Find out which films are a must-see this week, and which are best avoided!

The Breadwinner *****

kilkenny-based animation and film studio Cartoon Saloon has already given us two aesthetically breathtaking Oscar-nominated features in The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea - and The Breadwinner is no different. In fact, in many ways it rises above them.

The mesmerising, youth-aimed movie is adapted from the award-winning novel by Canadian writer Deborah Ellis, (who also co-wrote the script), and centers on 11-year-old Parvana (voiced excellently by newcomer Saara Chaudry), who lives under extreme patriarchal rule in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Just a couple of minutes into this empathetic and sophisticated animation, you understand why the movie earned the Academy's attention.

Set in 2000-1 when women were banned from leaving their homes unless they were escorted by men, forbidden from going to school, and when learned citizens were beaten for wanting to read and write; the inspiring animation gives viewers an insight into the injustice and repression of this totalitarian society.

On Chesil Beach ****

Saoirse Ronan is adamant that playing the newly-emigrated Eilis in Brooklyn took more out of her emotionally than the role of Chesil Beach's just-married hero, Florence.

For audiences, the sobs-to-scenes ratio could be exactly the same on Ian McEwan's Dorset coast as it was in Colm Tóibín's New York.

The year is 1962, and Florence and husband Edward (Billy Howle) have arrived for their wedding night at the kind of hotel that feels like it's been in mothballs for at least half a century.

They've barely put the key in the honeymoon suite door when the walls start closing in. The conversation is as stodgy as the food and the double bed across the room takes on the properties of quicksand.

Solo: A Star Wars Story ***1/2

Is Solo: A Star Wars Story the Star Wars spin-off fans were baying out for? Perhaps not. But this Han Solo origins story is a breezily entertaining, if slightly forgettable, romp through the Star Wars universe.

It wasn’t all plain sailing bringing this franchise spin-off to the big screen, which usually doesn’t bode well for mega-budget blockbusters.

The film had a highly-publicised switch-up of directors months into production, with Ron Howard taking over from Phil Lord and Chris Miller (The Lego Movie, 21 Jump Street) and re-shooting a reported 70% of the film. Luckily, any backstage discord doesn’t come across in the finished product which zips along nicely for its 135- minute running time.

Show Dogs **1/2

How’s this for a crossbreed - a family, buddy cop movie with talking dogs? Like a snap back to Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs, here’s an occasionally charming and occasionally funny kids movie about a police dog who goes undercover at a Vegas dog show to bust an illegal trade in rare animal smuggling.

Voiced by rapper Ludacris, our main canine is Max, a no nonsense maverick of a Rottweiler with a badge who reluctantly teams up with bungling NYPD detective played by Will Arnett to collar (sorry) the bad guys.

In a clear lift from Miss Congeniality, this all involves macho and unkempt Max undergoing a transformation from gruff loner to primped pooch so he can enter the competition with Arnett posing as his proud owner.

Edie ****

Edie (Sheila Hancock) has dutifully nursed her husband George for 30 years following a stroke. Now that George has passed on, she wants to fulfill a lifelong wish to climb Mount Suilven in the Scottish highlands.

Thus begins a passage of reflective looking back. Edie still keeps the old postcard that her father sent many years before, after he had climbed to the summit of Mount Suilven in the Scottish Highlands. The affectionate, pithy wording had urged her to climb the mountain herself sometime.

83-year old Edie - short for Edith - never did get that chance, although she has cherished the desire all her life. Her marriage, though it yielded a daughter, was dutiful, functional, her husband denied her freedom and affection, nipped in the bud her desire to climb the mountain. In her newly widowed state, the idea begins to ferment that now, with no one there to protest, she might climb this mountain and fulfill the dream or obsession.

STILL SHOWING

Deadpool 2 ****

It’s not often a sequel surpasses its predecessor, but Deadpool 2 improves on the original in pretty much every way; packing in funnier jokes, better characters, and even some genuinely touching moments.

This is even more impressive given the pressure to deliver the goods the filmmakers were presumably under after the break-out success of the first film, which grossed a staggering $738 million in the global box office on top of glowing reviews.

Co-writer, producer and leading star Ryan Reynolds steps back into his role-of-a-lifetime Deadpool suit for the follow-up which takes place a few years after the events of the first film. The wise-cracking anti-hero and his girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) are living in blissful domesticity and have decided to start a family when a tragedy tears them apart.

Citizen Lane ****1/2

It’s hard to imagine a more enchanting, and exasperating in equal measure, subject for a film than Hugh Lane, the Irish art collector, dealer and philanthropist and namesake of Dublin’s municipal art gallery. Lane’s personality could easily to distilled into one word – contrary. He was snobbish and egalitarian, frugal and generous, cerebral and yet unable to articulate his thoughts.

Bringing a contradictory character such as Lane to the big screen required an actor of great excellence (enter Tom Vaughan-Lawlor) and an imaginative approach, both of which have been accomplished with director Thaddeus O’Sullivan’s captivating docu-drama Citizen Lane.