What I like about Among the Believers, a portrait of radical Islam in Pakistan, is how the first two-thirds of the movie strives to remain as balanced as possible.

David O Russell’s Joy is an intriguing but weirdly subdued and stylised film.

What is so distinctive about this Iñárritu picture is its unitary control and its fluency: no matter how extended, the film’s tense story is under the director’s complete control and he unspools great meandering, bravura travelling shots to tell it: not dissimilar, in some ways, to his previous picture, Birdman. The movie is as thrilling and painful as a sheet of ice held to the skin.

With its sheer warmth and likability, this good-natured documentary won my heart.

Jimmy Ellis’s story really is stranger than fiction.

The tone is gently mischievous rather than exhaustingly wacky.

It's nowhere near as good as many of the films it so wants to be positioned next to, but it's nasty enough to leave an impression.

Director Ron Howard does a solid job of getting the smell of salt off the page and into the picture. The first half works quite well simply as a procedural, but when the action comes we run into trouble. The well-earned seriousness is washed away as we’re broadsided by B-movie tropes.

The Good Dinosaur looks great, of course, but it’s not in the league we’ve come to expect.

Too often it’s just silly.

Tamasha keeps shapeshifting, in ways both intriguing and self-defeating.

While we open with dazed individuals in a crashed limousine as it begins to take on water, Submerged’s frequent flashbacks eventually reveal a tiresome crime plot rife with soporific acting and unremarkable dialogue.

While formally quite different from his more universally-respected early work, Chi-Raq has the exuberance and wit you’ll find in Do The Right Thing and Crooklyn. It’s the best film he’s made in a very long time.

It’s a thin, trickledown sort of fun.

It’s a minor work that knows its place in the margins, but is thought-provoking and surreptitiously insightful – and very funny.

Chiwetel Ejiofor, one of our top-tier film actors right now, is on good form throughout, and the others act their hearts out, too. But they are somewhat left out to dry in a production that feels more like syndicated television than a feature film.

The script may feature numerous wobbly passages in which everyone eerily states precisely what they are thinking (an unfortunate tradition that runs throughout the series) but if anyone can sell it, it’s Stallone and Jordan.

Surprisingly, for a movie this ephemeral, the closing sequences, which consist of flashbacks and confrontations, are actually quite touching.

Without stridency but with a clear sense of purpose, director Tonje Hessen Schei compiles a mix of original interviews and footage and archive material and simulations to explore the history of drones.

If the plot’s familiar, no imagination or expense has been spared in mapping the kingdom it winds through.

There’s real energy.

Amid all this holiday melancholia, Wilde bursts into the film with an intensity that feels held over from another, better movie.

My All American is awful; but it gets points, I suppose, for at least looking professional.

McKay’s attempt to cover so much ground is admirable; and the outrage that courses throughout is deeply felt. But his busy execution...feels labored.

The script could have done without the odd bout of heavy-handed chess symbolism (“a king for a king”) but it’s a solidly entertaining drama with an intriguingly unconventional lead.

A harrowing subject for a film, then, but somehow Landesman – who also wrote the screenplay – never manages to turn it into a gripping movie.

By the Sea’s uncompromising nature is its most admirable asset. It’s a vanity project that’s difficult to love, but alluring to unpack.

Eid proves a dolefully expressive lead, and Wolfgang Thaler’s ever eloquent camerawork is as fascinated by the discovery of bullet shells in the sand – a clue, and a warning – as it is by the punishingly craggy landscape.