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.

Billed as the 13th and final instalment of the X-Men film series, The New Mutants (20th Century) slams the lid on the coffin of a once-mighty franchise with a resounding thud.

Fatima (Picturehouse), a fact-based drama from director and co-writer Marco Pontecorvo, recounts what may rank as the most remarkable series of religious events of modern times.
Namely, the 1917 apparitions of the Virgin Mother Mary (Joana Ribeiro) to three shepherd children near the Portuguese city of the title.

By Kurt Jensen Rosamund Pike stars in a scene from the movie "Radioactive". Photo: Amazon Studios/CNS. The key to any good film biography of a scientist is found in the montages that show the discovery or invention that gained the subject fame. On that score, Radioactive (Amazon), the story of Marie Curie (Rosamund Pike), the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for physics, does...

Sex is more fun than being Catholic. That’s the basic message of writer-director Karen Maine’s semi-autobiographical drama Yes, God, Yes (Vertical).

There’s an adolescent quality to the nihilism that underlies director Max Barbakow’s feature debut, the romantic comedy Palm Springs (Neon/Hulu). Its frivolous and degraded view of matters sexual is equally immature.

The novels of British author CS Forrester (1899 to 1966) have proved a rich resource for Hollywood. In 1951, for example, Gregory Peck took the title role in Captain Horatio Hornblower, playing the protagonist of Forrester’s popular series of books about the Napoleonic Wars.

The furtive world of Miami-based activists working either on behalf of or against the Castro regime in Cuba in the 1990s is lazily re-created in the undisciplined drama Wasp Network (Netflix).

While it may not be all its title promises, TV comedian-turned-writer-director Jon Stewart’s clever political satire Irresistible (Focus) is certainly appealing.

A grotesque treatment of abortion and a misguided view of faith are the most notable elements of Saint Frances (Oscilloscope).