Shot entirely in Welsh, this pristine debut from Lee Haven Jones has a methodical chill to it, laying steady groundwork for a buffet of grotesqueries. It’s horror-satire, with its eye on environmental plundering, and a demonic revenge to exact.

What makes Mistress America peculiarly frustrating, though, is what great potential it whips up – for a good half-hour it’s a fast and fluid pleasure, waiting to curdle.

While unlikely to steer future comedy in any direction you could identify – it’s barely in control of its own running time, frankly – the film is genuinely silly, at a time when silliness is quite welcome.

As cautionary tales go, The Front Runner is of an unusually cautious bent. It presents the evidence, then sits back and folds its arms.

It’s impressive how many layered twists Dark Web inflicts after its simple start, suggesting the tendrils of a conspiracy proliferating so quickly and steathily there’s no undoing them.

Sy is such an attentive listener in close-up that you instantly grasp the frazzled Alice’s attraction; if she’s less well defined, Gainsbourg’s nervy intelligence and clenched-jaw resistance to sentimentality hold the interest nevertheless.

While Bill Skarsgård only fitfully impresses as Count Orlok in Robert Eggers’s chilling remake, Lily-Rose Depp proves she’s one to watch.

Borgli’s scenario might falter as it goes along, but Cage is a dream.

Nothing about the plot or craft astounds, but the qualities above are all far rarer in studio movies these days than they should be, which makes The Amateur remarkable – in its own stonily workmanlike way.

Told briskly and with an unapologetic determination to yank at the heartstrings, The Keeper unfolds like the Great Escape meets the Match of the Day goal of the month highlights.

Though working on a thin budget from Allied Artists, director Don Siegel managed to create a compelling and violent tale of juvenile delinquency. [05 Jul 2014, p.32]

The headline draw remains the headline draw – and sometimes it’s enough for two lead actors to animate, complicate and enrich a project by lending it all the mysterious gravity you could ask for.

For all The Escape’s weaknesses, it’s held together with real sinew by Arterton, who lives and breathes the stifling air of Tara’s habitat without needing to act up a storm at any point.

Long Promised Road doesn’t really bring us any closer to comprehending the inner workings of Brian Wilson’s extraordinary mind, but it might just remind us that there is a real suffering human being behind the musical magic.

The animation is state-of-the-art – but isn't it high time superheroes stuck a pin in one reality and ripped up their passports?

Director/co-writer Babak Anvari made a startling debut with Under the Shadow (2015), but like his follow-up, Wounds (2019), this is a shakier pot-boiler – diverting, provocative in spots, a little head-scratchy in plot terms. The secret weapon is Ascott, an actor you itch to see cast in more films

[Burton] never thought acting was a manly profession, and seemed to be involved in a tug-of-war against himself, tangled up by his roots. To have half explored these themes, as Evans’ film does, means we’re left wanting more, but there’s a pleasing ache to the experience as a platonic love story.

It’s considerably too polite to do Philip Roth justice. Only in that single tête-à-tête does it truly crackle with the cold, white heat required.

Director Cave stages some nicely gripping scenes of suspense, toggling between camp and grit as nimbly as the swoony soundtrack, which occasionally cuts out for comic effect.

An enjoyably silly police thriller,

There’s very little marring this as a pleasant experience all round, even if little, outside the performances, ramps it up into the realm of the truly memorable.

The film leaves you enlightened and disillusioned, but still furious at Armstrong, who seems to have drawn the conclusion that he is now a tragic hero.

The film’s a satirical thriller, which is a novel enough entity in itself these days; it has a pungent, can’t-miss-the-point premise, and a big, weird, sharkish performance from Jake Gyllenhaal powering it up. It’s a must-see and a must-talk-about film, electrically overblown in the moment, if not wholly in control of its pay-off.

The film hinges on the bond between dad and daughter and on the expressive face of Fanning, as we see her shift from a sort of nervous adoration of the unpredictable, if loving, Joe, to something more steely and independent.

It’s the Pixar film that has to remind its audience what a Pixar film is.

Copshop has a certain sub-Tarantino appeal, which is very much the way director Joe Carnahan (Narc, Smokin’ Aces, The A-Team, The Grey) wants to play it.

The evidence is inconclusive, and by the final credits we’re back where we started – confused about Smollett’s guilt or innocence, but aware that somebody on camera has to be lying through their teeth.

This starfighter-recruit blockbuster is refreshingly idea-driven.