It should have been an effortless performance for a man who has made that word entirely his own in film after film, including a couple directed by himself. Where from then this laborious effort and this creaking film, despite the little-known jewel of a story from the greatest war the planet has seen? The actor-director and co-screenwriter drowns it in not only very cliched characterisations but in very strange and half-hearted flippancy contrasted with amazingly soporific speeches.

It’s a delight to watch the wooing of Travers by the Disney team, also including the scriptwriter of the Mary Poppins film Don DaGradi and the lyricist-musician duo of the Sherman brothers. She spars over everything from Mr Bank’s moustache to the dancing penguins, and it’s a nice observation into what an artist feels letting go of his or her life’s work. One can see the little girl in that ageing woman almost at every turn.

NEVER one to shy away from human privation, be it in Hunger or Shame, McQueen offers here in one horrific scene the brutality of slavery and the helplessness of blacks against their white masters.

…this film produced by Anant Singh and based on the South African leader’s autobiography by the same name, treats its subject with that delicate reverence, bathing him in drippling sunlight and framing him more than once as a heroic figure against scenic backdrops of his loved land. It sacrifices small details for a rushed narrative, and a deeper understanding for a biopic that touches upon the many chapters of Mandela’s eventful life without touching anything closely.

…It’s easy to see why the film is scooping those awards. For it may be about two con artists, an ambitious FBI agent, and a showman, if do-gooder politician, but rarely will you see character sketches as detailed about largely middle-aged people dealing with “the art of survival”.

There’s nothing that comes as a surprise in Walter Mitty, least of all the tiresomely predictable daydreams he goes into as the film opens. And his discovery of his true self happens with too few wrinkles, and with too unlikely a hinge, to make an impression.

The Wolf of Wall Street isn’t about Belfort the stock manipulator who cheated poor people of hard-earned savings. It isn’t really about Wall Street either. It is about the culture that allows one to breed the other, and vice-versa.

It’s sad then that such magnificent creatures have been laid unnecessarily low by the dialogues humans have saddled them with.

If A sequel takes four years coming, chances are it will be more cloudy than meaty. Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2 lives true to that fear, with a riot of colours for imagination but nothing in either the story or the dialogue to match up to it.

Jackson builds up quite a spectacle as he conjures up different lands, particularly the Lake People. However, as was the case with The Unexpected Journey, his eye appears to have moved from the characters to the circumstances they find themselves in, and you often long to care for some of them.