Despite the best efforts of Graham, menacing in monochrome flashbacks, the sanitised script never truly pins whatever unprocessed trauma is eating at the rising star.

This is pure pulp, but it’s good, honest pulp that keeps in time with the backbeat throughout. Good support from Bridgerton’s Charithra Chandran. Not for the squeamish, though.

It doesn’t quite work. Actors as talented as Negga and Patel can’t enliven the “zany” auxiliary friend roles. Levy’s script, more damningly, can’t quite reconcile grief with the film’s romcom ambitions. A promising first film, nonetheless.

There’s not much formal romance here, but there’s a great deal of love.

Daliland is an entertaining if disappointingly formulaic entry into the Harron canon.

It is impossible to watch the picture without meditating on the way video games have changed action cinema. Similar thoughts kicked up during the very different 1917, but the loop is more dizzying here.

It helps that the 1989 flick had a score to equal that of any contemporaneous Broadway hit. And, Bailey, who will surely profit from this opportunity, knows how to build the blowsier numbers through show-stopping crescendos. All that should be enough to satisfy indulgent fans.

Adapted from a section of Pál Závada’s 2014 novel, from the first wintry opening shot in which hunters hack away at a dead deer, Natural Light is a chilly, unknowable film, one that repeatedly evokes brutality and the more desolate tableaux found in Andrei Tarkovsky’s work to deadening effect.

None of these bits fit together. Each is tolerably entertaining on its own terms.

A cult waiting to happen. [22 Sept 2006, p.13]

Ultimately, for good or ill, one has to accept that Bono’s compunction to spill his emotional innards is, for fans, more of a feature than a bug.

Cruella plays like the result of an endless script conference that generated only partial answers to the questions being asked.

It makes no grand claims for itself, gesturing briefly at ethical complexity before pegging it towards efficient, blood-soaked mayhem.

It really isn’t worth trying to keep up. Immerse yourself rather in the sillier stunts and the genuinely sparky interplay between committed action stars: Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Jordana Brewster, Cardi B (!).

One yearns in vain for some acknowledgment that the creation being celebrated is nothing more than a bag of squashed organic matter coated in a modestly spicy mulch.

The three leads demonstrate absolute belief in romantic absolutes as we drift towards a class of sob-heavy denouement Hollywood now rarely attempts. The Irish director’s best film yet.

Mostly, this is a film of intriguing, maddening loose ends.

A grim thrill rounded off with a chilling last shot.

Jojo Rabbit works such tensions throughout: between laughter and groans, between emotion and sentimentality, between daring and bad taste. Such gambles are worth taking even if you believe the gambler is headed for the breadline.

The film is about the cost of success. It is about the emptiness of fame. It is about the companionship of women (in small groups and in vast stadiums). Those themes are expounded with an invention and wit that add bounce to a film draped in rich, oil-painterly gloom. Approach with the most open of minds.

The animation remains enchanting and is punctuated by exciting swords-and-sandals action, even if the finished film is not quite the classic we might have anticipated from the talents attached.

Even those who find themselves unable to warm to Cry Macho will surely admit that the film’s presence in 21st century cinemas is a marvel.

The problem is that, until the closing 15 minutes, the film traces the same path as too many (sad and true) stories before it. Happily, the inevitable redemption is handled with great vim and a shameless determination to cause audiences to punch air and dab eyes. Only those with the coldest of hearts will be able to resist.

Sadly, the film runs out of steam as it develops into a detective story with a solution that will surprise nobody.

Fair play to Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, the songwriters drafted in to replace Lin-Manuel Miranda: Moana 2 can’t quite match the showstopping highs of the original film’s How Far I’ll Go, but the songs are consistently, toe-tappingly good.

If the first film didn’t exist, the current Mean Girls would impress as a modestly clever variation on common tropes. As it is, the current picture will remain a footnote to earlier triumphs.

The main thread of the script is efficient enough, but the loosely connected subplot concerning a terminally ill acquaintance strains the boundaries of good taste past breaking point.

It accordingly falls to Ford to save the day. The octogenarian’s gruff charm endures against the brain-numbing CG tableaux.