With its well-observed, often darkly hilarious details of oddball inhabitants and chilling deployment of the chaotic overwhelm of social media in our lives, Eddington walks a thin line between dread and comedy.

There’s nothing new here and also a palpable reliance on enduring goodwill from the franchise’s existing fanbase, but honestly it doesn’t really matter. This is all such undemanding, carefree fun, delivering exactly what it promised, and simple without ever becoming simplistic.

There’s too much focus on disturbing the viewer rather than illuminating anything for them. Bring Her Back is a film that knows how to provoke, but not how to provide much insight.

It is a convincing, emotionally arresting, and visually appealing antidote to the complex muddle of so many recent superhero films.

The film feels limp, palpably too dependent on its source to emerge as its own thing. To convey the messages it wants to convey, it needed to work much harder to be more than just a pretty painting.

I salute Gunn, who was poached from Marvel, for trying to infuse this reboot with humour and vitality, dragging it out of a gloom that no longer suits viewers plagued by enough real-world problems.

Whether you’re a racing fan, have watched Netflix’s F1: Drive to Survive, or are a newcomer to the sport altogether, F1 uses old-fashioned, engine-revving storytelling.

Boyle still has an eye for suspenseful action, and much of it is breathtaking.

The fact is that the restrictions and judgements around single motherhood are only compounded by the harsh reality of class and privilege. Surrounded by more bureaucratic red tape than common-sense empathy, Molly often struggles – but through grit and determination, she reaches a foothold for her family that promises a better future.

Ballerina is actually great fun, a propulsive, pulpy gun-fu joy that revels in the things the early John Wick did so well: stunts and absurd world-building.

It’s a film that could do with a little more feeling overall – and more fury, too.

Made with Anderson’s typically droll tone, it’s often very funny and continually surprising.

There is monologuing, there is pacing the floor, there is possibly too much wordiness for what is ultimately a visual medium. But its characters and the performances are intriguing enough to keep the suspense going.

The Friend is a film that tells us that the only way out of heartache like this really is through. It may jump all over your bed and make you sleep on the floor, but weathering the hard part has its own kind of rewards.

Sinners is one of the most satisfying and fun blockbusters I’ve seen so far this year.

The twisty machinations are a bit too familiar, the pacing a tad too glacial before Odysseus’s revenge finally happens, the performances uniformly good but rather self-serious.

It’s a bog-standard, eat-the-rich message. But it does at least give the otherwise ridiculous unicorn story something to hang its horn on.

Even if the film can feel airless at times, with long, solid shots of the survivors’ banal everyday lives, it does have much to say on the foibles of mankind – and the way society may very feasibly backslide into, well, The End. That, to me, is worth giving a chance.

It’s great fun to watch two actors of such calibre play these wicked games of mistrust and deception – it’s even more fun to see Soderbergh handle his story so deftly.

Mickey 17 is a highly entertaining absurdist ride that embraces nihilism right up until the moment it tenderly skewers it.

The Monkey is surprisingly lacking in any good ideas. In fact, it’s the worst thing a horror film can be: boring.

There is a lot to garner from Anderson’s performance as a woman who has spent her life as the vessel of other people’s lust and projection; that is the main attraction of The Last Showgirl. But without the narrative scaffolding or depth to surround her character, Coppola’s film can often feel like a message in search of a movie.

Mad About the Boy is just enormously good fun.

This is a gnarly and fascinating thriller whose characters feel genuinely dangerous and unpredictable.

It’s a film about ordinary Londoners living ordinary lives and facing normal challenges, from mental health to domesticity. Baptiste is toweringly real: formidable and heartbreaking in her performance.

A work of staggering mystery and power, with an epic scope and a visual style to match, Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist is old school in the best possible sense.

This is not some deification story, even though it often regards Dylan’s capacity for musical storytelling with something akin to worship. Mangold steers the ship into harbour competently, even if I have some niggling questions about why the Dylan myth requires yet another movie.

You don’t have to profess any special interest in the subject to have a fantastic time at the cinema with Conclave, which is part political thriller, part catfight, and utterly compelling.