Clark Gable, 21 years older, repeats his role as an expatriate adventurer; Ava Gardner's brunette temptress looks great but is an inadequate replacement for Jean Harlow's wisecracking blonde broad; Grace Kelly is the frigid upper-class visitor (a role originally played by Mary Astor). John Lee Mahin wrote both but did a better job first time around. [26 May 2010, p.51]

The characters and plotting tend to be a little schematic, but just because the trajectories of the women’s narratives are predictable, it doesn’t follow that the story lacks power. On the contrary – this is fearless, potent storytelling.

The final message of hope is resolutely upbeat and desperately needed.

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

The film lurches into conventional horror-thriller territory as it progresses, though there are interesting moments.

The message is not always clear, but it’s an entertaining ride.

The volcanically sweary dialogue doesn’t quite disguise the naivety of the feelgood trajectory, and the ending feels clunky, but this is a boisterous and disorderly charmer of a picture nonetheless.

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 High Note doesn’t serve up any real surprises, it’s a pleasant diversion, a sunny, slick production that delivers an upbeat refrain of dreams realised and talent appreciated.

Equally impressive is the quality of the dance on screen.

F is an engaging kid-pleaser that celebrates the power of imagination and suggests that the key to overcoming the tough times might have been lurking in our minds all along.

Levine’s playful deconstruction of tortured genius is a witty and provocative send-up of tyrannical directors, diva-ish actors and over-invested voyeurs alike.

This immersive, slow-burning documentary about a Congolese charcoal maker finds poetry in the punishing, monotonous graft of one man’s trade.

More than 70 civil and criminal charges have been lodged against the family. Marcos flaunted her wealth while her country’s living standards plummeted, and Greenfield’s portrait is damning.

It's flat, unrevealing, but powerfully sincere. [11 Apr 1999, p.6]

The film’s formal qualities obscure Nemes’s intentions instead of illuminating them. It’s all too vague to function effectively as either a commentary on the build-up to the Great War or as the story of a woman looking to find her place in a city predicated on rigid, gender-determined hierarchies.

Nolan’s desire to stimulate both the blood and the brain feels earnest. What’s frustrating is that he doesn’t trust his audience to follow along.

Catching Fire is more concerned with the mercurial essence of its subject than it is with the nuts and bolts of her life. We learn little, for example, about her family background.

The central notion of discovering one's unique personal identity ("the only thing that matters is what you choose to be now") takes us back to an earlier China and it's free of jokey references to other movies.

Time is of the essence; Eastwood’s 94 years old. He’s not prepared to be cross-examined or sidetracked by pesky minor details.

Caroline Lindy’s feature debut is a droll, if uneven blend of comedy, romance, fantasy and horror that relies heavily on the off-the-charts chemistry between Barrera and Dewey, who manages to convince as a charismatic romantic lead, despite looking like a rejected prosthetics test for the 80s TV series Manimal.

On screen, the man play-acted the qualities of courage and resilience. Off it, he came to embody them too.

The screenplay is so meta that at times it is practically consuming itself, an ouroboros of in-jokes. But there’s an affable appeal to the picture that disarms the more self-satisfied tendencies of the writing, and which stems from the chemistry between Cage and Pascal. Come for the industry satire, stay for the endearingly goofy buddy movie.

Ultimately, Dumb Money may not be as revealing about the financial markets as it is about the rallying power of the internet.

This portrait of a woman pushed to breaking point coheres around a fine, friable performance from Kristen Stewart.

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.

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.

What the film-maker has built for us here is the cinematic equivalent of an Anderson shelter: basic, sturdy and unfussy. It’s there if we need it and have nowhere else to go.

Jordan is doing double duty here, directing as well as starring in this solidly by-numbers chapter in the ongoing Creed saga. He does a workmanlike job – the fight sequences are thrillingly visceral, but his weakness for cheesy montages and the film’s formulaic screenplay ensure that the picture was never going to take the franchise anywhere new.

Amusing and well acted. [16 May 2010, p.50]

It’s a highly personal documentary: in addition to focusing on the mountains, Guzmán revisits his childhood home, now derelict, and explores his own archive footage of the 1973 coup d’état that prompted his relocation to France.

The overall tone is one of wry knowingness, which is DaCosta’s achilles heel.

Whatever its inconsistencies, The Lost King is an underdog story that proves a perfect vehicle for Hawkins’s reliably winning screen presence.

Though this stolid drama, based on a true case, begins as a procedural, about systems, processes and deadlines, it is most absorbing when it zeroes in on one man’s moral arc.

All creatures great and small are fighting for their lives in this blasted landscape and, though the tension often flags, the actors, many of them non-professional, give consistently good face, especially Masstouri, who resembles a leathery, bushy-haired John Garfield.

Half-witted British comedy about a dim-witted gang's attempt at a big kidnapping. But it's worth seeing for a gifted cast, headed by Terry- Thomas (the victim's rich, shifty husband), that includes George Cole, Sid James, Bernard Bresslaw and John Le Mesurier. [25 Aug 2002, p.8]

Three thin but amusing one-act comedies spun around guests at Manhattan's Plaza Hotel, adapted with minimum concessions to the cinema by Neil Simon from his own play which ran for three years on Broadway. [20 Nov 2005, p.115]

Handsome animation adds to the appeal of this sequel to the 2002 animation Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, but this is family entertainment that’s quite niche in its appeal – pony-mad kids will love it, but it may test the patience of parents.

It’s mildly amusing stuff that delivers no surprises, but may muster a few laughs.

For a film that dips its Manolo-clad toe into the murky waters of domestic abuse, it’s unexpectedly aspirational, almost frothy in tone. But perhaps that’s the point the film is labouring: spousal violence in a relationship is rarely broadcast to the wider world.

Flashes of violence are effectively jarring when juxtaposed with the chintzy cosiness of much of the film. Less successful are two thudding, lead-weight flashbacks, which disgorge chunks of exposition and quash some of the fun in McKellen and Mirren’s deft double act.

This handsome but uneven animation weaves together excerpts from the diary with the quest of Kitty – the imaginary friend to whom Anne addressed much of it – to locate the young writer in present-day Amsterdam.

Director Jaume Collet-Serra creates a romp of a picture booby-trapped with adventure movie tropes (arcane curses, snakes, evil Germans) which, while they might seem familiar to Indiana Jones fans, still combine to make for a decent family flick.

Eiffel is not unentertaining – it would pass the time pleasantly enough on a long-haul flight. Together, Duris and Mackey have a corset-twanging chemistry. But the foregrounding of a fictional romance over a feat of engineering does feel like a missed opportunity.

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.

While it takes a few dramatic liberties and could have benefited from a tighter edit, there’s a swell of goodwill as the story progresses that is hard to resist.

Was the persona 6ix9ine an act or a kind of addiction? Was he a professional troll – the Katie Hopkins of hardcore hip-hop – or a genius marketeer? This intriguing documentary fails to fully answer these questions, but it does shine a light on a particularly uneasy aspect of internet celebrity.

What we have instead is a succession of variously successful vignettes, only some of which hit that sweet spot between horror and humour, as we watch Arnaud’s life collapse around him.

There’s plenty to enjoy, not least Layne’s terrific turn as the newbie with a fresh take on forever.

While Shorta is certainly a propulsive piece of action cinema, which makes effective use of its acid yellow, cement grey and burnt umber palette and warren-of-concrete location, there’s a crudely schematic quality to the writing.

For all the effort that has gone into ensuring representation in the casting, the storytelling, with its forced flashbacks and synthetic sentiment, lets the whole thing down.

For all its apparent structural complexities, The Father is not quite as mysterious as its creators would have us believe.

Watching this sporadically sparkling yet weirdly saggy “cover version” of Argento’s biggest international hit, I couldn’t help wishing that someone had been there with the scissors to trim the film of its indulgences – not the violence, but the verbosity.

A puzzle box of a structure reveals fresh angles to the story with each new contributor, but the woman at its core – the discredited author Misha Defonseca – remains silent and unaccountable, to the film’s detriment.

This semi-documentary account of the terror in the Boston of the early Sixties sparked off by the serial killer Albert de Salvo has a creditable central per-formance from Tony Curtis and an admirable suppor-ting one by Henry Fonda as the chief investigator for the state attorney general. [12 Aug 2007, p.14]

Those who enjoy Blumhouse productions for their unabashed silliness will be pleased to discover a sticky slice of schlock, with both household appliances and prosthetic genitals given their genre moments.

Eichner is on fine form with the scabrous spikiness of the first half of the picture, but neither he nor the film itself seems fully comfortable with the final descent into sentimentality.

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

The film is a vehicle for Haddish, whose timing and delivery make the jokes jump off the page.

With the help of a couple of outstanding performances from Ziętek and Agnieszka Grochowska, as Jurek’s mother, and its obsessive attention to period detail, the film finally unravels the serpentine coils of corruption.

Unfortunately, for all its daring, Eureka is often stultifyingly slow.

A film can be obnoxious and simultaneously very funny, and Deadpool & Wolverine is frequently hilarious. But it’s also slapdash, repetitive and shoddy looking, with an overreliance on meme-derived gags and achingly meta comic fan in-jokes.

There’s the flabby third act in which Östlund slightly fumbles the hand-tooled Louis Vuitton ball.

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 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 slow-motion breakdown of a family is tracked by a lens that initially sought out intimacy and celebration, but finds itself, as the years pass, increasingly distanced from figures caught in its time capsule of a frame.

While the action set pieces and effects are dizzyingly immersive, the storytelling is fussy and somehow uncompelling.

Radwanski uses restless, handheld cameras and improvisation to capture micro-moments in which not a lot happens but the implications are huge.

Spectacular archive footage from the event captures an inescapable sense of excitement – infectious, even to cycling agnostics in the audience – and interviews with LeMond and his wife, Kathy, are unexpectedly affecting.

Mortensen and Seydoux play it deliciously straight, jumping through the well-rehearsed philosophical and physical hoops with elegant ease, conjuring a sense of yearning humanity that saves the production from descending into silliness… just about.

There’s little that’s new in this enjoyable but familiar brush with villainy.

The unstoppable force of Lawrence’s charisma notwithstanding, this is not so much tasteless, just a bit bland.

It’s tempting to view Selah and the Spades as a triumph of style over substance, richer in visual promise than thematic rewards. Yet there’s also something thrilling about Poe’s refusal to smooth the odd and potentially alienating edges off this very personal (and ultimately empowering) drama, suggesting a strength of creative purpose that will doubtless pay great dividends.

Part of the problem is that while Johansson is deliciously minxy and manipulative as Kelly, the usually likable Tatum has all the charisma of a carpet tile in this clenched-jawed, buttoned-up role.

See The Room Next Door for its stunning mid-century architecture, chic interior design, and for Swinton’s enviable euthanasia wardrobe. But don’t expect to feel much of anything, unless you have an unhealthy passion for colour-blocked chunky knitwear.

The film is all about the chase: it’s an aggressive seduction that teases with bold visual statements, with flesh and flame throwers. But does it satisfy? Not on any deep emotional level, certainly.

It’s a beguiling drama that contrasts the mirage-like quality of hopes against the more tangible solidity of regrets. But while there’s a melancholy magic to it all, the spell is stretched rather thinly over the long running time.

He may be 80, but Ford carries the weight of the film, which, for all its gargantuan expense, feels a bit like those throwaway serials that first inspired Lucas – fun while it lasts, but wholly forgettable on exit.

The film soon runs out of bite, with a plot that repeatedly chews over the same thumps, bumps and rattled doors, and the same shadowy menace in underlit basements.

The community support for the embattled shop surprises nobody, except, perhaps Tannenbaum, the ageing hippy whose love of literature is evident on every groaning shelf.

The latest picture from DreamWorks Animation is a likable if slight story of teen crises.

In this third outing, there’s a crucial crackle of chemistry between Mikkelsen and Jude Law’s younger Dumbledore.

The styling is at odds with the otherwise straightforward courtroom narrative. The prestige procedural elements work better; the real-life story is enraging, and it’s fun to see Benedict Cumberbatch’s morally conflicted military prosecutor lock horns with Foster’s icy human rights lawyer.

Like the backdrop – marsh or swamp – it’s all a bit soggy.

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.

Decent adaptation by playwright Robert Ardrey of Flauberts great novel, directed in the staid MGM costume-classic style and much superior to the recent Claude Chabrol version. [30 Jan 2000]

Disappointingly but perhaps not surprisingly, this sequel fails to match the original on any level whatsoever. It’s not bad exactly, although there’s a synthetic look to the colour palette that feels very try-hard and gaudy next to the lovely, atmospheric earth tones of the first film.

What the film does best is capture the daunting rage of the fire: Annaud combines muscular action sequences with actual footage of the event to eyebrow-scorching effect.

It’s striking, certainly, but teasingly elusive when it comes to story resolution.

Heavy-handed symbolism aside, this is a decent little drama which digs into the bewildering limbo state between childhood and the adult world – a time in which everything hurts, heads are full of hormones and time stretches out interminably.

This slapdash movie, with its big-hearted, puppyish positivity, might not save the world but it will surely lift the spirits.

Where Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner’s version comes into its own is in the moments where it dares to find its own distinct voice – nowhere more so than in placing Somewhere in the hands of Rita Moreno.

MacKay is muted; his character is teased for his reserve, a quality he shares with the film. Niewöhner gives the sparkier performance, as a passionate German nationalist whose loyalty has flipped.

What we get is closer to early Vegas Elvis – a little bloated and befuddled, and not as light on his feet as he needs to be.

Film-maker Jamila Wignot pays particular attention to the specificity of Ailey’s black influences: the church, blues music and his southern upbringing, all of which informed his best-known work, Revelations (1960).

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.

Inevitably, some chapters work better than others but it’s an interesting, sideways look at how violence can serve as a catalyst rather than a climax and how it can change – and galvanise – a community.

Lorne Balfe’s sparsely used music leaves plenty of open spaces for the drama to breathe, as if inviting the audience to fill in the blanks with an internal accompaniment (tragic? Comedic? Ironic?) of their own choosing.