This isn’t a particularly chancy film, unless the decision to go old school is considered such. It is still, however, quite good.

Martinessi shrewdly combines subtlety, melancholy, satirical observation and candour about sex.

Stubby’s minimal anthropomorphism makes him a believably doggy sort of dog, whose expressions and behaviour clearly indicate that the animators spent many hours studying the real thing.

What could have been a who’s-sleeping-with-who, tangled-web-we-weave drama quickly evolves into something much more compelling as Nation blurs the line between thriller, psychological drama and character study.

There’s really not much for the humans to do, other than flash brilliant white smiles, making the film feel like the world’s longest toothpaste advert. And it’s a toothbrush you’ll be reaching for after all so much sugary sentimentality.

Sigurðsson is no misanthrope and his humane message – that everyone is muddling along as best they can – makes all the feuding and bile easier to stomach. Some may prefer a little more bite.

A friend who watched this with me said that it’s the kind of film she’d like to see again when she’s dying. That pretty much nails its meditative, melancholy tone and suits the kind of work Goldsworthy does, which is all about the ephemeral and the enduring; time and the tactile qualities of the instant.

Very soon, O’Doherty will be the headline act in comedies like these, but this good-natured crowdpleaser generously lets her steal whole stretches.

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.

If the shark-versus-Statham bout doesn’t tickle you, the shark-versus-Pekinese sidebar might. Not quite killer, but it’s rare to see a 21st-century blockbuster having this much fun – right through to its sign-off – with its own premise.

Yoon executes all the classic double-agent set pieces with finesse, and those enamoured of the genre will appreciate a change of setting.

Watching Never Goin’ Back, it’s easy to see the frames of reference Frizzell pulled from, besides her own teenage escapades. But the film also defies easy categorization; it’s not consistently funny enough to be a comedy, nor lively enough to be a drama.

It’s an undemanding watch, easily digestible while on in the background, but even easier to forget.

Extinction is a competent, if formulaic film. Its dilemma, like many of the films in Netflix’s growing sci-fi catalogue, is the way its best parts are subdued on the small screen while its worst (dialogue and clunky storytelling) are enhanced.

There is modest craft and genuine heart here, not to mention an eye-catching centrepiece: an actor growing more certain of herself, and more capable than ever of holding an entire picture together – even one as unusual, and sometimes as unlikely, as this.

It is a film with its own miasma of unease.

Dee’s investigations are not truly suspenseful, or governed by much hard logic. Without these, what remains is a restless action-comedy with a few nice reversals.

[A] sombre, thorough, intelligent and informative documentary.

Even if some of the late-stage plotting seems sloppy and increasingly preposterous, there’s a callousness to the brutal last act that, together with the far patchier, yet similarly hard-edged First Purge, feels like a definite product of the time we’re in, as war on terror-era torture porn did in the mid-2000s.

It is a poignant set-up but, disappointingly, Okada’s ideas about motherhood don’t cut as deep as they could.

The Equalizer pictures operate under a false moral imperative, using the mission of cleaning up the streets as a cover for the same pat hyper-stylized, near-pornographic brutality.

Something in the sheer relentless silliness and uncompromising ridiculousness of this, combined with a new flavour of self-aware comedy, made me smile in spite of myself

Over two-and-a-half hours, you get a lot of deafening bangs for your buck, and the tourist location stunts are impressive - but there isn’t as much humour in the dialogue as before.

As a film this is anything but banal, and operates as a potent reminder of the randomness, and casual cruelty of modern terrorism, the way it leeches out the humanity of victims and perpetrators on both sides.

This is stupid but it’s also mostly entertaining, thanks to Johnson and a plot that moves fast enough to retain our attention yet without enough, ahem, the originality to ensure it lingers in our minds once the fire has been extinguished.

It’s a film principally and poignantly focused on the absence of Whitney, an aching void felt as much in life as in death. Many of us missed Whitney even before she left; this imperfect documentary preys calmly and effectively on that longing.

Clumsy attempts at comedy are weaved in to try and alleviate the remarkable grimness but all it really does it add to an uneven tone.

It’s confusing and disorientating but brings back dreamy teen angst like the strongest of madeleines.

For the impressively moronic dialogue, Oldman brings a lack of imagination so complete that he could plausibly explain this performance away as a high-concept ironic joke.

On a beat-by-beat basis, writer-director Matt Palmer’s feature debut skates close to the edge of cliche – only to swerve suddenly in an interesting new direction almost every time.

The film is intelligent, thorough and sympathetic, with Rupert Everett narrating Beaton’s diaries. But it never quite persuades you that Beaton really deserves to be considered a substantial artist.

Stephen Schible’s documentary portrait follows the musician in the calm and introspective period forced on him – but it also shows him participating in post-Fukushima demonstrations.

This movie channels the paranoia and bad faith that’s in the air at the moment and converts it into a thriller of visceral hostility and overwhelming nihilism. It’s all killer, no filler.

A difficult, depressing watch.

What a rush of storytelling energy and style.

There are some heartfelt moments, but this is an opaque and frustrating experience.

Eventually, the drama closes in on itself and attains the logic of a dream, though a dream that dissipates quickly on waking.

There’s undoubtedly a terrifying true story at the centre and it’s easy to see why the film’s producer Charlize Theron optioned the book but there’s something a little too flat in the delivery.

Surprisingly, there’s emotional resonance in this slapstick flick about friends who are terrified to hug. Add that to the solid chemistry between the leads, and Tag is a fine callback to the sprawling ensemble comedies of the 1980s, back when the real-life tag team graduated high school. It’s a solid summer film that will melt away from memory by fall.

This high-gloss take on Gordon Parks Jr’s funky vision of the hustle goes so far into sheer, unabashed rap-video excess that calling it gratuitous would miss the point. Until it suddenly, brutally isn’t.

Compared to the CGI chaos that tends to engulf DCEU and MCU movies, especially in crossover teamups, the clean zip of Pixar animation feels exhilaratingly rare, like a lost language rediscovered.

A hammy and facile family drama in the TV-movie-of-the-week mode.

For all of its faults, there’s still plenty here to praise, the result of so much being thrown at the wall is that some of it will stick. Pearce has a sharp creative flair and a head full of ideas but he feels somewhat hemmed in by the constraints of a short running time and a high profile release date.

The lifeless direction, the unrefined script, the underwhelming cameos, the distinct lack of fizz – there’s a slapdash nature to the assembly of Ocean’s 8 that makes it feel like the result of a rushed, often careless process. It’s made watchable thanks to the cast but star power alone cannot mask creative inadequacy. Stealing a diamond necklace is bad but wasting an opportunity like this is unforgivable.

There are some reasonably entertaining scenes and set pieces, but the whole concept feels tired and contrived, and crucially the dinosaurs themselves are starting to look samey, without inspiring much of the awe or terror they used to

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.

Hereditary is basically a brilliant machine for scaring us, and Collette’s operatic, hypnotic performance seals the deal every second she’s on the screen.

Adrift doesn’t have quite the existential gut-punch of JC Chandor’s similar All Is Lost or the recent Cannes debut , but what it lacks in the department of pure howling cinema, it makes up for with the emotion of its central relationship.

McKellen occasionally slips into the part of twinkly super-cool gay uncle that he tends to play in interviews these days. But mostly he’s thoughtful and self-reflective (and not at all gossipy about his theatrical chums, disappointingly).

Though there are moments of real joy and liberation during the games, everything outside of the matches is cloaked in a mood of lost dreams and stunted futures.

The three leads are so strong that one wishes Netflix had granted them a whole series to live in, their everyday lives worthy of a deeper dive. Ibiza is a fun, far-fetched frippery but I’d rather see what happened to them if they’d stayed at home.

It is the rarest kind of sports movie, in that it will encourage in participants a different, thoroughly thoughtful perspective with which to view their pastime. Breath is a surfer film with soul and gravitas.

Hunnam and Malek both hold up their end of the deal. Noer, for his part, meets them halfway by conjuring golden-hued beauty for the jungle surroundings and a due griminess for the danker chambers of their holding compound. He doesn’t overcomplicate things for himself, keeping the clunky dialogue to a minimum and focusing on the guiding light of Papi’s indomitable willpower.

It really is strange, a film with what is actually a pretty good premise for a comedy, but with no interest in actually being a comedy and also no interest in being a thriller, or even that mysterious erotic parable that it seems to be claiming to be.

Monge has created a satisfying drama of doomed obsession, the gambler’s thrill that staves off, for a few moments, a weariness with life. It’s a film with, as they say, something of the night about it.

It is often poignant and humorous but also placid and complacent, with performances bordering on the self-regarding and even faintly insufferable.

It is a movie made up of delicate brushstrokes: details, moments, looks and smiles.

What Kahiu’s film lacks in originality, it makes up for in its depiction of the giddy flush of first love. Mugatsia and Munyiva have an easy, unfussy chemistry that overcomes some creakier moments of dialogue.

It’s a simplistic film in some ways, with a naive ending – but there is energy and vigour, too.

The Wild Pear Tree is a gentle, humane, beautifully made and magnificently acted movie.

It is a rather slight dramatic experience.

It is an attractive and sympathetic performance from Geirharðsdóttir as Halla.

Leto is a film with some wonderful moments and some slightly forgettable stretches – like an album with one or two wonderful tracks.

It is bewildering. I’m not sure I understood more than a fraction and of course it can be dismissed as obscurantism and mannerism. But I found The Image Book rich, disturbing and strange.

With Happy as Lazzaro, Rohrwacher has crafted a magic-realist fable that doubles as an origin myth for a modern Italy subsumed by corruption and decline.

Girls of the Sun is a feminist war movie: impassioned, suspenseful, angry.

Donbass is a flawed, but vivid achievement.

This is a stridently, bafflingly cacophonous movie which despite some smart, shrewd touches, is pretty much content with its single note of shouting acrimony and finishes by immolating itself in martyred self-pity.

This is an amusing essay in amorous delusion.

Filho’s film is never less than heartfelt and strident, like a tale torn from life, or an episode of Jeremy Kyle played as stentorian opera. And this, I suspect, may be part of the problem. Crucially, Angel Face lacks shading, pacing and nuance.

Nevertheless Cargo is a very strong, at times stirring achievement: a zombie film with soul and pathos.

A movie with incomparable bite and strength.

The crystalline black-and-white cinematography exalts its moments of intimate grimness and its dreamlike showpieces of theatrical display. It is an elliptical, episodic story of imprisonment and escape, epic in scope.

This is a gripping nightmare.

[An] attractive and sympathetically acted movie in a classic New Wave style.

This film just wades into a murky lake of self-consciousness and sinks inexorably to the bottom.

It is an ordeal of gruesomeness and tiresomeness that was every bit as exasperating as I had feared.

Solo: A Star Wars Story is a crackingly enjoyable adventure which frankly deserves full episode status in the great franchise, not just one of these intermittent place-holding iterations

The movie’s other major weakness is its continued foregrounding of the white guys at the expense of the consciously inclusive cast around them.

It’s an entertaining spectacle but the brilliant tonal balance in something like Jordan Peele’s satire Get Out leaves this looking a little exposed. Yet it responds fiercely, contemptuously to the crassness at the heart of the Trump regime and gleefully pays it back in its own coin.

Access to the great man has clearly been provided with an undertaking not to challenge, not even to ask questions, in the normal interview sense.

In the most reductive way, it is another mafia story. But as with their previous film, it is the specificity that counts, and while certain genre tendencies prevent the narrative from truly unmooring, hardly a scene goes by without something fundamentally familiar being rendered in a unique fashion.

What does the ending of Ash Is Purest White mean — and what does its middle or beginning mean? I’m not sure. It feels like a gripping parable for the vanity of human wishes, and another impassioned portrait of national malaise.

Jafar Panahi has here created a quietly engaging quasi-realist parable, part of his ongoing and unique creative cine-autobiography, full of intelligence and humility and a real respect for women and for female actors. It is gentle, elusive, and redolent of this director’s mysterious Iranian zen.

Mikkelsen hurls himself into proceedings. It’s a performance of intense commitment, one where every grunt and yowl feels agonisingly authentic.

It is as if Noé has somehow mulched up the quintessence of dance, coke and porn together and squooshed it into his camera. If that sounds horrible, then yes it is, but also, often, demonically inspired.

Either you are one of the devoted or you’re not. You won’t know what camp you’re in until you see it.

It’s a movie that will live with me for a long time.

However agonising it is to admit it, this film isn't half bad, a sparky black-comic actioner with a cute "con trick" scene showcasing Gibson's Clint Eastwood impression.

It’s an extremely watchable movie, beautifully and even luxuriously appointed in its austere evocation of smalltown America – though maybe a little self-conscious in its emotional woundedness.

Mayer’s The Seagull is not a masterpiece, but it is impressive, and for those who agree that it is important to check back in with the classics, the whole company deserves its huzzahs.

A well made film, which slithers confidently in its slick of blood.

The pictures are remarkable. It’s something to seek out on the big screen.

It seemed overextended and self-conscious.

These 88 minutes never drag their heels long enough for us to get hung up on their myriad implausibilities. One of those low-expectation releases that’ll see you right if Infinity War remains sold out.

Life of the Party’s predictable and lethargic box-ticking of scenes (accidentally getting high – check; dance off – check), gives it the unremarkable stench of something you’ve half-watched on cable before.

Farhadi’s storytelling has overpowering force.

This film offers something that is never in sufficiently plentiful supply: fun.