The film plays like something Boyle could kick out in his sleep, all his supercool devices listlessly deployed in service of a mediocre wet dream.

That the filmmaker at least makes a concerted effort to tweak what in most hands would be an offensively whitewashed dark-continent parable is worth some measure of praise.

The movie meanders for two and a half hours, has glaring continuity gaps, and repeatedly confuses self-consciousness with irony, sincerity with significance. There are grace notes here, but Wenders' ambitions seem far, far away.

Harold Pinter's script sometimes suffers from awkward, even implausible dialogue; but careful pacing and casting make for a film that, while directed with cool discretion, is sensual and shocking in its casual evocation of erotic violence, emotional manipulation and moral torpor.

Even in those well-executed gnarlier moments and winky character beats, Scream VI feels a lot more dated than the genre it’s deconstructing.

The fine cast takes the movie as far as it will comfortably go, until Bahrani gets a case of Great American Play–itis.

Renner and scientist Rachel Weisz are sympathetic enough (although lacking in Matt Damon's all-American approachability), and the movie flies along briskly.

Hollywood loves these apocalypse-soon stories, however, because they function as blank canvases for ruin porn, and if nothing else, Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium gives us the realistically trashed tomorrow we suspect we deserve.

Tiresome.

The new recruits have standard issue hilarious-style problems - route marching, press-ups, food, the local brothel - but most of all they have psychotic, cruel-to-be-kind drill sergeant Walken. Why Walken plays him so dulcet and limp is beyond comprehension.

More of a clever comic parody than a jokey pastiche, this lively kiddies' horror pic delivers frights and laughs which are rooted in a sure and sympathetic grasp of Monster Movie mythology.

It works well if rather stiffly for a while, with excellent performances (Wycherly and da Silva are outstanding), but blows up into absurd histrionics and naive propaganda.

“Stories heal, stories hurt,” we hear in voiceover, and while any horror film would unavoidably literalize such a claim, this one can’t hold a candle to the power of the page, as read by a thirty, ghoulish mind.

It exists in fits and starts: a Blade Runner–esque moment of rainy contemplation on a hotel balcony; some weird sexual tension with a lizard girl (statuesque Svetlana Khodchenkova) who steals away Wolverine’s healing powers.

Del Toro is the Ernest Hemingway of screen badasses: the less he says the better he is – he does his most convincing work while looking like he’s about to nod off. ‘Sicario 2’ sets up a future instalment centred on him: that sequel will be a must.

Given the dreck we’ve seen this summer, it’s nice to be reminded of the virtues of clean storytelling and cultural curiosity.

Fennell has captured something real about these unreal people and the world they live in. Her film slices with a scalpel, peels back the layers and finds only hollowness beneath. Maybe that’s the real twist.

There are some nice comic moments though; in fact relying as heavily on its disquieting black humour as on images of physical disgust, the whole thing works far better as comedy than horror.

As history, I’d take this account with a pinch of salt – it feels too enamoured by certain elements of its antihero’s story and blinkered to others – but as an exercise in capturing the man’s self-engineered legend, it’s energetic and engrossing.

A messy, meandering script ensures that, despite stylish camerawork and sturdy acting, this lengthy indulgence succeeds neither as jazz movie nor as cautionary tale.

From its title on, Come Undone is as dully generic as is imaginable.

This aesthetically undistinguished yet still engrossing documentary follows the emotionally charged lead-up to the vote on Question One, a 2009 Maine referendum that put the marriage rights of gay and lesbian couples on the state ballot.

With Ustinov's energetic impersonation of Poirot and Anthony Shaffer's traditionally structured script, Death on the Nile offered a fair recreation of Agatha Christie's world, but this time Christie herself would rightly have disowned the film.

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

It works because we haven’t seen this story a thousand times before, and because it leaves behind the grim-dark posturing of ‘Suicide Squad’. It’s nice to see a joker who doesn’t take herself too seriously.

If Jaffe's previous production credits aren't sufficient warning that this is one for Sensitive Drama suckers, the opening shot's a giveaway.

Rewriting the narrative through an anti-colonial, Black and feminist lens, Purcell bestowed a First Nations background and the moniker Molly Johnson on Lawson’s unnamed protagonist. Delving deeper into Molly’s troubles in the novel of the same name, this film marks her third spin at the material. It’s still riveting.

Hawn, atypically cast and supported by all-round excellent performances, proves that she can act. But still this bitter-sweet concoction is very much Demme's: not only in the warming celebration of friendship and community values (the unsentimental generosity extended towards the characters positively glows), but also in the assured handling of period, place, music and mood.