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.

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.