Fionnuala Halligan

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.

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

Part of what makes Brides so engaging — and not in a passive way – is its closeness to the truth: not just of the Begum story, but life truths.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

House Of Gucci can switch into camp faster than you can swing a bamboo-handled handbag, and will certainly launch a thousand Gaga memes, an element which is accentuated by the random application of chart bangers in the soundtrack. But it’s also unsettling, entertaining, and really quite unusual: like next year’s fashions from a more extreme house, it grows on you.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Long and detailed and frequently terrifying, Alex Gibney’s documentary about a 1994 massacre in a pub in Northern Ireland is investigative journalism at its rigorous best.

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.

For all that it bounces off a lot of contentious issues about children and the internet, where Carrie-style bullying has moved into the unsupervised zone of cyberspace, Nerve frustratingly stops short before eventually falling in on itself in the third act.

Neighbors: Sorority Rising turns out to be an uneasy watch, awash with unconvincing performances, unfunny stereotypes, and dubious gross-out gags.

Between the highs-and-lows of razzle-dazzle couture there a substantial film here, and a frank portrait of a damaged, evasive man trying to come to terms with what he has done.

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

The Cured is at its sharpest when drawing acute political parallels. As a zombie film, the shocks are few/

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

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.