A frustrating drama that struggles to be either a thoughtful character study or a slow-burn thriller.

This gentle comedy has some touching moments between Crystal and Tiffany Haddish, playing a struggling singer who befriends his character, but Here Today ultimately proves too saccharine and manipulative to elicit the tearjerking reaction it so strenuously strives to achieve.

Fatman has its wicked charms, but ultimately this cheeky action-comedy is a lot of buildup without sufficient payoff.

Seydoux is as charismatic and minxy as always, but the role of Lizzie is maddeningly elusive and underdeveloped. Perhaps the main disappointment of the picture, aside from its lifeless and conventional approach, is the fact that it is so preoccupied with the leaden Jakob, while his mercurial, treacherous wife is a far more interesting character.

A sporadically funny film that has moments of real heart in what’s otherwise a formulaic study of an aggressive businesswoman who learns to stop being so selfish.

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.

Boasting a darker, more nihilistic streak than the typical comic-book film, this Warner Bros. release has its kinky pleasures and some amusing nastiness, but in the final analysis there’s simply too much flexing of empty attitude — and far too much self-congratulation for how edgy it thinks it is.

We’ve seen the bones of this creature before, for sure, but some terrific GGI monsters, swampy scares and Driver’s committed performance make 65 a snap-toothed popcorn multiplex movie which, at 93 minutes, is sprightly in comparison with its lumbering rivals.

There are more engaging fireworks, or at least small sparks, when the film begins to dig into the feelings, friendships and jealousies of its two main protagonists.

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.

Lacking the killer instinct of its ferocious titular beasts, Meg 2: The Trench lumbers through the waters, failing as both a gripping thriller and a cheeky ’so bad it’s good’ piece of late-summer escapism.

Intermittently, Father Stu hints at Long’s fascinating contradictions — his earthy bluntness mixing with his sensitive belief in the divine — but the film is not sharp enough to give those contradictions vivid dimension.

For a movie that’s supposed to be about a modern-day Geppetto bringing his dolls to life, the wooden Welcome to Marwen never makes it out of the toy box.

Offering predictably heartfelt messages about seizing the day, The Last Word can be very sweet and funny, but its lightness starts to feel cloying rather than ebullient.

Ultimately the visual polish and subplots merely serve as fleeting distractions from the weary familiarity of this two-fisted tale.

Much like its Oscar-winning star, the film coasts along on charm and audience goodwill, although a little more edge might have helped.

Abattoir gets past its clunky storytelling with a great look - dark, shadowed, with a 1940s hardboiled feel - along with some well-staged shocks and scares.

Its emphasis on teambuilding makes The Thousand Faces of Dunjia play like a wuxia riff on Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) but its blend of spectacle and humour isn’t nearly as successful.

Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but Domino dishes it up as a sloppy mess of warmed-over clichés. Instead of his old high style and kinky violence, director Brian De Palma delivers only crude thrills and ugly stereotypes, a soggy bag of junk-food snacks.

A forced and often cloying romantic comedy-drama with a strong, Bradley Cooper-led cast and an enticing Hawaiian setting but a bewildering mishmash of plot threads and themes.

Packed with better action sequences and a smidgeon more emotional resonance, this sequel may be more engaging than its predecessor, but the franchise remains a rather clattering and crude affair.

The new film is proudly aware of how ludicrous it is...and the sunnily silly plot mostly functions to get the Bellas to their next song-and-dance number or comedic set piece. Yet, it’s impossible to miss the film’s wheezing tone.

The ingredients of an old-fashioned romantic weepie are given class and conviction by director Nicole Garcia whose elegant restraint helps to ground the more fanciful elements in some sense of reality. Her approach also makes the eleventh hour revelations easier to swallow.

Lacking the visual flair of 127 Hours or the satisfying resilience of Robert Redford’s character in All Is Lost, the film leans heavily on Armie Hammer’s performance. And while he is a charismatic leading actor, he is not given enough to work with here to sustain the picture.

Despite the keep-it-open ending, it seems clear that Chastain has an idea, and not a franchise; that Simon Kinberg (X-Men) works better as a producer than a director.

The actor’s comic sad clown performance lifts the film above an ordinary script.

A production line effort with an eye on cashflow rather than the demented work of art Hooper loosed on the world, this eighth entry is above average for its attenuated series. Gore levels are as high as expected and, naturally, the finale leaves things open for further instalments.

Slouching Theron is absolutely convincing as a self-loathing haunted soul with zero ambition. As the town’s “rich slut,” Chloe Grace Moretz gives yet another pitch-perfect performance. Both actresses elevate the material, making a somewhat far-fetched story both believable and enjoyable.

There is never any doubting Doillon’s sincerity or artistry but his film is overly cerebral, unfolding in a series of encounters that fade to black and never build a dramatic momentum.

Both overstuffed and underwhelming, Disney’s spectacle-driven reimagining of the beloved holiday staple tries to serve many masters, and the result is a family film straining to be both timeless and timely, simultaneously old-fashioned yet cheekily irreverent.

There are plenty of would-be tearjerking moments in Family Business as different generations of this family reaffirm how much they mean to each other, but the sincerity of those scenes is consistently undercut by the filmmakers’ insistence on overdoing everything: the schmaltz, the slapstick, the feverish pace.

Dirty Weekend is entertaining enough to spawn a Les-and-Natalie odd-couple sitcom, but it does come across as dated.

Both McGregor, close cropped, and Seydoux, in retro bangs, give tender performances, although there’s not much that’s new in the love story once you push the robotics aside. Tech-heads who rush to Zoe may leave the theater feeling under-charged.

While enjoyable in parts, its episodic pacing lets down the real-life story of a bold and remarkable woman.

Feels manipulative and glib ... Farrelly’s tendency toward simplistic bromides in Green Book is even more egregious here.

Although there are plenty of lyrical moments, Zemeckis’ lack of restraint and some questionable narrative choices undo what should be a moving affair.

Exorcist: Believer has none of the creeping dread of the original.

Soapy in style and luridly exploitative in its approach to violence, Smaller And Smaller Circles is perhaps not sophisticated enough to appeal to fans of the crime genre outside of the domestic market.

Rising star Amandla Stenberg has a few affecting moments as one of the few teen survivors of a mysterious pandemic, but director Jennifer Yuh Nelson’s live-action feature debut mostly walks in the footsteps of bolder and more original takes on similar sci-fi subject matter.

A muddled bid for political relevance has led the film-makers to drag on The Gunman’s primary mission: to entertain.

This sloppy horror comedy under delivers on both shocks and laughs.

Try as he might, Rowan Atkinson’s slapstick pratfalls and rubbery expressions can’t stretch over the feature’s brazen attempt to rehash past glories.

Emma Mackey gives a heartfelt performance as the titular protagonist, whose marriage is collapsing just as she’s about to be named her state’s new governor, and this comedy-drama contains some of the crackling dialogue and disarming candour of Brooks’ best work. Ultimately, however, this disjointed character study ultimately feels as messy as its heroine’s life.

Screenwriter Jeff Nathanson (Catch Me If You Can), taking over from series regulars Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, doesn’t make much sense out of the typically (for the franchise) convoluted plot, but does manage to bring out a father-child theme that lends the film a little emotional resonance.

Director Stephen Chbosky badly mishandles the material, resulting in an increasingly frustrating experience in which Evan’s inability to come clean leads to a string of emotional manipulations that sometimes border on cruel.

Although the film’s musical performances galvanise, director Antoine Fuqua reduces The King Of Pop to a blandly inspirational cipher.

There’s a thin, and very jagged, line between the radical mosaic approach to editing and narrative of a film like Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color and the impressionistic jigsaw vagueness of Woodshock, which simply seems reluctant to commit itself to mere coherence, as if that simply were too unchic.

While never quite predictable, The Electric Kiss lacks the knowing brio of recent French period pastiches such as François Ozon’s The Crime is Mine or Cédric Klapisch’s 2025 Colours of Time, similarly set in Paris bohemia.

Trying to recapture the magic of the 1940 animated classic, Robert Zemeckis’ live-action Pinocchio is a wooden, laboured affair.

The adrenaline never stops pumping in Mile 22, a superficially kinetic thriller that simultaneously attempts to be politically savvy and an ultra-macho shoot-‘em-up. That juggling act proves too sophisticated for director Peter Berg who, in his fourth collaboration with Mark Wahlberg, again demonstrates his sufficient skill at crafting dynamic suspense sequences.

Wim Wenders’ latest is a handsome production which, although it is rich with symbolism, is ultimately not quite as satisfying as it should be.

Trying to wring laughs from the nauseating sex-and-stardom exploits of fictional Tinseltown A-lister Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) and his buddies, Entourage consistently comes across as sour, shallow and misogynistic.

Terminator Genisys is a reasonably entertaining and niftily executed sci-fi action-thriller, and yet its ingenuity and craftsmanship are all in service of justifying its existence, resulting in a sequel that can be appreciated for its cleverness but otherwise regarded with a certain amount of ambivalence.

There is a mixture of styles in Dead In A Week that never quite gels.

Seen at 60 frames per second (fps) on 3D-Plus (2K resolution), Ang Lee’s action spectacular Gemini Man proved a compulsive watch: not for the usual ingredients of can’t-look-away Hollywood cinema such as acting – Will Smith takes a dual role - or plot, both of which fell a little flat, and seemed almost wilfully generic. As a viewing experience, though, this picture delivers as a prototype of future action film-making.

Thompson brings her reliably spry comedic talents as a new recruit who discovers all the extra-terrestrials in our midst, but she’s easily overmatched by a witless script, laboured plot and, most depressingly, a badly misjudged performance from her usually-charming co-star.

While there is a propulsive energy to some of the film, there is also a sense that a lot of territory is being covered. And not all of it – a nit-picking examination of Tupac’s contractual woes for example – is as dramatically compelling as the central arc of Tupac’s bright-burning stellar rise and fall.

A Taken-style no-holds-barred family survival action film, with an inevitable side order of xenophobia undimmed by the indictment of faceless corporate chicanery.

Jacquot at his best is a master at teasing us with tantalising narrative mazes and false threads, but here we soon find ourselves losing interest in the riddle of where things are headed: the film takes what feels like a very circuitous route to a dead end.

While this medium-budgeted action film clearly hopes to launch a cinematic series, the YA trappings feel familiar, despite some intriguing ideas about toxic masculinity and adolescent insecurity.

An agonisingly strained attempt at misanthropic comedy, Bad Santa 2 is puerile when it should be shocking, calculating when it should be transgressive, and listless when it should be liberating.

Anyone shunning Woody Allen’s artistic output will be depriving themselves of a bittersweet comedy peppered with splendid performances if they give A Rainy Day In New York a pass.

Perhaps the question is not whether the film needed to be so relentlessly grim, but rather whether it needed to be made at all.

Timur Bekmambetov’s Ben-Hur remake offers robust spectacle and some decent performances. But ultimately, the director of Wanted and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is, perhaps unsurprisingly, not the ideal filmmaker to capture this timeless story’s more nuanced emotional range.

The result is a picture with gripping sequences and clever byplay, even if there’s a sense that it’s merely repeating past strengths, only not quite as ingeniously.

The risk-averse approach to the remake extends to the humour. Pratfalls and benign double entendres (“I saw you slip her a sausage!”) rub shoulders with familiar gags and catchphrases which have been lifted wholesale from the original series.

A ripe, bittersweet romantic tragedy lies at the heart of Tulip Fever, but director Justin Chadwick’s aggressive tastefulness smothers the life from this potentially lusty melodrama.

The main audience takeaway here will be the two main performances by Adams and Close.

This apocalyptic thriller is a run-of-the-mill zombie flick that goes through the genre motions efficiently enough but fails to live up to its credits.

Writer-director Dean Craig gathers a winning ensemble for his dark comedy and, intermittently, the characters’ rank awfulness is a joy to behold. But despite boasting a fair amount of snide one-liners and a general air of gleeful misanthropy, the film ends up becoming strained and predictable, not quite liberating or shocking enough.

The film may pretend it’s more sophisticated than the show that spawned it, but its comedic stylings are alarmingly regressive.

It is an elegantly crafted, expertly acted old-fashioned weepie that manages to sell a whopper of a plot that would bring a blush to the cheeks of Nicholas Sparks.

Even given that lazy stereotyping is the point of her schtick, Vardalos’ broad routine hasn’t aged well, her heavily-(and widely-) accented ‘oily’ Greek family an uncomfortable, almost retro fit for today’s global sensitivities. Apart from that, the gags just aren’t that funny.

Brian Shoaf does not break any new ground in Aardvark (besides featuring an actual aardvark in an independent film), yet his pairing of stalwart female characters with troubled men is a welcome twist of gender stereotypes.

Sometimes a bad film is just a bad film, but Depp is most likely to pay the price.

If there is a star in this show, it is certainly cinematographer Nathalie Moliavko-Visotzky whose work stands out as the one perfectly valid reason to watch this film.

Thurber spends so much time referencing films he loves that Red Notice feels more like an elaborate game of dress-up than a worthy heir to their greatness.

Writer/director Michael Connors creates a good sense of atmosphere and clearly knows his way around the military milieu, but never manages instill the film with a much-needed sense of dramatic tension despite a solid enough story structure.

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

The entire cast does their best with borderline hackneyed material, and the proceedings are nicely shot by ace DP Guillaume Schiffman.

Four Letters is a tale of signs and omens, destiny and divine intervention, cosmic connections and miracle cures in which love conquers every obstacle placed in its path. It has elements of Edna O’Brien’s early writing, and these star-crossed lovers might have appealed to Powell and Pressburger back in the day.

Although the follow-up to the 2023 original boasts colourful animation, too often this Illumination production mistakes visual and narrative busyness for genuine excitement. As a result the film, based on the venerable Nintendo property, suffers from strained humour and cluttered action sequences — issues that will hardly discourage young audiences from coming out in droves.

Not so much bleeding edge as screeching edge, Gia Coppola’s Mainstream is a frenetic piece of pop-art social satire that strives to be super-current but feels oddly traditional beneath its eye-searing, pixel-popping surface.

Despite its rich visual evocation of the eponymous port city as a simmering cauldron of vice, corruption, and barbarity, director Mikael Håfström’s film is undone by its tortuous plot, wooden characterisation, absence of narrative tension, and emotional nullity. It simply lacks conviction.

This religious-themed horror based around the phenomena of Marian apparitions has an intriguing premise but cuts too many corners in its catechism.

This Grand Guignol riot of rotting animal and Godless creations is great fun. However, of the cast, it is only McAvoy, walking the line between madman and genius, who fully manages to hold his own against the spectacle with which he shares the screen.

Vroman follows up The Iceman with a competently-made film, featuring solid production design from Jon Henson (Testament of Youth) and some good, gritty chase sequences, particularly at the film’s onset.

Convincing performances from David Oyelowo and Kate Mara – as an escaped killer and his drug addicted hostage – are the saving grace of Captive, a decent dramatic thriller somewhat weighed down by its mildly religious message.

Deftly made and diverting for young audiences but unlikely to linger, with any vibrancy tempered by the familiarity of the tune.

The feature’s heart is in the right place, especially in advocating that age shouldn’t be a barrier. But Poms is a by-the-numbers feature which couples its empowering message with routine gags and muddled conflict.

Assassin’s Creed is nearly wall-to-wall violence, but Kurzel reveals an eye for widescreen composition that, paired with Christopher Tellefsen’s efficient, hyperactive editing, gives the film the tenor of a sophisticated graphic novel.

Perversely pleasurable, it works on its own self-conscious terms, though not all audiences will appreciate its English brand of sad-sack humour.

Lucy In The Sky has ambitious visual flourishes, a bold performance from Natalie Portman and not nearly enough insights into the peculiarities of human behaviour.

Kin never feels like more than uninspired borrowings from other, better genre films; it’s a story about family without any heart.

There’s precious little to care about in a movie that’s neither ingenious nor silly enough to savour.

If judged by fluid effects work, Atwood’s stunning costumes, and the fun of watching Theron and Blunt reach new heights of arch camp, The Huntsman: Winter’s War is a triumph. By any other measure, though, it’s a far more qualified prospect

Like his hungry symbiote latching onto Eddie, Fleischer cunningly fastens a malicious irreverence onto an otherwise lacklustre superhero movie. But the symbiosis doesn’t quite take.

This tale of a bestselling spy novelist who finds herself embroiled in real life espionage has some fun moments, an impressive cast and explosive set pieces (not to mention some strong echoes of classic eighties adventure series Romancing The Stone) but, in its attempts to keep audiences guessing, ties itself up in knots.