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.

Whedon and his large, capable cast (even larger for this follow-up) deliver enough adventure, laughs and flat-out spectacle to ensure that audiences will feel as if they have gotten their money’s worth, especially when Ultron zeroes in on the quiet humanity beneath the special effects.

In focusing on Bell’s flamboyant performance and moving the action along at a frenetic pace, [Palmer] did what was required here in making a rowdy, infectious entertainment.

Hits all the expected emotional beats but doesn’t take many risks or glean sufficient insights about our fascination with the double-edged sword of eternal youth.

Its relatively tranquil surface, its small amusements (many of them revolving around a tasty turn by John Turturro as a histrionically insecure American leading man), its moments of touching, almost Sirkian melodrama, above all its ability to tease resonant themes out of seemingly inconsequential scenes or lines of dialogue, make for a film that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Nguyen’s documentary certainly leaves the viewer wanting more.

Ultimately, the impression remains that Child 44 either needed to be much longer to let all the different elements breathe or much more tightly focused to let the murder manhunt dominate.

Though suitably moving in parts, Desert Dancer is more dutiful than inspired, reducing a worthy message to lukewarm sermonising.

A strangely lacklustre, unconvincing attempt to tell the story of the Heineken kidnapping.

Slouching Theron is absolutely convincing as a self-loathing haunted soul with zero ambition. As the town’s “rich slut,” Chloe Grace Moretz gives yet another pitch-perfect performance. Both actresses elevate the material, making a somewhat far-fetched story both believable and enjoyable.

The Longest Ride plays like cynical fan service to Sparks’ readers, who, it is assumed, will be content to sit back and enjoy a cheap tearjerker, no matter how mouldy its execution is.

A drearily sincere movie about faith and tolerance, Little Boy boasts plenty of good intentions but very little else.

Timoner’s often-compelling documentary, which is neither an apology nor a hagiography, is an intriguing personal take on a man who turns out to be endlessly intriguing, no matter what you think of his antics.

It’s a title to be admired, certainly, but for all its visual fireworks, Far From The Madding Crowd doesn’t truly ignite an emotional spark.

Its impact sealed by across-the-board strong performances from its all-male cast, Tangerines is a film about loss and belonging, about rootedness and departure.

It’s joyous, it’s crazy – cars skydive out of aircraft in Azerbaijan, no less - it’s exhaustively long, and, still, it’s clunkily lovable.

The Water Diviner is a heart-warming tale of family, love and sacrifice told with four-square enthusiasm and manliness by director and star Russell Crowe.

Lead performances from Jonah Hill and James Franco are plenty impressive. But at the same time, True Story is almost too polished and clever for its own good, sacrificing complexity for a surface-y examination of the issues at play.

Though perhaps lacking in a real sense of dramatic tension; veering towards the schmaltzy at times and needing a far tighter ending, Woman In Gold is still a thoroughly enjoyable story, engagingly told and with a nice line in gentle humour to balance the legal battle structure which can veer to dryness at times.

Last Knights is little more than a dutifully compiled collection of genre conventions, its tale of a group of brave knights seeking vengeance for their fallen leader so undemanding that it’s almost charmingly pedestrian.

The saga, directed by a Scot in New Zealand with no American actors, takes us back to American truths. Guns, greed and rugged nature defined the West, setting the New World apart from the old. The roots run deep.

Almereyda has created an experiment of his own: a kind of cinematic Rorschach test, prodding viewers to consider what they would do if sitting in the same seat as Milgram’s subjects.

At heart Dreamcatcher is a simple film, but it is also a rigorous and compassionate one.

While there are admittedly some jarring notes, Lost And Love is an ambitious and assured debut, and sounds a note for Peng as a name to watch.

A raunchy yet slack-feeling comedy that seems to put as much effort into playing on racial stereotypes as playing for laughs.

This is a generous, consistently pleasurable comedy.

A gentle charmer punctuated with a series of nicely judged performance and an increasing sense of magical realism.

The second installment of the Divergent series shows some symptoms of middle chapter-itis but in the end makes the most of a strong returning cast led by Shailene Woodley, slick direction from Robert Schwentke, impressive effects and a closely guarded plot twist.

Suite Francaise exudes a sense of glossy class in its design, staging and costumes and its lead actress Michelle Williams is especially fine, responding perfectly to a role that could have been tricky.

A delightfully clear-eyed adaptation of Charles Perrault’s fable of goodness triumphing over adversity, which brings psychological depth to characters like Cate Blanchett’s magnificent, believable stepmother.

While the dramatic themes echo the great crime movies of the seventies, it’s the modern flash and muscle that ultimately win out in this pacey yet less than satisfying action thriller.

What proves irritating throughout the movie is the sense that Fogelman has chosen the easiest, least interesting execution of a rich premise.

A muddled bid for political relevance has led the film-makers to drag on The Gunman’s primary mission: to entertain.

The supporting cast takes some of the comic weight off the always likeable Vaughn’s shoulders. But Wilkinson’s character is too sad-sack to be really funny and Franco’s verges on the mawkish.

Chappie is a bucket of bolts, Blomkamp’s desire to say meaningful things outdistancing his ability to say them compellingly.

In the end, Sex is a compelling exploration of ordinary men trying to figure out who they are permitted to be, how they are evolving and what their lives are all about.

Does the alternation between documentary inserts and sci-fi superstructure work? Not always – more than once it’s a wrench to be dragged back to Ghost’s basement. But Kapadia and his co-scribe Tony Grisoni seem to understand that the pummelled audience can take only so much cinematic doomscrolling.

A winning, if whimsical, account of an ordinary woman achieving the extraordinary.

A film which doesn’t sugar-coat the ache of bereavement, the futility of war or the manifold failures of mankind, but which manages to balance the darkness with sparks of hope, humour and humanity.

Hamstrung by lumbering plotting and variable special effects, this first part is an unimaginative hodgepodge which leaves its well-assembled cast stranded across time and space.

A chaotic, unpredictable portrait of a chaotic, unpredictable individual, The Worst Person In The World is a spirited and thrillingly uninhibited piece of filmmaking from Joachim Trier.

Silent Night works best as a grim chamber piece that subverts the season’s usual good cheer — or, depending on one’s temperament, serves as a tart distillation of the nagging gloom those who hate the holidays often feel.