There’s just not enough natural, easy charm and the star, like many maturing child actors before her, can’t figure out how big or small to go with her adult reactions, making something buoyant and breezy look far too much like hard work.

Radiating a sickly ambience, The Last Assassins is happily far more granular visually speaking.

As the jokes start to sour and the night shifts to something more serious, Wilde and her dramatically experienced ensemble are able to handle a difficult tonal descent without slipping.

Had the film been contained by its clever premise - the Minions must fight to preserve their place in Hollywood – it might have achieved the crystalline simplicity that is a hallmark of good children’s films. But aiming to both lead the Minions in a newer, smarter direction and appease the gibberish-fest expectations set by the franchise, Coffin bites off more than he can chew.

If Boll and Musk want to make and promote make a film about an establishment stitch-up, then why not a hard-hitting film about the relationship of Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump? Meanwhile it’s time for Hammer to return to the trade he followed before this: selling timeshares in the Cayman Islands.

The ultimate irony of Strung is that it’s just another industry exercise in ignoring your gut in favor of playing it safe – and on that score, alas, it sings.

Though composed of a huge volume of material, Daher’s documentary does not overwhelm, maintaining instead a remarkable rhythm that fluidly moves between calm, exuberance and disorder.

I found a few moments here lightly amusing . . . but it’s largely, disappointingly short on real laughs, a panicked maximalism to its bawdiness replacing anything more smart and thought through.

Seeing a Jackass movie with a crowd is still a kick, and Knoxville’s still got it. And by “it”, I mean the willingness to get into the ring with a furious bull, and then go back when he doesn’t quite get the shot he wants.

Supergirl isn’t a perfect movie by any means, but there are moments when you’ll believe this franchise can fly.

The overblown finale unites the family therapy and gorehound strands, as the demonic hunter does his atavistic worst – while everyone else competes to sacrifice themselves for each other (and vocalises their need to do so). It’s like the Scary Movie franchise did a splatterhouse Last of the Mohicans skit.

In many ways it’s a shrewd sketch of the ways that real life, in all its embarrassment and banality, does not respectfully stop for bad news.

The combustible mix of lowlife cynicism and high art provide enough energy and enjoyment to power the first two-thirds of this long film. But in the end it flags, and it’s as if the outrageous black comedy has to be paid for with solemn romantic fantasy. But what a performance from Butler.

In trying to scratch our itch for the old while also recognising the new, McKendrick settles for something stale.

Nothing in Girls Like Girls exists beyond individual feeling, and there are no larger institutions to speak of, not even a school. It all leaves the film stranded in an unsatisfying place: intensely personal yet emotionally unearned, politically gestural yet totally vacant of politics. Kiyoko has made a film obsessed with being seen. It never once learns how to look.

Here is a really impressive directorial debut from Mumbai film-maker Rohan Kanawade: tender, subtle, candid, scrupulously observed.

A couple of its good-looking actors give performances with frozen, startled expressions, like they’ve been kidnapped from the set of an advert for luxury five-star holidays.

For a slow – and often ponderously uneventful – film, the ending also feels strangely rushed, decisions and reveals not explored enough for them to really land in the way that’s clearly intended (there’s a potentially more satisfying psychological thriller using the same ingredients). There’s really impressive craft here though.

It’s almost incredible to think that the Toy Story series is more than 30 years old, a central plank of the Pixar animation golden age. But now it is played out and IP exhaustion has set in.

As a formal experiment, Dry Leaf has its own conviction and self-possession and there is a deliberate, if opaque artistry here: one shot shows us a dry leaf under Irakli’s car-tyres, another gives us wet leaves in a waterfall. The soft-edged, pixelated look is, however, interesting and surprisingly watchable, bringing a kind of painterly effect.

This unsettling parable has a scriptural concision and mystery.

The way Friedland subtly works in these little touches is truly impressive. But her finest achievement here may be casting Chalfant, who gives an astonishingly nuanced, considered and graceful performance.

Overall this is a frustrating and rather precious piece of work.

Ladykins, Stop! That! Train! is a winner. Perhaps that’s unsurprising seeing as many recent Drag Race challenges have felt like mini movie sets themselves, with elaborate scripts and costumes. And while recent gay movies like Pillion and Blue Film have focused on uncomfortable home truths about queer life, Stop! That! Train! offers refreshingly rosy escapism. See it with as rowdy – and gay – an audience as possible.

The film has a clever dodge for avoiding the inevitable silly moment when the aliens are revealed but, in a few too many scenes, this is a bit more snore than awe.

Disclosure Day does give us once again a very Spielbergian primal scene of suburban childhood, though not with the devastating reality of his autobiographical The Fabelmans; rather, it is that aliens give Spielberg his way of defying the old maxim about not being able to go home.

Black-belt performances from Claire Foy and Richard E Grant put some vim and vigour into this haranguingly one-note and unidirectional period romp of the raucously bewigged and be-poxed 18th century.

Every movie the Wayans come across has essentially the same function: an easily recognizable bathroom wall where they can scrawl insults about who’s a slut, who’s secretly gay and who deserves to get abruptly hit by a car.

The romcom is a genre I will forever root for, despite it being stuck in a cruelly long flop era, and while Office Romance does have a tad more gloss than Netflix’s many junkier alternatives, the magic is still missing. Like the office at its centre, it’s too sleek and corporate to melt us – all work and no play

This nifty little movie keeps you guessing and when it eventually shows its hand, there’s still plenty of mileage left in the characters.

Here is a niche drama about one of the most important chapters in the history of experimental jazz. It is however watchable, well acted and avoids the music-movie cliches – though I could have done without the fourth-wall-breaking lectures about the nature of jazz improvisation.

You can feel the struggle of trying to cram everything in and even at an unforgivably bloated 143 minutes, it’s both busy and hollow.

There are times when the writing and staging lay it on a little thick, though Beast never becomes too heavy-handed or on-the-nose, marking a significant step up for Atkins after his cheesy, Byron Bay-set 2022 drama Bosch & Rockit.

Its scope might be small but I found its emotional impact to be surprisingly big.

Director Eric Appel has worked on plenty of funny TV series, yet in place of slick professionalism, this movie feels Scotch-taped together.

Backrooms progressively raises its game towards the big finish with jump scares, squirm scares and tiny shiver scares. There is real fascination in exploring this vast, invisible city state of fear.

Power Ballad is about making it and dreaming big, about every busker never giving up on hopes of one day being mega. But as so often with Carney, it’s about something else, usually left unacknowledged in movies about music or any sort of showbusiness: the terrible binary of success and failure.

Leo Woodall’s breakout TV roles in The White Lotus and One Day offered a megawatt charisma, but for his biggest film role to date he dims it to a soft glow with gentle performance opposite Dustin Hoffman as one of a pair of New York piano tuners. And what a pair they are; they are a real pleasure to watch in an easy, unforced drama that mixes romcom moments with a relaxed crime thriller.

Despite a few sparky face-offs between the actors, Pressure feels destined for a less notable fate: to cause plenty of armchair naps once it hits streaming.

Far from reiterating tired binaries – tradition versus modernity, elders versus youngsters – the film embraces the beauty of contradictions with open arms. Even when the possibility of reconciliation appears out of reach, it is the effort to communicate – whether through words or art – that brings peace.

An absorbingly intimate, novelistically detailed procedural about the day-to-day, moment-by-moment lives of the Vichy administrators after the fall of France, mostly shot conventionally, sometimes jolting into an anachronistic dreamlike scenario on video.

The tension is capably managed and Magimel is a gargoyle of menace.

Teaching scenes in films always have a fascination for me, and these are tremendous; Mercier patiently, sometimes angrily, tries to get the students to appreciate the complexity, nuance, eroticism and social commentary in the frescoes and artwork.

With warmth and heartfelt passion, and a quintet of outstanding performances from young actors shot in looming closeup for so much of the time, Clio Barnard has created an absorbing and moving social-realist picture.

There is archival interest and historic drama in what Lennon has to say – and especially for me in his generous, open-minded comments about newer bands such as the B-52s and the Clash. But this is a disappointment.

The Dreamed Adventure is clearly the work of a director with a fluent, distinctive film-making language, but what she is trying to tell us is elusive.

The Esiris have created a seductive, mesmeric picture.

One for the fans … but some nostalgic entertainment here.

There is much that is valuable and interesting in this movie, although it is a little predictable in what it has to say and how it says it, though Campagne and Macchia give committed performances as secret lovers in the shadow of war.

For a film so unashamedly silly, it’s also incredibly, tiresomely un-fun and, by the end, laughably earnest, as if we should all be learning a very important lesson.

The Black Ball is handsomely produced, lovingly detailed and confidently constructed, bringing the puzzle pieces together in the edit and contriving an elegant, poignant cameo for Lorca himself, a kind of incidental choric figure who seems to intuit all the future triumphs and disasters of love and war. It is a rich and rewarding movie.

The Man I Love is an honestly intended and conceived movie, but that faintly baffling and strenuous lead performance sits uncomfortably.

The only mildly jolting sequence is the cold open, setting up a previous haunting with two friends, something the marketing team was clearly aware of, having essentially shown it in full in the first teaser trailer. It’s downhill from there, as we’re stuck with an anonymously written couple we struggle to root for as they face off with an antagonist we struggle to understand.

The results prove middling at best, not on any level dealing the knockout blow that religious conversion practice deserves; nor is it ever the campy scream the set-up might have licensed.

The film is an amazing feat of animal training and deft editing, and it’s all so weirdly cheering.

Fares’s gaunt, handsome face so eloquently conveys vanity, but also a poignant emotional woundedness, anxiety and self-pity.

Finding Emily shares DNA with Richard Curtis’s comedies – the same warm heart and charm, plus levels of cheesiness that some may find cringe. In the end I found it impossible to hate, though one or two performances felt a bit lacking in comic flair.

A sweet, odd diversion – more eccentric, maybe, than Travolta intended.

While every actor gets to make a brash and indelible impression, their characters can feel frustratingly limited.

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s new film is a bafflingly unsatisfying and unconvincing muddle of ideas and moods.

The movie does set up potential for a continuing movie franchise. Mostly, though, Jack Ryan: Ghost War feels like a sad state of affairs for the world’s dads (and dads at heart), who deserve to see airport-novel espionage brought to less chintzy life.

Co-writer and director Shea Wageman earns some points for weirdness.

It’s a gripping story – though perhaps those involved have told it so many times over the years, they’ve lost their sense of excitement; this may well be for aviation fans only.

The climax is all airborne dragons and fireworks; the fact it makes little sense doesn’t matter because it’s all about sensationalism, stimulating the amygdala with bright colours and noise to the point of overload.

This one, sadly, is flawed by that perennial problem of how to end a story with a great premise.

The performances from Mazurov and Lebedeva are outstanding, and Zvyagintsev’s direction is superb with his cold daylit compositions and scenes in grim streets and housing estates. Everything here looks like a crime scene.

There is something stolid and at times monotonous about the way this is presented to the audience – as ever with Nemes, the force of gravity is increased, making everything 20% heavier and denser. And Barábas’s performance is frankly actorly rather than real in his incessant frown of righteous resentment. It’s a minor movie from this always interesting film-maker.

I confess that, for me, this movie doesn’t have the impact of his comparably modernist Parallel Mothers, but Almodóvar’s sensual, playful, melancholy films are always food for thought and feeling.

Her Private Hell resists interpretation, like so many of Refn’s recent films, but executes a slow dervish swirl of hypnotic strangeness.

The film is watchable and barrels along capably enough, but perhaps there isn’t enough of the humanity, humour and extravagant space melodrama which has made and continues to make Star Wars lovable.

At all events, [Nemes] undoubtedly brings impeccable craftsmanship, and the performances and production design are strong.

This is a very glib and unsatisfying drama, whose essential naivety becomes apparent when the lead character is forced to confront the crisis in her life.

Ultimately, the film does not compellingly deliver a blazing truth about its various relationships – but neither does it intriguingly withhold any such truth from us.

There is some top-quality entertainment value on offer here from a movie which can only intensify the world’s K-obsession.

It’s a meaty drama with big scenes and big but carefully considered performances: a really substantial piece of work from Gray.

It is a fierce rejection of anything starry-eyed about movie-making and a quietly gripping psychological study of a painful confrontation between father and daughter.

This is a bleak, pessimistic film with two excellent lead performances.

It’s tender and sometimes beautifully made, but also contrived and occasionally features some too-good-to-be-true caring characters. Frankly, it’s rather precious.

It’s a riff or theme-variation on Kieślowski’s A Short Film About Love – with a twist of Hitchcock’s Rear Window – doggedly spinning a spider’s web out of itself. The result is intricate, elaborate, though a little nebulous.

Ritchie is more deeply invested in the thought-through craft of making a B-movie than many of his peers and there’s a smooth sensuousness to how he moves, each of them looking, feeling and sounding like films he genuinely cares about.

Butterfly Jam is contrived, tonally uncertain, implausible and frankly plain silly in its underpowered kind of magic-unrealism, with some clunky secondhand Mean Streets mob-fraternal dialogue and pedantic ethnic-foodie cred, and elliptically positioning key scenes off camera for no obviously satisfying reason.

Here is an impossibly elegant, poised historical vignette whose brevity and control can hardly contain its characters’ personal and historical pain.

Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet’s new film is a hectic, garrulous, breezily agreeable comedy of midlife emotional upheaval, unencumbered by any serious or permanent concern about any of the passion and heartache that it briefly encounters. It’s also a movie that declines to allow its characters to be changed in any way by the excitements and disappointments that life has to throw at them.

On the face of it, the film contains a soap-opera’s worth of secret feelings and tumultuous events, including the teenage lovers’ sensational escape from the town during a heavy storm. And yet Fukada maintains a cool distance.

It is efficiently executed, though its relentless cursor-nudging will probably make older viewers want to unplug and retreat into an 18th-century novel.

The double act of McKellen and Coel has the onscreen chemistry of the year.

Jane Schoenbrun unveils a very enjoyable display of transformative ecstasy and submissive rapture, treating us to a bizarre pop-cultural black mass of fiercely believed-in trash and kink.

Is God Is may borrow from an old narrative formula, but it reframes it into something sharper and more searching. It shows that stories rooted in Black trauma don’t have to be pulled down by it. Vibrancy and texture are what give a killing spree its stakes, after all, and this one ends with an understated affirmation of the human spirit. How’s that for a twist.

There are a couple of decent plot twists and reveals, but not enough to stop you from checking out until the next bit with the whale comes up.

This is a powerful, memorable film.

What is fascinating about northern soul is the way it survived under the media-cultural radar and appears to resist larger interpretive analysis.

It’s entertaining and bizarre chaos, anchored by Odenkirk’s hangdog air of gloomy resignation to the violent mess which he has to clean up.

Ramblers are justified in keeping the pressure up and the take-home message is: opening up the glories of the countryside and nature itself to everyone is a universal good.

The film’s absurdity and antique dramatic style never quite come to life.

This docu-portrait verges on corporate promo at times, though there are a couple of telling vignettes in the second half.

What gives the film its distinct flavour is a slightly feverish tone and dream-like logic. In places, it’s hard to see what the magic realism adds, and the script’s ideas about gender and gaze feel underexplored. Perhaps in the end, this sense of unreality opens the door to its characters finding love in this harsh and hopeless place. A touching and moving film.

Still fully in possession of every marble at the ripe old age of 100, Sichel reflects to camera on his middle-of-the-action view of events during the cold war, and a little tea gets spilled along the way, but not so much that he’s likely to get in any trouble for revealing state secrets. Still, he’s unabashedly critical of some CIA operations, such as the plots to destabilise leftist regimes including that of Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala.

Instead of letting the visuals do the talking, the voiceover steps in to verbalise the characters’ feelings, and the need to provide multiple backstories through flashback veers into over-exposition. Still, Departures remains a highly thoughtful exploration of love and identity, and an excellent showcase for northern talents on film.