Matters would have been improved from the audience’s point of view, however, if said digging had happened a little sooner; the film takes its sweet time to get to where we sense it’s going, and then quickly runs out of steam when it does.

The quirkiest thing about it is how much of that time it spends accidentally calling attention to its own overwritten, under-thought weaknesses.

The fight sequences are lethargic and feature a lot of extras waiting patiently for their cue to fall over dead. The Maltese architecture remains as lovely as ever; the dialogue is, however, shockingly bad.

The trouble with Nick Frost’s knowingly cartoonish and silly comedy paying homage to folk horrors such as The Wicker Man and Midsommar is that Frost has done this kind of movie before, and better.

A documentary might have served this material better, or a fiction feature that doesn’t have a made-up character as the lead.

This lavishly produced and costumed European co-production is handsomely cast – but the range of talent here feels wasted on what is a fundamentally dated and stereotypical drama, whose Bohemian passion is diluted.

The stunts are duly impressive and filmed with vim, but the party apparatchiks would probably be happy with how thuddingly sentimental the film is, and how conservative it is about family values.

Here is a frustrating film that tries to tell two stories at once, and succeeds with neither.

The Electric State is a fundamentally unsatisfying and muddled film, even leaving aside the deja-vu.

The stakes here are too low and so is the entertainment value.

Whatever might have made sense on paper just doesn’t translate to screen, a fun little concept that ends up being something of a drag.

For a film about advanced technology, it’s all awfully simple.

Dear Santa is like watching Bad Santa slowly turn into Elf, an unsatisfying attempt to be both naughty and nice, ending up as nothing instead.

The end result is so comically tawdry and silly you can’t but wonder if its all a bit of a tongue-in-cheek goof, a gag that Elizabeth Hurley at least seems to be in on, judging by her ripe, almost-winking performance.

Alas, you have to sit through a lot of turgid Bible studies dramatisations of bits of scripture to get to the good stuff.

De Niro is the most fluent and relaxed I've seen him for many years, but this is still very low-octane stuff, and the film lamely and unsatirically ends up at the Cannes film festival.

Tedious stretches of vulgar banter are interspersed with equally dull interludes during which people melt. Then it finally gets resolved after 85 very long minutes.

The script, the gags and the action remain mostly intact. But this time around, real actors and sets become deadweight to a story that soared in larger-than-life animated form.

German screenwriter Constantine Werner has adapted a story from fantasy author George RR Martin and the resulting dialogue lands like a series of sandbags on a concrete floor; director Paul WS Anderson handles the material with stolid determination.

Here the actual transitions are quite nifty, featuring lots of bulging veins and grisly-looking in-between stages as people turn into different kinds of snarling mammalian creatures. However, once they are done transforming, the masks or make-up or whatever the actors are clad in are so ineffectual they end up looking like a bunch of underlit extras in Halloween costumes recreating The Purge while howling.

The comic timing and bonhomie of the ensemble is sort of infectious, and (what do you know) some of the songs are pretty darn catchy.

There are touches of above-average streaming craft here, distancing it from the standard Netflix equivalent – an indistinctive yet solid score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, some grand cinematography from Guillermo del Toro fave Dan Laustsen – but the film bears too much of that synthetic Apple feel, as if it was primarily made to show off the abilities of a new iPhone.

This could be projected on to a wall at a club, but actually being made to sit down and watch it in a cinema is a weird experience.

Three big names doing a professional job … but the target isn’t found.

There’s also not really enough fun here, the repetitive nature of the fight scenes – quip, laugh, injury, wince – growing tired fast.

Unfortunately, Bloody Axe Wound doesn’t have quite enough distraction technique, giving the audience far too much time to start wondering how on earth any of this is supposed to hang together.

It’s quasi-erotic, pseudo-romantic and then ersatz-sad, a club night of mock emotion.

Tomorrow is too murky, meandering and self-indulgent an inside joke for audiences to remember it for more than its smirking moments. In time the Weeknd may come to regret this too, a missed opportunity.