It’s a sentimental film about New York and the way it sees itself: tough, big-hearted, assimilated and patriotic.

This documentary includes witty and insightful interviews with MI stalwarts like Thompson and Hugh Grant; it is a great pleasure to watch and will send people back to Merchant Ivory films themselves, particularly perhaps their Quartet (1981) and The Golden Bowl (2000).

Frank & Louis is a solidly made drama, but Ben-Adir and Morgan are something special.

An explosion of pass-agg hipster quirkiness is what’s offered here, an everything-everywhere-all-at-onceuniverse of cutesy vulnerability and pseudo-childlike ersatz charm.

Despite featuring big-name actors – Miller, Paul and Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks as Debra’s sister – American Woman is a film with a lived-in authentic feel. And Miller plays it beautifully with psychological depth and not a jot of actorly condescension.

It’s when the script leans into the story’s specificities that the film is at its most compelling – when intersectionality causes ruptures within the group, when we see civil rights giants fail to understand the hypocrisy of their homophobic bigotry, how Rustin manages his queerness in public and in private – and these moments help to provide depth to some of the flatness that’s in the more standard-issue scenes.

It succeeds in fits and starts – I laughed more than I have at many a comedy in the past year – but its wild, scattershot humour is so hit and miss, too many jokes going nowhere, that it’s not quite the rousing win I wanted it to be.

The movie is not without interest, but I found it mannered, derivative and opaque.

The President is a striking movie - and a bold and challenging change of directorial pace from Mohsen Makhmalbaf.

There is humanity and complexity in this welcome movie, as well as muscular power and unreconciled anger.

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

It is a horrifying parable, with chilling moments, although the story is structurally uneven.

This tale of freelance underworld fixer Akilla Brown, played with careworn wisdom by Saul Williams, doesn’t live up to its sharp tailoring and has too much faith in fatigued beats from the gangster-film locker.

This horror bonanza, the eighth instalment in the V/H/S anthology series, is a mixed bag, with some very high highs and regrettably poor lows.

The personae and performances of Pacino, Domingo and Myha’la complicate the psychopathic nastiness of the affair, and create something surreal and bizarre and often hilarious: a display of, not heartlessness, exactly, but a shrewd professional sense that pity and fear were emotions that could only benefit the kidnapper.

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.

And what do we find aside from the high-tech visual superstructure? The floatingly bland plot is like a children’s story without the humour; a YA story without the emotional wound; an action thriller without the hard edge of real excitement.

As a horror The Blackening isn’t the scariest. But that’s not the point of this film – a Fubu satire smack in the sweet spot between Get Out and Scary Movie.

Although the whole concept is quite daft, Winter’s energetic and committed performance adds a bit of heft without ever forfeiting the comedy entirely.

It’s Shannon who leaves the most lasting impression.... She effortlessly mines the material for all its uncomfortable laughs.

The cast certainly seems to be in on the whole joke, or at least must have felt all those hours in the makeup chair getting swaddled in latex was worth it in the end.

What a commanding performance from Cassidy. And Scott Walker’s orchestral score offers a sinister caress.

A garish cult thriller.

Some of the scenes in the LA art world are a bit broad. But this is a terrifically absorbing thriller with that vodka-kick of pure malice.

It feels confident, inventive and as grippy as duct tape throughout.

Sure, this is a talky movie, big on debates and low on action, and may feel somewhat theatrical – but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, especially when the performances are this subtle, expressive and electric.

Danny Boyle’s T2 Trainspotting is everything I could reasonably have hoped for - scary, funny, desperately sad, with many a bold visual flourish.

Some funny stuff, but a rental/download only.