Interviews with various journalists, local law enforcers, politicians and FBI agents lay out the nitty-gritty of the story. Lashings of onscreen text spell out the statistics and figures, which is helpful. The caricatures of the various grifters are distractingly tacky, though, and somewhat lower the film’s tone.

The documentary’s director, Oscar Harding, explains that his grandfather was a neighbour of Carson’s in the wonderfully named village of Huish Champflower, and he was first shown A Life on the Farm age six. Stretching this curiosity of a man and his work into a full-length documentary is perhaps pushing it.

The whole film is a little rough-and-ready in the way it’s put together, but it’s amiable and well-intentioned and the laughs are real.

Jolly sequel to the superior The Mouse That Roared, which flaunted a Peter Sellers tour de force. This returns to the little Duchy of Fenwick, where the inhabitants - by virtue of their wine, which makes rocket fuel of a rare vintage - beat the superpowers to the moon. [04 Mar 2006, p.53]

There’s a lot to admire in the performances from Garner, Henwick, Yovich and Weaving.

The film has sympathy and charm, although I can’t exactly share all the praise that’s been lavished on it. It unfolds in an indulgent, dreamy summer haze, halfway between rapture and torpor; a murmuring indie-stonewash of good taste.

A star vehicle that functions like a runaway train, Jawan covers a lot of ground in surprising fashion at full throttle – but that’s also a polite way of admitting it’s utterly all over the place.

It’s in the scenes from the late 80s, which slowly start to take centre stage, that the film finds more original footing, exploring with nuance the realities of living with the weight of doing so much yet thinking of it as so little.

Cabrini’s story is rather absorbing and the film offers a lushly mounted portrait of life in 1880s New York, when immigration was just as much of a contentious issue as it is today.

There’s just about enough care and sensitivity in The End We Start From to offset its issues, providing us with an unusual, female-powered alternative within a field of films that are usually heavier on action than words.

Considering the complex sociopolitics of the region, this representation of community and geographical identity is much more fragile than it seems, and should not be taken for granted.

The film has an odd teatime glow of cosy-crime sentimentality which deadens the effect, and this period drama can’t quite bring itself to show that, in the 1930s, murder was punishable by death. But McKellen overrides these concerns; his glorious star quality and dash make him the only possible casting.

Spall keeps the performance tight, projecting not just Jimmy’s damaged psyche but also his wit.

The film too has a meditative effect, with its soothing, gentle rhythms, watching the seasons changing, and sense of time passing.

If you feel the need to watch a faith film, you could do far, far worse than this one, a decently staged musical treatment of the nativity that feels like a Christian version of a live action Disney movie.

This portrait of title subject Lhakpa Sherpa, the only woman to have summited Mount Everest 10 times, is so densely packed with uplifting moments that at times it feels like emotional mountaineering – but the climb has terrific views.

It’s a pleasant enough watch, listening in as these various acts grapple with whichever Bolan masterwork they’ve opted to try – though there’s not much in the way of on-screen fireworks on show, and in any case the film doesn’t get to linger on any single performance; you’ve barely got to grips with one song before it’s off to another.

Given His Three Daughters’ fidelity to the cold facts of dying, the final minutes makes a bold and uneasy logic leap that pulls on the heartstrings but feels too neat for a drama this lived in, for sibling bonds this spiky.

The result is a movie in the tradition of “vibes” film-making, less interested in a propulsive plot than exploring the revealing and delightful moments that arise from spontaneous human interactions.

It’s not quite the full grand cru period drama from the Merchant Ivory vintage, but rather a semi-sparkling biopic.

Luckily, there are enough idiosyncrasies to set it apart not only from US superhero cinema but from earlier adaptations of the same story (including a kitsch, cartoonish 2016 take, League of Gods, which starred Jet Li).

It’s an intriguing filmic tribute to the rehabilitation programme: effective altruism in action.

The original delivered some big laughs, scenes that were an absolute joy. This is less good-natured; it is a film with streak of misanthropy, more likely to leave a sour taste in the mouth than a smile on your face.

It’s encouraging to see low-budget early-career film-making with ambition.

Haze is excellent: pacing, weeping, baring his teeth and adding ample unruly emotion to his prison.

My Sailor, My Love is worth watching for Walker’s excellent portrayal of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown and the damage accruing from being the perpetual caretaker of the family.

Indeed, it is not clear how interested director Rudy Valdez is in Santana, or whether he is just doing this gig as a means to an end.

There are plenty of laughs and fun along the way.

At one point, Michel Troisgros insists that cuisine is not cinema, but real life. But Wiseman continually spotlights the importance of close observation in ingredients, taste, preparation and presentation that enables the elevation of the material world into art; from creme brulee forensics, to the staff finicking with the tableware until the setting is just-so.

Batiste is a cheerful and inspiring presence but there’s a guardedness to him that keeps us at a respectful distance. His relentless optimism, so integral when he’s trying to keep everyone’s spirits up, can also function as a shield.

This enjoyable silver-spoon romp packs all of its 97 minutes with jokes and bits ranging from the puerile to the genuinely funny, proving that there may yet be more to wring from eat-the-rich satire.

Thank goodness for Kerslake, who drives the action, literally and figuratively. Her portrayal of the damaged but resilient Eileen is prickly, unsentimental and true.

Tamahori builds a largely credible aura, supported by uniformly strong performances and Gin Loane’s classy cinematography. But The Convert is one of those films with occasional moments that make you go “huh?”

His to-the-point revenge thriller Silent Night isn’t good enough for us to erupt into the applause Woo has so often deserved, but it’s also not bad enough for us to mourn the film-maker that he once was, a mostly competent exercise that serves less as a victory lap and more as a warm-up.

Sometimes it feels like a cross between a film studies lecture and what happens when you leave YouTube to keep autoplaying while the all-powerful algorithm suggests more and more content.

Stanfield is a performer whom you can’t help warming to, although here, as sometimes in the past, I found myself wanting him to bring something extra in the third act, some new level of energy or anger. But maybe it would be wrong here.

It’s sentimental, though the way Kirsty is helped by women boiling with fury at the injustice does feel modern.

This is a genial and good-natured production with much spectacle and entertainment to offer, and, like all of Branagh's classical revivals on celluloid, it manages to be high-minded and yet accessible.

A worthwhile, engaged film.

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

It’s stylishly shot by first-timer Louis-Seize, a bit reminiscent of an early Jim Jarmusch movie with its deadpan sense of humour, never trying too hard, just a little bit too cool for school.

Overall, it’s an entertaining bit of summer fun.

Not a terribly profound movie, perhaps, but robustly performed and an interesting reminder of the dusty old debates on the point of being swept away by the great horror of the second world war.

Miraculously this film is never silly. The recreation of stone age life feels unexpectedly convincing – partly I suspect, because of the sensible decision to have the actors speak a made-up stone age language instead of English (bolted together, apparently, from bits of Arabic, Basque and Sanskrit).

Smith and Clark, at the head of a very capable supporting cast, keep the movie on an even dramatic keel, with intelligent, thought-through performances putting life back into some familiar tropes.

A solid serving of popcorn entertainment.

It makes for some fun moments and a funny showdown with the baddies. In the old days this would probably have gone straight to tape, so straight-to-download feels like the right place.

Inside Out 2’s view of growing up has nothing in it as powerful or real as the When She Loved Me song from Toy Story 2 – but there are a lot of entertaining moments, including a great demonstration of what sulky teen sarcasm does to the tectonic plates of your emotional geology.

It drags a little in places, despite the appealing animation style, which really comes into its own during the action sequences.

It is a sweet-natured little tale, indebted to Monsters Inc and the whole Pixar canon but saved from being predictable with other borrowings (Back to the Future, Inception), as well as its various metafictional levels of storytelling.

The fly-on-the-wall camera has had privileged, intimate access, there’s no doubt about it. But it still always looks like a film which is happy to go so far and no further. Perhaps some more detailed, critical analysis of the music itself would also have been welcome.

The film is a surprisingly gentle, touching story about acceptance, though it is less than sizzling as a romance.

It is an interesting new Nosferatu for our age of pandemic fear, with some beautiful images and striking moments, particularly in the eerie moonlit hallucination sequence at the beginning, which makes the rest of the story feel slightly literal and self-conscious.

This one has all the Norwegian drama of Yuletide in one tidy package, yes sir.

You’ll spend the next 90 minutes finding out, and for the most part that’s a brisk and painless journey that romps merrily along, powered by its own cliches and memories of better movies, in a way that’s more comfortingly familiar than wearisome.

It’s still a tremendous spectacle: all four of the musketeers are very attractive characters, particularly the noble and agonised Civil as D’Artagnan.

All the characters are rounded, fallible and likable in equal measure, and even if the score is a bit syrupy, it’s a pleasant, engaging watch.

Mordini’s film, though, is a handsomely made, stylish-looking piece of cinema, with some beautifully lensed racing scenes and great 1980s wardrobes – but when you sit down to watch something called Race for Glory you do want your heart to beat faster. This can’t quite get away from the lurking sense that it could do with just a little bit more rev in its engine.

At 85 minutes, Destroy All Neighbors gets a little indulgent, and the plot, as William finds his creative mojo in the company of his newly acquired ghoulish ensemble, is throwaway. But it’s a gleeful lo-fi rampage all the same.

Leung Chiu-wai has a predatory glint behind the salesman’s grin, and Lau has the beaten look of a man bested for much of the movie. What’s really missing is a Leung/Lau face off, an epic confrontation.

At its best, the film skewers the potentially eye-rolling concept of white fragility with visual panache and wit.

It’s all quite lovely to look at or even just listen to, making for something that can easily be experienced at home while the viewer is knitting or chopping vegetables.

The whole shebang is quite bizarre but sort of works, thanks to the brisk pacing of the editing and the joie de vivre that directors Zoya Akhtar and Ryan Brophy inject into the proceedings.

A Prince might reinterpret the pastoral through a queer lens, but the point of view remains a white, French one.

It’s a strange, violent dream of disorder, drained of ideological meaning.

The longer it goes on, the more we find ourselves in therapy-land, in contrast to the zingy, zesty territory in which we began.

For a film that very much bills itself as a comedy, particularly through the lovable and literally bumbling character of Blue, If is fairly short on actual laughs. Instead, it settles by the end into misty-eyed, mostly earned sweetness, with the evergreen lesson of remembering love and playfulness as you grow up.

As Sokol’s style matures, Glob’s direction also becomes visibly more assured. The meandering beginning in which the film-maker’s narration does a lot of the heavy lifting soon becomes more stylistically coherent.

Director Gonzalo López-Gallego creates a strong frame around the characters in both visual and narrative terms, while a lovely score credited to Remate, mixed with well-chosen soundtrack cuts, creates a limpid poignancy.

Both Kerr and Burchill come across as unpretentious, down to earth and likable.

Despite quality performances from both leading lads, Land of Bad won’t exactly knock anyone’s socks off.

It’s a movie presented with absolute conviction and gimlet-eyed seriousness, but less wayward humour than Cronenberg often gives us.

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

It meditates on identity and belonging, the poignancy of not being valued, not being seen, the transition from childhood to adulthood, girlhood to womanhood, sexism and cruelty. The energy and heartfelt good humour offset the moments of cliche and implausibility.

Steve McQueen finds the key of C major for this well made and unashamedly old-fashioned wartime adventure, heartfelt and rousing and – yes – a bit trad overall, sometimes even channelling the spirit of Lionel Jeffries’s The Railway Children, although for me that’s no put-down.

It’s a film whose tone and meaning can’t be nailed down.

With Hathaway at its centre, The Idea of You is on far surer footing, in small moments almost threatening to be something far greater but settling into being perfectly acceptable instead, a plane movie par excellence.

Though it ends up as strident, laborious and often flat-out tedious as the first film, there’s an improvement.

The soul of the movie isn’t particularly in the human/creature relationship at its center, but in the stunning craftsmanship that surrounds (and in the creature’s case, creates) them.

It’s about misogyny and abuse and memory and materialism and gender performance and many other things that would be a spoiler to mention. It’s therefore less of a plate and more of a buffet, and while it might be beautifully served, it’s a film about excess that suffers from it too, a case of too much leaving us with too little.

This 70s-set prelude to the classic satanic horror has flair but struggles with the weight and familiarity of what came before.

It works in parts, as a study of the ache and irrationality of grief, asking its characters how much they’re willing to accept and deny in order to see their loved ones again. But the first-time director Thea Hvistendahl’s patience-insisting slow burn can be testing, like watching a block of ice slowly melt, a story told in the smallest of drips, some of which sink in deeper than others.

The stars are toothsome and have a fizzy chemistry, while the ending is surprisingly poignant for all its corniness.

It’s sort of impressive how much director Simone Scafidi allows Argento’s dark side to show through all the hype about his genius.

Players may trip on its gimmicks at times, but there’s enough lived experience beneath the rapid-fire quips to work.

It is well-acted, disciplined and intimate as a play. But for me it is marred by an early, unsubtle moment of overt supernatural creepiness, which signals a retreat from ingenuity and restraint.

In true streaming economy form, it’s a smooth, ambient operator, made more memorable than it should be by a still underappreciated Mendes, who will hopefully upgrade to more headlining adults roles sooner rather than later.

The first-time writer-director Laura Chinn can’t quite muster enough genuine emotion to get us there, her so-so debut working best when investment is at its lowest.

The film makes cogent, sweeping sense of the record for perhaps the most illuminative, swift and damning case against the institution of policing – the real fourth estate, as one subject puts it – of the many investigations conducted in the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. But there’s a dryness to its procedure.

A Real Pain is occasionally insightful on the subject of suffering, sometimes funny, a bit endearing, a little pretentious, often dry.

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.

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.

A sombre, steadfast argument for art’s life-giving properties.

The resulting documentary is anything but conventional.

If you’re in the right headspace, the whole thing is quite entrancing. Still, it’s also an extremely rarefied sort of entertainment.

It’s a generous, sensitive study of allyship and what that really means in the day-to-day with Ferrell working out in different, often potentially dangerous, situations how to do the right thing.

As far as zeitgeisty nonfiction goes, Winner is one of the better ones, at once entertaining and illuminative.

You could almost call [Eno] a meta-artist. And this is his meta-documentary; it is not, ultimately, as radical as it purports to be, or as revealing as it could have been perhaps (some external viewpoints would have been welcome), but stimulating and cerebral all the same.