David Jenkins

It’s predictably rousing, and Tolkien heads will probably enjoy many of the callbacks to the original trilogy, but as a film in its own right, it’s all a little overblown and unnecessary.

There are some great things in this film, yet its intentions are swept up in a mire of tonal indecision and cynicism masquerading as irony.

Visually and dramatically, the film doesn’t reinvent any wheels, nor does it set out too, instead happy to splice together a satisfyingly intense period drama with some nice moments of genre pay-off.

It’s all competently performed and executed, with loud booms of sound cued to each scene change as an attempt to ramp up the tension, and lots of behind-the-head tracking shots of cardinals anxiously pacing through corridors and stairways.

It’s a model of old school screen storytelling, where the robust individual elements coalesce into the exact sum of their parts and not a single ounce out either way.

There’s a breezy panache to Wang’s direction, and he’s very good at capturing the comic skulduggery of, say, early instant messaging apps. It’s a shame, then, that it doesn’t have an original bone in its gangly, hunched frame.

It’s a creative and admirably earnest endeavour, but one that will most certainly live or die on your tolerance for Torrini’s winsome warbling.

Dreamers is slight but effective, and perhaps doesn’t quite come back from a twist that occurs about two thirds of the way in when Isio’s situation suddenly changes.

Where this film excels is in the basics – it doesn’t take any risks and just choses to do the simple things well.

One issue with here is there’s so much plot, alongside a persistent desire to frame and underscore every one of this journey’s universal resonances, that it’s hard not to feel bogged down in ideas and details.

Occasionally, the film does lack ambiguity, and there are a number of characters who, just through the casting, make-up and dress, come across as one-dimensional extremes of “goodies” and “baddies”. Yet Molly herself, and the seemingly endless string of physical and psychological trials she endures . . . makes for a satisfying emotional core.

It’s a fun little diversion that’s more interested in the salacious gossip and anecdotes than it is offering a more broad inquiry into how these artworks more generally enhance the music they’re being used to sell.

From its slow build-up comes a rousing finale, with Penelope setting an impossible feat of strength and agility as the benchmark for her new marriage material (as it should be!).

There’re no wheels being rein­vent­ed here in terms of tone or nar­ra­tive, but it is a very sol­id genre runaround that is ele­vat­ed by its occa­sion­al and wel­come laps­es into soul­ful intro­ver­sion.

It’s not that Soto has no moves in his arsenal when it comes to achieving a mere modicum of originality, it’s that the formal structure of these films is now so tired and dreary that, even with a few, nifty customisable elements, everything looks and feels like a rehash of something else.

This archive clip-driven documentary comprises Cousins’ own informed and poetic postulations on the inner-workings of the Hitchcock corpus, as he heads on a jolly, thematically-inclined ramble through one of the great artistic legacies of the 20th century.

The film plays through the scenario with plenty of moment-by-moment gusto, and there’s a lack of flab to it that makes it rather appealing when placed next to so many action blockbusters (many of the interim Predator franchise entries included) that just feel the need to ramp things up to a silly degree. And still, this is a shallow film that offers little more than superficial pleasures.

Emotional equality and the equilibrium of platonic friendship soon give way to factionalism and suggestions that two of three may peel off to form a couple. The film playfully wrong-foots the viewer as to who the two end up being.

It looks good, it sounds good, the actors are giving it their all, and yet… it never properly gels.

After a strong opening drag, there’s the feeling that the film doesn’t really have anything more to say, its revelations seeming fairly paltry in the scheme of things.

It’s a decently constructed piece of fluff that is way too soft to exert any real lasting impact. Yet the reason to see it is for Bardem’s masterful, completely committed lead turn. The real comedy gold comes from his blink-and-you’ll-miss-it expressions and mannerisms that usually come when he’s listening to other people talk.

Peter’s unflappable, occasionally unbelievable heroism is placed front and centre, and it’s nearly always at the expense of making Emancipation a richer and more varied experience as a piece of cinema.

There’s no real moral centre to the film – it’s a depth-free caper which only demonstrates negligible interest in any wider ramifications of these types of big money boardroom IP raids.

Unfortunately, much of said action is old hat (pun intended), with the bulk of this strangely peril-free offering playing like a refried compendium of golden moments from Spielberg’s original trilogy.

Shawn Levy’s Deadpool & Wolverine is a mixed (ball) bag indeed, definitely not unendurable, and even boasting a couple of nuggets of misty-eyed nostalgia that aren’t instantly undercut by playground irony, but for the most part it does boast the hit-and-miss qualities of polytechnic sketch comedy.

When Autumn Falls strays into some interesting, ethically thorny terrain, but Ozon always opts for the easy, often crowd-pleasing solution rather than to have things become too dark or alienating.

The film sorely lacks for surprise or tension, even while it does offer a likably earnest survey of the economic hole that many found themselves in while the world got sick.

There’s an interesting metaphor here for McAvoy’s own career as a Scottish man who earns a crust by perfecting a range of accents and character types. Yet its feelgood arc is all a little predictable and soft-edged.