ALSO SHOWING

THE FRONT RUNNER (15)

POLITICS and sleaze have become depressingly frequent bedfellows in recent years, ushering us into an era where the press and social media scrutinise the moral fibre of our public servants.

Director Jason Reitman’s sharp-suited drama The Front Runner unfolds several years before Monica Lewinsky’s dress stained global consciousness.

Co-written by Matt Bai and Jay Carlson, the film focuses on three tumultuous weeks in the late 1980s, when political journalism abruptly shifted focus from manifestos to the personal life of Senator Gary Hart from Colorado (Hugh Jackman, above) after he refuses to answer questions about an extra-marital affair.

The script fails to delve deeply into the emotional meat of that volatile period when media executives openly professed: “It’s up to us to hold these guys responsible.”

Like Hart’s campaign, Reitman’s film is a slickly orchestrated and entertaining circus that stumbles at the final hurdle.

THE UPSIDE (12A)

HOLLYWOOD has a long and inglorious history of remaking hit foreign films for Englishspeaking audiences and losing the subtleties of the original in translation. A similar fate befalls The Upside. This glossy reworking of the award-winning 2011 French buddy comedy The Intouchables is clogged with cloying sentiment despite the best efforts of Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart, above, to energise a pair of emotional misfits. Key scenes from the original are replayed such as the opening car chase that catalyses a flashback to events that unite the central duo. Oscar winner Nicole Kidman is only permitted to let her character’s heart beat openly in the closing frames.

THE FAVOURITE (15)

COURTLY intrigue pits two ambitious women against each other for the affections of an emotionally brittle queen in director Yorgos Lanthimos’s rollicking comedy of deliciously cruel intentions.

Olivia Colman, pictured, has just picked up a Golden Globe for her performance as Queen Anne in this brilliantly bawdy and boisterous battle of the rouged sexes, which tosses out profanities with devastating precision.

Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone are equally impressive as the Duchess of Marlborough and her ambitious cousin Abigail, fighting to be the favourite of the fragile queen.

Words cut to the bone and an expertly polished script by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara draws copious blood with its volleys of rapid-fire barbs.