Simran Hans

Wright is sympathetic and believable, but we never truly get a sense of Edee or her desires outside the bounds of her loss.

With its hero’s journey structure, punchily edited racing scenes and warmly drawn oddball community (a widow, Maureen, is obsessed with Tunnock’s Tea Cakes), the film is shamelessly predictable and thoroughly feelgood.

Crawford is brilliant and bitter as a soon-to-be divorced dad unable to accept his fate.

To call the film meditative would be to undersell Kosakovskiy’s instinct for drama and tension.

For a film about magic, there’s little sparkle to spare.

It’d be easy to mistake the director’s deadpan observation for mocking, but the space he holds for the darker aspects of his characters’ individual stories helps to puncture any cultivated cutesyness.

Unfortunately, the second half is over-reliant on flashy disaster set pieces, blazing towards a predictable, melodramatic conclusion.

Valadez’s expressionist images give texture to the abstract emotions of rage and pain.

Shanley has an Oscar and a Pulitzer (he wrote the sublime Moonstruck, and the stage and screen versions of Doubt). Here, that’s easy to forget, given the cartoon accents and overblown metaphors about horses destined to jump the fence.

The film retains a warm sense of humour about technology’s grip on society.

Levine’s playful deconstruction of tortured genius is a witty and provocative send-up of tyrannical directors, diva-ish actors and over-invested voyeurs alike.

Kawase’s frequent use of handheld camera gives parts of the film a quasi-documentary feel, but it’s the lyrical touches . . . that hit the hardest.

There’s just enough magic and mystery to tease out a supernatural reading of the film, though Petzold encourages viewers to find pleasure in puzzling out his femme fatale for themselves.

The styling is at odds with the otherwise straightforward courtroom narrative. The prestige procedural elements work better; the real-life story is enraging, and it’s fun to see Benedict Cumberbatch’s morally conflicted military prosecutor lock horns with Foster’s icy human rights lawyer.

The spectacle is more involving than the plot, especially the dazzling image of Kong floating skyward, serene and surrounded by purple glowing rocks.

Rosi’s broader critique of violence is implied through footage of a play performed by patients in a psychiatric hospital, and of a children’s art therapy class. He is more interested in the reverberations of conflict than the source, focusing on those who have suffered its effects directly.

There is an incandescence and a buoyancy to the animation that elevates the formula.

The comedy doesn’t work quite as well this way around, though Fowler is extremely likable as a sweet-natured slacker, channelling the endearing guilelessness of Murphy’s original Prince Akeem. Still, there are enough in-jokes and returning characters to keep fans happy.

Maslany is magnetic, her coiled fury and sexual energy threatening to erupt as her placid partner plods along beside her.

Favier is smart on the mechanics of abuse, and the sobering inevitability of her heroine’s downhill skid.

These self-consciously upbeat moments clash horribly with the wider redemption narrative.

The sci-fi stuff is tedious, but Wiig and Mumolo are bawdy and brilliant as ever, their effortless chemistry bolstered by years of collaboration.

Perhaps wisely, Ryan White’s slick documentary chooses not to mine the bizarre scene for comic potential. Instead, he spins the arrest of Siti Aisyah and Doan Thi Huong – economic migrants from Indonesia and Vietnam respectively – into a parable about political corruption.

The showy singer turned actor struggles to modulate his natural charisma, a flirtatious, extroverted energy repeatedly leaking out where it should be muffled.

Sukhitashvili’s subtle performance brings interiority to a character who might otherwise be defined entirely by her suffering.

The ensemble cast electrifies Powers’s dialogue, jockeying between black power and integration, activism and commerce, spiritual clarity, pork chops and sex.

The whole thing feels strangely pedestrian, unable to capture or channel Bowie’s maverick spirit.

The impish Leslie Mann is well cast as his dead wife, Elvira, who provides a jolt of creative inspiration. Judi Dench’s screechy caricature of psychic Madame Arcati is less winning.