Tim Robey

Benedict Cumberbatch is inspiredly cast, serving up a technically ingenious performance which may be his juiciest ever.

This defiantly blank canvas may strike you as a puzzling, even a dubious, heroine, but Ryder’s terrific. And at least she has the last laugh: no one can get their graffiti to stick.

Midway will never be mistaken for a classic, and even box office success for the $100 independent production looks dicey. Stretches of the film work beautifully, though, and the sinking feeling for Japan’s forces is painted with sympathy, not schadenfreude.

For all the film’s fumbled shortcuts, air of semi-intentional Nineties-ness, and the completely mad bit with a stray flight of doves, it jollies along with some amiability.

Boy Erased could have been more sharply etched, all told – there’s something naggingly indistinct about it. But the lessons of Conley’s experience fight manfully, all the same, to punch through and be counted.

It uses some hoary devices to twist your arm, but resistance, eventually, is futile.

It has a whistle-stop quality, and you sometimes wish it would slow down to savour more personal details, rather than dishing out brisk bullet points from this amazing life.

There’s only so much in this desperately involved historical saga that Chadha and her screenwriters are able to grapple with.

There’s enough in Mr Jones to make you want a good deal more.

It has heft, it looks amazing, and it's businesslike to a fault.

It’s unlikely to change anyone’s life, exactly, but it’s genial, funny, and invigorating.

An artistic spin on tragedy that’s deft, witty, very well-acted, and more diverting than it is profound.

This meat-and-potatoes B-thriller stays modest and grounded: compared with the noisy excesses of higher-budgeted action flicks, it has a kind of crude integrity.

For a comedy about a tribe of manic homunculi with nylon faux-hawks, it’s really got to be counted a pleasant surprise.

From top to bottom, it’s Brydon’s film, and his performance matches the modesty of the surroundings: rarely pushing too hard, he finds just the right groove as a browbeaten Everyman lacking spring in his step (or dash in his breaststroke).

Many things in this film have an off-kilter absurdity, for good and bad.

Come the final act, the best political thrillers don't play nice, after all – they twist the knife. This one’s so concerned with making the world a better place, it retracts the blade and wipes it clean

Cinematically, Golda doesn’t altogether avoid a TV-movie stodginess – it looks a bit drab, with some duff effects and uneven staging. But it has a businesslike running time, and doesn’t waste it.

The film brings us down, as well as letting itself down somewhat – a late scuffle in a peat bog is poorly motivated, the ending too vague. But the jangling escalations of the first half still mark Andrews out as a name to watch.

At the end, it’s hard to avoid the sense you’ve watched a grab-bag of horror conceits, a kind of pot-pourri-potboiler with organising principles cooked up to provide a veneer of cohesion.

It's halfway-strong, just under-dramatised; goodness, though, if it doesn't show what O'Connell is capable of.

None of this quite counts as stop-the-presses stuff in the present day, but it’s enough to make this a sharp debut, with a shivery undertow.

Sincerity isn’t the film’s problem; it’s more a question of mileage.

Director Justin Lin has become the man to give this franchise legs: the start and finish here, defying every imaginable law of physics, are series highs.

The film is not only unchallenging, it seems actively scared of challenging us. You emerge feeling pacified and only semi-entertained.

Stuntman-turned-director Chad Stahelski honours the choreography first and foremost – there’s none of the choppy editing that can often cover for this-will-do blockbuster combat, but bravura long takes which push the stuntmen and Reeves (with a lot of digital assistance) to the limits of their presumed endurance.

The production design and effects for this apocalyptic terrain are way above par for this sort of thing, and evidence of a much higher budget than Ball had first time around.

Arrogance may be the Achilles’ heel of all Grant’s baddies, including this one, but a tip-toeing aversion to risk makes Heretic end with a whimper.