It’s worth mentioning that Six Minutes to Midnight (a rather outdated reference to the Doomsday Clock, if today’s moviegoers even know what that is) has a few unintentional laughs. It’s tough not to giggle when Jim Broadbent, when threatened with being scalded by the contents of a squealing tea kettle, says, with the kind of conviction that only a master craftsman can muster, “I’m not a bloody traitor. He’s half German, half English. I helped the English half of ‘im.”

Viewers are legitimately transported to a land where fairies and goblins are real, and it’s all very dazzling and Harry Potter-like. Artemis Fowl would seem, then, to be a perfect film for fans of that series. Alas, the Harry Potter features are painstakingly mapped out so viewers understand the rules of the magical world they enter. This is not the case with Artemis Fowl, which teases viewers without elaborating and leads to a long string of questions that are never adequately answered.

Frears’ movie departs substantially from the book while telling a fascinating tale of motherly love and indicting the Catholic Church’s operation of Magdalene laundries. These facilities, which were designed as rehabilitation centers for unwed mothers, often operated like prisons, and Philomena’s story puts a face to the tragedy many young women endured. In the film, Sixmith (portrayed winningly by Steve Coogan), a journalist, learns that the now elderly Philomena wants to find her lost son.