Ian Nathan

A flawed work held together by Alwyn’s tender presence.

Despite moody flashbacks to the Nazi takeover, Hirschbiegel draws a blank. Elser remains an enigma, a great what-if whose German torturers cannot comprehend acted alone.

Vallée’s post-traumatic stress comedy is more scientific than genuinely moving. Nevertheless, Gyllenhaal continues his post-Nightcrawler upgrade with another vivid performance in the key of strange.

For all the special effects and half-starved A-listers, this is a sodden beast. Perhaps there’s a reason that Melville only told half the story.

Charming in that neurotically adorable way Charles Schulz established over many years, this is a fond continuation of the Snoopyverse.

On one level a fascinating refraction of the Amanda Knox trial into an examination of perception, on another an increasingly trying hall of mirrors.

Lavish and sporadically powerful, Jolie's POW biopic may have just enough gravity to entice the Academy, but struggles to bring truth to an unbelievable truth.

A persuasive, warts-and-bolts depiction of warfare from the guts of a tank yoked to an overwrought, sub-Private Ryan account of innocence under fire — so a hit and a miss.

Weightless, but not without its enchantments, this is Woody Allen coasting. But where better to coast than the loveliest coast of all?

For all its chilled intelligence and topical ambition this is a bloodless adaptation, but worth seeing for Hoffman’s deft and ghostly presence.

What begins as a thrilling pastiche of comic-book formula gets bogged down in its own scientific prattle — not that you ever stop adoring Johansson’s magnificent heroine.

An uneven debut from John Slattery that nonetheless shows flashes of flair and a jet-black sense of humour.

For all it boasts in ingenious style, this genial American yarn lacks the delicious bile of Jenuet’s early days.

With Eastern Promises and Dirty Pretty Things, screenwriter Steven Knight has proved his ear for London's darker rhythms. Here, though, there's little to raise the pulse.

Good intentions, vivid setting and TLJ on top form do not make up for a lack of anything truly compelling.

However exotic the locations and starry the stars, there’s no escaping this is The Devil’s Advocate of online gambling. Fold.

Already a hit in America, 42 is a well-told but square biopic doing justice to Jackie Robinson rather than exploring him.

The CG does its part of the bargain, but even more than the brighter, breezier original this is a pale imitation of Potter.

Del Toro is giving scope to a boyhood lust for mayhem, the multi-million-dollar equivalent of kicking over sandcastles and torturing insects. There is something infectiously juvenile in that.

Despite DiCaprio’s prize performance, purists will fume, but even as lit-crashing razzle-dazzle entertainment Luhrmann’s adaptation is a candelabrum too far.

Hitchcock for dummies: brisk, jolly, well-played but oversimplified.

An uneven mix of impressively executed, violent clichés about good ol' boys defending the American right to flout the law.

As earnestly as they have tried to continue the formerly excellent spy series, everything Gilroy and crew concoct only serves to mock the excellence and passion with which Greengrass delivered his films.

Family dysfunction to make Jeremy Kyle blush, but thanks to McConaughey's oily power and Friedkin's unflinching purpose it's a compelling beast.

Buffeted by a lack of suspense, threadbare characters, and a very poor script, the stunning visuals, gloopy madness, and sterling Fassbenderiness can't prevent Prometheus feeling like Alien's poor relation.

With so many films adapted from novels, it's nice to see cinema paying homage to unheralded greats of literature like Sebald. While this one often struggles to do justice to his sense of grandeur and poetry, it'll be manna for fans of the German's work.

There's no question it's stunningly mounted, and Wasikowska makes a much stronger Jane than Alice, but the romance is overripe and the climax underdone.

Not one to let slow-building tension and mystery get in the way of wild flourishes of extremism and shock, Ken Russell hit upon a story that more or less handled his structural excesses and tendency toward blasphemy.