It’s easy to buy Hardy’s dual performance, and it doesn’t get in the way of the film – although some actor-ly exuberance in the delivery of Ronnie can sound an off-note, with Hardy using some facial prosthetics around the jaw line which aren’t particularly subtle.

A polished, engrossing procedural, Spotlight offers plenty of old-fashioned pleasures — chiefly, the sight of smart, scrappy muckraking journalists stopping at nothing to uncover systematic corruption.

The first Transporter film in seven years is moderately entertaining and reliably ludicrous in all the predictable ways, but the film’s new sharp-dressed driver doesn’t possess the effortless stoic wit of the original trilogy’s Jason Statham, which ends up making all the difference.

Full of committed performances, particularly from Elba and the impressive young actor Abraham Attah, Beasts Of No Nation is a project of considerable integrity which makes for a consistently-engrossing, if over-long, viewing experience.

While it’s impossible not to be somewhat caught up in these climbers’ life-or-death struggle, Everest is oddly uninvolving — it depicts a horrific scenario in an underwhelming, distancing way.

One wouldn’t expect A Walk In The Woods to be a rat-a-tat-tat 1930s comedy, but between the stars’ rusty comic timing and the script’s stale setups, the movie simply isn’t that funny, more likely to produce a smile than even a chuckle.

An engaging documentary that’s perhaps too enchanted by its own “stranger than fiction” oddness to delve deeply enough into the human drama on display.

Despite great efforts to develop the three central characters, the confusing early sequences mean it is hard to feel empathy for any of them.

Turbo Kid is a wild enough burlesque that the audience can ignore a few things that don’t seem quite right.... Harder to ignore is that Turbo Kid, which was first made as a short, struggles to sustain its energy for 89 minutes of evisceration.

The feature debut of director Max Joseph can occasionally be as entrancing and euphoric as the pulsating dance songs on the soundtrack. But even an empathetic performance from Zac Efron (and an impressive, nuanced turn from Wes Bentley) can’t distract from a movie that mistakes surface flash for probing, zeitgeist-y insights.

A Taken-style no-holds-barred family survival action film, with an inevitable side order of xenophobia undimmed by the indictment of faceless corporate chicanery.

[A] delicately calibrated portrait of dissolution which points to the versatility of writer/director Alex Ross Perry.

This is a delightful surprise, and though it is even more minimalistic than his last two illegal exports, This Is Not A film and Closed Curtains, it is also more mature, and better calibrated and - at the risk of annoying art house patrons who often hate this term - more entertaining than the other two.

Consistently off by a beat, Hitman: Agent 47 fails to ever click into gear.

Touching, funny, perceptive and simple enough to carry large audiences, The Second Mother is carried throughout by a hilarious, intelligent and soulful performance from veteran Brazilian actress, comedian and TV host Regina Case, surrounded by a solid supporting cast.

This is a moody comedy about unconscious marital discord, but it’s also about that ineffable discontent that envelops most of us. Digging For Fire is funny because it rings true — and because it stings a little.

Part stoner comedy, midnight movie, outsiders’ love story and ultraviolent B-movie, this intriguing film is given real soul by stars Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart, even if director Nima Nourizadeh’s ambitions end up being more laudable than the results.

This latest collaboration with star and co-writer Greta Gerwig radiates indomitable wit. And Gerwig is a hoot as a woman whose unflappable, unearned confidence lands somewhere between inspiring and horrifying.

In the end, for all the plot tension and genre tastiness –underlined by some acidic colour photography and lighting that plays up sickly yellows and purples – there’s just something a little too mannered about the exercise.

[A] depressingly inept comedy.

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.

With so much focus on spectacle, the film fails to explore this part of Korean history in any meaningful way. Assassination plays more to Choi’s strengths - witty dialogue and entertaining storytelling accompanied by strong visuals and cast.

A good cast led by Miles Teller gets swallowed up in a narrative that grows progressively more muddled and tedious.

A breezy but touching dysfunctional family dramedy, with real heart and some genuine musical soul.

It’s this adoption not only of Minnie’s point of view but the voice and narrative style of her half girlish, half womanly outlook on life that makes The Diary of a Teenage Girl such a vibrant, hopeful film.

Z For Zachariah’s beauty is its simplicity, Zobel telling the story with a minimum of fuss and resisting easy explanations for his characters’ actions.

Despite a twisty, juicy and compelling story, there remains a staid conventionality that keeps the political and thematic undercurrents from being explored as satisfyingly as one might hope.

It is sophisticated yet innocent, and while always accessible for young fans it never suffers from a lack of dialogue, with the straightforward and breezy story easy to follow and fun to enjoy.

The action scenes are predictably magnificent, and an excellent supporting turn from fetching new cast member Rebecca Ferguson helps make this a sexy, propulsive, top-notch thriller.

Initially, it plays like an atmospheric but predictable stalker thriller with not much more than style – and maybe the casting of the always watchable Jason Bateman – to recommend it. Later, though, it turns into a considerably more intriguing and twisty psychological drama.

Sporting a flowing mullet and aviator shades, Dinklage perks things up considerably as the story’s comically arrogant bad-boy-turned-good-guy.

The Gallows offers up few new ideas and very few genuine scares.

Before it starts to lose steam in its third act, Trainwreck is a deft blend of laughs, romance and poignancy — not to mention one of Apatow’s most polished, mature works.

Jokey rather than funny, and a bit forced when it’s trying to be sincere, Ant-Man has plenty of enthusiasm but not a lot of inspiration.

Tangerine paints a portrait of transgender sex workers and their clients that pulses with raunchy energy and compassionate humour. It’s a bracing slice of American indie film-making.

There are enough twists and turns in Self/less to keep things interesting

This likeable, emotionally precise film has a big heart and a genre-shifting construction that keeps the proceedings from feeling like just another young-adult meander. But despite an agreeably earnest performance from rising star Nat Wolff, Paper Towns covers familiar coming-of-age terrain and suffers from an opaque turn by newcomer Cara Delevingne that’s not quite as captivating as the story requires.

This sequel to the unlikely 2012 male-stripper sensation has an agreeably ramshackle spirit and another winning turn from star and producer Channing Tatum. As for the dancing, it’s as deliciously spirited as ever.

Committed performances, a hefty budget and assured hands behind the camera ensure that Dragon Blade delivers on its promise of sprawling battle scenes, intriguing culture clashes and budding bromances, where its giddily high concept and unlikely casting may so easily have seen it fail.

Max is a genial if somewhat old-fashioned tale that’s too clunky to transcend its genre(s) but effective enough within its own limited emotional range.

A rambunctious, sexy, funny, irreverent whirlwind of a movie, Dope doesn’t seem like it has much discipline or focus, but its frantic forward momentum and haphazard mixture of styles, although demonstratively entertaining, shouldn’t distract from a rather pointed political message about race in America.

Terminator Genisys is a reasonably entertaining and niftily executed sci-fi action-thriller, and yet its ingenuity and craftsmanship are all in service of justifying its existence, resulting in a sequel that can be appreciated for its cleverness but otherwise regarded with a certain amount of ambivalence.

Ted 2 is as subtle as a frat-house flick.

A surprisingly demented delight; a crazy, spirited, if simplistic fusion of off-beat adult humour blended with the sensibility of an anarchic toddler.

Jake Gyllenhaal brings likeability and commitment to a raw role, but despite a strong supporting cast director Antoine Fuqua never quite transcends the proceedings’ gritty, melodramatic blandness. A lot of care, heart and craft have been thrown at awfully familiar material.

Brooklyn balances its melodramatic leanings with several light touches.

Listen To Me Marlon is an elegy, with scenes of extraordinary beauty throughout – not least the young Brando himself — but Riley has not made a hagiography, nor is this documentary just for Brando fans.

While Jurassic World boasts a few efficient sequences...mostly it’s a grim affair that’s not leavened by adequate humour or a palpable romantic spark between Pratt and Howard.

Overly precious but undeniably affecting, Me And Earl And The Dying Girl travels into familiar dramatic terrain — the offbeat coming-of-age story, as well as the terminal-cancer drama — to deliver something that feels handmade and also heartfelt.

Arcevedo is certainly as preoccupied with image as he is content and it is perhaps the individual frames and tableaux which linger on past this resolutely-downbeat, emblematic story.

Matthew Heineman does break the mold in Cartel Land and gets inside citizens movements – better known as vigilantes – which overturn the cartels’ monopoly on violence, for a while.

It’s a sad, sad film about the tragic loss of a generation, but the thought of Brittain moving through the generations to deliver her message afresh is somehow a consolation in its final, rallying cry.

Trying to wring laughs from the nauseating sex-and-stardom exploits of fictional Tinseltown A-lister Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) and his buddies, Entourage consistently comes across as sour, shallow and misogynistic.

A forced and often cloying romantic comedy-drama with a strong, Bradley Cooper-led cast and an enticing Hawaiian setting but a bewildering mishmash of plot threads and themes.

The very earnest human drama fits awkwardly into the action and isn’t helped by some unconvincing performances and weak dialogue.

Rams may sound bleak and unforgiving but it has a generous spirit and wit that make it entirely accessible.

Tim Roth gives a meticulously withdrawn performance that speaks volumes, and although filmmaker Michel Franco can be too fussy in his starkly somber design, Chronic is nonetheless a captivating work.

This is not a venture into wire-work and acrobatics but a contemplative, often ravishing-looking, immersion in the complex politics, power struggles and personalities of the Tang Dynasty as seen through the moral dilemmas facing an enigmatic trained assassin.

Often laugh-out-loud funny, even (or rather especially) as the silliness escalates in the final half hour, this is a cult cineaste’s treat which rampages gleefully through a china shop of genre conventions. Only killjoys who demand narrative coherence will fail to respond.

Using techniques of distanciation that sometimes make it an alienating, even confusing experience, László Nemes’s cogent, strikingly confident debut is harrowing, but cinematically rewarding.

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.

One of the most consistently engrossing elements of Macbeth is Kurzel’s vision of that harsh world, helped by a tight unit of costume, design and camera.

Mon Roi’s melodrama glossiness grates more than it convinces.

Arnaud Desplechin’s My Golden Days is touching, involving and very well acted.

Kore-Eda’s film is more than the beautifully luminous faces of his actresses, the particular way they move and speak, or the lovely landscapes of Kamakura, even though all of these should be admired. So much more lies buried in-between the lines.

As all the dots join in a pattern that strives for deeper meaning, the just too-damned-cute Sea of Trees becomes undone by a surfeit of contrived ingenuity.

Sicario is an ambush, a low-slung film about a dirty drugs war with Mexico which challenges and engages in equal measure. It moves with grim tenacity, confounding expectations until its very final sequence.

The wry, flamboyant cinematic opera of Paolo Sorrentino reaches new heights of showy, utterly tasteful magnificence in Youth.

Proceeds without flashy tricks or showy technique, offering the pleasures of captivating storytelling with an irresistible human pulse.

A paean to the importance of retaining one’s childlike enthusiasm, the animated The Little Prince is itself a charmingly innocent film, lacking some of the storytelling and design sophistication of its Pixar and Dreamworks competitors but nonetheless delivering a sweet, likeable tale.

For those prepared to invest the time, One Floor Below quietly builds into a devastating portrait of a weak man and the weak society he represents, both of which have lost their moral compasses.

The humanity of the enterprise, hovering between sympathy and ironic detachment, keeps the script on course, delivering a story that for all its motley-band-of-brothers clichés feels as authentic as many more pious takes on the Bosnian conflict.

An overly self-conscious somberness infuses the film, keeping this heartrending tale from being as poignant as it could be.

Despite early frissons from the very game lead trio, the overall effect is a lugubrious turn-off. In its spacily numb longueurs, Love effectively invents a new, singularly unsatisfying genre: chill-out porn.

Winocour doesn’t overstate her subtexts, but they’re there - Disorder is a film about haves and have-nots, about the psychological effects of war, and about the abuse of women as chattels.

Richly detailed, sensitively played and cleverly mounted.

There may not be a lot of depth to Green Room, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t sufficient thought and care.

Maintaining his fondness for long, contemplative shots, Weerasethakul creates a deceptively serene sense of storytelling, with gentle grace notes of wry humour.

A good cast including Sam Rockwell and Jared Harris wander around sincerely in what feels, at times, almost a shot-by-shot remake, and at others, an obstinately wrong-footed exercise in dabbling with the narrative.

Garrone’s new film reminds us that traditional fables don’t need injections of contemporary relevance to grip, stir and disturb us.

It’s such stately, evocative, confident filmmaking, the only reservation being that it’s also a bit chilly.

Irrational Man heads to one of the most startling pieces of action he’s ever filmed. It hints where he stands now as a moralist or cynic in a corrupt world.

With most of the story of Inside Out playing out inside Riley’s mind – the child’s eyes providing the emotion-themed characters’ view of the outside world – the film offers ample scope for the creativity of the filmmaking team.

George Clooney and newcomer Britt Robertson are solidly compelling, but Tomorrowland remains only a moderate success, its ingenuity, wit and enormous heart too often at odds with a ho-hum story and tentpole conventionality that the film tries so hard to transcend.

Amy is a cautionary tale - she was the Janis Joplin of our age, and as it’s the media age, we get to see the full price of fame this time as a fragile talent self-combusts. It’s not a pretty picture.

It may be based on universal human anxieties about love, relationships, compatibility and loneliness, but Filippou’s script takes on a defiant, prickly life of its own, refusing to play as an easy allegory.

For a while, Fury Road’s complete disinterest in screenwriting fundamentals feels liberating, as the director keeps upping the ante on this desperate chase through the desert. But what feels liberating at first can become monotonous, and Fury Road starts to drag once the frenetic sameness of Miller’s strategy takes hold.

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 Reese Witherspoon and Sofía Vergara do have their fleetingly amusing moments, this road-trip buddy comedy feels like it rolled off the cliché assembly line, offering wan laughs and familiar setups.

Beautifully observed, gently amusing and often performed with emphasis on the small things in life rather than any major dramatic incident, its focus on retrospective jealousy is an unusual and intriguing one…and offers an absorbing story that comes up with some gently profound truths.

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.

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.

The directorial debut of Australian filmmaker Kim Farrant is undone by a series of overwrought, miscalculated scenes that can’t be redeemed by an expert cast that’s fully committed to the heavy-handedness.

The surprise in Maggie is Abigail Breslin, playing a teenager who flares and burns with dread as she becomes aware of the horror of her infection. For a zombie film, her performance delivers real emotion which is rarely seen in this genre.

The film is edited to convey the comet-like arc of a talented, troubled, sensitive soul, but also as a driven, concert-length tribute to that man’s creativity.

Humor does provide some welcome relief from the heaviness of Mohave’s script.

The reason The Wolfpack is so fascinating, and at times so disturbing, is because it keeps us teetering uneasily between empathy for a remarkable human drama and the suspicion that we’re not getting the whole truth, let alone nothing but the truth.

Dirty Weekend is entertaining enough to spawn a Les-and-Natalie odd-couple sitcom, but it does come across as dated.