However slight the recorded romantic history of a well-known female author is, you can be sure it will become a key part of her biopic. Joining the trend now is this account of the life of Emily Brontë, which spends a chunk of its time on a romance that may not have happened. It’s well played and well written, but it’s an odd addition to a story that is remarkable even without invention: studios need to start letting spinsters be spinsters.

In the opening scenes of Kazan and writer Budd Schulberg's satire on the dangers of television and advertising, Griffith's virtuoso, likeably irreverent performance makes for genuinely amusing viewing; but once he's mixing with the bigwigs, the film-makers' political messages start flying thick and fast, and the drama soon becomes overheated and unconvincing.

This is a movie about a subculture, made for that subculture; only hard-core Xboxers need apply.

MacFarlane’s preference for quantity over quality results in a lot of dead air, but the gags that land are howlers, and all of its crudeness (and racism, and sexism, and homophobia, etc.), the movie beats with a real heart.

The movie lacks the visual snap that would push the humor into next-level American satire. Still, you can’t help but laugh at scenes that could be mini-cartoons in themselves.

There’s an innately camp, silly quality to these star-crammed murder-mysteries. Embracing that would make Branagh’s adaptations more of a scream.

Underwater shots of spherical midsections floating past the camera prove that they understand the beauty of bodies in motion, even if their storytelling feels a little stillborn.

The documentary's scope feels a bit small overall - more concerned with capturing the episodic adventures of these disparate subjects than with connecting their experiences to larger societal ills.

Scott Lee is an unexpectedly appealing hero, partly because he's never indulged, and his dialogue is kept to a minimum.

Richard Pearce's thriller suffers from near-total predictability, with a script that careers headlong through clichéd situations, calculatedly coarse dialogue, and cardboard characters. That said, Pearce reveals a strong feel for lurid locations and spectacular set pieces, and makes the film look stylish, too much so in the case of the three leads. Indeed, taken straight it's all a little risible; but as fast-paced hokum pitted with plot-holes, it's polished fun - no more, no less.

It is a simple, touching story that is sweetly, undemandingly entertaining. It would be very easy to pick holes in it but it doesn’t give you much reason to want to.

Strikingly picturesque locations and a terrific ensemble cast help this tonally inconsistent adaptation of Posy Simmonds's comic series pass by with relative ease, though it leaves a very peculiar aftertaste.

Maybe this is a good time to mention that the director is Richard Linklater, usually a lot more versatile. Try to imagine a version of Linklater’s "School of Rock" that didn’t pivot on the manic music teacher played by Jack Black but instead, perhaps, on his boring roommate.

While American Animal's finely tuned filmmaking is leagues above the usual Indiewood sloppiness, all the movie-quoting manic episodes feel like empty grandstanding; it's hard to tell where D'Elia's own psychotic cinephilia ends and the character's begins.

The Infiltrator works best when it owns its Miami Vice–esque sizzle: Composer Chris Hajian breaks out the percolating Jan Hammer synthesizers, and the ’80s decadence wafts offscreen like a stink.

Anna Wintour? Feh! There never was, and never will be, a style icon quite like Diana Vreeland.

None of the hilarity is enough to keep Wanderlust from feeling like a late-night comedy-show sketch stretched to feature length. But why look a giggle-prone gift horse in the mouth?

Despite the best efforts of a cast that mixes unstudied newbies such as The Tree of Life’s Sheridan with Hollywood prima donnas like Reese Witherspoon (a starlet-slumming-it distraction as Mud's dim-bulb inamorata), there’s an overall clunkiness that Nichols is unable to overcome.

Given that the entire show and film is dedicated to McGarrigle, you wish this exquisitely made, undeniably moving family album featured even more of the singer herself.

It definitely demands patience ... but it rewards it with a similarly narcotic effect.

Viewers enduring early adolescence or those grappling with its psychic scars will recognize the honesty in the comic humiliation.

What Sing 2 does offer is more big musical numbers (‘Bad Guy’ by Billie Eilish backdrops a great visual gag involving a floor polisher), lots of eye-popping animation and a sugar-high ending that will delight kids and U2 fans alike

The film feels naive for an audience that's ready for some harder truths.

When it comes to capturing the man behind the phenomenon, however, the film never progresses beyond a superficial, weird-yet-wonderful portraiture.

Is Gemini on the level of classic L.A. films like Heat or The Player? Hardly. But you sink into its mood, and that’s enough.

The film may be a brilliant visual record of the Floyd playing, but sadly the music works on you more if you just close your eyes.

Carice van Houten (Black Book) is superb as the emotionally unstable Jonker - all manically beaming highs and depressively gloomy lows, a tempestuous force of nature in a movie that too often plays it blandly polite.

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.