The pop-genius-as-self-destructive-lost-soul biopic is this year’s genre du jour. We’ve already had documentaries on Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain, while coming down the pike are dramatised bios of NWA, Hank Williams, Elton John, and, again, Cobain. Now Love & Mercy, a fictionalised life of Brian (Wilson), presents the Beach Boys’ resident composer of gorgeous pop classics like "God Only Knows" as a sort of Californian Amadeus, an otherworldly savant through whom sublime music pours while he tries to escape from the domination of a stern father.

When least expected, comedy has come stumbling into the work of French auteur Bruno Dumont. In his seven films to date, from the Cannes-winning Humanité of 1999 through to the stark Camille Claudel 1915 from two years ago, the director, frequently working with non-professional actors, has marked out a distinctive territory defined by its bleakness and emotional intensity.

US films about and aimed at African Americans broadly fall into two categories: gangsta life in the ‘hood action flicks and broad comedies, the latter niche dominated by Tyler Perry, who does for Black Americans what Mrs Brown does for Irish women. Dear White People, on the other hand, is a sophisticated social satire in the vein of Spike Lee’s early She’s Gotta Have It or Bamboozled.

Oh Arnie. For two terms Arnold Schwarzenegger retooled himself as the Governator who could save California from debt, drought and Democrats. By the time his term ended, the Californian exchequer was reduced to rubble. A bit, in fact, like the Golden Gate bridge at the start of Terminator: Genisys. When the Terminator said he’d be back he wasn’t wrong. But this time he’s leading a project that’s only pretending to destroy California’s infrastructure.

“I don’t think I could handle it, I think I’d go mad.” It’s the sort of answer given by anyone asked how they’d react to fame. With the possibility looming of recognition beyond jazz circles, Amy Winehouse, who was then not so well-known, responded with something which could have appeared trite; the humble words of an aspirant not wanting to seem too big for her boots.

If Peter Bogdanovich – remember him? – weren't there in the credits, Woody Allen would seem the unmistakable director of She's Funny That Way, the way too intermittently funny trifle that calls to mind such far superior Allen paeans to the New York stage as Bullets Over Broadway and finds leading man Owen Wilson adopting Allen's mannerisms throughout (as well Wilson might, having led the cast of Midnight in Paris). 

Station to Station documents the transcontinental American rail trip taken by a group of musicians, visual artists, and performers in 2013. Local artists and marching bands also contributed to the series of "happenings", often enhanced by light shows and pretty effects, which included rock concerts staged at each of the 10 designated stops on the westward journey. Organised by the artist Doug Aitken, the marathon must have brought the contributors and audiences much pleasure. His film of it is underwhelming.

In 1998, Ian McKellen starred in Bill Condon's Gods and Monsters, an account of the final days of the ailing and tormented film director James Whale. Echoes of it are discernable here, where Condon has recruited an older McKellen for a carefully-crafted depiction of the imaginary dotage of Arthur Conan Doyle's great fictional detective. Aged 93, the doddering sleuth struggles to reassemble the jumbled jigsaw of his memories and hence solve his final case, which turns out to be himself.

Condon has based his film on Mitch Cullin's novel A Slight Trick of the Mind, and the narrative whisks us back to 1947 and a melancholy rural England still trying to drag itself from the wreckage of World War Two. We first meet Holmes in a railway carriage as its steam locomotive chugs through garden-of-England Sussex countryside, the view occasionally scarred by the rusting wing of a Luftwaffe aircraft sticking out of a field. There's no sense of an enemy triumphantly vanquished, more of regret for something lost forever. Holmes's gruff assertion to a schoolboy passenger that what he thinks is a bee is in fact a wasp not only establishes him as a bit of an old grouch, but also previews a recurring apiaristic theme.

Having long ago called time on his career as a "consulting detective", Holmes has retreated to his rambling old house a stone's throw from the sea, where he tends his beehives and racks his brains for recollections of his glory days. His only companions are his tetchy, unhappy housekeeper Mrs Munro (Laura Linney) and her son Roger (Milo Parker, pictured above with McKellen), the latter a fan of the Holmes mythology who also bonds with the old man through a shared fascination with bees. His once scalpel-sharp mind is growing foggy, and Holmes's friendly local doctor (Roger Allam) asks him to make a dot in his diary every time he can't remember a name. As the story progresses, the dots gather like a black snowstorm. McKellen, equally persuasive as the dapper, pleased-with-himself Holmes in his prime and the fearful old man he has become, can expect some gongs heading his way.

Condon's dominant theme is memory, not just the way Holmes's faulty one chops up the past into fragments and non-sequiturs, but the way memories can be distorted or manufactured. On a trip to Japan, to track down the supposedly memory-enhancing prickly ash tree (prompting a disturbing visit to the ruins of Hiroshima), Holmes has to explain to a local fan that he never wore a deerstalker or smoked a pipe, but these were just inventions of a book illustrator. Holmes reflects sadly on his brother Mycroft, Mrs Hudson and Dr Watson, all long gone now, but he still hasn't quite forgiven the latter for his penny-dreadfulesque fictionalisations of Holmes's great cases.

It's the final one, The Case of the Grey Glove, that has been preying on Holmes's mind. Condon has some fun with a scene where Holmes goes to the cinema to be appalled by a melodramatic film treatment, The Lady in Grey, with Frances Barber in the title role. Meanwhile, Holmes has been laboriously trying to write his own definitive version of events, in which he investigated the failing marriage of Thomas and Ann Kelmot (Patrick Kennedy and Hattie Morahan, pictured above with McKellen). Suffice to say that we learn why the case prompted Holmes to call time on his detective work, and its tragic overtones shine a piercing and poignant light into the soul of the erstwhile doyen of Baker Street. When Holmes comments that "I've been alone all my life, with the compensations of the intellect," it makes you ponder an interior Holmes that Dr Watson cheerfully ignored. And when that intellect begins to fail, what is left?

Though Condon is chiefly concerned with a crumbling, misfiring Holmes, the denouement permits a belated flash of the old deductive powers, and it helps Holmes to make the human connection that has eluded him for so long. Despite its stately pace and determination not to do anything rash – it's the antithesis of the hyperactive clever-dickery of the Cumberbatch Holmes – Mr Holmes is a quiet triumph whose ripples will keep washing over you long after you've left the cinema.

Overleaf: watch the trailer for Mr Holmes

A group of gunmen are roaming the Argentine rainforest jungle, terrorising local farmers in order to obtain the rights to their land. One farmer follows an ancient custom, praying to spirits to send a saviour. When a young stranger strolls bare-chested and barefoot out of the jungle, the farmer assumes his prayer has been answered.

Some people are irritated by Entourage’s superficial depiction of Hollywood as a bro fantasy world, but this is like condemning a soufflé for not being a roast chicken. For those like myself who enjoyed Entourage the television series, Entourage the movie will be very much the kind of thing they like, since it is essentially a feature-length version of the long-running HBO/Sky Atlantic show; non-enthusiasts, however, may find it shallow, shambolic, sexist, and smug (if you feel this perfectly describes Top Gear, you probably fall into the latter category).

Like the film iterations of Sex in the City, the movie is primarily a reunion for characters and fans and the similarities don’t end there. Both are a celebration of the city as a glamorous arena of infinite possibilities centered around a group of four friends, in this case pretty boy Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) and his three homies from Queens (New York’s version of Croydon). They come along for the ride as Vincent rises to Hollywood stardom, keeping him grounded when he hits the big time, picking him up from the setbacks, and always having his back as they negotiate life in the fast lane.

The ostensible story is just an armature on which to hang entertaining social comedy and insider jokes

Just as there are no long subway journeys, grim ^fifth floor walk-ups, or homeless in the New York of SATC, so traffic-clogged freeways, sprawling suburbs, and gangbangers do not trouble Entourage’s LA. Instead, both shows take place in a bubble of fabulous residences, super-trendy nightspots, and fashionable neighbourhoods. And just as SATC’s girls are drowning in designer shoes and clothes, Entourage’s boys have an endless supply of exotic cars and babelicious hotties on tap.

The film’s story follows the basic arc of an Entourage season – Vincent strikes off in a new creative direction, a gamble that may pay off or result in ruination. Since fast-talking, mercurial agent Ari Gold – Jeremy Piven (pictured below), far more at home here than as genial Midwesterner (!) Mr Selfridge – is now the head of the studio backing Vincent’s expensive directorial debut, his neck is also on the line.  

The pressure ramps up when the Texan oil magnate who is largely bankrolling the studio insists on his obnoxious film grad son (The Sixth Sense’s Haley Joel Osment, all grown up) having creative oversight. This allows the movie to cock a snoot at those backwards (homophobic, environmentally unsound) rubes in flyover country who actually buy the tickets that keep the whole enterprise afloat.As always, the ostensible story is just an armature on which to hang entertaining social comedy and insider jokes that perfectly capture Hollywood’s combination of lethal aggression and laidbackness. The insider-y feel is reinforced by over 30 cameo appearances by various celebrities portraying themselves. Some (like Kelsey Grammer, Pharrell Williams, and Queens-raised Mark Wahlberg, one of the show’s originators whose adventures allegedly inspired the series) are more recognisable than others (namely various US sports stars and industry moguls).

But while no one is going to accuse Entourage of being a hard-hitting critique, writer-director Doug Ellin does permit two aspects of harsh reality to intrude. One is a constant awareness of how even power players like Ari and Vincent are a single misjudgment away from failure, and how rapid and unforgiving the fall from grace can be. 

The other is the eternal struggle of Vincent’s more talented, less cute actor brother, Johnny Drama (a well-judged performance by Kevin Dillon, real-life brother of the very good-looking Matt), forever relegated to having his nose pressed up against the glass of success by a combination of self-sabotage and bad luck. A scene where Drama auditions for a small role captures the endless humiliations heaped upon the 95% of industry hopefuls who, unlike Vincent, never make it into the charmed circle.

Middle-aged women like Mrs Ari (as she’s called in the credits) are permitted if perfectly toned and expensively dressed

Also outside the Entourage universe are: old men, unless famous or very rich and powerful, like Ari’s boss played by Alan Dale or the actual Warren Buffett (another cameo); fat chicks; and old chicks. Middle-aged women like Mrs Ari (as she’s called in the credits) are permitted if perfectly toned and expensively dressed.

This is a man’s world, so, as in The Sopranos or True Detective, those babelicious hotties are often found wearing not a lot, either dancing in the background or writhing on a bed. But at least Entourage has a moment where two of them turn the tables, calling one of the boys out on his Hollywood player attitude and asserting their right to be treated as more than just a disposable shag.

And if Vincent’s object of desire is one Emily Ratajkowski (apparently famous enough as a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue model and featured dancer in Robin Thicke’s controversial Blurred Lines video to portray herself), at least his driver and former go-fer Turtle, now a successful tequila magnate, pines for actual Olympic Judo champion Ronda Rousey, also playing herself, a woman who makes SAS squaddies look like Sarah Jessica Parker.

If you’re expecting a penetrating, caustic look at the entertainment industry’s many shortcomings, you’re going to be disappointed. But if you’re prepared to sit back and enjoy the limo ride, Entourage is enjoyable on its own terms as entertaining, breezy escapism.

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Overleaf: watch the trailer for Entourage