There’s plenty of warmth and compassion here, and the true story is a belter, but this ‘Lion’ doesn’t quite roar.

What stops David Cronenberg’s grotesque noir Maps to the Stars, written by LA insider Bruce Wagner, from feeling tired is that it’s deliciously odd.

Accusations of tastelessness are bound to arrive, with some justification. If your priority is to respect the dead, why hire the director of Battleship?

The Great Wall is not exactly a good movie – but it’s a pretty enjoyable one.

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

Pacino gives his most natural performance in years.

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

First-time feature director Omid Nooshin makes the best of a minuscule budget, and his punchy script doesn’t brake for breath.

Being stuck in a cinema with David Brent for 96 minutes can be trying (the lazy ending doesn’t help). But when Gervais is on an improvisational roll, Brent digging himself deeper and deeper into some awful pit of social awkwardness, we can’t help but remember why we love to hate them both.

Trolls is not break-the-mould brilliant like The Lego Movie or Toy Story, or a keeper like Frozen. But it’s a lovable and giddy guilty pleasure.

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.

Phantom Boy is frequently beautiful to look at, but the cops-and-robbers angle feels tired and the characters are thinly sketched.

Respect is due to Joe Johnston and his screenwriters for not only fashioning a nifty, highly entertaining slice of pulpy comic-book action, but for making this most divisive of costumed crusaders universally relatable.

It’s all unexpectedly uninvolving.

There are some gorgeous comic touches.

Breathlessly paced and surreally funny, ‘The Boxtrolls’ fizzes with visual invention and wild slapstick. But the grotesquerie is overbearing.

Bale is as good as it gets, Harrelson shows us why he is Hollywood’s favourite psycho and Willem Dafoe is terrific as a sleazy drug dealer. The rest of the film is without a bat squeak of authenticity.

At least there’s plenty from Whitney herself in incredibly poignant TV interviews where she talks about her struggles with fame and addiction.

It’s slightly frustrating that Winslet’s character Alex is nearly always the one who needs looking after, but the chemistry between them is good, the suspense sufficient and the ending gives you a gentle tug on the heartstrings.

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.

Cox is rudely magnificent, capturing not just the wilfulness of the man but the nagging self-doubt at his inner core. But the film is just too bloodless to be fully convincing.

[An] informative documentary.

The art is undeniably impressive, but there’s a lot of I-did-this-before-him-without-her-help, which drags. Still, look at that: it’s massive!

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

It’s Bulger whose grim appearance and even grimmer behaviour ‘Black Mass’ indulges. But it’s the quieter, more complicated Connolly who offers the film’s subtler pleasures.

Momentum builds, and come the '70s, with budding film-maker Gigi and and his jealous brother Giancarlo now free-living students, their accumulation of petty slights and betrayals becomes genuinely compelling.

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

Director James Wan has his method down. The scares are effective and the camerawork is superb, all lurking long shots and short sharp shocks. Wan is fully aware of the austerity-era parallels in his story, and the period detail is surprisingly authentic.... But there’s little here we haven’t seen before.

Yet another quirky crime comedy, but on its own terms entertaining enough, with a distinctively sharp take on masculine behaviour and a surprising amount of the Bard.

It ends up as a sweet-enough movie, and one that’s full of joy and invention – but also one that feels like a lot of effort has been put into serving a tale that maybe doesn’t fully deserve it.

It's to Ozon's credit that he never serves up easy answers.

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.

It’s all done with care and authentic Japanese locations, and is engrossing for anyone with an interest in the subject. But there’s scant drama as proceedings plod their way towards mutual understanding.

The film’s Groundhog Day-meets-Independence Day plot is actually pretty genius.

The direction, by a former stuntman, concentrates on the action and happily leaves everyone to their own devices, with almost nothing to do. Field shows what natural acting is all about, and Reynolds' send-ups of himself are, despite repetition, becoming more likeable. Here his kidding around is exactly in tune with this fast-moving but essentially lazy vehicle.

Demange is a strong storyteller and masks the script’s tendency to nod to every opinion and social division by offering a masterclass in tension as soon as his dramatic bomb starts ticking.

Story aside, this is about the gags, songs and then more gags. On the upside, the jokes are great: the usual jolly mix of character humour, situation comedy, farce, satire and wordplay.

Liman mines the story for familiar but fun comedy...though it never reaches the comedic heights of rise-and-fall classics such as Goodfellas or The Wolf of Wall Street.

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.

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

There’s much over-egged mugging from the grown-ups (bumbling toff Richard Griffiths, shouty sarge John Lynch), but the lads are spot-on: young Mackay is effectively touching and bristling O’Connell hints at Next Big Thing charisma.

75 minutes isn’t really long enough to fully examine the Sky Ladder project, let alone an incident-packed artistic career. Still, as an introduction, this is entirely serviceable.

It’s breezy fun, touching lightly on illness and worse. Saying that, there’s a spot of intrigue as the tournament hots up.

Seidl gestures towards understanding rather than confrontation – turning in a slighter, softer-grained film than its predecessors, but no worse for it.

Despite being recognised as one of the better 007 films (and one laudably devoid of what would later become the formulaic Bond ending), number two in the series actually proves marginally less memorable than many of the others.

It’s a remarkable story, but it’s undermined by some odd directorial choices.

To enjoy the film's arresting musings on language, time and how much we can ever understand others, you'll have to close your eyes and ears to the wealth of schlocky hokum surrounding them.

Much of the film's impact stems from a pair of remarkable lead performances.

Poltergeist, while entertaining, has more in common with slick, audience-goosing spookers like "Insidious" and "Sinister" than with the imaginative original.

LaBoeuf is good, but his performance is – ironically – desperately serious, as is the tone of this film.

It’s refreshing to see a movie like this directed by a woman, Eva Husson, so boys and girls are objectified equally. Which is not to say this passes the feminism test.

There is a message here about celebrating differences, which would be a bit more convincing if they’d cast a smaller actor in the role – instead of using distracting CG effects on Dujardin.

Tale of the eagerly criminal career of Virgil Starkwell is as unpredictably structured as Annie Hall, if not yet anything like as sustained in tone and mood. But it has plenty of hilarious jokes and concepts, like the ventriloquists' dummies at prison visiting time, and the return home from a chain gang break with five shackled cons in tow.

The film also touches on Bell’s work for the British government, drawing up the boundaries of Iraq after WWI – which was to have consequences still felt today.

Let’s not kid ourselves: cast-iron interpretations of Malick’s recent filmmaking are risky. It’s also a matter of taste. You either slip into the pretty, dreamlike, wistful groove of his later films or you don’t, and even hardened arthouse film lovers may find Knight of Cups way out of their comfort zone.

This is a valuable companion piece to other accounts and a vivid collage of in-the-moment imagery.

This is one mad mess from start to finish... But the sheer ambition is impossible to ignore, and the sense of fun is infectious: you may fear for your sanity during Jupiter Ascending, but you’ll come out smiling.

Three years after Smokey and the Bandit took the hard-drinking, fast-driving, trickster ethos of the American redneck into the big box-office league, Reynolds has proved he just does what he does best: show off. A lightweight chase caper that Reynolds must truly be sick of by now, but which he has elevated into something impossible to dislike.

The film’s blanket refusal to question its subject feels not only cowardly, but antithetical.

The outcome may be pre-ordained, but Emmerich’s knack for a witty pop-culture reference, a pulse-pounding gun battle or a sneaky political undercurrent (the film has drawn fire in the US for being leftie propaganda) hasn’t deserted him.

There are beautiful moments from David Hockney’s home-video stash in this thoughtful doc.

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

As a thriller, Before I Go To Sleep is perfectly effective, but while director Rowan Joffe keeps the twists coming, something about Kidman’s blank, frosty performance is unconvincing.

What isn’t so charming is Azaria’s irritatingly over-egged impersonation of the Child Catcher in ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ – that and the headache-inducing 3D.

While the anatomical special effects are imaginative enough, the manic rather than magical tone fails to achieve the sense of awe that made Fantastic Voyage - clearly this film's inspiration - so fascinating.

22 Jump Street knows how to play to its strengths: Tatum’s performance here is even more puppy-dog lovable than last time, and his scenes with Hill possess a goofy, low-key warmth too often lacking in big-budget comedy.

This is a deeply silly, extremely noisy and sometimes impenetrable action movie that’s drowning in CGI, wild overacting and mullets. And it’s enormously entertaining.

It's very silly, of course, but Hanks' fine timing is matched by a strong supporting cast, and thanks to Dante's wicked, comic-strip view of the world, the movie achieves an admirably wacky consistency as it debunks American mores and movie clichés, from Hitchcock and Leone to Michael Winner and Tobe Hooper.

A warm-hearted comedy involving a bunch of orphan kids promises neither a rewarding evening nor the best use of Pryor's considerable talent. The plotting is sloppy at times and this is undoubtedly a minor film, but its rewards are surprising.

This being a Disney comedy, nothing too drastic happens; and attendant adults can rest assured that, because Dad is so dithering and ineffectual, awkward questions about potentially incestuous relations, sadly, do not arise. Good performances struggle gamely to overcome the increasingly predictable plot.

Voyage of Time veritably tongue-bathes the eyeballs with its succession of extravagant images and with its digitally enhanced vision of a natural world that practically tips the scales into unearthliness. But somehow we're never truly surprised by any of its wonders.

For all its humanistic warmth and undoubted charm, Short Term 12 just never quite rings true.

We’re all set for sparks to fly, but unfortunately reality doesn’t quite live up to the set-up.

The result isn’t as powerful as it should be. But it’s still cheering to see a film whose moral journey has little to do with the usual Hollywood chestnut of white middle-class consciousness-raising.

There’s a lack of subtlety or surprise which serves the story poorly... That said, it’s a thoughtful, timely, often quietly captivating drama.

Child’s Pose plays its thematic cards far too early, but it’s sustained by Gheorghiu’s compelling central turn as the endlessly self-deluding grande dame.

It’s all too much too fast, and the cumulative effect is like watching a two-hour trailer – more dizzying than thrilling.

As with all of West’s work this is a good-looking, well acted film shot through with moments of real power, but its conventionality is troubling.

It’s a touching film and a fascinating glimpse into one of those couples you can’t quite believe are still together.

It’s all very sweet and harmless, though you can’t help wishing that Cinders got her happy ending for more than being kind to her digital mice and weathering a lot of crap with a never-ending smile on her face.

No comedy classic, then, but a good natured and engaging slice of goonish self-mockery.

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.

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.

There’s plenty to enjoy – a handful of smart one-liners, a few nifty shocks and one truly unsettling confrontation in a cemetery – but nothing to give Joss Whedon a run for his money.

The film plumbs no great depths. But it snappily combines frisky aerial action, a sprinkling of fairy dust and much cuddly bonding with the massive furball of the title.

[An] amiable but flat-footed debut feature.

Bell is so goofy and likeable I found myself willing the film to keep up with her. But the funny bits are never quite funny enough, and the script loses feminist points bigtime for its sour bitch ex-wife character.

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

Not exactly arthouse, but as subtitled fluff goes, we’re talking première classe.

The script is solid, the period recreation spectacular and the performances muscular, but The Connection suffers from a severe case of overfamiliarity.

It’s adequate and often fun, but no match for Cumberbatch’s talents: physically, his Assange is far more complex and intriguing than most of the things we hear him say or see him do.

Like Bujalski’s early mumblecore work, this is sensitive and meandering – and just a little bit patience-testing. But it’s also infectiously sweet and honest-feeling.

Hats off to Dreamworks for offering some bold surprises in a respectable sequel filled with moments of humour and emotion among its ample noise and movement.

As modern dating movies go, How to Be Single gets a lot right.

If Del Toro is pitching for an audience of 12-year-old boys (and we do mean boys: this is old-school macho), he’s done a bang-up job. Still, there are times when Pacific Rim could be the work of any jobbing Hollywood director – the warmth and idiosyncracy that characterises Del Toro’s finest work, from Pan’s Labyrinth to Hellboy 2, is absent.

This sequel suffers from the same lack of quality control that plagued the first film.

There are a few lovely scenes: Mavis listening to a new mix of one of her father’s last recordings is heartbreaking. For old-soul fans, Mavis! is a must.