Irrational Man is a good idea, a sketch for a movie, but the movie itself is unrealised.

Funny, oddly affecting and cherishably personal.

It hasn’t anything as genuinely emotionally devastating as Up, or the subtlety and inspired subversion of Monsters Inc. and the Toy Stories which it certainly resembles at various stages. But it is certainly a terrifically likeable, ebullient and seductive piece of entertainment, taken at full-throttle.

Director Brad Bird deserves praise for packing such big ideas into such an accessible, rip-roaring, retro-futurist adventure.

It is an overwhelming story, and despite everyone knowing the ending, it is as gripping as a thriller: Kapadia has fashioned and shaped it with masterly flair.

It’s an adventure which begins by being bizarre and hilarious but appears to run out of ideas at its mid-way point, and run out of interest in what had at first seemed to be its central comic image: humans turning into animals.

That adjective in the title is accurate. Extravagantly deranged, ear-splittingly cacophonous, and entirely over the top, George Miller has revived his Mad Max punk-western franchise as a bizarre convoy chase action-thriller in the post-apocalyptic desert.

Hunting Elephants has its requisite scenes of planning and setbacks, but it mostly settles for old-people jokes (now I know the Hebrew for Viagra: it’s Viagra) and making Patrick Stewart look like an imbecile.

I can’t believe just how dumb Hot Pursuit is. Moreover I can’t believe just how much I laughed.

It could be the finest hour for both of its lead actors.

More frightening (yet strangely entertaining) than most of today’s narrative horror films.

It's a confident, well-made film that ends up in a blind alley of cynicism.

I give the odd, small film Maggie all the points in the world for experimenting with genre-blending and subverting audience expectations, but there’s just too much about it that fails to connect.

A pleasing, high-minded film; also something of a palate-cleanser.

It’s a play shoehorned into a film. Sometimes that can work – LaBute’s managed it before – but it’s a steep hill to climb, and this one doesn’t quite make it.

Age of Adaline, which starts off looking like a frothy series of excuses to put Blake Lively in some fabulously timeless gowns, ends up an emotional and even bold chamber drama. Its ending is ludicrous, but also perfect, and I’d be lying if I didn’t get a little choked up.

The opening section, mixing shots of the Earth from outer space with recollections from astronauts about what it felt like to see it for real, is deeply moving and beautifully edited. However, once the film settles into a groove of guilt-tripping the viewer and trots out talking head after talking head...the experience grows numbingly monotonous and painfully sanctimonious.

It’s all operatically mad, and the city-destroying final confrontation is becoming a bit familiar, but Whedon carries it off with such joy and even a kind of evangelism.

There’s really not much going on with Roar storywise. But then you take a step back and think about what it is that you’re watching. My viewing of Roar was set to a soundtrack of “Oh my God!” and “Holy crap!”, all of my own making.

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.

The three leads draw you in. The pace gives these actors time to breathe, show nuance and make their characters human.

This is the film’s grossest crime. It’s dumb, it’s long, it’s dull, but it isn’t quite bad enough to be camp.

There is ultimately something very unbalanced in this movie: the female lead and one male support are outstanding; another supporting male is fine and the third is frankly uncomfortable and miscast.

The film is never less than amiable, and rather more spirited and nonconformist than the Transformers movies.

The spectacle of highly competent professionals going about their work is always absorbing, and Simons is an interesting man: reticent, calm, shy, intensely focused but apparently never losing control until the end.

Ultimately, Experimenter finds a glimmer of hope by simply revealing itself. Maybe if more people are educated about the dangers of obedience, they’ll put up more resistance. It can’t hurt to hope.

There’s something about the franchise’s earnest investment in its characters that’s quite unique. Its longevity is because it functions as much as a soap as an action flick.

It’s grim, unfussy and deeply moving.

There can hardly be a bigger waste of time than this piece of twee nonsense.

It is a strange, clenched movie: weirdly compelling, with an undertone of absurdity worthy of Woody Allen’s Love and Death.

Spy confirms Feig’s and McCarthy’s instinct for both the zeitgeist and the funnybone, and is sure to ramp up anticipation for Ghostbusters even higher – as well as being a delight in its own right.

I don’t believe that Get Hard sets out to be hurtful, and there are some good gags... but it does seem dumb and dated.

The movie moves on to some grandstanding moments, before finally painting itself into a corner. The ending is frustrating: it runs out of ideas before the final credits. But Johnson packs an almighty punch.

Chappie is a broad, brash picture, which does not allow itself to get bogged down in arguing about whether or not “artificial intelligence” is possible. It has subversive energy and fun.

Mitchell brings off some sensational setpieces of fear and suspense. I can’t remember when I was last so royally freaked out in the cinema.

You’ve seen this movie before with peppier actors, and not tethered to a visually uninteresting set that looks like a remainder from a 10-year-old episode of CSI.

Opinions will divide as to the film's final moments: some may find it all too much, and the film does not quite digest everything it wants to encompass. But there an energy and boldness in the debut work from Daniel Wolfe.

Robin Campillo’s drama is sweet and neat, as ambitious as it is gripping.

If there was just one extended sequence that crackled with originality you could at least say it has its moments, but, truly, there’s nothing besides repeated use of swear words in lieu of wit.

What’s terrific about The Duff is that Casey and Jessica may not have intentionally befriended the less attractive Bianca as a way to make themselves look better, but they don’t exactly deny that she serves that purpose.

There’s more to this movie than sweeping music and celebrating in slow motion. It all stems from Costner’s remarkable, taciturn performance as Coach White.

Branagh and Weitz stick lovingly to the legend throughout; and while it might have been nice to see the new-model Cinderella follow Frozen’s progressive, quasi-feminist lead, the film’s naff, preserved-in-amber romanticism is its very charm.

Johnson’s Ana squeezes believability out of one of the more silly romantic entanglements in recent popular culture. It’s all there in her face, which Taylor-Johnson frames in close-up. She’s fully aware this scenario is ridiculous, but can’t seem to turn away from its lunacy.

There are moments of visual brilliance here, moments of reverence and even grandeur. He is always distinctive, and anything he does must be of interest. But his style is stagnating into mannerism, cliche and self-parody.

It is grown-up, respectable and historical, perfectly competently made, lots of accents and period dressing-up … and just the tiniest bit dull.

It is an elegant if slight piece of work, touching and intriguing by turns, but hampered structurally in that it relies on two separate flashback sections.

It’s all very chaotic and entertaining, like a bizarre cult sci-fi TV show that somehow survived a threat of mid-season cancellation.

It isn’t just the sheer density of jokes that is impressive, but the diversity.

The on-stage moments of Entertainment are revelatory but, unfortunately, some of the in-between meat of the film doesn’t quite connect.

The movie culminates in a tense, protracted standoff that keeps the audience on edge for way longer than is comfortable. I mean that as a compliment.

A smart and beautiful meditation of fathers and sons (and the Father and Son) that is slow but never boring.

Clement’s unique comic timing and his character’s wonderful artwork add to this film, whose aim is to communicate how relationships work, rather than to create fake movie magic.

Director Kyle Patrick Alvarez deserves all the praise in the world for the way he cranks up this pressure cooker script. The Stanford Prison Experiment begins with giggles but ends in full psychological break.

Mistress America eventually travels down roads of broken trust and acceptance of reality, but please don’t let those heavy themes suggest this movie is anything other than pure delight. The primacy of the joke rules the day.

Without Ronan’s performance, Brooklyn might have left a sugary taste. But she is the ingredient that brings everything together: her calm poise anchors almost every scene and every shot.

The premise is ripped from the headlines; the treatment is delicate and astute. Then we take a turn. Stockholm, Pennsylvania veers into movie-of-the-week melodrama and never finds its way safely back to shore.

No one in the film is particularly likeable, and while the global implications about epistemology are interesting, the specifics of this particular case, at least rendered here, are quite dull.

Clearly there is entertainment value in this documentary, but it’s very much of a “behind the music” calibre.

Not since Grey Gardens has a film invited us into such a strange, barely-functioning home and allowed us to gawk without reservation. This is a nosy movie, but it is altogether fascinating.

High-school students have plenty of growing pains to offload, and Gomez-Rejon clearly knows what makes them tick. His film is at once buzzy, fun and confronting.

Though our heroine remains more self-reliant than most Disney princesses, the film is too mild to constitute any kind of statement.

Writer-director team Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (It’s Kind of A Funny Story, Half Nelson) must be applauded for refusing to let their shaggy dog tale line up with any predictable storyline.

Despite the uncomfortable sexism and altogether predictable nature of the film, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t modestly entertaining.

Think about that one insufferable guy you knew in school who comments on everything you put on Facebook. Now try and imagine spending an entire movie’s run time with him.

Satrapi's disreputable little creepshow finally doesn't amount to a hill of beans. Maybe that's fine. The Voices provides an enjoyably trashy antidote to the traditional Sundance fare of soulful drama and crusading documentary.

When Abbot and Nixon start their sparring, Mond’s film takes on a magnificently physical and tactile quality.

The Aardman vision of contemporary England is generous, inclusive and - if a fast-moving film about a smart-alec sheep can allow itself such grandiose ambitions – genuinely inspiring.

This movie may be too slow and verbose to be the next breakout horror hit, but its focus on themes over plot is what elevates it to something near greatness.

What The End of the Tour tries to sell, and sells well, is that Wallace’s big heart was just not made for these times.

It’s morally complex and sometimes uncomfortably close to the bone, but also lushly bawdy and funny, and packaged together with an astonishing degree of cinematic brio by first-time writer-director Marielle Heller.

With a sly dreaminess, Vikander steals the movie from the two males.

It’s a strange, naive work, with something fundamentally misjudged about the drama, characterisation and casting.

Queen and Country is an entertaining and sympathetic guide to a lost world: a rite of passage that Britain was to find it could do without.

The message is laid on slow and thick, but it's no less powerful for it.

Slightly overlong and convoluted at times, it presents compelling, sexy characters spouting sharp, believable dialogue.

Blackhat can’t decide if it is a grim, realistic story from the trenches or cyberwarfare or a giddy, “who cares if that makes sense?” Bond film.

It’s a little hammy and soapy, with an occasional Pythonesque sense of its own importance but this film, directed by Richard Laxton, is performed with gusto.

It’s difficult to know what subtitle to give this. Taken 3: Not Again, or Taken 3: Seriously? or Taken 3: This Is Getting a Bit Much Frankly.

This inevitably doesn’t have the charge of the first story, but it is still interestingly weird and dreamlike, and quite disturbing. A commercially driven sequel, sure – but still effective.

Despite the presence of grandfatherly Michael Caine, Kingsman’s tone is about as far from the Christopher Nolan-style superhero film as you can get. Verisimilitude is frequently traded in for a rich laugh. The action scenes delight with shock humour.

Even if Predestination is distinctive chiefly for Snook’s excellent performance, it’s still a tricksy story well-handled by its directors. It doesn’t offer any new twists on the genre, but it is clever enough to leave you satisfied that you don’t want the time back.

Certainly we care for Margaret and the way Walter has her trapped, but her character comes across as a cypher representing a great number of issues without being a real individual. This movie wants to be an oil painting, but ends up being more of a mass-produced, though good-quality print.

Both Rogen and Franco, who have marvellous chemistry and exude good cheer, continue to tweak their personas in this very amusing, very imbecilic film.

The co-operation between Wenders and Salgado Jr works well, mixing the former's heavyweight presence as both interviewer and storyteller, and the latter's ability to harvest intimate, deep-buried subtleties that may otherwise not have seen the light of day. Together they have made a moving tribute to a peerless talent.

The film is listing, overladen with cheap trinkets. Dogged, heartfelt acting works hard to prop it up.

A handsome crowdpleaser with a big heart.

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

It may be no more than the sum of its parts, and the slightly soap-operatic finale doesn’t entirely distract your attention from untied plot threads, but there is some great fancy footwork in the narrative and fierce satirical strokes that recall Tom Wolfe.

Unimpeachably important, ambitious in its scope and handsomely presented, it has all the hallmarks of a trophy winner, for better and worse.

Despite the desultory nature of the film, it is sure to hammer home some key points.

Zero Motivation is a shot of honesty, in which short-term goals are far more important than larger geo-political ones. Perhaps because they are the only ones over which we have any control.

Greg Barker’s documentary is a heartfelt, if historically disjointed, tribute to individuals who took part in the Arab Spring.

Levasseur understands the claustrophobia of being locked inside a stuffy pyramid with collapsing floors and sand traps. Unfortunately for him, Indiana Jones turns out to be incompatible with Alien, and the bad acting and atrocious script don’t help.

Like Agatha Christie’s detective novels, there would appear little in the way of aesthetic – as opposed to technological – progression; having set the tone so definitively at the outset, each film delivered exactly what it promised.

Though high-minded and well-intentioned – as well as being conceived on an epic scale – there’s something faintly stodgy and safety-first about the endeavour.

It is half turkey, half triumph.

Penguins of Madagascar is an injection of sugar direct to the pineal gland and woe betide any parent who tries to get their children to take a nap after seeing it.

[Clint Eastwood's] gripping, incurious film gives the impression of having not so much been directed as dictated. It stares so fixedly down the rifle sight that it is finally guilty of tunnel vision.