What’s missing is much in the way of substantial drama or character development.

A heartwarming true story that has been expertly crafted into an irresistible, emotion-charged documentary.

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 brutal survival tale is so powerfully engrossing that, despite the clear limitations of his monochromatic, showy approach, the film’s compelling construction tends to override the legitimate criticisms.

Director Lenny Abrahamson has made a deeply moving story about how adults try to explain the world to their children — even when they don’t always understand it themselves. And Brie Larson gives a tremendous performance as a mother who must be strong for her boy, until she suddenly can’t be anymore.

Krampus, when he eventually shows his cards, is a dark delight, but this film has more to offer than a single monster – Dougherty has a few puppet side-shows, including elves, a clown which comes right out of Poltergeist’s closet and some stuffed animals which are the satanic mirrior images of our Toy Story friends. Ho, ho, ho, indeed.

Core’s incarnation of Point Break is about one thing, extreme sports, and it is no small relief that the film at least handles those sequences well.

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.

There’s a jazzy air throughout and the sound of the dance halls resonate.

This Grand Guignol riot of rotting animal and Godless creations is great fun. However, of the cast, it is only McAvoy, walking the line between madman and genius, who fully manages to hold his own against the spectacle with which he shares the screen.

Though it sometimes recalls the irresistibly energetic, genre-bending feel of Lee’s best films – Do The Right Thing in particular – it lacks the assurance and unifying thrust that made those features work so well.

The actor’s comic sad clown performance lifts the film above an ordinary script.

Alongside a sharp supporting cast that includes Dean Norris and Michael Kelly, Secret’s leads do what they can and never embarrass themselves. But the film’s so disposable, it vanishes right in front of your eyes.

Since so much of Creed’s emotional oomph comes from audience familiarity with the past films, the movie mostly shadowboxes with its past.

A so-so stoner film where the premise is almost always better than the execution.

It might be a given that Pixar’s movies are visually spectacular, but The Good Dinosaur may be the studio’s most purely cinematic, the richness of the design and the emotional power of the widescreen compositions stirring deep, almost primal feelings about childhood, the loss of innocence and the untamed ferocity of the natural world.

The Big Short means to infuriate its audience, but it’s smart enough to know that such an approach doesn’t preclude a film from being darkly, cathartically funny as well.

Landesman’s film may not be scintillating drama, but it aches with muted anger, and his cast makes sure to keep the proceedings at a consistent simmering boil.

Roland and Vanessa simply aren’t sufficiently compelling to provoke us to fill in the blanks. Pitt brings his usual weathered charm, and Jolie Pitt makes her character’s all-consuming melancholy occasionally ravishing, but there’s not enough depth underneath.

A Nazi Legacy – What Our Fathers Did comes to a climax in Lviv, but the film is a layered examination of brutality, self-deception, guilt and the nature of justice which is compelling throughout.

Spender...has made a rare kind of documentary – muscular and refined, and a splendour for the eyes.

Mockingjay — Part 2 proves to be the most satisfying, gripping and emotional film in the franchise, resolving Katniss Everdeen’s odyssey with tense action sequences and a well-earned poignancy.

The Peanuts Movie isn’t so much an homage as it is an echo and a call-back, one that certainly has heart but also feels dispiritingly riskless.

Seyfried is impressive in the role, mercurial and fragile, but with a flinty coldness deep within.

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.

What The Daughter lacks in narrative surprises, however, it works hard to make up for in its confident approach.

The Ghost Dimension isn’t exactly frightening — the setup is so well-worn now that it’s hard to be particularly startled by what transpires — but it’s able to wring sufficient dread out of this franchise’s go-to fears.

Bond has seen it all before, this team has done it all before, and the production juggernaut hits every beat with a carefully calibrated precision which can be deeply satisfying but also risk coming across as rote.

Every thoughtful story beat and every well-observed character moment happens with such predictability and slick professionalism that the whole project seems smothered in bland sweetness.

A stunningly misjudged comedy, Rock The Kasbah stretches and strains Bill Murray’s deadpan nonchalance until it snaps, and what results is a singularly unfunny, often infuriating tale.

For a film about the music business, it’s interesting that Kill Your Friends sticks so faithfully to one note throughout; it’s as if Niven fears any glimpse of humanity might risk the project’s integrity, but the lack of human empathy ultimately becomes this project’s biggest handicap.

Like its star, The Last Witch Hunter is big, overblown and frequently incomprehensible.

Del Toro’s predictably impeccable production design and tonal flourishes help bring the film to life, aided by strong performances from his leads, especially Jessica Chastain, who gives the otherwise reverent proceedings just the right amount of jolt.

For all its cosplay sex slaves, mountains of blow up dolls and frenzied masturbation, this is as tame, and in many ways as innocent, as a Benny Hill sketch.

Censored Voices is a reminder that glorious myths of wars and the men who fight them wither under scrutiny, in Israel and everywhere else.

A cult item par excellence, Bone Tomahawk does for the Western what Gareth Edwards did for Monsters. Long, slow and low-budget, Bone Tomahawk is also disturbingly tense, hyper-violent, and destined to attract an adoring fanboy following.

There is no question that this is an extraordinary tale of human fortitude and resilience: at least some of the tears that will be shed in the film will be honestly earned.

First-time feature director Don Cheadle has made an invigoratingly bold attempt to structure his film about Miles Davis as an extended visual and narrative equivalent of modal jazz.

The Treasure once again demonstrates that even though there is little chance of his breaking down the doors of your next door multiplex, Porumboiu is certainly one of the most original filmmakers to emerge in the recent past.

More like the testimony of an enthusiastic, fully committed supporter watching, in close-up, a populatoon reclaiming its rights, Afineevsky’s film accepts as a basic premise that Yanukevych is the villain. Anyone who differs should look elsewhere.

Young actresses, Lorenza Izzo, who plays the dark-haired vicious vamp, and Ana de Armas, a Marilyn Monroe-like nymphette, are fine as the sociopathic femme fatales, toying with their sexiness like a loaded weapon. But Reeves is the obvious big draw here, and he’s fun to watch, alternating between exasperation, fury and helplessness.

It stretches character credibility, and resorts too much to criminal-underworld cliché and the driving pace of its own perpetual motion, which curiously does nothing to paper over the longueurs in certain over-stretched sequences. You come out on a high of sorts – but it soon fades.

Richards is such a fun interviewee that there’s no point kvetching about the film’s superficial treatment.

It’s no discredit to Steve Jobs, Danny Boyle’s propulsive and iconoclastic biopic of the digital-revolution visionary who democratised personal computing, that it’s a dispiriting study of capitalistic self-aggrandisement – one that leaves a sense of unease despite its ironically upbeat ending.

Jack Black’s mildly theatrical, knowingly hammy performance is but one of this horror-comedy’s overdone elements, and the film fails to rise above the level of perfunctory effects-driven spectacle.

Unusually for a Spielberg movie, Bridge of Spies is tonally uncertain.

Sherpa swiftly proves as grippingly human and political as it does visually spectacular.

Hitchcock Truffaut is of undeniable appeal to those with even a passing interest in the history of cinema. There’s nothing rarified about the air the project breathes, either – this features passionate people who have made their own iconic cinema talking about two giants of our film age with an enthusiasm which is infectious.

John McKenna and Gabriel Clarke have been assiduous in tracking down the participants and their descendants, and deserve recognition for the effort they have put in to raising Le Mans for a new generation of fast car enthusiasts and Hollywood buffs.

Tools associated with fiction are used to tell the truth, and an elegant tone is deployed to disguise a righteous fury.

Despite its rich visual evocation of the eponymous port city as a simmering cauldron of vice, corruption, and barbarity, director Mikael Håfström’s film is undone by its tortuous plot, wooden characterisation, absence of narrative tension, and emotional nullity. It simply lacks conviction.

Zemeckis reminds us that it’s in the service of reality, rather than fantasy, that digital technology is often most potent.

If some of this loud horror material looks frankly absurd, that’s only, Amenabar would no doubt argue, because it reflects the hackneyed, trick-or-treats way in which we give form and body to our night fears. Fine, but for a thriller to thrill, such didactic admonishments are not enough.

What begins as a playful look at five young women’s rebellion against their strict upbringing soon becomes something far more stirring and emotional.

As a dreamy yet concrete evocation of lives beset by unseen anxieties and dwindling resources, Western has a mythic quality in keeping with its totemic title.

Chris Rossi built Meadowland’s screenplay on short, punchy scenes, and he deserves credit for crafting moments of quotidian ordinariness... that are also charged with tension.

When the film gets more serious it produces some affecting moments between the two leads.

Danny’s story isn’t dramatic or affecting enough to carry the film and other characters never develop into anything more than colourful ciphers. Irvine is appealing and relatable, but his performance isn’t always convincing and he’s handicapped by some clunky dialogue.

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

A stripped-down drama built around a powerful and sometimes troubling performance by Christopher Plummer.

Some intricately choreographed long takes - Eric Gautier’s photography is superb throughout - enhance a project which is both vivid in its evocation of the recent past, and razor-sharp in the light it sheds on the way that religious and nationalistic fanaticism continue to exert a dangerous sway.

London Fields overflows with interesting ideas but they are frequently buried under lurid fantasy sequences, blunt-edged satire and the sense that it is much more amused by its own wild daring than we are.

Julie Delpy’s latest directorial effort juggles some potentially delicious ideas, but Lolo proves to be an exasperating romantic comedy that flirts with darker terrain it never has the guts or wit to really explore.

A tour de force of drama, composition and colour.

It’s an inspiring story, acted with heart and grit by Paige and Wood, and film directed with adroitness by Rozema in a ruin of a set in the woods.

It’s above all a character study, as well as an elegant technical achievement that puts a distinctive stylistic slant on its realist subject matter.

Aleksandr Sokurov’s Francofonia is rich, complex, challenging.

The Forbidden Room is a tour de force that takes Maddin’s ambition through a maze of magical melodrama.

The only thing that’s clear from start to finish is that Hadžihalilovic is in absolute command of her unsettling cinematic realm.

The Childhood Of A Leader is as relentlessly sombre and compelling as the film’s remarkable, full-volume orchestral soundtrack by musician’s musician Scott Walker.

Through both parts, and this is Bellocchio’s admirable achievement, he has life itself impetuously claiming its rights.

Office is first and foremost about enjoying cinema’s capacity to entertain and have fun, which Johnnie To certainly seems to have had himself in making it.

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.

This tender, gently funny depiction of female friendship benefits from nicely committed work from lead actresses Toni Collette and Drew Barrymore plus distinctive locations in London and Yorkshire, but suffers from unconvincing moments and struggles to convert diverse story elements into an especially compelling whole.

All three leads get stronger as the movie goes along, in part because Miller’s full intention isn’t clear until about halfway through. These characters are foolish without being idiots, which produces a more sophisticated type of comedy.

Bryan Cranston creates a potent sense of Trumbo as a reasonable man, full of charm, eloquence and principle and he is surrounded by a string of performances to savour.

Working with writer (and co-editor) Amy Jump again, Wheatley wades into the prescient 1975 text, delivering a complex, fluid interpretation which is respectful and almost-faithful while still being its own beautiful, crazed beast.

In the slim but powerful documentary He Named Me Malala Davis Guggenheim attempts to colour in a shy, yet deceptively stout-hearted schoolgirl and her symbiotically-close relationship with her father, indicated by the film’s title.

Hester’s goal was to convince politicians that gay people are like everyone else. In its ultra-mainstream style, and now in its argument for equality (which most of America endorses today), this solidly acted drama drives that point home.

For all that it promises the thrill of high-speed racing, the crush of the peloton, and the drama of disgrace, The Program works best when it deals with this fascinating case of investigative journalism which saw Walsh doggedly pursue his target through 13 years and the temporary loss of his own reputation.

Films about dysfunctional families are as common as families themselves. But for most of its running time, The Family Fang impressively negotiates around the familiar trappings, finding a relatively new way to discuss familiar themes.

Ethan Hawke delivers an intense, committed performance as the hopelessly drug-addicted trumpeter Chet Baker in the odd, erratic Born To Be Blue, written and directed by Robert Budreau as a bumpy free-form improvisation on the hopeless-wreck-makes-musical-comeback biopic.

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.

Prophet’s Prey is more effective at presenting the enigmatic figure of the Prophet himself. His drawling somnolent voice hovers over the movie like a menacing ghost.

Hiddleston’s intense performance lends a little frisson to an otherwise familiar, if gorgeously-mounted tale about a troubled musical genius who is inevitably, gruellingly, felled by his demons.

While Eye In The Sky is effective in building suspense and making a talk-y drama compelling, these techniques are in service to high-minded, heavy-handed filmmaking that buries troubling wartime questions in simplistic rhetoric.

Equals just about passes muster as a solid vignette of love against the odds, but when it comes to futurism, its vision is dustily archaic.

A very basic formula, executed in bare-bones fashion, works a treat because this set of interviews with Brian De Palma on his life and films is so revealing, and entertaining, that little is needed here other than the man, his opinions and some telling illustrations.

A slight story that aspires to be a thriller but ends up as a rather flat melodrama about a rock-star generation struggling to deal with its twilight years.

Charlie Kaufman is back – with a wistful, resonant film, a bracing, wry, honest dose of cinematic melancholy.

Politics is a dirty business, but Our Brand Is Crisis doesn’t stick its hands into the muck sufficiently to be as entertaining or stinging as it could be.

Visually spectacular and consistently entertaining, Ridley Scott’s space rescue procedural The Martian suffers only from a failure to hit its emotional beats with the amount of force and feeling usually required to make this kind of life-and-death adventure really take off.

It is a more stimulating, thought-provoking and entertaining call to arms than anything we are likely to hear from an aspiring President over the next year.

Though it’s laudable that Vallée and his cast tried not to make just another story about someone wallowing in his grief, their alternative coddles Davis’s mourning with a rampant colourfulness that’s suffocating.

Ultimately, Prince is unwilling to follow through on its darker impulses, while equally reluctant to go the whole nine yards in its lighter comedy register. Even so, its stylistic brio makes Prince enough of a live wire to bode well for de Jong’s future.

A marketable slice of hit-and-miss mischief that doesn’t suggest a career rebirth so much as a larky side project that will yield more in the way of nervous laughter than quickened pulses.

With more action and less mystery, a returning director and main cast and a handful of sketchy new characters, The Scorch Trials makes for an efficient yet uninspiring sequel.

Corin Hardy makes a slick, confident debut with supernatural horror The Hallow. Demonstrating a facility with storytelling almost as skilful as his nimble orchestration of animatronics and visual effects.