There’s nothing Saulnier does better here than unveil his premise and bring the siblings together for their handful of scenes, but his film remains deftly shot and dynamic to the end.

Director Camille Delamarre and Luc Besson, who co-wrote the screenplay, relocate the story to Detroit and tone down some of its (admittedly broad) social satire — although the Parkour remains centre-stage, and is mostly hair-raising.

Anderson’s Pompeii doesn’t sweat the human stuff. His camera is mostly trained on the big picture: billowing smoke, tidal-waves, fireballs streaking through the sky. What’s happening to the people on the ground doesn’t matter, so long as we’re aware that 95 percent of them are being squashed or torched.

Genres don’t come much more formulaic than frat-house comedy, and nobody, in this fair-to-fine example, feels like rocking the boat.

Transcendence is the worst, most portentous, and certainly the silliest big-budget science fiction film since the 2008 Keanu Reeves remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Nick Cassavetes (John Q, The Notebook) has never delivered a picture that entirely knows what its tone is, and a manic uncertainty duly sucks the fun away.

This modest ladcom scores rather higher on the sincerity scale, much like a best man’s speech that fluffs the jokes but semi-accidentally gets a deep sense of friendship across.

We are encouraged to find these people stupidly brutal or comedic without being given the slightest idea as to why they might be that way.

It’s a series of pointless, boorish skits about two unrepentant lotharios.

This cast of national institutions make fools of themselves with a lack of vanity that’s theoretically fun, but there’s playing to the gallery, and then there’s clambering up there to wiggle your bits at them.

The more tangled the plot becomes, the more hackneyed Skjoldbaerg’s tactics get.

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.

[Dolan's] raised his craft, and made by far his best film yet.

The more you scrutinise the society Roth and these screenwriters have created, the more it seems a chintzily self-designed dystopia whose rules and entire infrastructure are pure cardboard.

This jumbled sequel, which was also directed by Carlos Saldanha, loses most of what made the first film such an infectious entertainment.

What you see in Dom Hemingway is exactly what you end up getting. It’s filthy, it’s shouty, it’s embarrassing, and you mainly want it to go away.

Aronofsky’s sixth film is not the Noah you know, but a hundred-million-dollar Chinese whisper; a familiar story made newly poetic and strange with a flavour that’s less Genesis than Revelation.

You can’t help but feel disappointed that a film with a relatively spicy premise becomes, in the end, so risk-averse.

It's halfway-strong, just under-dramatised; goodness, though, if it doesn't show what O'Connell is capable of.

The racing scenes are its one hope of reclaiming your attention, but there aren’t nearly enough of them to justify such a killing duration.

It’s a stunningly confident piece of filmmaking, which holds on to vital clues about how much time has elapsed, and what’s happened, then springs them on us. The performances slay you.

Muppet film number eight is a resounding disappointment: it’s uneven and often grating, with only a few moments of authentic delight, and almost none of the sticky-sweet, toast-and-honey crunch of its vastly enjoyable 2011 forerunner.

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.

Particle Fever offers enough broad explanation to keep lay persons up to speed. Where it excels is in depicting the various personalities involved.

Guiraudie’s film is acutely brilliant on the funny, scary machinery of desire, and how easily humans can get caught up in its cogwheels.

The whole thing is so roaringly absurd, and delivered with such hands-clasped sincerity, that the only rational response is to laugh the house down.

The macho showmanship of director Fyodor Bondarchuk, wedded to such a facile script, turns this undeniably impressive megaproduction into a behemoth you mainly want to cower from.

The point is that you could watch these films for four hours, then spend 14 arguing about them – about whether sex, for vor Trier, is an eternal human mystery, or a cosmic joke at our expense.