Cath Clarke

More bah-humbuggery – which is a rational response to the wall-to-wall Christmas jumpers – and less zany antics here would have done the job better.

There’s really not much for the humans to do, other than flash brilliant white smiles, making the film feel like the world’s longest toothpaste advert. And it’s a toothbrush you’ll be reaching for after all so much sugary sentimentality.

The script is mostly tasteless, a buffet of blandness. Instantly forgettable.

Spree is meant to comment on the shallowness of social media culture; the trouble is, it’s a film with the depth of a puddle.

Mortal Engines really is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent slog, as characters leap unfeasibly out of planes on to bits of cities while a squad of rebel-fighter pilots straight out of Star Wars buzz around.

The cinematography here, capturing the fierce beauty of the craggy landscape, raises the quality an inch or two above hokey cheapness. In the end though, this is movie with right on its side but not a scrap of believability.

Loud and zappy, The Jungle Bunch trots out predictable be-kind-be-brave platitudes, but lacks anything distinctive of its own.

Deadwyler’s soulful performance really grounds The Devil to Pay even as it cranks into revenge-movie mode. That said, if you want a slice of grim Americana to hunker down with, I’d go with Winter’s Bone or Frozen River.

More like 92% generic.

There are a couple of decent jumps and a few giggles, but nothing armrest-clenchingly scary about The Quiet Ones.

The script feels completely devoid of ideas about what the future of AI might look like. But what it does prove is that Pearce adds a basic layer of credibility to any film simply by showing up.

This is anaemic stuff, though perhaps its target audience won’t care.

To me this feels like a silly smirking film with zero insights into abuse or conspiracy theories.

Even with an intelligent, credible performance by David Oyelowo, the daftness and utter implausibility of a smartphone so smart it can make calls to the future is overwhelming.

All told, ‘Winter’s War’ is not the fairest sequel, but it’s not so terrible that it deserves to be taken out to the forest and finished off.

The lowish-budget production values, gestural performances and blunt moralism of the scriptwriting puts this very much in the heightened dramatic tradition of mainstream Nigerian cinema, but Emelonye has an accessible style and has picked the topical subject of cybercrime, an approach which might broaden the film’s appeal.

Why drag the franchise back now? The screamingly obvious answer is sheer cash-grab cynicism. Or perhaps it’s to cater to the generation of kids who’ve grown up riding the Saw-themed roller coaster at Thorpe Park. Either way, it’s depressing.

Forget about chilling to the bone, The Grudge barely drops below room temperature.

The film is depressingly thin on the women; often it seems more interested in arranging them in arty tableaux than investigating the way that isolation has shaped their personalities and how they see the world.

This is a well-made film and nice looking, but there’s a tiresome predictability to a few too many scenes. It is a franchise that feels like it’s hit the rocks.

The top-notch cast keep calm and carry on, but this TV remake is a waste of everyone’s time.

It’s as if director Warren Fischer has forgotten to write jokes in his script. No one says anything remotely humorous; instead there’s just a parade of lowest-common-denominator gags.

Any of Dahl’s gruesome sense of fun is obliterated by a bulldozing message of empathy and kindness, thanks to a plucky orphan Beesha (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) and her pals pulling together an opposition to the Twits. This is vile and revolting in all the wrong ways.

There are some nice enough performances, particularly from Ken Jeong as JJ’s CIA boss and Anna Faris playing the high school deputy principal leading the choir trip. But tonally the movie is all over the place.

The movie is full of wackiness but contains only traces of comedy.

In the end, this is a shallow drama passing itself off as saying something meaningful.

Cage dials it down nicely, keeping his freaky at a gentle 6 out 10. The film cruises along on his charm; it’s otherwise a totally disposable but mostly entertaining action comedy drama with a really stupid plot and a few good laughs.

The film is constantly defining what ugly is: freckles, crooked teeth, excess weight, glasses, clumsiness. At times it feels like an unintentional crib sheet for under-sevens bullying.