Hollywood's latest play for the growing Asian market revisits the ancient Japanese legend of self-sacrifice, hoping to offset its garbled narrative and grinding humourlessness with 3D and Keanu Reeves as a samurai Jesus.

It's a thriller in which the twists become so absurd that it becomes a kind of caper, but without the humour.

It’s rare that a film so convoluted also manages to be so determinedly boring.

With the fourth film, the Ice Age family animation franchise is looking almost extinct.

It's a bit of a flavourless CGI-fest, without the character and comedy of the Arnie version, and it never really gets to grips with the idea of "reality" as a slippery, malleable concept.

It's evasive and feeble; Julia Roberts is not a properly funny or satisfying villain, and yet neither is she the interestingly flawed, even sympathetic figure she might have been if the film had kept the all-important question she asks the mirror.

It's amiable enough, but it makes "The Flintstones" look like it was scripted by Karl Popper.

For me, it never came to life.

Bill Nighy and Toby Kebbell liven things up in the supporting cast.

There's some comedy in there, too, intentional – mostly. As a poignant study of the ageing process, it's on a rough par with "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel." For The Expendables 3, they might want to consider enlisting Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson and Judi Dench.

Inevitably, the guys wind up sentimentally telling each other they should do this every year. Please no.

There's undoubtedly a good film to be made out of the scramble for oil in the Arabian desert in the 1920s – but this, for all its herculean efforts, is not it.

Someday Hollywood will think of women as more than fallopian tubes in heels; until then, we're stuck with this kind of project.

Movie 43 is sketchy, in every sense. It's a collection of short comedy films in the manner of the 70s cult classic "Kentucky Fried Movie," each with a separate director, in which many very famous actors have been persuaded to take part.

Comedy gothic isn't exactly novel, and frankly there is a sense here of a movie coasting along on Halloween hype-marketing, without providing as many laughs and ideas as it really could have done.

Toning down his usual act in a manner that suggests he’s finally read his reviews, Butler gives it handfuls of dramatic ballast, but this vessel has been badly compromised: any interest seeps out by the frame.

The spirits fly in and out of The Lone Ranger at random. It's nice to see them come and go. I just wish they'd stay for longer.

Oblivion goes on for a long time, moving slowly and self-consciously, and it looks like a very expensive movie project that has been written and rewritten many times over. It is a shame: Cruise, Riseborough and Kurylenko as the last love triangle left on Planet Earth should have been quite interesting.

There are some effectively nasty kills (this is no PG-13 reboot) and Green’s visual eye often results in some impressive imagery but both the look of the film and the script feel confused. Green can’t seem to decide whether he wants it to be gritty and lo-fi or slick and cinematic and so ends up awkwardly between the two, anything resembling an atmosphere sorely missing.

It's not bad, exactly – but it is boring and very rarely funny. This is laboured. This is aimless. This Is 40. It's really quite a grind.

Gyllenhaal rises above the tedium; sadly, not far enough. Great English accent, though.

Winterbottom's location work in Jaipur and Mumbai has richness and spectacle, but somehow this does not come fully to life.

Even Stallone's rumbling voiceover possesses the drooping tone of a lullaby – like 45rpm vinyl played at 33. And if you think that reference is retro, you should see the actual movie.

One of those agonisingly well-intentioned films whose heart is in the right place, but everything else is wrong.

As the couple try to rekindle the bedroom flame the note of cutesy comedy kicks in and the movie gets phonier and phonier.

It feels as if you've seen it many times before. Bill Nighy isn't in it, for example, and yet afterwards I had an intense memory of Bill Nighy being in it, the way amputees can feel their toes itching.

The premise is looking pretty tired.

The script's a drowner, the acting's awash. Again and again Butler returns to the sea. He just about survives the buffeting.