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.