Donald Clarke

Even those who find themselves unable to warm to Cry Macho will surely admit that the film’s presence in 21st century cinemas is a marvel.

Too murky. Too little access to the character’s face. It takes a long, long time for the film to redeem itself with the biplane stunt you’ve seen on the poster.

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s translation of the late Jonathan Larson’s semi-autobiographical musical, a cult hit off-Broadway in the early 1990s, asks a lot of even the most indulgent audience.

The story’s underlying message has ended up more relevant than the film-makers can ever have anticipated.

This is pure pulp, but it’s good, honest pulp that keeps in time with the backbeat throughout. Good support from Bridgerton’s Charithra Chandran. Not for the squeamish, though.

Even an actor as good as Craig struggles to make sense of that more sensitive, more sharing version of Bond. Too many opposing cogs are creaking within a psyche that has never been much at home to contradiction. Then, towards the close, it comes together in such stirring form that only the most awkward customer will leave unsatisfied.

The plotting is, alas, a little slack in the later stages. There is a sense of flailing around en route to a reasonably satisfactory destination. Son remains, nonetheless, the work of a singular, oddball talent. Seek out.

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

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

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

There is an argument here about the corrupting influence of religion on ordinary Americans, but it is made with such bellowing cacophony that tinnitus ends up blurring the syntax.

For all the mad adventure, it feels like a Twilight Zone episode stretched out thinly to feature length.

F1 really is too thuddingly familiar for words. Drop a bowling ball off a cliff and you would be less sure of its trajectory.

The plot is rubbish. Nobody seems comfortable putting tongue anywhere near cheek. If the costumes were any more heightened you’d demand a song and dance number. All of which makes it hard to look anywhere else. But good? Probably not. Bad? Maybe not that either.

The jokes land with satisfactory regularity. The locations are lovely throughout. But a middle-ranking Working Title rom-com – more Wimbledon than Notting Hill – may not be enough to revivify a spluttering genre.

For all its flaws, however, Origin does have power as both didactic treatise and drama of recovery. There is something reassuring being said here about the restorative power of work.

A glossy package. Not quite enough inside.

Destin Daniel Cretton, director of Just Mercy and Short Term 12, continues Marvel’s reasonably successful practices of unlikely hires from the indie sector. The dialogue is snappy. The action has real kinetic clatter. What a strange industry this has become.

The miracle is that most of it sticks. Kane is a fine craftsman.

The interaction between these fine actors – John David Washington, the director’s brother, continues his rise – keeps the production tasty even as, in later stages, it gives into something like desperation.

If the first film didn’t exist, the current Mean Girls would impress as a modestly clever variation on common tropes. As it is, the current picture will remain a footnote to earlier triumphs.

It is hard to gripe at a movie that sends one out in such buoyant mood. Job just about achieved.

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.

Khan, like her documentarist heroine, clearly seeks to offer a balanced take on arranged marriage – opening non-Muslim viewers up to their own prejudices while admitting the restrictions. That balance proves, however, difficult to sustain in a genre that relies on a desperate, final rush to the airport (or whatever) as soul mates admit their attraction.

There are decent jokes all the way through, but, even at a groaning 145 minutes, the film feels overstuffed.

None of these bits fit together. Each is tolerably entertaining on its own terms.

Freed from the pretensions of his DC projects and working with the Netflix charge card, Snyder has a ball proving that trash can triumph on the largest stage if played with elan and enthusiasm.

Full marks for character and setting. Less enthusiastic hurrahs for narrative arc.