Helen O'Hara

With its uncompromising commitment to gross-out injuries, nerdy pop culture in-jokes and inappropriate touching, Deadpool 2 was clearly made to cater to existing fans with every innuendo-filled moment (they should stay through the credits for some important story points that are very nearly thrown away).

It's all very, very silly. That, combined with the relentless pace, should ensure that it delights its target audience of under-tens, but the adults shouldn’t fear this dog’s bark too much.

It’s relentless and exhausting for adults, but kids and die-hard SpongeBob fans may find something to love here as the consistently cheery fry cook once again out-dimwits a dastardly foe.

It glides romantically along on the surface while political turmoil boils away underneath. Its plea for tolerance isn’t subtle, but it’s a story that deserves to be told.

If anything, this is too faithful to the book, sometimes getting bogged down in detail as Katniss struggles to her goal. But its epic sweep, grand designs and unyielding central performance make this a compelling finale.

This is not a simple story of an uptight English woman induced to loosen up by those freedom-lovin’ Yanks, but a delicate and brilliantly acted story of overcoming the past to embrace an uncertain future. Emma Thompson, in particular, is magic.

It’s consistently pretty entertaining, even if it takes a while to get going.

Smart, funny and really quite hot, this is worth a look no matter what you think of "Charlie's Angels."

A curiously bloodless account of a real-life disaster that has moments of gripping tension punctuating long stretches of fatally understated business as usual.

It’s beautifully designed and pleasantly quirky, with fun performances from the cast, yet the arch narrative style and structure can make the whole feel thin and unsatisfying.

As a Nick Fury buddy comedy, it’s fun. As a feminist fable it’s essential. This takes a while to really get going, but when Carol Danvers takes off she is unstoppable.

The fire scenes are terrifying and may well sear themselves into your brain, but however well-intentioned, the human element is less involving than the disaster they must endure.

An informative but incomplete look at Whitney Houston’s life and death, this will frustrate fans as much as it fascinates them.

Funny and scary - and sometimes both at once - it lives up to the original, even if it fails to surpass it.

The drama and tone are powerful and effective and Lawrence makes an exceptionally charismatic heroine, but an almost total lack of action means this is less catching fire than treading water.

A return to form for the MCU and for the Guardians, this is tear-jerking and heart-warming in equal measure, keeping its characters in focus despite all the chaos and colour swirling around them.

Frenetic, kinetic action meets satisfyingly soapy drama. See it before everyone tries to copy the best bits.

Gentle, unchallenging drama for people who already know they like it, this is a nostalgic and rosy depiction of an England that was, surely, never so innocent.

The people of Downton Abbey have never been relatable, but they’re really pushing it this time.

Loveable - especially if you're as fond of a pun as we are - and extremely silly.

It’s cool and brutal, but with such impressive action credentials you almost wish there were fewer plot devices to distract you as Charlize gets up and at ’em.

Occasionally, like its characters, ragged around the edges, this nevertheless rings with all the emotion and power of the source and provides a new model for the movie musical.

Wheatley continues an unbroken run of quality, helped by a great cast and a startlingly effective premise. This is seriously cool, stuffed with great dialogue and riddled with bullets.

It may be too tame for horror fans, but the gothic twist works remarkably well — even if everything else is business as usual for the Belgian detective.

It’s long and sometimes gets swept astray by currents of family drama and period detail, but Ridley’s plucky determination and can-do energy carries the whole thing along. The result is an old-fashioned inspirational pleasure.

It is entirely predictable from moment to moment and frequently laughable in its portrayal of international relations and politics, but it’s also funnier than it needed to be, and, thanks chiefly to Zakhar Perez, often charming.

It falters in the middle and hesitates unnecessarily in setting up the love story, but Gru still has charm and kids will adore the Minions.

The result is overlong and rarely groundbreaking – there are hints of The Truman Show, Edge of Tomorrow and, visually, Inception – and suffers from some obnoxious filmmaking shorthand in its portrayal of other cultures late on.

It’s not as scary or as effective as the first film, but points for the performances, and for trying hard to do something different and fresh.

A perfectly serviceable biopic with good performances, which goes some way to explaining Franklin’s genius as a musician and a star, but one that isn’t nearly as transcendent as its subject deserves.

Nearly as good as the last film — the starrier cameos compensating somewhat for the more scattershot plot — this is fun but could have been more deeply felt.

Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum make a sweet and spiky couple in this likeable caper. It’s never going to challenge The African Queen for quality, but it offers 
a consistently good time.

The stories are all individually charming, but overly familiar animation and underwhelming character-design blunt the effect. 

A history lesson with more fire in the belly than most. It turns out that a feminist angle really can revive the same old Tudor psychodramas, thanks in large part to Ronan and Robbie’s authoritative performance.

Somewhere between the pop-culture deconstruction of "Zombieland" and the skewed romance of "(500) Days Of Summer," this manages to make the apocalypse seem charming. Warm is the right word.

Everyone’s trying hard, but they can’t quite live up to the particularly gentle, warm tone of Pooh himself. Unlike the bear of very little brain, this is a film pulled in different directions with entirely too many thoughts in its head.

The blood and gore is all present and correct, but the focus on Kramer's vulnerability and human side sits at odds with his awful judgmentalism. Let monsters be monsters.

We know that this cast can produce magic together, and that this director can inject pace into unlikely topics. It’s just this one that seems to have feet of clay.

[Ridley Scott's] second film in as many months, after The Last Duel, is uneven, overlong and completely over the top, and has characters and plot turns that Marvel and Pixar would reject as ‘a bit much’. The good news is that it is undeniably a proper drama and, for the most part, wildly entertaining.

It feels real, and honest, in a way that too few romantic films manage.

The film doesn’t quite trust the magic of the garden, adding visual dazzle and, sometimes, artificiality, but when the film relies on the kids and their relationship it still finds the book’s magic.

Pine supplies gravitas in the lead, but he’s almost a lone voice of moderation. Bloody and brash and as subtle as a trebuchet, this is gleefully entertaining — unless you’re English, anyway.

A quiet and meditative portrait of the artist as a retiree, this lacks incident or high stakes but has an elegiac feeling of regret and reckoning that fits its subject’s twilight years.

A likeable cast and colourful depiction of Pakistani (and Pakistani-British) culture makes this look warm and inviting, but the central romance can’t hold our attention as it should.

There’s a good-hearted father and son tale at the heart of the madness here, but the surroundings are sometimes a little too silly for true greatness.

The plot is insubstantial in the extreme, but Rae and Nanjiani are so cool, and their loose, free-flowing improv so winning, that you probably won’t care.

It’s not a hugely innovative biopic, covering just a short period of Bader Ginsburg’s extraordinary career, but this is still a vastly inspiring account of the fight for equality.

It's scatty, scrappy and thoroughly OTT, but then that's like the characters themselves.

Happily, it emerges at last with enough inventive action to stand alongside its murderous predecessors, and makes Ana de Armas into a likeable assassin hero – a phrase that makes more sense in her killer-filled world than our own.

Another ‘live-action’ remake that’s darker and less compelling than the animated original, but it’s saved by Bailey’s charming performance, McCarthy’s sass and the story’s own eternal magic.

It’s not the toothless remake we feared, and is often very funny, but there’s a slight imbalance between the Roses that blunts some of its effect.

Moving and insightful. Not a classic by any means, but a fascinating glimpse of the way we live today.

It’s far from a complete biography, but it makes at least some effort to engage with the messier aspects of Lee’s life. Ultimately, however, this is a celebration of Lee and the cheerleading he did for comics, and that is surprisingly moving.

The two gifted comedic actresses give their characters depth while also finding moments of lightness that stop the drama from ever bringing the pace down too much. It makes for a wickedly funny spin on the safe old British period drama.

With a cast this talented there will always be decent moments, but they never cohere. Credit for its casting and design, but it’s not the movie messiah, just a very disappointing mess.

Hargrave, a stuntman turned director, knows where to put his camera for maximum impact, and genuinely disturbing foley work showcases sounds of crunching bones and splattering blood. You feel every punch land.

An animation that never drags itself out of mediocrity despite the best efforts of gifted animator Tartakovsky.

It’s a well-made adventure with great energy and considerable style, but it’s essentially a maze without an exit.

The performances are solid and the story is touching — and perhaps that will carry this to its chosen audience. But it's a little flat for true drama.

These bosses cannot justify either murder or lasting comic memories, fatally compromising a farce that could have been great but ends up merely mediocre.

It's an impressive performance from Chastain and a fascinating subject, but the film doesn’t delve deep enough into Bakker’s inner life.

This is just as unevenly plotted as the original, lacks even the element of surprise, and is not by any reasonable standard “good”. Between gooey and ghoulish, there must be better options.

Cavill and Hammer are made for each other, but the film can’t always find the pyrotechnics to match their chemistry.

It benefits from a supernaturally engaging cast, but this treads too closely to the rom-com model to feel as smart or moving as Westfeldt's previous best.

As with many high-concept horrors, it falls apart as it grasps for an ending, but there's still enough dread, and three great central performances, to just about carry it through.

A glowing tribute to The Beatles and their music, this is both a toe-tapping pleasure to watch and a smart, occasionally scathing look at how we get things wrong.

Savage directs with a light hand, and sometimes you wish for a little more shape to the baggier scenes.

This is an Aquaman film that needs lots more Aquaman and vastly less bombast. It’s visually wild and recklessly inventive, but the cast deserve better than to be cast adrift in a tempest of CGI.

In this fun action-thriller, David Harbour’s Santa is less Saint Nick and more John Wick.

Some fun intergenerational warfare, clever genre nods and a generally sharp script enliven what could have been a bog-standard slasher movie.

The great circle of life has thrown up a gorgeous, star-studded story, but trading feeling for realism means that we lose something of the original film’s excellence.

A strong directorial debut from Winslet with — as you’d expect — stellar performances from her cast. It might be the perfect antidote to other, overly saccharine Christmas films.

Even the slightest wisp of critical thought will bring the house-of-cards plot tumbling down, but avoid thinking too much and it’s a frothy, sun-drenched bit of fun.

Kormákur creates some effective jump scares and considerable suspense as the lion stalks its prey with blood-chilling growls one minute and deadly silence the next. The CGI budget can’t always quite match his ambition, however, and perhaps as a result, his timing sometimes seems off.

A fun blend of scares and sentiment, this largely justifies a lengthy run time with effective frights and a valedictory feel. Just don’t watch it before trying to clear out the attic.

The whole thing reads as an indictment of the sort of upper class upbringing that Milne's children's books idealised, with only paid employees offering worthwhile parental affection.

McKellen has fun as the bitter, biting Erskine, but the plot takes so long to come together that at times he’s the only thing holding the audience’s interest.

It’s unexceptionally filmed and occasionally clunky, but this is a gently heart-warming underdog story, and Turner shows real star-power in the lead role.

Lawther’s a charismatic, uncompromising lead, and Billy’s campaign is an inspiring one, but this sometimes settles for broad strokes of heroism or villainy where more subtlety would have increased its impact.

Easily the third-best Terminator film, which is more of a compliment than it sounds. It’s great to have Hamilton back in this role, but she’s ably matched by Reyes and Davis.

This spectacular adventure sometimes wanders across the borders of invention into artificiality, but finds its feet when it focuses in on its characters and their relationships.

It looks gorgeous and offers strong performances from Driver and Ridley in particular, but ultimately the saga ends with neither a bang nor a whimper but something inbetween.

It’s annoying and one-note and so relentless in its cheeriness that it eventually comes to seem almost likeable. At least there are great voice performances underneath all the felt and pop mash-ups.

Fleischer Camp brings a light touch and a good human cast to this reverently faithful effort, but it’s never as clear and bright as its source material.

It’s not all bad: no film with this cast could ever fail entirely. Staunton makes you root for Sandra even at her worst, and Imrie offers an impish, joyous counterbalance to her pursed-lip disapproval.

Tense and occasionally disturbing, but somehow you’re left with the nagging suspicion that what should have been a meaty psychological drama has been turned into a slightly insipid thriller instead.

If you do pick up a penguin, you could do worse than experience Michell’s kind of spiritual and moral awakening. Still, the film is thankfully sharper and less cute than it initially appears.

The plot is predictable and the look unmemorable, but Johansson has nevertheless crafted a pleasingly old-fashioned character piece with just enough bite to balance its emotion.

Fans will be left on a high; other viewers will be confused but generally entertained by a saga whose romance is matched only by its weirdness.

Messier and heavier than Days Of Future Past, this is not so much the next step in the X-Men’s evolution as a failed callback to past glories.

Had this adaptation of the young adult fantasy-romance taken a few more liberties, it might have been a home run.

This old-fashioned tale of folk heroism and hardy underdogs benefits from solid performances and spectacular vistas, but it loses points for a sequel-baiting ending. 

There's a hint of comforting, chocolate-box, Sunday-night TV here, but it's delivered via such quietly powerful performances and with such hope that it's hard to resist.

It's well performed, and Collet-Serra knows his way around a beautifully timed scare, but what's most haunting is the sense that the same idea has been done better before.

It admirably avoids many of the pitfalls of adapting this book, but seems to have lost some of the life and pace as well.

Amiably silly and impressively gory, this lives up to both its low-budget inspirations and its rocker stars.

This is one teen dystopia that sustained its quality across the trilogy. It may not set the world alight — ironically, given the solar flare that started its story’s disaster — but it 
will get the blood pumping.

Although the quips aren’t always sharp enough and the sleight of hand a little lacking, it takes a hard heart not to cheer as a few young victims of a broken system carve out their own little bit of magic.