels like the film-makers know they have to do the sex bits, but don’t really want to actually do them.

The film is depressingly thin on the women; often it seems more interested in arranging them in arty tableaux than investigating the way that isolation has shaped their personalities and how they see the world.

An Italian-American man in late middle age rejects the rat race and embarks on a voyage of self-discovery and winemaking in this lifelessly unfunny comedy.

It’s all very silly, with a few enjoyable moments.

It’s an entertaining, uncontroversial film directed by the actor Sadie Frost, who pulls in her celeb mates to do talking-head duties: Vogue editor Edward Enninful, Kinks guitarist Dave Davies, and even interview-shy Kate Moss gives a quote or two.

The film catches the excitement of this moment for Clarice, and Dynevor’s performance is wonderful.

It’s a film of desperately upsetting details.

The problem with Bruce Willis in the movie is that he’s not doing something that he is supposed to be doing: acting. He puts in a such a wooden performance playing a washed-up, burnt-out cop that I could have screamed in frustration.

Nine Bullets is unfocused to the point where you might want to scream with frustration.

It’s an almost entirely unfunny comedy from Debra Neil-Fisher, who edited the Hangover movies and makes her directing debut lumbered with a stinker of a script; it’s not smart enough to work as a grownup relationship movie, and laughs are too few for a proper comedy.

It’s a deeply uncomfortable film but also weirdly gripping.

The director is Christopher Nelius, himself a surfer, who has done a brilliant job with editor Julie-Anne De Ruvo of assembling the archive to capture the sport at a moment in time, all youth and energy. Smartly, he lets this exceptional group of funny, tough, talented women surfers, now in their 50s, do the talking.

At 88, Raven is still performing – perched on a stool – as his alter ego Maisie Trollette. In this affectionate if slight documentary, he tells a story or two, though perhaps not enough to fill a book.

The lowish-budget production values, gestural performances and blunt moralism of the scriptwriting puts this very much in the heightened dramatic tradition of mainstream Nigerian cinema, but Emelonye has an accessible style and has picked the topical subject of cybercrime, an approach which might broaden the film’s appeal.

Imagine Game of Thrones crossed with Gladiator and you’ll have something like this entertainingly old fashioned action movie with epic levels of throat slashing, spectacular scenery and a fair bit of camp.

Some Like It Rare is a tasty treat for herbivores and carnivores alike.