Helen O'Hara

A fun blend of scares and sentiment, this largely justifies a lengthy run time with effective frights and a valedictory feel. Just don’t watch it before trying to clear out the attic.

The fire scenes are terrifying and may well sear themselves into your brain, but however well-intentioned, the human element is less involving than the disaster they must endure.

Its magical denizens too often look and feel like out-of-season pantomime characters, but there’s just enough heart and humour to make this enchanting.

A crime thriller with no interest in thrills and not much in crime, this is an at times frustrating character study of a guy who can’t get out of his own way.

It’s not a hugely innovative biopic, covering just a short period of Bader Ginsburg’s extraordinary career, but this is still a vastly inspiring account of the fight for equality.

As a counterpoint to the (much better) "Spotlight," it’s a fascinating look at modern journalism – but perhaps not always for the reasons its makers intended.

It's less action-heavy than the last trilogy and inevitably more ape-centric, but this is a promisingly chewy start for the latest series of simian thrillers. These apes are still strong.

This one coasts by on Hanks' immense appeal and charm, but more focus and a touch more sharpness are needed to make it really come alive.

It’s consistently pretty entertaining, even if it takes a while to get going.

Some fun intergenerational warfare, clever genre nods and a generally sharp script enliven what could have been a bog-standard slasher movie.

This starts strong but doesn’t always have the room to explore all the ideas it crams in, even with a lengthy running time. Still, Rockwell’s man-on-a-mission is a delight.

This is one teen dystopia that sustained its quality across the trilogy. It may not set the world alight — ironically, given the solar flare that started its story’s disaster — but it 
will get the blood pumping.

As with many high-concept horrors, it falls apart as it grasps for an ending, but there's still enough dread, and three great central performances, to just about carry it through.

In this fun action-thriller, David Harbour’s Santa is less Saint Nick and more John Wick.

It’s not the toothless remake we feared, and is often very funny, but there’s a slight imbalance between the Roses that blunts some of its effect.

It’s bleak and understated, but strong performances and a thorny moral maze give this considerable power despite the gloomy skies.

It loses sight of its own heroes amid the hustle and bustle of its wildly entertaining environment, but Zootropolis is still a blast to visit for a couple of hours.

A well-intentioned biopic about a little-discussed but pivotal moment for both artists. If it’s never transcendent, it at least offers charming child performances, and Hawes is a particularly good fit as Neal.

It looks gorgeous and offers strong performances from Driver and Ridley in particular, but ultimately the saga ends with neither a bang nor a whimper but something inbetween.

It’s long and sometimes gets swept astray by currents of family drama and period detail, but Ridley’s plucky determination and can-do energy carries the whole thing along. The result is an old-fashioned inspirational pleasure.

Somehow less than the sum of its very impressive parts. Massy Tadjedin brings out the best of her strong cast but all the eyeball-melting beautyon display and the highly polished treatment of the story could have done with a touch of authentic grit.

It's an impressive performance from Chastain and a fascinating subject, but the film doesn’t delve deep enough into Bakker’s inner life.

Although the quips aren’t always sharp enough and the sleight of hand a little lacking, it takes a hard heart not to cheer as a few young victims of a broken system carve out their own little bit of magic.

It’s a light diversion rather than a symphonic masterpiece, but it’s still pleasantly in-tune entertainment.

It's well performed, and Collet-Serra knows his way around a beautifully timed scare, but what's most haunting is the sense that the same idea has been done better before.

There's a hint of comforting, chocolate-box, Sunday-night TV here, but it's delivered via such quietly powerful performances and with such hope that it's hard to resist.

It’s an intriguing look into a secret world and a great performance from Chastain, but Sorkin’s directorial debut never quite makes the leap from great poker movie to great movie.

The plot is insubstantial in the extreme, but Rae and Nanjiani are so cool, and their loose, free-flowing improv so winning, that you probably won’t care.

These Mark 6 Jaegers with their electric whips, “gravity slings” and plasma swords deliver all the giant robot thrills you could wish. Thanks to Boyega and Spaeny, you might even care about the human characters, too.

A sportsman biopic that concentrates more on the man than the sport, this offers food for thought for those who can stand the languorous pace.

Gentle, unchallenging drama for people who already know they like it, this is a nostalgic and rosy depiction of an England that was, surely, never so innocent.

Pugh is superb, while Wilde confidently steps up to a bigger subject and budget to deliver a slick, beautiful film. It doesn’t quite stick the landing, but its flight to that point is fascinating.

The midway point between "A.I." and "Diary Of A Wimpy Kid." It has quirky charm and a tender heart, but the treacly sentiment may become wearisome.

It’s a fun premise, one that this treats seriously, but it never quite reaches the highest levels of the genre.

The set-pieces are quick, light and for the most part fun. What Game Night lacks in (any) plausibility or coherence it makes up for in Friday night, pleasingly brainless entertainment.

Once you swallow the giant pill that is the premise, it just about makes sense, and Woodley sells it with all her conviction.

Beautifully designed and voiced, this has a solid message at its heart. But it’s a well-told tale that’s suffers from being too well-trodden already.

A beautiful, subdued Daisy Ridley performance anchors a story that is underplayed to the point of almost non-existence. Still, if you’re tired of blockbuster bombast, this could be the antidote.

It’s far from a complete biography, but it makes at least some effort to engage with the messier aspects of Lee’s life. Ultimately, however, this is a celebration of Lee and the cheerleading he did for comics, and that is surprisingly moving.

It's fine for an epic to sprawl, but you want a sense of purpose at the same time, and this one sometimes loses its way. Still, it’s handsomely shot and well performed, a throwback to the glory days of event-movie horse operas.

There still hasn’t been a truly great film based directly on a video game, and the characterisations here are more likely to annoy than delight the hardcore fans, but the jetsetting and sunshine here is a welcome break from more serious action movies, and Holland will just about hold the interest.

The plot’s all over the place, but there are a lot of laughs and some strong action beats along the way.

This old-fashioned tale of folk heroism and hardy underdogs benefits from solid performances and spectacular vistas, but it loses points for a sequel-baiting ending. 

Proof that Netflix doesn’t just do Kissing Booth movies: given the right talent, they can produce a genuinely compelling high school comedy. And you thought they didn’t make ‘em like this anymore.

It benefits from a supernaturally engaging cast, but this treads too closely to the rom-com model to feel as smart or moving as Westfeldt's previous best.

Pacy and punchy, this is a promising first official outing for the new Captain America, even if some awkward and inconsistent moments hold it back from greatness.

It may be too tame for horror fans, but the gothic twist works remarkably well — even if everything else is business as usual for the Belgian detective.

It’s fun to see Zoolander once more. It seems unlikely that the premise could ever sustain a third film, but if this is Derek’s swan song then he leaves amid a flurry of feathers and bustle – surely all a male model could wish for.

Blood-drenched and gore-splattered, anchored by a hard-as-nails performance by Beetz, this is a thinly plotted but immensely fun horrorfest. Best watched with a strong stomach.

Haynes’ film has lovely performances from both actors, and a keen sense of time and place help, but the story is a little too shaggy and unformed to entirely hold the attention.

Fans will be left on a high; other viewers will be confused but generally entertained by a saga whose romance is matched only by its weirdness.

It’s cool and brutal, but with such impressive action credentials you almost wish there were fewer plot devices to distract you as Charlize gets up and at ’em.

It's loud, at times unwatchably gross and sometimes lingers on the verge of hysteria. But it's also a warm-hearted and optimistic celebration of black womanhood. Maybe friendship can save us all.

It's scatty, scrappy and thoroughly OTT, but then that's like the characters themselves.

However slight the recorded romantic history of a well-known female author is, you can be sure it will become a key part of her biopic. Joining the trend now is this account of the life of Emily Brontë, which spends a chunk of its time on a romance that may not have happened. It’s well played and well written, but it’s an odd addition to a story that is remarkable even without invention: studios need to start letting spinsters be spinsters.

The few weaknesses in the plot can be overlooked as The Vow makes for a wonderful - if a bit teary - romance that is brilliantly acted.

Funny and scary - and sometimes both at once - it lives up to the original, even if it fails to surpass it.

Amiably silly and impressively gory, this lives up to both its low-budget inspirations and its rocker stars.

The performances are solid and the story is touching — and perhaps that will carry this to its chosen audience. But it's a little flat for true drama.

The great circle of life has thrown up a gorgeous, star-studded story, but trading feeling for realism means that we lose something of the original film’s excellence.

Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum make a sweet and spiky couple in this likeable caper. It’s never going to challenge The African Queen for quality, but it offers 
a consistently good time.

It falters in the middle and hesitates unnecessarily in setting up the love story, but Gru still has charm and kids will adore the Minions.

It's all very, very silly. That, combined with the relentless pace, should ensure that it delights its target audience of under-tens, but the adults shouldn’t fear this dog’s bark too much.

The result is overlong and rarely groundbreaking – there are hints of The Truman Show, Edge of Tomorrow and, visually, Inception – and suffers from some obnoxious filmmaking shorthand in its portrayal of other cultures late on.

If you do pick up a penguin, you could do worse than experience Michell’s kind of spiritual and moral awakening. Still, the film is thankfully sharper and less cute than it initially appears.

It’s not as scary or as effective as the first film, but points for the performances, and for trying hard to do something different and fresh.

Strong performances keep the viewer guessing as much as our heroine, but the character drama recedes as the thriller element builds, to its detriment.

While it’s a woefully incomplete middle chapter, at least it’s never boring.

Lawther’s a charismatic, uncompromising lead, and Billy’s campaign is an inspiring one, but this sometimes settles for broad strokes of heroism or villainy where more subtlety would have increased its impact.

The plot is predictable and the look unmemorable, but Johansson has nevertheless crafted a pleasingly old-fashioned character piece with just enough bite to balance its emotion.

An uneven but essentially likeable story about the joys of setting yourself improbable goals and the tribes you can find as a result, with a strong, committed performance from Bell at its heart.

This is silly and sentimental, but it’s also basically well-meaning and inoffensive. Best watched after quite a few grappas, or with your sprightly grandmother.

There’s a good-hearted father and son tale at the heart of the madness here, but the surroundings are sometimes a little too silly for true greatness.

This spectacular adventure sometimes wanders across the borders of invention into artificiality, but finds its feet when it focuses in on its characters and their relationships.

The film’s glowing, golden cinematography suggests a far warmer story than it in fact delivers, but Winslet’s stunning turn is worth a look if you can stand the consciously stagey feel.

[Ridley Scott's] second film in as many months, after The Last Duel, is uneven, overlong and completely over the top, and has characters and plot turns that Marvel and Pixar would reject as ‘a bit much’. The good news is that it is undeniably a proper drama and, for the most part, wildly entertaining.

Cavill and Hammer are made for each other, but the film can’t always find the pyrotechnics to match their chemistry.

A life story packed with incident means that this sometimes rushes past events that would be formative for anyone else, but equally means that Lamarr’s life story is never, ever dull.

Big, dumb and only mostly fun, this doesn’t always find the right tone to marry action and charm, but Johnson’s remote and ruthless superhero is a welcome change from the norm.

It’s beautifully designed and pleasantly quirky, with fun performances from the cast, yet the arch narrative style and structure can make the whole feel thin and unsatisfying.

Happily, it emerges at last with enough inventive action to stand alongside its murderous predecessors, and makes Ana de Armas into a likeable assassin hero – a phrase that makes more sense in her killer-filled world than our own.

The stories are all individually charming, but overly familiar animation and underwhelming character-design blunt the effect. 

Creepy rather than scary, and more a ghost story than a monster movie, this has a good heart but feels a little toothless for something with so many killer robots.

Nearly as good as the last film — the starrier cameos compensating somewhat for the more scattershot plot — this is fun but could have been more deeply felt.

It won't do anything to win over those not already partial to Tarsem's style, but it has more than enough blood, guts and glamour to satisfy – and Cavill looks like a superman.

It rips a few too many pages from familiar playbooks, but when it indulges in its own weirdness this film casts off those heavy caterpillar tracks and soars.

Savage directs with a light hand, and sometimes you wish for a little more shape to the baggier scenes.

The film doesn’t quite trust the magic of the garden, adding visual dazzle and, sometimes, artificiality, but when the film relies on the kids and their relationship it still finds the book’s magic.

Fleischer Camp brings a light touch and a good human cast to this reverently faithful effort, but it’s never as clear and bright as its source material.

With its uncompromising commitment to gross-out injuries, nerdy pop culture in-jokes and inappropriate touching, Deadpool 2 was clearly made to cater to existing fans with every innuendo-filled moment (they should stay through the credits for some important story points that are very nearly thrown away).

A perfectly serviceable biopic with good performances, which goes some way to explaining Franklin’s genius as a musician and a star, but one that isn’t nearly as transcendent as its subject deserves.

It’s silly and a little too slow, but the characters are enormously charming and the design is overwhelmingly sumptuous. It should give viewers, especially children, a welcome hit of Christmas magic.

It’s a well-made adventure with great energy and considerable style, but it’s essentially a maze without an exit.

A sugar-fuelled thrill, this boasts a fine young cast and pleasantly pantomime adult roles. It may be too long for younger kids, but tweens are going to love it.

A quiet and meditative portrait of the artist as a retiree, this lacks incident or high stakes but has an elegiac feeling of regret and reckoning that fits its subject’s twilight years.

Maybe art does demand something profound of us all, but here the big, interesting ideas have been chipped away in favour of subpar scares, leaving this film’s own cult appeal looking rather limited.

This is an Aquaman film that needs lots more Aquaman and vastly less bombast. It’s visually wild and recklessly inventive, but the cast deserve better than to be cast adrift in a tempest of CGI.

The storytelling is a little loose, but as a workplace comedy with a side-line in romance, this earns its laughs thanks to the immensely game Henson and a stellar supporting cast.