Roald Dahl’s eponymous 1983 novel, first brought to the big screen in a 1990 film helmed by Nicolas Roeg, gets a spirited second adaptation with The Witches.

In place of Rodgers’ mother-and-daughter duo, Freaky features a vicious serial killer known as The Butcher (Vince Vaughn) and misfit high school student Millie Kessler (Kathryn Newton).

As demonstrated by the popularity of his long-running TV series The West Wing, Aaron Sorkin has a knack for making politics interesting.

The title may be an oxymoron, but there’s nothing paradoxical about Honest Thief (Open Road); it’s a solid, entertaining action-thriller.

Humour goes AWOL during The War With Grandpa (101 Studios).

Far-fetched and ham-fisted, the grim fantasy Antebellum (Lionsgate) is marked by an outlook on timely racial issues that lacks both balance and a humane spirit.

Satan does seem to be having his way around the clock in the harrowingly grim, mayhem-ridden drama The Devil All the Time (Netflix). In fact, various forms of perversity are so pervasive in the film that it skirts the border of the offensive.

The early medieval Ballad of Mulan tells of the exploits of a heroine who, disguised as a man, distinguished herself as a warrior.

Of the numerous film adaptations of Charles Dickens’ autobiographical 1850 novel, The Personal History of David Copperfield (Fox Searchlight) may rank as the happiest.

Sixty years ago, Rod Taylor hopped on a fancy sled for a loopy journey into the future in The Time Machine. Twenty-five years later, Michael J Fox went in the opposite chronological direction – with a DeLorean and much more comedy – in Back to the Future.