Olly Richards

Great houses, shame about the plotting. The sort of glossy nonsense you might happily half-watch on a lazy Sunday.

A delightful premise never fully comes to life in this sweet romcom, which is a real shame because it gets off to such a strong start.

There’s still plenty here to make you shiver, but in letting events out of the basement this sequel has also released much of the tension.

The usually distinctive filmmaker – Black Swan, The Wrestler, Mother! – is in unflashy form for this solid, starry but not very memorable thriller about one man’s very bad night.

There are almost endless holes you could pick in its logic and storytelling, but it gives you few reasons to want to. This Friday’s freakier, but it’s kind of… funner too.

This is far from the disaster that was predicted. It’s cute and cheerful, but its efforts to make Snow White both respectful to the original and relevant to a new audience leave it stranded in some smudgy grey areas.

It’s third time unlucky for a series that still hasn’t worked out what it wants to be. The Last Dance can’t find its rhythm.

The film is at its best when it’s sitting just with them, not doing much, not trying too hard to be eccentric; just shooting the breeze and being cheerfully weird.

All involved have done a solid job in executing what most fans likely want from a very belated Beverly Hills Cop sequel. This is not an action movie with the slickness or invention to take on any current blockbuster franchise. It’s cheerfully old-fashioned and easy. It feels like you should be popping open a VHS case to watch it.

Bertrand Bonello’s sci-fi epic-cum-period-romance-cum-stalker-thriller is absolutely teeming with ideas. That they don’t all come together in an entirely convincing way doesn’t spoil the overall effect of something thought-provoking, very handsomely made, and appealingly weird.

Its brainless brawn is again pretty entertaining, until the credits roll and you can instantly forget the whole thing.

A step back from the last film in terms of ambition, this nevertheless continues the series’ chirpy, amiable mood. Nothing to be po-faced about here.

As a take on a very difficult topic, made even more so by current events, this is admirable and handsomely executed, but it’s rather like walking through a museum exhibition: it’s packed with fascinating detail, but doesn’t let you close enough to touch it.

A by-the-numbers biography, this sheds little new light on an icon but features a soaring performance from Kingsley Ben-Adir.

With a 105-minute running time, making it practically a short in the MCU, it has just enough good stuff that it doesn’t outstay its welcome. But the intricate plotting that was once a Marvel selling point is now becoming a millstone around its muscular neck, keeping newcomers out instead of welcoming them in.

As a perfectly serviceable horror movie, it at least gets the Exorcist franchise back into respectable territory, but there was the potential for something much better.

The horror-lite element gives it a boost, with Branagh’s direction conjuring up a few jumps, but this gently entertaining mystery could have used far more scares. If he’d gone the full leering Hammer Horror, rather than tastefully occult, this could have been a scream.

It’s not one of this summer’s strongest entries, but it’s fun to spend 90 minutes in this dog-eat-dick world.

An ambitious documentary on one of the most intriguing, frightening phenomena of our time. The attempt to cover every aspect of a broad topic results in an intriguing if slightly disjointed watch.

Take That have more than enough hits to give this a solid soundtrack, but the story they’re loosely tied to is weakly constructed and far gloomier than the cheery music deserves.

New director Steve Caple Jr (Creed II) isn’t as slick a director as Michael Bay – it’s sometimes hard to orient yourself in his larger battles – but he’s efficient and can land some solid gags. It feels generally similar in tone to Bumblebee, by far the most fun Transformers movie.

Sure, the final act is the sort of monster battle we’ve seen countless times, but Shazam! Fury of the Gods never loses the energy and easy laughs that makes this second-tier hero far more fun than a lot of his more famous colleagues.

It’s almost churlish to complain that some of the carnage is too basically carnage-y, but at 169 minutes there’s a lot of it to sit through. That running time might test the casual fan, but for Wick devotees this character’s battle through assassin hell will be close to action-movie heaven.

One of the sillier series entries in terms of plot, but still scary enough and funny enough to leave you hoping Ghostface might yet kill again.

If you’ve never seen Luther, don’t start here. You will be completely lost. Even dedicated fans are likely to be confused by this messy revamp of a story that once felt dangerous but is now merely daft.

It’s gory and mildly funny but its joke – that the bear is acting like a serial killer – is the only one the film has. It wears thin very quickly.

Robustly acted by a superb cast and with some beautiful moments, this follow-up to The Father nevertheless feels less mature and less sure of itself.

Like the Minions, this instalment is barely distinguishable from any of the others, but it’s easy to be won over by its nutty joy and enthusiasm.