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.