Neil Smith

Pixar falls back on the tried and tested in an entertaining caper that will be a surefire kid pleaser this summer. Old favourites are always welcome, but it would have been nice to see some more new ideas too.

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

André Øvredal (Troll Hunter) ruthlessly ratchets the tension – with no little assistance from Olwen Kelly, conveying menace without moving a muscle.

As cozy as a mug of Horlicks inside an electric blanket, Hoffman's film couldn't offend if it tried. Age, however, has yet to wither its veterans' undimmed star appeal.

Veteran French actor Bouquet brings a lifetime of experience to his arthritic old master, though, while the frequently unclad Theret captivates and exasperates in equal measure.

Chastain stalks the corridors of power with steely aplomb in Madden’s coolly compelling incursion into House of Cards territory.

With writer/director James Gunn off to DC and some of its stars signalling they’re done with their characters, there’s an inevitable air of finality – not to mention contractual obligation – about this third instalment in Marvel’s Guardians series. If anything, though, that’s more a strength than a weakness, all involved being seemingly intent on going out on an emotionally affecting, thematically audacious high.

Jan Ole Gerster’s deceptively slender character study has a complex undertow, subtly linking its wallflower anti-hero’s acceptance of his failings with his country’s wider atonement for its World War II past.

Pimped, primped and dressed to the nines, Joe Wright's Tols-toy story looks the business. Like a disappointing Christmas present, though, the pleasure quickly evaporates once you remove the shiny paper.

Stirring and striking, Hooper's epic musical won't be wanting for awards and plaudits. Danny Cohen's cinematography is stunning and Hathaway's Oscar is guaranteed.

The director of The Square gives a new shape a whirl with hilarious, scathing and sometimes jaw-dropping results.

This is a Shyamalan movie through and through. And it’s his best in some time, thanks to a magnetic McAvoy.

Third time’s the charm for a franchise that’s found its groove, ironically by changing the record.

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

A bleak yet strangely heartening film.

It's a must see for fans of roar footage.

2 Days is a sparky, crowd-cheering gem buoyed by Julie Delpy's smart writing and Adam Goldberg's tart whining. Less swoony than Linklater's "Before Sunrise/Sunset," but Delpy nails the relationship humour.

The style might cause whiplash, but it’s worth it for the thrilling momentum Chazelle brings to his revisionist filmdom fantasia.

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

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.

Assured if not inspired, Legacy keeps the Bourne engine ticking over without reaching top gear. The action's accomplished and Renner's fine. Without Matt Damon, however, it feels like a placeholder.

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.

Though not as dramatically rich or emotionally compelling as Skyfall, Spectre still ranks as a sleek, pulse-pounding if slightly overlong entertainment.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Tamer than the book and not as funny, this is Salmon filleted. But McGregor and Blunt make fetching lovebirds, while Kristin Scott Thomas is off the scale in a rare comic outing.

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

This classy adap of a much-garlanded stage play will appeal to discerning audiences who can tolerate unpleasant characters with potty mouths if they're played by Oscar winners.

Saluting both America's national pastime and its oldest working icon, Curve is a solid heart-tugger that plays with a straight bat when it comes to plot, character and message.

In a summer hardly starved of comic-book properties, this redundant extension of a series that ran out of gas a decade ago doesn't need a neuralyzer to be forgettable.

Some will balk at Pinto's passivity, but Trishna again shows Winterbottom to be one of the few directors today who are liberated, rather than constricted, by classic literature.

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.

Despite being as garish and manufactured as Perry's multi-coloured hair-don'ts, Part Of Me deserves kudos for allowing an element of unpredictability to intrude upon its tween exploitation and sugary vulgarity.

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.

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

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

The breakout stars of the Despicable Me franchise seize the spotlight in an enjoyably demented off-shoot that is guaranteed to send their young fans bananas.

With a massive ensemble to play with and new characters to introduce, it’s inevitable that some cast members (Brie Larson’s Agency operative Tess among them) get a little shortchanged. But with Fast XI on the cards for 2025, there’s still time to shine as brightly as John Cena does here as Brian’s genially protective uncle: a retooled part that fits him far better than the nefarious one he took in 2021’s F9.

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.

As impressive as [Berry] is, though, it’s the kids who shine brightest in a drama whose iron hold on the audience’s attention can withstand the odd dip into credulity-stretching implausibility.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Believably charts a girl’s coming of age but is eventually capsized by lurid melodrama.

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

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

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

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

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.

Chloé Zhao gives the MCU just the kick in the pants it needs at this phase in its evolution.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Populist fare from across the channel that will amply repay those ready to put the time in. The scenery, meanwhile, makes you want to run out and buy a timeshare.

Bickering turns to bonding over the course of a predictable affair that only comes to life during a Texan steak-eating contest that has Babs ingest a mountain of meat.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Directed by John McTiernan, it’s an ’80s classic full of still-thrilling action, quotable one-liners (“Get to the chopper!” “Stick around!”) and sly digs at Uncle Sam’s penchant for unwinnable jungle wars.

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

To borrow a line Roberts spits at Collins, there's something about Mirror that's incredibly irritating. Fingers crossed Huntsman has more edge.

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.

"What are you going to do?" wails Maggie. "What I do best!" growls Liam. Yet while it's fun to watch him take out the Eurotrash, we've seen him do it better.

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

A lavishly mounted re-telling that, for all its good intentions and visual wonders, can’t help seeming surplus to requirements.

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.

Affection for the characters will bring fans in. But many will leave wishing the makers of one of the most enjoyable programmes of recent years had left well enough alone.

As implausible as the stars' gleaming choppers.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

What [Bekmambetov] doesn't do is offer us any respite from his 3D CGI barrage, an assault on the senses that makes the bullet John Wilkes Booth fired into the real Abe's noggin seem calming by comparison.

James DeMonaco’s blood-splattered thriller begins well before expiring slowly from multiple improbabilities.

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

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.

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.

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