Peter Bradshaw

In many ways it’s a shrewd sketch of the ways that real life, in all its embarrassment and banality, does not respectfully stop for bad news.

The combustible mix of lowlife cynicism and high art provide enough energy and enjoyment to power the first two-thirds of this long film. But in the end it flags, and it’s as if the outrageous black comedy has to be paid for with solemn romantic fantasy. But what a performance from Butler.

It’s almost incredible to think that the Toy Story series is more than 30 years old, a central plank of the Pixar animation golden age. But now it is played out and IP exhaustion has set in.

As a formal experiment, Dry Leaf has its own conviction and self-possession and there is a deliberate, if opaque artistry here: one shot shows us a dry leaf under Irakli’s car-tyres, another gives us wet leaves in a waterfall. The soft-edged, pixelated look is, however, interesting and surprisingly watchable, bringing a kind of painterly effect.

Overall this is a frustrating and rather precious piece of work.

Black-belt performances from Claire Foy and Richard E Grant put some vim and vigour into this haranguingly one-note and unidirectional period romp of the raucously bewigged and be-poxed 18th century.

Here is a niche drama about one of the most important chapters in the history of experimental jazz. It is however watchable, well acted and avoids the music-movie cliches – though I could have done without the fourth-wall-breaking lectures about the nature of jazz improvisation.

The tension is capably managed and Magimel is a gargoyle of menace.

There is archival interest and historic drama in what Lennon has to say – and especially for me in his generous, open-minded comments about newer bands such as the B-52s and the Clash. But this is a disappointment.

The Dreamed Adventure is clearly the work of a director with a fluent, distinctive film-making language, but what she is trying to tell us is elusive.

One for the fans … but some nostalgic entertainment here.

There is much that is valuable and interesting in this movie, although it is a little predictable in what it has to say and how it says it, though Campagne and Macchia give committed performances as secret lovers in the shadow of war.

The Man I Love is an honestly intended and conceived movie, but that faintly baffling and strenuous lead performance sits uncomfortably.

A sweet, odd diversion – more eccentric, maybe, than Travolta intended.

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s new film is a bafflingly unsatisfying and unconvincing muddle of ideas and moods.

This one, sadly, is flawed by that perennial problem of how to end a story with a great premise.

There is something stolid and at times monotonous about the way this is presented to the audience – as ever with Nemes, the force of gravity is increased, making everything 20% heavier and denser. And Barábas’s performance is frankly actorly rather than real in his incessant frown of righteous resentment. It’s a minor movie from this always interesting film-maker.

I confess that, for me, this movie doesn’t have the impact of his comparably modernist Parallel Mothers, but Almodóvar’s sensual, playful, melancholy films are always food for thought and feeling.

The film is watchable and barrels along capably enough, but perhaps there isn’t enough of the humanity, humour and extravagant space melodrama which has made and continues to make Star Wars lovable.

At all events, [Nemes] undoubtedly brings impeccable craftsmanship, and the performances and production design are strong.

This is a very glib and unsatisfying drama, whose essential naivety becomes apparent when the lead character is forced to confront the crisis in her life.

Ultimately, the film does not compellingly deliver a blazing truth about its various relationships – but neither does it intriguingly withhold any such truth from us.

It’s tender and sometimes beautifully made, but also contrived and occasionally features some too-good-to-be-true caring characters. Frankly, it’s rather precious.

It’s a riff or theme-variation on Kieślowski’s A Short Film About Love – with a twist of Hitchcock’s Rear Window – doggedly spinning a spider’s web out of itself. The result is intricate, elaborate, though a little nebulous.

Butterfly Jam is contrived, tonally uncertain, implausible and frankly plain silly in its underpowered kind of magic-unrealism, with some clunky secondhand Mean Streets mob-fraternal dialogue and pedantic ethnic-foodie cred, and elliptically positioning key scenes off camera for no obviously satisfying reason.

Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet’s new film is a hectic, garrulous, breezily agreeable comedy of midlife emotional upheaval, unencumbered by any serious or permanent concern about any of the passion and heartache that it briefly encounters. It’s also a movie that declines to allow its characters to be changed in any way by the excitements and disappointments that life has to throw at them.

It’s entertaining and bizarre chaos, anchored by Odenkirk’s hangdog air of gloomy resignation to the violent mess which he has to clean up.

The film’s absurdity and antique dramatic style never quite come to life.