The Sheep Detectives is a profoundly odd viewing experience – entirely pleasant, lightly funny and easily absorbed, yet every so often you find yourself thinking hang on a minute, I am watching a flock of sheep investigate a murder, and feel like you are having a stroke.

In fairness to Beyond, it makes very few promises it can't keep, but also goes halfway out on every limb it can find, risking next to nothing.

In place of depth, MacKay and Niewöhner invest Legat and Hartmann’s relationship with a watchable if uncomplicated friction, but it’s when the Führer himself first appears, more than half an hour into the film, that things really start to cook.

The engagement with JM Barrie’s themes here is palpably sincere, and I found myself pulled along, not only by Zeitlin’s tugging showmanship, but the ache he manages to create around childhood as an enchanted space.

At base, these are meat-and-potatoes genre thrills, but the meat’s decently seasoned, and, even if there’s too much token foliage crowding the plate, it’s cute that they mind about presentation.

Respectful if not revelatory, Bouzereau’s film gives her legacy a massage, gently probing, but also leaving her in peace.

It's decent but not deep fare, connecting most with the theme of alcoholism as a different kind of tempting but terrible abyss.

Late in James Stewart's career he made this sturdy western, the beauty of which lies in its simplicity. [09 Jul 2016, p.32]

A searching, timely drama about the dehumanising effects of waging war at a distance.

I’ve rarely felt more impaled on the fence by a film, because, exactly as promised, it’s everything at once – good and not good; fresh yet still a formula; cramped, strenuous, full to the brim.

Arriving under the radar, The Meddler is a surprise treat. Go see it with your mother.

Refn and Flemming Quist Møller’s screenplay is very good at showing how a destructive belief system such as Nazism can slowly seep through institutions, thanks to nothing more sinister than ordinary people deciding not to rock the boat.

This is one of the best mad scientist movies from the Fifties unforgettable moments include the absurd yet horrific image of a fly with a tiny human head, screaming "Help meeee!" [27 Apr 2013, p.32]

If 300’s human touch largely came down to Butler’s roaring and screaming, it’s left entirely to Green to goose the sequel into life. Happily she obliges.

We may not be convinced by Ben’s backstory, but we believe in his tense, uneasy friendship with Trevor.

Nerve zips along, looks really smashing and has the mental wiring of a hyperactive squirrel. You may well risk it anyway.

The film is much too anxious – desperately so – for us to feel that Barry is a fundamentally decent guy.

It’s fun to see Zoolander once more. It seems unlikely that the premise could ever sustain a third film, but if this is Derek’s swan song then he leaves amid a flurry of feathers and bustle – surely all a male model could wish for.

The thing actually docking this unpretentious ride is a nagging shortage of charm, because all the script’s efforts can’t drum up a buddy dynamic between Elba and Madden (both playing Yanks) that’s anything more than strictly contractual.

This prodding, acidic, bumpy-but-worthwhile movie is about even the world’s consenting creatures winding up with nothing they really wanted, while a dog submits to human will just to make us feel like we’re the ones in charge.

In its present form – hyperactive, dopey, and hammered into shape like a Hollywood sitcom – it’s a passable school holiday jaunt.

As a film, Tallulah has a bedrock of grounded, believable performances to latch onto, but makes the mistake of grasping after crude types and abstract themes instead.

While you couldn’t hold up Sumotherhood to any legitimate standards as good cinema, it’s an entertaining shambles – and far less toxic than anything Clarke made.

Personally, I couldn’t follow Arnold over the dotted line into violent magical realism, however situated it might be in a young girl’s sense of fantasy. It’s a miscalculation, like playing your weakest suit mistaking it for a trump.

Its star isn’t exactly overburdened with Hollywood charisma, and its various argumentative manoeuvres are pulled off with the grace of a reversing bin lorry. But it still politely seizes you by the lapels, makes its case with range and precision, and sends you home with a carbon-neutral fire in your chest.

It’s eye-opening, well acted and darkly entertaining.

There’s a good trickle of laughs running through this, and an observation of British familydom that’s just on the credible side of cringeworthy.

The Commune doesn’t openly stumble so much as constrict itself awkwardly inside its main love triangle, short-changing the terrific supporting cast, and nearly forgetting what we thought it was all about.