Theatrical, both in its single-location setting and its tone, the film manages to be simultaneously laboured but also oddly opaque.

Two Steve Carells most assuredly aren’t better than one in Despicable Me 3, a winded sequel which is cloying when it isn’t exhaustingly frenetic.

Most of the story’s credibility goes out the door with the big plot twist.

The victims of notorious Chilean torture camp Colonia Dignidad suffered more than enough without Colonia adding insult to injury.

Flying off the rails at an alarming speed, The Girl On The Train fails as a compelling character study, struggles to satisfy as a psychological thriller and ultimately settles as an overheated potboiler that doesn’t have the courage to go full camp.

Roher’s willingness to blindly accept any and all of his speakers’ pronouncements leaves The AI Doc feeling toothless. ... Clearly, the filmmakers want to present the material in an evenhanded fashion so that viewers can make up their own mind, but in the name of so-called fairness, the documentary lacks any real perspective or inquisitiveness.

Sequences depicting the Selma marches – the first of which led to violent police attacks that were seen on national TV and helped change the mood of the country – are fairly understated, when a more visceral approach might have given the film more emotional heft.

A good cast led by Miles Teller gets swallowed up in a narrative that grows progressively more muddled and tedious.

Any hopes of smart social commentary or unsettling psychological underpinnings are quickly shattered by a clichéd screenplay and amateurish performances.

The perfunctory martial-arts sequences and convoluted plotting conspire to make this a painfully uninspired proposition.

Part space romance, part space thriller and all space corn, Passengers is a messy and unconvincing mash-up that tries to get by on the not inconsiderable charm of stars Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt.

little can be done to disguise the weakness of an undercooked script based on an idea Tornatore apparently had in his bottom drawer for decades.

This low-budget combination of thriller, horror and satire flaunts a smartass tone that proves deadening, and as the body count starts rising, viewer interest quickly begins dropping.

Riley so wants to make strong criticisms about everything from racial stereotyping to corporate greed that he forgets the need for a real person to root for at the story’s core.

Clocking in at just 96 minutes, Sword of Destiny feels heavily truncated, lacking in narrative substance. Scant characterisation and timid action choreography don’t help matters, while an over-reliance on simple sets and CGI landscapes mean Grant Major’s (The Lord of the Rings) production design lacks the resonance of the previous film.

The New Mutants’ greatest failing is that, even as a spinoff, its drama is puny and its spectacle nonexistent.

Apart from a few quippy anecdotes, the only thing holding Elton John: Never Too Late together is the songs.

The car chases should be the escapist, high-octane fun part of the movie. But fun is in short supply in a picture which is fuelled by a full tank of ill-will and fury.

For all the punches thrown and buildings pulverised, The New Empire barely leaves an impact.

Director Gail Lerner’s Cheaper By The Dozen is aggressively cutesy while trying to address real-world issues such as race and class. Lerner’s version feels busy and laboured, its sitcom treatment straining equally for laughs and pathos.

Despite a few touching scenes in which Sophie and Agatha reassert their bond amidst handsome suiters and devious spells, Good And Evil ends up feeling both too busy and too underdeveloped to let their relationship blossom. There’s no happily ever after awaiting audiences at the film’s end.

For audiences craving shoot-‘em-up carnage, the sequel contains an abundance of explosions, car crashes and kill shots, although the strained air of hip irreverence soon turns suffocatingly stale.

Kumail Nanjiani and Dave Bautista are a likeable pair that deserve better than Stuber, a strained action-comedy with a clever premise but maddeningly uninspired execution.

It’s an understatement to say that The King’s Man has a weird, unsettling, tone.

Mothers will do anything for their children, but this film’s simplistic brand of horror never makes that devotion compelling or frightening.

Deliberately off-putting, Hosking’s latest tests the audience’s patience with frustratingly unfunny scenarios and an array of nasty, angry characters doing unpleasant things.

Though it sometimes recalls the irresistibly energetic, genre-bending feel of Lee’s best films – Do The Right Thing in particular – it lacks the assurance and unifying thrust that made those features work so well.

A parade of gaudy CGI and strained whimsy, Alice Through The Looking Glass proves even more manic and grating than its 2010 predecessor.