Catherine Shoard

For all its absurdity and the family friendly bloodlessness (despite the copious violence), it spins along very smoothly and efficiently.

The peripheral interviews with the extended Spicer family are as compelling as the central quest; this is a film with rare honesty and nuance in a field that frequently feels queasy.

As high-class cheese goes, Truth slips down fine. It’s a noisy, one-note rally for the converted that gets your pulse racing even if you’re rolling your eyes.

Guggenheim largely dodges lodging her story within a greater political context; a choice, but a shame, for when he does, the movie gains tension.

Saturation point when it comes to quirkily dysfunctional families in over-soundtracked dramedies was reached long ago.

Director Sarah Gavron does well to galvanize her story with a degree of urgency: the result of swift, assured camerawork and a brilliantly understated performance by Carey Mulligan.

Ant-Man is a cut-and-shut muddle, haunted by a ghost, produced by a high-end hot dog factory, by turns giddying and stupefying. Watching it is like channel-surfing between "Hot Fuzz", a duff early 90s Michael Douglas drama and the very schlockiest bits of "Interstellar".

There’s something about the franchise’s earnest investment in its characters that’s quite unique. Its longevity is because it functions as much as a soap as an action flick.

It is half turkey, half triumph.

Maguire flails around obligingly, happy to trade amiability for a decent fist at capturing the difficult, prickly Fischer. But he can’t quite carry it off, and the way the script dances around the edge of his illness, exploring the surface symptoms without trying for deeper psychology, leaves the actor exposed.

The presence of Sophie Barthes behind the camera does not amplify sympathy for our heroine. Rather, the opposite: if anything Barthes seems less in her allure, less tolerant of her tiffs, full-throttle with the vanity and the selfishness.

It has to be said, the performances are excellent. Winslet manages emotional honesty within anachronistic confines, and Schoenaerts escapes with dignity.

Aniston’s drab-act is diverting, but it’s not enough to sweeten a character who is one hell of a pill.

This is Where I Leave You is totally aimble, utterly unmoving filler given a major shot in the arm by its cast, people it’s simply a pleasure to watch, even with the creeping feeling they’re better than this.

What Cumberbatch delivers is an impressively rounded character study of someone variously kind, prickly, aggressive, awkward and supremely confident. But it's almost too nuanced. Accuracy isn't all, but fumbling in the dark isn't always fun.

There is a contrivance to both story and script that grates, rubs up against Murray’s appeal as a loose cannon.

The Judge is a timeless film, in that it could have been made at almost any point over the past 80 years: rote plot, functional support, well-signalled twists. It’s a two-seater star vehicle offering little legroom for other passengers.

The movie is strongest is when it strips away the facts and focuses on the emotional notes.

With its frank approach to the basics of human desire, its steady, intense focus on a small-town story which could have come straight from Douglas Sirk, Reitman's fifth feature appears to bear little resemblance the four that went before.

This is highly competent catnip for the watercooler crowd.

It's bracing, but it does feel closer to panto than melodrama, more exhausting than illuminating.

Curtis's heart is in the right place. In fact, it's all over the place – front and centre and backlighting the whole thing with a benevolent glow. But it is hard not to watch this, read the news that it will probably be his last as a director, and look to the future.

Shame was erotic compulsion turned into opera, full of sombre vibrato. Thanks for Sharing is probably the more realistic, as well as more mainstream, and there's a generous pinch of very funny lines, mostly bestowed on Robbins.