The film may pretend it’s more sophisticated than the show that spawned it, but its comedic stylings are alarmingly regressive.

Swiss director Baran bo Odar leans heavily on bone-crunching sound design and a percussive score which rumbles over the film like a pursuing helicopter.

A treatise on art, ambition, long-distance relationships and the struggles to find one’s own voice, the film unfolds with uncommon grace.

Gradually, the movie becomes a compassionate but constructive commentary on the danger of nostalgia — how it seduces us into sticking with worn-out pleasures at the expense of new experiences and challenges.

&t does effectively plunge the viewer back in those choppy seas for an object lesson in how politics can rapidly inflame a situation to dangerous levels, even when both countries had agreed the best place for him was Cuba.

This satire boasts plenty of ideas but is only occasionally compelling.

Screenwriter Jeff Nathanson (Catch Me If You Can), taking over from series regulars Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, doesn’t make much sense out of the typically (for the franchise) convoluted plot, but does manage to bring out a father-child theme that lends the film a little emotional resonance.

Okja is fun, if sometimes over-egged, as an adventure romp, but flounders in overstatement when it comes to satirical intent.

Soul on a String is visually stunning.

The film still stands as an imposing monument to the memory of a great artist.

Abacus: Small Enough To Jail isn’t as grand or engrossing a treatise as Hoop Dreams or The Interrupters, but in its intimate, well-observed way, the film is deeply moving and subtly shaming.

A luminous, heartbreaking performance from Olivia Cooke shines through every frame of Katie Says Goodbye.

Co-writers Julian Barratt and Simon Farnaby fly the flag for a rare original idea with the goofy, genial, fitfully inspired Mindhorn.

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

Italian artist Yuri Ancarani’s mostly-silent travelogue captures the Arabian peninsula without comment, its repetitive, dreamy imagery providing an insight to an age-old sport which plays out within the trappings of extreme wealth.

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.

Commercial considerations strangle the vitality from the movie, but Ritchie does his best to bring a bit of impish wit to the proceedings.

It’s a long, flat, no-frills journey which struggles to engage despite its many bloody shocks.

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.

Judith Chemla is a perfect choice for the lead.

The film’s freewheeling energy is as appealing as its developments are unpredictable.

In its style as well as its psychological focus, Hounds of Love marks Young as a filmmaker to watch, though he’s not the feature’s only standout. His trio of leads has rarely been better.

The broad brushstrokes storytelling and the director’s over-fondness for slow-motion sequences are among the film’s failings but this is still a rousing, easily accessible epic.

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

Whitney Can I Be Me delivers yet another tragic lesson in the toxic mix of fame and talent and children: it should be required viewing for all those who seek to follow this diva’s path to fame and fortune.

Ice Mother handles the lives of its older protagonists with sensitivity and admirable candour.

There is no shortage of drama to feed House Of Z.

Everyone loves a conspiracy—which is one of the reasons that A Gray State, a tantalising and fascinating real-life story, makes for compelling viewing. But it’s also supremely timely.

This incendiary true story boasts a charismatic central performance from rising star Peters (X-Men, TV’s American Horror Story), whose everyman charm helps drive a narrative which has a tendency to get entangled in its own worthy intentions.

Brian Shoaf does not break any new ground in Aardvark (besides featuring an actual aardvark in an independent film), yet his pairing of stalwart female characters with troubled men is a welcome twist of gender stereotypes.

The Lovers is shrewd, even if it’s not altogether satisfying.

Pointedly recounting the history of the LGBT movement in New York, director David France shines a light on how, even within that community, transgender people have been treated like second-class citizens.

No one says too much in this film’s underdeveloped dialogue, yet Ryan’s steely demeanor reflects the jumbled toughness and vulnerability of people dependant on land that isn’t giving them much.

We’re lucky that moralists like Ponsoldt and Eggers have a sense of humor.

Starting off as a strained farce before segueing into a sappy family film, How To Be A Latin Lover has its likeable, goofy moments, although it is consistently undercut by a main character who is very difficult to love.

Walk With Me is a slip of a film, at turns worthy and profound, yet also soporific and uneventful, an occupational hazard of spending three years embedded in a Zen community, no doubt.

Preposterous, nonsensical, but fun nonetheless, Unbroken frustrates as much as it entertains.

Although Wakefield’s ending leaves open the possibility for multiple interpretations, the filmmaker removes the sting from her story’s tale, which keeps its insights from cutting as deep.

Not only is it an affectionate and personal film – the subject, Elsa Dorfman, is a long-standing friend and Morris’s emotional investment in her story is evident in every frame. It’s also far more informal in approach than his normal forthright technique.

Underneath Vol. 2’s sarcastic exterior, Gunn’s script has a big, bleeding heart, pinpointing the characters’ insecurities and emotional scars.

Tramps is a good-natured little film.

It’s all glossily camped-up nonsense with an amusingly inappropriate title, but luridly – and ludicrously – entertaining nonetheless.

Connery extends the film’s appeal with enjoyable sequences depicting how the game was run back then – extravagantly be-whiskered golfers would push and shove their way around the course, casually moving balls while being followed by unruly, whisky-swilling crowds.

Expertly paced, Glory builds to a cleverly staged off-camera climax that perfectly caps everything that has gone before.

Essentially a feature-length version of the cute animal videos that proliferate on social media, Born In China is a feast for the eyes while also being an irritant for the ears.

The problem with City Of Tiny Lights is a plot that is all too easy to second guess and stretches of dialogue which fail to sparkle.

In what is only fitting for a story literally and figuratively embroidered around hearts, the film’s visual and emotional beats are perfectly in synch.

The spectacle gives you enough action from enough famous names to sustain the momentum of its legacy.

Editing is clearly complex given the variable footage, but each emergency call and every character is successfully individualised and identifiable, and several arcs snap into the overall narrative drive.

All credit to Dan Stevens for rendering so vividly a selfish, abrasive character.

While enjoyable in parts, its episodic pacing lets down the real-life story of a bold and remarkable woman.

Though perhaps low on insights, this is an evocative portrait of a brief, intense window of hedonism, self discovery and Olympic levels of self-indulgence experienced by young people on the cusp of adulthood.

A lazy heist comedy that asks little of its appealing leads, Going In Style goes down smoothly even if the only thing that really gets stolen is the audience’s time.

It’s certainly a striking location for a story: a blinding white sun-baked blank slate on which anything can be written. It’s just a little unfortunate that the story Herzog chooses to tell is so frustratingly enigmatic and unformed.

Lacking the visual flair of 127 Hours or the satisfying resilience of Robert Redford’s character in All Is Lost, the film leans heavily on Armie Hammer’s performance. And while he is a charismatic leading actor, he is not given enough to work with here to sustain the picture.

While Schwarzenegger is solid – almost literally, his face like granite and his movements stiff – and McNairy is completely committed in this tragic two-hander, Lester’s film is resolutely one-note.

A genuine, likeable, loose-limbed buddy dramedy about impending death.

A heartfelt performance from Chris Evans as the conscientious caretaker of his brilliant niece isn’t ample compensation for a film lacking the same intelligence and inquisitiveness that its young protagonist possesses in abundance.

It might be with a child’s eyes that Summer 1993 relates the efforts of a six year-old trying to cope with grief, but it is with maturity, empathy and heartfelt emotion that it conveys the uncertain reality that follows.

It is the attention to detail and the refusal to compromise that allows Serra to create such a compelling, coherent vision.

Even though there’s an enormous amount to look at and digest, little of this film is truly memorable or thought-provoking.

It is, however, creepy, suspenseful and nerve-wracking - and marks Gillespie and Kostanski as genre auteurs in the making.

Jon Nguyen’s carefully-calibrated ode to Lynch is in itself Lynchian, an essential picture for the director’s legion of fans.

All This Panic has a refreshingly light touch. These girls can make heavy weather of routine situations yet shoulder enormous responsibilities with grace and good humour.

It may be modest in scale but the film is assured in both intention and execution, building successfully towards a quietly moving climax.

I, Olga Hepnarova struggles with its difficult central character, always spiky and occasionally psychotic but never really as intriguing as the filmmakers clearly believe.

A grab bag of vulgarities, sex jokes, slapstick, nudity and chase scenes, the action-comedy CHIPS holds together better than expected, thanks largely to the goofy, dim-bulb rapport between stars Dax Shepard and Michael Peña.

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

This considered, muted drama can’t escape a fussy tastefulness — not to mention inevitable comparisons to more crackling treatments of similar subject matter.

A teen group therapy session disguised as a superhero movie, Power Rangers is numbingly predictable and cynically made, recycling myriad blockbuster tropes but draining their adolescent pleasures in the process.

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.

The initial promise of a South African Brokeback Mountain broadens into a measured consideration of class, race, self-loathing and self-assertion in a compact but pleasingly complex drama.

Warped visuals and layered dialogue give a sense of Dylan’s psychological battleground, while the use of reflective surfaces underscores Wang’s exploration of identity and perception.

The Devil’s Candy is a masterful slow burn, the horror and violence alluded to rather than seen.

Even if it tells the age-old story of the filthy rich getting richer and the poor going nowhere, Betting on Zero is still rather shocking.

Phillips’ collaborators work in harmony with the natural, nuanced acting; credits across the board are stylish and smooth, with lensing a standout. Also of particular note is the design; a rich, forest-driven colour saturation which suits the hooded houses and shadowy driveways of these traumatised teens.

What might have been a bleak account of not quite trying and therefore never really failing actually becomes an unlikely and engaging missive of hope and of choice, albeit steeped in reality.

The pivotal scenes may be fictionalised, but the prickling, precarious threat is clammily authentic and inspired by the experiences of the film’s writer, director and star, Ana Asensio, as an undocumented Spanish immigrant eking out an existence in New York.

There’s plenty of Lynch-light in dark interiors and empty staircases as Katz’s portrait of hipster La La Land winds through familiar territory. Gemini may not show too much that’s novel about that noir world, but we see new strengths in its lead actress.

Tickling Giants shows how a window of freedom and hope can unleash surges of creativity, like the improbable overnight success of a surgeon satirist.

Best appreciated as a sensory experience whose deeper meanings aren’t nearly as profound as the filmmaker and cast believe, Song To Song demonstrates that Malick remains a singular artist — albeit one in a palpable rut.

Director Nathan Morlando makes a concerted effort to inject dynamism and emotion into the telling of Mean Dreams, but fights a losing battle against the cliched writing and some risible plotting.

The film’s down-and-dirty nastiness does have its merits, but the bloodshed isn’t nearly as interesting when the characters are as exciting as a spreadsheet.

Native New Yorker Michael O’Shea makes an impressively confident directorial debut with The Transfiguration, a vampire movie that looks, feels, walks and talks like a gritty US indie flick.

Hyperactive, oddly premised and never quite as endearing as it should be, The Boss Baby is an animated family comedy that seems to have all the right elements but just doesn’t deliver.

This fragile, frank film chronicles its subjects with stripped-down intimacy, which can sometimes border on feeling like simple gawking. But it’s impossible not to care deeply about these anxious lovebirds, especially as we begin to understand the obstacles threatening their relationship.

A deftly handled cautionary tale, there is a compulsive, creeping horror to this portrait of a man losing all self-respect. That said, it is frequently a tough watch.

What’s lacking here, mostly, is a clarity of vision and control of tone that would give this prestige Euro-Western’s mannerisms a focus.

Childhood is a mystery we endlessly come back to and a place the Leydens have never fully left; Ní Chianáin gives the viewer an intimate view of it in this unusual little story.

Rauniyar handles the socio-political complexities of life post-conflict with a lightness of touch and flashes of absurdist humour. Much more than a photogenic ethnographic postcard from afar, this is a deceptively complex story of muddled allegiances and proscriptive social rules.

More than a quarter of a century later, Beauty and the Beast enchants again as a swirling blend of live-action story, stage, screen and sheer, rococo-spun fantasy.

The film is called, and certainly contains, cries from Syria but in itself Afineevsky’s documentary is more of a shout, a piercing scream.

Save the highly predictable decider, the on-court battles are satisfyingly fast and fierce, but the tension they generate is undercut by the labored Oedipal melodrama that contains them.

It’s a work of undeniable historical significance.

The Settlers is captivating viewing for the most part. But it’s also muddled in its combination of historical and contemporary storytelling.

If the film belongs to anyone, it’s creature designer Carlos Huante. Kong is expressive and impressive, both in hair and full-body movement, and his interaction – with water, humans, other animals – is consistently fluid.

This is a picture with first-rate fight choreography to match the quality of the martial arts talent involved.

Tightly focused and ambitious in its multiple themes, the tale touches on how the death penalty radiates out to affect the living.