On the Rocks has an unusual premise. Laura (Rashida Jones), a New York City novelist and mother of two young daughters, suspects her husband Dean (Marlon Wayans) is having an affair with a co-worker, Fiona (Jessica Henwick). Laura confides her fears to Felix (Bill Murray) and they’re soon zipping around Manhattan at night pursuing Dean and Fiona in Felix’s dyspeptic Alfa Romeo.

What news on the rialto? Not much of particular buoyancy or light in the Peter Mackie Burns film Rialto, which takes a grimly focused view of a married Irishman's struggle with his same-sex leanings. Adapted by Mark O'Halloran from his 2011 stage two-hander Trade, the movie is anchored by superb performances from a trio of talents who will be known to theatre devotees.

Barring a few outliers, British indies tend to follow the same formula: serious subjects told seriously. Whether it’s a council estate, a rural farm, or a seaside town, you can always rely on that trademark tension and realism we Brits do so well. What a shock to the system Eternal Beauty is then, filled with more imagination than almost anything else out this year.

Aaron Sorkin’s latest powerhouse drama couldn’t come at a more opportune moment. Rife with the director’s rapid-fire dialogue, this courtroom drama is set in the wake of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago and bubbles (sometimes froths) with a raw energy, tackling the thorny subjects of justice, racial equality and war.

Beauty queen pageants have long been ripe for parody, from their plastic glamour to the Machiavellian competitiveness. Miss Juneteenth opts for a much more nuanced approach, using the pageant as a focal point for a mother and daughter navigating their difficult present and possible future. It’s a universal story of familial love, told and performed with deftness and real personality.

Building very promisingly on the achievement of his debut feature Lilting from six years ago, in Monsoon Hong Khaou has crafted a delicate study of displacement and loss, one that’s all the more memorable for being understated. Cultural disorientation is becoming almost a trademark for the director, and it’s present in his new film in what feels a more personal context.

It’s no secret that Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous creation lays claim to more appearances on screen than any other fictional character. Over the past several decades, we’ve seen Sherlock as a pugilist action-hero, a modern-day sleuth, and in a painfully unfunny slapstick guise.

Beavis and Butthead’s vicious grunge-era gormlessness remains interred, Wayne and Garth (and their stars’ careers) are too superannuated to revive. But here are the slightest of Gen X’s idiot double-acts, back again to save the universe in a time-travelling phone-box.

September 18th is the 50th anniversary of Jimi Hendrix’s death, an appropriate moment to release Hendrix and the Spook, a documentary exploring the vexed question: was it murder, suicide or a tragic accident? Trying to unravel this conundrum, director Tim Conrad sifts through the evidence, speculates about the crucial unknowns and, rather unconvincingly, creates possible end game scenarios.

The most painterly and ominous sequence in Nocturnal naturally occurs at night. Until recently strangers, 33-year-old Pete (Cosmo Jarvis) and 17-year-old Laurie (Lauren Coe) gaze across a body of seawater to a miniature chemistry set – a tract of illuminated industrial buildings and smoke-belching cooling towers. Initially these bright satanic mills occupy the foot of the frame, the rest of it a vast black void; then they glide disarmingly close to Pete and Laurie as he drives among them.