Kevin Maher

When the rushed conclusion arrives at 90 minutes, the feeling is one of crushing disappointment, minor betrayal and sadness. What do we want? More Wham! Where do we want it? In this film!

Despite the film’s undeniable emotional power, there is evident frustration about where this drama might have gone if freed from the limitations of overfamiliar box-ticking biff-bammery.

The prospect of a reconciliation is the main, and indeed only, driver in a film that’s seemingly more concerned with illustrating the iniquities of our gross “comphet” (compulsory heterosexuality) society than bothering with anything so trivial as dramatic tension, character arcs or narrative subplots.

There is a palpable yearning for primal storytelling and a need for art that can inform and instruct as well as entertain. Nolan has done it. This is the artwork.

The performances are impeccable, the characters impossibly well balanced. Wilde the film-maker is unimpeachable here.

Despite Alcock’s efforts, Supergirl fails to uplift the superhero genre.

The acting is feeble but for a solid turn from Idris Elba as the boozy bodyguard Duncan. The action is jeopardy-free and repetitive. And although the pitiful script, in vague development hell for more than two decades, seems determined to recast He-Man as a delicate, left-leaning protagonist, a finale involving gloriously captured face punches and broken jaws leaves us in no doubt that he remains a two-fisted Trumpian warrior and 1980s to the core.

It's like watching fantastically dull scenarios from the 2007 first person video game Portal apparently a source of inspiration for Parsons. There are breaks for backstory — Clark had a volatile marriage; Mary's mother was sectioned — but these add little meaningful context or narrative grounding.

It’s Jones who provides the tale with emotional ballast. His softly espoused beliefs in the values of home, family and living in glorious anonymity.

Welcome back the British rom-com! It’s been a while since we’ve had a profoundly lovely film that swaggers into life from the opening disco beats (New Order’s Blue Monday) and subsequently demonstrates an unwavering surety of purpose.