An energetic escape from Development Hell: suitably OTT, often fun and always loud. The villainy is underpowered, the plot a mess, but Cooper and Copley impress. We, er, quite like it when a plan comes together.

A tormented movie about torment; loopy, over-reaching and occasionally suspicious. Simultaneously, it is a daring artistic endeavour.

Funnier than it has any right to be, thanks to Reynolds’ charisma and Faris’ bubbleheaded blonde.

An ambitious and sloppy, yet occasionally likeable, cross-European fable.

The exuberance of the package, coupled with a sexual frankness seldom seen in English language cinema, makes this the most fun foreign film since "Y Tu Mamá También."

Sensitive performances from a willing cast bring Zola's novel to life on the big screen.

More story-led than the original with a high enough body count to make it a satisfying action movie.

A gaudy, flamboyant expose that asks a lot of its stars, and gets more than it deserves.

Less a sequel, more a virtual remake of Home Alone, this "John Hughes production" follows the same route as its money-spinning predecessor, wheeling out the well-worn precocious-kid-on-his-todd scenario with scant regard for originality.

Thin and predictable, and a flop of awesome proportions in the US, this has occasional bursts of freshness, but mostly leaves you with the nagging impression that Mathis ended up with the wrong guy.

One of those films that seems like it was made mainly for film festivals - and it has the awards to show for it.

Hit-and-miss for Howard. The tone flits, sometimes uncomfortably, from Vaughn-fuelled laugh-fest to relationship drama, but it's a winner compared to many of the clunkly comedies out there.

Wrong Turn has some decent booby-trap business but can’t find enough that is different to enliven the weary concept. But for the horror hardcore, keep watching once the credits roll.

A pitch-black, often very funny slice of pulp fiction with a number of stand-out performances, notably the ferocious Theron.

The film’s glowing, golden cinematography suggests a far warmer story than it in fact delivers, but Winslet’s stunning turn is worth a look if you can stand the consciously stagey feel.

It’s an impressively starry cast, but sadly, this lacks the charm, wit and, yes, magic of the original. You’ll like it, not a lot.

The film seems to be pitched at shrieking level, as if that’s the only timbre children can register.

Jellyfish is a familiar but compassionately drawn portrait of hardscrabble lives, centred by a terrific performance by Liv Hill.

Though Farrell does great work and the film is a visual feast, Ballad Of A Small Player is an impenetrable story of redemption that’s both too obvious and too baffling.

Johansson is no Anne Hathaway in this pleasant but forgettable comedy.

Aniston deports herself competently, here showing us nothing she hasn't on Friends, and Bacon is pretty much on autopilot as the company stud but it is Mohr who actually shines, skilfully giving an underwritten role a genuinely deft sense of nobility and charm.

Lovely to look at and with some fun material not of Seuss' invention, but it's too hectoring, like reading an environmental textbook with jolly pictures.

This big-spy-meets-little-kid comedy isn’t funny enough for teens, but not really suitable for younger viewers either.

Lyne's efforts to be both passionate and artistic are generally successful, although a few sex scenes are disturbing and arguably close to salacious.

Relentlessly juvenile, it will offend moralists while making fans laugh out loud. It's only when demands of storytelling intrude that the film can't keep it up.

Beautifully animated, and about as faithful and affectionate as a corporate cash-in is possible to get — but it still doesn’t come close to the experience of actually playing the games.

The storyline delicately tiptoes along the line of good taste and is embroidered by a first-rate cast. Still, a knockout moment is missing.

As horror, it's a worn-out succession of gory, meaningless, hard-to-enjoy deaths, and too much of the running time is given over to puppets arguing with each other.

Zac Efron makes a convincing bid for movie stardom — and Ratajkowski proves she’s more than just a pretty face — in this flawed but fitfully entertaining film, even if it all goes a bit Pete Tong at the end.

It's just too tempting to dismiss it as extremely long and incredibly disappointing. It's challenging, divisive and has moments of beauty but leaves you cold.

It won't do anything to win over those not already partial to Tarsem's style, but it has more than enough blood, guts and glamour to satisfy – and Cavill looks like a superman.

Sadly, despite its various attributes and overall funky MTV sensibilities, this never gets quite brutal or blockbusterish enough and the result is a movie both likely to offend the family and infuriate the aficionados in roughly equal amounts.

Superlative performances from Roberts and Hammer almost cover the shortcomings. Like most Tarsem films it's a muddle, but this time not one with enough distracting dazzle.

If TV had a Saga Channel, this intriguing, if never quite gripping, serial killer thriller would play on a loop, in between reruns of Matlock and NCIS.

As with "Stuck On You," this is proof that when the Farrellys are involved (even as mere producers), ribald yet humane comedy can be mined from the most potentially offensive sources.

Despite Cage in a snit, it's a likable if functional summer-show.

Though its themes are overly familiar, this is a fun and charming introduction for newbies to the Addams Family. Once again, it’s cool to be weird.

Sentimental, cliched and at times overdone but a true weepy if ever there was one.

There's lo-fi charm in the musical numbers and heartfelt turns from the young cast but the story drifts along without offering much that we haven't seen before.

Heavy but fascinating creepy drama, that lacks pace in the first half but has some genuinely thrilling moments.

This is Ben Wheatley on a different register: a bigger scale, a more mainstream approach. There’s much to like — but the shadow of Alfred Hitchcock looms large.

There’s a wobble about how committed this is to being a scary movie rather than an inside Hollywood drama, but — like Exorcist III — it springs one great lunge-out-of-an-unexpected-corner-of-the-frame jump scare.

Against the odds of a feeble script and uninspired direction the duo do, in fact, grow on you, and there are a smattering of silly laughs, most notably a sequence involving a large road kill stashed in the back seat.

Verdict Spies, terrorists, remote-controlled bombs… Unlocked’s components are all too familiar, and it doesn’t put nearly enough effort into making them feel fresh.

Unstintingly raw and cynical, this disconcerting and deeply affecting State Of The Union treatise regularly comes dangerously close to caricature.

This is silly and sentimental, but it’s also basically well-meaning and inoffensive. Best watched after quite a few grappas, or with your sprightly grandmother.

An inoffensive if unengaging family romp that somehow manages to make the ultimate day of fun feel like a drag.

There are colourful characters and cool moments to keep you entertained on the road to nowhere, but they can’t disguise the fact that this is a shaggy-dog story with no real point.

There was potential here, but Frozen Empire is an overpopulated mish-mash, with too many heroes to wrangle. What’s left is a bit of a gooey mess. We’ve been slimed.

It might have worked better if it took itself a little less seriously.

A Dame To Kill For shares some of the downsides of the first, particularly dubious female characterisation. But this retains the gritty, gruelling vice-grip on graphic-novel noir that made Sin City so enjoyable.

Nothing aligns, nothing builds, and before you know it we’re hip-deep in the big showdown -- a free-wheeling frenzy of choreographed combat that neglects to find much space for the cast.

Warm but unassuming family comedy.

Roth's slick shock-'em-up sequel is a dispiritingly traditional splat of gristly Grand Guignol. It's tooled up to outrage, but ultimately numbs rather than grips.

The real nun in the movie is the heroine, played by a spirited Taissa Farmiga, and the dramatic weight falls on her able shoulders.

Too many false notes add up to a Nicholas Sparks-lite teen romance.

Apart from a couple of nice touches - like a faked orgasm scene that's almost as off the wall as the one in When Harry Met Sally - mark this firmly in 'Should Have Been Better'.

Too childish and shallow for adults, yet too brutal and gory for kids, this is one Damsel that really does need saving, after all.

Pfeiffer's performance supersedes any of the material, but the rest of the film is a seething mass of clich's despite the "true story" origins.

What Above Suspicion lacks in flashy direction, it makes up for in strong performances and gripping true-life material to draw from.

An extremely silly, inconsistently funny, action-packed jaunt, carried by the sheer star power of J-Lo, with strong support from Josh Duhamel and Jennifer Coolidge on top form.

Trying so hard to recreate the stylish spy comedies of the 60's, Turner and Quaid pose unconvincingly as the couple in New Orleans when their maternity leave is cut short. Sadly they the required chemistry and their banter falls decidedly flat. The only redeeming feature is the support of Stanley Tucci.

You will jump out of your seat then wince at every kill, but you won't leave the cinema thinking you've seen a classic. Which is a crying shame.

Not quite vintage Black, and Mark Wahlberg is no Robert Downey Jr, but this is fast and funny enough to be worth a couple of your hours. Squint hard enough and it almost feels like you’re back in the ’90s.

It doesn’t completely work and lacks complexity, but Capone is scene-for-scene more interesting than many slicker films. Hardy’s swing-for-the-fences performance is a must-see.

One of the most talk driven summer flicks in living memory, an out of sorts Howard transforms what should be a fun treasure trail romp into something inert and borderline dreary.

Is this what Studio Ghibli’s future looks like? Probably not. But what Earwig lacks in animation elegance, it makes up for in sparky, kid-friendly adventurousness.

Without rising star DiCaprio and Mark Wahlberg this would have been considerably more turgid and unappealing. But their charm allows sympathy and involvement with the characters, despite their efforts towards self-destruction.

The creatively gory fighting and amusing — if shallow — characters just about compensate for the paper-thin story. But at its best, it’s a lot of dumb fun. 

As good an all-out, non-camp horror movie as we’ve had lately.

Long-shelved, the final product never lives up to the promise of its contemporary-Grimm-brothers conceit.

Rising to the challenge of doing something new(ish) with an overworked sub-genre, this may not be particularly scary or funny. But it belies its modest budget to splatter to knowing effect.

Despite a wonderfully witty voiceover and the bullish playing of a willing ensemble, this bawdy romp consistently stumbles over its more contrived excesses.

Shark. Weak.

Straining for significance at every moment, this is one of a wave of late '60s/early '70s Westerns that represent Hollywood's idea of the counterculture in love beads, feathers and picturesque gore.

Writer-director Jack Hill (Spider Baby) evidently didn't try very hard on this one.

Fonda and Danner — who looked then exactly like her daughter, Gwyneth Paltrow, does now — are likable leads in ’70s futurist leisurewear (why didn’t those tailored jumpsuits catch on?), and some creepy corporate robot action helps (Danner’s gunfight with her robot duplicate), but it’s a lot less exciting than the original and replaces satire with TV-style plotting.

Unoriginal, unfunny superhero spoof with a bewildered cast and an obvious plot.

A very silly, sporadically serious hood spoof, with some surprisingly frank discussions of mental health — and a welcome redemptive arc for the multi-talented Adam Deacon.

As sweet and beguiling a musical romance as it’s possible to have between two murderous psychopaths. Its kooky approach won’t suit all stripes of comic-book fan, but it finds a strange, tragic hopefulness all of its own.

Witless, charmless, teen twaddle. Let's take all prints off the film, and bury them. Don't bother marking the spot with an X.

As a fairy-tale romantic rendering of Ireland, Irish Wish is almost offensively bad; as another rung on the ladder for Lindsay Lohan romcom supremacy, it is almost, somehow, beyond reproach.

Rambo could have been a satisfying romp - wherein bad dialogue and cardboard characters can be forgiven - but for the sin of making the main man step to the sidelines in favour of charisma-free fillers. Bad move, Sly...

Fans of Broken Lizard's previous work will enjoy this beer-fuddled effort; for anyone else it has its moments, but is best watched through beer-goggles.

The Break-Up doesn't turn the rom-com on its head, but with its focus on the darker side of love manages to gently tip it on its side.

A sci-fi horror dimmer than the dark side of the moon.

They make a fun duo, but none of the constituent genres work in this overbearing action-rom-com.

It doesn’t do anything different from the original, but the upside to The Upside is two strong, winning performances that keep you going down a well worn path.

Ror all its cleverness, Emily Rose does have its hokey moments.

Less than crowd-pleasing chick flick livened up by John Cusack’s self-penned one-liners.

Dodgy on every level.

A solid action-comedy that proves just how much we’ve missed Cameron Diaz in the last ten years. Next time don’t leave it so long, eh?

Far from perfect in its execution, but once IF hits its stride, Reynolds and Fleming keep this emotional adventure entertaining enough.

Although there are some great moments (one for Nicholson recalling the toast scene of "Five Easy Pieces"), Penn's intentions lose their way.

The second half falls into familiar action tropes, but Honest Thief has some twists and turns, sly humour and a refreshing feel for its characters that raises them beyond genre types.

Unforgivably terrible.

Subtlety had never been Brooks’ thing, but even blunt blows need to be well aimed, and while Spaceballs doesn’t exactly miss its targets, it certainly bounces off them embarrassingly.

It's not nearly exciting enough and at an hour and twenty minutes is overlong for animation fans, yet by virtue of the fact it's a cartoon, it presents itself as too childish for older live action devotees.