More often than not, the stirring tunes and the genuineness of the proceedings help paper over Spirited’s rough spots. A couple of twists are well-handled, and Ferrell’s performance as a dutiful ghost who suddenly questions his (after)life choices reveals a vulnerability which is disarming.

It evokes a specific time and a place so vividly that you can almost taste the stale cigarette smoke and cheap beer. But while the picture affectionately skewers the youthful pretensions of the aspiring artists, it also allows the students an overly generous space in which to pontificate and navel-gaze.

War On Everyone is essentially a clothes hanger for smart one-liners, verbal and visual, and its success will depend partly on how folks like the look of the clothes hanger.

It’s a film made with honesty, integrity and a certain grace, but it can’t quite overcome an earnestness that was never a problem in Hansen-Love’s best films, which carried their literary and cinematic inspirations lightly.

The overly busy story provides countless opportunities to create imaginative worlds and strange characters, but it also tends to feel like a string of set pieces rather than something that builds dramatic tension or momentum.

The script may be a litany of cliches but there’s grit here too, and the vein of documentary truth that pulses behind some rather brazen nationalistic French virtue-signalling keeps us watching.

Rocketman is so energetic that it’s possible to be swept away by its enthusiasm for putting Reg on a pedestal. Too often, though, the film just flattens you, demanding fealty to Sir Elton.

Anyone expecting a progression in Zahler’s work may be disappointed, as the amusingly mannered dialogue starts to feel self-conscious and forced, as does the fatalism.

There’s more texture than might be expected from characters based on plastic dolls.

An oddball hybrid that’s part documentary, part stylistic mish-mash, but wholly celebratory of Mansfield’s often derided ‘blonde bombshell’ image.

The film simmers with rage at the cruelty of one nation toward another, although the plotting grows increasingly convoluted, undermining the story’s righteous anger.

It’s a strange film, one that feels its way through Hasna’s story, changing tack, trying out different methods – including the casting of three different women as the adult Hasna, one of them the director herself, and a final shift into documentary.

One can feel Williams’ anger at an America that imperils young Black and Latino men, viewing them only as potential threats, but the picture never fully gets a handle on its mixture of satire and seriousness.

Using his characters as pawns on the chessboard of history, Mountains May Depart culminates in a nostalgic future where the Chinese look back for the identity they have lost.

Lipovsky and Stein’s first feature as collaborators exudes a grungy, second-hand feel, and the movie doesn’t have the confidence or vision to breathe new life into its narrative clichés. Instead, the pair lean on the sincerity of their storytelling, crafting a paean to broken families and exploring how children process unspeakable loss.

His fans will probably adore it, think it cute and original, the rest of the audience will sigh again in resignation and wonder whether this game of cinema riddles does have anything significant to say behind its smiling, insouciant wrapping.

The film does praiseworthy work when it comes to challenging accepted assumptions about what constitutes beauty and sexuality. It does so, however, through a degree of physical and emotional oversharing which some audiences will find deeply off-putting.

Throughout it all, Knight is a compelling and fiercely persuasive performer.

Strenuously heartfelt, Tick,Tick…Boom! belts it out like a pro, but increasingly feels as if it’s raising the volume to an emptying room.

Starting sedately but promisingly, it sails (literally, in one respect) into a perfect storm of heavy-handed symbolism and sentimentality.

Although much of the film is effectively claustrophobic, it is too bogged down by exposition to fully take off.

This intriguing political thriller uses the ideological beliefs of its characters as a jumping-off point, but is most effective when it takes its own stance, and starts to unpick the tiers of exploitation within society.

The film’s dialogue has ample tang of real family discourse, but it often fails to rivet.

There’s real feeling coursing through Jellyfish, even if its insights aren’t particularly trenchant.

Hot Milk lacks some of the lush, heady symbolism of the book, and opts for a less teasingly ambiguous approach to the storytelling. Mackey, however, impresses, as a woman driven to distraction by the neediness and manipulation of those around her.

At once a visually expressionistic hymn to female agency and liberation, a psychological thriller that always stays one step ahead of the viewer and a flamboyant reggaeton dance musical, Ema will strike some as a heady celebration of a movie, while leaving others bemused by stylistics that sometimes overpower narrative and psychological plausibility.

Ultimately, the picture is entertaining enough, in a somewhat tawdry way. Just do not expect it to hold up to forensic scrutiny.

Lurker is sometimes a little too on the mark.

Armin seems to get less interesting as a character rather than more as his quest for survival takes priority. Ultimately you wonder whether, dramatically speaking, it was worth wiping out a planet full of people just so that one useless bloke could finally get his act together.

Theater Camp is ultimately too uneven and unfocused to earn a curtain call, but like its marginally talented protagonists, it does its best with what it has.

Like the characters it follows, this first feature from director Jaydon Martin is unpolished, honest and a little rough around the edges at times.

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight is the kind of bold swing with difficult material that does manage to earn your respect.

The quality of the performances goes some way towards mitigating the navel-gazing tendencies of the dialogue. Seymour, in particular, gives a lovely, textured vulnerability to recovering alcoholic Kate.

It’s ultimately unsatisfying—more style than substance.

Proficiently directed by Sara Colangelo (The Kindergarten Teacher), well-acted by Keaton and co-star Amy Ryan as Feinberg’s deputy Camille Biros, and made with the respect and reverence that its subject deserves, Worth nevertheless remains a bit too stolid and too on-the-nose.

Genre fans close in age to the characters depicted onscreen should be appreciative of the enjoyably familiar mix of inspired comedy moments, smart zingers, grossout gags and nudity offered by the apostrophe-phobic Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse.

Like the first film, The Secret Life of Pets 2 is at its best when it concentrates on the unconditional love offered by mankind’s best friends, or gently mocks familiar situations.

Freud aside, this is a fairly straightforward boy-to-man narrative, but that it plays out during such a turbulent time in Austrian history brings additional texture.

An increasingly overwrought approach undermines its better instincts and creates an uneven affair.

Always watchable but not transcendent, Cedric Kahn’s character study builds its portrait via landscape, work, prayer and friendship.

Unlike this film’s sleek killing machines, the new installment is creaky and sometimes clumsy, and yet it ultimately succeeds by delivering sufficient thrills while also offering just enough emotional depth to keep viewers engaged in its familiar man-versus-robot tussle.

Convincing performances from David Oyelowo and Kate Mara – as an escaped killer and his drug addicted hostage – are the saving grace of Captive, a decent dramatic thriller somewhat weighed down by its mildly religious message.

Green Book is a thoroughly predictable and conventional true-life drama, but at least Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali make for decent company along the road.

Although Blue Jay is a warm, likable film, it doesn’t offer anything new to say about nostalgia, the passage of time or living with regret.

With modest ambitions and a slender runtime, the film proves to be a sexy, amusing time – despite being fairly forgettable.

Ines and Emilie have tensions between them which are uncomfortably alive, and Langseth’s script is a gnawing reminder that, even when the date of death is set, family quarrels and resentments can still be corrosive.

Does the alternation between documentary inserts and sci-fi superstructure work? Not always – more than once it’s a wrench to be dragged back to Ghost’s basement. But Kapadia and his co-scribe Tony Grisoni seem to understand that the pummelled audience can take only so much cinematic doomscrolling.

Frauke Finsterwalder’s take on the Empress is a lavish production favouring an accessibly middlebrow, at times almost soapy, approach.

In its zeal to pay proper respect to Mexican traditions and to avoid any hint of appropriation, Coco fails to give as much attention to its perfunctory characters or mediocre plotting, resulting in a family film which is reverent rather than inspired.

Viewers are left with some likeable, grounded performances from Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby and Ebon Moss-Bachrach — and a gnawing sense that this visually appealing sci-fi adventure is a missed opportunity.

This English-language remake of In Order Of Disappearance by its Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland doesn’t particularly succeed as a thriller, but the film’s gleeful perversity at refusing to satisfying genre conventions gives it a scruffy integrity all the same.

Ride is at its best and most authentic in its final chapter and an inconclusive resolution, but not so sure-footed in how it gets there.

Close Your Eyes finally builds a head of emotional steam in its last half hour, while exploring questions of identity and what remains when memory has gone.

The film is a patchwork portrait that combines the joys and irritations, the petty arguments and the homespun warmth of this environment.

This apocalyptic thriller is a run-of-the-mill zombie flick that goes through the genre motions efficiently enough but fails to live up to its credits.

And Their Children After Them is a big, sweeping melodrama which, although undeniably cinematic, struggles to sustain audience engagement throughout its overly generous running time.

Roofman sidesteps this tale’s most potentially fascinating elements to sell a more conventional narrative.

Flamin’ Hot is a breezy affair accented by Jesse Garcia’s winning performance as the budding Mexican-American entrepreneur, but this underdog tale ultimately proves to be too unremarkable to generate much heat.

Oddly enough, in trying to capture a time that was wracked by scarcity, by the idea of make-do-and-mend, by the plucky spirit of the men and women under the might of the machines, Blitz just fires far too much heavy artillery.

Cottontail does not hold any great surprises and, while understanted and full of grace, also lacks bite.

It is pleasant to watch, needs a much stronger structure to hold it together.

At its core, The Kill Team has one great performance, and some important things to say – about the dangerous appeal of the strong, and the easy malleability of the young. It’s well worth watching, and thinking on. It’s just a shame that that great performance isn’t matched by all the others – and that what the film has to say is said in such a dutifully by-the-book way.

Despite a smorgasbord of high-octane action filmmaking, its thimble-deep characters and strained political commentary repeatedly stall what should be a wonderfully trashy shoot-‘em-up.

Quantumania has greater stakes and a grander canvas than the more lighthearted previous chapters of the Ant-Man saga, and the film mostly negotiates the tricky tonal shift — even if the results are more predictable than spectacular

Late Night director Nisha Ganatra brings a bighearted sincerity and more than a few touching moments, and it is a pleasure to see Lohan back in a major big-screen role. But her charming performance cannot compensate fully for a perhaps unavoidably convoluted plot.

The reason it still mostly works is because the actors play it straight, with Rutherford displaying a sense of directness that compensates for the occasionally wobbly tonal shifts. The few instances of slapstick, however, are always more awkward than hilarious.

The two actors manage to capture the vulnerabilities that come with opening yourself up to someone else, particularly at such a delicate age.

Despite an honourable commitment to exploring how severe adolescent trauma casts a long shadow over a person’s life, the film’s patina of pain eventually grows repetitive, undercutting the sensitivity Stewart and her lead bring to the proceedings.

Pleasantly entertaining, Pitch Perfect 2 scrabbles for a raison d’etre, however, hoping that goodwill from the first show, coupled with a few raunchy gags and cameo appearances, will be enough to get by in the post-Glee age.

Although less convincing when it tries to say something meaningful about racism and police brutality, Black And Blue has sufficient pulp pleasures and a winning confidence in executing its modest ambitions.

Often amusing but rarely shifting into a higher comedic gear, Snatched features fun chemistry between co-stars Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn, some delightfully goofy moments of stray hilarity, yet not enough story or heart to keep this thin tale afloat.

This story of a frustrated man and the slow recognition of what really matters in his life could, indeed, have come from a Springsteen lyric, but the sketchiness of the premise doesn’t really favour the full cinematic treatment it has been awarded here.

Galloping across the decades, the film becomes increasingly sketchy and superficial. There is so much detail and substance in the 1970s stretch of this epic that the twists of fate and rueful reflections of later years inevitably feel less authentic and closer to soap opera.

Here, however, his bravura conducting of relatively conventional melodrama material doesn’t affect us as much as his best earlier works. In any case, it’s the actual music that often does the heavy lifting here – with selections from Chopin, Bartok and Bruch, not to mention Grégoire Hetzel’s score, spiralling saxophone capturing the vertiginous register of the whole affair.

The film never entirely transcends its nature as a polemical pamphlet - and despite strong presence in those scenes where Maryam speaks truth to power, Alzahrani doesn’t quite have the charisma to make her substantially more than a representative figure.

The film is hugely impressive in the scope of those interviewed.

This flawed thriller manages to tap into the sickening realisation that no matter where we travel in the universe, we always bring the worst parts of ourselves.

While vivid in its depiction of Paris’s vibrant lesbian culture, seems curiously slight and modest in its emotional impact given the seismic internal battle the central character wrestles with.

The film lacks the teeth to be an incisive takedown of romantic comedies — in truth, it works best at its sweetest. Dewey communicates a lifetime of longing in those soulful eyes that pop through Monster’s makeup, and Barrera brings an endearing amount of dorky energy. But whenever these characters leave the house, the problems start — both for their relationship and the film itself.

The film is nothing but a sensuous rush of snappy period costumes, elegant beauties, dapper men, kinetic action and so-so quips, and because Ritchie seems even less concerned with story than usual, that blinkered approach very nearly works.

Boasting a breezy spirit and Tom Holland’s likeable turn as the titular web-slinger, this new film is adequately rousing and jokey, but too often it has the feel of a transitional chapter which is meant to pivot away from Endgame to whatever producer Kevin Feige has next in store for these heroes.

Angel of Mine isn’t without its bumps, but its equally challenging and cathartic payoff is worth the journey.

Filled with feeling and led by heartfelt performances from Elle Fanning and Naomi Watts, the latest from director Gaby Dellal (Angels Crest) is a warm, rich film in many regards — and yet, there’s a nagging suspicion that, in the attempt to de-emphasise the hot-button topicality, About Ray isn’t ultimately about that much.

Norway’s Roar Uthaug (The Wave) directs it straight up, without even a twist of humour, bouncing Vikander from set piece to set piece with no real attempt at coherent plotting in-between. Yet Vikander is so watchable as the video-game-made-flesh, and the low-fi chase sequences can be so exciting, it’s almost enough. Almost.

Although there’s nothing about Charlie McDowell’s interpretation that doesn’t aim for similar excellence, the very act of embodying the book lessens its magic.

Even those with only passing knowledge of Williams’ challenges—with drugs, alcohol, and self-esteem—aren’t likely to find any new revelations about the comic genius.

Ascher may be a better media analyst, or mythologist, than chronicler of the human condition. With The Nightmare’s foregrounding of the paranormal and refusal to acknowledge the psychological, the project sometimes feels disingenuous.

Marcello and his committed, compelling lead actor Luca Marinelli deliver an always watchable take on the hoary old story of the struggling artist that is more interesting in its shape-shifting style and texture than in its rather conventional dramatic core.

For all its unpredictability and nerve, the film too often feels snarky rather than subversive.

While little here eschews genre conventions, Bana’s weathered performance and striking work by DoP Stefan Duscio ensure that this is a gripping-enough watch, even as it ticks a torrent of familiar boxes.

While the film is contemplative, intimate and visually arresting, its deliberately slow pace lessens its dramatic impact.

The film is sometimes stylishly executed, but its hyper-aesthetic, even rarefied approach, together with a confusing dream-tinged narrative and a general sense of narcotised sluggishness, will make for limited appeal beyond Asian markets and the fanbase for traditional drawn animation.

Hustle lives up to its title by going all out — especially Sandler, who brings some heart to his predictable character, and director Jeremiah Zagar, who fights against the story’s cliched elements.

Bardem’s performance, as a man who has spent a lifetime hiding his unethical behaviour behind the veneer of patrician affability and who seems to have lost his feel for what’s right and wrong, has a depth and complexity that seems to come from somewhere else.

While the movie overdoes the plot twists and existential musings, The Discovery is a diverting head-trip whose reach far exceeds its grasp.

Writer/director Michael Connors creates a good sense of atmosphere and clearly knows his way around the military milieu, but never manages instill the film with a much-needed sense of dramatic tension despite a solid enough story structure.

Although directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett do a good job executing tense suspense sequences, neither the satire nor the setup is particularly convincing. What we’re left with is some nifty cinematic gamesmanship which is not as politically astute as it thinks it is.

The drama’s rich atmospherics vividly embody the melancholy mindset of its characters, although it does comes at a price, especially as the plotting grows increasingly convoluted near the finale.