Only God Forgives is the spectacle of a brilliant young director spinning out in style. It’s a beautiful disaster.

Fans of Cage and Cusack, previously paired as unlikely allies in Con Air (1997), may be looking forward to a bit of deranged actorly combat once Hansen is cornered in the interrogation room, but it’s here that this hopeless flick comes up especially short.

As 2017’s gripping and confidently philosophical Life proved, it’s possible to weave an original action movie from the smelly-people-trapped-in-space cliche. Yet The Cloverfield Paradox’s take on the genre is ham-fisted, with deafening bursts of exposition strewn between endless, talky, tedium.

It’s testament to just how bad the original Super Mario Bros Movie was that this sequel can be a noticeable improvement in every respect – animation, storytelling, humour, vocal performances, you name it – while still comfortably qualifying as absolute rubbish.

Baby Invasion, which premiered at Venice tonight, may be the stupidest film I have ever seen. And I use the word “may” only because I’m not entirely sure this thing actually is a film in the first place.

Despite the clumsy writing and production design, Thirlby and Hurt acquit themselves perfectly well, and Jürgen Prochnow makes an enjoyably ripe appearance as a former Nazi who unwittingly helps direct Ari towards his target.

This is pure filmmaking-by-paycheque: you can virtually hear the clock card machine crunching at the start of every scene, as cast and crew punch in dutifully for another shift.

As supposedly taboo-smashing comedy, it’s never on full thrust, settling more for tentative gags with underwear firmly in place.

Occasionally things get a little overcrowded, particularly during a sticky final act, but Pan has a certain timeless buoyancy that keeps it bouncing back.

Assassin’s Creed is leaps and bounds ahead of kitchen-sink-hurling flapdoodle like X-Men Apocalypse – it’s only the second-worst Fassbender star vehicle of 2016 – but it never allows him a sober moment, as that film did in a hushed Polish forest, where his talent, as opposed to his biceps, gets a stern workout.

A lot of the blame for this misfire must fall on novice Brazilian director Afonso Poyart, whose crackpot editing and fondness for irrelevant zooming don’t so much turn this film’s screws as loosen them unrecoverably.

Tom Gormican, the writer and director, mostly uses overlapping dialogue in place of actual jokes, although occasionally he stretches to toilet humour.

Runner Runner starts off with a solid draw, then folds on the flop.

Substance-wise, there might be enough going on here to sustain a five-minute short.

It’s bizarre, unsettling and yet – in the filmmaking equivalent of turning wine to water – bracingly dull to boot.

This is Egoyan’s best film for a very long time: like Reynolds, he needed a hit, and The Captive is a welcome return to the form of The Sweet Hereafter. Its eeriness creeps up on you and taps you on the shoulder, and when you spin around, it’s still behind you.

Every punchline is followed by a quiet pause for audience laughter, the lengths of which might kindly be described as optimistic.

Truth or Dare is the kind of film that must have seemed like a good idea at the time, but its initially appealing premise – what if a demon possessed a drinking game? – quickly falls to pieces under its own self-generated confusions.

It’s a welcome surprise: sharper and funnier than its doom-laden predecessor, with a fantasy setting immersive enough to distract from the narrative’s various chips and cracks.

An enjoyably silly police thriller,

It’s Mamma Mia!, minus ABBA. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Jones conjured intimacy on the surface of the moon, but in the crowded streets of futuristic Berlin, there’s no real feeling.

Absurdly, the film ends up flouting its own self-imposed rules to reach a suitably syrupy conclusion – and thereby avoid the more bittersweet, thought-provoking landing you find yourself wondering if it has the courage to go for. Well, it doesn’t: Genie is a sugar-only zone. But then, it is Christmas. Or near enough.

Venom can be quite a lively watch, both as a reminder of why Hollywood stopped making superhero films like this, and also for the occasional glimpse of the off-the-wall, star-driven freak-out that might have been.... But in terms of basic entertainment, let alone as the foundation of a franchise, it is miserably shaky stuff.

We’d give the lazy set-up a pass if sufficiently fun things started happening off the back of it.

The action is slapstick-driven, yet the set-pieces are all so transparently bogus – with fourth-rate CGI and actors’ digital doubles flopping about the place like haunted marionettes – that they play as insulting rather than outrageous.

The switch from male to female leads has been done with so little apparent regard for how it might actually affect the plot that entire tracts of the film, including its finale, now land like poorly tossed pancakes.

The result is an empty film about emptiness, and therefore doubly depressing.