Carlino's direction doesn't help: he was responsible for the atrocious Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, and The Great Santini suffers from the same triteness, with its Deep South setting and a 'progressive' racial subplot that plunges deep into tear-jerk territory. See it for the acting; wallow in the sentiment.

It’s a CGI-heavy fantasia that will pop your eyeballs, but giddy as it is, it never quite sells its characters or gets much purchase on your emotions.

In short, a very bleak - but very funny - comedy.

Hoffman predictably knocks a familiar role out of the park (and just as unsurprisingly, wrings excellence from his performers) in this rather trivial, downbeat four-hander about a working-class couple trying to connect during a Gotham winter.

The three ghosts of Christmas are wonderful. Elsewhere, Fozzie Bear bears a resemblance to Francis L Sullivan in the David Lean Dickens adaptations, and there's a shop called Micklewhite. As an actor, Kermit can corrugate his forehead vertically. Good fun.

The 'camera' takes a conventionally objective viewpoint, perpetually rolling over rolling countryside, which effectively robs the plot of all its terror and tension. And the bunnies are a crudely drawn, charmless bunch, with the final nail provided by the soundtrack's famous voices, who help turn the film into a radio play.

The soundtrack offers the expected jazz, while Allen himself, now sounding mumbly, offers intermittent, awkward narration. In the pantheon of his films, it’s a pretty but minor distraction.

The location (an Irish castle) is used imaginatively, the Gothic atmosphere is suitably potent, and there's a wonderfully sharp cameo from Patrick Magee as the family doctor.

If the dolce vita-style intrusion is given distinctly Jacqueline Susann-like overtones by the rather dissociated dialogue in the English language version, Conversation Piece nevertheless comes across as a visually rich and resonant mystery, far more fluid and sympathetic than Death in Venice.

Still, the problem that often fells these documentaries - humorlessness - has been licked: Jack Black makes an exuberant cameo pitching recycled toilet water (his fake brand is called Porcelain Springs). Sound gross? Open wide, because it's on the menu for all of us.

Adapted by William Goldman from his own novel, this thriller is quite effective in its basic set pieces, even if the overall thrust seems a trifle ponderous.

It's as if Pakula had got on a fairground horse that has gone out of control, and is undecided whether to go with it or try to stop it.

All rather facile sword-and-sorcery stuff, of course, but at times very funny (special mention to McKern as a bumbling priest) and always beautifully photographed in the Italian Dolomites.

A cinematic Rorschach test, it’s more likely to reaffirm your views on the man than challenge them.

What is missing is any real tension or psychological detail that might lend plausibility to all the hocus-pocus about East-West political and military intrigue.

If Pedro Almodóvar was hired to direct another "Sex and the City" film, it might end up like Cupcakes. The sort of movie that adjectives like frothy and bubbly were invented for.

Moment to moment, the film is gripping and beautiful to behold (props to cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi for the mesmerizingly grainy, achromatic visuals). But caveat emptor to those expecting a hinterlands gloss on "Taken" with rapacious curs in place of nefarious Albanians.

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.

The Bad Guys will work better for kids than adults: the comedy is broad, with farting not just a major source of laughs but an entire plot device, and the characters aren’t quite as lovable as the movie thinks they are, despite a winning voice cast that also boasts Marc Maron, Zazie Beetz and Awkwafina.

Somewhat underwhelming sequel.

Brace yourself and go see it.

As to the movie's three sections, the best comes first, as an eclectic "cast" of characters (among them philosopher Alain Badiou and musician Patti Smith) pontificate their way around a lavish Mediterranean cruise ship.

Whether this talent symbolizes racist aggression or mournful shock is left unsettlingly unclear, however, and while Oskar is a sphinxlike contradiction, Schlöndorff has a tendency to sketch the rest of the cast as simple grotesques or symbols of decadence that are unconvincingly humanized in the final third.

The film is finally too soft, but the performances are uniformly strong, the humour intelligently adult, and Brooks once again proves a pleasing alternative to Woody Allen.

There's a sharp sense of humour at work in this school-of-Carpenter siege movie, even if, for all its ironic observations on madness in American society, it never cuts free of genre routine.

The tone is relentlessly sordid, the view of these pubescent hedonists so hermetic, that the film-makers' 'honesty' seems exploitative and sensational. The film may not say anything new, but the way it says it does, in the end, make it some sort of landmark. Depressing.

There's so much right with Gareth Edwards's low-budget alien invasion tale that you almost want to brush aside everything that's not up to snuff.

Washington, the best he’s been since BlacKkKlansman, is a convincing leading man here: strong in deed and, eventually, ethics. Hardcore genre buffs will moan that the questioning of what it means to be human isn’t as developed as it is in, say, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, but this is still a spectacular blockbuster.

There's not much story - the lads' experience in Hamburg at the start of the '60s, their disagreements, their acquisition of a loyal club following, and Sutcliffe's appointment with death - so that the film depends for effect on atmosphere, performance and panache. Happily, it largely succeeds in each respect.

Straight-line conflicts, low-light visuals: the film's basics, its strengths, and its critical Achilles' heel are all those of the classic American male action movie.

Babies is barely more insightful than your average Flickr photo gallery or home movie clip: it’s just infant porn for prospective parents.

Filmmaker Gérald Hustache-Mathieu has fun recasting Monroevian moments and setting up parallels between the fromage-hawking hottie and the late silver-screen sex symbol - bring on the Miller, DiMaggio and JFK avatars.

Return is almost too underdramatized to seem like a piece of today's zoomy entertainment, but its anxieties-the bare cupboards, the vague sense of purposelessness-are at the heart of the American experience for many. It's what indie filmmaking ought to be.

An inspirational, humorous portrait of an individual grappling with an addiction that, unlike heroin or alcohol, has rarely been addressed in film.

The movie's firepower would shame the devil. It's what Hollywood wanted Woo for: bigger, brighter explosions.

While marred somewhat by the griminess of its HD imagery, Splinters nonetheless successfully integrates the sport and an attendant subculture in a way that manages to enhance both, leading to a climactic competition that actually makes you feel something important is at stake.

There are occasional glimmers of what might have been in the fresh performances of the actresses. But it plods where it should sparkle, like a celebration where the champagne's gone flat.

On the surface it's a complete delight, with Matthau's relentlessly funny lines taking most of the honours, but underneath lies a disenchantment as bleak as The Apartment: amoral, misogynist characters (in Lemmon's case, literally spineless) racing through ever more futile efforts to outmanoeuvre each other.

Love Crime soon plummets into a flashback-laden mess, a shame since it was marginally stronger as a psychosexual game of dominance.

If director Antoine Fuqua thoroughly flubbed his remake of The Equalizer, he properly sticks the landing here. Seizing you from the outset, The Guilty refuses to let go until you’re gasping for breath.

The first-person sections, however, couldn’t be more clumsy or grating, and every time Diamond’s tone-deaf narration starts repeating the obvious, you can feel an eye-opening history lesson turning into a quirky, orbs-glazing travelogue.

Capably directed by debut filmmaker Lee Haven Jones, The Feast won’t challenge Midsommar for the modern folk-horror crown. Like a Welshophone episode of Inside No.9 stretched to feature length, it’s more of a sinister little snack than a full-blown feast.

Tasteful adaptation of Grace Metalious' best-selling novel detailing the lives and loves of 'ordinary folk' in a small New England town. It comes with its full quota of sex, conspiracy and violence, but the story is told in such circumspect fashion that next to nobody was offended.

Wilder's soft-centred cynicism provides frequent enough laughs without too many longueurs.

The promise Dumont once showed has ossified into unholy shtick.

In theory, there's nothing wrong when a movie reminds you of TV. (That's where the fun is, anyway.) But when a movie resembles a long-lost, corduroy-clad episode of "The Rockford Files," that's a problem.

Fortunately, a few striking sequences break up the tedium.

Mixing early-’80s nostalgia with mild social anthropology, the film successfully crystallises the optimism and vivacity of the early New York hip hop scene and suggests that film and TV portrayals of the Bronx as a savage and inhospitable hellhole were perhaps greatly misjudged.

Most of all, it’s a colourful journey lit up with great tunes and a deep love of music – an ingenious, infectious new spin on the music doc.

The whole thing feel(s) more like a naughty snapshot than any artistic achievement.

Credit the actors for making what might have been nothing but a well-intentioned message movie (which includes real archival testimony of rape victims) into an affecting drama.

It is well mounted and enjoyable, with solid performances: the pre-credits sequence, in particular, has a dreamy beauty. But some of the action is a bit flat; and overall it marks the point at which vampirism in British movies became so overtly erotic that the films virtually ceased to be about anything except sex.

It’s an affable biopic about a great but troubled man, with plenty of artistic spirit of its own.

It’s lifted by some very convincing performances.

The cast's performances are so gut-wrenching (particularly from Emmanuelle Devos and Areen Omari as the boys' equally empathic mothers) that the film's hopeful message and abundance of heart prove impossible to resist.

Subtle performances — especially from Bale and Affleck, both growing meaner in the absence of hope — transcend any structural weaknesses. The bottom drops out early for them, but their endgame is savagely captivating.

Cheap Thrills is little more than low-budget torture porn for the doobie-addled dudebro contingent.

It’s a film that’s about as funny and/or scary as a lump of sod.

The people of Downton Abbey have never been relatable, but they’re really pushing it this time.

Despite sturdy acting from a starry cast, actor Barry Primus' directorial debut is a lacklustre affair.

As eye-opening as it is disturbing, with little in the way of commentary, it’s a patchwork of raw, brutal images that weave a chilling narrative of youthful naivety and adventure being warped into death and destruction.

A rare Chilean film that doesn’t mention either the Allende or Pinochet regimes, Violeta Went to Heaven is a love letter to a lost 20th-century goddess. It’s hard to resist her.

While it’s not a perfect female-centric spy thriller (let’s keep trying), Atomic Blonde winks to the future with exciting possibilities.

This is another dinner conversation that races and lingers, making you want to do more with your own life.

The more the visual ephemera piles up, the more the emotional thrust of the story gets buried beneath all the monotonous pageantry. (Anna's many tête-à-têtes with her two lovers - especially a should-be-dizzying dance-seduction scene - are frigid pomp without any real heat.)

McAvoy gets good performances from his cast, with Ross a boyish yet broken presence as the spiralling Bain, but ultimately the journey is more satisfying than the destination.

It's after the sex friends go back to being just friends that the film really hits its stride, and that's also when the excellent Patricia Clarkson and Richard Jenkins enter the picture as loving but imperfect parents who help explain what's made both leads so gun-shy.

Though the characters are fictional, Polytechnique hews close to the facts regarding the 1989 incident, down to its misogynistic Marc Lépine avatar (Gaudette) separating "feminist" coeds in a classroom.

It's fascinating to watch Yeshi grow from a skeptical teenager into a spiritual leader - a transformation that still doesn't bring him any closer to his father. The film could use one scene of the two men acknowledging their differences, but even without that, My Reincarnation won't test your patience.

A smart horror film will fatten its pigs before the slaughter, and the mock doc The Last Exorcism feeds its prize hog nicely.

Material like this doesn't require the additional strain of overnarrated freeze-frames, a "Cuckoo's Nest" supporting cast of adorable crazies and a Glee-ified musical number set to Queen and David Bowie's "Under Pressure."

Unpacks the man's story with a dramatic flair that might be mistaken for Zoolanderiffic, if it weren't so aptly accessible.

Its story is accordingly old-hat...but Hitch makes the most of his locations (although the film is set on the Isle of Man, it was shot in Cornwall), while the frequent use of shots taken through windows anticipates the interest in voyeurism in his later work.

Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's mostly whiffed docudrama makes the influential poem by Allen Ginsberg (Franco) seem dull, ordinary, pedestrian instead of pioneering.

A cut above most nonfiction explorations of Katrina, thanks to the ever-empathetic Demme's talent for showcasing the uniquely human qualities of every person he films.

Summer Wars surprisingly celebrates togetherness and bravery as much as binary-mathematics expertise, all helped along by a kick-ass synthesis of traditional hand-drawn scenes and fluid, rainbow-explosive CG artistry.

You watch Dafoe's intelligent hands skillfully setting traps, building fires and squeezing triggers, and wonder if an entire movie might be made of such manly components. Probably not.

If you can stomach the fear, go. Confident hands created this film. Its nightmare lingers for weeks.

Russell Crowe's pained vocal stylings (they sound more like barks) as relentless Inspector Javert can be forgiven after hearing Hugh Jackman's old-pro fluidity in the central role of Jean Valjean, hiding a criminal past.

Like the "Scream" series, Hot Tub Time Machine is a cake-and-eat-it-too experience; you get both a vintage Brat Pack comedy, albeit one regrettably drenched in post-Hangover raunch, and an ongoing metacommentary at the same time.

Less Hitchcock, however, than writer Norman Krasna, who at his best could twist conventional characters and plot patterns in such beguiling ways that you'd almost forget their antiquity. This comes near his best.

Grant's habitual skill at playing the faint-hearted prig is such that one can almost overlook the moments of mawkish sentiment and gentle complacency about the country club milieu.

Figgis (in his first American feature) handles the explosive action and the psychological undercurrents with equal assurance. Dark, dangerous and disturbing.

Even at its most affecting, Simon Killer rarely seems like more than a cinema-du-Gaspar-Noé simulacrum. The languorous long-takes, dissociative sound design and strobe-light scene transitions meant to mirror this emotional con artist’s skewed view of the world are anxiety-of-influence hand-me-downs through and through—viscera without vision.

The theatrical and sometimes overcooked dialogue doesn’t always convince; and despite moments of masterfully staged suspense, the film’s feature-length take on this ethical dilemma – the so-called ‘trolley problem’ – feels a little too decompressed and repetitive.

As you watch these actors, you appreciate the endeavor the climbers went through all the more — and as triumph turns to tragedy, you feel the grief winding its way through your shaken nervous systems.

Williams is cuddly enough as the man whose talents for nurturing a family are constantly undermined by a malign fate, and there is a performance of some dignity from Lithgow as a six-and-a-half-foot ex-pro footballer transsexual. But it's the kind of movie which is brave - or stupid - enough to ask the meaning of life without having enough arse in its breeches to warrant a reply.

It may be devoid of significance of any sort, but it is nevertheless passably entertaining, and certainly better viewing than most MacLean adaptations

After a bright start, this hunkers down to serious hand-wringing... Coop's hick (none too convincingly hinted at as the new Messiah) turns out to be a bore, and Capra strains to accommodate political chicanery and his own half-baked idealism.

Even with incredible fight footage, however, all we have here is a standard if formless ESPN hagiography, complete with a cheesy cop-show score and little sense of who these guys are outside of the ring.

Early on, the film bristles with endorphins and oddness.

As this engaging, if rote, doc points out, the name Eames, much like Victorian, now defines the style of an era. Yet how many of us knew that the industrial designers behind those midcentury molded mod chairs were an eccentric married team?

This potent emotional undercurrent goes a long way toward counteracting the movie’s clumsier moments, carrying us aloft to a finale that, in its strange mix of trepidation and tenderness, is truly sublime.

Beautifully written and directed by Bergman, this paradoxically modern slice of nostalgia energetically revives the long mourned 'oddball' comedy. For once, Cage is pleasantly understated, playing the straight guy beset by nine shades of madness: lunatic mothers, deranged mobsters, singing Chieftains, and sky-diving Elvis impersonators by the dozen, they're all here in this joyous, uplifting romp.

Not since a Nam-scarred Sly Stallone asked, "Do we get to win this time?" in "Rambo: First Blood Part II" has an American action star been deployed to rewrite history so thoroughly.

As the film shifts away from the mansion and into a pretty pat subplot about far-right goons and drug addiction, it grows less like a prize-winning flower and more like a clump of unsightly weeds, further sunk by underwhelming work from Schrader’s regular cinematographer Alexander Dynan.

What begins as gritty realism ends up as the usual made-for-cable melodramatics—an apple that’s always better left unbitten.

This recut version appends a new interview with Polanski and Stewart, returning to the same hotel room to wax nostalgic. Essentially, they liked going fast and big; this film feels slow and minor.