The film works its showy magic. Or perhaps enforces its magic would be more accurate.

This is an enjoyably pacey spy picture, unfolding against the backdrop of a country that has imploded. It’s a film in which smiles are masks and conversations are loaded with double meanings.

By the end, I was fond of every single brat, dead or alive.

It’s a handsome production, and an impressive debut from first-time director Malcolm Washington, Denzel’s son. But like the previous two pictures, it’s stagey and mannered – a film that never quite sheds its theatrical roots.

What differentiates Sendijarević’s film, however, is the hot-blooded current of feminine lust that runs through it. Zorić’s Alma stomps, pouts and scowls her way through the film, aware of her sexual power and unafraid to use it to her advantage.

It shouldn’t work yet it does, underscoring the tragedy of corrupted innocence, constricting codes of masculinity and the aftermath of trauma.

Superior mythic adventure yarn about the search for the Golden Fleece, nicely scripted by the late Beverly Cross (playwright and second husband of Maggie Smith), with pleasantly frightening monsters by the Hollywood-trained, London-based Ray Harryhausen (1920-2013). [13 Apr 2014, p.45]

Combining news footage, interviews, blustering commentators and vox pops, the film serves as an accusatory finger pointed at public appetites and the press that fed them, and a cautionary tale.

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.

What it all adds up to, other than a moment-by-moment experiential overload, is uncertain.

The story is a touch convoluted, but it’s a gleefully grim good time.

Back in New York and with Iron Man gone, everyone’s asking Spider-Man if he is going to be the new lead Avenger; Holland is an endearing and quick-witted enough presence to suggest he might just be up to the task.

Wells’s bracingly spiky writing vividly draws both the characters and the connections between them.

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.

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

Sharp small-scale western set in a nasty frontier community that finds its incorruptible old-style sheriff (Richard Widmark) a barrier to its joining the 20th century. Widmark is excellent, as is Lena Horne as the handsome saloon-keeper he marries. [17 Apr 2011, p.52]

While Winton’s achievements and his dedication were remarkable, the film-making here is less so. There’s little to set One Life apart from the very crowded field of films exploring equally laudable tales of second world war heroism.

It’s not subtle – at one point he grafts Trump’s voice on to footage of Hitler addressing a Nazi rally. But subtle was never in Moore’s cinematic vocabulary.

Stewart is low key and likable, creating real emotional stakes and strategically using her signature shoulders-down shuffle. A pity, then, that she and Davis don’t quite have the romcom chemistry needed to secure the film’s place in the Christmas movie canon.

Hyperactive editing, the jittery rap score and an obligatory acid trip scene grate, but Doff’s social commentary is sharp.

It's an exhilarating commentary on Swinging London in its dying days and the worlds of popular music and crime, with the disturbing paintings of Francis Bacon and the fascinating fictions of Jorge Luis Borges as influences. [11 Mar 2007, p.14]

Raiff knows exactly what he’s doing – Cha Cha is funny, honest and shamelessly manipulative.

The decision to turn the film into a procedural with a redemptive ending feels like an attempt to grasp at justice, but it’s harrowing to watch all the same, yet offering little context and few fresh insights.

It is, in effect, a reworking of The Admirable Crichton, JM Barrie's parable about a servant taking command when a hopeless aristocratic family is shipwrecked. Far superior to the disastrous 2002 Guy Ritchie-Madonna remake. [30 Jan 2005, p.13]

With the exception of Stéphane, who becomes more intriguing and less likable with each secret unpeeled, the main characters are a little schematic and two-dimensional. It’s fortunate, then, that the always impressive Calamy is on top form.

Handsome, ponderous, politically toned-down treatment of Hemingway's passionately committed novel about an idealistic American (Gary Cooper) fighting with the anti-Franco loyalists in the Spanish Civil War. The casting of Cooper, Ingrid Bergman (his peasant lover) and Oscar-winning Katina Paxinou (gypsy guerrilla leader) couldn't be bettered. [25 May 2003, p.8]

Wry rather than uproarious, it’s a little uneven at times. But Suleiman is a master of slow-burning, cumulative humour; this is the kind of comedy that creeps up on you.

It might be staged, but it has a scrappy, fly-on-the-wall feel.