Vaughn brings a tenderness to the role of a man forced into animal violence for the sake of love and the miracle of birth, and the rangy anarchy of Zahler’s deeply kooky film gets under the skin at times. But in the end, you wish some big bad studio boss had been there to cut this director’s cut.

Ne Zha 2 is a distinct fantasy epic and a technical achievement that stands up to the best that Disney, DreamWorks, Aardman or Studio Ghibli can offer, even if it frequently gives in to the same proclivities for excess as its peers.

A rowdy salute to the thankless sacrifices made by modern mothers, Bad Moms has lots of spirit, some funny moments and wonderful chemistry from its three leads. And yet, this so-so comedy can’t shake a formulaic, uninspired construction that often settles for the easy joke or the pat pay-off.

There are plenty of solid laughs in Mascots — everything from jokes about furries to throwaway bits involving obscure cable channels — but what’s disappointing is that there’s not a great overr-iding idea that ties all the gags together.

The film’s lavish production values and a comic register more impish than truly acerbic makes this a surprisingly cosy piece of luxury heritage cinema.

Ewan McGregor’s directorial debut eventually finds its own emotional core, zeroing in on the tragedy that befalls a seemingly perfect life once a man’s wilful daughter torpedoes it.

Sacha Baron Cohen didn’t become a household name by pulling his punches. While his latest subversion Grimsby is ostensibly a routinely lowbrow British comedy, it’s also a something of stealth device to test the waters as to how far down he can bottom-feed.

Neither the milieu nor the insights are especially fresh, despite the tender tone.

Savill keeps the tone upbeat, homing in on her character study. From goofy grins to anxiety-ridden wide eyes, Scotney’s range and talent is clear: her comic timing and commitment to Millie’s mania are exemplary. But in centring her above all else, there are a few too many narrative stones left unturned.

Unfortunately, the film tends to underline its points, turning a clever idea into a fairly obvious one, and Love Me’s self-consciously innocent/sweet tone can become grating. But what holds the film together is the intelligence and commitment the two stars bring to this occasionally mawkish tale.

Final Account is shocking footage which hasn’t quite made the leap into being a forensic film.

The descent into melodrama in the final act increases the tension but, in relying on some unexpected actions by several characters, also damages the film’s credibility.

This clever, heavily meta picture has fun both mocking its own existence and trying to find enough twists to justify itself. The result is a film which is superficially appealing even if it is ultimately undone by the contortions necessary to keep the irreverent sleight-of-hand going.

It may have its failings but it is never less than entertaining.

An effective, albeit somewhat artificial, exercise in suspense, The Wall derives much of its propulsion from Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s grunting, grimacing performance as a wounded US soldier squaring off with an unseen Iraqi sniper.

Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga play the Lovings as refreshingly ordinary people caught up in the swirl of history, but a benign tastefulness overcomes Loving, smothering chances of a meaningful engagement with the material.

The period details are impeccable, the look and feel are seductive, but the muddled script lacks the killer instinct of its central figures.

The romantic comedy-drama Rules Don’t Apply is, by turns, fizzy and melancholy, nostalgic and clear-eyed, but it never builds to anything especially substantial.

While the bracingly bleak climax will come as a surprise to pretty much nobody, it still comes with an efficiently grisly pay off.

Deftly made and diverting for young audiences but unlikely to linger, with any vibrancy tempered by the familiarity of the tune.

In the end, Marry Me can’t wed its conflicting ambitions, resulting in a likeable picture that’s hard to love.

Sure, the motorcycle wheelies are cool, but there’s nothing more intense than the raw emotion that comes from a mother trying to protect her child.

It’s a handsome film, but a conventional one, rather missing the opportunity of allowing Salomon’s thrilling uninhibited style to inform the film’s aesthetic.

And while the story of the film lacks some of the sinuous inventiveness of its predecessor [Your Name], it shares the striking animation style, romantic sensibility and a similar poppy score.

Despite a fantastical premise and some truly eye-popping effects, The House With A Clock In Its Walls suffers from post-Potter fatigue; there’s simply nothing here, visual or thematic, that hasn’t been done before.

A cinematic symphony more than a classic narrative film, Terrence Malick’s long-awaited The Tree Of Life has moments of breathtaking visual and aural beauty, but in the end it has us longing for the days of Badlands, Days Of Heaven or The Thin Red Line, when the Texan auteur also knew how to spin a good yarn.

It’s easy to buy Hardy’s dual performance, and it doesn’t get in the way of the film – although some actor-ly exuberance in the delivery of Ronnie can sound an off-note, with Hardy using some facial prosthetics around the jaw line which aren’t particularly subtle.

While The Boogeyman — based on the 1973 Stephen King short story about a closet-dwelling stealer of souls — is as narratively generic as its on-the-nose (and oft-used) title may suggest, British director Rob Savage brings an innate humanness and playful spirit that lifts this otherwise-rote monster movie.

Ridley Scott has lost none of his flair for grandeur, but ultimately Gladiator II is diminished by a nagging recognition that this material felt fresher in the first film — and that Denzel Washington’s devilish schemer steals the picture from Mescal.

While the sub-par effects make it difficult to become fully immersed in the tomb raiding exploits of the Mojin, the rivalries, romances and camaraderie between the central trio do hold water and help sustain the film’s forward momentum.

Ronde, who clearly identifies with the teenage perspective, has delivered some gorgeous sequences, nonetheless. Formerly a documentarian, his debut could be seen as a delicious experiment, tantalising audiences as to what he might do next. Or it could be dubbed chaotic and indulgent, an awkward misfire.

Primate is often a blunt instrument, but these set pieces exude a little elegance in their sustained dread.

Howard honours the collective heroism above all else, resulting in a well-crafted procedural that’s a little impersonal. Like the brave men who ultimately saved the day, Thirteen Lives gets the job done.

Milocco’s performance manages to walk a thin line between credibility and delusion, a line which is less successfully negotiated by other aspects of the film.

The film delivers a dark coming-of-age tale through the young lead’s uncertain perception, tinged with uneasy implications and poetic flights of fancy.

This is filmmaking which echoes Cohen’s music style – it’s contemplative, searching and stripped back, but it can also be somewhat navel gazing, ponderous and very slow.

As a director, Jordan has produced polished, briskly paced entertainment but what’s disappointing is that, quite often, Creed III hints at being something more.

The improvisational flair, unpredictable tonal shifts and overt emotional lurches that highlighted American Hustle and Silver Linings Playbook are here less consistently inspired and affecting, resulting in a heartfelt fairy tale that only soars in spurts.

This inherently melodramatic material has an undeniable emotional sincerity, although the story ends up being so gentle that it barely makes a ripple.

Donzelli’s observations on the working poor don’t dig deep enough, resulting in an overly polished glimpse at the struggles of making ends meet.

Rebecca Zlotowski’s third feature packs in so many ideas and themes, and boasts so many ravishing and enigmatic images, that it seems choked with riches.

The Polka King, and Jan’s plight, never quite reaches the level of palpable human drama of their previous effort. Black does his best to make Jan a vulnerable and sympathetic character, but neither the script nor the direction allows him to become fully dimensional.

Typically delicate and as gentle as a balm, the film’s well-intentioned earnestness will not endear it to the more cynical end of the audience spectrum. But fans of Kawase’s small scale personal dramas will respond to the film’s wistful tone, as well as the plaintive prettiness of the photography.

With more inspired lunacy or smarter plotting, Lobster Cop could have been a surprising treat. As it is, this is perfectly digestible light entertainment that won’t have anyone coming back for seconds.

In presenting its story as a portrait of a budding great statesman discovering his destiny, Barry is neither insightful nor poetic enough to justify its increasingly didactic approach.

Initially intriguing, Ashkal grows less satisfying as it struggles to do justice to the disparate elements of the personal, the political and the supernatural.

A claustrophobic thriller about a disgraced cop trying to undo his past mistakes over the course of one supremely stressful night, The Guilty boasts a clever close-quarters conceit that ends up feeling more like an actorly exercise than a gripping human drama.

Essentially a four-handed chamber piece of sorts, this adaptation deals with powder-keg themes of the colonial psyche, racial tensions and retribution, but ultimately proves too stilted and stagey to pack much of a punch.

Fitfully amusing and certainly heartfelt, this latest chapter in the likeable animated saga will work best with younger viewers, but its life lessons and emotional beats feel slathered on rather than deftly woven into the storyline.

This gentle comedy trades heavily on Tsai Chin’s deliciously abrasive central performance, but stumbles when it comes to the execution of the action sequences

The results are more dutiful than absorbing.

While the film struggles to fully disengage from its theatrical origins, it is an intelligently slippery study which positions the audience in the grey area between empathy and complicity.

Giants Being Lonely may not add much to the landscape of coming-of-age dramas, yet the preciseness of its impressionism results in a striking atmosphere of hormones and vulnerability.

The early potency of this macabre fairytale becomes increasingly diluted however, as the film progresses and the story broadens.

A love-all crowd-pleaser for the most part, more Borg than McEnroe thanks to an arresting performance from lookalike Sverrir Gudnason.

A restrained production favours story over splatter but eventually delivers a fair amount of gloopy, tentacled creatures and exploding host bodies. That should be enough to satisfy Adams aficionados.

As a brief, brightly-coloured, virtual babysitter – lasting just long enough to keep the children diverted while you check in and out of that last Zoom meeting, and get dinner on the table – it dutifully fulfills its obligations. But anyone looking for much beyond that in this tale of a flying squirrel – well, they’d have to be nuts.

The shared experience between the filmmaker and the subject of the film allows for a character study of depth and intimacy. However, the story itself – a slightly soapy ‘romance against the odds’ narrative – presents few surprises.

Although Nitram is a thoughtful exploration of mental illness, highlighted by a strong cast, Kurzel can’t fully transcend what is familiar about this handwringing portrait of a ticking time bomb set to go off.

At its weakest, there’s a suspicion that Eleanor The Great is leaning into the Holocaust for otherwise unearned emotion, but the piece is clearly genuine, and the cast so strong, it doesn’t linger.

This is not great or memorable filmmaking but the power of the story and some of the performances make up for that.

This meticulous documentary can’t quite overcome the inevitability of its rise-and-fall trajectory, the familiarity of its sad-clown hypothesis.

With a decades-long rapport on screen and off, they’re natural and sparky together, and Roberts joins Clooney in her decision not to presenting the cosmetically refreshed face of her peers. For that alone, Ticket To Paradise is a trip worth taking.

The imbalance between the sketched, what-if nature of the film and the weight of its visual wizardry is keenly felt.

The Nice Guys harks back to the 70s golden age of revisionist detective thrillers, but the result feels too knowingly déja vu, rather than bringing a truly fresh angle.

Animals is a smoothly-made, beguiling tale of female friendship, which, like its protagonist Laura (Holliday Grainger), sometimes feels a little lost, in need of a home.

The film struggles to juggle its combination of rage and humour, satire and sadness, but the game performances mostly help gloss over the material’s familiarity.

A gentle, unassuming picture, it does have a satisfying, feelgood trajectory and empathetic central performance from Marie Leuenberger.

The later stretches, which are forced to become oblique and symbolic in the absence of any hard evidence about what really happened to the sailor, showcase some of Firth’s best screen work.

The result is a picture with gripping sequences and clever byplay, even if there’s a sense that it’s merely repeating past strengths, only not quite as ingeniously.

The Aftermath works best when looking at the bewildered people who have been left behind, literally, to pick up the pieces. The savage loss of family members still reverberates through empty rooms and ruined landscapes.

Whatever else could be said about this competent and generally pretty entertaining latest addition to the series, surprising it is not.

Wendy casts a powerful spell — the movie has the potency of a dusty folktale brought to vivid life — but it can be frustrating that Zeitlin doesn’t have much interesting to say beyond his stylistic flourishes and evocative atmosphere.

As arresting as this speculative portrait can be at times, the film is ultimately both galvanised and limited by how unknowable its protagonist turns out to be.

The action in Cold War 2 - again overseen by Chin Ka Lok - is far superior to its predecessor.

This likeable, emotionally precise film has a big heart and a genre-shifting construction that keeps the proceedings from feeling like just another young-adult meander. But despite an agreeably earnest performance from rising star Nat Wolff, Paper Towns covers familiar coming-of-age terrain and suffers from an opaque turn by newcomer Cara Delevingne that’s not quite as captivating as the story requires.

Romulus achieves its goal of being nothing more than a well-executed monster movie, but that modest ambition leaves this sequel feeling a little hollow and mechanical — a sufficient thrill ride that largely reminds the viewer how masterful the first two instalments were.

While American Honey exudes ample energy, this episodic piece doesn’t muster much narrative drive over its daunting running time of two and three quarter hours. There’s probably a stronger, tighter film in here, but fair game at least to Arnold in her commitment to following the winding back roads of filmic experiment rather than the well-mapped highway of storytelling.

Gandhi speaks to collaborators, lovers and journalists, who help flesh out Hernandez’s life and career trajectory, although the musician’s unwillingness to participate leaves this an intriguing snapshot rather than a definitive portrait.

Gloriously ludicrous and stridently melodramatic, F9 is fuelled by its own goofy energy, delivering comically grandiose chase sequences and shameless fan service all in the name of giving audiences an uncomplicated good time.

The Convert promises the potential for plenty of fire and brimstone but, despite some committed performances, lacks the dramatic passion that would have really left a mark.

From the earnest score to the breathless talking heads to the atmosphere of awestruck reverence, this is a film which takes itself every bit as seriously as its subjects.

For all the creativity on display in Tron: Ares, it’s in service of a story with scant signs of life.

Even when it is more dedicated to brand extension than the art of deduction, Detective Chinatown 3 exudes a heightened zaniness which is most welcome in today’s largely homogenised franchise landscape.

Grappling with serious themes, this wistful comedy opts for a sentimental tone that’s out of rhythm with the more realistic, tough-minded story that occasionally asserts itself.

The Choral is a narratively jumbled film whose unrestrained sweetness and adept ensemble tie up some of the film’s looser ends.

A film of two halves, Cloud’s excessive, bullet-strafed second section is more effective than the restrained and sluggish first part. The themes it explores are uncomfortably of the moment.

While the film doesn’t quite work as a horror, and can stumble as a character piece, Abrahamson has pulled together a sumptuous production which is more than sufficient to keep viewers engaged throughout.

Fluid, shifting and tense, the action here easily outstrips the film’s basic set-up (man tests himself against nature, is humbled), which can feel like unconvincing filler between surges of effects work.

Intense battle action and rousing heroics just about make up for the dramatic shortcomings of 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi.

Less on the nose than the title makes it sound, faith-based offering Miracles From Heaven spins some bland but efficiently tear-jerking drama out of its true story-based tale.

Skin is a little pedestrian and obvious in its early stages, skirting with the feeling of a television production. It is the nature of the story and the scale of the mountain that Widner had to climb that finally makes it into something more compelling.

Lost City is the acme of a 21st century prestige picture. Sadly, however, it is one that is also deeply flawed. Gray’s most ambitious movie yet is marred by a story arc that fails to rise or reach a climax, unnatural-sounding expository dialogue, and an unforgivable lack of thrills.

It’s a small, worthy, film that works reasonably well, although there’s something a little too linear about its structure.

If nothing else, Deepwater Horizon makes a case for going back to basics with action films. It’s classically framed, executed, and feels like the real deal, and while it clearly boasts some fine effects work, it manages to lose the cartoonish aspect of so many recent tentpoles.

It’s a radiant debut for young newcomer Joe Alwyn, who plays a Texan war hero uneasy in his own land. It’s a shakier curtain-raising for Lee’s ambitious weaponising of new technologies.

Beautifully shot, impressively cast, and revolving round a charismatic lead from long-time US indie favourite Pitt, the film otherwise comes across as a derivative, solemn affair with a look that suggests a retro gloss finish on generic material.

The script puts artsy effect before character credibility.