Kate Stables

Theron is gobsmackingly good as the real-life screen queen determined to unearth the victims of Fox News’ most powerful predator.

Greta Gerwig’s warm, woke take on America’s classic girlhood novel takes liberties, but makes a tender, engrossing tale.

Zellweger knocks it out of the park, lighting up this punchy and moving late-life biopic with big-hearted, big-voiced panache.

Tween-appropriate action and jungle-genre gags keep this family-friendly reboot giggly rather than gripping

The powerful, vanity-free performances are the real thing in this bittersweet biopic.

Ronan is the monarch of the lens in this feisty, feminist royal biopic, which favours queenly clashes over battlefield action.

A heist movie with serious bite, Widows is both brilliantly tense and strikingly relevant.

Simply doesn't have the original's magic.

Theron is astonishingly good, giving a subtle, vanity-free performance.

There’s a bumpy, wholly unexpected dip into melodrama along the way, but the film’s commitment to its characters, and its sheer emotional heft, carries you along regardless.

The storytelling can feel a bit plodding, but Jim Broadbent’s exuberant Ernest and Brenda Blethyn’s timid, upwardly mobile Ethel give the marriage a touching intimacy and warmth.

Gyllenhaal is outstanding in this inspiring warts-and-all story of a Boston bombing survivor’s recovery battle.

Musing on memory and machine-emotion, it echoes Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Her. But despite its fine portraits of loss, it never escapes its stage-play origins.

Stone and Carell ace it in this smart biopic, stylishly recreating the champ-vs-clown clash of the tennis titans that electrified ’70s America.

Mixing a rom-coma into the romcom, this smart, sweet and highly personal love story finds a winning formula.

Jean-Pierre Léaud effortlessly summons up the iron ruler inside the failing man.

Both smart political primer and tense cautionary tale.

Filled with cherry-blossom gorgeousness and sentimental homages to small-town Japanese life, it's a film of quiet, telling moments, even when big revelations surface.

Taraji P. Henson excels in a heart-warming history lesson that proves not only rocket men had The Right Stuff.

Interviewing key figures in his life, they build an anecdote-rich bio.

Coupled with the extraordinary lush visuals and fluid camerawork – moulding the ocean’s many moods and textures till it’s practically a character – Moana essays a rich, vivid feel. It might not be a whole new world, but it’s a fantastic voyage.

The portentous narration, restless visuals and whimsical ghost characters (an unexpected Night at the Museum-style Napoleon) combine to make a thoughtful case about the inevitable interweaving of art and war.

Based on a true story, it’s directed with beautiful, painterly restraint by Anne Fontaine (best known for pretty pieces such as Gemma Bovery), who lets powerful performances by Agata Buzek (as a nun of faltering faith), and fearsome abbess Agata Kulesza power the story.

Hugely charming if somewhat cluttered, Burton’s horror-spiked YA freaks-and-a-geek fantasy proves a Home run for Asa Butterfield.

Besson is at his balls-out bonkers best in this genre-scrambling, mind-expanding exhilarator.

Steeped in the bitter political divisions of the Civil War, Spielberg's thrilling film about hardwon freedoms is immersed in its own time, but speaks eloquently to ours.

Despite its hard-scrabble setting, eco-gloominess and dystopian story, this dark fairytale is engagingly vivid and life-affirming. An ambitious love letter to a Louisiana way of life that's being literally washed away.

Its attempt to cram in both origin story and follow-up adventure makes it a long haul for the target tinies.