Tom Huddleston

A fascinating true tale of animal welfare becomes an annoyingly pretentious doc.

Director Athina Rachel Tsangari keeps things brisk, maintaining an almost nature-doc distance from her subjects. Her affection for them is plain, but that doesn’t mean she lets them off the hook.

What emerges is a sympathetic portrait of a genuinely idiosyncratic, outrageous individual whose towering musical talent never stood a chance against his rampaging personal demons.

This is all fun all the time, a dizzying carnival of wisecracks, fisticuffs, explosions, chases and truly eye-popping effects.

Precious Cargo isn’t actually as objectionable as your average petrol-station-bargain-bin thriller, thanks to one or two half-decent lines, a plot that vaguely makes sense and an unexpected dearth of outright misogyny. It’s still pretty rubbish, though.

The visuals are painstaking and horribly beautiful – shades of Hitchcock, Carpenter, even Spielberg – while the gore scenes are truly outrageous, knocking cheap imitators (hey, Nicolas Winding Refn, this is how it’s done) into a cocked hat.

It’s time to put this franchise on ice for good.

There are times when Cell feels like a surreal pastiche of po-faced apocalypse movies. But no such luck: this is every bit as bad as it appears.

This is one of those romances where the woman only exists to be a figure of worship for a nerdy, socially awkward young man, whose side we’re meant to take unquestioningly. Sorry, Pif, but you’ll need to try a bit harder.

The photography is starkly lovely, the slow drip of information is smartly handled and the central performances are appealingly ambiguous.

It’s all too much too fast, and the cumulative effect is like watching a two-hour trailer – more dizzying than thrilling.

The word "personal" is bandied around a lot in film reviews, but it’s hard to think of a work that better fits the description than avant-garde icon Chantal Akerman’s intimate swansong No Home Movie.

Thank the movie gods for Dwayne Johnson, who delivers a performance of such charm, such unexpected goofiness that the screen practically glows every time he appears.

Unique and intoxicating, an art movie that grips like a thriller.

Director James Wan has his method down. The scares are effective and the camerawork is superb, all lurking long shots and short sharp shocks. Wan is fully aware of the austerity-era parallels in his story, and the period detail is surprisingly authentic.... But there’s little here we haven’t seen before.

[A] calm, reflective, gorgeously uneventful slice of nostalgic romance.

The total absence of originality here is notable, but it needn’t have been a problem: with a tighter plot, a touch of humour and some peppier, less slab-fisted action scenes this might actually have worked – a kind of Guardians of the Galaxy meets Lord of the Rings.

As a story about how hard it is to make your own way in the world, Kiki’s Delivery Service is truthful and scalpel-sharp. That it manages all this while remaining consistently funny, optimistic and exciting – even for little ones – is a mark of Miyazaki’s genius.

If you loved the game, you might enjoy watching the script contort itself into ever more zany shapes to incorporate the necessary elements: giant slings, teetering towers, boomeranging toucans. But it’s not enough to counteract the tiresome, sub-Lego Movie snarkiness of the script or the bright, busy and unengaging animation.

There are no memorable action scenes—the closest we get is a virtual rerun of the time-freeze sequence from the previous movie. And the script is just nonsense, comprised entirely of sarcastic asides, portentous gobbledygook ("The dawn of a new age will rise!" cries Isaac) and insider references that only the faithful will appreciate. Unless that’s you, it’s best to steer clear.

Respect is due to Joe Johnston and his screenwriters for not only fashioning a nifty, highly entertaining slice of pulpy comic-book action, but for making this most divisive of costumed crusaders universally relatable.

It’s ironic, but Keanu might be a better movie if it was more like TV: 90 plotless minutes of Key and Peele just goofing around on the mean streets might’ve been something really special.

It takes a while to find its focus – and takes itself just a little too seriously – but as low-budget Ozploitation goes, it’s snappy and effective.

Perhaps inevitably, the film as a whole doesn't stack up to its central performances.

It’s not a total washout: at least one gag in five is actually funny, and the action scenes set an enjoyably breakneck pace. If you’re an 11-year-old on a week-long sugar jag, you might just love it.