Catherine Shoard

There is comfort and joy in the routine and delight in the details. Not just the thumb-smudges and dusty crockery (Wallace has become so reliant on smart tech that he keeps pressing the teapot lid, befuddled, in hope of a cuppa), but the more startling flights of fancy.

There’s something grating about a film which insists on detailing its pseudo-science while also conceding you probably won’t have followed a thing. We’re clobbered with plot then comforted with tea-towel homilies about how what’s happened has happened.

For all its absurdity and the family friendly bloodlessness (despite the copious violence), it spins along very smoothly and efficiently.

Hidden Figures is a bouncy, almost garish feelgood girl pic. A movie that knows right from wrong and doesn’t see any use in complicating matters.

This film is conceived as a showcase for its performers, and, as that, it is immaculate.

For what is, in essence, a by-numbers Disney sports flick, there’s endless freshness and vivacity to Mira Nair’s picture – her best in years.

What we have here is an embedded report that sacrifices impartiality for access. But what access.

The peripheral interviews with the extended Spicer family are as compelling as the central quest; this is a film with rare honesty and nuance in a field that frequently feels queasy.

Guggenheim largely dodges lodging her story within a greater political context; a choice, but a shame, for when he does, the movie gains tension.

As high-class cheese goes, Truth slips down fine. It’s a noisy, one-note rally for the converted that gets your pulse racing even if you’re rolling your eyes.