That the director is able to continue producing such creative and daring work while ostensibly under the thumb of the state is a true feat.

The Martian is nearly all things to all audiences: a ticking-clock drama, an intimate character study, a sci-fi comedy, a rollicking space adventure. It’s almost impossible to dislike, which is perhaps its only flaw. When a huge film reveals its eager-to-please intentions from the get-go, the stakes evaporate awfully quick.

As directed by Robert Zemeckis from a script he co-wrote with Christopher Browne, the film limps through its first two acts, putting in time until the big moment.

Villeneuve (Prisoners, Incendies) once again proves he can craft a gripping tale that never collapses under its own moral weight. Sicario is not an easy film to watch, but it is a riveting and essential one.

It’s only mildly entertaining, never funny enough nor smart enough to summarize the cultural moment in the manner of a "Working Girl" or "The Social Network."

While directors Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion want to have their laughs and horror, too, the film is something of a zombie itself: half-alive and bloody, but lacking any heart.

There is no tragic hero here; there is no overarching explanation, but a movie that offered either of those would seem pretty pat. Take it or leave, Everest is just there.

The faith-based War Room is so named because life is a battle to be strategized, with, in the case of God’s infomercial of a film, a large bedroom closet serving as scripture-plastered command centre.

The film's police-procedural action is unimaginatively presented, but Oyelowo is compelling.

On a thematic level, it remains wholly reprehensible and a fraudulent piece of entertainment. But at least it rips off some better films (Mad Max, Day of the Dead, The Matrix) with a good deal of energy.

It’s a genuinely fun affair – let’s not write it off as a cult classic just yet – with the smirking air of a confidant and mischievous filmmaker.

For all its high-speed car chases and extravagant stunts, director Camille Delamarre’s reboot of the Transporter franchise is as punctilious as Frank himself – glossy in finish but a little uptight.

Real insecurities live deep beneath the frenemies’ cringe-worthy obliviousness, though all credit to the filmmakers for allowing their comeuppance to contain none of the empathy the girls deny everyone else.

The film’s own unhurried pace might frustrate the popcorn crowd, but it is the blasé, blank-faced unconcern for expediency from judges, prosecutors and bailiffs that should prove much more infuriating.

Made for ironicists, Turbo Kid, in its endearingly goofy way, says good things about the power reserves of our childhood – an inner superhero we can call upon when needed.

The performances, the writing, the direction, Segel’s D.F.W. impression, everything is just fine. But The End of the Tour is disgraceful. It feels like it’s towing out the real Wallace’s ghost to perform some soppy parody of himself.

[A] soulful, fluently told, low-key comedy.

Fear is the anticipation of horror, and it’s this movie’s prime evil: not what happens inside the tent, but what might be making that noise outside.

Muylaert’s is attuned to matters of social stratification and economic mobility, and the manner in which Brazil’s leisure class is propped up by the undervalued exertions of domestic labourers.

Like its namesake prophet, Zobel’s film is about exile and return, but it’s also more simply about who we lust after. This simplicity is the film’s virtue rather than its sin, and a layered picture of right and wrong, faith and reason, emerges as the story unfolds.

Director Jon Watts is smart enough never to deviate from a narrow vision that he executes superbly.

The nature of this fantasy is boringly feel-good and aspirational.

If you suspend your disbelief for some of the weaker plot points and unnecessary use of the c-word, the film is palatable.

Whatever seeds of social justice and emotional nuance No Escape may be attempting to sow are undercut by the film’s melodramatic valorization of family values.

It’s tempting to think Hitman undermines any beauty it musters with its habit of ridiculousness.

For all its shocks and wannabe-disturbing imagery (trapped Bible-thumpers being mauled by rats etc.), nothing in Sinister 2 comes across as believably scary.

This is not a spoiler alert; it’s a tip: If you go to see American Ultra, stay for the credits, right to the end. They are animated and provide a mini fourth act for the film, a little action movie starring a super simian and a beautiful (human) damsel; they are an amusing addendum, but mainly they tell you a lot about where American Ultra’s heart lies, deep in comic-book territory.

The chipper tale is admittedly interesting, though not “fascinating,” as self-advertised.