Cath Clarke

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’s a gentle and superbly shot film.

The clunky script feels like it’s been re-drafted and re-drafted to the point of incomprehension – blowing any chance of conveying a message. However well-meaning, it makes for a surprisingly dull watch. That said, my five-and-three-quarter-year-old (and clearly a few other younger people in the cinema) were a bit scared by some of the dicier moments of action-adventure peril.

This is a painful, important film, made more urgent in light of China’s tightening of religious freedoms and human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other Muslims.

The film is expertly bolted together from archive newsreels, snippets of classic war movies and interviews with surviving airmen.

The will-they-won’t-they succeed in carrying out the poisoning plot makes for pretty flat drama, and for a film about people who have suffered so much, this really fails to make us care about the characters.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

The strength of the writing is in portraying Bunny’s reality, allowing us to wonder – like the social workers – whether she really is a reliable parent. This is thoughtful film-making, though I didn’t quite buy into the explosion of drama at the end.

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

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.

There’s plenty of white-knuckle footage from the archive, as well as reflections of old muckers. Fiennes says that in his darkest, diciest moments in peril he imagined his heroes – the father and grandfather he never met – watching over him.

The film is grimly depressing in places. I covered my eyes during Google Earth time-lapse sequences showing the pace of deforestation in the Amazon; the violence of it is too much. And yet, there is Bitaté: still a teenager, he’s already a skilled communicator.

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.

It’s a very funny film, sending-up human absurdities without being too mean. Cruz is a talented comedian, but she smartly plays it straight-ish here. You never doubt for a moment Lola is the real deal. Nor that Cruz is either.

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.

This is a well-made film and nice looking, but there’s a tiresome predictability to a few too many scenes. It is a franchise that feels like it’s hit the rocks.

What makes the film so engrossing is how much attention the film-makers give to Lee’s complicated life after prison.

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

There’s perhaps not enough new material to justify a re-release, but as a whole it’s still great, and a reminder of just what a class act Michael was.

The film is a reminder of just what a brilliant writer Bourdain was.

It’s entertaining enough and you never know where the story is headed, but it doesn’t quite hold together.

In the end, it’s a film with a melancholic feel, which probably has a lot to do with its timing.

There are some very funny scenes and a reasonably tense shootout finale – though the sentimental ending felt to me like a bit of a cop-out.