As a director, Jordan has produced polished, briskly paced entertainment but what’s disappointing is that, quite often, Creed III hints at being something more.

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 inherently melodramatic material has an undeniable emotional sincerity, although the story ends up being so gentle that it barely makes a ripple.

Donzelli’s observations on the working poor don’t dig deep enough, resulting in an overly polished glimpse at the struggles of making ends meet.

Rebecca Zlotowski’s third feature packs in so many ideas and themes, and boasts so many ravishing and enigmatic images, that it seems choked with riches.

The Polka King, and Jan’s plight, never quite reaches the level of palpable human drama of their previous effort. Black does his best to make Jan a vulnerable and sympathetic character, but neither the script nor the direction allows him to become fully dimensional.

Typically delicate and as gentle as a balm, the film’s well-intentioned earnestness will not endear it to the more cynical end of the audience spectrum. But fans of Kawase’s small scale personal dramas will respond to the film’s wistful tone, as well as the plaintive prettiness of the photography.

With more inspired lunacy or smarter plotting, Lobster Cop could have been a surprising treat. As it is, this is perfectly digestible light entertainment that won’t have anyone coming back for seconds.

In presenting its story as a portrait of a budding great statesman discovering his destiny, Barry is neither insightful nor poetic enough to justify its increasingly didactic approach.

Initially intriguing, Ashkal grows less satisfying as it struggles to do justice to the disparate elements of the personal, the political and the supernatural.

A claustrophobic thriller about a disgraced cop trying to undo his past mistakes over the course of one supremely stressful night, The Guilty boasts a clever close-quarters conceit that ends up feeling more like an actorly exercise than a gripping human drama.

Essentially a four-handed chamber piece of sorts, this adaptation deals with powder-keg themes of the colonial psyche, racial tensions and retribution, but ultimately proves too stilted and stagey to pack much of a punch.

Fitfully amusing and certainly heartfelt, this latest chapter in the likeable animated saga will work best with younger viewers, but its life lessons and emotional beats feel slathered on rather than deftly woven into the storyline.

This gentle comedy trades heavily on Tsai Chin’s deliciously abrasive central performance, but stumbles when it comes to the execution of the action sequences

The results are more dutiful than absorbing.

While the film struggles to fully disengage from its theatrical origins, it is an intelligently slippery study which positions the audience in the grey area between empathy and complicity.

Giants Being Lonely may not add much to the landscape of coming-of-age dramas, yet the preciseness of its impressionism results in a striking atmosphere of hormones and vulnerability.

The early potency of this macabre fairytale becomes increasingly diluted however, as the film progresses and the story broadens.

A love-all crowd-pleaser for the most part, more Borg than McEnroe thanks to an arresting performance from lookalike Sverrir Gudnason.

A restrained production favours story over splatter but eventually delivers a fair amount of gloopy, tentacled creatures and exploding host bodies. That should be enough to satisfy Adams aficionados.

As a brief, brightly-coloured, virtual babysitter – lasting just long enough to keep the children diverted while you check in and out of that last Zoom meeting, and get dinner on the table – it dutifully fulfills its obligations. But anyone looking for much beyond that in this tale of a flying squirrel – well, they’d have to be nuts.

The shared experience between the filmmaker and the subject of the film allows for a character study of depth and intimacy. However, the story itself – a slightly soapy ‘romance against the odds’ narrative – presents few surprises.

Although Nitram is a thoughtful exploration of mental illness, highlighted by a strong cast, Kurzel can’t fully transcend what is familiar about this handwringing portrait of a ticking time bomb set to go off.

At its weakest, there’s a suspicion that Eleanor The Great is leaning into the Holocaust for otherwise unearned emotion, but the piece is clearly genuine, and the cast so strong, it doesn’t linger.

This is not great or memorable filmmaking but the power of the story and some of the performances make up for that.

This meticulous documentary can’t quite overcome the inevitability of its rise-and-fall trajectory, the familiarity of its sad-clown hypothesis.

With a decades-long rapport on screen and off, they’re natural and sparky together, and Roberts joins Clooney in her decision not to presenting the cosmetically refreshed face of her peers. For that alone, Ticket To Paradise is a trip worth taking.

The imbalance between the sketched, what-if nature of the film and the weight of its visual wizardry is keenly felt.