Adrian Horton

The Love Hypothesis demonstrates that you can have all the right ingredients for a romcom, but movie magic has never been a science.

The midnight margarita redux may feel obligatory, but there’s just enough magic here to still, despite everything, cast a peculiar spell.

I’m reluctant to value brawn over everything else, but given the ignominious glut of straight-to-streaming background noise, it’s hard to root against a theatrical release that, knowingly or not, lands some truly cataclysmic punches with enough over-the-top silliness to force a smile. That some heart got lost in transit is, in this case, just fine.

Reminders of Him does, in fact, remind of that earlier time, when It Ends With Us over-delivered on sweeping sentimentality, a brief glow before everything curdled. We cannot go back there, but I’ve heard far less pleasurable echoes.

Written by Colby Day, In the Blink of an Eye attempts no less than the sweep of life from big bang to unknown verdant planets, with the emotional depth of a tide pool and the complexity of a cave painting.

This is, against great odds and surely some western expectations, a beguiling hangout film – an invitation to the dinner party, a fascinating window into a group of underground artists who carry on despite the risks, a representation of creativity under surveillance. A snapshot of everyday resistance, the fight for a freedom from the bottom up. And most effectively, a moving portrait of one nutritive, symbiotic friendship in transition.

It’s both a sublime hang-out of a film and a celebration of individual achievements, a fascinating map of a long-ago scene and a referendum on legacy.

For a film so sincerely intent on bringing us into the process of sibling grief, I still left a stranger.

Chasing Summer at least outruns the charge of being boring, though at what cost.

The road through year 10 may be rocky, but Manners is a confident guide – her film-making is splashy and stylish throughout, shrewdly conveying just how much one can learn, and break, in a year.