Trevor Johnston

Half of a Yellow Sun bravely takes on too broad a canvas with too narrow a budget, but it’s a relevant saga that’s worth telling.

By far the film’s best move is casting some lovable veteran actors. Ellen Burstyn is adorable as Adaline’s daughter and Harrison Ford steals the show as an old-timer with an instinct for saying the wrong thing.

Both actors are tremendous. Sy adds powerful dramatic shading to his usual irresistible charm, while Gainsbourg hints at a sunnier disposition beneath her volatile nervousness.

It’s just a shame the film is slightly ragged, with a tendency to preach when there’s more than enough drama to get the point across. Still, it’s an important story, told with commitment.

The film is let down by thin characterisation, struggling to generate much empathy with its square-jawed, tough-yet-troubled special-forces warrior heroes.

At its heart, is Danner’s lovely performance, vulnerable and smart behind the sarcastic façade, and sealed by a devastating karaoke performance of Cry Me a River that hints at the musical talent her character left behind in her youth.

Gout’s ambition pays off in a climactic flourish. And the assault-and-battery of camera tricks captures Mexico’s head-spinning everyday madness.

Fans should enjoy it; parents won't suffer too much.

It’s all unexpectedly uninvolving.

It’s all done with care and authentic Japanese locations, and is engrossing for anyone with an interest in the subject. But there’s scant drama as proceedings plod their way towards mutual understanding.

It’s refreshing to see a first feature which isn’t just a calling card, but driven by an authentic need to find a fresh angle on representing an undervalued cultural heritage.

There’s much over-egged mugging from the grown-ups (bumbling toff Richard Griffiths, shouty sarge John Lynch), but the lads are spot-on: young Mackay is effectively touching and bristling O’Connell hints at Next Big Thing charisma.

Seidl gestures towards understanding rather than confrontation – turning in a slighter, softer-grained film than its predecessors, but no worse for it.

Il Buco is certainly thoughtful and worthwhile, but perhaps just short of the revelation we were hoping for.

Tigers is a vivid, chastening look inside the ruthless promised land that is top-level sport.

We’re all set for sparks to fly, but unfortunately reality doesn’t quite live up to the set-up.

The result isn’t as powerful as it should be. But it’s still cheering to see a film whose moral journey has little to do with the usual Hollywood chestnut of white middle-class consciousness-raising.

Child’s Pose plays its thematic cards far too early, but it’s sustained by Gheorghiu’s compelling central turn as the endlessly self-deluding grande dame.

Classic opening gunfight and first-rate performances from Garner, and from Robards as the tubercular, laconically resigned Doc Holliday. A determinedly old-style Western, made two years before Peckinpah shook things up with The Wild Bunch.

Occasionally flummoxed by the scale of the period canvas, [Dunham] slathers too many somewhat shapeless scenes in Carter Burwell’s incessantly cheery a capella score, and gets stuck in a plodding pace that makes the movie seem longer than it actually is. The flaws though, don’t stop us getting caught up in Catherine’s world, and it’s refreshing to encounter a medieval story which eschews savagery for a humane generosity sure to spur many useful parent-child conversations.

The film plumbs no great depths. But it snappily combines frisky aerial action, a sprinkling of fairy dust and much cuddly bonding with the massive furball of the title.

Not exactly arthouse, but as subtitled fluff goes, we’re talking première classe.

Pretty bland, but you have to admit co-producer Belafonte had an eye for talent, spotlighting HipHop legends-in-the-making Afrika Bambaata and the Soul Sonic Force, the Rock Steady Crew, and Grand Master Melle Mel and The Furious Five.

Harlin is never a man to shy away from the lure of Very Big Explosions, and, on a technical level, the spectacle's impressive. The only actor to make much of an impact is Malahide's colonial officer, who extracts tart irony from the merest crumbs.

Scantily clad Ms Munro, vengeful telepathic pterodactyls and cut-price explosions comprise a familiar mix, but it's daft enough to enjoy if you're in a schoolboy mood.

Yet just when the movie has us in its grasp, the script falls to pieces and turns into a crass female-in-peril button-pusher whose shameless psycho-killer clichés insult the intelligence.