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.

Wiig is terrific, but there’s just not enough of her. It truly is a wonder to see an A-lister like Chris Pine embrace the traditional female support role of the pretty sidekick so winningly, while Gadot is as smooth as silk and never less than watchable. The team is there, but this is most definitely a sequel.

Returning director Gerard Johnstone does not feel the need to rewrite the code, delivering a tried-and-tested mix of action, effects and comedy. Yet the whole thing now feels overly self-aware, resulting in a lumbering actioner that lacks the novelty value of its predecessor.

The film shows plenty of ambition and imagination delivered with considerable visual elegance, yet still ends up feeling somewhat airlessly conceptual.

We never shake off the feeling we’re watching a filmed play, one whose dramatic crescendos and lulls are relentlessly stagey and stylised.

Bullet Train has no shortage of giddy, madcap gusto, hoping to satiate hardcore genre fans with its bloody, over-the-top violence and rising body count. But this lumbering locomotive proves to be neither hilariously amoral nor liberatingly violent — it makes quite a commotion, but mostly just spins its wheels.

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

Enfant Terrible is somewhat repetitive – ever more shouting, more hedonism, more tainted glory – but it’s never boring. It’s just not very insightful – full marks for the style, but the substance is best found in the books, and in the various documentaries about the man.

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.

The New Zealand landscapes could not be more enchanting, although the story lacks a similar magic.

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.

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.

In its determination to maintain a glossy, upbeat tone throughout — even when dealing with an event that, as a final sombre title card tells us, saw ‘over 30,000 people killed or disappeared’ — The Penguin Lessons proves to be neither fish nor fowl.

Natasha certainly proves that Khrzhanovsky is a risk-taker, and his actors even more so. But it’s a puzzling, inconclusive drama that doesn’t quite hold its own outside the parameters of the overall project.

Ultimately director Jon M. Chu’s more-is-more approach has a numbing effect, the endless spectacle leaving little room for nuance, depth or genuine feeling.

Lively performances elicit enough chuckles for this Chinese version to pass muster as undemanding entertainment, although erratic pacing prevents the proceedings from ever truly hitting their stride.

The aims are laudable, but the execution is as baggy as a discarded pair of support tights.

The Fox doesn’t go far enough, its sombre tone muting its fantastical elements, its weirdness not nearly weird enough to overcome its flaws.

While a few of the new songs are keepers, too often the razzle-dazzle distracts from a familiar but resonant look at the pain and pleasure of adolescence.

For a film that aspires to be a frank look at a middle-aged fighter’s hard road back to glory, Bruised too easily indulges in sports-film fantasy, undercutting the story’s inherent bleakness.

It’s not simply that Uncle Frank becomes just another road-trip comedy — it’s that Ball resorts to clichéd or contrived narrative devices to keep the story going.

This often absorbing opus can be as mighty as Superman himself, but a lack of restraint proves to be its Kryptonite.

Adapted from a chapter in Bram Stoker’s novel, the picture initially has some gory fun with its close-quarters suspense, but Ovredal unsuccessfully tries to elevate his monster movie with flimsy psychological depth and unconvincing emotional underpinnings.

Unfortunately, a glib superficiality hangs heavy over the narrative. Rather than really explore these lost and angry souls who feel destined to be despondent, Wilson settles for simplistic quirkiness, which makes the characters merely bland misanthropic types instead of fleshed-out individuals.

Unfolding over the course of a year, and divided into seasons, the film digs deep into the psychology of dying but is curiously unmoving, despite milking every last cancer-afflicted frame for sentiment.

There’s anger but no insight in Vice, a glib portrait of Dick Cheney that preaches to the choir but becomes less persuasive as it goes along.

These characters may be immortal, but the studio’s assembly-line predictability drains the vitality from the proceedings.

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.