Robbie Collin

Deftly adapted by director Audrey Diwan from a novella, Happening is a period piece, but it’s acted and shot with a shivery immediacy.

It works as beautifully as it does because the film’s comedy has been machined with Swiss precision, and all of its characters written with obvious love.

The two stars generate an astonishing sensual charge in a brilliant addition to the Batman canon that refuses to behave like a blockbuster

At least Watts’s bright-eyed charisma and obvious commitment passes the time – while director Phillip Noyce, who also had Angelina Jolie running for her life in 2010’s Salt, does his best to keep things visually fresh.

The Duke is that rarest of things: a comedy that knows that a twinkle in the eye and a fire in the belly needn’t be mutually exclusive.

It’s less a film than a compound disaster scenario for comedy: to say I didn’t laugh once is to understate the sheer volume and vehemence of not-laughing I was doing during each of its 106 agonising minutes.

With Kimi, director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp have dazzlingly updated Rear Window for the work-from-home age: their film puts a thrillingly contemporary spin on a vintage paranoia-drenched premise.

As portraiture, it’s also unapologetically (and therefore unfashionably) complex: the unsavoury aspects of his personal life are frankly addressed, but never used as a stick with which to beat the work. Rather, the signature tone of the narration – nicely delivered by the Doctor Who actress Pearl Mackie – is one of curiosity. And the fascination proves infectious.

It’s testament to the artfulness of Moore and Johnathan McClain’s screenplay that your suspicions flit constantly between all four parties, and the denouement – which takes a surprising yet just about merited turn for the macabre – still manages to surprise.

The new film Dog is essentially an hour and three quarters of Channing Tatum rolling around with a dog – and quite frankly, for many of us, that’s enough.

This is a film which simply wouldn’t have worked in any medium but animation: in an hour and a half we come to know Amin intimately without actually setting eyes on him at all. It’s an ingenious way to tell a story that’s both extraordinary and commonplace: only with the teller’s anonymity tactfully preserved can the tale itself be hauled fully into the light.

Every frame is so obviously green-screened, airbrushed and otherwise climate-controlled that it unfolds without a squeak of peril – the stakes couldn’t have felt lower if an extra-life counter were sitting in the corner of the screen. As for the script, you can almost hear the words NEEDS TO BE FUNNIER written in capital letters in the margins at least once per scene.

A Wolf of Wall Street-like treatment of this story could have been a scream – and the details are more than bizarre, crass and damning enough to have supported it. But cheeks aside, this is flat, colourless stuff.

The Princess tells us nothing we don’t already know, but there’s bracing value in seeing it crisply spelled out.

It can’t be denied that as a piece of cover-all-bases, hi-sheen, lo-thought, built-to-order corporate product, the film runs with a steady and satisfying whirr.

It’s a film that could have so easily smacked of an exercise, but its beauty feels thrillingly natural, and its considerable emotional power is honestly earned.

A terrific, despair-drenched final scene is the viewer’s reward for staying the course: pitilessly cruel, spare and shivery, it’s got everything the rest of this strangely stiff and synthetic film lacks.

For all the placidity of its cud-chewing subject, Cow has a thrillingly alien charge.

The film has the heft of Shakespearean tragedy, but a more generous cosmic outlook. Maternal love goes a long way. [14 Mar 2015, p.10]

In place of depth, MacKay and Niewöhner invest Legat and Hartmann’s relationship with a watchable if uncomplicated friction, but it’s when the Führer himself first appears, more than half an hour into the film, that things really start to cook.

Rather than doing anything novel or surprising with the basic spies-gone-rogue template, The 355 just repackages it in girl-power wrapping: it’s the film equivalent of a high-fructose, corn-syrup-based fizzy drink being passed off as chic in taller, slimmer cans.

It is what these films always are – source material for its own advertising campaign – but in this instance, it’s little more, which might have been a problem if said campaign hadn’t already proven such a roaring success.

So no, The King’s Man doesn’t take itself especially seriously – until it suddenly, jarringly does.

The effects have a pleasingly retro patina, but the action itself is drab, the jokes scarce, while the town itself is both entirely characterless and oddly deserted, giving the impression that nothing’s really at stake. It’s just what we were warned about all those years ago: something weird that don’t look good.

At a time when the corporation’s live-action output keeps doubling down on the franchise grind, here from just over the garden fence is a lesson in storytelling that feels at once elegantly classical and zingily fresh.

At a glance, A Boy Called Christmas looks delightful enough, with its snowy landscapes, cosy knitwear, and scenes of Jim Broadbent larking around in a periwig and frock coat. But beneath its Paddington-meets-Potter storybook exterior, its bloodstream runs with purest gloop.

It’s a hard film to recommend, but it works on its own gutsily perturbing terms.

You suspect Sorkin relishes the clash between Ball’s fundamentally fatuous show and the razor-smartness of his take on it. And it is smart. It just isn’t much else.