Charles Gant

Co-writers Julian Barratt and Simon Farnaby fly the flag for a rare original idea with the goofy, genial, fitfully inspired Mindhorn.

Native New Yorker Michael O’Shea makes an impressively confident directorial debut with The Transfiguration, a vampire movie that looks, feels, walks and talks like a gritty US indie flick.

While Gervais returns often to the same comedic well, he’s adept at transforming simple miscues into horrific spirals of embarrassment.

What really separates The Girl With All the Gifts from the genre pack, however, is its moral intelligence, clever thematic consistency (drawing on the Greek myth of Pandora’s box) and emotional heft, the latter component rooted in the truly captivating breakout performance of young Nanua.

Resistance to this delirious romantic tragedy is futile, save for that nagging voice in our head wondering if it really has to be this way.

The film’s dialogue has ample tang of real family discourse, but it often fails to rivet.

The film’s ace card is its intertwining of not one but two mismatched buddy relationships.

Elstree 1976 entertainingly explores the world of the character actor and bit-part player.

With the consistently playful, often delightful and frequently funny God fantasy The Brand New Testament, the Belgian auteur delivers his most substantially enjoyable film since 1991’s Toto The Hero.

The film’s rigorous approach will appeal to documentary purists while challenging more general audiences who might care to know more about Pathway, Gusman and his philosophy.

Genre fans close in age to the characters depicted onscreen should be appreciative of the enjoyably familiar mix of inspired comedy moments, smart zingers, grossout gags and nudity offered by the apostrophe-phobic Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse.

Zemeckis reminds us that it’s in the service of reality, rather than fantasy, that digital technology is often most potent.

This tender, gently funny depiction of female friendship benefits from nicely committed work from lead actresses Toni Collette and Drew Barrymore plus distinctive locations in London and Yorkshire, but suffers from unconvincing moments and struggles to convert diverse story elements into an especially compelling whole.

A marketable slice of hit-and-miss mischief that doesn’t suggest a career rebirth so much as a larky side project that will yield more in the way of nervous laughter than quickened pulses.

Corin Hardy makes a slick, confident debut with supernatural horror The Hallow. Demonstrating a facility with storytelling almost as skilful as his nimble orchestration of animatronics and visual effects.

While the story arc of Hippocrates is not especially remarkable, the film works best in its depiction of life in the bowels of the hospital, which the public never visits.

Re-creating the show’s winning formula of three amiably precocious young children trading smarts with fondly exasperated parents, the pic swings for a much more eventful story arc, with mixed results.

Although the film is never less than gripping, the story beats of the chase rely on a number of coincidental encounters, while the abundance of main characters and their unpredictable natures can make them seem a bit light on psychological investigation.

Above all, 45 Years is a drama of quiet restraint.