Kevin Harley

The deaths are exuberantly grisly and explosive, too, the sound mix relishing every gooey squelch. Yet as predictable twists and an underused final cameo arrive, all the blood isn’t enough to cover up the nagging shortfalls of final-act invention.

You’ll flinch, yes, but you’ll forget it just as quickly.

Brown and the beast strike sparks as Fresnadillo’s initially lukewarm adventure gradually heats up.

First too slow, then too silly, Vaughn’s well-cast but wayward romp fires off half-baked ideas without the focus needed to make them stick.

A little more than a remake yet less than a makeover, Tina Fey’s watchable, well-cast revisit needed more daring to be wholly worthwhile.

Davis, Dinklage, Zegler, and the Games thrill, but Snow doesn’t quite summon the substance needed to fulfil this long-haul prequel’s ambitions.

Fitful jolts aside, the devil trots out the old tunes wearily in this hoary and overcooked valentine to a horror classic.

Mashing up Groundhog Day with Get Out, They Live, Sorry to Bother You, Westworld, A Clockwork Orange, blaxploitation films, "X-Files shit", and more, They Cloned Tyrone is a race-conscious conspiracy caper at heart, spruced up with some zippy patter and a razor-sharp cast.

As we watch Lee still encouraging ‘true believers’ well into his old age, it’s hard not to be moved.

Muschietti directs confidently, notably in an opening sequence that betters both Justice Leagues for fun. What’s less persuasive is the CGI, an eyesore that’s particularly gaudy when the finale’s ‘secrets’ drop.

Solid casting and scares mix with thin plotting and middling monster moves in Savage’s King riff.

Bigger, bloodier, blunter. Ghostface goes all-in for the kills in a brash but broad requel-sequel, sharpened by Barrera/Ortega’s ace pairing.

CGI/saga-building issues aside, the MCU’s fun sci-fi getaway stretches Ant-Man and answers any Multiverse niggles. Majors’ menace focuses the attention fiercely.

Though the action and characters are sketchily served, Brown’s match-dry lead, Bradbeer’s brisk direction, and fine support casting make a persuasive case for Enola’s return.

Fast, fierce, fuzzy: nicely unruly, naggingly undisciplined, Johnson’s live-action DC bow strains to entertain but struggles to breathe amid the noise.

The cast commit, but The 355 is no lucky number for Kinberg, who only delivers diminished returns on spy-thriller genre conventions.

The leads deliver to order in this flimsy but playful frolic. A tankful of banter keeps the engine ticking nicely.

A last, cheering hurrah from two dudes.

There’s a chemical imbalance here… Netflix’s super-drug thriller is less than addictive.

Even an axe-swinging Charlize Theron struggles to wallop much life – endless or otherwise - into Gina Prince-Bythewood’s comic-book riff, a derivative fantasy-actioner so laggy it puts you right off immortality.

Sometimes fun, sometimes flatly awkward.

Despite mostly sparky cast-work, the Phoenix never quite rises as hoped in Kinberg’s affectionate but often perfunctory X-Men send-off.

Too rackety and hackneyed to scare, The Nun groans next to the likes of Hereditary. Only the moody, menacing abbey inspires the right levels of belief.

The end-stretch is overlong, but the Flash animation style pops with colour, the music is fun, and off-the-scale creature cuteness abounds.

Reid’s a fine lead, but DuVernay’s usually firm footing wobbles in the CGI clouds of Disney fantasy.

Despite the candid vérité stylings, art-dance powerhouse Grace Jones remains a magnetic enigma in Sophie Fiennes’ docu-study.

Aiming straight for mounting dread, Parker gets the job done aggressively.

Lowden and Findlay excel in their roles, but Mark Gill’s Moz-movie needed more: both more music and more “people who are young and alive”.

Shipp Jr. thrills, but a busy script blurs too many nuances.

Dagg keeps things simple, but his jogging camera whips up the urgency and he’s well-served by Sutherland’s rangy physicality.

“Prepare for Gar-mageddon!” Or worse: more Smurfs films.

A satire of capitalist can-do thinking lurks in The Wrestler/Turbo writer Robert D. Siegel’s script, yet Hancock (Saving Mr. Banks) lacks the stomach to do full justice to its vision of the American dream plummeting into a nightmare.

Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov stresses spectacle over subtext – and, effectively, leaves the cast floundering fast.

If the final third’s sudden, Twilight Zone-lite genre relocation seems desperate, the hollow climax confirms suspicions: vital supplies of narrative oxygen are lacking here.

Direction and cast pack a wallop.

Lie Laas' furrowed lead and Nørgaard's taut orchestration of flashback-pumped plotting help flesh out old clichés – at least until the climax takes a glum turn for the overwrought.

Tasked with brokering a peace between event-sized thrills, gaming lore and high fantasy, Jones embraces Warcraft’s world with laudable commitment: but when it comes to charging it with life, sheer bulk gets the better of him.

As Johnson enters Columbine-style turf, a clearer slant on our modern mindset is required than the one he offers.

The cast’s likeable work falls right through the script holes.

Coherence croaks as Gout dishes enough jump-cuts, whip pans and slo-mo assassinations to make Michael Bay look restrained, but the multi-handed mood music offers meaty compensations.

Next to message-laden, CG-soaked kids’ animations, SpongeBob stands alone. His return is a skittish but winning splash of nonsense: dip in.

Reynolds moves on from Green Lantern in Satrapi’s psycho-romp, pitched awkwardly between funny-haha and funny-peculiar, but blessed with enough style and smarts to merit a look.

When someone in Age Of Extinction carps about “crap sequels and remakes” in movies, you almost choke on the audacity.

Lawrence’s mechanised menagerie and the directors’ stereoscopic smarts entertain most.