Leslie Felperin

Even though Trump puts herself, her husband and many members of her family at the heart of the story, the end result never feels navel-gazing or narcissistic.

It would be risible if it weren’t so offensive, mean-spirited and, frankly, nasty.

Utterly bonkers but also sort of brilliant, Judy & Punch creates an origin story for the traditional British puppet show (usually known as Punch and Judy,) resulting in a tonally complex comedy-drama about spousal abuse, infant mortality and misogyny told with magic tricks, puppets and slapstick.

Somehow the tacky piano score amplifies the ineptitude of Mary McGuckian’s direction, but even so one can’t fail to be impressed by a scene where Brady’s Gray literally dances about architecture, proving that it really is possible.

The period trappings – which must have cost a bomb – are lush and smartly deployed without being heavy-handed, and the two young leads are very watchable.

Sometimes a seemingly unprepossessing genre film comes along that has finer qualities than you would expect. Such is the case here.

This dorky, silly sci-fi feature offers a weird blend of high-grade craftsmanship (especially from the visual effects, cinematography and music departments), and guileless ineptitude, especially in the crucial realms of screenwriting, acting and editing.

It ticks nearly every box in the checklist of films you wish you could like more than you actually do.

It takes a good hour or so to get going, but then it builds up some watchable spectacle – although Gray goes way overboard with the moody, fireside lighting, and the rousing orchestral score gets all ceilidh-cutesy for the happy montages.

Told with clarity, respect and empathy, and not just for the women on whom Weinstein preyed, Macfarlane's film offers a timely and fascinating overview of his story, one that's almost emblematic of the pathology of serial sexual abusers.

The Nowhere Inn is simultaneously satire and fan service, frothy fun and pretentious nonsense, depending on what the viewer wants it to be.

Like horse racing, filmmaking is a high-risk gamblers' game, but the team behind Dream Horse, the resulting dramatization of the Vokes' story, have surely bred a winner with this endearing, determinedly crowd-pleasing adaptation.

The Nest lingers long after the final credits. It may not have the same surprising newness that juiced the debut of Martha Marcy, but it casts an ineffable spell nevertheless.

Although clearly made with earnest good intentions, this shabbily constructed work feels way too thirsty for audience love as it strings together a series of life-affirming, message-laden and sometimes embarrassingly anachronistic moments that feel too unconnected to satisfy as a drama.

Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets blurs the boundary between documentary and feature filmmaking, making for a playful, compelling sui generis work.

The idyll is all so jolly that when the film swerves into misfortune in the final act, it feels not like a necessary dramatic corrective but just a dreary downer, like medicine there to stop the spoonfuls of sugar from going down so easily.

What's ultimately very endearing about Swift is her intelligence and self-awareness, qualities that also make her music compelling, sophisticated and capable of appealing both to adolescent kids and hipster musicologists.

Often moving but also disquieting and even intermittently funny, this drama unfurls a spiritual parable that is uniquely Polish but accessible to all.

Ma, with his natty suits and ruthless glare, brings heft and humour to the proceedings and easily upstages his pretty-boy co-stars.

With well-timed rhythms and backchat, the ensemble is quite credible as a gaggle of slightly obnoxious, mildly likable millennials on the brink of middle age.

Words can't do justice to the truly lavish sets and costumes on display here which are so dazzling, intricate and bizarre they serve as a useful distraction from the awkward dialogue and plot holes.

Packed with rambling digressions, sudden shifts of tone, and playful fake-outs as it shuttles between layers of “reality” and performance, but constructed with precision and assurance, it leaves you with both a sugar high and slight sense of nausea.

There are some neat, borderline gory animations to illustrate how concussions work, which for this viewer were a lot more interesting than the endless stretches of racing footage. The anonymous, off-the-peg score of backing music and flat editing, however, still make this a bit of a slog.

It's as if a bunch of horny grad students decided to loot a costume store and then remake Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom with camera phones, but less fun.

Whimsical and wistful, if occasionally a little too self-consciously kooky, British comedy-drama Sometimes Always Never constructs a pleasant portrait of a mildly unhappy family living in the English northwest.

The cast commit enthusiastically to the material, walking that fine line between comic exaggeration and an almost earnest dramatic sincerity.

With Aniara, the Swedish writing-directing team Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja deliver a cold, cruel, piercingly humane sci-fi parable that’s both bang on the zeitgeist and yet also unnervingly original.

A somewhat claggy, uneven work with stiff performances from the leads, both of whom seem to be sleep-talking lines as if they learned them in Yiddish first.