Robbie Collin

For the microscopic subset of cinema-goers who watch Magic Mike films for the plot, Last Dance may prove disappointing. Returning screenwriter Reid Carolin doesn’t come up with anything novel to do with the hackneyed let’s-put-on-a-show premise.

The thing about Spielberg these days is he makes this stuff look easy.

There’s lots to enjoy in this aviation disaster thriller slash tropical shoot-em-up, with its uproariously blunt title high on the list.

In spirit, it’s all very Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. But in execution, it’s far closer to Meet the Parents with a heavy dose of identity politics.

It’s a modest but polished psychological drama that keeps threatening to mutate into an old-fashioned toxic relationship thriller – and the tension between what it actually is and where it might be going makes it an enjoyably nerve-jangling watch.

The Nicolas Cage aficionado carries two hopes into each of the 59-year-old actor’s new films. The first – not often met, truth be told – is that it will be good. And the second, failing that, is that it will be mad. Alas, this thin and lumpy western is neither.

Banderas is good value, playing the role a few shades more seriously than it deserves, while first-time director Richard Hughes deploys much fizzing neon and halogen to strike a convincingly sleazy tone. But even at 90 minutes the plot feels padded, and it’s all so preeningly sordid.

Having slyly slipped the bonds of the past, Corsage eventually allows its heroine to make a very modern break for it in the film’s (wholly fictional) final act. It’s a fun, coolly outrageous manoeuvre – and the final shot is so freeing, it’s as if the laces on your own invisible corset had suddenly been cut.

Seydoux is coolly enthralling throughout: her mask-like face, often streaked with a single, strategic tear, mirrors the fundamental blankness of her line of work. Thanks to her performance, France is never less than intriguing. But it’s also extremely hard to get along with – a broadcast-news parable whose sense of purpose keeps fuzzing in and out.

The film is thrillingly reckless enough to make you genuinely dread what’s coming next.

For all its world-building sprawl, The Way of Water is a horizon-narrowing experience – the sad sight of a great filmmaker reversing up a creative cul-de-sac.

Emancipation is a finely crafted, unflinching pursuit thriller about a slave seizing his freedom in 1860s Louisiana, and the first notable thing about it is that Smith is terrific in it.

The script, co-written by Del Toro and Patrick McHale, is perhaps a little slick when it comes to hustling the plot towards the next moral lesson. But the storytelling itself is unashamedly old-fashioned, and forays into the political and the macabre are all carefully tailored to younger viewers.

Like its precursor, Glass Onion doubles as a dazzlingly engineered gizmo and a raucous cautionary satire, with implications that billow out into the world even as its mechanisms snap satisfyingly shut.

Parts of The Menu taste familiar. There’s a dash of Michael Haneke’s winking mercilessness; a soupçon of Midsommar’s black-hearted mischief; the sheeny satire of super-wealth comes straight from Succession. But the cast and filmmakers’ commitment to nasty delight is unswerving, while the dinner ends in the most gratifying way imaginable: just deserts.

Adams almost makes it work through sheer force of musical-comedy will: her mimicry of “classic wicked stepmother poses” is a scream, and despite the thin material, she never looks less than fully, beamingly engaged. Even so, it’s hard not to wish she’d just stuck with her happily ever after first time around.

The first Enola Holmes was colourful, spirited – and made for cinemas, though it was fast-tracked onto streaming during Covid. The sequel, however, has the silty pall of content: scenes often look dreary and move more drearily still; you’d swear in the fight scenes the actors are just taking it in turns to be hit. Elementary? Not really – just basic.

Against this enticing, enigmatic backdrop, the odd sops to mainstream taste – some comic shrieking, a sprinkling of toilet humour – feel unnecessary, but forgivable. It’s the sort of film you’re relieved to discover still exists.

Only Nyong’o and Winston Duke, whose avuncular mountain tribe chief M’Baku makes a welcome return, actually feel like human beings. Elsewhere it’s drainingly apparent we’re just watching the nth round of chess pieces being rearranged. Like Namor with his dinky ankle-wings, this franchise has become super-heroically adept at treading water.

If we’re reaching for something, anything nice to say here – and we absolutely are – Theron’s black trouser suit and trench coat is a strong look.

Against serene and haunting backdrops, the animation itself has a raucous energy that’s constantly thrilling, and leans into the children’s vulnerability as well as their high spirits.

This quietly courageous debut feature from Anastasia Tsang, which had its world premiere at this year’s Tokyo Film Festival, is an elegy for that lost Hong Kong – and suggests that in certain corners of the city, its old spirit still fizzes and glows.

The idea is that Chickie’s experiences will challenge his simplistic view of the conflict, but Farrelly frames his jaunt as a glorified gap year, with various atrocities repackaged as opportunities for personal growth. Napalm

Amsterdam might encompass 15 years of history, straddle two continents and throw in innumerable subplots, but it becomes increasingly hard to shake the sense that you’re watching a very thin idea twiddling its thumbs.

Dunham’s film has the kind of winning light touch that’s impossible to fluke.

Schrader can do this stuff in his sleep, and in Master Gardener you sometimes wonder if he might be.

Heidi Thomas’s screenplay, cannily expanding a little on Bennett’s glisteningly witty original script, shows its hand with tactical finesse.

The film contains deeply felt work by Hugh Jackman and Vanessa Kirby, but it’s an otherwise drab, simplistic, mechanical thing that wears its workings right on the surface.