The script does a solid job of making it an accessible world to those not already steeped in it although Goldstein and Daley, writing alongside Michael Gilio, are less effective with the film’s many attempts at comedy.

It’s dynamic and intriguing, though the detail and the emotion can get lost in the splurge.

Barnaby’s colonialist take on the formula is far from subtle, and at times a little too bluntly on the nose, but he’s a film-maker with both something to say and the skillset to say it in a distinctive way, offering up an initially engaging alternative to mere guts and shock tactics.

Justin Pemberton’s documentary, based on the bestselling book by French economist Thomas Piketty, tells us a story no less depressing or gruesomely hypnotic for being so familiar – like observing a slo-mo driverless car crash from the passenger seat.

This is Obama’s own film, so we can’t expect any tough scrutiny.

I’m not sure that this documentary completely nails the movie’s attraction, and it can’t quite bring itself fully to condemn the misogyny or the rape scene, in which a woman of colour is assaulted (so that the white heroine can get her revenge) and is then forgotten. But there are plenty of insights.

It’s an amusing and diverting film that, with a series of ellipses and jumps, finally takes us to an unexpected world of fear and grief – and then back again, to stylised unseriousness. An engaging debut, which Sendijarević will follow up with more substance to go with the style.

As the daughter of director Ron Howard, widely regarded as one of nicest men in Hollywood, Howard is herself blessed in the dad department; he is very likable here. His only parenting crime seems to have been to film the birth of all four of his kids. But the rest of the Hollywood contributions are irritatingly platitudinous.

Cinematographer turned director John Barr serves up a generic thriller: the title lets you know that what you’ve got on the label is what you’ve got in the can.

There is an undeniable energy and spookiness to this low-budget chiller, which makes intelligently modest use of digital FX in a way that some bigger-budget projections would do well to emulate.

An American Pickle is a tasty, insubstantial snack of a comedy.

It’s entertaining, though composed with algorithmic precision, and it winds up suspiciously neutral about whether kids really should abandon digital enslavement in favour of real-life human friends.

The film’s big experiment feels only semi-interesting.

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

It’s an intimate portrait that at times borders on meandering but it remains free of judgment throughout, with Einhorn and Davis using their background as journalists to let the story happen without coercion or commentary.

Elfar Adalsteins’ directorial debut captures well-trodden paths with fresh eyes.

It is opaque, sometimes eccentrically comic, but intriguing.

The result would be hilarious if it weren't for its grisly and often deliberately pointed subject matter. There seems little to do but to laugh or retch. The fact that you may well do both at the same time is probably the film's intention. It has a serious point to make about the media's complicity in violence. But, in making it, it may well defeat its own ends with too many absurdist touches. [14 Jan 1993, p.8]

After a lifetime reporting on conflict, Fisk reflects on the capacity of human beings to cause chaos on such a scale. Is there something deep in our souls that permits it because it feels natural? His painful, deeply serious question about the inevitability of war sets the tone of this documentary about his career.

In light of the strange, brutal ending that’s more foreshadowed than it seems, it’s hard to work out where Weisse wants to land on issues around the best way to coax talent, especially in fields such as music where you have to put in a relentless amount of hours to achieve the highest results.

It is something of a letdown: a funny but conventional glossy romcom. But there is no messing with Viswanathan, who is undoubtedly the main attraction.

It’s imperfect, sometimes frustratingly so, but also just about fun enough for yet another tipsy Friday night locked down indoors, its sun-drenched setting proving alluring and yet cruelly out of reach.

There’s a kind of blunt brute force to [Bloom's] performance – and he looks almost unrecognisable, as if he’s using certain muscles in his face for the first time.

It’s a brazen celebration of Jackson, which unlike Lee’s other documentary work doesn’t look under the hood to tell the whole story and examine some of the more uncomfortable inner workings.

For the most part it manages an adept balance between satire, sincerity and sheer silliness that’s ultimately winning.

Homemade is a diverting but indulgent collection, and the experiences of genuine hardship don’t shine through very much.

This is a fan-servicing but not necessarily hagiographic documentary.

The movie finishes on an unresolved chord, as if we have left the story months or years before the actual scandalous denouement. But it is arguably faithful to the mood of messy bewilderment and frustration that governs the ongoing situation.

A fascinating film.

Strong on lush cinematography, period knitwear and sincerity, but less effective in terms of historical plausibility, the mostly second world war-set drama Summerland is a mixed bag – a blend of fizzy sherbet lemons and humbug.

There is tragedy in this story, but the grownup questions of guilt and loss are de-emphasised.

It’s powerfully and pugnaciously acted, and horses are brought in – as animals often are in social-realist movies – as symbols of redemptive nobility. But I felt that in narrative terms it turned into a cul-de-sac of macho violence.

A smart and satisfying movie, although the crashy-bashy deafening score is so loud you can probably hear it in space.

The film isn’t perfect, and there is a touch of orientalism about the obsessive-affair-with-Japanese-man trope (which surfaced also in Wash Westmoreland’s The Earthquake Bird in 2019). But there is also something well controlled in the movie as it maintains its cool, even pace and Alexandra Daddario’s performance as the vulnerable, secretive yet emotionally open Margaret is smart.

The stranger-than-fiction weirdness and emotional dysfunction are what’s interesting here, and the film doesn’t quite take the lid off it.

A punchy, likable trio of performances are the point of this superhero action-thriller with energy to burn.

Work It is a fun, mostly entertaining and easily digestible concoction that does everything you expect but well enough for its lack of ingenuity not to matter.

Rogue isn’t offering nature-documentary realism, but director MJ Bassett is a former wildlife presenter whose interest in the South African grassland goes beyond mere backdrop.

It’s flawed for sure but still moves with more deftness than most (arriving after Eternals is a blessing for any Marvel film) and there’s an ending that suggests an awareness of its roots (post-credits scene aside), hinting at a promising way forward rather than back. Consider the curse of sorts sort of broken.

It all sort of comes together in the end, but there’s no earthly reason that it should all have taken two hours. Maybe the spoiler is the unfeasible length of the running time.

It’s thrilling to see the iconically ugly Transamerica Pyramid skyscraper get trashed in the finale, but otherwise the look of the film is pretty generic.

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.

Host is a lean, nasty little exercise that might not linger for very long but it shows what can be done during this difficult time. Once regular shooting resumes, we should look forward to whatever Savage comes up with next.

There is a tenous narrative logic - in which Jodorowsky himself, dressed in cowboy black, must gun down four desert-dwelling killers - which gives the film a measure of watchability. But it's hardly deep.

It’s a movie whose subtle thoughts are in danger of being upstaged by a potent and erotic love story that surfaces and then disappears, leaving you uncertain whether finally to be more interested in that romance or the ruminations it has interrupted – or enlivened.

Here is a strange, opaque but interesting piece from Vietnamese film-maker Minh Quý Truong: an ethno-fictional essay movie.

Robin’s Wish is not a wide-ranging documentary about Williams’s life. It only briefly sketches in his career, from early ambitions of serious acting at the Juilliard drama school in New York to standup stardom (“he drained every scintilla of laughter out of the crowd”) and Hollywood.

Reiner Holzemer has made a film that is intensely supportive and uncritical – as fashion documentaries tend to be – and to those of us who are outside the fashion world, it can be a bit opaque. Yet it is refreshing to hear creativity discussed with such seriousness and commitment.

Some might find her style, leaving no thought unexamined, a bit rambling, but Paula is doing something interesting here.

It all rattles along amiably enough.

Sie elicits mostly spontaneous, credible performances from the younger cast, who deliver their wisecracks and banter with aplomb and only occasionally edge into annoying child-actor pertness.

There won’t be many viewers who’ll remember it by this time next month but within its swift running time, it just about fits the brief, zipping along at speed buoyed by the charm of its leads, like almost guaranteed instead.

The film would have been more effective if its relentlessly uplifting score didn’t keep figuratively prodding the viewer in the chest, telling us to feel moved, dammit. Likewise, the editing is annoyingly frenetic at times, and you long for a more measured approach that would allow you to appreciate the athletes’ skills, instead of seeing their prowess chopped up into tiny snippets of footage.

It’s a throwaway film that perhaps I shouldn’t have enjoyed as much as I did, but Mandy is such a deliciously sour character.

It’s string-pulling Pixar formula but done with just about enough effectiveness to work (do their films ever truly fail?). It doesn’t have that emotional kicker of an ending we might expect and hope for, it’s far too slight to evoke an ugly cry, but it’s breezily watchable, low stakes stuff, handsomely animated (on dry land, in water less so) and, like Disney’s spring adventure Raya and the Last Dragon, refreshingly free of romantic diversion, prioritising friendship and self-discovery over getting the boy, girl or sea monster.

Viewed as an acting masterclass, the film is bruisingly impressive in its way. The principal actors raise the roof; each gets to do their big turn for the camera. But it feels a little schooled, a little staged, like a workshop at the Actors’ Studio.

It’s an uneven ride, rocky in places, but it’s one that’s also unquestionably worthwhile, a progressive, witty and timely way of reminding many of us how antiquated women’s healthcare still is while also alerting a younger audience that there’s more to the teen movie than Netflix.

With so much intense focus lavished on the action, there’s none to spare for the characters’ emotional lives, and it’s hard to care much about who lives or dies.

Noblezada has great pipes and a natural screen presence that augurs well for her future career.

It isn’t that Rosi has removed the context, it is more that he has supplied a new context, a more universalised, humanistic context of the spirit – with some artistic licence. But I felt that his earlier films give us a more intimate access to people’s lives than Notturno does, for all its intelligence, empathy and stoicism.

By Allen’s lamentable recent standards, this fitfully entertaining film could be called adventurous, while the reliably cranky Shawn and a stately, vampish Gershon are clearly having a good time and letting us in on it.

Despite being a valuable reminder of Thunberg’s idealism and unselfconscious courage, the film doesn’t entirely work.

All said, there are less educational ways to raise your blood pressure for two hours, and the masochistic Twitter-refreshers nourishing themselves with a steady drip of maddening headlines will have plenty to fume over. Starting with the sniggering title, this torturous rehashing of yesterday’s history all seems to be for them.

It’s an engaging and spirited piece of work.

I wish that I enjoyed The Disciple as much as I admired it. The film is a labour of love insofar as it feels overthought and overburdened, with all the rough edges planed down.

What can’t be faulted is Noce’s sheer boldness and ambition. If Padrenostro winds up as a bit of a mess, it’s a beautiful mess, a glorious mess.

Even when it’s coasting, the cast still works hard to sell what they’re given and it remains visually handsome until the very end, an immersive and slickly captured last-act car chase proving a standout.

This is a charming and thoroughly likable film.

The performances are persuasive and watchable, especially Mikkelsen, the guys’ alpha-leader, who ruinously makes being drunk look pretty acceptable until it is too late.

Apples is intriguingly deadpan and sometimes funny, though I couldn’t help feeling that it is also contrived, and even a bit flippant in a middleweight-arthouse mode, not quite as profound as it thinks but certainly displaying some impressively choreographed mannerisms of dysfunction.

This is an old-fashioned father-son story and none the worse for that, but there is something a little slick and subdued about the way the story is resolved.

Mandibules is a rollicking, rambunctious tequila-dream of a movie.

[A] startling but sometimes frustratingly reticent and guarded documentary.

It’s a handsomely made and sturdy little movie, mercifully devoid of cloying sentimentality, an old-fashioned throwback for families in search of something safe and superhero-free that might not sing quite as loud as it could have but flies just about high enough nonetheless.

It is at once a relief and an obscure disappointment that the mystery is not left enigmatically unsolved.

The film is maybe a little callow, but it’s an undoubtedly impressive and accomplished debut.

Berry brings commitment and focus to the drama. She wins on points.

Without any real stylisation to shake up Nolan’s inner realities beyond bog-standard techno-realism, this sunken place has no strong signature of its own – and little to add to the African American experience.

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

Brilliantly acted but never entirely credible and not quite the force for feminism it wants to be.

Loren still has an imperious address to the camera. I spent much of this film wishing she were allowed to let rip with something more spirited, but it’s a heartfelt performance. Loren has an undiminished screen presence and it’s great to see her with a substantial role.

It’s all very spectacular – but nothing much happens in the second half, and back on Earth, the movie’s message about loss and the power of letting go feels over-sweetened, more Disney than Disney.

Any poignance Stern’s David-v-Goliath fight might have possessed is undermined by a flowery script that’s over-fond of quick comebacks. To hear Bosworth curl her lips around some of these zingers though, almost makes for a fair trade-off.

Slow paced and deploying minimal sound – apart from gentle bursts of voiceover and the sound of wings and planes taking off – this Swiss-set quasi-documentary about a bird sanctuary is relaxing to watch, like one of those machines that plays the sound of waves breaking to help you fall asleep.

There’s ultimately too much in the film’s rushed 94-minute runtime for anything to really breathe.

Forgettable story aside, the film is a visual treat, full of joy and zaniness.

Thomas and Pilcher are determined to avoid making a flashy war epic, and stress the sacrifices of everyone involved; the downside of this is that A Call to Spy has a stolid pacing that makes you feel every minute of its two-hours-plus running time. But it’s still an interesting story that’s yet to fully come into the light.

First time director Martin Krejci draws lovely performances from his cast, and the whole thing looks dreamy and splendid thanks to Andrew Droz Palermo’s cinematography – but the last act could have done with some serious workshopping to smooth out the motivational kinks and deflationary resolution.

Revolving around a tender true love story, this first narrative feature from seasoned documentary director Heidi Ewing (which won a couple of awards at Sundance) is a fascinating – though at times uneven – blend of film styles.

It’s a really watchable film, more substantial than most sports movies and many postwar dramas.

It’s a film that may be a bit sugary for some tastes, but it’s made with real care and craft.

This film’s real propulsive, emotional motor is nothing to do with a woman, but rather the age-old entanglement of lawman and outlaw.

An intriguing, somewhat abstract drama about a country descending into chaos.

It's often entertainingly creepy in a twilit world of its own.

Droll, witty, and proportioned like the proverbial outdoor brick-built convenience, Johnson is well placed to realise the superhero movie’s potential as surrealist action comedy. It’s a shame that all these other DC-ensemble heroes crowding into the action are frankly not really in his class, although Viola Davis’s brief cameo as Task Force X chief Amanda Waller brings the menace.

Full-throttle star turns from Jack Black and Jennifer Coolidge raise laughs but don’t help the perfunctory plotting in this screen take on the game franchise.

Alternately corny and magical, scary and comic, naive and perverse, elegant and clumsy, The Mummy is always stylish and atmospheric, and Cushing and Lee became enduring world stars.

Small, imperfectly formed but quite entertaining all the same.