Neil Smith

Jared Hess's indie sensibilities help to elevate a video game adaptation that is boosted further by Jack Black's irrepressible star turn. The special effects could be better, as could the female roles. But this remains an entertaining fantasy adventure that makes light work of what might appear to be unpromising source material.

Though closer in quality to Morbius than Venom, Kraven is far from a catastrophe and serves up a decent helping of bloodthirsty, globe-trotting action. Taylor-Johnson makes a muscular if self-satisfied protagonist in a film that would have been better off standing on its own shoeless feet than cravenly (or should that be, 'kravenly') cleaving itself to its comic book brethren.

A visually striking and inventive overhaul of well-oiled IP that suggests animation was the right path all along. Autobots, roll out!

The Gearbox title gamers loved has spawned a frenetic and disorderly shambles they’re likelier to loathe. Claptrap? You said it.

A serious subject is sensitively handled in a drama that’s otherwise just tear-jerking soap opera.

Long before the film reaches its action-packed, train-based climax, however, adults will be questioning if its three writers have so much as seen an actual Garfield comic strip, given how removed their work feels from its activity-averse inspiration.

Entertaining enough but inessential, Kingdom offers spectacle and thrills but lacks the ambition, smarts, and gravity of its immediate predecessors.

Such is the in-built disposability of this sort of lightweight streaming fodder that those who watch it will probably have forgotten it inside of five minutes.

Snyder’s sci-fi epic stumbles towards the finish line with an underwhelming Part Two that feels more like a Part One-And-A-Half.

Given the short from whence it came ran a mere 12 minutes, there is a definite sense of material being extended beyond its elasticity. Yet it’s a decent vehicle for Ridley that, like last year’s The Marsh King’s Daughter, shows she doesn’t need a galaxy far, far away to demonstrate her star (Wars) power.

Ethan Coen strikes out on his own with a frivolous frolic that wears its slightness like a badge of honour.

Capturing Marley’s essence on screen proves an impossible task in a biopic that veers towards hagiography.

The best bits of Kingdom come when Jules Verne-esque technology like Manta’s Octobots collides with Atlantis’ psychedelic bioluminescence, a colourful contrast that gets to the heart of this watery franchise’s trippy appeal.

Snyder’s passion project risks becoming subsumed by its own self-importance, but delivers bombastic mayhem and grandiose visuals by the bucket-load.

Marvel’s woes won’t be solved by a disjointed mini-Avengers that doesn't make a great deal of sense. But the cats are Flerken great.

A ploddingly predictable, gore-lite yawner.

Stanfield, on double duty as both Clarence and his straitlaced disciple twin Thomas, is a charismatic lead in a cast that boasts more than one enjoyable cameo. Yet you can’t help concluding that Samuel’s laudable ambition to give his mischievous comedy a deeper resonance was too heavy a cross to bear.

The performances keep us engaged.

Tobin Bell’s comeback may please some, but it’s not a sufficient X-cuse to see Saw resuscitated.

The Nun 2 feels like an unnecessary sequel to a hoary offshoot that was hardly essential in the first place.

A swearing dog voiced by Jamie Foxx is funny – once. Having set up its ribald premise, however, Strays – an R-rated riposte to such talking-pooch heart-stirrers as 2017’s A Dog’s Purpose, complete with cameos from that film’s stars – has to relentlessly and tiresomely up the ante, plastering the screen with so many peeing, pooping, and humping tail-waggers it feels more like A Dog’s Porno.

While bemoaning how tough life has become in the made-up Palmera City, Jaime’s sister Milagro (Belissa Escobedo) remarks that "progress is not for us!" In a genre increasingly subsumed by numbing bombast, Blue Beetle’s abundance of personality might just be progress enough.

Fast, furious and based on fact, this pleasingly lateral adaptation embellishes a console-jockey favourite with familiar sports-movie archetypes.

The first Meg never pretended to be anything more than a shamelessly imitative, big-fish smackdown. Yet even that low bar proves too high for this listless, mechanical follow-up.

At least until its Turning Red-ish plot becomes subsumed by a tiresome showdown finale, there’s a lot to take pleasure from here - not least the invertebrate protagonists’ amusing elasticity, which recalls the madcap fun of Tex Avery’s cartoon classics.

Taste and laughs are in equally slim supply in Jennifer Lawrence’s latest, from which only her fresh-faced co-star emerges untarnished.

Sixteen years on from the Shia LaBeouf original, though, the many brains behind this franchise have still to figure out how to satisfy an audience without leaving it bludgeoned.

There’s no questioning Skarsgård’s commitment to his character’s descent into depravity, while the gifted Goth is fearlessly uninhibited. But just because Infinity Pool looks good on the surface, that doesn’t mean it has hidden depths.

Precision-built to make you chortle, M3GAN is a l0t of 4un. On the fr1ghts front, however, it’s basically a Furby.

A serviceable translation of a theatrical success whose weaker elements are found wherever it veers too widely from its source.

As terrific as Colman is, however, the film around her has a schematic and engineered quality not too dissimilar from Jones’ prized projectors.

In narrowing his film’s field of activity, director Colin Trevorrow dispiritingly winds up reducing it to the tried, the tested, and the numbingly familiar.

Reichardt and Williams reunite to muted effect to create a portrait of an artist that feels a little unfinished.

At two hours and change Hunt definitely outstays its welcome, while it’s disappointing Lee has room for only two notable female characters. If you are up for some robust, relentless, blood-splattered mayhem, though, it’s well worth hunting down when it makes its way into cinemas.

Though delightful in places, the third entry in Sony’s third Spider-Man cycle feels both overstocked and underwhelming.

It’s not great Scott, but House Of Gucci still offers a fine excuse to vicariously experience the lifestyles of the rich and shameless.

An action vehicle that, in trying to do it all, does a little too much; Johnson and Blunt keep it afloat.

It’s no slam dunk for King James in a reprise that shows you can only spread Space Jam so far.

Damon’s sturdy presence just about holds it together, while Breslin shows some impressive chops as the daughter who is too aware of his failings to see him as her saviour. By the end, though, the still waters McCarthy seeks to navigate don’t run deep so much as dry – a consequence, you suspect, of trying to cram too many genres into one star vehicle.

Better than The Conjuring 2 and most of the Annabelles, this latest entry gives some zip to a stumbling franchise.

A memorable showdown from yesteryear is recalled in an enjoyable yet frustrating film that stubbornly refuses to pick a side.

Like the inscription on her daddy’s sword, the new Mulan is loyal, brave and true… but not quite as funny or dramatic as it might have been.

A lot of talented people have done their utmost to make Hooper’s vision succeed. Sadly, it doesn’t.

Gore and guffaws go hand in weapon-wielding hand in a belated follow-up that struggles to replicate the original’s winning formula.

Maudlin, glum and distinctly cheap-looking, Angel brings the curtain down on a trilogy that should have never got this far.

A well-cast coming-of-age story with a potty mouth, Good Boys certainly has its moments, but is overall pretty small fry, too reliant on recycling the same joke.

It takes more than two Avengers and the director of Fast & Furious 8 to make the MIB hip again.

Reynolds and Pikachu make an inspired combo in a CGI/live-action mash-up that otherwise adheres to a rigidly boilerplate formula.

A little more anger would not have gone amiss in this well-acted but strangely remote slice of Oscar bait

The story is predictable, but Simmons’ tighty whities and Delpy’s fish impressions compensate.

A primitive concept (cavemen play football) generates unsophisticated laughs in an animated caper that’s fun but rather second division by Aardman standards.

We’ve seen Stiller do ‘exasperated malcontent’ before, but this remains a perceptive portrait of fortysomething angst.

The shadow of subsequent events looms oppressively large, but Greg Barker’s film still speaks eloquently for diplomacy and selfless public service.

A solid if far-fetched thriller that still entertains, even as it goes off the rails.

The action’s passable and Gillan makes a decent fist of an underwritten character. Otherwise, this Jumanji makeover’s a losing game.

Backdraft clichés notwithstanding, this is a stirring fact-based tribute to public servants putting it on the line.

Tots will enjoy, but there’s no denying the pieces don’t quite click together. Best giant moggy since The Goodies, mind.

Believers will be more interested in what he uncovers than the layman, who will soon identify this ’80s-set adap of Lee Strobel’s book as a tedious sermon that’s preaching to the converted.

Two characters, who you won’t like, insulting each other for two hours. Give it a miss and rewatch Midnight Run instead.

Too solemn to keep us invested in its heroes’ mission or fate.

An only moderately entertaining threequel that assumes a double dose of Carell will make up for missing Minions. It doesn’t.

Pixar’s least essential franchise gets back on track with a polished but disposable threequel.

Irish politics made accessible with the help of a playful script, two fine performances and 11 years of hindsight.

A classy ensemble (Charlotte Rampling, Harriet Walter) supports Jim Broadbent’s amusingly tetchy lead, while youthful flashbacks evoke a mood of romantic yearning.

Rob Lowe provides colour as a Southern-accented sleazeball, while the Free Willy finale has enough vehicular mayhem to excuse its dodgy FX.

Clearly no stranger to John Hughes movies, writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig brings a spiky wit and a warm-hearted, nerd-friendly finale to a comedy that wants for nothing but a little substance.

For all his noble intentions, though, Crocodile Gennadiy sure loves the limelight, forcing us to speculate whether he works for God’s glory or his own.

It’s too brief to convey the intellect and almost mystical ability that underpin Carlsen’s success.

Early promise proves misleading in a sequel that should be far better than The Da Vinci Code than it actually is.

As crude as the oil it revolves around, Deepwater provides combustible entertainment without leaving the shallows.

There’s an undeniable charm here that, allied with the picturesque locations, results in a nostalgic throwback to a gentler age.

Those with fond memories of a gentler era of boy-and-his-insert-critter-here heartwarmers are bound to welcome Dragon’s old-fashioned vibe. But it still feels almost perverse to place all of Weta’s hi-tech wizardry at the disposal of a film so stubbornly, studiously lo-fi.

For all its attempts to expand the original’s ensemble and embellish its themes, Dory is cod in batter beside Nemo’s smoked salmon. But still tasty.

Bobin’s attempt to fill Tim Burton’s shoes generates a lively but ersatz sequel that only truly ticks when Baron Cohen and Bonham Carter are around.

Bloodthirsty, derivative and xenophobic nonsense.

The strange thing about Grimsby is that it works much better as a Bond-spoofing actioner than it does as a politically incorrect rib-tickler.

It doesn’t exactly soar and the lack of levity grates, yet the Spooks movie still delivers some appealingly old-school mayhem.

Ambitiously staged and impressively shot, Monsters: Dark Continent makes a bold stab at mounting a franchise but lacks the vision and surprise of its predecessor.

This is not, we’d wager, the film its director intended. Yet it’s worth watching, if only to see Caine and Kingsley together for the first time in 25 years.

The most inventive sequence has Larry and Teddy plunge into an MC Escher painting, an interlude so dazzling you can almost overlook the weeing monkey.

Liam Neeson cuts a rather sorry figure in what’s less a final flourish for the series than a prolonged death rattle.

It’s left to the leads to keep us engaged, a tall order given their film’s old-fashioned, fusty feel.

A serious subject receives a simplistic treatment in an ill-conceived thriller in which the emotive (and timely) issue of honour killings becomes just another plot device.

Director Arnaud des Pallières lends a bleak austerity to the story, but with only one murky battle scene to quicken the blood it’s hardly a recipe for unbridled excitement.

Just as bloody yet much more conventional, 300 #2 offers splashy thrills aplenty but fails to make a watertight case for its own existence. Green, however, ensures it stays afloat.

A solid outing for a re-Bourne hero that could, with a few key tweaks, generate another round of vehicles for the Clancy cash cow.

Fear falls short of fantastic yet it’s a decent effort that, like Pegg’s beard, proves to be something of a grower.

Twists pile as high as corpses before an overcooked ending sends things spiraling into silliness.

The results – achieved through small cameras clipped to nets, masts and the crew – will hook some and induce seasickness in others.

Though it’s good to see Michelle Pfeiffer married to the mob again, she alone can’t redeem a lumbering farce that takes an unpleasantly sadistic glee in violence, murder and intimidation.

Potts does the singing himself, but that doesn’t stop Justin Zackham’s (The Big Wedding) contrived script from sounding bum notes throughout.

Fun when Jones is around, dull when he's not, it's all just a little bit of history repeating.

Longer than OHF and just as daft, WHD makes for a more entertaining watch before succumbing to the same bombastic overkill.

Washington and Wahlberg are an effective double act in an intermittently exciting thriller with more twists than it needs. We’d love to see them partnered again, though perhaps as characters.

Neatly juxtaposes the beauty of the landscape with the enmities it engenders.

The final showdown whisks up the requisite excitement, but the open-ended coda feels like an optimistic throw of the dice from the franchise showing meagre signs of Harry Potter longevity.

Can’t decide if it’s a broad farce or a poignant portrait. Small wonder then, that it falls short on both counts, failing to earn either Bridesmaids-sized laughs or nods of recognition.

It’s a step up from the garbled silliness of Wolverine’s first solo outing. Unlike Origins, the storytelling is more sharply focused here, ignited by flashes of stylised superheroism.