Simran Hans

The film is a vehicle for Haddish, whose timing and delivery make the jokes jump off the page.

Debicki (The Tale, Widows) is wonderful as Woolf, a wry and solemn observer, but the rest of the film is all too literal.

The film feels more like an elbow in the ribs than a slap on the wrist, revelling in the miscommunications between Susan the Sasquatch’s literal-minded monkey brain.

The metaphors are messy (trauma makes people extraordinary?) and the pacing’s off, but it’s fun to see the individual films’ universes crossing over.

Shanley has an Oscar and a Pulitzer (he wrote the sublime Moonstruck, and the stage and screen versions of Doubt). Here, that’s easy to forget, given the cartoon accents and overblown metaphors about horses destined to jump the fence.

Adams is a vivacious screen presence with a twinkle in her eye, and Jordan can’t quite match her, unable to draw out any real inner turmoil in a character who is respectable to a fault.

The Roads Not Taken is frequently moving, and a fascinating creative idea, but without sufficient information about Leo’s character to anchor the narrative, it feels too abstract.

With its drab, overpowering score, this tedious drama is nearly as gruelling as the trek up Scotland’s Suilven.

The feelgood tone feels a little flaccid.

This zippy car chase thriller shares some DNA with Joel Schumacher’s 1993 black comedy Falling Down . . . . Both are darkly funny studies and send-ups of emasculated men, with Crowe’s character claiming to have been “dismissed as the unworthiest fuck to ever walk the planet”.

Probably, the intention was to make explicit the connections between Theo’s past and present, but there’s not enough detail or characterisation for this structural intervention to work. Without those connecting narrative bones, the result is all flab and no flavour.

The film fetishises female strength, but only in its ability to prop up men; its women remain prettified empty shells.

Simon Kinberg’s film feels aggressively focus-grouped for the girl-boss crowd.

Characters and storylines appear to have been chosen at random by a Woody Allen meme generator.

The performances create anthropological distance, not human empathy.

The journey is a nice excuse to paint Tom into a cheerily cosmopolitan portrait of the UK.

Tension is frequently punctured by clunky dialogue.

James’s natural charisma should allow the film to soar but he’s bogged down by an avalanche of distracting cameos, from Gremlins to Game of Thrones.

You could make the argument that this film is effective enough as a series of stunt gags in 70s costume, and an alcoholic bear certainly made me crack a smile. But the subplot involving DC’s attempts to bring up his 14-year-old daughter is a saccharine afterthought, and feels oddly out of step with the vacuous nature of the rest of the film’s throwaway laughs.

At least the CGI is clever, the consistency of Venom’s viscous, hostless form moving between molten metal and melted chewing gum.

Clearly, it’s intended as a vehicle for Wilson, who is credited as co-producer, but it’s Hathaway who steals the show.

The whole thing feels strangely pedestrian, unable to capture or channel Bowie’s maverick spirit.

The camera’s canted angles and shaky closeups convulse with feeling that the actors can’t seem to summon. Ensemble dance sequences convey neither emotion nor information (except that the felines each have 10 fully articulated human toes). The film is rated U, but many of its uncanny images are sure to haunt viewers for generations.

Rarely does a half-hour TV show successfully stretch itself into a 90-minute film. It’s a nice surprise, then, that the popular BBC mockumentary works as a feature.

The impish Leslie Mann is well cast as his dead wife, Elvira, who provides a jolt of creative inspiration. Judi Dench’s screechy caricature of psychic Madame Arcati is less winning.

These self-consciously upbeat moments clash horribly with the wider redemption narrative.

Frequently, the film is enraging. Not because it shows the way in which dogma has the power to rewire the moral instincts of its devotees, but for the sombreness with which it acknowledges that the devotees allow this to happen.