Kevin Harley

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

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

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

Direction and cast pack a wallop.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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”.

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

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.

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

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.

Like E.T. gone wrong, director Kiah Roache-Turner’s underdeveloped but briskly suspenseful, suggestive arachno-shocker sees a kid with family issues find solace in alien company. Only this spidery E.T. will gobble you up before it phones home…

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

A last, cheering hurrah from two dudes.

The sheer volume of potential readings eventually stalls on reductive soundbites about a faithless generation, but the set-pieces sizzle with style.

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