It’s bewitching stuff when it doesn’t feel like a waste of invitations.

To be fair, pulling off complex action sequences in such unforgivingly high definition is a ballsy move—it’s much harder to hide the joins between what was captured in camera and what was added later. But as impressive as the action is—and a Smith-vs.-Smith motorcycle chase in Colombia is a superb sequence worthy of peak Bond—the high-definition format just doesn’t work.

It’s exciting to see this underground scene finding an outlet on screen. As an exploration of contemporary youth culture, masculinity, identity and sexuality, as well as life at the margins, VS. is topical and energising.

It’s made with so much love, care and enthusiasm—plus no small amount of risk—you thrill to think that they’re just getting started.

Philippe earns his keep, not only by mounting a crisp, elegant production well above the standard of your typical video-lensed making-of, but by skewing toward anecdotes that most corporate clients would frown upon.

While it’s based on the bizarre 2007 story of the female astronaut who drove 900 miles in adult diapers to confront an ex-boyfriend, Lucy in the Sky doesn’t include that intimate detail. Then again, the movie shits the bed in so many other ways, it may have been overkill. Director Noah Hawley (TV’s Fargo) omits the headline-making undergarment, instead stocking up on paper-thin observations about workplace misogyny and mental health in a cloying feature debut that begs to be scorned.

After a while, you adjust, or rather, you get tired of probing the slightly-off evidence of your eyes and the headache it produces. There’s a lot of fun to distract you.

Its trump card, of course, is Zellweger, who blows through the film in a gust of jittery energy, wounded ego and half-buried star quality. The transformation is startling.

There’s comfort to be had in executing on such a durable formula, and—life lessons accompanied by Coldplay’s treacly “Fix You” aside—Abominable usually resembles the swift adventure it wants to be.

None of the care that Stallone imparted to his recent Rocky reboots—Creed and Creed II (both of which were produced by him)—is in evidence; it’s as if he were admitting that the Rambo movies were always trash. He may not be the best custodian of his own legacy. Graying, splotchy and barely intelligible, Stallone turns in a self-negating performance, just as ugly on the inside.

Yes, it’s basically an episode of the show stretched out to two hours, but like the Crawley family silver, it’s so polished you can practically see your face in it.

Damon and Bale are unfailingly enjoyable company to be among, steering the psychology away from alpha-male dominance to something more complex and occasionally mystical.

If Wu is compelling as Destiny, Lopez is magnetic as her savvy mentor. It’s her most authoritative role since Out of Sight. The plot, in contrast to the stars, sags in the middle and there are a few more celebratory hang-out scenes than we need, but the gang is so charismatic, it’s no great chore to spend extra time with them. Some people would pay thousands for just a few minutes.

The tonal lurches – from jokey to earnest and back again – will have whiplash setting in by the time its eccentric fourth-wall-breaking coda comes around, while some odd casting choices (and accents) drain gravity from the serious moments.

It's the exuberant yin to the stately yang of Jackie Kennedy biopic Jackie, Larrain’s last film, and it’s full of the pheromones of sexual discovery and the piss and vinegar of toxic relationships.

On its way to an uncathartic climax that somehow involves a black-market-fenced oil painting and an Amsterdam shootout, The Goldfinch throws in so much diversionary character work that you wonder if anyone thought the stew was going to be edible.

Breathtakingly risky but valid under scrutiny ... Jojo Rabbit isn’t perfect; sometimes it strains to reconcile Waititi’s more relaxed beats (“Let everything happen to you,” is a line from poet Rainer Maria Rilke that gets big play) with his visual fussiness. But he’s legitimately breaking new ground. It will find an audience that gets it.

Murder, skulduggery and an avalanche of plotting makes Rian Johnson's latest a retro pleasure for those who enjoy being dizzied.

The film doesn’t know how innocent it wants to be. Establishing shots of Manhattan’s 1998 skyline arrive in the cutesy form of a colorful diorama, just like Mr. Rogers’s show, but that gesture feels utopian and unearned, not to mention a little boring.

The Personal History of David Copperfield feels, to a large degree, like a writer’s stunt. If you’re in a mildly irreverent mood (like Iannucci himself), you won’t complain too loudly about that.

Waves shudders with ambition and nervy style; it never quite relaxes out of its harrowing first hour but the longer it stretches out, the more humane it feels.

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

Sure, some of the historical detail is terrible (did Henry V really get crowned topless?) and Shakespeare purists may scream heresy, but director David Michôd has done something genuinely fresh and confident with this well-told piece of English folklore.

Kids train for guerrilla fighting in a gorgeously atmospheric film that feels like a transmission from the future.

Even as it drifts into narrative indiscipline, you appreciate the movie’s attempt to make sense of a troubled, beclowned present.

The Informer is a film that favours brawn over brains, punching its way through any plot predicaments. A smart hairpin or two would have made it a juicier watch.

Inna de Yard becomes more like a concert movie, with a spine of cultural history, than a narrative documentary.

An uneventful, overly stuffy approach to a painter who, as this mother continually tells us, was considered outlandishly strange.