Fionnuala Halligan

As the narrative gears grind through like the slow and steady paddle boat, there’s a sense that Branagh has lost a lot of the fun of Agatha Christie along with his passport - although as the credits indicate he kept a navy’s worth of digital compositors in work through the pandemic, at least they’ll be smiling.

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.

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.

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.

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

Beckett, though, has better films in its DNA - it is by no means original. What it mostly serves as is a reminder of what is missing from independent cinema - and may well be gone for good.

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.

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

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

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.

Nguyen’s documentary certainly leaves the viewer wanting more.

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.

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.

The thin story plays out in a hail of bullets, zombies and action-laden sequences.

The main audience takeaway here will be the two main performances by Adams and Close.

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

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

Technically-skilled, well-acted and fatally over-long, it’s hard not to see Blonde as a chronicle of exploitation and abuse which merrily carries on the tradition – a sensation reinforced by Ana de Armas’s poignant performance as Marilyn.

A soft-edged, stolid blend of gorgeous geographical authenticity with a global-facing English-speaking cast whose accents range from Joe Cole’s Brit to co-producer, co-writer and leading man Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’s mid-Atlantic purr.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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