When Alyce makes the turn towards dismembering madness it’s hard not become infatuated with what she is going to do next or how she imagines she’s going to extricate herself from an increasingly blood-splattered dilemma of her own creation. It’s fascinating, disgusting and horrific all at the same time, everything building to an eerily ghoulish conclusion of malevolent serenity that caused my blood to run icily cold.

Before Midnight, like its predecessors, is a masterpiece, and I have a feeling I’ll be holding it near and dear to my heart for the rest of my life.

Everything builds to the expected conclusion of Flash! and Boom! and Bang! and numerous more exclamations I can’t bring myself to mention. It’s pointless, and the only true emotion I felt watching Epic was a growing furious anger over just how inept all of this ultimately proved to be.

The movie is remarkable in most ways that matter, and I’m sure many are going to take away an amazing amount of insight into a world few know anything about that they otherwise wouldn’t have garnered without seeing it. But, for me at least, none of this meant near enough, my own feelings and views sadly invading my headspace as I watched things play themselves out to conclusion. I admired Fill the Void but I didn’t like it, and no matter how hard I try to make myself change that opinion sadly that’s just one thing at this time I simply cannot do.

A modern day adaptation of the Henry James novel, What Maisie Knew is an emotionally-charged, delicately authentic knockout tale of a child learning to circumnavigate an adult world while maintaining her wide-eyed exuberance about life and its potential in the process.

Unlike a lot of summer monstrosities that label themselves as being nothing more than “dumb fun” but forget to treat the audience with respect, Fast & Furious 6 remembers that people who do in fact watch this might actually have brain. While the movie itself is pretty stupid, it doesn’t treat viewers as being so themselves, understanding and respecting the audience in a way big budget enterprises of similar ilk rarely do.

It’s ebullient and joyous but still laced without the proper amount of pain and pathos, everything working in incandescent tandem with its various pieces in order to make the movie come alive to its own free-flowing beat. Make no mistake, Frances Ha is a stunning achievement, an exercise in pure cinema that’s as rare as it is spectacular.

The Wolfpack have lost their bark, been declawed and certainly no longer have anything close to resembling a bite, and I for one am thankful I won’t have to be running through the cinematic forest with them again anytime soon.

Problem is, after so much build up, after a great introduction to the possibilities of doing something fresh and original with characters many of us might think have done it all, the movie doesn’t just drop the ball it pops it with a bobby pin leaving its shriveled and lifeless husk out on the playing field like bits of discarded garbage. The last third of the movie is an insult, having characters do things, not because they need to, but more because having them do it just calls more attention to the fact the filmmakers are repeating in their own mirror-world way what has already happened before.