This fantastically muddled and exasperatingly dull quasi-update of the King Kong story looks like a zestless mashup of Jurassic Park, Apocalypse Now and a few exotic visual borrowings from Miss Saigon. It gets nowhere near the elemental power of the original King Kong or indeed Peter Jackson’s game remake; it’s something Ed Wood Jr might have made with a trillion dollars to do what he liked if he’d been given a trillion dollars – but minus the fun.

Proves more footnote than fresh start.

The broad characterisation, dialogue and scene transitions probably worked better on stage, but they give a bounce to this feelgood Britfilm version.

Don’t Tell Mom is a justifiably sweet feat that makes latchkey kids across the generations feel seen. Refreshingly, it represents real growth for an industry that would much rather be left to its own devices.

It's to director Hal Ashby's credit that he succeeds in maintaining an unsettling tone of pre-Lynchian absurdism throughout, while also pulling the viewer into a touching love story between perhaps the most unlikely couple in cinema history.

It’s not for everyone, but for gorehounds this film delivers and then some.

Hairy-chested drama aboard a US submarine, cruising dodgy Pacific waters after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Clark Gable is impressive as sole survivor of a sunk sub, given command of another. [06 May 2006, p.53]

Dreams of a Life is a painful film, a Christmas film with no feelgood message, but one which I think would in fact have interested Charles Dickens. Watching it is an almost claustrophobic experience, but a very powerful and moving one.

It’s a valuable portrait of a great risk-taker.

For all its smashed open cuts and swollen eye sockets, Younger’s film remains an oddly sterile experience. For a biopic, it is remarkably featureless.

There’s an extraordinary story to be told here. It’s just a shame it had to be told in such an ordinary way.

Maybe a little unexpectedly, Amazon Studios have given us a very watchable and classily upscale espionage drama-thriller in the spirit of John le Carré.

Issa Rae and Lakeith Stanfield can’t save this dreary Valentine’s drama that lacks fizzle and emotional stakes.

These mid-90s, north-west Brooklyn specificities are fascinating and relevant; to Biggie’s art, certainly, but possibly also to his death.

Fall is the rare three-drinks-in “what if?” elevator pitch that somehow survived the journey to the big screen, made with unusual precision and punch.

In the end the story is told rather blandly, the edges sentimentally smoothed down.

Nothing here to challenge anything from the Pixar golden age, but Despicable Me 2 is a sweet-natured family film.

This is a documentary that discreetly does not concern itself much with Peterson’s personality, and concentrates on the music, which is entirely worthwhile.

There is talent and ambition here: the film has style, mood, references – and, inevitably, a great opening and credit sequence – though it's short on substance.

Not Okay is like many “internet movies” before it – approaching uncanny valley, somewhat obvious, just a little off — but this unsettling darkness makes it a solid entry into the canon of just-okay social media films.

The Goonies has a rich and indomitable air of all-American innocence.

Kiah Roache-Turner keeps the camera moving and the cuts regular, setting a cracking energy that’s particularly important for midnight movies like this, concerned more with relishing carnage than telling a story.

It is a strange, subdued, rather miserable film, interestingly perceptive on conformism and philistinism as a way of life, and on the disconcerting wiles the inhabitants use in order to thwart Florence’s entirely reasonable plans.

Cranston acts the hell out of the role, like he’s performing Macbeth in a room. Unfortunately his commitment isn’t enough to sell Wakefield as anything more than a hollow character study, with an unappealing tool at its core.

For all its berserk energy, you will need a very particular sense of humour not to lose patience with the prolific Takashi Miike’s latest.

John Schlesinger’s winsome adventure from 1965 still has verve and ambition, a romantic satire of swinging London.

DiCaprio’s performance is excellent; his Romeo is transformed and astonished by the real thing; he has play-acted at love until now, and he hasn’t realised how vulnerable it would make him. Danes looks more mature than he does (though in fact six years younger) and she is such a smart, stylish player, even at this age. The Luhrmann R+J is a tonic and a delight.

Given that a fair amount of creative licence has been exercised here, it is strange that Bruce Lee has such a small part to play.