Fionnuala Halligan

Like protagonist Pete Davidson, on whose life it is loosely based, The King Of Staten Island is a loping, amiable, sweetly-funny film, and yet you sometimes wish there was a bit less of it.

All the lavish sets and gorgeous costumes in the world – and they are here – can’t quite cover over the cracks in Friedkin’s canvas, constructed by three writers from a non-fiction book.

The film-making itself can stumble - this isn’t always a smooth watch; and such heartfelt sentiment sets it apart from more savvily sophisticated similar dramas.

Cesar Diaz’s debut feature is both compact and ambitious, distilling its larger themes into the core story of one young man and his secretive mother.

Jonze’s film (his first full-length feature since 2013’s Her) sits in an awkward gap between live performance and event cinema.

There’s a great deal of fun to be had watching Hardiman play out her cards; we know the hand she’s holding, but it’s a nice-looking deck nonetheless.

Call Of The Wild isn’t animation, it isn’t live action, it isn’t fish, fowl or dog and somewhere in between it falls off its sled. Mankind can always benefit from some digital enhancement; man’s best friend, not so much.

Like the book, Reed Morano’s film is long on atmosphere and short on the kind of detail a spy thriller needs to be credible.

It’s a commercially marketable prospect, sure, thanks to a committed performance from Julia-Louis Dreyfus (who also produces), but Downhill has also groomed out the subtlety from the original Swedish-language source material in some wincing stabs at cross-cultural comedy.

Revelatory, moving, and honest, it is essentially the story of one brave woman’s decision to publicly accuse the rap mogul Russell Simmons of harassment and rape. But it’s also a painful, parsed education on the subject of black women and abuse.

Wittock has neatly sketched out her subject and a groovy neon palette for scenes involving Jumbo “himself”, but the story and general characterisation remains broad and thinly developed.

Whenever Herself settles into predictability, the strength of Dunne’s performance pulls that comfortable rug away. And if her screenplay and her acting helps audiences understand what it is to be homeless, to be vulnerable in this way, Herself will have been a A-grade build by an A-list team.

A film to respect for its audacity, admire for its lead female performance perhaps, but also view as dramatically contrived.

Footage is surprising, and, occasionally heart-breaking; not because of the disabilities onscreen, but because it recalls the idealism of the 1970s, long since gone.

The more specific its characters are – and these are very specific – the more amusing the gags in this warm-hearted comedy about growing up and breaking free.

Notable for the crispness of the lensing, Jose is deceptively simple but punches above its slight weight.

Shaun exists simply to entertain children and he fulfils his brief.

Mendes is intent on bringing a sense of breathless derring-do to a war only known for its doomed futility. And he loads onto it a one-take challenge, a rolling-back and slowly-swerving camera, using the sleight of hand which distinguishes the best action cinema of this kind.

It’s only when Pugh gets her hands on spoiled younger sister Amy and opens up that often-overlooked strand of the work does the film seem to find relevance beyond its pretty fussiness and that warm, wintery – decidedly Christmassy, somewhat pleased-with-itself – glow.

The subtle brilliance of its mise-en-scene, from 1980s Ohio boardrooms and rubber-chicken dinners to all-black wait staff and the casual discrimination against women, beds the story in the awful truth.

Gibney’s story is clearly told and wholly engrossing.

Everyone here appears to be revelling in the juicy opportunities Earthquake Bird brings to hit up our memories of everything from Fatal Attraction to Single White Female.

Although MEMORY follows some templates of the format, trying to lock Alien into a cultural and political framework, the film itself transcends that obviousness.

Seen at 60 frames per second (fps) on 3D-Plus (2K resolution), Ang Lee’s action spectacular Gemini Man proved a compulsive watch: not for the usual ingredients of can’t-look-away Hollywood cinema such as acting – Will Smith takes a dual role - or plot, both of which fell a little flat, and seemed almost wilfully generic. As a viewing experience, though, this picture delivers as a prototype of future action film-making.

A complex, steady, deeply intelligent film with a chilling resonance today.

A handsome, earnest drama ... This is a tasteful, respectful and thoughtful film about what it means to be a true friend in the darkest of times.

A significant, ambitious and entirely impressive film by a dazzling young French director in full command of her ship.

The trouble with a high-stakes “small” British project like this is that everyone involved tends to want to play it safe.

A thrilling, action-packed, wide-vista yarn from the sharp quills of Jack Thorne and co-writer and director Tom Harper, this Amazon-backed project is deceptively simple yet surprisingly deft.

The delicate dance between the two veteran actors, both eagerly devouring a late-life jewel of a script, is a joy to behold.

Obvious good intentions are drowned in a hot wash of showboating stars and flooded by self-indulgence.

Renee Zellweger gives the performance of her career in a film which is certainly an awards-friendly biopic, but strikes a darker, more maudlin note than expected.

Seberg somehow manages to pull off a tricky combination of radical politics, inter-racial sex and Hollywood tragedy while styling Stewart in Chanel. It’s quite a balancing act, but this is a film in which the story is just about strong enough to pull that heavy cart along.

It’s only when Baumbach surrenders to the inherent theatricality of what he is creating, that Marriage Story finally takes wing and flies.

A strangely-compelling, unpredictable and manipulative piece of work.

A classic, if downbeat, addition to the canon.

For all that it dances on familiar ground, Firecrackers ends on a pleasingly opaque note. It’s attractively shot by Catherine Lutes, and smartly cast with unknowns, making it more than just a calling card for its young writer/director. There’s much to take note of here foom Mozaffari and her all-female crew.

A thoughtful and fascinating piece, it’s a game of two halves, however, with Lindeen making heavy work of modern-day footage which tends to drag on the dynamism of the past.

Sibyl is far less than the sum of its parts, and never manages to shake off a heavy tone which consistently threatens to capsize even the rare funny interludes.

While it’s important to have seen Canto Uno in order to savour Intermezzo, this film in itself doesn’t seem remotely essential.

Once Upon A Time….in Hollywood is beautifully made. Beyond all the ‘Tarantino-esque’ touches of the action, the banter, the violence, the constant movie references, there’s a real craft at play here.

Even with an abrupt ending and the sense of unfinished business, Diego Maradona is more satisfying than Kapadia’s previous work.

Sometimes a bad film is just a bad film, but Depp is most likely to pay the price.

Yesterday is a film we’re all familiar with, for better or worse.

This story of a frustrated man and the slow recognition of what really matters in his life could, indeed, have come from a Springsteen lyric, but the sketchiness of the premise doesn’t really favour the full cinematic treatment it has been awarded here.

A Dog’s Journey is certainly manipulative - humans aren’t safe here either, with a significant cancer side-plot. At times, it even seems obsessed by death. Yet there’s something oddly cathartic about sobbing your way through this film, with its mash-up of Buddhism and All-American values.

The Aftermath works best when looking at the bewildered people who have been left behind, literally, to pick up the pieces. The savage loss of family members still reverberates through empty rooms and ruined landscapes.

A superb performance by Affleck, who constructs a touching and believable rapport with his 11 year-old co-star, grounds his low-key directorial and feature-writing debut.

This portrait of the artist as a young film-maker will certainly stand the test of time.

Photograph’s deliberate pace does bring some rich rewards for the patient viewer, while a lovely ending feels like a throwback to the old-fashioned big screen romances of yore.

Animals is a smoothly-made, beguiling tale of female friendship, which, like its protagonist Laura (Holliday Grainger), sometimes feels a little lost, in need of a home.

Despite the pyrotechnics of McAvoy’s performances and Willis’s grounded conviction, there’s just not enough here past the high concept of “what if real people were superheroes?”.

Jackson’s film is more than a technical tribute: it’s a testament to the bravery and camaraderie of the soldiers, the memory of which has faded like the photographs he brings back to life. In a way, it helps arrest the fear that we are forgetting this futile obliteration of an entire generation.

This is a big-hearted song and dance spectacle for the entire family in which everyone laughs at the same jokes.

There’s real magic here, and nothing fake about the emotions which guide it.

Veteran Danish director August (1987’s Pelle The Conquerer) has presented a well-meaning, flat film which also feels somewhat unfinished - although there’s not much in here to suggest that a further reworking is merited.

Whether Hill’s debut as a writer-director is drawn entirely, or partly, from personal experience seems a moot point: there’s a sufficient clear-eyed skill to the project to elevate it out of the memoir arena and mark the actor out as a directing talent to watch.

There’s a lot of love in ROMA, and, as is the way with love, it doesn’t always arrive in ways that are equal, or reciprocated, or even endure. His first film to be set in his homeland since Y Tu Mama Tambien in 2001 is Alfonso Cuarón’s most personal film, and his most honest. It may even be his best.

Using the Great Hunger as a backdrop for a revenge western is an interesting way to exorcise old ghosts, but the end result drains pathos from the tragedy while muting The Proposition-style genre elements.

Slow, deliberate and often unexpectedly funny, Michael Tully’s (Ping Pong Summer) contribution to the ever-growing Irish horror catalogue is refreshingly original even if it lacks the jump scare pay off to its heavily-signposted creepiness.

Greta is best read as tongue-in-cheek femme fun. And proof, certainly, that despite her considerable success, Huppert has not at all fallen into the trap of taking herself to seriously.

The distinguishing, and perhaps unsurprising element - given McQueen’s strong characterisation in the past – is that each of the film’s many characters comes fully-formed.

Strong, committed performances and the upsetting ring of reality anchor a highly-personal film which cycles through addiction, relapse and rehab in an episodic way, each high as inevitable as the low which follows.

This magnificently-realised film moves from feeling like a long, dry history lesson to becoming an angrily-direct and emotional tribute to the reformers of the past.

While the film doesn’t quite work as a horror, and can stumble as a character piece, Abrahamson has pulled together a sumptuous production which is more than sufficient to keep viewers engaged throughout.

Loveridge doesn’t seem to trust Maya’s natural significance and strains for the doc about her to achieve UN levels of relevance. Taking her for what she is would have been more than enough.

It’s a beautifully made film, with an impeccable lead performance from Ryan Gosling as the sober, sensitive astronaut. Yet it’s also a film which takes elegant flight but stalls across its extended closing sequences; a project which, in its probing of Armstrong’s emotional mechanisms, neglects the development of other characters who might have anchored it more securely.

It takes its narrative cue from the Bon Secours mother-and-baby home in Tuam, County Galway in which “significant” numbers of dead children have been discovered. Even though this is placed within a potentially-exploitative genre framework, it is still handled with sensitivity and sympathy by this latest female director to flesh out horror tropes.

Whether it’s a self-portrait, a series of sketches, an artist who is continuously working over a painful loss, Honore’s film betrays mixed emotions that may never be resolved as he carries the losses of that time with him forever.

Cold War is glorious, sophisticated film-making, shadowed by the spirit of Pawilowski’s Oscar-winning Ida. Lead actress Joanna Kulig is arresting.

Perhaps it’s the effort of introducing so many new characters that has sucked out the spontaneity from Deadpool: still, it’s nothing that can’t be sorted for the likely next installments.

Union is capable of powering the film through, valiantly trying to plug the holes the high-concept plot can’t reach. She’s got that big screen charisma, even though, this time, she’s working with small-screen material.

An indulgent 130-minute running time and a plot that wildly over-stretches sees Racer ultimately bounce off the rails.

Smothering the screen with good intentions, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (adapted from Annie Barrow’s best-selling comfort novel of the same name) is British security-blanket film-making at its finest.

A Quiet Place is the rare example of a creature feature which uses special effects sparingly (and possibly due to budgetary restrictions) in order to amplify the drama onscreen, not solely provide it. It employs the full register of sound, and the lack of any noise, as a dramatic player, informing all the action to the point where Krasinski’s film becomes a startlingly sensory experience.

This film, mostly shot in the UK, is technically suberb. But splitting the pleasures of virtual and reality, Ready Player One never fully satisfies on either front.