Fionnuala Halligan

Amidst an orgy of cameos and spiked with more than a few stinging gags, the further travails of Patsy and Edina as they battle irrelevancy is bright, light entertainment, even though it never quite makes a convincing case for itself cinematically.

Overall, it’s as cheesy and just as hard to resist as a Mamma Mia! with smoother production values and a LGBTQ+ heart. The fact that Meryl Streep connects the two is a delight: at 71, this is an actress who still knows how to have a good time in her craft, and the viewer can feel the joy in it.

The film is called, and certainly contains, cries from Syria but in itself Afineevsky’s documentary is more of a shout, a piercing scream.

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

Markees Christmas is an appealing, sensitive find as Morris, with Robinson striking all the rights notes as his struggling father.

Whitney Can I Be Me delivers yet another tragic lesson in the toxic mix of fame and talent and children: it should be required viewing for all those who seek to follow this diva’s path to fame and fortune.

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.

There is a big effort put into the world building, which pays off.

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.

It’s hard to tell which of the cast is more winning, but all credit to a grizzled Hanks for sharing the screen with a scene-stealing mutt and a bucket of screws.

Choe has taken a slim scenario and used to touch on universal themes and thoughts of escape and second chances in life.

This is a muscular story about the fight for freedom which is rich and vibrant and authentic. However, Bilal’s beefy approach also extends to scenes of torture and bloodthirsty battle sequences.

Durham captures a place in time quite beautifully, and McNairy is sympathetic and believable playing a character who could be perceived as weak, or neglectful, but instead comes across as a somewhat hopeless romantic. It’s really his performance that lingers.

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.

Jon Nguyen’s carefully-calibrated ode to Lynch is in itself Lynchian, an essential picture for the director’s legion of fans.

A palpably well-made documentary if an uber-voyeuristic one, The Princess attempts an immersive approach into the life of Diana, while examining the attitude of the public to her – and the royal family – during that time.

The man himself and the machine tend to become confused in a swirl of dark glasses and wet raincoats in a production-perfect Italy of the late 1950s.

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.

Wright’s moving performance and some genuine heart-felt and -breaking moments amid all this natural majesty make Land a journey worth taking.

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.

Ethan Hawke delivers an intense, committed performance as the hopelessly drug-addicted trumpeter Chet Baker in the odd, erratic Born To Be Blue, written and directed by Robert Budreau as a bumpy free-form improvisation on the hopeless-wreck-makes-musical-comeback biopic.

While it’s a remarkable feat, particularly from an editing perspective, there’s also something laboratory-like about raiding the archive from a distance and imposing such an articficial structure on it.

We’ve seen the bones of this creature before, for sure, but some terrific GGI monsters, swampy scares and Driver’s committed performance make 65 a snap-toothed popcorn multiplex movie which, at 93 minutes, is sprightly in comparison with its lumbering rivals.

[A] polished yet unexpectedly affecting documentary.

Their marriage was unequal, and so is the film, but Maestro is honest about the larger-than-life flaws of its central character, and Cooper is impressive in the role.

Italian artist Yuri Ancarani’s mostly-silent travelogue captures the Arabian peninsula without comment, its repetitive, dreamy imagery providing an insight to an age-old sport which plays out within the trappings of extreme wealth.

The unfolding of this unusual friendship, however, and Henry’s lively performance against Lawrence and their resulting rapport, make it a sound prospect to spend some quiet time with.

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.

Much of this film has never been seen before, and it is a true treasure trove. It feels, like Bowie’s career, though, incomplete, and certainly the period between his later-in-life marriage to Iman and death after the final, unsettling Blackstar recordings is vague and reliant on what the director/producer/editor calls ‘musical mash-ups’ which he designed and edited to have a trancey, hypnotic effect.

Koepp has managed a brisk adaptation, although some of the dialogue can feel very forced, particularly when it comes to the clue-solving set-ups. Still, Howard keeps the viewer constantly occupied, Felicity Jones is an engaging sidekick, and there’s clearly a lot more mileage left for Tom Hanks in this franchise’s tank.

Fennell is in that kind of blow-it-all-up mode, and the result is a spikily entertaining, narratively rackety ride led by a formidable Barry Keoghan in devil-may-care mode.

Connery extends the film’s appeal with enjoyable sequences depicting how the game was run back then – extravagantly be-whiskered golfers would push and shove their way around the course, casually moving balls while being followed by unruly, whisky-swilling crowds.

There’s a jazzy air throughout and the sound of the dance halls resonate.

John Carney’s 1980s-set Sing Street is like a barnstorming tribute group. It’s crowd-pleasing, heart-warming, hits all the right notes, and is eager to please.

While its surprising innocence is what makes this film appealing, the franchise is still dependably cheeky thanks largely to Hugh Grant.

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 a palpably ambitious piece, with a visual acuity which punches well above its weight and a fascinating central performance from Rose Williams (Sendition).

&t does effectively plunge the viewer back in those choppy seas for an object lesson in how politics can rapidly inflame a situation to dangerous levels, even when both countries had agreed the best place for him was Cuba.

Wright crafts a hyper-elaborate set-up and delicate drip-feed of information which make spoilers an equal crime, but The Stranger is more of a felt experience than a traditional policier; it’s all about the hunt, not the crime.

Loveling relies on the charm of its chaotic central family (an overweight son who insists on carrying a giant tuba around with him, for example) and the warmth of Teles to seduce and dazzle audiences into submission.

It’s a halfway house between reality and the desires and dreams and disappointments of a 40 year-old woman, and should be appreciated as such by Francophone audiences everywhere.

By focusing on the touring footage, Howard’s picture distinguishes itself by allowing us to remember them as they started out while emphasising their skill as musicians (there’s an interesting comparison with Schubert and Mozart) and the endearing closeness of their unit.

Even if it tells the age-old story of the filthy rich getting richer and the poor going nowhere, Betting on Zero is still rather shocking.

Although the seams may show on a narrative level, and some may find it over-cooked, this is a luxurious slide into female neurosis.

The dialogue in Mank is fabulously fast, hard and quippy throughout, a real tribute to the man himself. If sometimes all that detail obscures the bigger picture, Mank is still a treat; for those looking for more, we always have Citizen Kane to fall back on, after all.

It can feel as if London Road is making the same point throughout, and in the same way – some thematic depth might have added bolster to the film’s dazzling artistic heft.

Structured to an unusual beat and often stuck in its own feedback loop, The United States…is a flawed film, much like its protagonist, but Day doesn’t set a foot wrong throughout, even as Daniels’ adoring camera traces her every breath in full close-up.

To a certain extent, Alam, which marks Khoury’s feature debut after a well-regarded career in shorts (in particular, Maradona’s Legs) follows some clear conventions, but there’s enough that is still raw and urgent at the film’s soul to make it stand out.

As the story of the mysterious Cordona plays out, the persuasive personalities of the three women both then and now strike a chord.

Copa 71 may have a packaged air to it, but the story speaks – loudly – for itself.

It’s fair to say that Final Reckoning delivers ever more thrills and spills, even though the links between the action are ever more frayed.

Hacksaw Ridge returns to the themes which have professionally and personally motivated 60-year-old Gibson for his entire life; he’s never been subtle, but he’s certainly effective when it comes to delivering his heart-felt message.

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.

Solondz’s latest is morose and jaundiced and, although uneven, a relentlessly clever little film.

Its running time may make it more digestible than some of Weerasethakul’s more ambitious pieces, although it straddles the line between full-feature and his short films and experimental work quite beautifully.

Weisz shows her Oscar-winning talents by hitting precisely the right notes throughout My Cousin Rachel: from warmth to guile to chilly practicality.

A well-executed, unusual and historically-tinged horror [film] ... drenched in the atmosphere of Second World War colonial dread.

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.

It’s joyous, it’s crazy – cars skydive out of aircraft in Azerbaijan, no less - it’s exhaustively long, and, still, it’s clunkily lovable.

Jackson’s film is best enjoyed for the quality of the performances and the typical richness of Hare’s screenplay.

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.

Newton is fascinating in the role.

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.

Conventional to a fault but about as solid an indictment of corporate greed as could be wished for.

In the slim but powerful documentary He Named Me Malala Davis Guggenheim attempts to colour in a shy, yet deceptively stout-hearted schoolgirl and her symbiotically-close relationship with her father, indicated by the film’s title.

The team effort of the story flows into and becomes a part of the team effort onscreen, and the fight continues.

Bond has seen it all before, this team has done it all before, and the production juggernaut hits every beat with a carefully calibrated precision which can be deeply satisfying but also risk coming across as rote.

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 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.

Larrain uses the familiar narrative structure of the flashback and adds some operatic grace notes to deliver a performance-led film that is never less than expected – but also never less than watchable.

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.