A syrupy stream of EDM-style pop in assorted languages fills in the spaces where people aren’t talking, but ultimately it’s all too bland and banal to even be offensive or annoying.

It’s a time-honoured and perfectly enjoyable setup, and the first act, when the new reality dawns on clueless Bradley, is watchable. But the plot twists are derivative and the action then becomes dependent on weird stabs of grisliness that are not convincing or consistent with the characterisation.

Silverstone’s easy charisma, and initial lived-in chemistry with Hudson, can’t overcome a script that isn’t witty or involving enough for us to care about another milquetoast Netflix family frantically hugging and grinning to show how close they are.

The gimmicks are unfunny, the romance inoffensive, the happy-ever-after straightforward. For all its waxing poetic on the specific luxury of champagne, no one is pretending this is anything other than a mass market item; the things to hate are also the things to like. One might call a critic’s feelings about it a champagne problem.

One could list all the film’s shortcomings, but that would be like pulling wings off a fairly harmless moth.

There’s nothing wrong with a weepie or big emotional moments, but for me Goodbye June is too unreal, too contrived in its sugary farewell.

A pale imitation.

The film sags during the subtler moments of the setlist, which is a problem when half of it is composed of ballads performed at a mic stand or while lying on the floor. I will freely admit to not being particularly fond of Cameron’s recent work, but I couldn’t help wishing for a Na’vi to swoop from the rafters on a tetrapod to liven things up.

20 years later Gans still can’t figure out how to escape the open-ended confinement of gameplay, or even give it the forward momentum of a game with a mission.

There's a lot wrong with The Brave, with a pace that may be intended to evoke desert languor, but is often plain leaden. Yet The Brave is oddly haunting, if only for its eccentricity. [13 May 1997, p.2]

Honestly, there isn’t a single step in Shelter’s plot that isn’t entirely predictable, but to the film’s credit the fight choreography is solid (Waugh was a stuntman himself once) and young Breathnach proves, after her turn as Susanna Shakespeare in Hamnet, that she is a find with a future.

Many of us have long sensed culture is making a decisive break with the analogue in favour of the (perhaps terminally) online and Fischbach’s film makes that paradigm shift not just visible but visceral; it feels not unlike spending 12 hours on Twitch with all the curtains closed.

The lack of story, structure, or any clear editorial principle is a serious impediment to empathy for these poor, struggling people; the 159-minute runtime feels like four years.

There are a couple of decent plot twists and reveals, but not enough to stop you from checking out until the next bit with the whale comes up.

It’s certainly a return to what many know him for – vibrant colours, unfettered sex, madcap plotting – but it’s also missing that same sense of infectiously boisterous energy. The parts are here but there’s nothing to truly animate them, just the vague hope that maybe nostalgia might be enough.

Lambert is too skittish to keep us in her character’s lives for longer than brief, often maddeningly flat moments.

Tonally pitched between a bloodbath and bath time, a boyish strain of immaturity is the dominant creative force for Sokolov, at times amusingly but more often in commonplace, enervating ways.

What should be wickedly cutting in-the-know dialogue is soft and uninventive, what should be a seat-edge string of escalating circumstances becomes increasingly tiring and hard-to-buy and while the cast is game, they mostly struggle to find the right level for Yan’s admittedly difficult-to-match zany energy.

Ultimately, the film does not compellingly deliver a blazing truth about its various relationships – but neither does it intriguingly withhold any such truth from us.

There’s a swirl of creepy noises in A24’s new hyped-up horror Undertone – screaming, gargling, singing, banging – but nothing is quite loud enough to drown out the swirl of films it’s cribbing from.

Some interesting material here, but the punches don’t land.

Cronin, an Irish film-maker who has made just two films to date (The Hole in the Ground and Evil Dead Rise), is an undeniable visual talent but his Mummy is also absurdly, watch-checkingly overlong (134 minutes is an unacceptable length for a genre film as thin as this), tonally unsure and, fatally, not all that scary. It’s also, for something so clearly attributed to just one person, a film so deeply influenced by the work of many, many others. It might not feel like a Mummy movie you’ve seen before but it’ll feel like a great deal else.

Doeren clearly has a feel for the bear necessities, but the human interest hardly gets its boots on.

The novelty of a malevolent presence in the wholesome, brightly lit world of a kids TV show can’t quite sustain an engaging 95-minute feature, Kelly not knowing where to take his admittedly attention-securing setup.

Chasing Summer at least outruns the charge of being boring, though at what cost.

This specific concoction of absurdism, sentimentality, childish humor and dark punchlines may have stayed off-key for me, but seemed to strike a chord with others, at least judging from the many guffaws at the screening I attended.

Written by Colby Day, In the Blink of an Eye attempts no less than the sweep of life from big bang to unknown verdant planets, with the emotional depth of a tide pool and the complexity of a cave painting.

[Colman] knows how to oscillate between broad comedy and heart-wrenching drama but the film around her isn’t as adept. Like the dream husband at its centre, Wicker looks the part but there’s nothing underneath.