Beautifully shot, impressively cast, and revolving round a charismatic lead from long-time US indie favourite Pitt, the film otherwise comes across as a derivative, solemn affair with a look that suggests a retro gloss finish on generic material.

The script puts artsy effect before character credibility.

The actor’s comic sad clown performance lifts the film above an ordinary script.

By shying away from demonstrating the degree of hardship Ederle underwent to make history, the film shortchanges the catharsis it seeks in its final passages.

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.

Talia Ryder gives a magnetic performance, providing an anchor for a film that is amusing and electric but mostly uneven.

Despite Nicolas Cage’s committed performance as the imposing, hardheaded leader of the expedition, this mournful yarn can’t quite transcend what’s familiar about its study of masculinity and the unforgiving spirit of the natural world.

The chemistry between these three is the film’s greatest strength, and Good Grief plays best as a love story between friends.

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.

While enjoyable in parts, its episodic pacing lets down the real-life story of a bold and remarkable woman.

Much like the original, The Lost Kingdom boasts a gleeful exuberance, whether through Bill Brzeski’s eye-popping production design or in Rupert Gregson-Williams’ knowingly overdramatic score. There is a boyish zeal to Wan’s filmmaking, which is not afraid to embrace the goofy or the playful.

Jacquet makes the fundamental miscalculation — at least for non-French audiences — of assuming that his endless musings about why he is drawn to this part of the world, delivered at length in his own voice, are, well, sufficiently interesting.

The best Pixar films make their dexterous mixture of humour, emotion and spectacle feel effortless but the ingredients do not blend as smoothly in Elio.

In their scenes together, Clear and Duggan spark beautifully, navigating their characters’ emotional highs and lows with a mix of caustic wit and often moving vulnerability.

The film subsides into piled-up shocks and reversals, leaving the actors to bolster the drama with emoting – not always in the most subtle of ways.

It’s certainly got the Perkins style and plenty of genuine chills, but the journey is more satisfying than the destination.

It’s an aggressively stirring account of a nation painfully enduring catastrophic conflict as prelude to independence.

As exciting as the film may be, Berg too easily undercuts the human element of his story.

The feature debut of Vladimir De Fontenay is an accomplished piece with a committed central performance from Imogen Poots, but the emotional impact is lessened by an air of predictability and the sense that every bit of fresh hope is destined to end in disappointment.

Whannell is so invested in unloading juicy surprises that this initially realistic story becomes increasingly preposterous, but Moss keeps the film anchored in plausibility; although sometimes just barely.

Like all of his work, the writer/director’s fourth film in Berlinale competition is elegantly made, ingenious and intellectually challenging. Yet it’s also too much like hard work to be entirely satisfying and, dramatically, it suffers from the same condition as its protagonists: inertia.

The veteran Hong Kong director makes his audience wait for the promised fireworks, and Three’s flimsy premise never quite captures the grounded realism of Drug War or Election, or the visual flourish of Exiled or Vengeance.

Politics is a dirty business, but Our Brand Is Crisis doesn’t stick its hands into the muck sufficiently to be as entertaining or stinging as it could be.

Emma Thompson again proves what a versatile star she is in The Dead Of Winter, not only convincing as a have-a-go heroine unexpectedly trying to save a damsel in distress, but also single-handedly rescuing this film from the worst of its formulaic elements. Indeed, lying beneath the icy surface of director Brian Kirk’s thriller is a lake of gooey warm sentiment that’s deep enough to drown in.

12 Strong wants to be triumphant but also mournful, rousing but also thoughtful in its chronicling of America’s place in a changing, complicated world. That tonal nuance is commendable...but the results are more muddled than thematically intricate.

Despite Aladdin’s occasionally arresting moments, this remake’s most potent element is its intentional air of déjà vu.

Jump, Darling travels along predictable roads as family secrets are revealed, ghosts of the past confronted and separate generations discover the strength to be true to themselves. What makes the journey worthwhile are the performances.

Resistance to this delirious romantic tragedy is futile, save for that nagging voice in our head wondering if it really has to be this way.