This sequel can’t compare to John Carpenter’s ingenious 1978 original, but director David Gordon Green delivers a crowd-pleasing chiller that doubles as an existential commentary on horror itself, both on the screen and in our lives.

How much a viewer will enjoy the convincingly cringe-making portrait on display here will depend on whether one feels empathy for Sophia’s inability-come-reluctance to access the ramp to adulthood or would prefer to reach into the screen and shake her.

While the film doesn’t quite work as a horror, and can stumble as a character piece, Abrahamson has pulled together a sumptuous production which is more than sufficient to keep viewers engaged throughout.

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.

This romcom offers a heady slice of appealing escapism fuelled by the chemistry between its two leads.

Ultimately, it’s difficult to say what A Private Life is trying to say, but remarriage comedies don’t really need to be anything more than that – and the ending is winsome enough to make up for that second-act wobble.

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.

As predictable as their tale may be, Chaplin, Tena and Verdaguer serve their characters well, with the former and latter particularly impressing with the material.

Whether it’s the sheer weight of the narrative repetition - which involves rewatching a brutal rape - or the two-men/one-woman perspective, which results in an underwritten character and a strained performance from Comer, The Last Duel is crushed by the weight of its own armour.

The choice of characters is strong enough to ensure a broad and insightful overview of the subject, which is explored in considerably more depth than might have been expected from a film which is packed to the gills with high-strength weed.

Rose Byrne is appealing as a sympathetic, patient person finally sensing she deserves more from her life. But for a film that critiques men’s inability to let go of childish things, this cutesy adaptation of the Nick Hornby novel feels a bit like a fantasy version of how adulthood really is.

Although Jay Kelly explores familiar thematic terrain of an ageing man wrestling with regret, this tender film is mildly radical in its insistence that celebrities were once just everyday people — and might still be during unguarded moments.

Aside from the mother-daughter relationship angle, this splashy, showy assassin picture doesn’t really cover any new ground. But the lack of imagination elsewhere is offset by some impressively slick tailoring – Boksoon really does dress to kill – and extravagantly athletic fight sequences.

While vivid in its depiction of Paris’s vibrant lesbian culture, seems curiously slight and modest in its emotional impact given the seismic internal battle the central character wrestles with.

Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet’s intriguing, modest drama keeps its focus tight on Gabrielle but, thanks to a keenly observed screenplay and Drucker’s finely balanced performance, presents a wider view on the female mid-life experience.

The central performances give the film its conviction and keep you intrigued about the twisted, see-sawing power dynamics between captor and captive.

Consistently intriguing and filled with tender interludes, this elliptical drama is the filmmaker’s most experimental work – although it frustrates as much as it enraptures.

Pondering imbalances of power is always timely, and here, it adds an extra layer of urgency and commentary to an already potent and perceptive offering.

The ultimate problem with this flamboyant, yet oddly oppressive-feeling film is Carax’s bleakly Romantic world view – even working with exuberant wits like the Maels, he’s unavoidably committed to the dark abyss himself.

A Faithful Man seems to be content playfully ruminating on how matters of the heart consume people — and how, sometimes, pursuing someone can be more fulfilling than actually possessing them.

Like protagonist Pete Davidson, on whose life it is loosely based, The King Of Staten Island is a loping, amiable, sweetly-funny film, and yet you sometimes wish there was a bit less of it.

A handful of bone-crunching, arrow-whirring, neck-slicing battle scenes allow us some time off from trying to follow the convoluted narrative thread.

It can be a challenge to get on this movie’s frequency, but the strange signals Tesla emits are nonetheless fascinating.

A love story between shelf stackers in a provincial superstore isn’t the most scintillating pitch. And yet, with the aid of affecting performances and a good eye for the virtuoso moves of a forklift truck, director Thomas Stuber mines the magical in the mundane.

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.

Music-video director Isaiah Saxon’s feature debut sometimes wobbles when balancing its impish sense of humour with darker tone, but ultimately, the picture’s peculiarity becomes part of its charm — as difficult to resist as that adorable titular critter.

Myers crafts an effervescent yet astute splash of teen life that delights the eyes, warms the heart and tickles the funny bone in equal measures.

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.