There’s an edge of panicky desperation to the film-making – the lurching, swooping cameras; the skittish editing; the arcing lens flare. It all seems a little too eager to distract from the fact that top-hatted, frock-coated, mutton-chopped chaps burbling on about the relative advantages of the alternating current versus direct current system does not, in fact, make for electrifying drama.

Favreau has simply taken things to their logical conclusion, using cutting-edge technology to create something that looks absolutely real while remaining absolutely unreal.

[A] charming sequel.

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.

It is, very occasionally, brilliant: a deft reveal in the final 20 minutes ties together the disparate, seemingly unrelated scenes that came before. But with its overuse of fish-eye lenses and the quacking, whimsical brass-heavy score, it’s extremely hard work.

The high-concept plot is held together more by force of will (and some decent special effects) than by logic, but the core of this engaging, kid-friendly Netflix production is a big-hearted tale of broken families made good.

Shipton is a fascinating character – abrupt, ill at ease with the voracious press attention, but also possessed of a sharp, unusual intelligence that tends to veer off at jarring tangents.

This is pure genre exploitation – a gleefully gory revenge flick that leaves its small-town streets awash with blood. It may also be one of the smartest, most perceptive commentaries on a contemporary society distorted and magnified by online hysteria that you are likely to wince your way through.

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]

Mostly, it’s the fact that Kormákur makes some genuinely interesting choices. Rather than relying on staccato editing to build tension, he opts for long, fluid single shots.

This gripping action movie is a cross between The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Treasure Island. [01 May 2011, p.47]

There’s comedy in its depiction of the Swedish prime minister as a caricature of even-temperedness, but from its gaudy 70s costuming to its goofy, wobbling tone, everything about this film feels uncomfortably broad.

Strays is a film that leans heavily on gross-out gags and a pre-adolescent fascination with pee and poop.

Law is phenomenal – a petulant, powerful and vengeful man who has the court balanced on the knife-edge of his mercurial favour. Vikander is magnetic as Katherine, but, as with the depiction of Josephine (played by Vanessa Kirby) in Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, the screenplay creates a strong woman of today rather than a credible figure from history.

Indeed, I’d have happily watched Cox flirt with Rosanna Arquette’s museum curator for 90 minutes; her game attempts to parrot his Gaelic and a tentative kiss while gardening, knee-deep in soil, are strangely charming.

Although a little too performatively Scottish at times, this is a competently made weepie that should please fans of the book.

Despite reported reshoots and a fresh edit after the film’s coolly received premiere last year, its sour spirit and a cluttered, clumsy third act remain a problem.

It may lack the depth of Eighth Grade or the punch of Booksmart, but it’s still blessed with enough post-punk energy to raise a smile, several chuckles and the occasional fist-punching cheer.

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

It’s not bad exactly, but like many film-makers, Clooney is at his most interesting when he’s not afraid to make enemies.

What keeps it from top-tier animation status is that, while the relentless killer drone army usually hits its targets, the jokes don’t always connect.

Mostly, though, as a B-movie, Greta works; the moments in which it leans into its own silliness are its best.

The force of Fuhrman’s performance – as she demonstrated in last year’s The Novice, she can be a remarkable and unsettling presence in front of a camera – goes a considerable way towards reclaiming the role of the malevolent mini psychopath Esther. Even more impressive is Julia Stiles, a supremely talented yet underused actor who dominates this film from a gloriously unexpected midpoint twist onwards.

The ratcheting tension is sadly punctured by unintentionally hilarious scenes of ambitious “research” by journalist Amy (Valene Kane), mostly involving frantic Googling and YouTube tutorials on “how to look younger”.

Sporadically goofy fun, a scrappy carnival of ripped limbs, severed heads and spilled intestines, all softened by an only partly parodic family-centred Spielbergian sensibility.

Davis’s deranged games designer Dr Volumnia Gaul and Jason Schwartzman’s showboating compere Lucky Flickerman justify the price of admission.

As the detectives start to lose the plot, so does the film, fizzling into an unravelling tangle of loose ends.

It’s all perfectly inoffensive kids’ entertainment, but aside from the well-meaning but slightly jarring BLM messaging, it’s ploddingly predictable stuff.

As a genre exercise, it mostly works; set pieces are tense, explosive and pleasingly gory, littered with flying scraps of metal and meat. Davis in particular is an authoritative presence. As a sequel, it’s baldly opportunistic, grab-bagging contemporary political issues (reproductive justice; undocumented migrants) in a transparent attempt to justify its cultural relevance.

This is the first film that Mendes has directed from his own screenplay (he had a co-writing credit on 1917), and for all its visual flair, courtesy of veteran cinematographer Roger Deakins, there’s little to suggest that Mendes has the writing chops to match his directing skill.

The relatively scant highlights include the film’s sunset pastels, shoals of fish in penguin waiter uniforms, a homage to Atlantis (the Las Vegas one) and a plot point involving the power of the Macarena.

It’s an interesting exercise – a show-don’t-tell action extravaganza. But Woo resorts to such clumsy storytelling devices . . . that the film is scuppered by its own gimmick.

The performances are so deadpan (or undeadpan perhaps) that most of the cast seem to be flatlining even before the zombies start chewing chunks out of their faces.

The frenetic pacing, intended to sweep the audience along, can’t draw attention away from Irvine Welsh and Dean Cavanagh’s platitude-riddled script.

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.

It’s Statham’s movie – a brisk, slick, ultra-violent action onslaught that yet again demonstrates his ability to redeem just about any old tosh.

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.

It’s almost worth watching just for the way that Cage delivers the word “testicle”: it sounds as though all the syllables got caught in a combine harvester and then had to be reassembled, with the accents and emphases in the wrong places. It is, like much of the film, utterly barmy.

Now in his 60s – not quite old enough to be a US presidential candidate but not far off – the actor lacks some of the hunger and aggression that ignited his career in the 80s, but he remains a uniquely magnetic performer. And somehow he manages to bring a degree of freshness to material that was stale several decades ago.

The result is a handsome if creaky and oddly inconsequential final film that lurches around the galaxy at light speed without actually getting anywhere, as it steers a course between the inventive and the inevitable.

Approach with a strong stomach, and don’t bother trying to keep a tally of the body count.

Sara Forestier is likable enough as the somewhat hapless Sophie, who dreams of working as an artist but whose main preoccupation is finding a man.

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.

It’s a peppy sugar rush that should please younger audiences, but the appeal of the series is wearing pretty thin.

Mena Massoud’s boyband haircut brings a certain charm, but like the rest of the film, he’s blandly competent.

The cartoonish tone of the relentless violence feels at odds with the otherwise sombre, apocalyptic mood.

In a chase picture that evolves into a war movie, the storytelling is propulsive, but it’s cheapened by crude and manipulative film-making choices.

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.

Brits Hunnam, O’Connell and Barden are strangely well cast as its all-American grifters. (Hunnam in particular gives a finely tuned performance as a washed-up smooth talker who still knows how to flirt.)

The showy singer turned actor struggles to modulate his natural charisma, a flirtatious, extroverted energy repeatedly leaking out where it should be muffled.

This perky computer-animated adventure leans a little heavily on its meta self-aware storytelling devices (expect numerous fourth-wall-smashing to camera asides), but it’s a fun, if slightly macabre option for family audiences.

Your standard vampire film would have put Cage centre stage. Renfield, God help it, elects to bury the lede and drive a stake through his heart.

It’s fair to say that this amiable but almost farcically uneventful adaptation of the 2005 memoir by JR Moehringer is also postcard-thin in its plotting and insight.

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.

The CGI critters are seamlessly integrated with the 35mm cinematography, the film stock’s grain smoothing the visual tackiness.

While DeBose is impressive, the contrived plot of Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s movie hinges, somewhat preposterously, on rational, highly trained scientific minds devolving overnight into paranoid, murderous maniacs.

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.

Choppy editing adds to the sense that this picture is struggling to achieve a tonal balance and work out exactly what it is trying to say.

Amiable thriller merging Fabian of the Yard with Dirty Harry. [21 Mar 2004, p.91]

The director treats the film as an empathy exercise, hoping to complicate and humanise a terrorist. Yet this is undermined by the obvious red flags that she plants in each section. Saeed’s flight path becomes a foregone conclusion.

It’s not badly made, necessarily, just entirely unsurprising. The saving grace is British theatre actor Sheila Atim, arresting and intriguing in a key supporting role.

Peter Cattaneo (The Full Monty) directs, just about striking a balance between the fluffy sentimentality of the story and its hard-edged political backdrop.

The tone flits between revenge thriller and against-the-elements survival movie, but commits to neither.

It’s a tricky balance, and one that the film doesn’t always quite pull off, between sounding a warning and screaming with existential terror; between galvanising the audience into action and plunging them into despair.

But while the period details are slavishly recreated, there’s an absence when it comes to character details for the two women, particularly Bundy’s wife, Carole Ann Boone (Scodelario).

An over-explanatory voiceover seems to indicate a lack of confidence in the script’s jumbled plotting and laggy pacing. The performances aren’t bad (Ameen’s charisma eclipses the expositional dialogue), but the stakes feel low and the characters gangster-movie generic.

The comedy doesn’t work quite as well this way around, though Fowler is extremely likable as a sweet-natured slacker, channelling the endearing guilelessness of Murphy’s original Prince Akeem. Still, there are enough in-jokes and returning characters to keep fans happy.

The camera whirls giddily, dizzy from the sparkle and spectacle, but not quite able to conceal the fact that this is an empty bauble of a movie.

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.

This is Day’s show all the way, and her performance remains the film’s strongest suit.

As anyone who saw The Woman King will know, Davis has a formidable screen presence and serious action chops; for all its silliness, there’s plenty of fun to be had watching her slaughter the bad guys amid a diplomatic hail of bullets and canapés.

The picture comes armed to the teeth with slick action sequences . . . and genuinely funny lines. It’s just a pity that both the action and the dialogue are occasionally obscured by the frenzied editing.

James Hawes, who directed the entire first season of Slow Horses, clearly knows his way around the spy genre. Which is why this disjointed thriller about a brilliant CIA code cracker turned elite operative (Rami Malek) delivers at least some pacy thrills and globe-hopping intrigue, despite numerous issues with the screenplay, structure and casting.

As rambunctiously entertaining as it is crude.

It’s a diverting enough way to pass a couple of hours, I suppose, although you’ll need a high tolerance for montage sequences and for the alarmingly priapic personal-space-invading exertions of Mike and his boys.

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

Director Susanna Fogel handles the action set pieces with gusto but fails to make the chick-chat bonding moments seem like anything more than padding.

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.

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

The famous apple incident is a taut centrepiece for Nick Hamm’s picture, and the action sequences are propulsive. The casting, however, is questionable.

This flimsy movie about an American millionaire caught up with the English aristocracy is performed with considerable style by Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr, Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons. [29 Jun 2008, p.18]

It should be stressed that the problem doesn’t lie with Ackie necessarily, but rather with a leaden, by-numbers screenplay from Anthony McCarten, who brings to this film the same box-ticking approach he employed with Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody.

The wildly uneven wedding clash comedy You’re Cordially Invited is certainly in the vicinity of terrible on numerous occasions.

Enitan’s trauma is revelled in but for what? Few new truths are learned here. A rushed, redemptive montage towards the film’s end is presented as ickily aspirational.

Rather than a slick, high-concept fantasy action picture in the vein of Everything Everywhere All at Once, here is a B-movie throwback with its roots in the pulpy creature features of the 1950s. Viewed from this perspective, the shonky special effects are just part of the fun.

Though Brühl is an affable and witty screen presence, there’s no getting round the fact that the film is a vanity project.

Whishaw’s intensity is gripping to watch but the character remains opaque; whether we’re meant to read Joseph as experiencing psychosis or simply suffering the unforgiving conditions of city life under capitalism is ambiguous.

A handsome period piece, shot in striking black and white, A Forgotten Man tackles an intriguing theme, but it’s a little too airless and inert in approach to bring this murky corner of European history to life.

Something slightly disingenuous, perhaps, about the glib anti-corporate message of the film jars. The appeal of the original came from its purity and simplicity. This overcomplicated onslaught of manufactured magic could never really compete.

And here’s the problem for Statham’s super spy: for all the Ukrainian gangsters he nuts and helicopters he pilots, Orson Fortune is just not particularly interesting or fleshed out as a character. Plaza and Grant, meanwhile, steal every scene they touch.

Director Cromwell lays on the expressionist style of tilted cameras, graphic shadows and sinister silhouettes with some relish. [31 Jul 2011, p.47]

A Man Called Otto taps into a seemingly unquenchable audience appetite for stories of cantankerous grumps redeemed by the healing embrace of community.

The only bum note is the music itself, despite the presence of prestige pop stars including Justin Timberlake, Kelly Clarkson and Mary J Blige.

Unfortunately, Perry drenches the tale with his trademark syrupy ineptitude, creating a gloopy, turgid plodder.

Guy Ritchie’s latest gangster comedy presents itself as a harmless romp, but behind its wink-wink-nudge-nudge humour is a bitter and dated worldview.

Electro-folk song interludes (written by Flynn) offer images about rivers and such that might better suit another film – one that doesn’t feel as if it’s waiting for darkness so that it can finally become a noir.

At a slow two hours plus, the film feels stretched.

There’s a pulpy, comic-book noir to this highly enjoyable thriller, whose rules and parameters are clear.