Donald Clarke

The main thread of the script is efficient enough, but the loosely connected subplot concerning a terminally ill acquaintance strains the boundaries of good taste past breaking point.

Nobody can doubt the filmmakers’ diligence. The interviewees seem like serious-minded people. But, as has been the case for close to 60 years, we are left with a jumble of loosely connected discrepancies that will do little to persuade those who expect everyday existence to be just that chaotic.

What really makes Bruised worth sticking with, however, is the epic closing fight sequence.

This is a straight-edge, inspirational sporting film of the old school – closer to Rocky than Hoop Dreams. Taking all the inevitable compromises on board, it could hardly work better within its chosen parameters.

Working halfway round the world, Campion has fashioned a startling translation of later chapters in the American creation myth.

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.

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.

Kristen Stewart is inspired casting as a woman on the brink of escape from a superficially comfortable prison. Who better to play a person remembered for her perceived shyness than the current maestro of hooded introspection?

We like that someone is allowing Chloé Zhao, recent Oscar-winner for Nomadland, enough money to build her own solar system. But the sluggishness and drabness is unforgivable.

Passing is, in some ways, a slender story. But Hall’s feel for the period and her gift for folding potent discourse into the attractive visuals kicks it up to the level of high art.

There is both too much and too little going on. It passes the time busily, but leaves us lost in copious allusion and unfinished narrative.

Few will complain about the delicious perplexities of the opening hour. The film’s focus on the sadness of remote lives – everyone here seems alone – adds satisfactory emotional ballast.

Steven Levenson’s book is all about normalising common mental health issues. But the film also reduces the dead character to a cypher and lets the protagonist off the hook too easily.

The French Dispatch is a lovely, lovely thing. But it is as impossible to grasp as a handful of water.

A rare historical epic that is connected to contemporary crises.

Arriving somewhat under the radar, Marley Morrison’s enchanting comedy makes something convincingly British of a form that the American indie cadre has exploited to near exhaustion.

A hugely entertaining record of a person no novelist could have invented.

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.

There are plenty of reasons to yell at The Starling. The pile-up of dreary sub-country songs eventually takes on the quality of something the CIA would have played outside General Noriega’s compound.

A fine yarn that arcs towards a memorable denouement.

Peter Bebjak’s disciplined film is forever reminding us of arbitrary cruelties and absurd outrages.

With the best will in the world, this is thin stuff. The dialogue is written in the awkward, stilted style of a radio play – first-person pronouns dropped in a fashion that never really happens in everyday speech – and the confrontations are too often clunkily contrived.

Occasionally frustrating, but worth getting frustrated about.

Dunne’s script, co-written with Malcolm Campbell, packs too much plot in its final 10 minutes, but it hits the emotional beats with gusto throughout. It was, when it was shot two years ago, an effective comment on an absurd crisis. Sadly, it is still that.

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.

Appearing opposite Nora-Jane Noone in a film that twists the actors round each other like competing bindweed, McGuigan could hardly have delivered a more bracing final performance. So savage is her turn that you expect water drops to hiss off her broiling skin.

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.

Here is a film clawed up from the damp soil and smeared imaginatively across the screen. It is unlikely to be confused with Wild Mountain Thyme.