Aside from its killer cast, the story-line of writer-director Quentin Tarantino’s ninth feature is one long high.

Mindy Kaling is so toasty-warm and regular-girl relatable you instantly feel you’ve known her for years (which in a way you have, through her stints on “The Office” and “The Mindy Project”).

Small-town police officer Jim Arnaud powers through a firestorm of flayed emotions while paying tribute to his late mother. Overwhelmed by grief, he is awkward, scatty, tragic and ridiculous.

In 1937, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are Hollywood stars at the peak of their illustrious comedic powers. But fame has always been a fickle mistress, and 16 years later they’re dining on humble pie.

Racism is alive and thriving in 1962 when Italian-American bouncer Tony “Lip” Vallelonga takes a job as chauffeur to celebrated African-American pianist Dr Don Shirley.

In this incredible-but-true tale, Clint Eastwood stars as a 90-year-old horticulturalist and deadbeat dad unwittingly recruited as a drug mule for a Mexican cartel.

Despite warnings from their counsellors, wannabe parents Pete and Ellie Wagner are fathoms out of their depth with the defence mechanisms of foster-system children.

Nakedly insecure, devoted to her 17 rabbits and largely wheelchair-bound, Queen Anne is a petulant, overgrown child.

To all intents, in 1991, 51-year-old Lee Israel is all washed up. With her glory days as a Manhattan celebrity profiler and biographer long behind her, she’s broke, jobless and alone.

With meat and dairy prices plummeting, the farmers of the sylvan Normandy village of Mêle-sur-Sarthe are doing it tough.