Bits of Allied really do work. There’s a clawing tension to the later scenes, as their marital bliss starts to turn sour. Pitt’s anguish is convincing, and even if some of his actions are ludicrous – endangering an entire Resistance cell for his own peace of mind, for instance – we still feel for him.

What marks out director Mike Newell and writer David Nicholls’s version is its impeccable acting.

It’s all a bit heavy-handed at times, but this is a sweet story honestly told.

Though the writer/director is working abroad and telling a linear story, it's immediately apparent - from the measured pacing, the immaculate compositions and elegant camera movements, the audacious ellipses and the inspired use of music - that this is a hallmarked Davies film. As such, it is extraordinarily moving, notably in a simple, underplayed death scene. Gena Rowlands' performance is a marvel of subtle nuances.

In his prime, co-writer Michael Ritchie might have turned this into a caustic Downhill Racer or Bad News Bears-style critique of professional sporting values. Director Turteltaub, on the other hand, patronises both characters and audience with daft knockabout humour, tear-jerking sentiment and racial stereotyping which skates on very thin ice.

Tense rather than terrifying, and with a strong black comic undercurrent, it rests on the mordant observation that zombies or no zombies, chances are the living will tear each other apart. A fitting conclusion to a remarkably astute series, a landmark in the horror genre.

When it puts down its copy of ‘Political Philosophy for Dummies’ and focuses on character and action, Tomorrowland is a blast.

The cliché-averse will doubtless resist, but the laughter and tears here are never less than fully earned. A lovely film.

It all spins out of control in a final blowout of naff special effects and random shouting, but there’s just enough leftover goodwill to carry it through.

It’s the directorial debut of novelist Helen Walsh and details as small as the actresses’ eyebrows reveal huge amounts about their characters. It’s also cleverly shot.

That Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi adore this music is not in question – it’s lovingly chosen and brilliantly performed – but the film sometimes feels like a work of cultural tourism, particularly in scenes set in a gospel church and a Chicago street market. These lively musical sequences also sit awkwardly with director John Landis’s bizarre predilection for wholesale destruction: sure, smashing up cop cars can be fun, but Landis takes things to a tiresome extreme.

After a spendidly traditional opening sequence, the message about the dangers of scientific research begins to loom ponderously large, with banks of super-computers dedicated to science fact but the dialogue (Good God, it's growing!) still mired in fiction.

An unsettling if not entirely successful social-cum-psychological drama. As a study in the complex relationship between violence and cinema, it's an unsensational alternative to Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and Man Bites Dog.

This slapdash but endearing doc about the rise, fall and resurrection of '80s pop outfit Spandau Ballet is an inside job, packed with strong archive footage yet lacking anything you'd call truly incisive.

Props should go to director Klaus Härö for making such a predictable premise feel fresh and his cast of characters – from a suspicious, disapproving headmaster, to the foil-swinging kids – feel engaging.

Crichton's excellent adaptation of Robin Cook's novel is one of the most intelligent sci-fi thrillers in years. A simple enough story, but one told in such chilling fashion that visitors to hospitals will never feel the same again.

Neither an anti-war tract nor a jingoistic rallying cry, the brutal but humane Lone Survivor instead registers as a howl of despair for so many young men and women lost in war.

Some of the performances (Hurt, Davis) give it an illusion of depth, but it's mostly expert in avoiding moral resonance and ambiguity: everything is satisfyingly clear-cut, just as every shot and every cut are geared to instant emotional impact. Political, moral and aesthetic problems arise when you try to superimpose the film on the 'truth' it purports to represent. As a head-banging thriller, though, it makes some of Hollywood's hoariest stereotypes seem good as new, and it panders to its audience's worst instincts magnificently.

Thankfully, the film’s final third over-delivers massively.

This is a simple, sweet tale about the basic pleasures of home and hearth, rendered unflashily in a delightful style of hand-drawn animation that employs a beautiful array of warm pastel colours.

If Heli lacks enough focus and thematic clarity to make it properly special, it's still winningly provocative and always compelling.

“Old age isn’t a battle; old age is a massacre,” Roth wrote in Everyman, but other than a few jokes about Axler’s limp erection and thrown-out back, we don’t see much of that.

Jolie has assembled an A-list team – Roger Deakins behind the camera, the Coen brothers in charge of the script - but while her film is perfectly competent, it hardly dazzles.

Confused plot and digressive globe trotting notwithstanding, the best Bond in years.

Luckily, Jackson’s singular talent for massive-scale mayhem hasn’t deserted him, and the hour-long smackdown that crowns the film gives him ample opportunities to indulge it.

The first half of Magic Magic is greatly enjoyable... Sadly, director Sebastián Silva isn’t sure where to take his characters.

At one point a character even ponders aloud that it’s probably best not to think too hard about how this ecology might work or whether it makes sense. Amen to that.

The initial stages of this epic movie are somewhat stodgy, but once Attenborough achieves his momentum there's no holding him. The performances are excellent, the crowd scenes astonishing, and the climax truly nerve-wracking. An implacable work of authority and compassion, Cry Freedom is political cinema at its best.

This feature-length Mr Peabody and Sherman is by no means unbearable: there are a few decent gags, and the episodic plot just about manages to hold the interest. But there’s little here for any but the most easy-to-please youngsters.

In Firth’s every grimace and flinch you feel the torment of Lomax’s private world, but emotionally ‘The Railway Man’ feels trimmed and tidied up.

The film does approach Milius with a certain reverence, but it can’t disguise the fact that he’s a troubling, divisive figure: bull-headed, almost cartoonishly macho, staunchly right-wing and dangerously self-obsessed.

I’ve never liked Renée Zellweger more as a warmer and wiser Bridget Jones – but still capable of making a total prat of herself.

This story of humanity manifesting itself in unexpected circumstances just doesn’t have enough surprises on offer to make good on that early promise. A noteworthy debut nonetheless.

There are more than a few false notes here.... Still, the sight of Emma Thompson, wearing old-lady prosthetics and a leopard skin coat as Barney’s mum...is not to be missed.

The fish-out-of water moments are great fun, watching arthouse gods Depardieu and Huppert in tacky tourist hell.

Apart from a clumsy climax, a wry and exhilarating bit of entertainment.

As a self-conscious exercise in kitsch graverobbing, ‘Viva’ succeeds through a combination of cultural nous and sheer aesthetic audacity.

Directed by cartoonist-turned-filmmaker Marjane Satrapi (‘Persepolis’), ‘The Voices’ steamrolls over boundaries between genres and giddily ignores the limits of good taste.

The visuals are painstaking and horribly beautiful – shades of Hitchcock, Carpenter, even Spielberg – while the gore scenes are truly outrageous, knocking cheap imitators (hey, Nicolas Winding Refn, this is how it’s done) into a cocked hat.

It's a crack at the American Dream which carries all the exhilaration and depth of a 133-minute commercial break.

If you enjoy improbable plot twists, overcooked dialogue and Hollywood legends champing on scenery, this adaptation is a highly entertaining slice of American Gothic.

It’s a wild, at times exhilarating watch – but an exhausting one.

When the talking stops the film takes off, with a pair of bone-rattling chases set in Athens and Las Vegas that cause maximum damage to people, property and the audience’s eardrums. A bracing reminder of how fiercely efficient Greengrass can be, these scenes just about justify the existence of Jason Bourne. But, please, no more.

Even Dench, while adeptly highlighting the vulnerabilities of age and the loneliness of power, can’t distract from the soft treatment, which leaves little room for the harsh realities of prejudice which must have made this a more painful and ugly chapter for many involved than this film ever dares suggest.

Based on a novel and a disowned script by the late Paddy Chayefsky, Russell's noisily grandiose swipe at psychedelia embellishes what is no more than the cosily familiar story of the obsessive Scientist Who Goes Too Far and Unwittingly Unleashes, etc.

Lindsay-Hogg wrote and directed this dull, static flounder, which exposes both MacDowell's limitations and Malkovich's withdrawal of labour.

Davis handles the pacy action sequences confidently, with dark, claustrophobic interiors enhancing the suspense; so it's all the more disappointing when corny dialogue and barely-sketched characters let things down.

An amusing watch, this has a freshness and naturalism rarely found in the typically over-styled French romcom genre.

Kids should be game for the ride, and the colourful characters offer humour and poignancy: Paul Giamatti’s cautious snail Chet shares a sweet friendship with reckless Turbo. Comparisons with Pixar’s ‘Cars’ are easy to make, but that’s no bad thing.

A sympathetic but slightly clumsy rewrite of The Wizard of Oz, with a whizkid programmer (Bridges) trapped inside a computer world. The film boasts some impressive computer-generated animation, but for all its inventiveness, Tron never reaches a level of excitement commensurate with its effects budget.

Sisters is too strained for a comedy starring two of the funniest people alive.

So much dash, flash and thrill...there’s scant time left for character, let alone, story, fun, seduction, humour or wit.

Pioneer delivers insidious, shadowy tension, while it’s genuinely surprising to find yourself so engrossed – story glitches notwithstanding – in key issues like compression sickness and divers’ gas supply.

It’s an important story, of course, but only mildly engaging as cinema.

Gout’s ambition pays off in a climactic flourish. And the assault-and-battery of camera tricks captures Mexico’s head-spinning everyday madness.

Franck’s survival and investigation techniques are glossed over in favour of convenient coincidences and sensationalist set-pieces: this hero’s emotional struggles are kept at arm’s length.

Muddled campus revolt comedy, distinguished by Elliott Gould's marvellously grizzly performance as an ageing dropout who decides to drop back in again, and resolutely keeps his nose glued to his books in self-defence. Robert Kaufman's script casts a nicely caustic eye not only on the juvenility of the student demands, but also on the hopeless desiccation of academia.

In this madcap comic farce, the homage to '30s screwball is explicit in the title, unflagging pace, and plot: a liberal lawyer (Hawn), married to an uptight DA (Grodin), gets messed up by a rogue ex-husband (Chase), their ex-convict servants, and her six dogs. A little of Adam's Rib or The Philadelphia Story creeps in as you drift into wondering how Cary Grant or Katharine Hepburn would have mastered the roles of slightly cracked, snobbish professionals.

It's très chic and charming but a bit disappointing when you see where it's headed.

Zinnemann blows it most of all in the Fonda-Redgrave relationship, and no credibility is given to Hellman's ferocious talent and dominant personality.

Desplechin’s film is a modest but very passable affair.

Not as witty as The Living Daylights, but it doesn't let the audience down in the arena of effects, gadgetry, and locations.

It's admirable that Kore-eda sets himself new challenges each time he makes a film, but the attempt to conjure substance from conversations improvised around a complicated and obscure back-story in Distance proves fairly unrewarding.

Unfortunately, Reynolds the director is as uncertain about the tone of the picture as Reynolds the star is about his screen persona. So while the action veers from lightweight action to extreme violence, Reynolds' character vacillates between macho tough guy and sensitive, vulnerable leading man.

Despite an excellent and promising cast, this Hollywood attempt at a mainstream feminist comedy is flabby and bland...Complacent, and even worse, not very funny, despite the efforts of the ever-excellent Tomlin.

The narrative is a little plodding, but adult punters will soon slip back into reverie for the lost visions of Saturday morning cinema, and their kids can get off on the extraordinary undercurrent of febrile sexuality. Acting honours go to von Sydow as Ming the Merciless and Mariangela Melato as his dark-eyed henchperson.

When it’s playing for laughs, ‘A Royal Night Out’ is harmless good fun.

Another one flies over the cuckoo's nest in this soft-hearted romantic three-hander. It's acted out in the secondary emotional register of the glass menagerie: whimsical, delicate, idiosyncratic, barmy.

The film overdoes it with the awkward, unconvincing re-enactments, many starring the director himself. The result will amuse hardcore Cash fans, but few others.

Dante plays the early scenes perfectly, racking up the clammy dread without tipping over into outright nastiness. But somewhere along the way, the tension dissipates.

As the most fun comes not from watching the movie but from recalling great lines later, it would seem that the audio success of C & C has not translated too well into visuals.

Kevin Macdonald’s slightly drab adaptation of Meg Rosoff’s popular teen novel would be nothing without Saoirse Ronan.

Once you get past some bumps in the road of believability, Our Kind of Traitor turns into a brisk, energetic drama, with Anthony Dod Mantle’s photography adding interesting layers to a fairly straightforward plot.

There’s something a bit over-familiar here – in a solidly entertaining, made-for-telly, nothing-we-haven’t-seen-before, way.

As audience movie-making in its purest form, the film is a delight, but it's also so obviously based on Stallone's own personal struggle with success that the mind boggles as to what Rocky can possibly do next.

Like four or five Harry Potter books squeezed into a single movie: it makes precious little sense.

Whether Rossi knows it or not, this is one of the most compelling discussions of appropriation and the ignorance of the fashion world in ages.

Despite much old-school splatter, it’s seldom frightening and oddly unfunny.

The performances are solid, even if the age difference between the two female leads may strike some as a little disconcerting.

Entertaining but never quite thrilling, this actually feels like the second film in a franchise, coasting along, but saving the best bits for the next episode.

The word exploitation comes to mind.

The Wall isn’t a terrifically exciting thriller, but it’s thoughtful and fitfully suspenseful – a lean, character-driven and quietly rewarding film.

Barry Sonnenfeld setting a cracking pace in his directorial debut, but suggesting that Tim Burton might have given the film the edge it lacks. Ooky the Addamses may be, subversive they ain't; it plays like a paean to the nuclear family.

It’s as handsomely shot as any film about an ace shutterbug ought to be, and Binoche infuses familiar internal crises with palpable pain and urgency.

A Walk Among the Tombstones is well paced and fairly watchable, but it does take itself desperately seriously.

For all its ingenuity, Cujo does lose an awful lot of ground from the fact that rabid St Bernards tend to evoke pity rather than terror.

War Dogs simply doesn’t dig deeply enough into the duo’s personalities to be more than a fitfully entertaining escapist spin on a ripped-from-the-headlines yarn.

Unfortunately, the film is so determinedly stylish (Gere's costumes, Giorgio Moroder's soundtrack, John Bailey's noir-inflected camerawork), and the performances generally so vacuous (only Elizondo's detective really breathes), that it all becomes something of an academic, if entertaining, exercise that fails to stir the emotions.

The Stag is formulaic and schmaltzy, and its endless gay jokes jar with its warm-hearted message – but it coasts along on an undeniable likeability.

Connery lectures at length on his favourite subject, which wouldn't be so dull if the suspense was more adroitly handled, but Kaufman, regrettably, gets the pacing all wrong. Blowup-style video detection scenes provide a modicum of interest.

The joke wears a bit thin and performances vary: this isn’t as slick as the teen movies it draws from, such as ‘Clueless’ and ‘Mean Girls’. But an original premise and earnest tone go a long way.

For all its audacity, a misguided folly.

Despite the donkey that arrives and ODs on the pharmaceutical buffet, the 'wild' party resembles a dance routine from an Annette Funicello beach movie. To his credit Hanks behaves throughout as though he's actually in a worthwhile movie.

Some prior interest in Berger would help, but even newcomers should find this an infectious portrait of independent thought and living.

The chassis may be slick and speedy, but under the hood Focus lives up to its Ford-produced namesake: sturdy but not exactly stimulating.

The plot of Nighthawks makes no sense. Its thrills are strictly visual. Stallone (the cop) gives a restrained performance for once, and Rutger Hauer (the terrorist) shows why he was to make it big in Hollywood.

Hyena is startling, claustrophobic and penetrating in its analysis of the blurred lines involved in doing good.

Overall, there’s a sense that ‘Fast and Furious 8’ knows exactly where it wants to go and won’t bust a gasket getting there: you might ask for a little more character work here, a few more plot surprises there, but on the whole this rattles along just fine.