Donald Clarke

For all its gimcrack incoherence, Madame Web – which would be nothing without Johnson’s charm – is a darn sight less pompous and up itself than the overstuffed Disney content.

Like the Whitney film, One Love suffers greatly from a looming whiff of authorisation.

For all the undeniable power of Occupied City, some will wonder if, given its formal repetitions, the piece should not be presented as an installation. Maybe. But the concentration and lack of distraction allow that greater degree of immersion. That sense of being dragged through a narrative – even a non-linear one – is a vital part of its unsettling appeal.

So hard and chillingly perfect is the aesthetic – Friedel and Hüller adding another carapace with their unflinching performances – that one bristles a little when it is occasionally broken.

And yet. Howard is so irrepressibly charming that Argylle proves hard to wholly resist. Her inherent warmth and charm add interesting balance to the violence she ultimately gets to inflict on circling maniacs. One must also grudgingly acknowledge Vaughn’s dedication to an epic mayhem that strives towards a blend of Bollywood, Hong Kong action and Golden Age musical.

Never mind the plot. Written and directed by Rich Peppiatt, a former journalist who created the salty 2014 satire One Rogue Reporter, Kneecap works best as a collage of digs at contemporary Northern/North of Ireland woven in with a touching treatise on why the Irish language matters.

An absolute treasure.

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.

The attempts to get us interested in fictional NFT art are no more successful than the international cabal of idiots’ efforts to draw us to the real thing. For all that, there is a sort of honest energy to Lift that deserves just a sliver of respect.

Along the way, Scala!!! (the number of exclamation points varies) takes in the history of a wider culture. You could see the community under discussion as that swimming in the long wake of punk.

There are endless nuances and ironies throughout. Though stories are told, In the Shadow of Beirut is more a mosaic than a narrative tapestry.

One Life breaks no new cinematic ground. But it tells a story worth hearing. And it allows an indisputable great one more chance to show us what he can do.

You would get more sparks from rubbing a wet flannel with a wetter rock. But try it anyway. It could hardly be more tedious than waiting for Freelance to crawl to its predictable denouement.

Based on an acclaimed documentary, the film looks to be asking us to fill in the many gaps in its Swiss-cheese narrative.

It is Coppola’s best film in 20 years.

If you want to avoid cliche and overworked influence you have come to the wrong place.

Though Dawn of the Nugget is not on the same plane as a masterpiece like Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, it delivers zippy good-hearted jokes at a cracking pace without outstaying its welcome.

Late Wenders sits at an odd angle to the young man obsessed with wandering and with the United States. There is a sense of a busy mind eager to share enthusiasms. Its generousness is part of the appeal.

Wonka is not any sort of disaster. It is made with enormous professionalism. It abounds with good nature. And it does offer at least one fascinating titbit about the protagonist’s background.

There is a lot here about how female sexual desire is repressed and sublimated. There is an implied, though not exactly hopeful, treatise on the promise of the later 1960s. Not every risk pays off. But all were worth taking.

What is most conspicuously absence is a hint, in even the vaguest technical terms, of what made Bernstein such an admired conductor and composer. It is not enough to have people tell us (and him) he’s a genius. The film does, however, give us a dramatic tribute to the passion he put into his work.

Its backwards glances serve only to remind us how transcendent Disney animation once was – as recently as Frozen – without offering any hopeful signposts to the future. But, yes, cracking songs.

Now 85, Scott again proves there is nobody so efficient at pressing contemporary technology to the limits. He also draws heroic performances from fleshy human beings

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.

Project X never encounters anything you could call a plot: the party starts off badly, gets wilder and ends in total calamity. An unhealthy strain of misogyny runs through the dialogue, and the film- makers' unquestioning acceptance of high-school one-upmanship fairly turns the stomach. But the film does have a certain impure purity to it.

A bracingly original, notably creepy film that leaves you brooding on its knotty messages.

All involved deserve better.

A paternoster of strong scenes and strong performances serve only to highlight pedestrian writing elsewhere.