Grapple as long as you want with this wrestling based British comedy, but you’ll struggle to pin down any laughs among the amiable goings on.

A Yorkshire community must rally around to save the local boozer from closure by the villainous brewery boss, a pantomime Stephen Tompkinson.

So to raise the cash and inspired by the internet, pub landlord Stephen Graham and his OAP regulars reform the Panthers, the professional wrestling team of their long ago prime.

Full of nostalgia the exploits of Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks, this aims to be a feelgood crowd pleaser such as the far superior The Full Monty or Brassed Off.

It’s a celebration of two inextricably linked British institutions, the local boozer and has-been sportsmen. And it feels very familiar as if it’s a feature length episode of a not great TV show such as The Last Of The Summer Wine. But on steroids, and not in a good way.

It’s always great to see actors such as Stephen Graham, Julian Sands, Jill Halfpenny and Sue Johnston on screen. And there’s no doubt they’re having a great time and the film’s heart is in the right place.

Nicolas Cage unleashes his inner maniac to demented effect in this outrageous and funny satirical comedy horror.

Often uncomfortable to watch and daring to voice unspeakable truths about parenting, he and Selma Blair play a very ordinary middled-aged suburban couple with a couple of kids.

One day a mass psychosis grips their nondescript town, and parents start murdering children, but only their own.

It’s amazing how homes lend themselves to inflicting bodily harm, what with all the power tools, wire coat hangers and cooking implements lying around.

And this being the US, personal firearms, also.

Brutal, mercilessly acerbic and mercifully brief it shows parenting is not all love and kisses, but jealousy, resentment and a form of madness.

Watching Cage work out his aggression was curiously cathartic, and I’m not sure it’s healthy to laugh as much as I did.

My son should be grateful I didn’t see this when he was teething.

Kate Winslet has been grievously overlooked during awards season for her magnificent turn in Woody Allen’s dark period drama, his 48th film as director.

When even your leading lady distances herself from your movie for political reasons, one suspects #timesup for Allen’s big screen career.

His work exists within its own little bubble, and it’s the small differences which separate his films from each other. We have a familiar complex family dynamic, a central female role, and Italian gangsters threatening violence.

For the most urban of directors, it’s almost alarming to find this one is set on the beach and filled with bold saturated colour.

Cinematographer Vittorio Storaro can be considered a co-author of this film the way Gordon Willis is the co-author of Allen’s Manhattan. And as Diane Keaton’s performance is key to the success of Allen’s 1979 masterpiece, so Winslet could be considered a co-author here. 

In a welcome gender inversion, Winslet plays the ‘Woody Allen’ character, a neurotic and romantically minded waitress called Ginny, having an affair with a younger lover.

Justin Timberlake is the hunky lifeguard on whom she projects a fantasy future together. As narrator, his character tells us at the beginning he enjoys big metaphor and broad characters and that’s what we get, with everything given an astonishing degree of artifice.

From the over-written dialogue, calculated performances and stagey confines, to the too shiny cars and bright nostalgic sunshine, everything is overcooked to represent how the dream world Ginny loses herself in.

A Ferris wheel dominates the landscape, as a knowingly absurdly kitsch representation of the wheel of fortune. While Winslet is often filmed in red light and at one point swathed in smoke, illustrating how she’s her trapped in a hell of her own making.

The choice between fantasy and reality is reinforced by her step-daughter who is happier having left the fake lifestyle of her wealthy husband and returned home to a more real existence. And of course characters escape the real world by hiding in the cinema.

As ever in Allen’s films, when someone chooses to pursue a fantasy existence over harsh reality, tragic events occur. This is closer in tone to 1989’s Crimes and Misdemeanours than 2016’s Cafe Society, and though there are humorous moments, this is not one of Allen’s funny ones.

 

Estranged sisters reconnect in this warm and bittersweet drama for the never-too-late generation.

Imelda Staunton is uptight and posh, but down on her luck, and has to move in with her poor but easy-going sibling, played by the saucy Celia Imrie.

It’s a British senior citizen riff on A Street Car Named Desire. Only with a lot less of Marlon Brando’s awesome sweaty animal magnetism, and a bit more cheery Timothy Spall and a nice hot cup of tea.

The veteran actors use their experience and charm to polish the pedestrian script and lift this into a sprightly and enjoyable experience, one it would be churlish to sneer at.

Gently exploring the difficulties of late middle age with good humour and sadness, it meanders a little as the producers eke their money’s worth out of Joanna Lumley.

And the message of refusing to stop dreaming just because we reach a certain age is one I’m increasingly keen to embrace.

I’m surprised this fishy tale of aquatic love has made such a big splash at the Oscars, and being nominated for 13 Academy Awards is very much of a red herring.

A dark fantasy set in the early 1960’s during the Cold War, it sees a mute cleaner begin an amorous affair with an captured humanoid sea-beast. She is moved to pity, then love and finally to free him.

This curious hybrid is neither fish nor fowl. Imagine Free Wily being remade as a gothic fairytale with The Creature from the Black Lagoon having it away with Mrs Overall from TV’s Acorn Antiques.

It’s clear from an early moment of intimacy Brit actress Sally Hawkins, is playing a very different role to the maternal Mrs Brown in the Paddington Bear films. As cleaner Elisa she’s a romantic yet lonely soul. 

And her naked scenes with the rubber costumed Amphibian Man have an unfortunate Fifty Shades of kink to them.

The real monster on show is Michael Shannon’s evil head of security, who wants to see the creature sleeping with the fishes. And Soviet spies want the ‘asset’ for their own nefarious ends.

Following the box office disappointments of Pacific Rim and Crimson Peak, Mexican writer, director and producer, Guillermo del Toro, has had to scale back his previously outlandish budgets.

Though the production design is typically detailed and rich, his use of locations, cast and CGI are kept to a minimum.

Del Toro’s heavy handed script sees many characters unable to give voice to their true identities, and are forced to live lives of compromise without love or face repercussions.

Following Hollywood’s ongoing sex scandals, this plea for tolerance, openness and inclusion is undoubtedly the reason for the film chiming so loudly with the Oscar voters.

With the message weighing down the entertainment, it’s mostly due to Hawkins’ impassioned performance this fairytale just about holds water.

 

Set sail with Colin Firth in this real life adventure which is an endurance challenge for the audience.

At 57 years old he’s missed the boat by about twenty years for this role, and he looks as if he’s been borrowing Paul McCartney’s hair dye.

The Kings Speech star plays Donald Crowhurst, an amateur yachtsman who in 1968 took up the challenge to become the first person to single-handedly circumnavigate the globe without stopping.

I’ve always been bemused when foolhardy posh people call stupid activities a sport, and expect us to care when they go wrong. For example Richard Branson’s hot air ballon rides. 

Crowhurst’s business is ailing, and similarly to Branson he sees the jaunt as an advertising opportunity.

A sentimental script asks us to have sympathy for this cowardly, underprepared chancer who quickly resorts to cheating. That’s Crowhurst not Branson, by the way.

Meanwhile your enjoyment depends on the appeal of bunking up with Firth on a soggy seven month trip. Bon voyage, old bean.

 

Director Clint Eastwood gives us the slow burn on the fast track in this seat-gripping biographical drama.

On 21 August 2015, two unarmed off-duty US servicemen and a civilian buddy were on a Paris bound train armed only with extraordinary bravery, when they prevented a potential massacre.

In a remarkable show of faith and possibly filmmaking ego, Eastwood casts Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlatos as themselves, and in fairness they do a pretty decent job. Credit to the director for tailoring his film to their abilities.

The incident occupies only a small part of the film so Eastwood can show in depth just how ordinary these blue collar guys were, going as far back to when they were naughty school kids. Once we know and like them, he dumps us next to them on the train that changed their lives.

This isn’t about terrorism or even the unnamed terrorist, but an examination of what makes a hero. You’ll want to salute them.

 

An increasingly beefy Gerard Butler rips into his role as a sleazy Los Angeles cop in this effective action heist thriller.

If you’re in the right mood the Scots actor can turn any old nonsense into entertainment, and thankfully his material here is a cut above his previous outing in the all-round disaster movie, Geostorm.

He’s hunting a crew of former marines turned ruthless bank robbers who are led by Pablo Schreiber. They’ve muscled O’Shea Jackson Jr.’s barman into being their getaway driver in a plan to steal $30million from the only LA bank which has never been robbed.

Among the deafening shoot-outs, well staged action and a great deal of toxic machismo, there are conflicted loyalties and muddled morality, with the cops boasting of being worse than the bad guys and the thieves enjoying loving family lives.

There’s no lack of ambition but it fails in comparison with its biggest influence, Michael Mann’s 1995 crime classic, Heat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hit the road for a funeral in the company of three impeccably crafted characters.

With honest chemistry, mournful perception and tremendous ability, Steve Carell, Laurence Fishburne and Bryan Cranston play three former Vietnam war soldiers who reunite in 2003.

As Carell wrestles with the US government for ownership of his late son’s corpse, his companions squabble for influence over the grieving man’s soul.

A strength of Texan director and writer Richard Linklater is his never being afraid of making his characters at times unlikeable.

Moments of black comedy brings shade to the script’s deep sadness and humanity, and though strongly anti-war and anti-authority, this is a salute to comradeship and finding dignity and honour in the service of others.

This is an unofficial sequel to Hal Ashby’s 1973 drama The Last Detail, which saw Jack Nicholson Oscar nominated for best actor. And though the names have been changed, it’s interesting to see Cranston’s take on the same role.