This is a muscular story about the fight for freedom which is rich and vibrant and authentic. However, Bilal’s beefy approach also extends to scenes of torture and bloodthirsty battle sequences.

A sure-footed handling of tangled emotional issues creates an involving if small-scale feature.

Cote’s film is consistently interesting without making the self-involved Boris’s plight in any way compelling.

Despite the comforting pleasures of watching old-fashioned battle scenes waged with swords, axes and crossbows, Bafta-winning director Nick Hamm’s action film recycles the stirring spectacle of bygone epics without having much new to tell.

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

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.

A mid-budget mis-fire after the director’s promising indie debut, Bang Gang, Girls of the Sun seems more concerned with staging sisterly bonding sessions amidst the rubble than in developing what might have been an intriguing story – about how war can reshuffle social and gender inequality.

Fans of zombie spoofs and films-about-films should enjoy this bauble, which is elevated by the cheery ensemble.

This biopic reaches its high point early on, as Bafta-winner Naomi Ackie vividly portrays the pop star during her meteoric ascent. But once the film reaches Houston’s later career, when drugs and a difficult marriage began to take their toll, the story doesn’t just become more downbeat but also more of a slog, falling to find an insightful angle into this slow-motion tragedy.

Woman Walks Ahead is a story of defying expectations, finding common ground and gaining knowledge.

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.

Spain’s J. A. Bayona is essentially stirring the same Jurassic pot here, with little that’s inspiring from his cast, unless you count the dinosaurs.

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.

Rambling but strangely compelling, Oh Mercy!’s documentary bedrock gives the investigation at the heart of the film a real authenticity. From around its midpoint, this uneven film becomes a riveting, compassionate interrogation drama.

A lively, funny and touching exploration of the way we live now through the filter of two generations.

Told with raw emotion and lurid violence, it transforms elements of his life story into a disturbing, eye-opening coming of age drama.

Despite this riveting premise, Padrenostro goes the way of 1970s cuisine in being over-cooked to the level of boil-in-a-bag.

Director Jay Duplass crafts a sensitive portrait of loss and forgiveness but ,for a picture based on actual events, there is an artificiality to the proceedings that undercuts the material’s inherent poignancy.

Alice Winocour’s captivating fashion drama Couture is a quiet, observational picture about creative women finding solace in one another.

The lack of emotional distance between the filmmakers and the subject – producer Jonathan Cavendish is the son of Robin and Diana – might account for the bracingly celebratory approach. This is understandable, perhaps, but it results in a lack of dramatic light and shade, and an absence of texture in the characterisation.

Unfortunately, the ending, like so much of what came before, is missing that certain magic, which not even a unicorn can provide.

A little more venom or bite might have been welcome but this is still an entertaining skewering of celebrity and the way a single day can flip from triumph to outright disaster

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.

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.

An uncomfortably un-restrained Whishaw, and an enhanced, aggressive sound design make Surge a raw experience and its eventual lack of any deeper insight is a little like rubbing salt into that experience.

Twenty years after The Fifth Element, writer-director Luc Besson has once again delivered a widescreen, sci-fi spectacle full of rampant whimsy, lavish effects and creaky social commentary, resulting in a nervy, go-for-broke opus whose audacity is more laudable than its execution.

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.

Nguyen’s documentary certainly leaves the viewer wanting more.