The film shies away from any kind of political commentary, and as a result feels oddly sapped of fire or urgency.

Alma Pöysti is luminous as Jansson, bringing to life her playful, pleasure-seeking artist’s spirit.

Rarely does a half-hour TV show successfully stretch itself into a 90-minute film. It’s a nice surprise, then, that the popular BBC mockumentary works as a feature.

There is something queasy about mining such fresh real-life trauma for popcorn entertainment.

The film is called Misbehaviour, but a timid script belies mischief of any sort.

Not surprisingly given Kuras’s background as a cinematographer, Lee is largely visually driven.

For all its to-the-moment social commentary, the film has roots in the anarchistic, surrealist 60s: Lillian could be a direct descendant of minxy troublemakers Marie I and Marie II from Věra Chytilová’s Daisies, reimagined for the TikTok generation.

The very watchable combination of Elizabeth Banks, as a suburban Chicago housewife turned illegal abortion technician, and Sigourney Weaver, as the founder of Call Jane, brings a force of charisma that overrides the picture’s occasional frothiness.

Given the emotive subject matter, the film chooses to keep the potential mothers at arm’s length as characters, losing tear-jerking opportunities as a consequence.

Mimicking the relapse-recovery cycle of addiction, the film’s timeline moves in unsatisfying narrative circles that stall the already shallow stakes.

Realistically, it was never going to match the instant cult appeal of the original, but it has a lot of fun trying.

Fortunately, the twin charisma assault of the two leads adds considerably to the film’s appeal. It turns out that watching two impossibly beautiful boys making cow eyes at each other might be just the escapist pulp we need right now.

There is no questioning the angular complexity of the central character study, with all its unexpected harmonics and discords.

Much of the film’s appeal comes from its star, newcomer Max Harwood, who, despite a chiffon-wisp of a singing voice claims every frame with his knife-sharp cheekbones and charisma to match.

A highly competent, conventional Second World War movie. [07 May 2006, p.10]

LaKeith Stanfield and Issa Rae light up a beautiful-looking movie that weaves together love stories from the past and present.

Unfortunately, it all rather stumbles with an overwrought final act that disintegrates under scrutiny and hinges on a key character’s unlikely ability to remember, verbatim, every word he has ever read.

While the pace falters a little – there are only so many ways you can almost fall off a tower, after all – the tension is unrelenting.

For all the real-estate machinations and nefarious scheming, there are too many inert scenes that drain the energy from this already plodding story.

There are thematic parallels with everything from The Lego Movie to The Matrix, but key to its appeal is an unabashed sweetness and goofy enthusiasm that proves irresistible.

It’s a thorough, measured, often illuminating portrait, aided by readings from Highsmith’s unpublished diaries and interviews with her ex-lovers.

It may be big, brawling and somewhat inelegant in approach, but this Gerard Butler vehicle is an aviation fuel-powered good time.

Peter Sellers, whose multiple role-playing sustained the earlier picture, is sadly missing here as the citizens of Grand Fenwick enter the space race. But a dull script is considerably enlivened by some inventive touches from Richard Lester, directing his first big-budget film, and he went straight on to A Hard Day's Night and The Knack. [15 Jul 2007, p.18]

Attractive comedy-thriller in the Topkapi vein starring Michael Caine, shortly after his international success in Alfie, as an over-ambitious cockney crook in Hong Kong. [30 Apr 2006, p.14]

The career of the man who directed The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington could only go up, and it rocketed with this very funny comedy starring George Hamilton as Count Dracula, who's driven out of modern Transylvania by zealous Communist Party officials and heads for corrupt Manhattan, hoping to meet a trendy model he's seen in a fashion magazine. [13 Mar 2005, p.83]

It’s a messy, mind-blowing collision of philosophy, technology, religion and fruit-loop paranoia which, while it doesn’t exactly make a watertight case, does provide a fascinating, and in one case deeply disturbing, insight into the thought processes of those who believe it.

Stevens is one of several reasons to watch this extravagantly gory botched kidnap horror.

At the centre of it all is Kidman, bringing an impressive physicality to her performance that says more about Erin than words ever could. We learn so much from simply watching her walk, her gait combining an air of stroppiness with an overriding sense of being weighed down or crushed, like a packhorse hobbled by years of abuse. It’s a terrific turn that (like the rest of the movie) reminds us that awards often offer little indication of what’s really worth watching in cinemas.

Such intricate genre mechanisms are fundamental to The Monkey’s construction, but the film also has a heart that beats with authentic human emotion.

It works on the assumption that a story about grumpy old gits united against a common foe has a universal appeal. True, to an extent, but what the makers of this film fail to realise is that it was the specificity of the Icelandic original that made it such a glumly hilarious delight.

An exciting tale with a cast that includes Christopher Walken and Martin Balsam, but its real concern is with a dehumanised, paranoid society dominated by electronic surveillance. [09 Oct 2011, p.46]

Alexis Louder holds her own as the heroine of (and sole woman in) Joe Carnahan’s lean, mean, 70s-inspired action thriller.

Judge Reinhold and Fred Savage are pleasant enough as the father and son who swap roles, but the result is less funny and less stylish than Peter Ustinov's period version of 1947 which starred Roger Livesey and Anthony Newley. [14 Dec 2003, p.8]

A haunting allegorical tale, Aniara warns of humanity hurtling in the wrong direction and realising too late that there is no turning back.

The film is fascinating on cult capitalism and the power of personality as a marketing tool for an otherwise unremarkable business plan.

Wright is sympathetic and believable, but we never truly get a sense of Edee or her desires outside the bounds of her loss.

While the film is largely content to tread a safe path, it does at least feel full-hearted in its appreciation of the way music can connect lost souls and enrich lives.

An impenetrable plot doesn’t entirely hold together, but the film is worth a look for fans of wigged-out sci-fi, gorgeous framing and lush, orchestral, Bernard Herrmann-inspired soundtracks.

Strong allegorical undertones reflecting the Cold War, then at its height, and an unforgettable score by Jerome Moross. [31 Dec 2006, p.12]

Earwig, the director’s first English-language film, lacks the macabre logic of Evolution, or the precision of Innocence; the audience is left fumbling for meaning in the gloom.

It’s all fairly predictable. Anyone who has seen more than a couple of serial killer movies will have no problem assembling a list of possible masked murderers. But Josh Ruben’s film goes above and beyond when it comes to squelchy, visceral gore.

For all its nudge-wink movie-history nods and self-conscious carnivals of bodily fluids and glamorous excess, Babylon is exhaustingly unexciting fare – hysterical rather than historical, derivative rather than inventive.

This portrait of lost souls connecting is unassuming, but quietly powerful.

It's a bicentennial companion piece to Nashville, with a fabulous cast that includes Burt Lancaster (superb as dime novelist Ned Buntline), Harvey Keitel and Joel Grey. [22 Jun 1997, p.11]

Harding’s film proves movingly open-minded on the subject of the strange things isolation can do, but as a neighbour he might have been nosier. English reserve seems to have prevented further prying into the circumstances that created this English eccentric.

The film is a match for Lars von Trier’s Dogville in its grimly relentless approach to misogyny and sexual violence. A disconcertingly beautiful picture about the ugliness of humanity.

While the result may not be quite as deep as the cavern at the centre of the story, it has an enticing sliver of ice at its heart.

Equally impressive is the quality of the dance on screen.

It’s an ambitious piece of writing, certainly, springy with ideas and information. But whereas the screenplay for The Big Short, which McKay co-wrote with Charles Randolph, deftly negotiated the dense, often very dry material, here there is a slightly frantic top note to McKay’s trademark wryly satirical tone.

Despite top-notch period production design and a couple of convincing studio workout sequences (I was reminded of the brilliant Love & Mercy as Aretha tells her bassist to ditch Alabama for Harlem), the drama rarely has the fiery spark its subject demands.

The emotional impact is true and clean. The fractious bond between the brothers and their aching anger at the loss of a parent are evoked with exquisite sorrow and clarity.

A critical and box-office disaster that the Master himself dismissed. It is in fact a fascinating film, and was revered in France by Truffaut and others as Les amants du capricorne. [02 Apr 2006, p.10]

There’s a thrilling charge to the film-making. Jostling, overlapping dialogue feels lived rather than written.

Blue Beetle may be frontloaded with visual fireworks that neatly meld the practical and the virtual, but it is the likable interplay between its down-to-earth characters that gives the film oomph, making it more than just a Shazam-style romp.

If the final act overdoes it a little with the wackily-ever-after feelgood vibes, Mohammadi’s flippantly acidic to-camera commentary emphasises the sharp edges within the family embrace.

Ultimately, if the film is entertaining – and it is, sporadically at least – it’s as much to do with the reliably engaging Taron Egerton in the central role of embattled businessman Henk Rogers, as it is with the wiretaps, honey traps and sneering Soviet security forces.

The only notable development is just how rapidly a satirical skewering of genre formulas can become thuddingly formulaic.

The film’s teen protagonists, meanwhile, are chaste children’s book heroes, but the horror, based on illustrator Stephen Gammell’s drawings, has a gruesome quality that feels too full-on for youngsters.

There is little satisfaction to be found in the picture’s messily uninhibited climax.

It’s a pity, then, that this sluggishly paced film, which leans heavily on a fussy, twinkling piano score, is so meandering and listless.

This handsome biopic by Lasse Hallström, with his daughter Tora Hallström in the role of the younger Hilma, attempts to redress the balance.

It’s the movie equivalent of a fairground ride with all the bolts loosened and the safety booklet blazed long ago when someone ran out of Rizlas.

The film tackles issues of race, sexual violence and the low-level simmering cruelty that is a fact of life for those hardy individuals who make a life in the bush in the late 19th century.

For all the talk of gamechanging comedy genius, Saturday Night ultimately plays it rather safe: it’s closer to a Noises Off-style romp transposed to a TV studio than the blast off of a cultural revolution.

Unfortunately, kind of a drag.

The respective charms of Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum receive a rigorous workout during the course of this caffeinated, overeager adventure romp – to the point where significant signs of wear and tear begin to appear.

There’s a little too much crammed into this overstuffed stocking of a movie, but the gorgeous, lovingly detailed animation style – it’s the second feature from British studio Locksmith Animation (Ron’s Gone Wrong) – and the zippy action sequences should prove a winning combination for family audiences.

Unlike movies such as Black Panther and Shang-Chi, which functioned as self-contained entities, this film requires an encyclopedic knowledge of Marvel minutiae and world-class cross-referencing skills to fully work. And who, outside the diehard fanbase, has the bandwidth for that level of commitment?

This colourful fable, scripted by William Goldman (who wrote Butch Cassidy and All the President's Men ) deserved far better than the critical drubbing and public rejection that greeted it. [20 Jul 2008, p.18]

It’s a fine, if mild, escapist hoot.

Carefully restored Powell and Pressburger minor masterpiece in glowing Technicolor, doing more than justice to Mary Webb's melodramatic sub-Hardy novel of late Victorian Shropshire. [05 Aug 2001, p.9]

A film that erases itself so thoroughly from your memory, it’s almost as if Pitt and Clooney had performed one of their bespoke clean-up services on your brain.

Cameos from Awkwafina, Nicki Minaj and Pete Davidson, and a subplot involving a trio of adorable hatchlings, are amusing diversions, but Jones’s dynamic voice work is the highlight.

Hawkins seems beguiled by Manning’s natural charisma, and more interested in the highs and lows of her personal reckoning. These are fascinating in their own right, yet more context might have made this feel like more of a definitive portrait.

It’s undeniably entertaining stuff, but this choppy collage-style portrait of the formative figures in the life of the young Tony Soprano (Michael Gandolfini) is better suited to the needs of existing fans rather than those of Sopranos neophytes.

While Ronan is terrific, Robbie has arguably the more difficult role, conjuring an engaging portrait of someone whose position has made her “more man than woman”.

Rory Kinnear gives a robustly likable performance as Dave, somewhat redeeming this unashamedly formulaic crowd-pleaser.

Mainly, though, the problem lies with a screenplay that fails to create suspense, or even to persuade us to care who killed a brilliant but unpopular hair stylist. Still, credit to the hair and costume design team for a collection of extravagantly silly creations.

While this is the smartest, funniest and stabbiest film since the 1996 original, it does feel as though Scream has come full circle, an ouroboros serpent of a franchise that is destined to endlessly devour itself until those testy toxic fans finally lose patience.

The aspect that’s traditionally elevated Pixar animations, the dizzy wit and inventiveness of the screenplay, is missing from this dispiriting trudge through outer space, via some box-ticking messaging along the way.

It’s not unfunny, but one joke can’t sustain the entire movie.

Motherless Brooklyn is a curious near miss that can be both applauded and criticised for its boundless ambition.

The film sets out to repulse us, and it frequently succeeds. It would be easy, and tempting, to dismiss it out of hand. But that would be to disregard its redeeming strength – the authentically knotty characters and the performances that inhabit them.

The scenes of family bonding are tiresome but the action is mostly tense and cheerfully bloody.

Unlike the steely resilience in the face of disaster of Robert Redford’s character in All Is Lost, watching Crowhurst slowly crack is the cinema equivalent of filling your pockets with pebbles and chucking yourself into the Solent.

Ultimately, the revelation here is not so much Dolan’s more contemplative approach to film-making, but the subtlety and sensitivity of his performance.

Directed by Oscar-winner Tom McCarthy (Spotlight), this is a thoughtful, knotty character study, albeit one nestled inside a polished, and less interesting, action thriller.

While some sections of the globe-trotting plot strike a baggy, backward-looking note, it’s the smaller moments that make this fly, particularly when the film uses fantasy to turn horribly real everyday harassments into moments of air-punching triumph.

In its better moments, this studio oddity is a tense thriller, at its worst, draggy and self-indulgent.

There’s something rather sterile and bloodless in the film’s approach, with its synthetic and soul-sappingly clean-looking CGI. Plus there’s the palpable lack of chemistry between the leads: a kind of brisk civility rather than the ache of eternal longing the title promises.

Merlant’s performance is committed, and the film takes her romantic and sexual fixation with the ride seriously, immersing the viewer in her dazzling, neon-lit world.

Grisliness occurs, accompanied by a score that sounds like knives being sharpened on violins. It’s thoroughly unpleasant, but that’s rather the point.

Parental indifference is not attuned to the looming tragedy in this horribly compelling fable.

Inspired by real events, the film is at its best when it leans into the action-adventure genre; director Tom Harper smartly uses camera-shake and closeups to immerse the audience in the weather’s volatility.

For some, Little Joe may seem too sterile to engage emotionally, but I found it glassily unsettling – even more so on second viewing. Inhale at your peril.

Sometimes there is pleasure to be found in brainless action, but the extended video game-style finale left me furious and fatigued.

The songs are a bum note, but the film does raise thoughtful questions about dogma, fake news and the identity crises that might occur once a community’s core beliefs are challenged.

For better or worse, House of Gucci is a little too well behaved to become a cult classic. But Gaga deserves a gong for steering a steely path through the madness – for richer, not poorer; in kitschness and in wealth.