The film follows a slick, predictable rise-then-fall narrative structure full of boisterous montages when things are going well and sombre music once the good times end.

This latest in the ‘personal growth through gentle humiliation’ genre is amiable enough, but does suffer from the over-familiarity of themes and plot-points.

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

This is a well crafted and often stylish film but you suspect it could have had a greater impact with more room for the individual elements to breathe.

Like the mismatched team from the Pacific Island, the picture is big-hearted and sweet-natured, but it is also rather lacking in polish and staying power.

This flawed thriller manages to tap into the sickening realisation that no matter where we travel in the universe, we always bring the worst parts of ourselves.

Rebecca Zlotowski’s third feature packs in so many ideas and themes, and boasts so many ravishing and enigmatic images, that it seems choked with riches.

One of the issues with Where Hands Touch is that whilst some of the details and specifics feel fresh, the drama often feels desperately hackneyed.

It’s a familiar watch and a pallid reminder of better days we’ve had with the director.

Gorging on bombast and self-importance, swamped by its own mythology, Batman v Superman is loud, sprawling, and distracted. The action jumps around almost as fast as a man can fly, but nowhere near as smoothly.

Bloodier but not better, the rebooted Mortal Kombat is a far more violent affair than the 1995 original, hewing closer in spirit to the gory video game which inspired the film franchise. And while there’s some fleeting gross-out glee in watching the martial-arts carnage — pulverised heads, severed limbs, a beating heart torn from a victim’s chest — the overkill only underlines how feeble the storytelling is otherwise.

Not without its bluntly funny bits, this nasty, programmatic comedy wants to be outlandish but, oddly enough, it’s the movie’s lack of realism that really hurts it.

While Schwarzenegger is solid – almost literally, his face like granite and his movements stiff – and McNairy is completely committed in this tragic two-hander, Lester’s film is resolutely one-note.

The film’s slight scattershot structure actually works in its favour, keeping the pace at a full-tilt sprint, the energy sparking and the story moving whenever there’s a risk of it tipping into the realms of the overwrought.

As the mysteries behind the strange occurrences are slowly revealed, this underpowered horror film starts to drown in cliches and predictable plot twists.

With more action and less mystery, a returning director and main cast and a handful of sketchy new characters, The Scorch Trials makes for an efficient yet uninspiring sequel.

Poker Face ends up being a cautionary tale about appreciating what you have — ironic since this thriller doesn’t have a sufficient grip on any of its myriad elements to fully engage.

Comandante is a film designed to make Italians feel good about being Italian – about pasta, sentimental songs and strongly demarcated gender roles – while also telling them how to be good Italians – chiefly by saving people at sea, not blindly following orders and getting on with other Italians whose dialects they don’t understand.

Hunter Killer conjures up whiffs of entertainment value from its shameless but spirited derivativeness.

Bringing a children’s favourite to life with vividly realistic visuals and appealing production design simply proves superficial when it lacks the heart and charm that has endeared its source material to readers for more than a century.

The very earnest human drama fits awkwardly into the action and isn’t helped by some unconvincing performances and weak dialogue.

Ewan McGregor’s directorial debut eventually finds its own emotional core, zeroing in on the tragedy that befalls a seemingly perfect life once a man’s wilful daughter torpedoes it.

The central performance has a likeable, modest charm, and King Richard director Reinaldo Marcus Green resists the typical, unwieldy cradle-to-grave biopic narrative approach. Yet he fails to breathe much life into this underwhelming drama.

The Angry Birds Movie is fitfully funny but tends towards a madcap mixture of comedy and action which never develops much forward momentum. The joke-a-minute approach misses more than it hits, although the bright animation and adorably-rendered characters are decent compensation.

Equals just about passes muster as a solid vignette of love against the odds, but when it comes to futurism, its vision is dustily archaic.

Lacking the freshness of the original trilogy or the meticulous, insidious tone of Fincher’s film, Spider’s Web mostly feels like a holding action to ensure that more sequels can be made in the future. That timidity flies in the face of this series’ inherent edginess.

Mistress Of Evil invests heavily in inundating our eyeballs with relentless enchantment, which unfortunately translates into largely dreary CG renderings of pixies, sentient trees and other woodland critters

Marc Forster’s meandering, slow-burning tale has elements that might have attracted Polanski or Almodovar but eventually settles for a psychological thriller that is a little too enigmatic for its own good.

It could just all have benefited from a more delicate touch.

A Dog’s Journey is certainly manipulative - humans aren’t safe here either, with a significant cancer side-plot. At times, it even seems obsessed by death. Yet there’s something oddly cathartic about sobbing your way through this film, with its mash-up of Buddhism and All-American values.

Even Arterton at smouldering full wattage can do little to hold together a picture in which the chemistry between the two leads is non-existent and many of the directorial choices are decidedly odd.

This adaptation of the Delia Owens bestseller proves to be an unconvincing, melodramatic affair that only occasionally locates the story’s mournful heart.

Polanski and the supremely genre-savvy Assayas know exactly what they’re doing, and whenever you think you’ve seen it all before, you realise they’re actually doing something else entirely – the film is an expertly navigated maze of misdirection.

The paradox is that in modernising Berlin Alexanderplatz, Qurbani has created an ambitious but also stridently melodramatic moral parable that seems oddly dated.

The Aftermath works best when looking at the bewildered people who have been left behind, literally, to pick up the pieces. The savage loss of family members still reverberates through empty rooms and ruined landscapes.

This high-concept feature tries so hard to charm that it becomes an exercise in wading through sickly sweet treacle.

A film that, after its initial promise, descends, at times, into TV-historical-drama mannerisms.

In Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Back To Black, Winehouse’s brief, brilliant life is essentially pared down to a tale of poisoned romance.

Rather than being thought-provoking or streamlined, instead Dark Phoenix is a frustratingly anticlimactic, familiar tale of misunderstood mutants.

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

While director Justin Lin’s thriller-inflected approach is periodically absorbing, the scattered structure and episodic nature of the plot works against him as it slides towards an overly sentimental conclusion.

Slavishly obeying the rules of a would-be franchise starter — including crafting an open-ended finale that leaves room for sequels — Snake Eyes features plenty of martial-arts mayhem but very little actual excitement.

We’re lucky that moralists like Ponsoldt and Eggers have a sense of humor.

Despite the pyrotechnics of McAvoy’s performances and Willis’s grounded conviction, there’s just not enough here past the high concept of “what if real people were superheroes?”.

Some heartfelt performances and an adorable dog aren’t quite enough to combat the sentimentality and contrivances that follow.

The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent director Tom Gormican once again latches on to a meta-movie idea with great comic potential, but this limp satire of vain actors, deluded filmmakers and shamelessly recycled IP quickly starts to sputter.

For all its attempts at inventive excess – and at slightly more sophisticated humour - this scattershot gross-out comedy ends up producing chuckles rather than real laughs.

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.

The second installment of the Divergent series shows some symptoms of middle chapter-itis but in the end makes the most of a strong returning cast led by Shailene Woodley, slick direction from Robert Schwentke, impressive effects and a closely guarded plot twist.

The awkwardly executed English-language Loving Pablo is a brash but ultimately anonymous, sub-Scorsesean number from Spain’s Fernando Leon de Aranoa.

What stands out in relief from the film’s flat characters and pedestrian storytelling is its dramatic core: the killing machine that death row had become in South Africa by the end of the 1980s, with 164 executions taking place in Pretoria Central Prison in the year in which Shepherds And Butchers is set, 1987.

Director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson brings some stylishness to the killings, but I Know What You Did Last Summer’s lack of compelling characters robs the story of its juiciest hook: these brutal slayings are cosmic comeuppance for their duplicity.

The picture’s just-a-lark tone, emphasised by the quick turnaround from script to final product, proves to be a double-edged sword: Locked Down feels like a fleetingly fun experiment that would have benefited from more time.

Creed II director Steven Caple Jr. brings a little playfulness and emotion to the series but, unfortunately, the clattering action and self-important tone remains.

Extravagant camera moves, woozy fish-eye lenses and a full-on assault of CGI fail to give this story of warring inventors much in the way of a dramatic charge.

It is a shame that director Catherine Hardwicke’s film cannot match its star’s inspired turn, settling for a likeable but strained fish-out-of-water tale.

Much like the original, The Lost Kingdom boasts a gleeful exuberance, whether through Bill Brzeski’s eye-popping production design or in Rupert Gregson-Williams’ knowingly overdramatic score. There is a boyish zeal to Wan’s filmmaking, which is not afraid to embrace the goofy or the playful.

Koepp has managed a brisk adaptation, although some of the dialogue can feel very forced, particularly when it comes to the clue-solving set-ups. Still, Howard keeps the viewer constantly occupied, Felicity Jones is an engaging sidekick, and there’s clearly a lot more mileage left for Tom Hanks in this franchise’s tank.

It is an ambitious debut and though a more rigorous edit may have evened out its overall tone, it is clear that Carter’s heart and head were certainly in the game.

Unfortunately, the film often feels as unremarkable as its protagonists, evincing little of the impressive spectacle or snarky wit of Marvel’s best installments.

Every thoughtful story beat and every well-observed character moment happens with such predictability and slick professionalism that the whole project seems smothered in bland sweetness.

In the end, Wild Mountain Thyme fails to make the most of its cast or fairytale story and feels slightly misbegotten.

Unfortunately, the film’s off-kilter tone and the characters’ beguiling opacity only enrapture for so long. The constant commentary about the banality of suburbia deadens the story, and a couple of late-reel twists fail to satisfy.

Three Floors is not a bad melodrama per se, but has none of the needle-sharp emotional intensity of The Son’s Room (2001).

What’s missing is much in the way of substantial drama or character development.

Viewers are in good hands — if they’re not too demanding — as Zhang Yimou puts the easily distinguishable characters through their paces.

Despite the potentially fun pairing of Ayo Edebiri and John Malkovich as, respectively, the writer and her messiah-like subject, neither the film’s commentary on celebrity nor its escalating body count pack much punch.

The directorial debut of Australian filmmaker Kim Farrant is undone by a series of overwrought, miscalculated scenes that can’t be redeemed by an expert cast that’s fully committed to the heavy-handedness.

Union is capable of powering the film through, valiantly trying to plug the holes the high-concept plot can’t reach. She’s got that big screen charisma, even though, this time, she’s working with small-screen material.

The latest from Drake Doremus is a candid, very watchable account of a messy period in a woman’s life.

This striking drama vividly captures the sense of uncertainty of transient lives, but loses power in a final act which gets somewhat mired in hallucinatory dream logic.

It’s not hard to figure out the recipe that resulted in Netflix’s Persuasion arriving half-baked from the streamer’s busy oven. Take one measure from Clueless. Cast an American actor as the lead (Dakota Johnson). Turn Jane Austen’s most mature heroine into a Bridget Jones, slugging red wine from the bottle and winking at the camera. Filter it all through a Regency Britain that comes straight from Bridgerton. Shake, too hard, and try not to cringe as the cake collapses.

Wielding the same grim power as his most obsessive, tormented work, Jack is deeply embedded within its creator’s psyche, and while the results may be cathartic for him, the movie is only intermittently arresting for the rest of us.

Rheingold is a helter-skelter mix of coming of age drama, heist thriller, chaste romance and origins story for a star rapper. Akin comes up with some striking moments.

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.

Two bravura performances can’t disguise the thinness of a script that exposes just how uninteresting this ‘sliding doors’ game can be. The Roads Not Taken redeems itself, partly, through the compassion and sensitivity with which it deals with the mind-ravaging illness at its core.

The new film is hardly a comedic lump of coal, but the broad, sitcom-y material has inherent limitations that no amount of shameless, gleeful silliness can overcome.

Whatever else could be said about this competent and generally pretty entertaining latest addition to the series, surprising it is not.

This zig-zagging emotionally perceptive tale of an American writer abroad and the women he has bedded — or perhaps merely written about having bedded — is accomplished French filmmaking the way arthouse denizens like it.

Suburbicon is a solid, pleasing piece, even if it never quite reaches the bleak heights its set-up promises.

Commercial considerations strangle the vitality from the movie, but Ritchie does his best to bring a bit of impish wit to the proceedings.

The final result won't fully satisfy either hardcore cineastes or those looking for soft porn in a pretty package - but the magic wand of art will help to broaden the film's commercial base beyond the cheap-thrill camp.

Director Martin Campbell (Casino Royale) applies his usual slick professionalism to a genre piece that touches on mortality, regret and child abuse without much emotional resonance or riveting action sequences.

The lack of a satisfying human connection between key characters is a stumbling block, but Wyatt does deliver plenty elsewhere.

The latest instalment in the DC Extended Universe too often succumbs to the conventions of its genre — it’s a film suffused with hokey punchlines and predictably gaudy action set pieces — but some compelling performances and director Jaume Collet-Serra’s ebullient B-movie flourishes prove to be sufficient compensation.

Despite the constant effort and genuine warmth of star Melissa McCarthy, the film’s stitched-together stories come apart early on.

When the film thoughtfully dissects the fable’s patriarchal attitude, this Cinderella can be touching and light on its feet. But too often, whether because of the subpar songs or the hit-or-miss comedy, Cannon’s rethink struggles to consistently dazzle — it’s a glass slipper that doesn’t quite fit.

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

What works best is the dopey charm of Hardy opposite his CGI sidekick. Their grouchy rapport is almost enough to make up for a slapdash script and some predictable genre elements.

Short on both charm and Chandlerian complexity, this version coasts on Liam Neeson’s engagingly haggard lead, and some spicy character playing from the likes of Danny Huston, Alan Cumming and Jessica Lange.

Ultimately, the impression remains that Child 44 either needed to be much longer to let all the different elements breathe or much more tightly focused to let the murder manhunt dominate.

Committed performances, a hefty budget and assured hands behind the camera ensure that Dragon Blade delivers on its promise of sprawling battle scenes, intriguing culture clashes and budding bromances, where its giddily high concept and unlikely casting may so easily have seen it fail.

With more than a dash of Jason Bourne and Mission: Impossible, director Stefano Sollima’s undistinguished shoot-‘em-up feels so indebted to its influences that it never establishes much of a personality of its own.

Although Moonfall is packed with such giddy good cheer that its abundant narrative cliches and dismal dialogue are almost part of the charm, even game performances from Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson aren’t enough to save the day.

The Curse Of La Llorona is haunted by a reliance on musty horror tropes. This competent but derivative exorcism film feels like multiplex filler for undemanding audiences who will happily sample any new addition to the Conjuring cinematic universe.

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.

A testy father-daughter relationship adds weight to the story, all of which Armanet, in her first lead role, tackles with a convincingly frayed and frustrated performance.

A bullet-riddled tale of unlikely female empowerment, Miss Bala toys with exploitation and social commentary but doesn’t have the ingenuity or nerve to successfully pull off either.