Cert PG 100mins Stars 3

It’s up up and away on a hot air balloon ride in this handsomely crafted adventure which takes off well but sadly only fleetingly soars.

A pair of chaste Victorian pioneers go where no-one has gone before in an attempt to break the high altitude record, held by their pesky French rivals.

Having won an Oscar for playing Professor Stephen Hawking in 2014’s The Theory of Everything, Eddie Redmayne is reunited with his co-star Felicity Jones.

But playing another real life scientist, this time meteorologist James Glaisher, Redmayne must now take a back seat to Jones’ fictitious daredevil hot air balloon pilot, Amelia Wren.

In a varied and physical role Jones is a far more compelling and enjoyably flamboyant figure than she ever was in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and even in the quieter scenes her charisma burns Redmayne off the screen.

And yes his character is very much the archetypal stuffy and repressed Victorian gentlemen explorer, but it would be so much more fun for the audience if they were sparking off each other, rather than letting Jones do all the heavy lifting.

Much like 2013’s breathless sci-fi classic Gravity, this is the story of a woman coming to terms with grief, but where that film was non-stop action, every time the action builds up a decent head of steam here, we’re brought crashing to Earth for another flashback.

And unfortunately all this clumsily assembled emotional ballast unfortunately tethers the narrative to the ground, where Himesh Patel is waiting anxiously for something to do, and where veteran Tom Courtenay is tasked with making Glaisher a sympathetic character.

Plus despite frostbite, oxygen sickness, lightning storms and a malfunctioning craft, there’s a lack of jeopardy as the script fails to find much up in the clouds to sustain an adventure.

However the production design is excellent, the stunts when they arrive are thrillingly executed and the high altitude photography is epic, crisp and beautiful.

Although The Aeronauts isn’t a deflating experience, I was left feeling pumped up.

Cert 15 101mins Stars 4

Bleak, compassionate, and powerful, this frighteningly realistic portrait of modern Britain by veteran director Ken Loach, is very much a companion piece to his devastating 2016 drama, I, Daniel Blake.

Kris Hitchen and Debbie Honeywood play a decent hardworking couple struggling to survive working as a delivery driver and a carer in the unforgiving regime of zero hours contracts, a system which values efficiency over humanity.

And in their damp and cramped rented home, their increasingly desperate and exhausted existence begins to impact on their two teenage kids.

Once again Loach fails to exploit the possibilities of Newcastle Upon Tyne as a location which offers plenty of opportunity to visually illustrate the UK’s wealth gap.

Plus there’s scant music and the dialogue is so functional and camerawork so perfunctory, it feels we’re watching a radio play.

Sadly there’s not much chance of this changing the world but it does make you think more kindly of white van men.

Cert 12A 112mins Stars 2

The talent of two of Hollywood’s greatest screen actresses is squandered in this solemn, superficial and dull drama.

Michelle Williams is happily running an Indian orphanage when she told she must travel to New York to secure a multi-million dollar donation from Julianne Moore’s mega successful media entrepreneur.

While there she attends a wedding where a devastating family secret linking the pair is revealed.

Lacking the wit to be satire or the campy fun of a soap opera, the super-wealthy characters mostly spend their time defending their right to be upset.

Taking itself far too seriously the script shamelessly uses an empty bird nest to illustrate the changing nature of parenting, and it’s passed about in the manner of a fizzing cartoon bomb.

Plus seeing Williams in a pashmina and meditating barefoot in an exclusive hotel suite, recalls Paul Hogan in 1980s comedy Crocodile Dundee, but without the acute social observations or self-mocking sense of humour.