There’s probably an excellent 66 minute film in Desert Of Namibia as well. Yamanaka certainly has talent. But fine-honing is not a strong point.

The feature debut of director Max Joseph can occasionally be as entrancing and euphoric as the pulsating dance songs on the soundtrack. But even an empathetic performance from Zac Efron (and an impressive, nuanced turn from Wes Bentley) can’t distract from a movie that mistakes surface flash for probing, zeitgeist-y insights.

A strangely lacklustre, unconvincing attempt to tell the story of the Heineken kidnapping.

As audience-friendly as they may be, the cast is left wading through the middle ground between the unengaging narrative and over-emphasised aesthetics.

Because the roles are underwritten and the players struggle to establish a rapport, The Magnificent Seven never lets the audience feel like its along for the ride with a dynamic group of death-or-glory hombres.

A lazy heist comedy that asks little of its appealing leads, Going In Style goes down smoothly even if the only thing that really gets stolen is the audience’s time.

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.

If some of this loud horror material looks frankly absurd, that’s only, Amenabar would no doubt argue, because it reflects the hackneyed, trick-or-treats way in which we give form and body to our night fears. Fine, but for a thriller to thrill, such didactic admonishments are not enough.

Technically-skilled, well-acted and fatally over-long, it’s hard not to see Blonde as a chronicle of exploitation and abuse which merrily carries on the tradition – a sensation reinforced by Ana de Armas’s poignant performance as Marilyn.

Not very funny and never especially touching, this Dora feels dispiritingly perfunctory — a two-hour babysitting tool that leaves little impression.

Pugh and Freeman are superb at embodying their characters’ emotional wounds, but Braff’s melodramatic approach quickly becomes oppressive, clumsily orchestrating wild highs and lows with such inelegance that his protagonists start to resemble helpless pawns he is pushing around the narrative chessboard.

Veteran Danish director August (1987’s Pelle The Conquerer) has presented a well-meaning, flat film which also feels somewhat unfinished - although there’s not much in here to suggest that a further reworking is merited.

If it never quite delivers on its promise of cheesy scares, neither does it really try for true psychological thrills with enough conviction.

Lee Cronin knows how to construct suspense sequences and ramp up tension, and there are moments in his portrait of a couple dealing with the traumatic return of their missing child that are legitimately frightening. But the film’s ambitious scope is betrayed by derivative genre ideas that make this tale of the dead disappointingly listless.

But as lovely as Blackbird can be, it’s never particularly insightful or compelling — for a film meant to celebrate life, the storytelling is curiously moribund.

Consistently off by a beat, Hitman: Agent 47 fails to ever click into gear.

This well-meaning debut feature about following your dreams just treads water.

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 obligatory nature of the fan service constantly undercuts the bittersweet, occasionally tearjerking tone, with the filmmakers more concerned about extending the franchise’s commercial life than really saying anything meaningful about loss and reconciliation.

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.

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.

Performance aside, the key issue is that endless griping about a shitty marriage – even the marriage of arguably the pre-eminent figure of 19th century literature – is a drag.

Rather than being insightful or candid, Five Nights mostly feels inconsequential — an intriguing, uneven narrative experiment more than a fully satisfying story.

Julie Delpy’s latest directorial effort juggles some potentially delicious ideas, but Lolo proves to be an exasperating romantic comedy that flirts with darker terrain it never has the guts or wit to really explore.

Call Of The Wild isn’t animation, it isn’t live action, it isn’t fish, fowl or dog and somewhere in between it falls off its sled. Mankind can always benefit from some digital enhancement; man’s best friend, not so much.

Unfortunately, there is not much ingenuity or inspiration to Snyder’s vision.

The actors lend sincerity to the proceedings, but the film keeps cheating to achieve its dramatic payoffs.

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

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

Like its star, The Last Witch Hunter is big, overblown and frequently incomprehensible.

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.

Mostly Emmanuelle feels like a package and looks like packaged luxury, the kind that comes with money and not very much taste.

Despite early frissons from the very game lead trio, the overall effect is a lugubrious turn-off. In its spacily numb longueurs, Love effectively invents a new, singularly unsatisfying genre: chill-out porn.

Chappie is a bucket of bolts, Blomkamp’s desire to say meaningful things outdistancing his ability to say them compellingly.

This sequel’s real sin is the fact the usually fearsome beasts are not suitably terrifying, resulting in some mildly effective action sequences but nothing that suggests the series is in the throes of a creative renewal.

The Gentlemen is a disposable crime caper on autopilot. Propped up by an all-star ensemble, particularly the sturdy Charlie Hunnam and scene-stealer Colin Farrell, Guy Ritchie reclaims the genre that brought him to fame but does little more than shuffle battered parts into an intermittently entertaining configuration.

The ultimate problem with this flamboyant, yet oddly oppressive-feeling film is Carax’s bleakly Romantic world view – even working with exuberant wits like the Maels, he’s unavoidably committed to the dark abyss himself.

Familiar execution and drab characters conspire to drain this vital story of its intensity.

This is a downbeat slog of a film which tells a not particularly involving story.

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.

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.

Come to Daddy starts out like a nasty drama, ends up as a gruesomely gory, coldly comic revenge thriller – and desperately loses its way somewhere in-between.

While it’s important to have seen Canto Uno in order to savour Intermezzo, this film in itself doesn’t seem remotely essential.

While we can quibble about the underused lead or the meandering plot, Fifty Shades Freed ultimately authors its own most stinging rebuke, closing on an extended montage highlighting major moments and turning points from the trilogy. Tellingly, none of them come from this film.

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.

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.

Although Reese Witherspoon and Sofía Vergara do have their fleetingly amusing moments, this road-trip buddy comedy feels like it rolled off the cliché assembly line, offering wan laughs and familiar setups.

The shock value of the dialogue – and it is staggeringly rude at times – is neutered by a rambling lack of narrative drive and, ultimately, a sentimental justification that feels disingenuous.

Despite the tantalising set up, Immaculate is a dull, predictable affair, composed of far too many inconsequential jump scares in lieu of sturdy storytelling.

Goodbye Christopher Robin doesn’t just lack authenticity, it appears to scorn it.

Like many films designed to double as opening chapters in ongoing screen sagas, The Fifth Wave always feels padded, its focus on establishing a springboard for future sequels rather than satisfactorily exploring its own narrative.

While there’s a sense that Korine is fully at peace with a lack of meaning in his work, it’s doubtful that he was aiming to be boring.

The film is adrenalised but familiar, sporting a sarcastic sense of humour in an attempt to mitigate what’s so threadbare about the premise and increasingly over-the-top fight sequences.

No doubt the world needs more paeans to tolerance, but movies as ineffectual as The Best Of Enemies feel profoundly inadequate to the task.

For all its deft style and sympathetic characters, there’s still something missing in We,The Animals. In its efforts to evoke a young boy’s inner-world, it falls short of fully capturing his emotional reality. Jonah’s story should be heartbreaking, but when we see images of him flying over the forest, it’s just picturesque and lyrical.

Even propaganda also needs to have some spark; Ram Setu is a damp squib.

Modi’s ramshackle romanticism never remotely convinces, and – given that it’s about artists who suffered for their radical modernism – it feels terribly dated, stylistically and in content.

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.

The film is mostly unmoving, neither the romance nor the social consciousness succeeding in stirring our emotions. Even worse, Penn lets the plight of displaced Africans slip into the background, resulting in yet another well-meaning film that wants to address planetary ills by concentrating our attention on the good-looking outsiders who come in to save the day.

Despite meticulous visuals and a strong central performance by Mark Rylance, the film feels dramatically ponderous and emotionally inert.

Instead of intriguing ambiguity, this updated version – which had a long and bumpy development – offers only maddening confusion...With false endings within false endings, it’s the sort of movie whose final fade-out will leave audiences groaning in frustration.

The film feels like a long succession of incidents that tend to climax in familiar platitudes or weary declarations of the “I can’t handle this!” variety.

The Gallows offers up few new ideas and very few genuine scares.

This is an earnest, half-baked fairy story drenched in a thick soup of CGI. It’s awkwardly staged, with turgid, expository dialogue that is appreciably tricky for a palpably ill-at-ease young cast to deliver

There is an undeniable cheesiness to the closing stage of ma ma that makes it hard to take entirely seriously.

The Crow longs to be edgy and sobering, but the shallow, melodramatic treatment constantly calls to mind an insecure adolescent male who is trying to prove how dark and deep he is by dressing all in black and talking ponderously about death.

[A] depressingly inept comedy.

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.

The film is so weighed down by self-importance that the proceedings are embalmed in solemnity.

Logic, though, is not at the forefront of The Nun II which, like its predecessor, attempts to force the fear through endless jump scares and bombastic music rather than take time to build any real tension.

Hamstrung by lumbering plotting and variable special effects, this first part is an unimaginative hodgepodge which leaves its well-assembled cast stranded across time and space.