BRIDGE OF SPIES (12A, 141 mins)

Director: Steven Spielberg

3 stars

Inspired by real events that took place between the late 1950s and early 60s, Steven Spielberg’s latest is a handsome drama that struggles to come to life during its stately course.

American and Russian spies plying their trade during the Cold War is the set-up, and it starts in sprightly and appealing fashion as a seemingly bumbling man (Mark Rylance) resorts to old school trickery and deception to give his FBI pursuers the slip. When the Feds finally catch up with him and raid his flat, we learn his name is Abel, and he is arrested and accused of being a Russian spy.

Even though he’s hated by the entire nation, noises are made that Abel be given a fair trial - even if the judge is immediately biased against him. A well respected insurance lawyer, James Donovan (Tom Hanks), is asked to defend him, but other than a few moments this is not a courtroom movie.

Abel is quickly found guilty but Donovan becomes a hate figure for defending him, especially as he wants to appeal. Meanwhile we continually cut to a group of pilots being trained to fly spy planes, though this is not really a spy movie either when it comes down to it. Don’t be fooled into thinking it’s a thriller either, just because the trailer shows a couple of moments of Donovan being followed down dark streets by shadowy men.

What all this long road of a set-up is leading towards eventually takes us to Berlin where the Wall is going up. An American pilot has been arrested by the Russians after his U-2 plane crashes and they want a spy swap, Abel for the pilot, and the CIA ask Donovan to travel to Germany to handle the transfer.

So eventually Bridge of Spies becomes about the Cold War preparing to enter a period of deep freeze, but it’s certainly not overloaded with thrills or even particularly memorable scenes. It doesn’t exhibit Spielberg’s usual flair, with some cheesy camerawork even while it looks amazing, gorgeously filmic and textured thanks to his long-term cinematographer Janusz Kaminski.

The Europeans all sound like they're doing a Peter Lorre impression while some scenes played oddly comical, and it goes round in circles in this Berlin-set second half. It makes for a curious movie, one that’s generally watchable but often tedious and more than a little dry, and it’s Spielberg’s stodgiest in many a year. Rylance is probably the most fun thing in the movie, doing a terrific Scottish accent for reasons that are never really made clear – he’s Russian but has a British passport.

With Hanks, Spielberg and a script by the Coen brothers, this is a movie filled with pedigree yet strangely lacking. Hanks is good as should be expected, and the dogged and honourable Donovan is a fine figure to build a movie around; it’s just a shame it’s such an underwhelming one.

BLACK MASS (15, 123 mins)

Director: Scott Cooper

3 stars

The seedy world of gangsters in 1970s Boston is the setting for this solid but very familiar story of real life criminal James “Whitey” Bulger (Johnny Depp), whose position was more or less created by the FBI. Bulger’s brother (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a senator, and old neighbourhood pal John Connolly (Joel Edgerton) is a Fed tasked with eradicating mafia presence in Boston, though neither actors nor characters convince.

Connolly thinks he and Jimmy should work together and this alliance allows Bulger to go from small time to kingpin to controlling most of the crime in the city. It’s Depp’s best work in years, and with his reptilian face and shark eyes he makes for a chilling psycho, inhabiting the character rather than becoming a caricature like we’ve seen so often from him of late.

But in form and content there’s very little that hasn’t already been seen in many similar crime films. On those terms it’s fairly watchable, just nothing special, but where it strikes out on its own is that as much takes place amongst the authorities as the criminals in a world where paranoia, betrayal and incompetence is rife on both sides.

A handful of individual scenes crackle and this is a crisp piece of filmmaking on the whole, but its sheer familiarity works against it, not just Depp’s own Donnie Brasco, but the daddy of them all, Goodfellas. Scorsese has pretty much closed the book on the genre, and though there’s much to appreciate here, if you’ve seen a gangster movie in the last quarter century, you’ve seen Black Mass.

CAROL (15, 119 mins)

Director: Todd Haynes

4 stars

Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Price of Salt is adapted into this luscious 1950s-set romantic drama in which buttoned-down Therese (Rooney Mara) works in a New York department store.

It’s here she first encounters Carol (Cate Blanchett), a wealthy socialite in the process of divorcing her husband, and the two are drawn to each other.

Because of when it’s set, words like “morality” and “conduct” are thrown around by characters who disapprove of their burgeoning love as it glides along methodically, built on lingering glances and touches without really expressing what is going on.

There’s not actually a great deal of content, but it’s so composed, so precise that it grips throughout, aided by a very internalised performance from Mara and an imperious but radiant Blanchett. It’s painterly, breathy and ever so slightly heightened, creating a wonderful sense of place and time, and it’s up there with Brooklyn as the year’s best romance.

THE GOOD DINOSAUR (PG, 101 mins)

Director: Peter Sohn

3 stars

The second animated feature from Pixar to be released this year has been through a troubled production, and emerges as a strangely half-formed thing that Inside Out should have no problem seeing off, in both hearts and minds and at the Oscars.

The Good Dinosaur takes as its premise the notion that dinosaurs never went extinct, and we meet a family of herbivores as their eggs are hatching, one of whom will become our hero, Arlo.

It's an odd direction for Pixar to take, the sort of anthropomorphised critter effort churned out by their pretenders, but it turns out to have a good hook.

Arlo is timid and afraid, so in order to make his mark his dad tasks him with catching and killing whatever has been stealing their food, which turns out to be a young boy, the twist being that Arlo speaks and the boy doesn't.

It's basically How to Train Your Dragon in reverse, as Arlo ends up lost with the dog-like caveboy, whom he names Spot, in tow.

As they go through a series of scrapes and adventures trying to get home, Arlo learning bravery and friendship, it takes a while to find its feet. But once it gets going there are moments of visual poetry, while it looks very special from top to bottom.

There are neat touches, like Arlo's family being farmers and T-Rexes being cow herders, but laughs are hard to come by and it's all just a bit lightweight and lacking in depth. Younger kids may find it more to their liking, despite some Bambi's mother wrenches, but there's nothing groundbreaking going on here that would explain why the film took so long to come to fruition.