Erin Brockovich is a study in Hollywood optimism, and Roberts sells it hard.

This is not as richly compelling as other Almodóvar films, but it’s a fluent and engaging work.

Cruz brings gall, spite and passion to the role of Laura, but there’s not much for Woodley to do in the thankless role of Lina. And Driver is a remote and unengaging paterfamilias. But no one could doubt the style with which Mann stages those race scenes, with their danger and horror.

Tom Hanks leads this handsomely shot but stolid and blandly self-satisfied western.

Even at a brief 73 minutes, Good Boy can feel stretched, a film that never quite convinces you that a short wouldn’t have worked better. Even though Indy is a remarkably expressive dog, there are only so many variations on dialogue-free scenes of him checking out a weird noise in the dark and the cycle soon gets repetitive, exposing a script that’s a bit on the thin side.

The sheer sustained intensity of the drama and performances carry it through.

This movie really brings some gobsmackingly weird and outrageous spectacle, with moments of pure showstopping freakiness. Eventually it loses a bit of focus and misses some narrative targets which have been sacrificed to those admittedly extraordinary set pieces.

The Club sees the film-maker at his most masterful, steering the picture through complex tonal shifts without letting it capsize into hysteria, even when the characters do.

The character dynamics are still as rich as when Sherriff first realised them, and C Company’s supporting servicemen add a few complementary hues to this portrait of militarised despair.... And yet Dibb’s direction doesn’t leave the actors enough room to breathe.

Claire Denis’s new film is a seductively indirect love triangle, a drama of the mind as much as the heart. It’s intriguing if contrived and anticlimactic, though acted at the highest pitch of sensual conviction.

Even though Share wraps up within a slim 90 minutes, Bianco does struggle to sustain her premise until the end, especially in the final act, as beats start to feel repeated and our investment starts to waver.

What Dream is Destiny makes clear is that commercial success really isn’t everything, and that being a director who isn’t bothered by it can lead to a singular if perhaps undervalued career.

It is a desperately unhappy story, sympathetically told by film-makers Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri.

I still can’t be convinced that Megalopolis is anything other than an (honourable) failure. But Figgis’s documentary is an absorbing success.

It’s a decent tennis movie, solidly told and choreographed, but it’s in the film’s depiction of a same-sex romance between King and her hairdresser, played beautifully by Andrea Riseborough, where things truly comes alive.

It's solid entertainment.

This is a richly intelligent drama, in which every word and every shot counts.

It is a handsome-looking film, though it has a promo look to it occasionally, like a lavish tourist ad. I loved the horse’s-eye view Spender gave us at one stage, careering around the track.

Some critics have expressed reservations about melodrama and overworked symbolism, but I found it gripping, with an edge of delirium.

Dead Pigs is an unassuming topical entertainment (rather different from the movies of its executive producer Jia Zhangke), but diverting and well-acted.

Mandabi features an excellent performance from Guèye, who is innocent and culpable all at once. This is gentle, walking-pace cinema that leads us by the hand from vignette to vignette, from scene to scene, presented to us with ingenuous simplicity and calm.

Glossy MGM weepie, a tale of loving sacrifice in the first world war to warm the cockles in the dark days of the second. [16 Dec 2006, p.53]

Viewers may be split on the question of exactly how satisfying it all is in the end. The performances are strong.

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

It’s in the film’s queerest moments that things feel most inventive, narratively and visually, as Bratton steps most firmly outside of the hemmed-in army drama formula and finds ways to make his film sit and thrive in the Venn diagram between military machismo and homoeroticism.

There are a few laughs in Z2: of course there are. But they are algorithmically generated and corporately approved. It’s the kind of movie you put on an iPad to keep the children quiet on a long plane or train journey; nothing wrong with that of course, but the heart and soul are lacking.

Alyssa’s self-absorption may be harder to swallow, but Palmer and SZA enjoyably ham up what could otherwise be try-hard, too gimmicky fare.

I find myself admiring his visual and compositional sense, while being a bit exasperated by the provisional and coyly non-committal nature of his storytelling.

The chemistry between Mikkelsen and Vikander barely simmers, when it should boil. Nevertheless, it's a fascinating affair of state.

Dark Waters is a movie that works marvellously well within its own generic terms, and perhaps after the fey disappointment of Todd Haynes’s previous, rather insufferable fantasy Wonderstruck, this tough, clear movie was what Haynes needed to clear his creative palate.

It’s the only documentary I’ve ever watched with a reading list in the credits – what a treat this film is.

There are some good gags and routines here, but loads of them, particularly the one about what it was like being eight and getting hit by your mother, have been done with far more invention and wit by Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy.

Macdonald grants us insight into the process and, as expected, it’s hardly as haphazard as sceptics might think.

The film pinballs cheerfully about the place, from crisis to crisis, from losing the tickets to getting back the tickets, with no great narrative purpose other than fun.

The Dig is actually not a very earthy film, though there is intelligence and sensitivity and a good deal of English restraint and English charm, thoroughly embodied by the fine leading performers Carey Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes.

It’s spectacular and immersive, with a sensational opening. But it gets bogged down in its own one-note, one-tempo uproar and open-ended parkour camerawork – impressive though that is – and suffers from a number of sneaky false-flag get-out clauses that feel like a cop-out.

Never was a title more misleading. This is sophisticated pleasure.

Amalric's handling is cool, studied and perhaps a little self-conscious. But he does a good job of showing how adultery is a noose that tightens at the throat even before an actual crime is committed - at which point the film grows altogether less interesting.

Somehow it works on every level: as a moving melodrama about maternal sacrifice and grief, as a domestic comedy, and even as a glorious musical.

Coda is a mostly likable concoction, but one that’s just too formulaic and ultimately rather calculated to secure the emotional response it so desperately wants by the big finale.

The film’s moments of truth or constantly countered by moments of compromise: for every wicked detail targeted directly at the queer target market, there’s a lumpen passage of explanation for the straights and squares.

It’s big and clever in a way that so few films of this scale are these days, a pleasure to be shepherded through the easy motions of a romantic comedy by people who know what they’re doing for once, and manages to walk a difficult tightrope without falling, despite the heft of baggage.

Matilda is a tangy bit of entertainment, served up with gusto.

The throwaway gags and throwaway ideas reminded me pleasantly of the Peter Cook/Dudley Moore comedy Bedazzled from 1967. Lowe’s comedy has bite.

It is a love story that is also a fascinating artefact: quixotic, romantic, erotic.

Moselle is at her most astute when concentrating on the fragile social dynamics that govern the tribes adolescents divide themselves into for survival’s sake.

[Berg] uses Jeff’s answering machine messages and archive 90s material, including the unmistakable, moody black-and-white MTV footage, to tell a very sad story with sympathy and urgency.

It’s the deeply felt affection for metal that really makes The Devil’s Candy sing.

This is the kind of movie whose amiable directionlessness and romantic gentleness generate a lot of warmth; it’s the kind of independent film which we haven’t seen a lot of lately, endowed with intimacy and a kind of dreamy charm.

It is a deconstruction of genre and a meta story of failure from which the director salvages a teaspoonful of success.

Oddly, Magic Mike somehow looks like a much darker and more challenging movie than is actually the case.

The first half of Straight Outta Compton, F Gary Gray’s two-and-a-half hour opus about the birth of west coast gangsta rap, is bursting with energy, exuberance and inspiration. The second half is immobilised by bloat and sanctification.

It is a masterpiece of black-comic bad taste and a positive carnival of transgression. The secret is the deadpan seriousness with which everything is treated.

Suspense is kept on a low flame but the film offers cosy pleasures, not least in the jury-room wrangles.

Not only is it wonderful – it is heartfelt, comedic, gorgeous and just the right amount of sad.

Life can be desperately embarrassing in your first year at university when you are trying out new identities and personalities. This film replicates that agonising discomfort.

This is a jewel of American cinema.

It’s a potent drama – and a melancholy reminder of the talent that Irish cinema and TV lost in McGuigan

A Bunch of Amateurs is a thoughtful film about film-making and has some unexpectedly deep things to say too about camaraderie, community and male friendship – though there are a couple of women in the club’s ageing membership.

The script steadily goes about its mission of freeing its characters from all forms of oppression – but it’s generous and unpatronising too.

All The Money In The World is not perfect; there is a touch of naïveté and stereotyping in its depiction of the malign Italians with their one, redemptive nice-guy gangster. But with the help of Plummer’s tremendous villain-autocrat performance, Ridley Scott gives us a very entertaining parable about money and what it can’t buy.

Nanny, as a whole, packs a rather toothless punch. It feels loosely assembled – chock-full of original ideas, intriguing imagery and plot devices, many of which either oddly wind up as loose ends or get resolved in a hurry.

Could Nasheed be the political Prospero to save the island – and the planet? Well, now he is out of power, and the Copenhagen summit was a disappointment. Perhaps his advocacy will help to bring the climate change issue back into political fashion.

However smart and sophisticated this film is, it may disappoint those who, in their hearts, would still like to be genuinely scared.

It’s possible to read Friendship as a plausible, if far-detached character study, a cringe-comedy Single White Male heading for disaster. Then it swerves away, following its nose towards something weirder.

The film scoots smartly past the death and brings us briskly on to the entertaining business of sheep-oriented crime detection. It’s all very silly, although, as with Babe, I have to confess to agnosticism about digital talking animals, even if the technology here is next-level. It’s an entertaining tale of ovine law enforcement.

The film doesn't merit chinstroking: it's stuffed with Troma-style riffs around schlock, gore and human effluvia, bookended by Shallow Grave-like sections full of cynical machinations. The parts barely relate, never mind work together.

If Union County serves as proof that Poulter deserves more substantive work and shines a light on people in a remarkable system, then it’s more than worth the choice to go docudrama over drama. But I still craved more of the real people.

It’s a film with charm and sweetness but a twinge of anxiety, a little gravitational pull to darker places.

It is heartfelt, but its periodic attempts at thriller-style bouts of excitement are redundant, and I wondered sometimes if the film-makers were sure what exactly their story was.

Fabrice du Welz's serial-murder jolly doesn't quite dramatically press its central relationship enough to prevent the film from devolving at the last into a default bloodbath. But it's disturbingly credible for a long time.

Writer-director Emerald Fennell (a showrunner for TV’s Killing Eve) lands a stiletto jab with her feature debut, and Carey Mulligan is demurely brilliant as the appropriately named Cassandra.

The real-time agony of the wedding day itself has an edge-of-the-seat factor, and Kooler gives a sensitive, emotionally generous performance.

The trance-like pacing and mystical meditation might frustrate viewers looking for an easy watch, but local film-maker Lois Patiño is clearly operating at the fine-art end of the cinema scale. He applies his distinctive mode to a story that’s both ravishing and unsettling.

It’s a hugely charming crowd pleaser, an infectiously entertaining coming of age film that feels primed to attract and retain a loyal eager-to-rewatch audience. There’s a wealth of snappy dialogue and what feels like an attentive grasp of teenage life.

This 1987 adaptation of John Lahr's biography of rebel playwright Joe Orton still stands up extraordinarily well: mostly because of two outstanding central performances, Gary Oldman as the talented, blase Orton, and Alfred Molina as his thwarted, Hancock-esque murderer Kenneth Halliwell.

Journeyman is flawed, but intelligent and heartfelt.

Casas has an undeniable nose for middle-class peccadilloes, but tone is everything.

A black-comic psychological drama with poise and self-possession. Featuring Fabrice Luchini and Kristin Scott Thomas, how could it have anything else?

The film finds the subtle tells that suggest these free-roaming girls might themselves have become prisoners of war, while enveloping its heroines in a persuasive turbulence: unpredictable, never forced, and forever compelling.

This 1966 drama ticks most of the right boxes when it comes to entertaining as well as educating.

A entertainingly nasty film for the new year.

For me, King Jack relies too much on violence for its dramatic voltage, but it’s a well-acted movie with heart – and it doesn’t outstay its welcome.

It’s eerie, startling — and yet also unexpectedly benign.

It is not a new direction for this film-maker, admittedly, but an existing direction pursued with the same dazzling inspiration as ever. It is also as gripping as a satanically inspired soap opera, a dynasty of lost souls.

If Burden has any fault, it’s that it is overly straight, but perhaps for a subject with which it is so difficult to relate, that is necessary.

Gibney’s film concludes that Jobs had the monomaniacal focus of a monk but none of the empathy of one, and it makes a powerful case.

It’s a movie that is boldly anti-clerical, juxtaposing the spectacle of faith with a hidden reality of corruption and hypocrisy – although in the final act I sensed that it perhaps did not quite have the courage of its satirical convictions.

What we have here is an embedded report that sacrifices impartiality for access. But what access.

Squint a bit, relax your mind and you might find in it a touching allegory that accidentally corresponds to our own, collective emergence from the oneiric, mesmeric lull of lockdown life, in which sleeping too much and dreaming about dead loved ones could have become the new going out.

The title is appropriate: it’s garrulous, elegant, bristling with classy performances from an A-list cast, and Deborah Eisenberg’s screenplay has a theatrical intimacy. It’s loosely and waywardly plotted, perhaps as a result of having gone through many drafts, though maybe not enough. It is slightly unfocused and uncertain as to where its emotional centre really lies – though there is a charm and a big dramatic finale.

Teenager vs Superpower does a solid job of contextualising this larger ideological battle, with talking heads and archive footage, but it’s always clear that the focus here is Wong.

Am I OK? is strongest when embedded in the two friends’ well-worn, effusive bond, in sickness or in health – when the fight comes the barbs are believably lacerating, the kind only best friends can wield.

Despite the film’s obvious interest, it is a bit conceited and stately, a little like Wim Wenders’ movie about Pope Francis, though without the sycophancy.

Although arguably a smidge too ponderous and self-serious for its own good, Nine Days still represents a reasonably promising debut for its writer-director Edson Oda.

Exhibition is challenging, sensual, brilliant film-making.

This film does not offer any actual conclusions, but it is an atmospheric immersion in the old, smoky and very male world of American TV journalism.

Like Your Name, it’s thrillingly beautiful: Tokyo is animated in hyperreal intricacy, every dazzling detail dialled up to 11, but it’s less of a heartbreaker.