PITCH PERFECT 2 (12A, 115 mins)

Director: Elizabeth Banks

3 stars

Pitch Perfect became an unexpected hit three years ago from a modest budget, introducing cinemagoers to the joys of a cappella singing and sticking the prefix aca onto words to coin the likes of aca-scuse me.

Beca (Anna Kendrick) is back as the key player in three times a cappella champions the Barden Bellas, until a wardrobe malfunction leads to scandal.

The team is banned from all competitions and not allowed to audition new recruits so it's basically the end of the Bellas, but they can compete in the world championship, which has never been won by an American team.

The first film was flimsy in the extreme, but fun and lively in its frequent numbers and undeniably entertaining and this sequel certainly continues the tradition.

The linking scenes are essentially random, peppered with some decent throwaway chuckles but never gelling into anything resembling a plot. Subplots of no particular value pop up, such as Beca interning at a record company, while entire reels of impromptu singing sessions that are fun but superfluous roll by.

On stage is where the magic happens though, and most of the songs are lively and done with pizzazz.

Elizabeth Banks moves from producer to director and pops up once again with John Michael Higgins for most of the film's funniest moments, as commentators who for some reason also seem to run the world of a cappella. Pretty much all over the place but undeniably infectious, this is breezily entertaining fare, not aca-mazing, but perfectly aca-ceptable.

A ROYAL NIGHT OUT (12A, 97 mins)

Director: Julian Jarrold

2 stars

It's VE Day in 1945, and Princess Elizabeth and her sister Margaret are envious of all the people out celebrating while they're stuck inside Buckingham Palace.

Inspired very, very loosely by true events, this weak comedy sees the girls head out into the London streets with their chaperones for a night of incognito partying, with various mild escapades along the way.

Though this seems like it should be a jolly romp, once it gets going it's just a lot of wandering about to no great effect, often down the same cobbled street.

Although there are some impressively recreated crowd scenes around Trafalgar Square, jokes about propriety and class are about the only joke the film has. Bel Powley provides the most fun as Margaret and Sarah Gadon is fine as the future queen in a film that's not unpleasant, just lacking.

CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA (15, 124 mins)

Director: Olivier Assayas

3 stars

Famed actress Maria Enders (Juliette Binoche) travels with her personal assistant Valentine (Kristen Stewart) to the Swiss town of Sils to rehearse for an upcoming play that she or may not star in.

She's been in the play before, but two decades earlier when she played the younger of the two leads, and this sharp drama could be likened to last year's Maps to the Stars, wherein a veteran actress revisits her past glories.

Much of the film is Maria and Valentine together, and much of that is line readings and rehearsal, and as the play and real conversations weave and bleed together, fears and anxieties about aging are revealed.

There's an awful lot going on here, some of it too enigmatic for its own good at times, and it can occasionally become a patience tester.

But it's meaty and satisfying at its best and Binoche and Stewart both deliver exceptional, natural performances that carry the film through its less compelling stretches.