Fionnuala Halligan

It’s authentic without being grim; moody and tentatively hopeful. There’s a British verite influence at play, but King Jack’s heart is positively American.

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.

Apart from being a series of comic vignettes, The Meddler is also framed partially as a romance, and a very endearing one at that.

The Northman is often bloody smart entertainment, although, essentially, it is also the good time that doesn’t realise that the fun has stopped.

There are touching moments...that could only have come from real life, and the film is all the better for them.

It is silkily persuasive in its own hot-sleuthy way.

Hitchcock Truffaut is of undeniable appeal to those with even a passing interest in the history of cinema. There’s nothing rarified about the air the project breathes, either – this features passionate people who have made their own iconic cinema talking about two giants of our film age with an enthusiasm which is infectious.

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

It is a nicely-packaged, technically-proficient production that stands out due to its timing, certainly, but also for the power and personality of the female comedians interviewed by the directors.

Michell’s film is as defiantly traditional as the wallpaper which decorates the Bunton’s house.

Between the extensive VFX creature work – led by Mike Stillwell and Andrew Simmonds - the performances, the tone, and the life-or-death subject matter, experienced shorts director Pusic has given her debut her all, and observers will take note.

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.

It’s impossible to deny the strength of the startling array of thoughts and concepts which Inarritu has brought to life and, ultimately, brings together, although the impact is clearly diluted by his unwillingness to cut.

Motel Destino may not make a profound impact, but it does make an impact nonetheless.

A cult item par excellence, Bone Tomahawk does for the Western what Gareth Edwards did for Monsters. Long, slow and low-budget, Bone Tomahawk is also disturbingly tense, hyper-violent, and destined to attract an adoring fanboy following.

As a screenwriter, Ford has made some brave choices in a difficult, complex adaptation. As a director, though, he veers between delivering far too much, and yet not quite enough.

Phillips’ collaborators work in harmony with the natural, nuanced acting; credits across the board are stylish and smooth, with lensing a standout. Also of particular note is the design; a rich, forest-driven colour saturation which suits the hooded houses and shadowy driveways of these traumatised teens.

A robustly old-fashioned production, it’s a tasteful film which reverberates with the feeling of a vastly different age. As such, it’s gentle escapism for the old, the young, and the nostalgic. Even Thorne can’t give it sufficient dramatic tension to thrill, but a lovely performance from lead Dixie Egerickx, plus stalwart support from old hands Colin Firth and Julie Walters, compensates.

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.

As a viewing experience, The Good House is capable if unexciting, as tastefully waspish as its millieu, with a damped-down pace and a muted score. As an acting masterclass from Sigourney Weaver as a smart woman in denial, though, it’s impressive.

This story of a homesick college freshman, played affectingly by Raiff himself, doesn’t break any new ground - it doesn’t even try - but his film is still an appealing charmer.

Emily Watson leads the cast delivering, yet again, a stinging reminder of her talent.

While there are admittedly some jarring notes, Lost And Love is an ambitious and assured debut, and sounds a note for Peng as a name to watch.

Krampus, when he eventually shows his cards, is a dark delight, but this film has more to offer than a single monster – Dougherty has a few puppet side-shows, including elves, a clown which comes right out of Poltergeist’s closet and some stuffed animals which are the satanic mirrior images of our Toy Story friends. Ho, ho, ho, indeed.

Brainwashed doesn’t deliver the opposing views you might like to see aired in a film like this - it’s not a debate for her, even though some film professionals still think it is - and Menkes shows possibly too many clips from her own films (as illustrations of the right sort of take), particularly as this lucid documentary draws to a close. Yet still it’s vigorous, often brash, and full of information.

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

Suburbicon is a solid, pleasing piece, even if it never quite reaches the bleak heights its set-up promises.

King’s debut makes attempts to widen out the stage play, but there’s no denying the fact that this is an exchange of ideas as opposed to a narrative, or that dialogue is often pitched as monologue. What ideas, though, and what a night.

Tramps is a good-natured little film.

It’s a film with considerable heart and, in Nighy and Ward, the Tinker Bell sparkle of the true film-star.

The result has a definite voice – even when its protagonists struggle to find their own.

As Avis softly underlines, not everything has changed for man’s servants. And although we know the beats of this story, it’s a classic for a reason: Disney+’s Black Beauty gives a great yarn a good exercise.

Sacha Baron Cohen didn’t become a household name by pulling his punches. While his latest subversion Grimsby is ostensibly a routinely lowbrow British comedy, it’s also a something of stealth device to test the waters as to how far down he can bottom-feed.

Final Account is shocking footage which hasn’t quite made the leap into being a forensic film.

It’s easy to buy Hardy’s dual performance, and it doesn’t get in the way of the film – although some actor-ly exuberance in the delivery of Ronnie can sound an off-note, with Hardy using some facial prosthetics around the jaw line which aren’t particularly subtle.

Ronde, who clearly identifies with the teenage perspective, has delivered some gorgeous sequences, nonetheless. Formerly a documentarian, his debut could be seen as a delicious experiment, tantalising audiences as to what he might do next. Or it could be dubbed chaotic and indulgent, an awkward misfire.

A love-all crowd-pleaser for the most part, more Borg than McEnroe thanks to an arresting performance from lookalike Sverrir Gudnason.

At its weakest, there’s a suspicion that Eleanor The Great is leaning into the Holocaust for otherwise unearned emotion, but the piece is clearly genuine, and the cast so strong, it doesn’t linger.

This meticulous documentary can’t quite overcome the inevitability of its rise-and-fall trajectory, the familiarity of its sad-clown hypothesis.

With a decades-long rapport on screen and off, they’re natural and sparky together, and Roberts joins Clooney in her decision not to presenting the cosmetically refreshed face of her peers. For that alone, Ticket To Paradise is a trip worth taking.

The imbalance between the sketched, what-if nature of the film and the weight of its visual wizardry is keenly felt.

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.

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.

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.

Fluid, shifting and tense, the action here easily outstrips the film’s basic set-up (man tests himself against nature, is humbled), which can feel like unconvincing filler between surges of effects work.

If nothing else, Deepwater Horizon makes a case for going back to basics with action films. It’s classically framed, executed, and feels like the real deal, and while it clearly boasts some fine effects work, it manages to lose the cartoonish aspect of so many recent tentpoles.

Moll is a director who is adept when it comes to loading the screen with tension; actors swerve in from the side of the frame, silhouetted against the plateau, all playing characters who are clearly not walking a straight line mentally.

Good-natured, soft-hearted, a little lazy, and propelledby the relentless charisma of Melissa McCarthy when all else fails, this Netflix production makes for cozy pandemic at-home viewing with scant thrills but a couple of genuinely funny moments.

This involving, stranger-than-life story has been edited for cinematic release although seems purpose built for streaming: like its protagonist, it suffers from a sense of unfinished business and unanswered questions.

Cote’s film is consistently interesting without making the self-involved Boris’s plight in any way compelling.

Strenuously heartfelt, Tick,Tick…Boom! belts it out like a pro, but increasingly feels as if it’s raising the volume to an emptying room.

Ride is at its best and most authentic in its final chapter and an inconclusive resolution, but not so sure-footed in how it gets there.

Oddly enough, in trying to capture a time that was wracked by scarcity, by the idea of make-do-and-mend, by the plucky spirit of the men and women under the might of the machines, Blitz just fires far too much heavy artillery.

Pleasantly entertaining, Pitch Perfect 2 scrabbles for a raison d’etre, however, hoping that goodwill from the first show, coupled with a few raunchy gags and cameo appearances, will be enough to get by in the post-Glee age.

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.

Norway’s Roar Uthaug (The Wave) directs it straight up, without even a twist of humour, bouncing Vikander from set piece to set piece with no real attempt at coherent plotting in-between. Yet Vikander is so watchable as the video-game-made-flesh, and the low-fi chase sequences can be so exciting, it’s almost enough. Almost.

Although there’s nothing about Charlie McDowell’s interpretation that doesn’t aim for similar excellence, the very act of embodying the book lessens its magic.

You could call it whimsical. Absurdist. Contrived. Or an unexpectedly unusual concept album that doesn’t quite come off but was worth the effort. And you would be correct every time.

Preposterous, nonsensical, but fun nonetheless, Unbroken frustrates as much as it entertains.

Walk With Me is a slip of a film, at turns worthy and profound, yet also soporific and uneventful, an occupational hazard of spending three years embedded in a Zen community, no doubt.

While McGregor and Harris convincingly portray a couple in trouble, and Lewis’s odball spook is an uneasy fit, it is Skarsgard’s dynamic performance which saves the day.

It’s a title to be admired, certainly, but for all its visual fireworks, Far From The Madding Crowd doesn’t truly ignite an emotional spark.

Robinson is a precise, empathetic and informed speaker and a righteous man who, in sisters Emily and Sarah Kunstler’s documentary, is every teacher you might have ever wished for as a student, but who deserves a larger stage.

For a film industry determined to open itself to a diversity of voices, this is very much a safe, back-to-basics play for British audiences in need of some reliable comfort food.

This is an idiosyncratic hop around Fassbinder’s life by his Danish film historian friend Thomsen.

The Fencer plays an entirely predictable match right down to its final bout, but the period Soviet Block setting gives the game an interesting hook, and DoP Thomo Hutri’s muted location shots prove atmospheric.

Rogue One’s Edwards delivers a film which is reliably visually inventive even when the familiarity of the narrative can make it feel oddly stale.

If the film belongs to anyone, it’s creature designer Carlos Huante. Kong is expressive and impressive, both in hair and full-body movement, and his interaction – with water, humans, other animals – is consistently fluid.

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

For a Burroughs adaptation, it has all the provocation but none of the haunting power that Naked Lunch still holds, almost 35 years later.

Bastille Day is fun, for the most part, but the biggest take-home here is how easily Elba could slip into Bond’s shoes.

It’s not that [Krasinski] fails, or that his film isn’t desperately charming as it goes about its business, but this is very familiar American indie territory, and The Hollars stops well short of innovation.

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.

Nightride doesn’t try to reinvent the (car) wheel, nor does it really pretend to be anything more than it is. Fingleton shows us what he can do, so it’s efficient vehicle in the end. Like the audience, it knows where it is going. It all depends on whether those on board like the cut of its chassis.

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.

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 hard not to wince sometimes, even amid all the lewd jokes and proud sexuality in the face of a no-hope future.

In its own deja vu way, Bridget Jones Baby is intermittently entertaining, mainly thanks to Zellweger’s performance.

John McKenna and Gabriel Clarke have been assiduous in tracking down the participants and their descendants, and deserve recognition for the effort they have put in to raising Le Mans for a new generation of fast car enthusiasts and Hollywood buffs.

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.

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.

Zimbalist’s film is all about the highs: at no point will it dig deep. There is zero sense of perspective past the obvious.

A drama that simmers away on repression but never comes to a fully satisfying boil.

While Schwarzenegger is solid – almost literally, his face like granite and his movements stiff – and McNairy is completely committed in this tragic two-hander, Lester’s film is resolutely one-note.

Golda is a tentative step towards looking at that inflammatory era with the depth it needs and that’s worthwhile: but plucking Golda out of her own life and that time out of its wider context still feels like a missed opportunity.

The actors are reasonably charismatic and the film grows increasingly lovely to look at, while failing to really make a case for itself beyond the superficial pleasures.

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.

An uncomfortably un-restrained Whishaw, and an enhanced, aggressive sound design make Surge a raw experience and its eventual lack of any deeper insight is a little like rubbing salt into that experience.

Wiig is terrific, but there’s just not enough of her. It truly is a wonder to see an A-lister like Chris Pine embrace the traditional female support role of the pretty sidekick so winningly, while Gadot is as smooth as silk and never less than watchable. The team is there, but this is most definitely a sequel.

The dynamics of the Claire family (whose daughter is rarely to be seen) are several layers more interesting than the plot, which makes it all the more disappointing when a film that has ballooned its running time with attempts at nuance then bursts into silliness.

It’s a long, long road cluttered with clichés and stalled in softness, pot-holed by its self-serving use of Alzheimer’s as a narrative convenience.

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.

Despite this riveting premise, Padrenostro goes the way of 1970s cuisine in being over-cooked to the level of boil-in-a-bag.

For a film about the music business, it’s interesting that Kill Your Friends sticks so faithfully to one note throughout; it’s as if Niven fears any glimpse of humanity might risk the project’s integrity, but the lack of human empathy ultimately becomes this project’s biggest handicap.

Ultimately, first-timer Langlois is unable to find a discipline within the excess that might keep these Queens on course over feature length. In fairness, his shorts were also over-long, so this won’t be a deterrent to his core crowd.

For all that it promises the thrill of high-speed racing, the crush of the peloton, and the drama of disgrace, The Program works best when it deals with this fascinating case of investigative journalism which saw Walsh doggedly pursue his target through 13 years and the temporary loss of his own reputation.

Hiddleston’s intense performance lends a little frisson to an otherwise familiar, if gorgeously-mounted tale about a troubled musical genius who is inevitably, gruellingly, felled by his demons.

The stubbornly naive Horizon series — which may encompass up to two more instalments – is both enjoyably retro and fascinatingly aimless as it attempts to resurrect an old genre with gleaming sincerity.