Cert U 92mins Stars 4

Buzzing with huge amounts of charm and humour, this wonderfully inventive and engaging animation is fun-packed family treat combining action, romance and a strong eco-theme.

A standalone companion to 2014’s award winning adventure, Minuscule: Valley of the Lost Ants, this uses the same technique of seamlessly mixing real life locations and people with animated insects.

When a pair of ladybirds inadvertently undergo a perilous trip from their French Alpine home to the Caribbean, a spider and an ant team up to rescue them.

Storms, sharks and venus fly traps are among the dangers, but rather than being outright scary, the marvellous musical accompaniment gives the derring do action the feel of a 1930’s swashbuckling cliffhanger serial.

All the creatures communicate with appealing whistles and raspberries, and the absence of dialogue adds to the feeling of old fashioned fun. Meanwhile the emphasis on the need for cooperation across cultural borders adds a timely message to the joyous and tender heroism.

Cert 15 mins 169 Stars 4

Pennywise the demon killer clown returns with top dollar thrills in this stomach-churning supernatural sequel which is guaranteed to be the horror blockbuster of the year.

Full of strong character work, crowd-pleasing humour and eye-watering rip-your-throat-out terror, as great performances power a dark and emotional narrative which erupt into a psychotic trippy nightmare.

Based on Stephen King’s 1986 novel, it’s set in 2016, 27 years after the events of Chapter 1, and Pennywise has returned to torment the now adult members of the self-styled Losers Club, who gather once more in their small home town of Derry.

The gang are now played by stars such as James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain and Bill Hader, with the latter delighting in the opportunity for caustic banter, and stealing his every scene.

Their chemistry generates a sense of shared experience and delivers a credible emotional weight to anchor the knowingly over-the-top action.

And sporting sharp rabbit teeth and a deliciously insane giggle, Swedish actor Bill Skarsgard’s brings a magnificent malevolence to his performance as Pennywise.

Plus having adults as the focus of the story allows the filmmakers to really push the button on the violence and gore, much more than could be done in the first film, and this is all the better for it.

A canny mix of CGI effects and physical props such as human-headed spiders and bleeding bathtubs populate a landscape of dirty syringes, sewers, spooky houses and fairgrounds.

However once again real violence such as domestic abuse is more chilling than the supernatural, plus there’s a human psychopath on the loose the Loser’s Club must also contend with.

The running time is used to do justice to King’s lengthy novel, and is full of madness, memory, guilt and trauma, and while definitely not for the squeamish, this is also a touching lament for lost friends and the camaraderie of childhood.

Don’t worry if you missed or have forgotten 2017’s multi-million pound smash first chapter, as the original young cast reprise their roles in so many flashbacks this is practically a standalone film. And you’re braver than me if you dare to watch it alone.

Cert 15 98mins Stars 2

Superman star Henry Cavill leads a police team on a dull trudge through this solemn and lacklustre serial killer crime thriller which takes itself far too seriously for it’s own good, and suffers as a consequence suffers a near fatal breakdown.

The brooding and bearded Brit actor is the detective investigating the murders of young women, an outrageous case involving multiple personality disorder, paedophiles and online grooming.

Alexandra Daddario plays his psychobabble expert, with Stanley Tucci his sweary boss and Nathan Fillion as his tech guy, though none of whom are given room to add depth or subtlety.

On the plus side we have Ben Kingsley as a baseball bat swinging vigilante, who’s teamed with the winningly nonchalant and foul-mouthed Eliana Jones.

But mostly it’s an ill-judged, silly and grim experience full of uninspired set pieces, with an overcooked potboiler plot which feels compelled to provide a measure of mawkish family values to digest its own grisly indulgences.

Cert 15 113mins Stars 2

This dreary drug rehab drama is based on an 1990’s memoir by James Frey which achieved infamy when it’s accuracy was challenged.

Creative couple Sam and Aaron Taylor-Johnson wrote the screenplay with Sam directing and Aaron playing the lead role of James, who begins the film being dragged into a Christian rehab clinic.

Although at times Sam directs with a visual inventiveness which would make a Trainspotting-era Danny Boyle envious, and her husband commits to his part with a swinging physical performance, for the greatest stretch this is dull slog.

Plus for a character who we’re told has destroyed his innards and is one alcoholic drink away from death, there’s no disguising Taylor-Johnson still has the buff body from his Marvel superhero days.

Fellow inmates Billy Bob Thornton and Giovanni Ribisi do their best to maintain morale with homilies and camp humour, the former as a gangster with a unique dress sense, the latter as a self-styled sexual ninja. But the drama and the comedy jar instead of complementing each other.

A low key Juliette Lewis offers empathy as a counsellor, and as older James’ brother, Charlie Hunnam once again demonstrates how dynamite on set can translate to a damp squib on screen.

We’re offered romance, some effective dental torture scenes, and a positive message, but due to the lead character’s lack of personal hinterland, the finale fails to land the emotional punch it aims for.

Cert 15 113mins Stars 3

This hard-edged old school crime thriller is a resolutely grim and increasingly violent affair, and holds your attention with to a hardworking cast, decent production values and a twisty story which holds its best tricks until the end.

Swedish actor Joel Kinnaman scowls and growls through the mean streets of New York as Pete, for all the world a heavily tattooed Athena poster wrought to rippling life, and a ‘soldier’ in the Polish drugs cartel who are importing huge quantities of heroin into the US.

Though Kinnaman is far from miscast, he’s the most Scandinavian looking Pole you’re ever likely to encounter.

Pete’s also working as an informer for the FBI in the hope of leaving the criminal life and making a fresh start with his adorable daughter and loving wife. The latter is played by Cuban actress Ana de Armas, who’s soon to appear in the next James Bond film, No Time to Die.

But when a drug deal goes wrong and leaves a New York cop dead, Pete is forced to take the fall, and he runs in ever decreasing and desperate circles trying to escape of the clutches of the Feds and the mobsters.

Rosamund Pike is an American-accented agent with a conflicted conscience, whose boss is another Brit star, Clive Owen. A veteran of twisty Hollywood movies such as 2009’s Duplicity, his casting is significant in a small but pivotal role.

Filling the plot with corrupt ambassadors, foreigners flooding the US with drugs, wronged army veterans and honest blue-collar cops, the script unashamedly
leans into the political narrative of the current US administration.

It’s adapted from a Swedish crime novel, and though Italian director Andrea Di Stefano, is more comfortable giving the violence a bloody realism than offering depth to the few domestic scenes, he delivers a dry but effective entertainment.

Cert PG 91mins Stars 4

A dream team of British acting talent combine to create a moving portrait of an artist as a middle aged man, in this achingly melancholic biopic of ‘matchstick men’ painter, L. S. Lowry.

Having won awards for playing another great artist in Mike Leigh’s 2014 film, Mr Turner, Timothy Spall carries himself with a sad, quiet dignity while being dominated by his bed-ridden, self-pitying and snobbish mother.

She’s played by the grand dame of English acting, Vanessa Redgrave, she relishes the dialogue of Salford screenwriter Martyn Hesford, whose lines have the comic observation of playwright, Alan Bennett.

A thwarted concert pianist, the embittered woman tries to persuade her son from pursing his passion for painting, while he earns money as a rent collector.

Director Adrian Noble provides a claustrophobic canvas for his stars to bring a testy and tender relationship to full drawn life.