A treatise on art, ambition, long-distance relationships and the struggles to find one’s own voice, the film unfolds with uncommon grace.

Branagh, in his direction and especially in his performance, can’t help but overdo the cheeky artificiality, which keeps Murder feeling more like a well-designed exercise than a delectable thriller.

Magnus Carlsen, called the Mozart of chess, became world champion in 2013 at the age of 22. Benjamin Ree’s rousing documentary shows us how this taciturn prodigy got there, and how his family keeps him sane.

The film’s eclectic ambitions and increasingly eccentric construction get the better of it, resulting in a very uneven brew.

Sarah Snook turns in a terrific performance which is always true to the character at every point of a complex arc.

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.

Not quite thrilling or hilarious enough, writer-director Elizabeth Banks’ take on the 1970s television series preaches empowerment and gender equality, and leads Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott and Ella Balinska prove to be fun company. But this fizzy entertainment is yoked to a dull spy story which recycles genre tropes without adding much that is new to the mix.

While this lively crime comedy doesn’t exactly break new ground, it does, in the form of an appealingly naive central performance from Brown, have a disarming, sweet-natured charm at its heart.

The Amateur mostly tries to upend genre conventions without offering anything exciting in their place.

Winterbottom delivers a heady cocktail of absurdity and profundity, laced with a generous measure of cutting one-liners in a film that builds into a scathing commentary on a world where the rich keep getting richer and the poor are merely collateral damage.

Even though there’s an enormous amount to look at and digest, little of this film is truly memorable or thought-provoking.

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.

Last Dance does not top what came before, lacking the inspiration, freshness and spark of the earlier pictures. But it feels properly measured in its acknowledgement that the dance eventually ends. Mike bows out gracefully enough.

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.

Adapted from a chapter in Bram Stoker’s novel, the picture initially has some gory fun with its close-quarters suspense, but Ovredal unsuccessfully tries to elevate his monster movie with flimsy psychological depth and unconvincing emotional underpinnings.

While it may wish to spark debate, the stance it takes on its messaging is troubling – particularly given a stapled-on coda that seems to suggest we should be putting all of this nonsense behind us.

A deft and absorbing multi-pronged tale about a kind, hard-working woman whose life becomes a morass of collateral damage, A Girl Missing is satisfying slow-burn drama expertly told.

This unfussy action-thriller has a lot of Jason Bourne in its bloodstream, with director Tarik Saleh focusing on taut pacing and crisp sequences. But despite some solid craftsmanship, the film never fully transcends what is familiar about the setup — much like the titular hero, The Contractor gives its all, possibly in vain.

There’s real magic here, and nothing fake about the emotions which guide it.

Despite meticulous visuals and a strong central performance by Mark Rylance, the film feels dramatically ponderous and emotionally inert.

In its more diverting moments, A Working Man echoes its no-fuss protagonist, executing compact action set pieces that eschew flashy CGI in favour of good-old-fashioned shootouts and hand-to-hand fighting. But that spareness too often belies the lack of ingenuity elsewhere.

Issues of class, wealth and power are woven into the tale but this is a bittersweet love story at heart.

This is not a film which challenges the stereotypes of teen coming of age movies. However the dialogue is sharp, and Powley’s comic timing is well-tuned.

The X-Men adventures keep getting bigger, but Singer works extremely hard to ensure that, even when they’re not always better, they continue to thrill sufficiently.

Despicable Me 4 may not reinvent the wheel (even if it does soup up a wheelchair with monster-truck-sized tyres at one point). What it does deliver is a brisk, fan-friendly romp which may be a little thin on actual plot but is stuffed to the gills with jokes.

All credit to Dan Stevens for rendering so vividly a selfish, abrasive character.

For all its directorial mastery, this austere cine-symposium feels like an artistic blind alley, and one that recklessly presumes an audience of committed chin-strokers with a preternatural attention span.