LOOKING for a movie to watch at the cinema this weekend? Here are five ideas.

FENCES (12A)


Review: Strong-willed patriarch Troy Maxson (Denzel Washington) presides over this tug-of-war for supremacy. He works as a rubbish collector alongside best friend Jim (Stephen Robertson), who loves to listen to Troy's anecdotes. "You got more stories than the devil got sinners," quips Jim.

Troy toils in order to provide for his wife Rose (Viola Davis) and their son Cory (Jovan Adepo). The young man is a gifted athlete and is being scouted for college football.

Troy refuses to sign his son's permission slip because he believes the football leagues are rife with racial prejudice and he doesn't want his flesh and blood to fail, as he did playing baseball many years before.

This refusal to support his son's dream drives an insurmountable wedge between Troy and Cory.

Meanwhile, the patriarch clashes with his other son, Lyons (Russell Hornsby), who only seems to materialise when he needs money.

Financial pressures tip Troy over the edge and his rage and frustration explode with devastating consequences.

Rating: Three stars

THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE (U)


Review: The beginning is a very good place to start with The LEGO Batman Movie because the opening five minutes of credits and droll voiceover are sheer perfection. "All important movies start with a black screen," growls Batman (voiced by Will Arnett), providing a hilarious running commentary of the production companies responsible for his film.

The rest of McKay's picture is a delight but doesn't scale the same dizzy heights of razor-sharp hilarity.

Batman wallows in loneliness at Wayne Manor where loyal butler Alfred (Ralph Fiennes) expertly pinpoints the source of his master's malaise. "Your greatest fear is being part of a family again."

Soon after, Commissioner James Gordon (Hector Elizondo) hands over control to his daughter, Barbara (Rosario Dawson), who calls into question the effectiveness of Batman when all of his nemeses including The Joker (Zach Galifianakis) and Harley Quinn (Jenny Slate) remain at large.

Despite the stinging criticism, Batman is smitten - cue strains of Cutting Crew's 1986 ballad (I Just) Died In Your Arms - and in the midst of this romantic fog, he inadvertently agrees to adopt plucky orphan Dick Grayson (Michael Cera).

The boy wonder infiltrates the Bat Cave, home to the Bat Train, Bat Submarine and a Bat Kayak, and picks out a spandex outfit so he can join his new father on night-time escapades. And Batman desperately needs a sidekick when The Joker unleashes every villain in the galaxy on Gotham including the Daleks, which Batman casually dismisses as "British robots".

Rating: Three stars

THE SPACE BETWEEN US (PG)


Review: Charismatic billionaire Nathaniel Shepherd (Gary Oldman) is determined to plough some of his fortune into Genesis Space Technologies and the Magellan-61 mission to colonize Mars.

The ground-breaking expedition to establish an outpost christened East Texas is led by plucky astronaut Sarah Elliot (Janet Montgomery). En route to the red planet, Sarah discovers she is pregnant and Nathaniel decides to conceal the revelation from NASA and the public.

"East Texas runs on good faith, good PR," he reminds the team, including Genesis mission director Tom Chen (BD Wong) and media consultant Alice Myers (Lauren Myers).

Sadly, Sarah dies during childbirth and her son, Gardner (Butterfield), is raised by scientists at East Texas.

Sixteen years later, he is still a secret, with a surrogate mother - astronaut Kendra Wyndham (Carla Gugino) - and a robotic best friend called Centaur (voiced by Chelsom).

The teenager's only connection to Earth is an online romance with a girl called Tulsa (Robertson), who doesn't realise that Gardner lives 140 million miles from her foster home in Colorado.

Desperate to meet Tulsa and track down his biological father, Gardner hatches a daredevil plan to go to Earth.

The Space Between Us shamelessly panders to a young audience, remaining tastefully chaste when it comes to consummating the couple's hormone-fuelled attraction beneath a twinkling desert sky.

Rating: Three stars

FIFTY SHADES DARKER (18)


Review: Anastasia (Dakota Johnson) has turned her back on Seattle's youngest billionaire, Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan), to clamber the career ladder under leering fiction editor, Jack Hyde (Eric Johnson). It's not long before crestfallen Christian pleads his case. "I want to renegotiate terms," he growls.

With the minimum resistance, Ana agrees. "No rules, no punishments... and no more secrets," she purrs naively.

Soon after, at a masquerade ball hosted by Christian's parents (Andrew Airlie, Marcia Gay Harden), Ana has her first run-in with Elena Lincoln (Kim Basinger), the woman who seduced Christian aged 15.

Meanwhile, Ana's boss Jack turns out to be a glowering poster boy for sexual harassment and one of Christian's former submissives (Bella Heathcote) stalks her former master. The title's a wild exaggeration. The sequel isn't a single shade darker, grimier or indeed sexier, let alone 50.

Rating: Two stars

LOVING (12A)


Review: Construction worker Richard Loving (Joel Edgerton) falls giddily in love with family friend Mildred Jeter (Ruth Negga). When she falls pregnant, the couple decide to marry.

Forbidden from consummating their relationship in Virginia, Richard and Mildred drive to Washington D.C. and return home with a marriage licence, which they proudly display on the wall of their home.

Sheriff Brooks (Marton Csokas) arrives soon after with his deputies and arrests the Lovings. They are eventually released, but the couple must publicly keep their distance.

"All we got to do is keep to ourselves for a while and this'll blow over," Richard tenderly assures Mildred. Alas, his optimism is misplaced and the couple narrowly avoids a one-year stint behind bars by agreeing that they will not return to Virginia together for 25 years.

The case eventually attracts the interest of American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Bernie Cohen (Nick Kroll) and trailblazing civil rights lawyer Phil Hirschkop (Jon Bass).

Meanwhile, freelance photographer Grey Villet (Michael Shannon) is commissioned to capture an intimate portrait of the Lovings' home life for TIME magazine.

Loving sensitively recreates a battle for justice waged by two quietly spoken people, who changed the course of history.

Rating: Four stars