Better in conception than execution, Spies In Disguise never really gets the best out of its James Bond Is A Pigeon high concept. The result is entertaining while it lasts, but won’t lodge itself permanently in your memory bank.

If TV had a Saga Channel, this intriguing, if never quite gripping, serial killer thriller would play on a loop, in between reruns of Matlock and NCIS.

A frothy fantasy about a boy and his bear that makes up for in style what it lacks in substance.

Tracee Ellis Ross kills it as a believable soul diva in a harmonious pairing with Dakota Johnson — a shame, then, that a distracting romcom plot ends up so high in the mix.

Downright depressing.

Over-the-top but blackly funny along the way.

Not a sequel to the bland film of Jacqueline Susann’s trashy best-seller, this is more like a demented remake, alternating modish psychedelia with deliberately square moralising.

Some gorgeous imagery – mostly in pictures taken by the kids – and heartbreaking stories, but the directors' appearances sometimes feel self-indulgent.

Moving beyond the confines of the app’s premises, The Angry Birds Movie 2 starts slow but flourishes into breezy, colourful fun.

A worthy — if chilly and difficult — addition to the sadly extensive filmography of American mass murder. The soundtrack from Canadian singer-songwriter Maica Armata adds some much-needed heart.

The film is strongest when it remembers it’s a Tim Burton film and has licence to get weird. While it’s slicker and less homemade-feeling than the 1988 vintage, there are still flashes of B-movie brilliance.

A film about a cult that might well attract a cult following itself. But it’s only moderately successful, with the early scenes hinting at a bolder, more satisfying tale that could have been.

For its historical detail and recognition that teenagers were around long before James Dean sparked up a Marlboro, this film deserves some credit.

Perhaps, it was the choice of material, a much more internalised story despite its glossy Raj setting, or the absence of Robert Bolt as screenwriter (it was he who put the fire in Lean’s belly), but the film, for all Lean’s innate elegance, is strangely remote and unmoving.

Jim Caviezel is a one-man scourge of child predators in this well-meaning thriller that doesn’t entirely deserve to be written off as culture-war propaganda.

A quiet and meditative portrait of the artist as a retiree, this lacks incident or high stakes but has an elegiac feeling of regret and reckoning that fits its subject’s twilight years.

Togo is in a slightly more sombre register than Call Of The Wild but delivers similar sturdy pleasures; exciting dog-in-peril action and striking landscapes, all anchored by Dafoe’s grounded performance.

The musical interludes in which Rapman narrates significant plot points offer a welcome change of pace, but the subject matter at play here is a little too common to truly stand out from the pack.

A few big laughs but weakly drawn characters mean a film that is enjoyable enough in the moment but then quickly forgotten.

An unsparing look at the winter of life, salted with humour and emotion.

A very text-book example of two actors better than the material, Crystal and Williams do their best but can't elevate this far.

Schnabel doesn't comes close to the quiet power of his last feature, "The Diving Bell And The Butterfly," delivering a story that can't match the scope or scale of Rula Jebreal's source material.

After an unsatisfying start as a comedy, Silent Night finds its feet as an ambitious, thoughtful chamber piece about what it means to peer into the abyss. Merry Christmas, everyone!

A compelling if formulaic star-crossed lovers’ narrative. Come for a wordless seduction, stay for the complexities of parenthood, drag queens and family loyalties that deserve more of your time.

An eerie and unsettling adaptation of Judy Pascoe's novel that impresses more for its atmospherics than its narrative.

This beautifully shot drama transforms an Italian summer of fraternal love into a delicate, decades-spanning exploration of friendship. It’s overlong, and overfamiliar, but remains a nuanced dual character study.

A deeply human and often brutally honest depiction of trauma and recovery, anchored by three superb performances — though it often falls victim to formula.

This is an Aquaman film that needs lots more Aquaman and vastly less bombast. It’s visually wild and recklessly inventive, but the cast deserve better than to be cast adrift in a tempest of CGI.