Donald Clarke

One could bang on all day about how familiar so much of this seems. But it is only fair to acknowledge that, judged as an independent entity (if such an assessment is possible), the current How to Train Your Dragon works as sleek, charming, funny entertainment.

Not everything works here. Too much is overfamiliar. But Run Rabbit Run retains a clammy grip throughout. Definitely worth a stream.

It doesn’t exactly subvert expectations, but the sharp writing and subtle acting make for a more satisfying experience than a bald synopsis promises.

Bloodlines, after that first-class opening section, isn’t quite so clever in its constructions as were the earlier episodes. There is more reliance on out-of-nowhere splatter than on amusingly inevitable disaster.

It is all very on the nose. It’s all shamelessly manipulative. Mind you, a cynic might argue you could say the same of Diamond’s best songs. And there’s nothing wrong with a hatful of Neil.

Rarely has anything looked simultaneously so spectacular and so monotonous. It’s like being drowned to drunken death in a lake of curaçao.

It hardly needs to be said that the film will not be for everyone. But even those frustrated by the knotted plotting will admit that Hadžihalilović masters the crucial trick of presenting the narrative as if it makes sense to itself.

For all its confusion, Babylon really does function as celebration of an increasingly threatened medium.

For the most part...A Life on the Farm is a warm-hearted celebration of an oddity for the ages.

What Respect does have going for it is Jennifer Hudson and some stirring musical sequences. Just as these films have become loaded with cliches, the reviews have too often lazily argued that “[Lead Actor X] just about saves the day”. Well, here we are again.

It would be nothing without a charismatic star at its heart. Sweeney is certainly that – and, as the final shot confirms, she is as game as they come. Nun more fun.

Sarandon is, sad to say, not the best thing in a film that only occasionally rises above the anarchic mediocrity we expect from the DC Extended Universe.

There is much rushing to little purpose. Too many dull contractual glitches get in the way of the enthusiastic performances.

Fennell sets off in the right direction. A strong cast helps her on her way. But conviction falters long before the tables are kicked over.

Unfortunately, the longer the film goes on the more blankly didactic it becomes.

Sure, the film borrows shamelessly from Romancing the Stone, but that film was itself slip-streaming behind Raiders of the Lost Ark. Everything about The Lost City is yelling “fun, fun, fun!” in your lughole. You are being dared not to have a good time.

What we have here is an efficient compilation of the hoariest sporting cliches given a breath of life by some charming actors.

The film is not a dead loss. The sheer chaos of the thing is welcome in an age when big-budget films travel along too-straight lines. Raimi is allowed a few moments of characteristic invention. But nothing here suggests there is much room to manoeuvre within the Marvel straitjacket. A disappointment.

House of Cardin drags out fascinating archive interviews to tease and tantalise. Cardin is articulate about his creative strategies, but the man inside remains something of a mystery.

No purer entertainment has come our way this year.

See How They Run is not quite so self-regarding as Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound, but See How They Run is a delightful, shamelessly affectionate deconstruction of ChristieLand that outstays not a second of its welcome.

There are reminders of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours and Sean Baker’s incoming Palme d’Or winner Anora in that urban chaos, but Watts’s bland style washes out all the grime to leave us with, well, something you might expect from a streaming release.

A humane work devised by serious minds.

The director of shockers such as Requiem for a Dream and Mother! has had his mainstream moments, but he has never before been quite so at home to tawdry soap opera.

The longer it goes on, however, the less fun and more earnest it becomes.

Miller has, as directors often will, followed up a succès d’estime — this is his first film since Mad Max: Fury Road — with something of a personal folly. Better that than bland boilerplate, but Three Thousand Years of Longing grates as often as it charms.

It’s not exactly a world you would want to live in but Jumbo, nonetheless, is awash with a sympathetic visual aesthetic that gives us some sense of where the odd passion springs from. It needs a strong actor to compete with that madness, and Merlant does not disappoint.

Many will be won over by the emotional surge of the closing moments. Others will wonder if there is a word for a manipulative drama that fails to satisfactorily manipulate.