Lacking some of the simplicity and elegance of the first instalment, The Conjuring 2 is nonetheless a smoothly efficient horror movie, building to a powerhouse finale rooted in our emotional connection to the film’s well-drawn main characters.

Packed with better action sequences and a smidgeon more emotional resonance, this sequel may be more engaging than its predecessor, but the franchise remains a rather clattering and crude affair.

A superbly silly sendup of the modern musical landscape, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is as thimble-deep as the throwaway hits it’s satirising, but also just as lively.

Doubling down on the giddily ridiculous tone of its predecessor, Now You See Me 2 is diverting, but the film’s rampant, cheeky cleverness — its ‘can you guess what’s going on?” coyness — ultimately proves tiresome.

It’s a classic underdog story, effective for its engaging chronicle of outsiders trying to change the system.

Fizzing with ideas, as difficult to pin down as its heroine, Divines keeps generating electricity long after the lights have gone down.

Na’s screenplay takes viewers to the root of evil in a manner that subverts expectations and cleverly manipulates cause and effect at almost every turn.

The film takes a long time to build dramatic momentum and gets interrupted by what seem like unnecessary plot points; some of them, perhaps, geared towards potential sequels.

Resistance to this delirious romantic tragedy is futile, save for that nagging voice in our head wondering if it really has to be this way.

The economical, precisely calibrated screenplay is nicely filled with enough simmering conflicts, character flaws and guilty resentments to keep you intrigued by what lies beneath the surface of these comfortable, middle-class lives

While the urgency of the message emerges powerfully, the details are often hard to absorb, as Gibney skips from political information to technical specs.

The young cast, from the newbie leads to an army of go-for-it extras, are terrific, and Marillier is something else – ferociously expressive in a performance that’s no-holds-barred on every front.

This is partly a consummate figures-in-a-landscape study, with characters – and their accompanying mules - often merging into the vastness of a varied, but usually profoundly, inhospitable landscape. But the cast makes striking use of non-professionals, and Laxe has an unerring eye for faces that tell a story.

Low-key performances by the conflicted Lahti and the radiant Airola prove the final knockout hit, with The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki at its best when it’s lingering upon the nuanced expressions on their faces, or highlighting the way their portrayals so convincingly convey their characters’ affections.

Hands Of Stone tests how far a film can go solely on heart, and in this case, it turns out to be just enough to overcome biopic conventionality.

If the film exasperates and exhausts, which it does, there is also the knowledge that before too long there will also be moments of surreal comedy, freewheeling invention and genuine tenderness.

This audacious, irony-laced, convention-jumbling tale is just plain fun to watch.

One thing that can be said about brazen crime comedy Dog Eat Dog is that it’s a full-blooded venture in every respect, with Schrader and his leads Cage and Willem Dafoe clearly enjoying the gore-soaked frenzy. But the film also feels like a too- familiar reheating of in-your-face Tarantino-style crime tropes.

While the stand-off does have its scripted moments, Clash rises above this for two reasons. Firstly, it’s intensely cinematic.... Secondly, underlying the drama is a rather poignant lament for the unity and energy of Egyptian culture, something which comes through in a wealth of small details.

The fading, erstwhile disgraced star’s grizzled, weary urgency gives this story some gusto and resonance, but otherwise, Mesrine director Jean-François Richet delivers adequate B-movie excitement only in spurts.

Like Kore-eda’s 2008 family drama Still Walking, this is a film which is interested in the architecture, both emotional and physical, of the family home.

he film’s unexpected narrative elements — including a few shots you’ve never seen no matter how often you go to the movies — make this a rewarding take on coupledom told with satisfying visual flair.

The end result proves commanding and fascinating, even if it’s not wholly satisfying from start to finish.

Exploring a bewildering range of issues from ideas of masculinity to assisted suicide and the fraying of societal ties, Staying Vertical is wildly eccentric, darkly comic and filled with you-don’t-see-that-often moments which are liable to render it an acquired taste.

This knowingly excessive brew of cartoonish knockabout and macabre comedy horror just isn’t that funny.

those who aren’t put off by the extensive subtitling will find themselves swept away by this family reunion which offers not only a masterful portrait of the contemporary Romanian middle-class but also a whole set of smart, perceptive reflections on the relativity of truth, on the failings of memory, the interpretation of history, the significance of religion and much more.

Farhadi remains a master of pace and tension, slowly upping the stakes in an unsettling narrative fuelled by a lingering sense of powerlessness, paranoia and the possibility that you never entirely know the person you love.

Sometimes all a documentary needs to do is to get us in the room with somebody we’re curious about. Laura Poitras did this, and a lot more, in Citizenfour, by taking us to meet US whistleblower Edward Snowden; she pulls off the same trick in Risk.

This is, quite simply, thoughtful and ultimately moving animation at its best.

Writer-director Jim Jarmusch often explores existential themes, but they’ve perhaps never been so beautifully unadorned as they are in Paterson, a deceptively modest character piece that’s profound and moving while remaining grounded in the everyday.

It is often very funny, unsettling and yet still proves illuminating on the character of Neruda and the battle for Chile in the 1940s.

The film is mostly unmoving, neither the romance nor the social consciousness succeeding in stirring our emotions. Even worse, Penn lets the plight of displaced Africans slip into the background, resulting in yet another well-meaning film that wants to address planetary ills by concentrating our attention on the good-looking outsiders who come in to save the day.

Ma’ Rosa is atmospheric and involving to a degree but also feels as if we are in familiar territory.

While it might not break new ground, there is no denying the potency of the film’s empathetic anguish and fury.

The film manages the tricky feat of both staying true to Waters breathless, page-turning prose, and creating a wholly persuasive new milieu for the story.

Jarmusch fans won’t find much of the director’s signature touch here, as he self-effacingly pays homage to a beloved act – Stooges fans will find plenty to enthuse about in the film’s ample coverage of a little-documented career.

The ingredients of an old-fashioned romantic weepie are given class and conviction by director Nicole Garcia whose elegant restraint helps to ground the more fanciful elements in some sense of reality. Her approach also makes the eleventh hour revelations easier to swallow.

Favouring an unhurried pace, Filho takes the time to let us get to know Clara. And while the moments of drama are small and intimate, the effect is engrossing.

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

The film’s ace card is its intertwining of not one but two mismatched buddy relationships.

Ultimately, all we have to hold on to in a story that lurches inexorably into CGI absurdity is our emotional connection with Stewart’s lost, lonely character.

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.

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.

Refn’s gifts as a visual stylist are employed to arresting effect - there’s a luxuriant use of colour which evokes the work of fashion photographer Guy Bourdin. But peel back the glossy, overly groomed surface and there is not a lot of substance underneath.

If the intimate frame and dour, matter-of-fact aesthetic suggest a return to the raw territory of La Promesse or The Son, what is new here is a flirtation with genre that lends an extra dose of resonance to a finely-scripted story.

Surprising, awkward, refreshing and, at times, downright hilarious, German director Maren Ade’s dazzlingly original follow-up to her 2009 Berlinale Silver Bear winner Everyone Else is that rarest of things: a nearly three-hour-long German-Austrian arthouse comedy-drama that (almost) never drags.

The film develops into a stirring salute to their deep-rooted spiritual devotion and quiet determination.

Kurosawa remains a master of twilight-zone atmosphere, but this extended metaphor for the grieving process relies too heavily on ambience alone.

A sequel in name only to Wilson Yip’s 2005 film, Soi Cheang’s SPL2: A Time For Consequences nevertheless recaptures the exhilarating energy of the original.

There is an undeniable cheesiness to the closing stage of ma ma that makes it hard to take entirely seriously.

There is a compassion in this filmmaking that is markedly lacking in America’s attitude towards the people it pushes to its outer fringes.

It’s a rich and complicated film.

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.

As appealing and likeable as The BFG is, the movie doesn’t seem particularly groundbreaking or daring when it comes from Spielberg, who is revisiting his major themes here without necessarily reinventing them.

The movie is competently made, but also perfunctory, telling us things about the greed of rich business executives and the shallowness of cable TV that we already know.

Agnus Dei’s filmmakers ultimately embrace the sin of over-simplification. And audiences, grabbing for their tissues, will likely forgive them of it.

A bittersweet comedy of manners that sees Allen pushing the boat out stylistically and in narrative ambition, even as he treads familiar ground.

A parade of gaudy CGI and strained whimsy, Alice Through The Looking Glass proves even more manic and grating than its 2010 predecessor.

The X-Men adventures keep getting bigger, but Singer works extremely hard to ensure that, even when they’re not always better, they continue to thrill sufficiently.

Tickled is unexpectedly compelling, alternately painful and funny and deeply sad.

Last Days In The Desert possesses the attributes that have been the hallmark of writer-director Rodrigo García’s best films: It’s emotionally uncluttered while being narratively ambitious.

It’s a nice premise, one grounded and lent empathy not only by a series of strong performances but by the script’s point-of-view shifts.

The Angry Birds Movie is fitfully funny but tends towards a madcap mixture of comedy and action which never develops much forward momentum. The joke-a-minute approach misses more than it hits, although the bright animation and adorably-rendered characters are decent compensation.

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.

Neighbors: Sorority Rising turns out to be an uneasy watch, awash with unconvincing performances, unfunny stereotypes, and dubious gross-out gags.

Elstree 1976 entertainingly explores the world of the character actor and bit-part player.

While McGregor and Harris convincingly portray a couple in trouble, and Lewis’s odball spook is an uneasy fit, it is Skarsgard’s dynamic performance which saves the day.

The film feels like a long succession of incidents that tend to climax in familiar platitudes or weary declarations of the “I can’t handle this!” variety.

This is an idiosyncratic hop around Fassbinder’s life by his Danish film historian friend Thomsen.

The entire film is a game of cat and mouse in the emotional equivalent of slow-motion, made watchable by elegant compositions and De Laâge’s natural beauty.

Perversely pleasurable, it works on its own self-conscious terms, though not all audiences will appreciate its English brand of sad-sack humour.

The script puts artsy effect before character credibility.

The ceaseless stupidity of men is lamented but also dissected in Sleeping Giant, a thoughtful, well-observed but also familiar coming-of-age drama.

As thoughtfully rendered as much of Hologram is, the film eventually succumbs to the material’s fundamental triteness, offering done-to-death life lessons about second chances and the value of broadening one’s perspective.

Bastille Day is fun, for the most part, but the biggest take-home here is how easily Elba could slip into Bond’s shoes.

The filmmakers rarely go beyond being pleased with how strange this convergence of pop-culture and political figures must have been, and so Elvis & Nixon comes across as both thimble-deep and distractingly self-satisfied.

Justin Kelly’s King Cobra bears the distinction of being the first optimistic black comedy set in the world of gay porn production that’s also extremely classy.

Despite the slapdash plotting, the film – taken from the point of view of the star – gives an uneasy insight into the celebrity’s co-dependent relationship with the people who make him, and can destroy him.

It is a sad little tale but one that manages to find notes of hope amongst the setbacks and rejections of everyday life.

Civil War is an exciting, often giddy pop pleasure.

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.

If there is a star in this show, it is certainly cinematographer Nathalie Moliavko-Visotzky whose work stands out as the one perfectly valid reason to watch this film.

The victims of notorious Chilean torture camp Colonia Dignidad suffered more than enough without Colonia adding insult to injury.

An intriguing and absorbing delve into almost alien parts of the United States.

Bouquets all round: Stephen Frears goes broad in Florence Foster Jenkins, and the appeal should be wide.

Although the seams may show on a narrative level, and some may find it over-cooked, this is a luxurious slide into female neurosis.

Vroman follows up The Iceman with a competently-made film, featuring solid production design from Jon Henson (Testament of Youth) and some good, gritty chase sequences, particularly at the film’s onset.

Ultimately, 11 Minutes is as much a virtuoso party piece as anything - but it shows a veteran director in youthful form, clearly having a ball.

A sporadically funny film that has moments of real heart in what’s otherwise a formulaic study of an aggressive businesswoman who learns to stop being so selfish.

While some may find Bang Gang a calculatedly chic opening salvo for a feature career, it carries a genuine emotional charge, and overall Husson shows she means business.

If judged by fluid effects work, Atwood’s stunning costumes, and the fun of watching Theron and Blunt reach new heights of arch camp, The Huntsman: Winter’s War is a triumph. By any other measure, though, it’s a far more qualified prospect

Conjuring up a serving of visual magic is one thing, of course; bringing Kipling’s characters and narrative to life is another.

The film is unashamedly middle-brow and sentimental but it tells such a good story that it is hard to resist.

Standing Tall can’t be faulted for energy and for seriousness - and offers a rare case of a troubled-teen drama in which the justice system is seen as entirely benevolent, and a source of succour to troubled souls.

The affectionate rapport between the actors and their characters is evident in every scene and manages to transport the wary viewer through an odd but not unappealing mixture of mystical road movie and family psychodrama.

The input of the eloquent, brilliant, bitchy circle of friends with which he surrounded himself creates a portrait of the man which is every bit as candid as his work.

Gorging on bombast and self-importance, swamped by its own mythology, Batman v Superman is loud, sprawling, and distracted. The action jumps around almost as fast as a man can fly, but nowhere near as smoothly.

Even given that lazy stereotyping is the point of her schtick, Vardalos’ broad routine hasn’t aged well, her heavily-(and widely-) accented ‘oily’ Greek family an uncomfortable, almost retro fit for today’s global sensitivities. Apart from that, the gags just aren’t that funny.