The soundtrack is crammed with ’60s and ’70s pop gems – several of them instantly familiar from Scorsese’s movies – while the colour palette is all muted corduroy brown and rainy urban grey. The result is less a homage than a slavish, overproduced cover version, lacking all the spark and integrity of the original.

Corny, but not enough for Lynch, who also throws in the escape of a homicidal maniac wrongly imprisoned for the child's murder, and a confusion of red herring conflicts which mark the plot as a poor imitation of John Carpenter's patient terrorism of good by evil. But if you forget motivation, the visual trick-or-treat of slow revenge is entertaining enough: a weirdo janitor dribbling at the window; the victim's year book photos pinned with shards of shattered mirror. Jamie Lee Curtis is superb as Miss Naturally Popular and Prom Queen-to-be, isolated in empty high school corridors.

The result is an odd, inconsequential but not entirely charmless misfire: an action-horror-comedy-romance with none of the first two and precious little of the third.

The film doesn't look good; it's as if the flat lighting and boring set of the TV show had infected everything else. And Big Arnie's quilted outfit makes him look like a duvet.

Too much of the humour derives from Emily’s insatiable appetite for booze, food and sex, while the central mother-daughter relationship is predictable.

Writer-director Billy Ray (the writer of Captain Phillips and the first The Hunger Games) honours the Argentine original with keynote scenes set in a mirrored lift and a crowded sports stadium, but the mood is too often sluggish and pedestrian.

If this family fodder is functional, it's due largely to its production design and cinematography, which endow the city of Chicago with an effectively menacing aspect.

There’s plenty to enjoy – a handful of smart one-liners, a few nifty shocks and one truly unsettling confrontation in a cemetery – but nothing to give Joss Whedon a run for his money.

Given an inch by the surprise success of his raunchy teddy-bear romp Ted, writer-director-star MacFarlane now takes a drastically overlong mile with a film that flatters his moderate talent and subzero leading-man charisma at every turn.

It’s hardly high art, but for a cheapjack homegrown action flick this is surprisingly solid.

This Brit comedy has the watchability factor of a mediocre TV sitcom.

The result is just a bit cringey.

Skarsgård himself is fairly bland as Greystoke, delivering a po-faced Byronic spin on the character, all velvet coats and dreamy romantic stares at his belle while sitting barefooted in the boughs of trees. But at least the animals are memorable – best of all is a pack of scene-stopping silverback gorillas digitally created for the movie. This Tarzan isn’t quite the jungle VIP – but it’s got a little swing.

Nobby is hardly a character for the ages. He's a basic fool. The movie, too, is chaotic and crude. But its lack of sophistication, like its odd mix of souped-up action and base comedy, ultimately feels like a badge of honour.

Cox is rudely magnificent, capturing not just the wilfulness of the man but the nagging self-doubt at his inner core. But the film is just too bloodless to be fully convincing.

The film never works out how to generate genuine dramatic fire from its material. There are convincing performances and decorative retro detail to admire, but the heart needs to beat just that bit faster – and it doesn’t manage that.

Ultimately it's left to Mad Max wizard Miller to steal the show with an extraordinary remake of Richard Matheson's story about an airline passenger who spies a demon noshing the starboard engine.

Diehard romcom fans will have their socks charmed off, but this is no ‘Notting Hill’.

A standard, camp, unapologetic Mel Brooks parody, with digs at Kevin Costner's Prince of Thieves and its multi-racial Merry Men, and an arsenal of throw-away gags. An impressive cast - Stewart, Hayes, Ullman - cannot unfortunately save the day.

It doesn’t even qualify for dumb fun.

The strands don’t so much intersect as float into each other’s peripheries to basically inconsequential effect, despite attempts to tie them together.

If you loved the game, you might enjoy watching the script contort itself into ever more zany shapes to incorporate the necessary elements: giant slings, teetering towers, boomeranging toucans. But it’s not enough to counteract the tiresome, sub-Lego Movie snarkiness of the script or the bright, busy and unengaging animation.

[Redemption] doesn’t always work but wins points for originality.

Better than most Stephen King adaptations, mainly because an exceptionally strong cast adds substance to the facile storyline about a mysterious stranger, Leland Gaunt (von Sydow), who opens the antique shop of the title in Castle Rock, Maine, and, by tapping into the inhabitants' acquisitive desires, sets them at one another's throats.

Roger Moore's interpretation of Bond is blandness personified. It is left to Christopher Lee, playing a kind of Westernised, Dracula-esque Fu Manchu, to lend some semblance of style and suavity as Scaramanga, the man with a hideout in Red China and a hankering after the status of gentleman.

There’s enjoyably smutty comedy to spare... but the film’s bleakest segments are actually its strongest.

It has the power to tug at your heartstrings like a puppy at a postman’s trouser leg. But ultimately its message is muddled and manipulative rather than meaningful.

Directed by Gillies MacKinnon, this new version lacks the mischief of the original and feels like a sluggish museum piece.

What a waste of Shailene Woodley the Divergent franchise is turning out to be.

Under Hamilton's moribund direction, this becomes a Bond-in-uniform saga, with a can-they-spike-the-Kraut-guns-in-time plot. All the potentially exciting set pieces (traitor in our midst, whose side are the Gucci-clad partisans on?) are thrown away with a disregard for the basic mechanics of suspense, and the climax is literally cardboard thin.

It’s a testament to the duo’s jazzy comic chemistry that they wring some laughs from this dated, frankly sinister premise.

DiCaprio (Rimbaud) and Thewlis (Verlaine) provide dynamic if mismatched performances, though there's no excusing Hampton's own laughable cameo, nor the protracted coda with DiCaprio doing a Peter O'Toole in the desert.

This is tame, lifeless stuff.

Refreshingly, Mariachi Gringo looks beyond the usual cartel/corruption/bloodbath take on modern Mexico, but the result is altogether stronger on sincerity than emotional engagement.

This tale of the manufactured pop group – fractured by fall-outs and drug abuse and now trying to ‘find’ themselves as they reflect on their career – is nauseating even for a long-term fan.

By the end, even Hanks looks a bit bored.

Despite the hackneyed sub-Frankenstein plot, the dazzling computer-generated special effects almost carry the film.

Daddy’s Home raises the occasional smile, but it’s not exactly Wahlberg or Ferrell’s finest hour.

The Great Wall is not exactly a good movie – but it’s a pretty enjoyable one.

The film’s sole saving grace is Tommy Lee Jones’s amusingly cranky FBI agent, but he can’t save this ship from sinking.

Ross, who began his career as a dancer and choreographer, brings plenty of gusto to the material and the performances are ebullient, but this is still a cynical and manipulative exercise with little feel for the teen culture it purports to celebrate.

There’s too much story to cram into one film, with the result that the three surly teenagers themselves – who would have made far more compelling central characters – are pushed to the side. And with their own legal team surely keeping a close watch, Egoyan and his scriptwriters are unable to point fingers in any meaningful way. A missed opportunity.

It’s all so horribly cynical, with every line, every twist and every note of music painstakingly focus-grouped to extract maximum cash value from the audience.

It quickly devolves into predictable shock tactics, drippy wartime romance and scenes in which the characters leaf tremulously through Victorian photo albums and spout exposition.

Sadly, much as we want to relish the shameless parade of cartoon violence, while indulging the equally shameless cavalcade of adolescent sexism, the soggy plotting and slack comic timing are downers.

It’s Bruni Tedeschi’s sure grasp of the milieu – and in particular her acute understanding of the specific foibles of a rich, arty but out-of-touch class nostalgic for an earlier era – that makes the film a modest but surprisingly substantial delight.

Three years after Smokey and the Bandit took the hard-drinking, fast-driving, trickster ethos of the American redneck into the big box-office league, Reynolds has proved he just does what he does best: show off. A lightweight chase caper that Reynolds must truly be sick of by now, but which he has elevated into something impossible to dislike.

The film's would-be subversive ideas about the kneejerk appeal of social violence get lost in the mix.

Child 44 is a striking example of how a single, wrongheaded choice can doom an entire movie.

The thrills and the effects are cheap, but this is in hard-driving, good-humoured command of its own silliness.

The best thing about ‘Kick-Ass’ was Moretz, and Hit-Girl still gets the best lines. Like the first film, Kick-Ass 2 pulls the reality of teen life into its fantasy.

There are a handful of really interesting scenes.... But for the most part Passengers is so anodyne, so frightened of the ethically troubling opportunities inherent in the setup that it just ends up feeling forgettable and silly.

As a thriller, Before I Go To Sleep is perfectly effective, but while director Rowan Joffe keeps the twists coming, something about Kidman’s blank, frosty performance is unconvincing.

It might have made a good episode of ‘Entourage’, but as a full-length feature it misses the mark.

This hugely entertaining oddity could never be mistaken for the work of any other filmmaker.

There are a couple of decent jumps and a few giggles, but nothing armrest-clenchingly scary about The Quiet Ones.

It’s formulaic, but also largely entertaining, quite touching, occasionally amusing and competently animated.

Director Sung-su Kim doesn’t spend long explaining how the heck this ravenous form of avian flu has come about, concentrating instead on the chaos as the epidemic spirals out of control.

The gags here ought to have been put out of their misery and the we’re-all-in-it-together bonding between the kooks of table 19 is just painful.

The humour throughout is alternately mindless, sexist, racist, and homophobic, and would probably offend if you managed to stay awake.

Another convoluted tale of criminal bumbling.

In the end, the characters are more lasting than the story, which is a standard save-the-city-from-destruction yarn. But this crew is a riot, and their world is intriguing and even a little meaningful.

Psychologists would doubtless have a field day with the film’s lumpy brew of semi-incestuous paternal angst, midlife machismo, all-American dick-swinging and moderate racism, but we imagine most of them are too busy to waste two hours on this sludge.

While MacLaine and Seyfried do the best with what they’ve got, The Last Word is pedestrian and predictable. It is harmless, though, too. You won’t believe a single minute of it, but you might, despite better judgement, find yourself caring by the end.

The film is sunk by a series of preposterous performances. There are more phony German accents than in a prep school version of Colditz, and Levin's expert plotting is buried beneath an avalanche of lines like 'Vat are we goink to do?'.

For all but the most forgiving horror fans, this is a lazy, stupid and incoherent failure.

The result, despite an uncertain start, is in the end a surprisingly intriguing and affecting movie.

Bond struck camp long ago, so it would seem pointless to complain about the dilution of Fleming's cruel stud into a smirking dinner-jacket with a crude line in double entendres. But the problem here is that the elements which act as consolation in late Bondage are missing.

This is one mad mess from start to finish... But the sheer ambition is impossible to ignore, and the sense of fun is infectious: you may fear for your sanity during Jupiter Ascending, but you’ll come out smiling.

Is there something creepy about Franny’s aggressive generosity and need to be needed? In a film with a better script, yes.

With some dire blue-screen effects, dizzying tonal instability and a total absence of suspense or originality, "Wolverine" is something of a disaster.

Chases on foot and four wheels keep the thing moving, but apart from a thematic wrinkle where Besson’s clearly siding with the hood rather than the lawmakers, it’s all pretty predictable.

There’s really nothing to recommend ‘Sea of Monsters’: the young cast are smug and forgettable; the action sequences barely get going before they’re over; and the whole affair is riddled with product placement and pop cultural references – one girl even seems to possess a magic iPad. Keep the kids at home

A way-too-leisurely thriller whose destination is fairly obvious from early on, but to which the talented cast apply themselves with effortful seriousness.

Would-be seadog Short inherits old boat and sets sail for adventure in the Caribbean only to have sozzled captain Russell land the whole crew in deep trouble. Queasy ocean-going comedy, not helped by Kurt's Robert Newton impersonation.

Sentimental and shallow, although just passable as a kids’ movie.

After a creaky, clichéd start, Need for Speed picks up a bit. The script is still as corny as hell, but the chase scenes are pretty spectacular.

There's absolutely nothing to it, beyond Ms Beals cavorting in a leotard, lots of sheeny backgrounds courtesy of Lyne the former adman, and a Joe Eszterhas screenplay mixed through with cliché concentrate as female blue-collar worker proceeds from showgirl at a men's club to the big audition for the Pittsburgh ballet school. The star, it has to be said, is not at her most convincing as a welder (how does she afford an apartment the size of an aircraft hangar?), nor should we forget that most of the serious terpsichorean gymnastics were done by uncredited French dancer Marine Jahan.

Softley negotiates layers of deceit with skill, but an uncharacteristic visual and narrative tightness leaves one wondering what might have been.

Jackson's showy technique does little to lighten the over-earnest heroics and ponderous references to samurai, which are punctuated by assorted numbers and costume changes for Houston. Lawrence Kasdan, it seems, mulled over the first draft of his screenplay twenty years ago; it should have been left to languish in development purgatory.

Gang of comic-strip killer car-thieves is led by lip-curling psycho Packard (Cassavetes). The town (comprising one house, a burger joint and no citizen who isn't a teenager or a cop) is overseen by Sheriff Randy Quaid, who displays all the reverence the script deserves. Best joke is having one of the thugs know a word like wraith.

Thanks to ‘Taken’ director Pierre Morel, this too often feels like just another slice of brainless Eurotrash, packed with saw-it-coming plot twists, half-hearted car chases and an angsty hero with mega muscles and zero charisma.

First-timer Gornick's direction is so painfully inept that not one of the episodes is even slightly scary, let alone horrifying. The only terrifying thing about Creepshow 2 is the thought of Creepshow 3.

Toning down the smut for a PG-rating, and bringing in veteran comedy director Paris, who made his feature debut with 1968's Jerry Lewis vehicle Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River, ensured slightly more in the way of comic consistency for this modest sequel.

Grammer's first major feature after his TV success with Frasier finds him embracing a new persona. Out goes the intellectual cold fish, in comes the intuitive, warm, fun-loving leader of men. The role looks good on him, but it's a shame that he's also jettisoned the sophisticated dry wit which has been his hallmark in favour of a much broader, wetter humour. But what would you expect of a movie directed by Ward and co-written by Hugh (Police Academy) Wilson?

Instead of updating the genre, The Other Woman rehashes it, bringing little more than a few giggles and a dash of glamour to the table.

The film looks nice but unoriginal (blue light, dry ice, flashing instrument panels); the model work is okay but laboured; the acting is stunningly mediocre.

Unfortunately for everyone, Captain Jack Sparrow is still slurring and staggering around the Caribbean. Whatever charm and charisma Johnny Depp once had in this role is well and truly lost at sea.

There’s nothing groundbreaking about the animation or script. That said, the characters and story still offer low-key charms.

No film about a scalpel-wielding three-year-old psycho zombie could be entirely devoid of shocks. But reams of tedious exposition, about a children's pet 'sematary' and the magical resurrecting properties of an Indian burial ground, stretch patience and credulity to their limits, while Lambert fails to exploit the potential of the novel's best set pieces.

Fans of the Stath and his inimitable oeuvre may find just enough shooting, punching and snarling to keep them satisfied. But those who enjoy proper movies are urged to steer clear.

For all its state-of-the-art animation techniques, Spielberg's production remains resolutely conservative: visually it's virtually indistinguishable from Walt at his wimpiest.

The filmmaking is solid, the performances strong and the tunes are pretty terrific. But this is too wary of controversy – and too ‘respectful’ of the fans – to treat its subject to the hard-headed analysis Tupac’s legacy deserves.

It lacks internal logic and relies on the audience’s familiarity with its cartoon serial source.

Kids still experiencing World Cup withdrawal symptoms may be entertained by this animated oddity from Argentina.

The top-notch cast keep calm and carry on, but this TV remake is a waste of everyone’s time.

Extraterrestrial doesn’t amount to much beyond a mish-mash of movies we’ve seen before.

There are times when Cell feels like a surreal pastiche of po-faced apocalypse movies. But no such luck: this is every bit as bad as it appears.