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If the relationship at the heart of biopic snapshot Being The Ricardos - between Nicole Kidman's Lucille Ball and Javier Bardem's Desi Arnaz - is a rocky one, the same cannot be said of the marriage between Aaron Sorkin's scriptwriting and Ball's quick-witted humour, which is one made in heaven. The writer, also directing here, has come under fire a lot in the past for his writing of female characters, a criticism he avoided adding to with 2020s The Trial Of The Chicago 7 by dint of its virtual all-male cast, but he has a ball with Ball and her cohorts, serving up dialogue as sharp and springy as an elastic band snapped against a wrist.

As with the Chicago 7, the truth is in here somewhere, but it's served up Sorkin style, so that he takes different events from Ball and Arnaz's marriage - an accusation of Communist activity, a gossip magazine revelation of a potential affair by Arnaz and an announcement that Ball is pregnant - and puts them into the pressure cooker of a single week on the set as they prepare for an episode of the second season of the show in 1952. He also employs a clever framing device, which sees the, now much older, writers, reminisce about the show, which allows him to dip in and out of the past without being too jarring. A further strategy takes us into the mind of Ball as, at intervals, she imagines how scenes of the show will play out, scenes rendered by Sorkin in black and white.

This might sound like a lot of mechanics but the pieces fit together surprisingly well thanks to Sorkin's breezy dialogue, which keeps us with Ball as she tries to navigate her personal problems while still keeping her show on top. While it's hard to completely lose yourself in Kidman's performance, simply because she is such a well known actress in her own right, she is helped by Sorkin introducing both her and Arnaz from the feet up, so that we can briefly appreciate both her and Bardem's voice work without the conflict of recognising the actors beneath the make-up.

Not only does she get the tone of Ball right, Kidman also captures the comedy star's forthright energy, an essential fearlessness and truthfulness about herself that Sorkin also evidently admires. Whether it's her refusal to lie about why she "ticked a box" or her persistence in trying to make a scene more funny in the face of opposition from her executive producer Jess Oppenheimer (Tony Hale), she never opts for taking the easy way out. Even if you're no fan of the original series - something Sorkin nods to in a conversation between Ball and the lone woman writer Madelyn Pugh (Alia Shawkat) - you'll be hard pressed not to fall for Kidman's portrayal of a woman who knew and wasn't afraid to speak her mind.

Bardem is solid in support as the Cuban Arnaz, the energy between he and Ball fizzy and believable, although as you might expect, Sorkin gives Ball all the best lines - even finding room for the most unexpected jump scare I've seen on film in a long time. Character is key, however, and there's a palpable sense of Ball being torn about believing Arnaz and her anxiety about her ability to create a sort of "home" with him onset that she can't manufacture off, but Sorkin never belittles her, treating both her talent and her troubles with seriousness beneath the surface laughs. He also spares more than a thought for her co-star Vivian Vance (Nina Ariadna), who is struggling with being stuck in the role of dowdy Ethel, giving Ariadna plenty to work with as Vivian spars with her grumpy older co-star William Frawley (JK Simmons).

Although Sorkin, as a director, struggled with the bigger crowd scenes in Chicago 7, here he's back on much firmer ground, within the goldfish bowl of the writers' room environment, and the studio stage, that though historic examples of type, must strike a chord with his own experience on television shows.

Some of the production values are on the weak side, particularly the lighting, which is oddly muted, given that films made for streaming services are generally overlit if anything - and there is something very odd about Ball's hair colour, which moves between pure ginger and something much more auburn seemingly on a whim. You may not completely love Lucy by the end of it but you will get a sense of what it was like to be a woman like her in that particular era - which is just as impressive an accomplishment.

From "True Colors" to "I'm Coming Out" to the Gorillaz' "Clint Eastwood," Mike Mitchell and Walt Dohrn's Trolls goes all in on being a jukebox musical. If otherworldly creatures belting out pop hits makes you nervous (perhaps you're still flashing back on Strange Magic, shudder to think), you might find yourself nonplussed in the theater. These songs, it turns out, are the best parts of the movie. It's everything else that's wrong.

The Trolls, based on the dolls with the hair, live carefree in a blissful, wooded community, having years hence escaped lives of captivity under the rule of the giant, grumpy Bergens. When they are again discovered and a (literal) handful of them are taken, Princess Poppy (Anna Kendrick) teams up with Bergen expert and sullen outcast Branch (Justin Timberlake) to mount a rescue mission.

Trolls' attempts at humor are like the last ten years' worth of sitcoms copied down to the umpteenth generation until the jokes have become thin and hollow echoes. Jokes, in fact, is too strong a word. In place of humor or comedic characters, our protagonists affect a sort of weary smarm, reacting to one another with long pauses and stares or with a curt, dismissive, "That's weird." Perhaps that's preferable, though, to the Trolls' other mode, which panders to the young audience of a few years ago, when the movie was likely written, by having characters shout things like "OMG!" or, most embarrassingly, "YOLO!"

However, when this patience-trying dialogue goes away for a few minutes, a seemingly entirely different film emerges. The musical numbers (as well as the occasional action or chase sequence) are whimsical, unpredictable delights. Poppy's journey to Bergentown, for instance, is told over the course of a single song but in a montage that gives us a tour of the varied and interesting locales of this fantasy realm. Most of these dreamy song segments remove us from the physical world of the film, inventively employing a felt and paper visual motif that recalls Poppy's scrapbooking hobby.

Poppy's arts and crafts are just a taste of the many pleasures the Trolls find in their world. Bergens, on the other hand, can only feel happy by eating Trolls, or so we're told. Eventually, we arrive at the thematic point of the film, wherein we learn that happiness is not something you put inside yourself. It's already there and you just need to bring it out. It's a surprisingly and unconvincingly anti-consumerist message for a movie based on toys.

Trolls might be worth a dollar or two at the Redbox where you can just skip ahead to the music and action vignettes that bring it to life. When it comes to characters, story and personality, though, the movie's as thin as a wisp of brightly colored hair.

Time. The beauty of time is that it's a great equalizer. Whoever you are, you always have 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, 12 months in a year.

There's a saying that time is money. What happens then if time replaces money as currency? Something that must be earned or traded in order to extend your life? Isn't survival of the fittest unfair? But if you could, would you choose to live forever? How long do you think until enough is enough?

I first heard about "In Time" during this year's Comic-Con and was most intrigued by the premise. In this alternate reality, everyone is genetically engineered with an internal timer and aging stops at the age of 25. Once you hit 25, you would only have one year to live. If you can't extend your clock, you die.

Society is divided into "time zones" that segregate the rich from the poor. Timekeepers enforce order in order to prevent overpopulation. The haves, with excess amount of time, have the privilege to live to eternity. The have-nots live on a day-to-day basis and struggle without the possibility of upward mobility. Those who can't earn, beg, borrow or steal time, zero out their clock and die on the streets from a fatal shock to the heart.

Will Salas (Justin Timberlake, "The Social Network"), a laborer with a good heart, saves a wealthy man, Henry Hamilton (Matt Bomer) from time thugs led by 'Fortis' (Alex Pettyfer, "I am Number Four"). The suicidal man who possesses more than a hundred years has decided that he's done with life and donates all his time to Will, unbeknownst to him. Tragically, Will couldn't arrive in the nick of time to transfer some of his time to prolong his mother's (Olivia Wilde, "Tron Legacy") life.

With his newfound lease on life, Will gets out of the ghetto, skips zones and arrives at the well-to-do's doorsteps, with the intention of taking away what they've got. Having the wealth of time allows him to mingle with the well-off and catches the eye of an heiress, Sylvia Weis (Amanda Seyfried, "Letters to Juliet") . She's the daughter of billionaire Philippe Weis (Vincent Kartheiser). It's like a twilight zone to see Philippe's mother-in-law, wife and daughter all appear to be the same age, frozen in time.

When timekeepers, headed by Raymond Leon (Cillian Murphy, "Inception"), finds Henry's body and a security camera leads them to Will, Will becomes a wanted man, falsely accused of murder. He ensnares Sylvia, who eventually becomes his accomplice in his "Robin Hood" mode, in a race for survival and to distribute the gift of life to those less fortunate.

Aside from the futuristic aspect, the thought-provoking premise isn't helped by a mediocre script, a pace that drags and cardboard characters. There are chunks of Bonnie-and-Clyde actions with Will and Sylvia on the run. Actions that become rather lifeless after a while. A standout scene, of all things, is an arm-wrestling between Will and Fortis, a clever way for Will to gain time.

"In Time" is stylistically entertaining, but the story could have been a lot more developed.