If the story doesn’t strain itself in pursuit of originality, it does build to a satisfying conclusion.

Tracing how the world’s peaks came to be viewed as playgrounds, it needs to be seen on the big screen for its vertiginous images of high-altitude adventurers.

The end-stretch is overlong, but the Flash animation style pops with colour, the music is fun, and off-the-scale creature cuteness abounds.

Over-ambitious perhaps, but Freyne’s intensely executed ‘infected’ fable packs tension, resonance, and clout.

Theron is astonishingly good, giving a subtle, vanity-free performance.

The Avengers latest stand feels well worth the wait. It’s not perfect, but it goes to a place most tentpole movies wouldn’t dream of, while retaining the scale, excitement, and humour you’ve come to demand from an MCU movie.

Alongside Sheehan’s charms, it’s Belleville’s intoxicating visuals that truly fire the imagination. India has rarely seemed so seductive.

Rampage was always going to be the cinematic equivalent of junk food – enjoyable enough while consumed, but devoid of nourishment. When the homo sapiens are on screen, you can feel the film start to flatline but, against the odds, a computer-generated gorilla might just win you over.

Bone-chillingly told and beautifully made, Ghost Stories is an expert twist on an evergreen genre.

There’s a bumpy, wholly unexpected dip into melodrama along the way, but the film’s commitment to its characters, and its sheer emotional heft, carries you along regardless.

Cleverly making the most of the quiet-LOUD-quiet-LOUD dynamics of most horror films, the sound is the real star.

A barking mad shaggy dog story with imagination to spare. 13/10, would watch again.

The beauty of Alice Springs offers a profound contrast with the ugly acts committed by its inhumane colonists.

Like Pacino’s Shakespeare rumination Looking For Richard (1996), Wilde Salomé is passionate and absorbing, though the insertion of lengthy clips from the film might irk viewers who’ve just watched it.

Reid’s a fine lead, but DuVernay’s usually firm footing wobbles in the CGI clouds of Disney fantasy.

Not in the Bridesmaids league but a very funny female-centric comedy with big laughs and spot-on attitudes.

Despite the candid vérité stylings, art-dance powerhouse Grace Jones remains a magnetic enigma in Sophie Fiennes’ docu-study.

Respectable. Boyega adds real bounce and DeKnight delivers spectacle, even if the plot doesn’t strain too far from the original’s crash-bang formula.

A short, sharp shock of a thriller that demonstrates the versatility and range of both Soderbergh and Foy.

It’s more of a table wine – inoffensive, middlebrow and, like the scenes of grape harvesting here, hard work.

Vikander packs a punch but this Tomb Raider is a long way off the Holy Grail of the first three Indy movies.

A fun romp with a great comic performance from Oyelowo. Doesn’t linger, but you’ll enjoy it while it lasts.

Lynne Ramsay returns with a scuzzy, stripped-back thriller focused on the man, rather than the mission.

Its love-in-later-life insights are well-worn, but with Staunton on song, Richard Loncraine’s film mines genuine feeling.

In the hands of director George Nolfi, what could have been a fascinating insight into street versus classical martial arts instead becomes a generic fight flick, with a script so heavy-handed it feels like it was bashed out with knuckle-dusters.

Defiant, determined, Vega delivers a star-making performance in a drama of embattled grief, directed with heart.

An exploitation movie that, paradoxically, exhibits too much good taste. Still, expect “Saws all!” to become a 2018 catchphrase.

Like Tonya on the ice, this vicious black comedy is lean, mean and hard to take your eyes off.

Aiming straight for mounting dread, Parker gets the job done aggressively.

A solid espionage thriller that’s lifted by its charismatic leads, Red Sparrow commits to the brutality of its subject matter, meaning it’s never easy viewing.

Del Toro’s Valentine to boundary-crossing love pours from the screen in ravishing torrents of feeling and style. And Hawkins is sublime.

Smart, funny and emotional, Lady Bird is a Trojan horse movie – sneaking its way into hearts and minds via well-worn tropes.

This chilly thriller is another highly accomplished feature to add to a formidable body of work.

Confident, assured and athletic filmmaking. And with Boseman on such dignified, dynamic form, his Infinity War return can’t come soon enough.

For all their technical competence, the Spierig brothers don’t show great understanding of how ghost stories actually work.

A film that also aims for gangster grit, community awareness and emotional impact, but compromises on everything.

Anderson crafts another classic of obsession and strange love, played by dynamite leads: Day-Lewis retires in style, Krieps is revelatory.

Claflin and Bettany stand out among an impressive ensemble in a harrowing, powerful WW1 drama well worth enduring.

The story is predictable, but Simmons’ tighty whities and Delpy’s fish impressions compensate.

A primitive concept (cavemen play football) generates unsophisticated laughs in an animated caper that’s fun but rather second division by Aardman standards.

No small achievement. Alexander Payne re-confirms his position as one of US cinema’s premier filmmakers.

A salty road trip tinged with sadness, sensitively handled by Linklater and his cast. Unfocused in places, but never less than diverting.

Shot with doc-style immediacy, it expertly builds to a shocking climax.

The result is poetic but unfocused.

Cooper’s western may be too meditative for some, but its grit, beauty and honesty are too potent to ignore.

We’ve seen Stiller do ‘exasperated malcontent’ before, but this remains a perceptive portrait of fortysomething angst.

Scott steers his ideas-rich, character-based thriller with brisk authority. Plummer and Williams bring their all.

The shadow of subsequent events looms oppressively large, but Greg Barker’s film still speaks eloquently for diplomacy and selfless public service.

With its monochrome stylings and a plot laced with ennui, it might be the most French film ever made, but there’s no denying Garrel’s craft.

A solid if far-fetched thriller that still entertains, even as it goes off the rails.

It’s hardly fresh, but the spectacle is decent and the relationship dynamics absorb just enough to fill the lengthy run time.

It may lack the ingenuity of their finest outings, but this is Pixar’s best film in ages. Visually splendid, frequently emotional and culturally nourishing.

A timely look at a fight to be heard – in the boardroom or the press – that’s elegant without being electric.

McDormand is an unstoppable force in a fiercely intelligent, profanely poetic movie that shifts tonal gears at breakneck speed.

An Oscar-aimed turn from Gary Oldman anchors this WW2 portrait of Churchill at his most beleaguered.

Bloom’s an extraordinary character, expertly played, and we gradually move from admiring her chutzpah to genuinely caring what happens to her.

Neither a satisfying treaty on diversity and 'race' wars, nor a fulfilling fantasy, it derails at the end of the first act with a confusing moment of anti-heroism, and never recovers.

Fans will find just enough heart-swelling moments involving friendships and family to enjoy one last group hug.

The storytelling can feel a bit plodding, but Jim Broadbent’s exuberant Ernest and Brenda Blethyn’s timid, upwardly mobile Ethel give the marriage a touching intimacy and warmth.

An excellent middle chapter bursting with wit, wisdom, emotion, shocks, old-fashioned derring-do, state-of-the-art tech, and stonking set-pieces.

The cumulative effect is overwhelming. Poetically shot by a dozen DoPs, including Christopher Doyle, a powerful portrait of horror, hope and humanity emerges.

Loaded with flashbacks, it’s unevenly mounted but kept watchable by the lively script and classy cast.

The low-key tone and casual pacing create an atmosphere akin to a fly-on-the-wall doc, while a nuanced moral conflict builds through the plight of the title character.

Stunning fights and creepy CG come wrapped inside a blade-sharp story, as the swordsman vows to hunt the killers of a young girl’s parents. Truly epic.

This is also a Christmas horror-comedy – and one of the best since Gremlins.

An outlandish high concept is a recipe for hope and humour in a film that bears viewing more than once.

Gyllenhaal is outstanding in this inspiring warts-and-all story of a Boston bombing survivor’s recovery battle.

The action’s passable and Gillan makes a decent fist of an underwritten character. Otherwise, this Jumanji makeover’s a losing game.

Filmmaker Jonathan Olshefski illuminates the rich, strife-filled lives of these extraordinary people.

Poverty and poetry, delinquency and deluxe wonder… this child’s-eye view of lives on a knife-edge is terrific.

Whether or not you’re a fan of Wonder Woman, this tale of her creation is rich, evocative and enlightening.

Backdraft clichés notwithstanding, this is a stirring fact-based tribute to public servants putting it on the line.

Musing on memory and machine-emotion, it echoes Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Her. But despite its fine portraits of loss, it never escapes its stage-play origins.

Alain Gomis’ film paints a lacerating picture of a raucous, dangerous city.

Face crumpled, eyes darting, Jones captures the wounded humanity at the core of this psychological thriller. He feels the walls of his flat closing in; we feel the influence of Polanski and Hitchcock.

The cast do decent work, but Clooney’s ersatz Fargo misses the mark. A Coen pastiche rather than the real deal.

Vexingly, Ferrell flaunts his daft genius just enough to avert an entirely shite Christmas.

This dreamily shot US indie is an insightful study of sexual repression and awakening, featuring a compelling lead performance from Brit newcomer Dickinson.

Marx, Tristan Tzara, André Breton, Werner Herzog; Constructivism, Dadaism, Futurism… on it goes. Impressive, sure, but ultimately stultifying.

With it comes admission into a stunning world of majesty and savagery; shame about the overbearing Philip Glass score.

From multi-talented Belgian/Canadian duo Dominique Abel and his partner Fiona Gordon comes a slice of light-hearted whimsy.

Stone and Carell ace it in this smart biopic, stylishly recreating the champ-vs-clown clash of the tennis titans that electrified ’70s America.

Dennis Bartok’s sparse horror has a spooky central conceit, and just about overcomes its budgetary bumps, while Macdonald excels as the innocent.

Justice League’s most significant shortcoming is how forgettable it all is. There’s barely a moment that sticks, not a single sequence to rival the standout superhero set-pieces of recent years.

Does for Norman’s place what Room 237 did for the Overlook: reopens old haunts for welcome re-investigation.

While the film lacks Christina Applegate’s razor-sharp delivery (though she gets a LOL-worthy cameo) and most of the plot doesn’t make sense, the older ladies warrant a Bad Grans spin-off.

A superb satirical swipe at the worst excesses of the social media generation.

A meditation on repressed desire with deep secrets, Thelma throbs with hypnotic intensity: it burns slow, but its magnetism holds right up to the teasing climax.

Comprising archive footage and first-hand accounts, Claire Ferguson’s film feels vital in sharing harrowing stories of life in concentration camps.

Kenneth Branagh finds interesting ways to grease the wheels of this new take on the oft-filmed novel.

A feel good sequel only marmalade haters could resist.

Disturbing and often distressing, but compulsively watchable.

The film reveals how patriarchal values clash with the desires of its female characters to lead more emancipated lives.

Peachy keen. A luminous, sun-kissed Italian love story brimming with warmth, passion and feeling. This is utterly unmissable.

This is a Marvel movie that knows when to embrace the ridiculous and when to puncture any pomposity, and it's a delight from start to big finish. And yes, you do need to stay to the very very end of the credits.

Despite some appealing lensing and an edgier tone than a lot of Christian dramas (nudity, swearing, and in one memorable moment, self-cannibalism), this is a movie with zero subtext and even less subtlety.

An animated film like no other, Loving Vincent is a staggering visual achievement.

All the signs pointed to a hit chiller: great cast, a director with fantastic form and a celebrated Jo Nesbø novel to draw from. So it’s a huge shame, then, that The Snowman is a bit grey and slushy when it should have been cool and crisp.