The standout star is the passionate and fierce Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, a Korean-American musician for whom music was an escape from racism and sexism.

Like Set It Up before it, Always Be My Maybe hits all of the beats we have come to expect yet fails to do so well enough, as if the mere existence of a technically well-structured romantic comedy is better than nothing.

The writing might be disappointingly inelegant but The Lost Bus is forthright and frightening regardless.

There are many provocative images: a winking statue of Jesus crucified, for instance, and occasions in which the “new boy” experiences stigmata. But Thornton revels in ambiguity and has no desire to provide viewers a clear pathway to understanding.

It slips just a little too easily into the generic pigeonholing of first generation south Asian narratives, but rattles along with fun and energy.

A syrupy drizzle of tasteful prettiness covers this cloying movie about the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir (Michel Bouquet) and his film-maker son Jean Renoir (Vincent Rottiers).

Gliding close to genre tropes but moving more comfortably as an uneasy drama about the alarming power of blind faith, The Other Lamb is an intriguing mood piece, strikingly made and well-performed if not quite as powerful as it could have been.

The actors lend it a sick heft, and there are droll, region-specific footnotes...but one senses the sniggering film-makers playing variably funny games with our phobia of pedophiles, rather than having anything lasting to say about it.

It is a vivid snapshot of a troubled private life at the apex of the US music scene.

There’s more wit and energy this time around, and a genuinely sweet message about friendship. Even the fart joke (every kids’ movie must have at least one) was a cut above and had the adults giggling.

It is a strange film in some ways, speckled with powerful, insightful moments but also with some strained acting, pulled punches and fudged attitudes, unable to decide if its heroines are compromised through having been loyal Fox staffers.

Amma Asante's second feature tells Dido's extraordinary story in handsome, if formulaic, style.

There are smart moments of fear and subliminal shivers of disquiet, the dance sequences are good and of course Guadagnino could never be anything other than an intelligent film-maker. But this is a weirdly passionless film.

It’s coarse and it’s stupid, but it is, thanks mostly the two good performances and some stylish use of music and editing, a little bit moving.

Baby Done is funny; it’s sweet; it means something. Most of all it’s charming.

As a comedy, it’s simply not funny and as a horror, it works better in pieces but not with the consistency a film set over one night would require.

Youth has a wan eloquence and elegance, though freighted with sentimentality and a strangely unearned and uninteresting macho-geriatric regret for lost time, lost film projects, lost love and all those beautiful women that you never got to sleep with.

How ironic to realise that the greatest Mitt Romney campaign ad should arrive too late to save him.

Born to be Blue is a curious mixture of fact and fiction, cliche and originality, style and emotion – it never truly soars but by throwing the ingredients of Baker’s life together and producing something different, it’s never less than intriguing.

Mandico has made a wildly strange debut, striking enough to make you sit up and pay attention.

Like The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Fury yokes together a spy thriller and a domestic drama while also incorporating elements of SF and horror.

It’s not a movie so much as 159-minute trailer for a film called Elvis – a relentless, frantically flashy montage, epic and yet negligible at the same time, with no variation of pace.

The novelty of a malevolent presence in the wholesome, brightly lit world of a kids TV show can’t quite sustain an engaging 95-minute feature, Kelly not knowing where to take his admittedly attention-securing setup.

The finale is more of a schmaltzy salute to the guide-dog ethos than intimate documentation of the new owners’ stories. The street training sequences, though – shot in swooping knee-high Steadicam – are thrilling; mini kerbside action movies.

Phoenix is the key to it all: a performance as robust as the glass of burgundy he knocks back: preening, brooding, seething and triumphing.

This is an unrepentantly cynical take on the hope-and-change promised to the US in 2008; this year's election race makes it look even bleaker, an icily confident black comedy of continued disillusion.

This long film is blisteringly brilliant for the first hour or so. Then there are shark-jumping issues.

It’s a breeze of a watch and with the bar for studio comedy being so very low right now, it’s at least mildly inventive and likably goofy, enough to warrant a cautious recommendation (premium rental price: no, next time you’re on a plane: sure).

It’s a fascinating story but the resulting film insists on a kooky relatability that isn’t really there. A misfire.

Infinitely Polar Bear is heartfelt and honest, but it's too cute by half.

Veteran French director Jean-Jacques Annaud serves up some high-octane film-making with this old-fashioned disaster movie, composed in a docu-realist style, about the catastrophic fire that engulfed Paris’s Notre Dame cathedral in 2019.

Its fervency and its eroticism give the film its currency.

Cheadle’s got the cred, and the period evocation is tremendous. It’s just that I’m not sure he has all that much to say

Fury is a punchy, muscular action film, confidently put together and never anything other than watchable.

It’s a dismal TV movie of the week: trite, shallow, cautiously middlebrow and blandly complicit in the cult of female prettiness that it is supposedly criticising.

This is a gift to cinephiles everywhere from deep in the cellar and we’re all lucky to get a sip.

The disparate ingredients do not always gel. But in fits and starts Bombay Rose casts quite a spell.

There are stabs of the same fear and revelation that made The Beast so fascinating, but this is in the main unfocused and undisciplined, and the isolation of each character merely drains the film of oxygen.

Cross of Iron is an atmospheric, unflinching tale of the German retreat, though its sedate pace holds it back from greatness.

Chastain single handedly prevents it all from veering off the rails by dominating Miss Sloane with her forceful presence. She grounds her heroine to ensure you’re with her.

Vivarium is a lab-rat experiment of a film, with flat, facetious humour and a single insidious joke maintained and developed with monomaniacal intensity. In its way, this film is an emblem of postnatal depression and simple loneliness.

It's atmospheric but derivative, and I didn't find the denouement's Christian imagery convincing.

Frustratingly, the film tells us little about the crime itself and the denouement is a little unconvincing. The taste of sweat and fear is, however, real enough.

The successes are in large part owed to Merced’s sensitive, grounded performance, her open face able to pass amusement, anxiety, self-loathing vitriol, panic attack and relief like quicksand. Her performance alone can absorb the film’s rougher edges, vaguer lines and dramatic whiffs, especially when assisted by a strikingly natural Cree.

This film is a deeply felt, tremendously acted tribute to courage.

Ant-Man is a cut-and-shut muddle, haunted by a ghost, produced by a high-end hot dog factory, by turns giddying and stupefying. Watching it is like channel-surfing between "Hot Fuzz", a duff early 90s Michael Douglas drama and the very schlockiest bits of "Interstellar".

Director Francis Laurence ekes a paltry story out. The special effects are limp and the script a little creaky, although somehow it still manages to thrill.

Where to Invade Next is a romantic film, equally affecting and annoying in its simplicity.

It’s a gentle, predictable film that doesn’t exactly put any steps wrong in its depiction of adolescence but Orley doesn’t quite do enough right for it to linger in the memory for longer than the credits.

Everything about this film is very well observed.

There's so much thrown into Tip Top that nothing stands out.

This is a film in which you will hear a letter read aloud, with a voice-over saying the words “you dared to dream”, delivered without irony. It is, as they say, what it is. Perhaps most interesting is Walker’s depiction of the mosque congregation. With its politics and divided factions, this part of the film feels utterly authentic and is dramatically interesting.

This film induces a grisly shiver, like a slug dropped down the back of your neck, and there are some amazing images. But I wondered if it was finally unfinished and anticlimactic.

Now Guardians of the Galaxy has reached the threequel stage: overlong, yes, and finally reaching for an importance and emotional closure (perhaps inspired by Gunn’s own emotional corporate redemption) that it doesn’t quite encompass, while leaving the GOTG brand open for a next-gen reboot. But it’s still spectacular, spirited and often funny.

You get the impression they are only comfortable sharing their lives when they’re perched above where the rest of us live. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find them swoon-worthy, never mind the cryptocurrencies and branded partnerships circling their pursuits.

This is a shameless heartstring plucker. But it’s charming and sometimes very funny.

It’s an earnest rather then energetic retelling but Stanfield’s stare is indelible.

Where it initially threatens to be a new The Thing, it finally serves up sloppy zomcom; just about enough for a Friday night but not much else.

Sad to say, it goes down like a cup of tepid, milky and over-sugared tea.

While it doesn’t have the same tense grip of Spellbound, it’s an amiable enough diversion.

It might work if Rita was a more appealing protagonist, capable of wringing out gallows humour or personal tragedy from her predicament.

Nanni Moretti's new film is occasionally amusing, but is also a frustrating and directionless experience.

I Am Mother is undoubtedly a strong calling card with plenty on its mind. I just wish it had figured out what to do with it all.

Overall, this is a likable and well-researched film, but there is something unsatisfying in ignoring the band’s later stages. Perhaps Part II is in the works.

An awkward misfire at best and an uneasy and irresponsible one at worst.

There is a contrivance to both story and script that grates, rubs up against Murray’s appeal as a loose cannon.

Emblazoned with mouthy Big Short-style info-dumps, and with a phone-selling scene reminiscent of The Wolf of Wall Street, Body Brokers outwardly seems to be aiming for high Scorsesian amoral operatics. But given the originality of Swab’s take, it’s a shame he couldn’t find the film a more appropriate style: at heart it is a more sober film intent on declaring its outrage.

West of Sunshine’s rough, down-at-heel Aussie vibe prompts one to set it alongside other recent bawlers and brawlers, such as Kriv Stenders’ Boxing Day or David Michod’s Animal Kingdom. But Raftopoulos is altogether more protective of his characters, shielding them from full-blown horror, clearly wishing them well even as they stumble and fall, and his film works best in tenderly framing a burgeoning father-son friendship.

In this film, nothing about mega-celebrity looks fun.

The supposedly important themes of immigrants and Syria are cancelled by its naive flippancy.

Everest is a frustrating movie in many ways – despite some lurches and shocks, it doesn’t quite deliver the edge-of-your-seat thrills that many were hoping for, and all those moderately engaging characters mean that there is no centrally powerful character.

The plots are rickety and the characterisation has the depth of a Franklin Mint plate, but there are some funny moments and Kevin Doyle, playing the overexcitable servant Molesley, pretty much steals the entire film.

The film has the authoritative air of official history: sometimes brash, sometimes stolid, sometimes with flashes of inspiration and sometimes with long stretches of courtroom dialogue.

The constant shifting between Italian, English and Québécois-accented French adds an extra texture, and the performances are as sharp as the suits.

Above all, everyone in a Meyer film looks like they're having an absolutely great time.

Scott’s return to the Roman arena is something of a repeat, but it’s still a thrilling spectacle and Mescal a formidable lead. We are entertained.

This is a story about the randomness of life in the big city, a melodramatic convulsion of grief, rage and pain which has a TV soap feel to its succession of escalating crises.

It’s cheerful and watchable, if a relentlessly on-brand fan promo, corporately policed and controlled, using vintage archive photos and video rather than closeup talking-head footage of the band now.

It has to be said that Nobody rattles enjoyably and bone-crunchingly along and as for Odenkirk, this career turn more or less pays off. He never tries to be macho exactly, and spends a lot of his time flinching and scowling at all the cuts and bruises on his face.

Finding Fela does an exemplary job of explaining, in musical terms, what made Fela standout, a simple enough step that most music documentaries ignore.

The archive clips suggest Halston is a role Richard E Grant was born to play: the designer had a long-limbed loucheness, grandiose affectations and put-on accent, along with a fierce perfectionism.

It’s an adequate, involving enough afternoon watch (faint praise: better than Geostorm) and for those with a certain destructive itch that still needs scratching, this should do the job.

This is a film with an impressive, sometimes oppressive craft and technique – but it also feels unfinished. A sustained and rather brilliant conjuring of atmosphere, with some superb ambient music, finally succumbs to a rather banal inability to decide where to take the story and exactly how important the story has been.

The effect of it all is elegant and overwhelmingly stylish, yet maybe there’s not a superabundance of substance to go with the style. Kinds of Kindness feels heavier and longer than I expected, as if reaching for a meaningful resolution that might not be there. Yet absence and loss is perhaps the whole point.

However earnest and heartfelt, the film doesn’t tell us nearly enough, or really anything, about Joe.

It’s an immensely likable movie, impeccably acted and wise about the nature of exile.

Those who come away cheering for Ready Player One will likely have enjoyed the film’s many references, the story’s breakneck speed and playful visual design. Others may want to unplug from the paint-by-number characters and shallow plot.

As the violence escalates, an absurdist dose of humor is added to the mix, injecting the film with a distinctly modern sensibility that is welcome and does not let up.

Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy are joined by Caine as a hilarious Scrooge in this irresistibly sweet musical adaptation of Dickens’ festive tale.

It’s a bruising movie, being sold on the promise that it’s “scary as hell”, a quote that I worry will mislead expectant horror fans. The scariest thing about The Lodge is how human it all is.

Mäkelä is too in bed with his protagonist’s objectives to develop the kind of perspective that might yield richer insights into the life/art trade-off.

Woody Allen’s Café Society is a sweet, sad, insubstantial jeu d’ésprit, watchable, charming and beautifully shot by Vittorio Storaro – yet always freighted by a pedantic nostalgia for the 1930s golden age in both Hollywood and New York, nostalgia which the title itself rather coercively announces.

Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac bludgeons the body and tenderises the soul. It is perplexing, preposterous and utterly fascinating.

The film coheres quietly, thanks in no small part to the two excellent child performances.

Actor turned writer-director Jillian Bell’s naked, and sometimes literally naked, attempt to craft a new rewatchable comfort food favourite with notes of both sweet and salt is charming when it works but distractingly effortful when it doesn’t.

Best of all, Zenovich and her editor, splicing and dicing 50 years of archive material, get across Chase’s abundant talent at its best, particularly his masterly command of the pratfall, and his immaculate comic timing.

Director Ali Abbasi has given us fascinating monsters in the past with Holy Spider and Border but the monstrosity here is almost sentimental, a cartoon Xeroxed from many other satirical Trump takes and knowing prophetic echoes of his political future. It’s basically a far less original picture.

As well as death and tragedy, war is full of absurdity, indignity, chaos, all sorts of bizarre and embarrassing things that don’t get mentioned in the official record. Greyhound is content with its keynote of sombre reverence.