A woolly family caper with a nostalgic flavour, The Sheep Detectives conjures flattering comparisons with Babe.

Finding positive manifestations for mass groups of men marching through cities in identical clothing is no mean feat, but you’ll walk away from Ultras with a new understanding of a misunderstood phenomenon.

Generic, sure, but gripping enough, Apex has located a corner of God’s own country where the devil reigns.

No one expected this long-delayed piece of Michael Jackson pop-aganda to lay bare the man behind the myths and myriad controversies in forensic style. And yet… this soft-ball character study of the King of Pop only doubles down on the former, while completely ignoring the latter, hitting all the usual dreary biopic beats along the way.

Newcomer Abraham Wapler as video artist Seb and Zinedine Soualem’s high-school teacher Abdel are standouts in the likeable ensemble, but the Adèle timeline, a sepia-tinged coming-of-age tale with a backdrop of characters to put Madame Tussauds to shame, is the film’s heartbeat. It’s a great excuse to revisit this gilded age in French history.

The film’s final moments mix compassion and vengeance to create something genuinely surprising, and if Cronin ultimately pulls a few punches in his body count, chances are you’ll be too traumatised by all the gore to notice.

A film about the unknowability of grief ends up feeling a little too unknowable itself.

It’s not going to win any awards, but it’ll sure make an excellent in-flight movie – ideally en route to Italy.

The movie is more of an anxiety dream than a full-fledged nightmare, and the more typically unsettling imagery...feel perfunctory.

It’s a light diversion rather than a symphonic masterpiece, but it’s still pleasantly in-tune entertainment.

There are a few laughs, and the first third is compellingly tense, largely due to the anticipation of the ‘thing’ dropping. Aside from Daniel Pemberton’s excellent, pins and needles score, the movie lacks rhythm. Yes, it got me thinking – but mainly about its shortcomings.

It’s not deep but it’s made with love and it hits the spot.

In his documentary-cum-video essay Orwell: 2+2=5, director Raoul Peck juxtaposes the British writer’s words with a flood of the same distressing images inundating our social media feeds, from Ukraine to Gaza, South America to the United States.

An early twist means that the bloodletting develops a repetitive feel, and there are unfortunate parallels with the recent Ready or Not 2, but the wincing and guilty laughs never quite dry up. Cult status may await.

The Magic Faraway Tree isn’t on Wonka’s level, let alone Paddington 2’s – two other Farnaby joint – and the aesthetic is occasionally a bit CBBC, despite the bucolic settings and intricate sets. But with the cracking cast, thoughtful message and the odd rollicking adventure, it’s a fun family movie that’ll finally give you permission to switch off the wifi.

It’s lifted by some very convincing performances.

Director Bienvenu, who also voices helpful robot Mikki in the French version, has crafted a family film that’s offbeat and full of heart.

Weaponising the cinema’s Dolby Atmos into a delivery mechanism for frights is a clever ploy that Undertone never maximises.

Newton is a fun addition as the bubbly Faith, but the game Weaving is MVP again: a sharp finger in the eye of the one percent. This is a broader sequel, though, that only has more of the same for her to do. It’ll pass an evening but it won’t blow your mind.

It’s often enthralling – especially with Murphy at its heart – though rarely explosive.

And that’s the major problem here. When the first Scream hit, it had a ball deconstructing ’80s and ’90s horror movie tropes. Six movies and three decades on, it’s become the very thing it was built to deconstruct, trapped in its own lore and fumbling about for its old smarts. The genre has moved on. Scream needs to get with the times.

Matthew Robinson’s sloppy screenplay feels like it may have been churned out by AI itself. It’s crammed with leaden exposition and clumsy with hammy dialogue in which everyone over-explains themselves, as if we’re watching it with one eye on our phones.

The class satire, the strongest suit of its Ealing ancestor, is blunter than a burglar’s cosh. The murders should be the juice in this devilish cocktail, especially with Zach Woods, Topher Grace and Ed Harris as the marks. But the deaths are throwaway affairs.

Padraic McKinley’s Great Depression gold heist flick has a welcome ’70s vibe and a careworn charm, mostly emanating from the always trusty Ethan Hawke.

Wuthering Heights was never written as a traditional romance, rather a tale of obsession, revenge, bitterness and betrayal. Still, it helps if you're made to care about its doomed lovers.

This film is less a fully fledged exercise in storytelling, and more a succession of stained glass windows, sumptuous enough that you almost forget the dark stories they depict.

Kangaroo has a love for the people, landscape and wildlife that leaves a warm glow. It’s not doing anything wildly different or unexpected, but it’ll put a smile on your face.

At the end of the day, it’s not really Hamlet, it’s something new that uses the words from Hamlet. But at its best, it’ll still hit you with all the force of Shakespeare's existential masterpiece.

Even if it doesn’t fully probe the socio-political realities of the prison experience, Wasteman succeeds as an emotional survival tale. Here’s a film that proves that sometimes, the most terrifying part of prison can just be who you’re locked up with.

Part meditative exploration of grief in the wake of the sudden loss of her father, part exhaustive detailing of the process of training a complicated and challenging creature, the film adaptation hews closely to the same description.

There’s something oddly appealing about the fact that Rebecca Zlotowski’s understated thriller, A Private Life, stubbornly refuses easy definition – other than as a modest romp that allows Jodie Foster to perform in another language. And if you’ll watch Foster acting in anything, you’re gonna love watching her do it in French.

Everything is wrapped up a little too neatly by the final act. But with the epidemic of loneliness only growing larger, maybe, every once in a while, a sweet, hopeful ending is exactly what audiences need from cinema. To feel seen. To be reminded that it's going to be okay.

For brain-free Friday night viewing, you could do much worse than spend 90 blood-soaked minutes with not-so-gentle Ben.

When the foot comes off the gas, the cracks become apparent.

A delightful premise never fully comes to life in this sweet romcom, which is a real shame because it gets off to such a strong start.

Ultimately, though, there’s not enough story to fuel a three-hour musical stretched across nearly five hours. What once was brisk and bright becomes a bit of a slog. Fans will be obsessified; everyone else, ossified.

Although the quips aren’t always sharp enough and the sleight of hand a little lacking, it takes a hard heart not to cheer as a few young victims of a broken system carve out their own little bit of magic.

It’s a movie that got up on the wrong side of the bed and compensated with four quadruple espressos.

Measured rather than playing to the gallery, The Choral is Brassed Off in a minor key – an elegant, Yorkshire-set exploration of music as a spiritual morale-boost in the darkest times. With Ralph Fiennes gravely essaying the controversial choirmaster at its heart, it does a lovely job of swerving the obvious notes but misplaces its stirring crescendo.

There is so much talent behind and within Nia DaCosta’s provocative adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler that it’s easy to embrace as an inventive artistic experiment.

If you want American gothic with a side of pancakes, you’ve come to the right place.

There’s still plenty here to make you shiver, but in letting events out of the basement this sequel has also released much of the tension.

Stone and Plemons’ verbal battles of wits are worth the price of admission, even if the script co-written by Will Tracy (The Menu) is overly reliant on culture war jargon.

This family endeavour is an acting masterclass, and we should be grateful that it’s lured Daniel Day-Lewis back into acting after eight years in the metaphorical woods.

Despite grasping for topicality and insight into human nature, Tron: Ares doesn’t have anything new or interesting to say.

It doesn’t all work: the religious iconography is too obvious, and the more lurid horror elements – like the obsessive fans who literally haunt Cam during his training – can be so heavy-handed they’re more silly than scary. What never falters, though, is Tipping’s avid commitment to his concept.

Despite an occasional burst of self-mocking glibness (mostly via Robbie, who skirts but never quite tilts into the manic-dream-pixie playground), this is a movie that isn’t afraid of sincerity, and it brings a bit of silver-lining energy to our overcast world.

Cheesier than a wheel of Stilton and about as edgy, Downton Abbey bows out with a cosy but loveable final instalment that will leave few dry eyes among long-time fans of Julian Fellowes’ British TV thoroughbred.

The performances are solid, with an excellent Jude Law all inscrutable psychopathy as a younger Vladimir Putin and Alicia Vikander the perfect embodiment of an amoral post-Soviet arrivista, and the chilly world-building works well enough, but there’s a missing ingredient – actual Russians.

Not top tier Jarmusch, but still a funny, soulful anthology worth seeking out.

The usually distinctive filmmaker – Black Swan, The Wrestler, Mother! – is in unflashy form for this solid, starry but not very memorable thriller about one man’s very bad night.

The Roses gets off to an enjoyable start, but like the marriage at its centre, the novelty wears off.

Grab your nan, put the kettle on and enjoy some exceedingly fine thesps hamming it up royally.

Fans, of course, will fiercely argue that Buckley has so much more to offer. And in the strongest compliment to Berg’s affectionate portrait, she makes a similarly convincing case, with ample and tender grace.

There are almost endless holes you could pick in its logic and storytelling, but it gives you few reasons to want to. This Friday’s freakier, but it’s kind of… funner too.

The Bad Guys 2 gets a bit high on its own supply; there are moments of indulgence. But to a large extent that’s because Perifel and co know they’re onto a good thing.

For a movie that looks this sleek, there’s a lot of scrappiness around the fringes. Paul Walter Hauser is fun as subterranean mastermind Mole Man, but gets barely a toehold on the plot. Half of whatever Natasha Lyonne’s character, a teacher with a thing for The Thing, was due to be doing is surely on the cutting room floor. The Four’s droid helper H.E.R.B.I.E. doesn’t leave a massive impression.

For Gunn, who has injected superhero movies with a winningly irreverence since his R-rated indie Super, ridding the DCEU of its bombast and self-seriousness is a step in right direction. Whether, like his alien hero, he can arrest the march of time and reinvigorate this tired genre is another matter.

Rebirth knows it needs to make its scaly stars frightening and surprising again and manages it in Spielbergian style.

Mercifully, it lacks the pretentious moralising of his later work, and is far more professionally put together. But for all its relative dramatic coherence, it's still hard to see how it was ever taken as a masterpiece.

Splicing in montage footage of marching soldiers, shots from Lawrence Olivier’s Henry V, and even archers in action, and layering in discordant sound design, Boyle reinvents the zombie movie as a bloody pop-art installation.

Song has, undeniably, done a beautiful job composing this visually absorbing film.

Happily, it emerges at last with enough inventive action to stand alongside its murderous predecessors, and makes Ana de Armas into a likeable assassin hero – a phrase that makes more sense in her killer-filled world than our own.

Unfolding at the American filmmaker’s measured tempo, it’s more droll than LOL-funny, though there are some big laughs along the way.

South African director Oliver Hermanus finds plenty of deep feeling and sincerity here but his beautiful-looking, measured period piece gets stifled by its own languors – especially in a first half that needs a slug or two of moonshine to inject some life into it.

This good-natured hagiography isn’t anywhere near free of pomposity, but even Bono seems to know when it’s best just to keep quiet and move on.

Yes, Friendship does feel in many ways like an expanded I Think You Should Leave sketch built on bizarro absurdism and a waterfall of exacerbating circumstances. To his credit, though, DeYoung – a TV director making his feature debut – does take advantage of the opportunity in some satisfying ways.

It’s a lurid psychological horror that’ll thrill midnight movie crowds.

As so often the case, this Marvel effort is best when its talented cast is flinging around snarky banter and self-aware asides.

The Friend is a poignantly affecting watch that mostly earns its emotional payoff, delivering gentle laughs along the way.

Ziba’s relationship with her unwaveringly affectionate mother (Narges Rashidi) is genuinely touching, a rejection of the austere immigrant parent stereotype.

Malek’s twitchy brand of anti-charm makes him an unusual lead for a film like this, and his outsider energy works better as the tormented killer-to-be than the doting husband. Heller is not always easy to root for, which can make The Amateur a chilly experience.

‘Painful to watch’ isn’t often a term of praise, but this action-comedy about a man who loses the ability to feel physical discomfort channels its unusual, nerve-numbing premise into a fun and oddly romantic ride.

This is far from the disaster that was predicted. It’s cute and cheerful, but its efforts to make Snow White both respectful to the original and relevant to a new audience leave it stranded in some smudgy grey areas.

If you take The Alto Knights on its own terms – as an eccentric but engaging curio – there’s still plenty of fun to be had.

Maybe art does demand something profound of us all, but here the big, interesting ideas have been chipped away in favour of subpar scares, leaving this film’s own cult appeal looking rather limited.

‘Please don’t be boring,’ Nelson’s villain beseeches Wilson in a clutch moment. Who wants to tell him?

Mostly admirable for its ambition, which often feels nearly endless – as, alas, does the film itself.

As it is, it’s an atmospheric, sporadically disquieting depiction of fatherhood in freefall.

The acting is a bubbling fondue of clashing styles.

While billed as a psychological horror, it may be best approached as a dark drama or thriller, rather than a fully terrifying experience. But if you invest in its characters, it offers a thought-provoking insight into the depths of the human mind when faced with the laws of survival. It’s grim, but good.

The film thrives on two performances: Barbaro is terrific as Baez, hypnotic on stage and fiercely charismatic off. And Chalamet inhabits Dylan without ever feeling like a Stars In Your Eyes contestant. From the voice to the charm to the earthiness to the self-centredness (‘You’re kind of an asshole, Bob,’ Baez tells him), Chalamet nails it all. It’s a shame Mangold’s safe flick doesn’t ask just that little bit more of him.

The songwriting verve of Lin-Manuel Miranda is missed, too. Composers Barlow and Bear chip in with some catchy ditties, but there’s nothing to match How Far I’ll Go and You’re Welcome.

As each character veers between confidence and awkwardness, it feels credible but doesn’t dig terribly deep.

While Nightbitch accurately depicts the mundanity of motherhood, you can’t help but wish it dug a little deeper into the devaluation of women once they become parents, rather than just holding a mirror.

It’s tamer than its deeply unsettling predecessor, but still unhinged enough to keep you nicely on edge.

An experienced SNL staff writer might have infused the script’s basic nostalgia with deeper knowledge. But when Reitman does take chances, it’s an exhilarating success.

Don’t expect too many boundaries to be pushed – that’s not Park’s intention here – but settle in for plenty of big laughs and relatable truths.

A mid-way twist seems like it’s going to up the ante but the film ultimately drops the ball in the final act, where there is a lot of huff and puff (Fire! Demons! Body horror!) but little in the way of a satisfying conclusion. Ironically, Never Let Go becomes less interesting the more untethered it gets.

Is Schimberg most interested in Cronenbergian horror? Psychological thrills? Darkly comic surreality? He’s gotten so much right that one more pass at the script could have pushed him to where he wants to be. But without a rock-solid core, A Different Man eventually succumbs to an insurmountable crisis of identity.

It’s consistently pretty entertaining, even if it takes a while to get going.

As an argument for how urgent and powerful photography can be, and the debt we owe Miller for the lengths she went to take those images, Lee wins hands down.

Queer may be flawed, but its naked approach to such a raw subject, coupled with a remarkable lead performance, makes it a trip worth taking.

A brooding, muscular FBI procedural that occasionally explodes into Point Break-y action, Aussie director Justin Kurzel’s (Snowtown) true-life thriller delves, pungently and topically, into the inner workings of white nationalism in America before deciding that squealing tyres and shootouts are a lot more fun.

There’s much to admire here, but with Legge’s keen eye for the technical side of cinema stronger than his narrative impulses, LOLA ultimately has to go down as an ambitious failure.

Still, powered by its own helter-skelter momentum and the wild-eyed Keaton, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice just about holds all its macabre threads together. It’s not Burton at his very best, but like its fiendish antihero, it does the trick.

Savage directs with a light hand, and sometimes you wish for a little more shape to the baggier scenes.

The film is at its best when it’s sitting just with them, not doing much, not trying too hard to be eccentric; just shooting the breeze and being cheerfully weird.