Tom Shone

The film is too talky and play-like to properly satisfy as cinema, but if you can roll with the dramatic slenderness, the pairing of McKellen and Coel never ceases to be delicious.

The sequel is a fully throated swansong now that the dragon is an endangered species facing the consignment store.

Mazin’s script has some fun with whodunnit tropes — the late-arriving wild card, the police blaming a drifter, the clue lying in the victim — but the film’s flaw is fairly straightforward: the sheep don’t do enough detecting.

The film plays like a well-leafed anthology of Irish folklore, handsomely enough shot but lacking the unifying conceit that has driven, say, the great Australian horror movies of recent years: The Bababook, Talk to Me, Bring Her Back. Hangings, hauntings, howling winds? For McCarthy, it’s all just good craic.

Remarkably Bright Creatures milks My Octopus Teacher for Hallmark-card dollops of anthropomorphic sentiment, but fails to live up to the promise of its title, abundantly. Nice but dim is closer to the mark.

The sidewinding rhythm of the film will probably throw some, but that’s all the more reason to see it in the theatre: a lot goes on beneath the surface, the lack of signposting has a cumulative power, and the ending is a beauty, mixing heartbreak, hope and the boy, Fernando, who has been patiently waiting for his father all along.

Layton’s direction is powerful but patient and Berry brings real bite to her insurance agent, who at 53 is prey to the bitter realisation that the system is not built in her favour.

Provocation is just people-pleasing upside down — it has the same empty rattle. A wind whistles through the centre of this film, and not the Brontëan kind.

Reinsve seems to give nothing away and yet there’s not a scene she’s in where we’re not clued into Nora’s emotions. The acting is almost invisible. Nora, it becomes clear, is the mirror image of her father: giving free rein to her emotions only under the cover of the art.

It’s a wonderfully raw, moving and funny film about sibling niggles and family heartbreak, filled with biting humour, button-sized observation, noisy kids, frayed tempers and armpit farts. In short, a perfect movie to watch with your family as you contemplate the looming festivities.