The diminution works its appeal once again in Epic – the latest film from the creators of "Ice Age" and "Rio" – which is just as well, because the rest of the narrative follows a rather predictable route.

Though pristinely faithful to Maynard's book, it blurs inexorably into Nicholas Sparks.

For all the solid efforts of the cast, it’s still one of those biopics with a totally canned story arc and as many head-slapping moments as intentional laughs.

The film is not only unchallenging, it seems actively scared of challenging us. You emerge feeling pacified and only semi-entertained.

For all its visual fizz, Bonello’s film, which he co-wrote with Thomas Bidegain, tells us nothing about the designer save the usual pompous/concessive hero-worship.

Reminders of Shaun of the Dead (2004) abound. However, an endearing cast...and a satisfying mix of gore and gorblimey charm more than compensate.

For shoestring charm, One Cut of the Dead remains unbeaten, but Final Cut brings off the same hugely satisfying Tetris symphony of emotional and narrative blocks falling into place.

How deep can an authorised portrait of Whitney Houston delve? The answer: not very. I Wanna Dance with Somebody aims, instead, to climb high – to cheer and celebrate as a glitzy biopic, where documentaries have tended to dwell morbidly on Houston’s downfall.

The film staples together two snazzy-sounding ideas – an ecologically inclined disaster movie with dinosaurs, and, later, dinosaurs on the loose inside a stately home – without considering whether the end product’s sheer snarling hideousness might just prove an intelligence-insulting turn-off.

It’s all lightly reminiscent of Bride Wars, the cat-fighty 2009 farce with Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson doing very unfeminist things to ringfence their perfect day. You’re Cordially Invited has a little more heart than that: it hits an average yet amiable stride.

Age of Uprising falls awkwardly (but not altogether unappealingly) into the gap between art film and horse opera.

Hoffman's performance has a sadness, an unexplained loneliness, which gives this slightly diffident piece a centre of sorts, and there's a pleasing air of melancholy all round.

When the film reaches its logical end point, Refn just keeps pushing, and eventually lands on a sequence so jaw-dropping...that all you can do is howl or cheer.

We all know Smith can deliver barbs like blow-darts, but Parker’s screenplay gives her a too-rare chance to do something more – and when she delivers a bittersweet, profound monologue towards the end of the film, it feels like you’re watching a classic Ferrari reach the end of an average speed check zone and whistle off into the distance.

So if the sex is such a ball, what’s wrong with Love? The answer, unfortunately, is absolutely everything else, of which there’s more than you might initially expect.

Valerian is a film to wallow in, not follow, and if you’re tuned to its extra-terrestrial wavelength, you wouldn’t cut a second.

Bird Box begins with considerable promise but is soon revealed to have feathers for brains.

Neither clever nor stupid enough to work.

As a bouncy childcare aid, it doesn’t exactly fail, but you might be better off asking an eight-year-old about that. It’s witless fare if you want the whole family entertained.

We are encouraged to find these people stupidly brutal or comedic without being given the slightest idea as to why they might be that way.

I was surprised to find how emptying out a man in this fashion triggered genuine emotion by the end.

If the very best animation feels like nourishment for the soul, think of this adaptation of the beloved Dr Seuss tale as the spiritual equivalent of a double helping of chocolate-flavoured breakfast cereal: not exactly clean eating, but packing an irresistible sugary kick.

The problem with this latest entry in Disney’s ever-expanding range of recycled classics isn’t that it hews too close to the studio’s original animated masterpiece, but that its many departures only muddle the original’s nursery-rhyme simplicity and neuter its famous sustained emotional wallop.

Gleeson and Byrne actually make for an appealing double act, and their scenes together are fun enough to make you wish that Gluck had ditched the digital animals and made an all-human countryside screwball instead.

It’s daft, disposable fun while it lasts.

In typical noir fashion, the story is related in flashback and there's a femme fatale, played by husky-voiced Lizabeth Scott, to lure our hero even further into the danger zone. [30 Jul 2011, p.30]

The film seems to think the mere presence of Mirren as a wisecracking widow will be enough for us to forgive it a multitude of sins.

Nothing here is raw enough for the strength of the brothers’ bond and the weight of their sacrifice to really bite.