Not without its bluntly funny bits, this nasty, programmatic comedy wants to be outlandish but, oddly enough, it’s the movie’s lack of realism that really hurts it.

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.

The issue of immigration couldn’t be more timely or poignant, but everything else in Desierto feels strictly by the book and it is a book we already know from cover to cover.

If in the past Abu-Assad’s movies could be criticised for stridency, The Idol finds him sacrificing none of his thematic drive while locating a more humanistic, inspirational tone.

Linklater does connect you with the fun that he must have had in those days. If you can take the testosterone, you’ll have a good time.

Hyena Road may be a bit underwhelming in its action set pieces and storytelling urgency, but its heart is certainly in the right place.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead and John Goodman make for fine sparring partners and the film has enough low-key, slow-burn suspense to keep the simplicity of the premise humming along.

Long, shiny, and treading a lot of water.

Apart from being a series of comic vignettes, The Meddler is also framed partially as a romance, and a very endearing one at that.

There’s an element of playfulness here – Hong challenges us to identify the subtle shifts in emphasis and interplay between the two versions of the story. The narrative expands into an intricate game of spot the difference.

Even by cult documentary standards, this one finds absurd depths in the peddling of enlightenment.

Big-name stars and dazzling visuals leap off the screen in eye-popping 3D, while the most recognisable chapter of China’s most-beloved literary text plays out in exuberant and energetic fashion. The Year of the Monkey could not have asked for a more enthusiastic welcome.

Creepy “send them back to Fuckheadistan” sentiment overwhelms London Has Fallen’s guilty pleasures, its meaty violence and xenophobic nastiness giving the cheddar an unpleasant aftertaste.

Even when the filmmaking falters, Krisha Fairchild’s unsettlingly intense lead performance dominates the movie, leaving us feeling as captive as the character’s wary kin.

It’s to Ficarra and Requa’s credit that they try to juggle romance and political commentary, daring to make a studio movie that doesn’t fall into cookie-cutter genre rules. But the overriding problem is that Whiskey doesn’t go far enough in its risk-taking, settling for a story that gets more predictable as it rolls along.

The bittersweet fact that money can buy many things but love and talent aren’t among them is explored with often-thrilling artistry in Marguerite.

The clichés start to arrive in rapid succession. Even the most moving performances cannot disguise their obviousness.

Mothers will do anything for their children, but this film’s simplistic brand of horror never makes that devotion compelling or frightening.

If A Quiet Passion grows in stature as we watch, it’s partly thanks to Cynthia Nixon, whose account of a witty, intelligent, rebellious but also reticent and emotionally confused woman takes the edge off Davies’ sometimes grating formalism.

As audience-friendly as they may be, the cast is left wading through the middle ground between the unengaging narrative and over-emphasised aesthetics.

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.

Newcomer Jelly Lin brings a delightfully quirky demeanour to her literal fish out of water.

Though there’s some clunky dialogue and not much real character development, Reynolds manages to put the action, mystery and drama elements together into a credible, and at times quite touching whole.

Neither director Stephen Hopkins nor star Stephan James can bring Owens’ story to passionate life, resulting in a drama that’s well-meaning rather than riveting.

The shifting loyalties and treacherous power plays that go on in Triple 9 are engaging, but Hillcoat especially shines in a series of three taut life-or-death sequences — one at the start of the film, one near the middle, and one at the end — that articulate more about who these characters are than anything they say.

Glassland is impressive, although Barrett struggles to give this carefully crafted narrative a coherent resolution.

It’s to the credit of Isabelle Huppert, who excels in the role of philosophy teacher Nathalie, and to the deft handling by Hansen-Løve that the film wears its wealth of ideas so lightly.

The Witch’s greatest asset is its precisely controlled menace, and so even when nothing terrifying is happening, it feels like something ominous could be unleashed at any moment.

Though it never gets too preachy, the film delivers its message about the dangers of stereotyping quite clearly and draws parallels with instances of everyday racial prejudice among humans.

As with all its cinematic precedents, there’s a race to a destination, many people involved, and at times the going can be uneven. The payoff, though, is worth it.

While the book had a kernel of believability and seriousness, on screen the drama is pretty insipid. The comedy, which produces only a handful of real laughs, comes from each character in turn, with Wilson dominating – and providing the mostly verbal raunch – in her now familiar party animal persona.

While shunning all the heroic pyrotechnics associated with this genre, [Lindholm] lays bare the moral and ethical dilemmas his main character, and many like him, have to face, raising questions that have no immediate or available answer.

The stakes are higher, the action is bigger, the ambitions are grander, the jokes are appreciably less funny. Like many comedy sequels, Zoolander 2 supersizes everything in such a way that it’s that much more apparent how few of the jokes are connecting.

Clocking in at just 96 minutes, Sword of Destiny feels heavily truncated, lacking in narrative substance. Scant characterisation and timid action choreography don’t help matters, while an over-reliance on simple sets and CGI landscapes mean Grant Major’s (The Lord of the Rings) production design lacks the resonance of the previous film.

More often than not, Deadpool’s bratty energy feels liberating, allowing for a sexier, dirtier, more hilarious superhero movie than the typical all-ages Marvel affair, which is so concerned with maximising profits that it risks offending no one.

Unquestionably uneven and only occasionally inspired, Hail, Caesar! is nonetheless engrossing and funny thanks to its off-kilter energy and a lead performance from Coens regular Josh Brolin that’s a model of quietly controlled chaos.

Swiss Army Man is a powerfully audacious and wilfully odd odyssey that is too nervy and strangely emotional to dismiss outright but, ultimately, isn’t satisfying enough to provoke a full-throated defence, either.

Yoga Hosers is a movie that feels like it was more fun to make than to watch.

Solondz’s latest is morose and jaundiced and, although uneven, a relentlessly clever little film.

The culturally specific elements that Iran-born, British-based first time writer-director Babak Anvari brings to the picture makes this a distinctive spin on a familiar premise.

Helped enormously by deeply-felt performances from Ellen Page and Allison Janney, this film mostly overcomes its unevenness by finding rich pockets of emotion and insight.

Though sometimes achingly on-the-nose in its attempts to foreshadow these characters’ destiny, Southside With You radiates enough wistful charm to overcome the well-meaning earnestness.

John Carney’s 1980s-set Sing Street is like a barnstorming tribute group. It’s crowd-pleasing, heart-warming, hits all the right notes, and is eager to please.

Small moment by small moment, Other People turns Kelly’s own experiences caring for his mother into something touchingly universal.

If the humor doesn’t always hit, the film’s darker conspiratorial turns never feel genuinely suspenseful, either. Even when Johnson ups the emotional and physical stakes for his character, the bogusness of the production interferes.

Newtown, which focuses on the bereaved families, is about coming to terms with loss.

Markees Christmas is an appealing, sensitive find as Morris, with Robinson striking all the rights notes as his struggling father.

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

The visual textures of The Lovers and the Despot, edited by Jim Hession — and the Kim audio tapes — make for vibrant cinema.

There is not an ounce of flourish to the filmmaking, but that’s always been the director’s aesthetic. His embellishments come in subtler forms, with witty dialogue and memorable characters—traits that Love and Friendship offers in abundance.

Lo And Behold, Reveries Of The Connected World is a modestly profound and consistently fascinating musing.

The remarkable, magical thing about this film is that, at 85 minutes, it’s so whole. With its fully-formed people and changing places, Little Men is a film a viewer can live in, and think about while they’re there.

Robert Greene’s latest fusion of reality and meta-fiction is fiercely intelligent, but inescapably tars itself with the ghoulishness it critiques.

It’s not that [Krasinski] fails, or that his film isn’t desperately charming as it goes about its business, but this is very familiar American indie territory, and The Hollars stops well short of innovation.

Ross and his two leads set the stage for a provocatively unsteady romance that’s initially entrancing, honouring all the uncertainty inherent in new love. But eventually, Frank & Lola succumbs to a series of progressively more implausible twists that run counter to the carefully constructed everyman that Shannon has essayed.

In a scant 72 minutes and in a few locations, Holmer has found a dignity in her appealing subjects, and a mystery.

Equity is a smart Wall Street thriller which is most engaging when it’s exploring the obstacles facing its female protagonists specifically because of their gender.

As sunny as Eddie The Eagle is, its greatest liability is that it never pushes itself, content to let an amiable true-life tale be turned into a generic genre exercise.

Its running time may make it more digestible than some of Weerasethakul’s more ambitious pieces, although it straddles the line between full-feature and his short films and experimental work quite beautifully.

The motivations and the performances are solid in Jane Got A Gun, an attractively mounted post-Civil War revenge drama with plenty of shooting and a well-placed twist or two.

The directorial debut of long-time screenwriter and producer James Schamus exudes a tasteful reserve, but actor Logan Lerman cuts through the seeming gentility in a performance that seethes with his character’s burgeoning arrogance and cynicism.

Warmly funny and deeply delightful, Hunt For The Wilderpeople is a tale of two misfits told with such generosity of spirit and consistent good humour that it’s a pleasant surprise to discover how sneakily touching it is as well.

Goat is a potent reminder that even traditional gender roles can be rife with angst, anxiety and devastating social pressures.

Sure, there’s a strong element of arch playfulness in the exercise, but that doesn’t make the end result any less tiresome. In Eisenstein In Guanajuato, Greenaway is good at making us look, but not at making us care.

The risk-averse approach to the remake extends to the humour. Pratfalls and benign double entendres (“I saw you slip her a sausage!”) rub shoulders with familiar gags and catchphrases which have been lifted wholesale from the original series.

Dark Night is a drama of grim inevitability.

Refreshingly, there is no clichéd love story or illicit thriller that emerges; Marston is pursuing ideas that are far more personal and philosophical, about the masquerade of identity and what it means to that identity when you make a significant change in your life.

The ending is haunting and affecting.

Like the family at its centre, Captain Fantastic is an odd bird, sometimes endearing, sometimes unbelievable.

A magnificent performance from Rebecca Hall is Christine’s clear highlight, but the entire ensemble shines in this stripped-down but deeply sympathetic drama.

Reichardt has crafted another deeply felt and beautifully ambiguous meditation on contemporary life in the far corners of the American heartland.

This may not be the most nuanced of films, but its blunt-force impact leaves one shaken.

Kenneth Lonergan’s deeply moving return after the travails of Margaret shows what a rare storyteller he is, measuring out his narrative beats in a world which crackles with life, guiding Casey Affleck’s magnificent performance, instantly recognisable as a career-be

A few sub-plots get lost...but this offers a satisfyingly large-scale demonic incursion as glimpsed from the streets.

Van Groeningen conveys kinetically the combined power of a ferocious beat, copious drugs, and sexual energy to endow revellers with transient communal utopianism.

The shock value of the dialogue – and it is staggeringly rude at times – is neutered by a rambling lack of narrative drive and, ultimately, a sentimental justification that feels disingenuous.

Slick production values and stylish directorial flourishes help make Detective Chinatown an effective and entertaining buddy cop comedy.

The climactic rescue sequence has tension and some thrills, but it’s over fairly quickly and the film settles back into a sentimental lull

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.

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.

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

little can be done to disguise the weakness of an undercooked script based on an idea Tornatore apparently had in his bottom drawer for decades.

Like many films designed to double as opening chapters in ongoing screen sagas, The Fifth Wave always feels padded, its focus on establishing a springboard for future sequels rather than satisfactorily exploring its own narrative.

With a script that’s about as inventive as the title, Ride Along 2 does little more than rehash the formula that two years ago teamed Ice Cube and Kevin Hart in an amiable if unambitious action comedy.

It’s authentic without being grim; moody and tentatively hopeful. There’s a British verite influence at play, but King Jack’s heart is positively American.

The going can be a bit slow at first, but the interweaving narratives, which comment on (and sometimes echo) each other, begin to develop a hypnotic grandeur. It’s a hell of a trip.

Although Sorrentino’s Fellini mash-up adds little of substance to what il maestro showed and said all those years ago, it’s still a remarkable cinematic experience.

Nicely acted – with an array of interesting, calculating female characters and clueless male ones – this relies too much on Satanic cliché, with tilted camera angles, wailing and buzzing music and odd lighting effects stirring up an atmosphere of dread which tips over too often into ridiculousness.

Anesthesia comes from the heart, as few films do these days.

Less like a drama than a statement, Chevalier’s characters do not grow but diminish. None of Attenberg’s charming insouciance is in evidence here although she never defines any of her victims too precisely, she is blunt and even cruel at times.

Grandma was clearly made on modest resources and can look a little rough and ready in places. Viewers will, however, be more than willing to overlook its imperfections - because it is so funny and engaging and because Lily Tomlin is such a joy to behold.

A sympathetic but clear-eyed character study transforms into something more insidious, sobering and infuriating in (T)error, a superb documentary that personalises the US War on Terror in ways that make the human toll intimate and unmistakable.

The Fencer plays an entirely predictable match right down to its final bout, but the period Soviet Block setting gives the game an interesting hook, and DoP Thomo Hutri’s muted location shots prove atmospheric.

This time, celebrated action director Yuen Wo-ping, taking over from Sammo Hung, ensures the film’s fight sequences remain the film’s primary focus, although the overall tone is smaller and quieter, reflecting both the personal drama Ip Man encounters and Donnie Yen’s own encroaching retirement from kung-fu cinema.

Robustly entertaining while carrying the weight of impossible audience expectations, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a fascinating, often satisfying mixture of rollicking mythmaking and fan service.

The Hateful Eight’s impact expands and grows richer the further away you are from the experience of watching it.

It’s a jolting race against time when the wave gathers steam far away, as implacable as the tsunami in Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter, minus the pop metaphysics .

A raucous and outrageously (if harmlessly) crude slapstick comedy.