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

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?'.

Based on a novel and a disowned script by the late Paddy Chayefsky, Russell's noisily grandiose swipe at psychedelia embellishes what is no more than the cosily familiar story of the obsessive Scientist Who Goes Too Far and Unwittingly Unleashes, etc.

There are a few ideas knocking about in the script – including repression of childhood trauma – but the silly, hand-me-down scares just don’t chill.

In short, the raw materials are there for a fun – if throwback – genre piece of the kind that kept ’90s cinema stocked with stiffs. Alas, the tension dissipates in a tangle of muddled subplots, sluggish pacing and some strange decisions from director Tomas Alfredson (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy). The result isn’t a Bone Collector, never mind a Se7en.

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

The novel A Long Way Down is not-quite-vintage Nick Hornby. And this is a disappointing film version, a bit hokey and fake.

Like Cry Freedom, it's still whites debating racial injustice: fine for a book published in Afrikaans a decade ago, but a poor premise for a message movie.

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.

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.

This low-rent ‘Bourne’ clone has been sitting on the shelf for two years now, which explains why there’s a photo of Barack Obama still hanging above the CIA director’s desk. It might also explain why Unlocked feels so choppy and uneven, like it needed a lot of knocking about in the editing room.

Cruz has enough charm to melt a glacier, but she can’t rescue the shamelessly sentimental script by director Julio Medem (‘Sex and Lucia’). Ma Ma is going for the heartstrings, but don’t bother taking tissues.

Everything here feels inauthentic, from the cast speaking their lines in English to the unthrilling final escape attempt.

It all leads to a climax so staggeringly lazy and glib that you honestly expect Woodley just to turn to the camera in the final scene, shrug her shoulders and walk off.

Sadly, this polite film, though touching in places, is so desperate not to offend, it’s the film equivalent of sensible shoes. Diehard fashionistas may disagree.

This is one of those romances where the woman only exists to be a figure of worship for a nerdy, socially awkward young man, whose side we’re meant to take unquestioningly. Sorry, Pif, but you’ll need to try a bit harder.

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

This forgotten chapter of history deserves to be better told.

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

In the end Horns is weird without being interesting.

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

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.

Complications escalate to a tiresome degree, leeching the fun from the movie, which is slung together with cold competence (and not much more) by jobbing Icelandic maverick Baltasar Kormákur.

A potentially gripping study of the fallout from the JFK assassination as experienced by his doctors, secret service agents and the man who famously photographed the incident is rendered tame by a combination of flat writing and overly busy storytelling.

Despicable Me 3 suffers both from a lack of new ideas – there are no memorable gags or action set-pieces, just a lot of flying about and yelling – and from an assumption that the audience is already invested enough to care about what happens.

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.

This is actually director Avildsen's first hit since Rocky, and it has the same mixture of calculation and apparent naïveté. It borrows its formula from both East and West with good humour, and is completely free of intelligence, discrimination and originality. No wonder it's a hit.

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.