Xan Brooks

On screen, the man play-acted the qualities of courage and resilience. Off it, he came to embody them too.

Time is of the essence; Eastwood’s 94 years old. He’s not prepared to be cross-examined or sidetracked by pesky minor details.

Salles’s imperfect, hobbled film tells us that hope springs eternal and that joy is a given and that most happy families will find a way to survive.

The film itself never amounts to much more than a silly, self-satisfied crime caper, but the headline stars look as though they are enjoying themselves and their sense of fun, by and large, is infectious.

Babygirl rolls off the track looking almost as neat and anonymous as a box from Tensile’s upstate delivery warehouse.

It’s too skimpy and self-conscious, more a series of gestures than an organic whole. But Ortega frames his action with a delicious high style, interspersing tense standoffs with formal dance sequences. He gives the impression that all his characters are locked in a bizarre hothouse romance, even when they are chasing or attempting to kill one another.

It’s a likable exercise in nostalgia; a joyride through old haunts. Burton’s underworld caper contains plenty of second-hand spirit; what it craves is fresh blood. What it needs is some substance.

The film is fun, broad and exuberant, like a primetime Marxist sitcom, although it does feel indebted to a number of recent, better films around the same theme.

It’s not The Exorcist, Sorcerer or The French Connection. But it makes for a worthy late addition to the great director’s armada.

The strong, credible performances oil the wheels during these clattering shifts of gear and serve to distract from its occasional moments of implausibility.

Anderson’s short, sweet, neatly managed production follows the original tale pretty much to the letter.

May December also comes coloured by the lurid downlight of tabloid culture. It could be a pastiche of a psychological thriller, or a playfully misdirected daytime afternoon soap.

It’s a thorough, measured, often illuminating portrait, aided by readings from Highsmith’s unpublished diaries and interviews with her ex-lovers.

Shinkai casts a spell in the moment, but the magic fades away.

Your standard vampire film would have put Cage centre stage. Renfield, God help it, elects to bury the lede and drive a stake through his heart.

This one almost makes it, but a boggy script slows it down.

Clooney and Roberts try their best but they’re finally not much more than decoration themselves, the filmic equivalent of plastic figurines on a cake.

Three Thousand Years of Longing is guileless, open-hearted, like an antiquarian bookseller’s dream of The Thief of Baghdad. It’s so defiantly out of step with fashion that there’s finally something faintly glorious about it.

A quality cast tackle the script’s various twists and turns with aplomb. But the tale itself feels cumbersome and over-furnished, listing under the weight of its bolt-on subplots and endless reams of dialogue.

The respective charms of Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum receive a rigorous workout during the course of this caffeinated, overeager adventure romp – to the point where significant signs of wear and tear begin to appear.

At the risk of insulting Benedetta, it’s mostly good, clean, wholesome fun.

True Things is not a bad film, exactly. The actors play it like they mean it, while the drama itself carries a natural dry charge. But it’s unambitious, sometimes clunky and doesn’t wrong-foot us once.

Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon offers street-food for the senses, served with lashings of hot sauce. It’s hardly nutritious but it tastes fine in the moment, wolfed down on the run.

Old Henry is a determinedly low-aiming affair.

Vigas’s direction is efficient, pedestrian, entirely built for purpose. But he manages to keep the audience on-board throughout the tale’s twists and turns.

Hallelujah is one for the fans, thorough and informative, like a set of cinematic liner notes, largely content to marvel at the majesty of its subject and the vibrant afterlife of his work.

The Hand of God, no surprise, is Sorrentino’s most nakedly personal film to date, almost to a fault in the way it jettisons the cool distance of The Great Beauty or Il Divo in favour of a sweaty, close-up evocation of youth. It’s a picture only Sorrentino could make. But that doesn’t necessarily make him the safest pair of hands.

Dumont’s secular crisis-of-faith drama has much to say about the corrosive effect of our 24-hour news culture. But it is also indecisive and compromised and plays out as a prolonged admission of defeat.