The groundwork is laid here for something potentially high-octane – think La Haine meets Ready Player One – but 20 minutes in, the film enters a holding pattern it never really escapes.

Flawed but compelling ... [A] hallucinatory gimmick feels a few rewrites away from working smoothly, and the thematic linking of Philippa’s plight with that of her subject’s never quite convinces. But Hawkins is quietly impressive.

Sometimes it just takes one actor to elevate a film from innocuous, take-it-or-leave it fare into something winningly tender – and if your first film’s needing that kind of lift-off, you could hardly do much better than Monica Dolan.

After the novelistic strengths of First Cow and Showing Up, Kelly Reichardt turns in something here that’s more like a short story – unhurried, pleasurable, and low key.

Of all the gonzo flights of fancy, though, perhaps Al’s romance with Madonna (a bubble-gum-popping, uncannily inspired Evan Rachel Wood) is the most helpful at getting this uneven spoof into its groove. The idea of her courting him just to secure the so-called “Yankovic bump” in her record sales is pure Madge, and as such, delightfully persuasive.

A slight but necessary palate-cleanser, as crisp and tangy-sweet as raspberry sorbet, and Dolan’s most conventional and accessible work to date.

Ahmed anchors a film that's more successful in style than in logic.

When Clooney gets this cast riffing off each other in boozy hangout mode, the movie skips along surprisingly well for all its so-what-ishness.

It’s a pleasing if minor piece of work, like a semi-precious stone that you’d still keep.

This film isn’t a nadir at all – it’s divertingly loony – but Jordan has rarely had less urgent things to say to us.

The distinctive charms of Wain’s aesthetic certainly come over, especially daubed across the lovely end credits, by which time this jumpy curio, with almost palpable relief, has laid itself to rest.

Schrader can do this stuff in his sleep, and in Master Gardener you sometimes wonder if he might be.

The main problem with Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice is that the film is a character study with very little character to study. ... Still, what the film lacks in revelatory insight into the Trump psyche, it makes up for in enticing context.

[Zlotowski] creates a situation, casts it perfectly, and backs out of a fully achieved story. As drama, it’s coitus interruptus, with a Geiger counter doing the interrupting.

Overegged is the word – there was enough conviction in Radcliffe alone to pull the story through these straits.

Marc Webb, returning after the last instalment, again shows a better feel for the relationships than he does for juggling all the overlapping story elements.

A story stretched thinly between two many characters, without the dynamism or momentum to keep itself charging onwards.

Eye in the Sky is a tick-tock suspense exercise as well as a neat little ethical echo chamber, a plea for reason in a world exploding too vigorously to give it the time of day.

Director Christopher Landon, a veteran of the Paranormal Activity series, keeps the energy levels so peppy and the twists coming so unflaggingly, you barely have time to lodge any complaints.

You sense structural uncertainty about what the Armstrong saga connotes and how exactly it was begging to be told. But you can’t take your eyes off Foster.

Like the 69-year-old Stallone hoisting his frame gingerly into play, Creed takes a while to move. But by the end, it’s genuinely moving.

It only really springs to life when the Beatles themselves are on screen. It feels as if there is a better film inside this one, struggling to get out. Maybe it is the Maysles original.

El Camino didn’t need to exist – but for fans who craved extra Jesse Pinkman in their lives, it hits the spot.

More skilful docs get away with more ingenious cheats than this, which doggedly insists that Aisholpan is proving herself to everyone, and dangles proofs it doesn’t even need.

Even if it springs few genuine revelations, this loping sine wave of a film still lands as an honest take on the high highs and low lows of a sodden Scandinavian lifestyle.

It’s not a peak for the doughty franchise so much as a reverential goodbye. Jollity is also served, when it’s not straining for misplaced importance.

The film’s messaging, heavy-handed as it can be, has some firework moments that might really spark the imagination.

It’s in the wit department that this trifle wobbles most, dodging irony and cosying up with convention.