A decent, mid-list spy thriller, suspended somewhere between le Carré and Bond but with a budgetary austerity in keeping with UK government spending cuts that keeps it out of the real high-stakes game.

The Secrets Of Dumbledore doesn’t quite cast a Potter-like spell — but with solid action and moments of genuine heart, it delivers a little light in the Wizarding World’s darkest hour.

Regarding Henry is ultimately just about bearable thanks to Ford's sheer presence and the occasional reminder, the first 20 minutes in particular, of what might and should have been.

The Merlot to "Sideways" Pinot, this is one of those middling movies that, while never terrible, also never really impresses.

Movie Marmite. Many will be perplexed. Donnie Darko fans should lap it up.

A fun, frothy return for Frank and his creaky commandos.

Burton's first feature revels in the weird, the unpredictable, the infantile and the absurd. A dazzling debut.

It has managed, admirably, to strike a balance between the wholesome 'school nerd blossoms' fairy tale and the gross-out comedy that is now a teen movie standard.

The set pieces make this well worth watching while director Goro Miyazaki shows he's truly his father's son.

Against the odds, perhaps, but part three injects a tiring franchise with new life and some surprisingly dark jokes. Some fun cameos and another winning Dan Stevens turn also add much needed unpredictability to the miniature goings-on.

The Year Of The Matrix will be remembered as an indulgence for fans, while the original movie will be affectionately held as a separate entity by a bigger crowd, much as the original "Star Wars" trilogy hasn't really been tainted by divisions over Episodes I and II.

For all the special effects and half-starved A-listers, this is a sodden beast. Perhaps there’s a reason that Melville only told half the story.

Fox is fun as a demonic harpy, but sadly the meeting of Hollywood’s two rock’n’roll queens is closer to safe studio product than slash-and-burn envelope-pusher.

A noisy but enjoyable destruction derby of a film, sadly with none of the subtlety, invention or skill of Spielberg's Duel.

Broader than Bad Santa and less consistently funny, it's still gleefully rude, crude and often a lot of fun.

A smart, accessible, surprisingly balanced look at our dysfunctional world. Compelling stuff.

Dull.

Intentionally or not, it might be the comedy of the year. The music and dance are thrilling and the costumes saucy enough to satisfy, but the whole is so camp and clichéd that it must be deliberate. Right?

A high-altitude horror – think a Bram Stoker reworking of *The Shining* or Shutter Highland – of real craft. Ultimately, though, the plot turns out to be thinner than the air.

Compared to its direct inspiration - Hal Ashby's blackly brilliant "Harold And Maude" - Restless comes off like an anemic facsimile. After the excellent "Milk," this is more like curdled cheese.

Overall, a superior sequel. Some people will never get over the height discrepancy but character-wise, Never Goes Back brings Reacher closer to the books for the type of thriller that rarely gets made these days.

It’s still a giggle, largely thanks to Tilly’s cantankerous mother (Judy Davis) and the camp local cop (Hugo Weaving).

Despite a muddled final act, Monster Hunter is satisfyingly efficient, a quick-fire thrill-ride of creepy thrills, nasty kills, and of course, monster-hunting.

This light satire is unlikely to influence the forthcoming election, but Costner's in fine fettle.

An uneven take on Palahniuk’s fourth novel, Rockwell and Huston shining brightly enough to eclipse a patchy directorial debut.

These teens may be a bit messy (who isn’t?) but it’s a joy to have Diablo Cody back to telegraph a new kind of adolescent horror, with a smile full of teeth.

The Michael versus Laurie showdown delivers — but for the most part, Halloween Ends is an unsatisfying closing chapter for this continuity. In trying to grapple with the horror beneath Michael Myers’ mask, it gets lost up its own abyss.

This might not be the venerable animation house at its very best, but it is a reminder of why they have endured for so long. Why change a formula when it’s a winning one?

Smart, fun, mid-list horror with Scream overtones

By no means the disaster many might have expected following its years-long delay. You’ll like it. Not a lot, but you’ll like it.

Landis' latest keeps you laughing not with it's originality (of which there is little) but with it's confidence to out-joke it's predecessors on this much-trodden ground.

Flawed, certainly, but by no means the horror-show its paltry box-office performance would suggest.

Not the reunion between Lau and Leung that fans might have been craving, nor the decadent deep-dive into Hong Kong’s boom-time that the film could and should have been.

A rare film in which the style IS the substance.

A heck of a debut from first-timer Shawn Simmons, and another powerful argument for A-list status for Samara Weaving. Bring on the sequel, which is obliged to be titled Miny Moe. 

Midway is a big, bold, brazen attempt to detail one of World War II’s most significant moments. But in a post Saving Private Ryan-Dunkirk landscape, it feels astonishing anyone is still making war movies like this.

An affectionate and entertaining tribute to the Western - but, Estevez aside, Young Guns II doesn't exactly add much to the old genre.

Very, very low-brow.

Hiddleston and Olsen impress, and the music remains golden, but this is just another by-the-numbers biopic.

The leads work hard and there’s an attempt to add fun via cheesy music and Salma Hayek, but hackneyed dynamics, half-baked action sequences and saying “m#th&rf$ck*r” does not a Shane Black make.

In the world of Mob Land, nothing good lasts. Disappointingly, despite the cast’s best efforts and a few striking visual flourishes, nothing good lasts in the film itself either.

The Wild roars back from a rocky opening act to a storming last reel, just managing to claw its way above comparisons with "Madagascar."

A disappointingly tame and unimaginative effort, which throws away much of what was best-loved about the original and fails to find worthy replacements.

Everybody is good at one thing, they say; for Emmerich, it's destruction.

In this stereotypically-fuelled moralistic gangster movie, the plot is poor, the acting worse and standing at three hours, proves about three hours too long.

With Hercules, Brett Ratner and Dwayne Johnson are out to entertain you — no more, no less. And that is just what they do.

Here is a film fully xenophobic, abhorrent film, touting guileless version of military honour, but with Jack Cardiff’s furtive camerawork and some excellent editing, it sucks you in to its disturbing heroic sweep.

While not exactly poised to bother the old grey matter too much, will provide a great night's entertainment for sitcom lovers everywhere. But doing for childbirth what Four Weddings And A Funeral did for nuptials remains an unlikely proposition.

It's safe, it's mainstream and it's silly, but Guttenberg and Hannah strike up enough chemistry to give this big budget apparition at least a little depth.

A largely uninspiring re-tread of a superior film, this has some decent moments and enough gnarly deaths to keep horror hounds vaguely entertained until the inevitable arrival of ‘Bird Box Santorini’.

If the series wants to become a franchise, a rethink and new blood will be necessary -- maybe Banderas can get mortally wounded in reel one of The Son Of Zorro, passing on the mask and sword to, say, Gael García Bernal.

The truly effective emotional arc is handed to the furry member of the cast.

Scabrous, watchable and deceptively provocative, Jon Stewart’s political parable may be slightly out of step with the political reality of 2020 — but Carell and Byrne do enough to earn your VOD vote.

Cute, cute, cute. No bouquets for originality, but it pushes all the buttons of this mini-genre, and Heigl and Marsden ring dem bells.

Despite some fun action excess and an impressively committed performance from Bill Skarsgård, Boy Kills World is a muddled, tiring mess, favouring violent shocks over cohesive storytelling.

The film strains in two different directions, half trying to stay true to its based-on-fact roots, half wanting to ditch all that and become a ridiculous farce.

Competent and well-cast, but it crams too much into the runtime and loses the elegance of the novel.

A curious mix of Britpop music cues and moppet-bait storytelling makes for a diverting, if derivative kids' animation.

Less of a riot than Wright’s previous Grabbers, Robot Overlords displays the same knowing intelligence, sense of fun and deep-rooted love for post-’70s genre film. Unlike its titular villains, it’s sleek and it never malfunctions.

Super sexy, silly Meyer fun where he takes his own self-styled genre to its heights/depths.

A well-intentioned biopic about a little-discussed but pivotal moment for both artists. If it’s never transcendent, it at least offers charming child performances, and Hawes is a particularly good fit as Neal.

In typical Rob Cohen fashion, it does exactly what it says on the tin. But that's all it needs to be the visceral rollercoaster ride we all expect.

While its reach may exceed its grasp, any shortcomings of Pathaan are papered over by the sheer charisma of its lead actor, who once again demonstrates why he is one of the most popular movie stars in the world.

It tootles along being cute and fluffy like a twentysomethings' version of Sabrina The Teenage Witch, but to further its notions of sisterhood and the power of women, it also takes a spin through Thelma And Louise territory, then revisits The Exorcist to up the supernatural content. It's enough to make your head spin.

Disappoints due to poor structure, flimsy characterisation and insufficient wit.

By no means perfect - a twist in the tale overextends its already lengthy running time - but it is terrific fun.

A quirky road-trip movie with things to say. A return to form for Depardieu too.

This is simply more fairly generic and forgettable family fodder.

Smart, intriguing, funny and sad, with some primo wisecracking dialogue.

The film’s bleak, Coen-esque sense of isolation, cold brutality and clutch of confident performances...make for a decent and engaging story that culminates in an enjoyably nasty conclusion.

This strict adherence to formula is wearing for anyone over ten, but worse is Lohan.

The result is a middle-of-the-table Conjuring universe film — one unlikely to make a dent in horror history, but well-constructed, with moments of inventive imagery, and that continues to cement Akela Cooper as a writer with a clear eye for freaky fun.

This doesn’t reinvent the wheel, and keeps you waiting too long for the final showdown — but when the creatures collide, it still delivers satisfying thrills.

Jaa’s period ‘beatquel’ is thick on action but thin on plot. Awesome final fight, though.

Tedious Western, that's a disappointment given the talent involved.

Occasionally clunky and retrograde but in the same manner as a story told by a grandparent, The Alto Knights reminds us that De Niro will always be cinema’s greatest gangster.

For all its faults, the good-natured, quirky humour that this for the most part offers ultimately makes it very hard to dislike.

Take That have more than enough hits to give this a solid soundtrack, but the story they’re loosely tied to is weakly constructed and far gloomier than the cheery music deserves.

Effectively scary and occasionally inventive, Blair Witch is a solid genre film both helped and hindered by its franchise’s place in cinematic history.

An animation that never drags itself out of mediocrity despite the best efforts of gifted animator Tartakovsky.

Like every one of its songs, it makes a lot of noise about nothing much and cockily straddles awfulness and greatness. It's enormously entertaining nonsense.

Occasionally dynamic action and an incredible cast can’t ultimately save this muddled, derivative film. And please don’t call it ‘Jane Wick’.

An okay paranormal mystery, with solid work from the regulars – but please Mr Carter, next time, could we have liver-eating mutants or post-modern comedy like the really good episodes of The X Files?

In spite of two great performances, this is a muddled affair.

Generic, uninspired and devoid of suspense.

The thrill of the original is seeing a black-and-white, one-foot-on-the-floor, no-sex-please Hays Code world suddenly explode into a slasher movie. Our loss of innocence has, simply, changed all the rules.

The midway point between "A.I." and "Diary Of A Wimpy Kid." It has quirky charm and a tender heart, but the treacly sentiment may become wearisome.

A supernatural, effects-laden yarn like this is right in Robert Zemeckis' wheelhouse. Which makes it a little disheartening that it’s merely good, rather than great. Dahl's story still sings, but like a potion missing eye of newt, this new take is slightly undercooked.

There’s no doubting the energy, but without Colin Farrell’s fervour, or any novel spin, it’s no more than treading water from this gang.

As a thriller it's solid three-star tension. As a Samuel L. Jackson showcase it proves a man can only coast through so many motherfuckin' or milquetoastin' turns before having to display his full and overpowering talent.

By the time everyone's done their darnedest to undermine this romance and the tirelessly selfless St. Danny has begun to contemplate cutting the apron strings, they've all nearly worn out their welcome. It's simple, sweet and uninspired.

This unholy concoction of ideas is unlikely to become a seasonal staple, but sift through the nonsense and there’s a surprising amount to enjoy in this bonkers Noel nightmare.

Bigger, weirder, and just about funnier than the first, the second Shazam! remains entertaining despite some tiresome plotting. And who doesn’t want to see Helen Mirren as an all-powerful Greek goddess?

Half-an-hour too long, but still a fun ride.

Until Dawn wants to carve its own path, separate from its source material. Ironically, in trying to be different, it ends up feeling more clichéd than ever.

44 Inch Chest gets by on the quality of its performances.

Little atmosphere and no surprises.

A sweet but predictable chick flick, this coasts by on the considerable charm of its two leads.