If hype, 'likes' and advanced ticket sales are any indication of success, box offices around the world will get a boost this weekend with the release of the much anticipated adaptation of author EL James' "mummy porn" phenomenon, Fifty Shades of Grey.
The media and public fascination with Stephen Hawking has, it seems to me, always been driven by a mixture of infantilising sentimentalism and morbid curiosity.
Given the civil rights subject matter, the greatness of Martin Luther King as the man at the centre of the story, and relevance today it's surprising Selma isn't a bigger, flashier film.
As french as croissants aux amandes and so extravagantly theatrical that you can practically smell the greasepaint in the cinema, this small and goofy French comedy follows the struggles of a young teenager to come to terms with his sexual identity.
Great drama speaks to any day in which it is performed. The second-most famous play by the great Arthur Miller deals with the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, in the late 17th century.
There are times in this brilliantly acted and understated psychological drama when it seems very little happens at all, but when the lights go up you're left reeling by the culmination of events that have quietly unfolded.
Unassuming and amiable, this road-trip buddy comedy, which played in the festival last year, belongs squarely in the sub-genre of very-low-budget American indies with untrained actors and improvised dialogue that has been dubbed mumblecore.
Fed up with a lack of stimulating female leads in Hollywood, Reese Witherspoon formed a production company and started making her own work. She's created herself a doozy (and a deserved Oscar nomination) playing Cheryl Strayed in Wild.
The recent movies that have looked at the impact of dementia - Away From Her, The Savages, Aurora Borealis, A Song For Martin, Lovely, Still - have tended to focus on the effect on those left behind as the light dies.
Two movies in and Angelina Jolie the director seems to have already developed a speciality. Her debut In the Land of Blood and Honey was about a Bosnian prisoner of war.
A patient watchfulness and an often exquisite visual sensibility distinguish the first film outside his native Norway by writer director Poppe.
A searching examination of middle-class complacency and gender roles in an age of us-or-them individualism, this assured Swedish drama is the kind of film that's hard to watch and harder still to tear your eyes away from.
The story of Chris Kyle - the "Most Lethal Sniper in US Military History" as his autobiography described him - might have been another kind of movie.
Given the backstory of the main character in this film, it's hard to avoid thinking of Icarus, who, became the epitome of ambition thwarted by hubris.
In the 1994 original Dumb and Dumber there was something endearing about Lloyd and Harry's idiotic, crude behaviour.
If you thought the lovable penguins were out of control in 2012's zany third instalment of the Madagascar franchise, Europe's Most Wanted, then think again.
An all-star cast brings Disney's adaptation of the James Lapine/Stephen Sondheim musical to life on the big screen, and it's hard not to get wrapped up in their obvious enthusiasm.
Five times honoured at Cannes, Turkish writer-director Nuri Bilge Ceylan won the festival's supreme Palme d'Or last year with this film.
TimeOut presents the best in movies, games, TV and albums for 2014.
Paddington was a creation of the 1950s, but the story of this polite, accident-prone bear from the depths of Peru has translated nicely into the present day.
Pitch-perfect acting and a fine control of high emotion that never slips into treacly sentiment distinguish this small and lovely ensemble piece by writer-director Ira Sachs, who gave us 2008's memorable dark farce, Married Life.
The new film for French cinema's leading lady has nothing to do with the fabled Paris cabaret of the title.
And so it ends, with a hiss and a roar. Actually, many hisses and many roars - those from that dragon from the previous instalment going down in flames at the beginning.
The cool good looks and technical confidence of this self-funded feature belie its limited budget. But they can't compensate for a seriously underdeveloped script.
Following her roles in Gone Girl and Hector's Search for Happiness, Rosamund Pike again finds herself in a troubled relationship, this time as Abi, a mum of three in the process of divorcing husband Doug (Tennant).