In a project that took a full year to edit, with unfettered access to the Orwell estate’s entire archive, Peck proves impossibly adept at layering in seemingly disparate clips, quotes and footage without ever once losing sight of his central message. Much like Orwell, in fact, it’s the clarity of his polemic that impresses most.

A thrillingly tense game of kill-or-be-killed.

In the end the most radical element of this revamped Marvel entry is its suggestion that the problems of the world can’t be solved by a super-powered punch to the face, but by a heartfelt group hug. Sappy and saccharine, perhaps. But possibly the movie we need right now.

Like the man, this film isn’t sentimental but gosh, it packs a punch.

There’s an unashamedly “enthusiastic” cross-promotional quality to the film, like a two-and-a-half-hour Formula 1 commercial, that never quite gels with its hoary central story.

Layton’s direction is powerful but patient and Berry brings real bite to her insurance agent, who at 53 is prey to the bitter realisation that the system is not built in her favour.

This is nearly two and a half hours of eye-gouging spectacle with jabs of heartfelt emotion, deftly orchestrated by the relatively inexperienced writer, director and animator Jiaozi (remember the name).

There are glimmers of intrigue, as well as quirks and curios.

The film ends far too neatly and with a speedy pass over the failures, but there is much here to savour.

The film builds to a magnificently sad climax, with Clooney breaking the fourth wall and delivering probably his best screenwork ever.

And then, saving the best till last, literally (of the entire franchise), there’s a helter-skelter biplane chase along South Africa’s Blyde River Canyon that’s simply one of the most extraordinary and apparently death-defying stunt set-pieces that anyone, let alone an A-list megastar, has ever attempted to put on film. And for this, Tom Cruise, we salute you. Mission accomplished.

Howard makes a fine straightwoman, however, in a film powered by the gaucheness of Mohammed and the ridiculousness of Bloom.

[Hitchcock] has managed to breathe some life into it. He has not made it credible--that would be expecting too much--but he has at least made it seem far less ridiculous than one could possibly have expected. [12 Oct 1927]

We are simply beaten into bored submission — yes, we get it, he’s maaaaaaad! There are also glaring plot holes and contrivances aplenty. By the closing-reel murder it’s almost impossible to care.

The London kids are all right, and then some, in this sun-kissed love letter to teenage angst, human frailty and the uncommon beauty of the capital city.

It’s a testament to Binoche and Fiennes that the heat they create on screen is intense enough to solder any cracks. Their scenes together are riven with pain and resentment yet bound by love. These are two of the greatest living actors nailing two of the most iconic roles in Western culture.

Nothing here resonates and its slavish adherence to recent Pixar formula is ultimately deadening. Yes, Elio, you are unique and wonderful. Your flaw is your gift. Now, please, can we all go home!

It has its moments, mostly in the initial set-up. And Armstrong still lands a few zingers.

The writer-director Peter Hastings preserves Pilkey’s key ingredients: lavatorial sniggers, winking details, a kid-made aesthetic.

The film, written by Julian Fellowes on autopilot and directed by Simon Curtis (in a trance?), climaxes with a scene that is simultaneously grossly saccharine and deeply cynical.

Well, the bad news is that Paddington in Peru isn’t as good as Paddington 2. The good news is that Wilson has made an entertaining and endearing yarn that is worth 106 minutes of your time.

Sweeney proves here, after Christy, Echo Valley and Reality, that she’s a performer of versatility and, crucially, staying power.

It’s unashamedly derivative but also entertaining. Butler and Kravitz are charming together and dripping with chemistry.

Majors plays the central character, Killian Maddox, with subtlety and sensitivity.

It’s loud, multicoloured and garish, like sticking your head inside a giant tin of Quality Street while someone whacks the outside repeatedly with a polo mallet. Only this time, for once, it’s slightly more pleasurable than that sounds.

It’s an ambitious contemporary western shot last year yet set in the summer of 2020, and ostensibly aims, in almost every scene, to analyse and ridicule the political obsessions and digital neuroses that dominated that moment. And, well, it’s quite the mess.

The film hovers uneasily in a narrative grey zone, post-audition yet pre-show, and repeatedly castigates social media and reality TV for turning a generation of human beings into vacuous, camera-ready twits.

The true naked aggression of Raging Bull seems beyond the reach of Johnson, or of this rather sweet-natured film. Instead it’s Gently Engaging Bull.

It’s when they return to Earth-828 that the film reverts to type: enervating action, platitudinous script, predictable ending.

Cole and Liu are grippingly believable, despite doing much of their acting through helmet visors, while Harrelson provides much-needed levity. The subaquatic cinematography conveys the vastness and terror of the open ocean.

Yes, it’s just awful. Fake, puke-inducing emotional dishonesty of the most absurd kind. Nothing here makes sense.

It leans away from formula and into the hard-knock-life of its protagonist.

If you want to soak in what amounts to a concert film with an origin story, Becoming Led Zeppelin is sonically impressive and visually arresting.

The film is peppered with alarmingly dull and horribly written sequences featuring water-treading conversations about democracy, power and the dream of Rome. In short, no, we are not entertained.

Roustayi handles the change of gear impeccably, though, balancing extreme events with layered characterisation.

This is the Donald Trump movie that you never knew you needed: full of compassionate feeling yet ruthless in analysis.

The last act has a disappointing inevitability, with little of the transcendent emotion of the first hour.

It works. Peake is that good. Isaacs is also that good. And the subject is compelling and timely.

There are no solutions offered here, alas, other than a call for awareness, and the film instead remains a beautifully photographed and elegiac depiction of a lifestyle that’s slowly fading even as the women within it burn bright.

It’s not going to rock everyone’s world and neither is it a patch on Carol. But it’s competent, sometimes clever, film-making with ideas and lots of heart.

Boon’s already considerable charisma is somehow magnified by Tommy’s incarceration and Graham and Riseborough prove yet again that they can find humanity in even the most disturbing characters. Please let this not be their last joint project.

Ultimately this protagonist looks to nature and to Mabel in an admirable attempt to reconcile the ubiquity of death, the brevity of life and the urgent, though possibly pointless, search for meaning.

This is a film fed by, and consistently cutting to, the operas that defined its subject. Yet there is not a single moment that is emotionally operatic. It is wilfully, wearily flat.

The film is a hoot, possibly the most gloriously macho cop movie since the writer-director Joe Carnahan’s previous cop movie Copshop (2021), or his breakout cop movie Narc (2002), or the cop movie he wrote for Edward Norton, Pride and Glory (2008).

The sequel is a fully throated swansong now that the dragon is an endangered species facing the consignment store.

The earnestness slowly becomes suffocating, and Grandmother’s endless lessons grating. Yes, nature is the ultimate healer. And?

Keaton commits fully to the puerility demanded by the title role. And yet the mania feels consistently forced. The fun is diluted.

Up there with Blow-Up and Alfie as the definitive Swinging London movie, this Julie Christie breakout has somehow acquired more gravitas over time than those two.

It’s loud and diverting and very young children are sure to be entertained. But it’s also utterly dead, right down to its hollow, greedy, cash-grabbing core.

In the end Good Fortune is perhaps too ambitious, and indulges in too much sermonising, especially when Gabriel also joins the human workforce and, like Jeff, experiences financial hardship. Reeves is good value as the clueless angel but an unfortunate sense of repetition sets in.

Jackman’s tendency towards camp is hidden by glitzy outfits and silly stylings of his stage persona, while Hudson is positively unleashed by the demands that Claire places upon her. She has been quite rightly nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance, and is a credible best actress Oscar contender.

It’s difficult to convey just how little dramatic urgency there is in a film that’s effectively a computer-generated diorama, one that’s filled with fantastical flora and fauna and mystical beings who are all dressed up with nowhere to go.

The Uninvited is similarly haphazard and, even by the film’s shamefully saccharine finale, has little to say other than “life is short, and making movies sucks.

The film, despite themes of empowerment, is really a strange cinematic palimpsest. Scratch the glossy feminist makeover to reveal underneath a still smirking, leering, chauvinistic pig.

Flawed to its core but never less than riveting

Fall is an instinctive visual storyteller, the two leads have a winning chemistry, and the location shooting in Istanbul is vivid and authentic. Just a shame the film is less so.

The film is so dewy-eyed about the process that made him a star, it overlooks the more devilish bits of the bargain. In truth all biopics ought to have some aspects of a cautionary tale: there but for the grace of God go we.

Mirren, of course, smooths over most quibbles with a character who begins in pure camp and enjoys a cheeky nod to her off-screen ex-beau Liam Neeson in Taken, and then gradually evolves into a serious, stony-faced sleuth.

There’s more of everything. More narrative convolutions, more subplots, more supporting characters, more one-liners, more slapstick, more musical interludes, and even more tear-jerking finales.

A painfully derivative buddy movie.

The supporting character interactions can be creaky and stiff, as if the director Benjamin Caron was so convinced of Kirby’s prowess that he presumed she could carry the film, flaws and all. And she almost does. Almost.

This is a film that, at its best, while softly cradling its two battered protagonists, is also howling madly at the shadow of mortality.

No, it’s not subtle. The rock soundtrack thumps along with propulsive vigour (cue original tracks from Grian Chatten of Fontaines DC and Amy Taylor from Amyl and the Sniffers), the screen pulses with stylish slow-mo from the director Tom Harper (Heart of Stone), while the top-tier acting duo of Murphy and Keoghan bring some unexpected poignancy to an otherwise familiar Oedipal clash.

The twists are many and some predictable, but the mood here is mostly, and unapologetically, guilty-pleasure hokum.

A nuptial apocalypse has rarely been explored with such dark intelligence and mordant wit as in this often piercing and cringe-out-loud dramedy starring Robert Pattinson and Zendaya.

Everything ultimately descends into an overblown and hyper-violent firefight south of the border, near Juárez. It is an action movie, after all. But it’s one of the good ones.

The bogus tone is grating from the start. It’s vanilla Quentin Tarantino, featuring long, diner-based exchanges, inexplicably glowing boxes and sudden eruptions of violence. Yet, unlike Tarantino, the dialogue is bland, the violence augmented with CGI gore, the set-ups devoid of jeopardy.

Eternity might have worked if the three leads conveyed anything beyond jaded inertia in each other’s company. They are supposed to be consumed by a love so passionate it propels them into adventures beyond the grave. They look, instead, as if they could barely get out of their trailers.

This is a mildly distracting guilty pleasure romp that is undone by its own casting crisis.

Sam and Mother Mary’s chemistry is the film’s big sell, and the impeccable Coel and imperious Hathaway prove the ultimate dynamic duo.

Sweeney is also surrounded by a plethora of ace character actors, especially Merritt Wever as Christy’s sanctimonious mother Joyce, who compound the sense of a lead protagonist trapped within a hopeless, claustrophobic milieu. It’s a proper movie.

The music is from the TikTok stars Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, who bring some verve and serious Frozen-esque power to the standout track Beyond (chorus: “Can I go beyoooooooond?!!!!!”). It’s just a shame that the surrounding film, unlike Moana, never really finds its way.

Erivo is extraordinary as Elphaba. Although she is known and rightly celebrated for her vocal prowess, her best scenes are wordless. She carries whole set pieces, and the wounded essence of the entire project, in her haunted looks and her mood of quiet despair.

It just coasts, with breathtaking laziness, on the power of nostalgia, and it seemingly hopes that the sight of our beloved trio gathered together, mostly on chairs and improvising badly, will be enough in itself.

There’s very little narrative sense here and even less psychological realism.

Evans is a film-maker with an instinctive understanding of frame space (The Raid is a joyful camera ballet), but he seems constrained here. As a screenwriter he leaves no cliché unloved.

Here the Oscar-winning director Barry Jenkins (Moonlight) dives truly deep for a tale of orphanhood, family conflict and the reluctant fight for a throne. It’s often thrilling to watch a film featuring only anthropomorphic animals where the central characters are more rounded than most of their human counterparts at the mainstream multiplex (yes, that means you, Gladiator II).

Even by the depressing standards set by the Mortal Kombat movies, Uncharted and the first two miserable Sonic the Hedgehog outings, this third Sonic is staggeringly poor.

The movie treads narrative water for the entirety of its running time.

The film bounds ambitiously through fifteen years of the Baranov-Putin alliance.

Remarkably Bright Creatures milks My Octopus Teacher for Hallmark-card dollops of anthropomorphic sentiment, but fails to live up to the promise of its title, abundantly. Nice but dim is closer to the mark.

It all ends with a grossly emetic monologue about how evil mass media is trying to “make us hate each other so they can steal from us”. And The Running Man is not part of the mass media how? Still, who doesn’t love Shaun of the Dead?

Provocation is just people-pleasing upside down — it has the same empty rattle. A wind whistles through the centre of this film, and not the Brontëan kind.

It is a fascinating, often moving exploration of Japanese family life in the traumatised, bomb-blasted aftermath of the Second World War.

This is intellectually specious and ethically dubious. You can’t simply hide bad art underneath political messaging. Yes, we need movies, urgently, that fully address Epstein, Pelicot and all the male monsters of the world, and this week’s brilliant Sound of Falling, from the German female director Mascha Schilinski, arguably does that in spades. But slapping the phrase “Me too” onto a sloppy, ham-fisted vanity project doesn’t cut it.

It’s a wonderfully raw, moving and funny film about sibling niggles and family heartbreak, filled with biting humour, button-sized observation, noisy kids, frayed tempers and armpit farts. In short, a perfect movie to watch with your family as you contemplate the looming festivities.

A suitably shiver-inducing farewell to the Warrens.

It’s bigger, brasher, more inventive, more “roboty”, certainly more entertaining, but missing just a sliver of the first instalment’s raw-bones charm.

Despite the game involvement of actors as fine as Damian Lewis, Katherine Waterston, Thomasin McKenzie and Anna Maxwell Martin, this Downton Abbey spoof is often aggressively unfunny.

You just want to punch the air and shout, “Yes, this is what it was like in the before times! With actual acting, crafted lines and plot!”

It’s mostly a dirge, but the younger Day-Lewis has an artful eye and his indecently talented dad is clearly crying out for better material.

The film instantly falls into the seemingly insuperable live-action remake trap — the deluded belief that simply putting the original on film, sometimes via a frame-by-frame copy, is enough in itself.

Sadly, the mockumentary Zamiri’s film most resembles — at times, eerily so — is Spice World: The Movie. No, really. Same manic energy. Same faux crises. Same shouty one-note line delivery.

Yes, it’s ostensibly sweet and inoffensive. But it’s so inoffensive that it’s almost, well, offensive.

The problem with this is that it howls at everything and nothing, while also using the kind of conspiracy theorising about sinister global cabals that’s more suited to foam-flecked podcasters and Elders of Zion loonies.

Like the original movie, this isn’t super funny, unless burping, farting and people being hit in the groin with golf balls is your thing.

Winstead, in her most fruitful role since 2012’s Smashed, is a powerhouse, while Monroe, though never camp, is frequently and fabulously boo-hiss.

Unburdened by narrative logic, there is a joie de vivre in the way Davis, 59, throws men over her shoulder, elbows them in the face and sprays them with machine-gun fire.