The BFG

Two cultural giants from different spheres align to occasionally sublime results in The BFG. Steven Spielberg's film locates the beatific in its (literally) outsized star, Mark Rylance, but lapses into the banal when its eponymous Big Friendly Giant – Roald Dahl's 1982 literary creation made motion-capture fresh – isn't careering across the screen.

As a sort of companion piece to...

Chevalier

The opening shot of Chevalier trains the camera on a rocky beach surmounted by overcast skies. A dark form emerges from the water, then another and another. They're like creatures from the primordial soup making land all those millions of years ago, but actually they're scuba divers who happily pose with their catches before clubbing them to death.

Men and Chicken

Half Man Half Biscuit have nothing on this. Splicing The Three Stooges and Island of Dr Moreau, this strange Danish film finds both slapstick and pathos in its grotesque premise. Part of the micro-genre in which adopted children search for biological parents, it takes its protagonists on some especially twisted country back-roads to get to where they’re going.

Weiner

Weiner is the story of a rapid ride from comeback to meltdown. It’s an enthralling journey to witness, even if you sometimes feel like averting your eyes. What can be more inexorable than a political life – not to mention a private one – imploding on screen in a documentary where the subject has promised full access to the filmmakers, and sticks to that pledge regardless?

The Legend of Tarzan

Accustomed as we now are to superheroes who can change size and shape, fly at nuclear speeds, levitate ships and vibrate themselves through walls, a bloke wearing pedal-pushers and jumping out of trees might be considered a bit of an under-achiever. Nonetheless Tarzan is back yet again (more than 200 Tarzan movies have been made since 1918), and Warner Bros are doubtless hoping to kick off a new big-budget franchise.

Notes on Blindness

Notes on Blindness is an extraordinary film that wears its original genius lightly. The debut full-length documentary from directors Peter Middleton and James Spinney, it may seem complicated in its assembly, but has a final impact that is luminously simple. And to speak of a film whose immediate subject is the loss of sight – and by extension, of the visual element that comprises cinema itself – in terms of luminousness is finally no paradox at all.