Dan Jolin

The odd conclusion renders it somewhat oblique, but Perfume is a feast for the senses.

A film more concerned with 'how' than 'why' or 'who', Valkyrie would have benefited from more scrutiny and complexity. Still, once the bomb goes off, the thrills come in spades.

Cinema’s least-subtle and most-escalated series hits its sky-high-concept plateau. It's a film that somehow finds new and fabulously silly things to do with cars, while — Momoa’s questionable villain aside — being exactly what you’d expect.

A handsome murder mystery with a neat literary twist and an impressive turn from Harry Melling, but which is overcast by the gloominess of its protagonist and the implausibility of its revelations.

A difficult film and one that's likely to offend in some ways. But as an elliptical, dream-logic infused visual poem, it certainly leaves a searing impression.

Writer/director Peter Landesman has turned out a film that nonetheless remains desperately conventional and never communicates that sense of inspiration.

Bitty and frustrating, its bigger laughs are set against some off-balance storytelling and crude comedy. Not one to take your nan to.

It aches for more depth and warmth and humour, but this is spectacular sci-fi — huge, operatic, melodramatic, impressive. It feels the right Superman origin story for our era, and teases what would be a welcome new superfranchise.

A mixed bag of bones and bodies, whose Southern Gothic atmosphere and superb performances — from Holland especially — are let down by the film’s lack of narrative focus.

An occasionally interesting but over-stretched attempt to recount Putin’s rise to power, best appreciated for the few moments in which Jude Law appears.

A new take on Peter Pan that actually works, delivering all the visual richness you’d hope for from the film-maker behind Beasts Of The Southern Wild.

An odd one. Rogen's latest clown is an angry, confused man who you never feel entirely comfortable laughing at. There are laughs -- you'll just feel guilty afterwards...

An opportunity to exploit childhood nocturnal fears is missed in a second-rate horror.

A throwback thriller which brings nothing new to a crowded genre, and has little to say along the way. They don’t make ’em like this anymore, and, to be honest, they probably shouldn’t.

Best enjoyed for the fun, slick action and the astonishing, super-expressive realisation of Alita herself, because elsewhere it’s cyberpunk business as usual, marred by some sloppy plotting.

Grown-up but not too serious; action-packed but not juvenile… Not only is this the mullet-free Robin Hood movie we’ve been waiting decades for, it’s also Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe at their most entertaining since Gladiator.

Another lavish and largely entertaining Disney re-do, with strong turns from Massoud and Scott. But, appropriately for someone playing a huge, powerful entity trapped in a tiny ornament, Smith’s genie performance feels disappointingly constrained — both by overdependence on the original and some ghastly CGI.

Too long, arduous, lecturey and patience-testing for even the all-new Matthew McConaughey to rescue. Director Ross is apparently so swamped by a sense of historical righteousness he hasn’t noticed he’s smothered a decent story.

Too long, and too wrapped up in its various plot contrivances to notice it’s veering off course. But Jack just about pulls the wheel back, aided by Verbinski’s flair for cartoonish comedy action.

This is unlikely to win Kathryn Lansky's antipodean owl fantasy any new fans, but even the bemused (and confused) can luxuriate in some grand-scale visual storytelling.

An initially cool premise that goes nowhere interesting as it heads off somewhere else too quickly. Hartnett does his best, but director Shyamalan seems more interested in trying to convince us of his daughter’s pop-star credentials.

An improvement on Murder On The Orient Express, with the increased focus on Branagh’s Poirot (even with its strange moustache obsession) welcome enough to distract from the problems with some of its ensemble and its too-obvious reliance on VFX.

A fiendishly effective holiday-gone-wrong thriller that's better at cranking up the agoraphobic action than fleshing out its characters. Still, it'll find few fans at the Mexican Tourist Board...

An engaging study of a beautiful but mysterious mind, which also reveals the stressful nature of world-class chess tournaments and raises the deep question of where intelligence actually comes from.

There is a frustrating absence of personality which means, for all her physical presence, this Major’s just not very engaging. It’s more a problem with the film than Johansson herself. A case, if you will, of it being so preoccupied with the shell, it forgot to bring enough ghost.

It’s as predictable as an Advent calendar, but thanks to Kurt Russell’s grizzly charms, The Christmas Chronicles at least gives us one of the movies’ best Santas yet.

A tender, nostalgic and warm ‘family’ drama which also quietly seethes with the threat and tension of imminent danger. Labor Day shows a new side to Jason Reitman as a filmmaker, and we like it.

Gilliam at his best and his worst.