Kate Stables

Despite the well-honed wizarding credentials of Yates and co-scripters Steve Kloves and Rowling, the series still can’t seem to settle on a hero. Let’s hope that the prospective next two helpings can unravel whether it’s Newt’s beast-fuelled journey or Dumbledore’s quest with which we’re hitching a ride.

It’s hands-down Disney’s best and punchiest prequel yet, one whose playful perils make for a deliciously rowdy ride.

Chadwick Boseman gives this muscular film, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, added punch and poignancy.

It’s ‘Hello Dahl-y’, as Anne Hathaway’s Grand High Witch brings camp not creepiness to Zemeckis’ entertaining fairytale.

Handsome, risk-taking Netflix remake sacrifices suspense for sweeping sadness.

Daniel Kaluuya is the motor for this lyrical but hard-hitting road-movie, fuelled by fury and frustration.

Theron is gobsmackingly good as the real-life screen queen determined to unearth the victims of Fox News’ most powerful predator.

Greta Gerwig’s warm, woke take on America’s classic girlhood novel takes liberties, but makes a tender, engrossing tale.

Zellweger knocks it out of the park, lighting up this punchy and moving late-life biopic with big-hearted, big-voiced panache.

Tween-appropriate action and jungle-genre gags keep this family-friendly reboot giggly rather than gripping

The powerful, vanity-free performances are the real thing in this bittersweet biopic.

Ronan is the monarch of the lens in this feisty, feminist royal biopic, which favours queenly clashes over battlefield action.

A heist movie with serious bite, Widows is both brilliantly tense and strikingly relevant.

Simply doesn't have the original's magic.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Mixing a rom-coma into the romcom, this smart, sweet and highly personal love story finds a winning formula.

Jean-Pierre Léaud effortlessly summons up the iron ruler inside the failing man.

Both smart political primer and tense cautionary tale.

Filled with cherry-blossom gorgeousness and sentimental homages to small-town Japanese life, it's a film of quiet, telling moments, even when big revelations surface.

Taraji P. Henson excels in a heart-warming history lesson that proves not only rocket men had The Right Stuff.

Interviewing key figures in his life, they build an anecdote-rich bio.

Coupled with the extraordinary lush visuals and fluid camerawork – moulding the ocean’s many moods and textures till it’s practically a character – Moana essays a rich, vivid feel. It might not be a whole new world, but it’s a fantastic voyage.

The portentous narration, restless visuals and whimsical ghost characters (an unexpected Night at the Museum-style Napoleon) combine to make a thoughtful case about the inevitable interweaving of art and war.