Weaknesses from the original remain, including a mustache-twirling villain straight out of a Bond film (Sharlto Copley) and a Freudian master plan that unravels the more you think about it. Give credit to Lee for staying fresh, even if this feels like slumming.

It’s a familiar tale, but one told with gusto, wit and visual flare; of particular note is the dilapidated Germanic fortress where Capricorn and his cronies reside, which looks like it was plucked straight from the warped minds of a Gilliam or a del Toro.

One of the main explanations for our country’s inner-city high-school dropout rate is that public education doesn’t teach skills applicable to life outside the classroom. Director Mary Mazzio’s film, part documentary and part public-service announcement, offers a plausible alternative, which may prompt a discussion of totally revamping standard curriculum.

If you’re not already a member of the “Johnny’s Angels” fan club, you might wonder why other equally outrageous athletes weren’t bestowed with their own cinematic tributes.

Cake chokes you on its self-seriousness, even as it trots out potentially interesting supporting players.

With the exception of an unnecessary spectacular climax, this is a restrained, haunting chiller which stimulates the adrenalin and intellect alike.

The final word on this incident will require a more thoughtful filmmaker. But hopefully, that artist will possess at least half of Bay’s punishing, peerless craft.

The opening scene on a rain-drenched rubbish tip hints at great things, but despite strong writing and an exceptional cast, the plotting is suspect and the murderer's identity is obvious from very early on.

Were it not for the hard-R violence and a generous amount of computerized splatter, The Predator would play like a slightly naughtier Independence Day or Armageddon, sci-fi movies that had their squareness dirtied up by pop-culture-riffing jokesters hired to polish up a draft or two.

De Niro's gift for pantomime, glimpsed in his plumber for Brazil, is a non-stop bombardment of mugging on the silent screen scale. There isn't much left for Penn, which is okay by me. Very entertaining.

Because both dialogue and direction are none too exciting, one's tired eyes wander endlessly over the space base sets, where there has been an overuse of that potent sci-fi movie convention which conveys 'realism' by showing that life on the outer limits will be as dingy and badly lit as a suburban subway, with all the usual vices.

The movie spends almost as much time allowing the filmmaker, playing a progressive-minded teacher, to push his students to be better citizens by interviewing homeless people on skid row (!) as it does watching the younger generation trying to get some. It's an uneasy mixture of crude yukking and mixed-message uplift that satisfies on neither level.

Herbie and his plucky stunt drivers steal the show in this agreeable family entertainment.

Light, cheery and shading into darker areas for the climax, it's fun.

Shadows still functions as a study in superior sequel-itude, building a fine showcase for a reimagined character and the compelling, twitchy dynamo playing him. Should Ritchie ever learn to be elementary instead of epileptically overwrought, he may one day do proper justice to both.

There are some funny moments, and though she hams it up at times, Barkin is very good in her first comic role. But Edwards milks the comedy, keeps the sexual comment to a minimum, and brings the film to a silly, cop-out resolution.

Lacking the intellectual, emotional and philosophical rigours of, say, a film by Oshima, this brazenly voyeuristic nonsense is finally as incoherent and unilluminating as it's hackneyed.

It’s a patchy but sincerely felt spy thriller that could be harshly described as The 39 Missteps.

Once thought of as racy and adventurous in its treatment of sex, this turgid nonsense about a high-class whore with love in her heart has dated atrociously. Taylor hams away and Harvey in his debonair mood is distinctly unappealing, while the overall effect is too excruciating even to be unintentionally funny.

Despite grasping for topicality and insight into human nature, Tron: Ares doesn’t have anything new or interesting to say.

Interviews with real-life Gleeks contribute to the signature mix of schmaltz and earnestness one can expect from any Ryan Murphy vehicle, and there's nothing here that couldn't be accomplished in good old 2-D. Still, there's no need to stop believing.

MacFarlane’s preference for quantity over quality results in a lot of dead air, but the gags that land are howlers, and all of its crudeness (and racism, and sexism, and homophobia, etc.), the movie beats with a real heart.

It's by some way the best of the killer doll series, and as stylish and witty a horror movie as you could want.

One would be better off experiencing Woodley via her heartbreaking turn in last year's "The Spectacular Now," a drama that actually has more to say about nightmarish cliques and individuality than any lackadaisical slide into future schlock.

But while it may not be strong on nuance and the story moves with all the careful pacing of a human cannonball, it’s got gusto and verve in abundance. An old-fashioned musical with a none-more-zeitgeisty songsheet, it may not be a flawless piece of storytelling, but it’s a pretty decent show.

We see a storybook landscape enchant the pair, but we never feel it.

Rote ageist jokes abound (“Do you guys have drugs?” asks a bachelorette; “Does Lipitor count?” responds Kline), but they come with an inclusive, self-deprecating spirit that grows more endearing over the duration.

A single arresting shot of a photographer chasing a man on fire says more about journalistic ethics and the queasy power of the image than all of the speechifying and star-posing combined; if only the rest of this muddled movie had as much insightful Sontagian bang.

You have to hope that Hardy is not this annoying in real life, because by the time Dashcam’s supernatural menace reveals itself, you’re firmly on Team Blood-Spewing-Zombie. Maybe that’s the point. It’s hard to tell.

Levine's dramedy not only gives Ned's middle-class crises a static, by-the-numbers treatment, it also feels compelled to adopt a ridiculously righteous moral tone.

More time could have been spent developing the bond between the men, but ultimately this is quite gripping: a weepie bromance. You don’t see one of those every day.

What matters in this type of film is not so much the plot as the way in which an atmosphere is created. Unfortunately, Rosenberg directs flatly, hopping from one set piece to the next, disjointedly throwing characters of varying interest across Newman's path, while the latter - in his coarsest performance yet - remains content to wisecrack and ham outrageously.

Most of the humour on display in this would-be screwball comedy has an inanity which follows suit with this central conceit.

For every camp element like Javier Bardem’s rainbow-vomit outfits or Diaz’s onanistic tryst with a car windshield, there are a dozen poetic-pulp moments that channel McCarthy’s pitiless view of the world to a tee.

Fading out long before it’s able to cohere into anything memorable, Song One has its heart in the right place (on its sleeve)—it’s just in desperate need of a few strong hooks.

Feels pedestrian and moribund.

If you’re able to look past the police’s bizarre inaction, Mully’s implausibly excellent driving skills and the schmaltzy score, there are moments of fun to be had.

The new drama, best viewed as a church movie, is a return to the kind of corner-chat indie cinema Lee revolutionized, with an emphasis on a towering performance by The Wire's Clarke Peters as a local bishop inflamed with the Word.

In our chatty "Game of Thrones" moment, you'll thirst for a sidekick: a sly dwarf, a wisecracking female warrior, a huggable wolf, anything. Solomon Kane has none of these, and even heavyweight speechifiers like Max von Sydow and the late Pete Postlethwaite (that's how old the film is) have little to gnaw on.

More damagingly, director William Eubank (‘The Signal’) can’t decide if Underwate’ is a disaster flick or a monster movie. It ends up sinking between the two stalls: too unfocused for the former; not scary enough for the latter. All that early promise vanishes into the murk.

If you're still at the age when farting and nose-picking seem funny, then Caddyshack should knock you dead. Buried deep - very deep - beneath the rising tide of effluent is a pleasant enough story of a kind about trying to make it to the top as a caddy while yet remaining human; a movie which could have done for golf what Breaking Away did for cycling. Instead it allows a string of resistible TV comics (Chase excepted) to mug through an atrocious chain of lame-brained set pieces, the least vulgar of which involves a turd in a swimming pool.

Brando makes a total mess of his English accent, the romantic interlude in Tahiti goes on endlessly, and the visuals (perhaps the main point of interest in the movie) too often resort to travelogue vistas and picture postcard lighting.

Displaying a weird lack of memorable or endearing characters, this animated effort feels more like a direct-to-video job from the 1990s than a fully fledged John Lasseter–exec-produced theatrical release.

Director Peter Webber, who once mined social unease from the painterly "Girl with a Pearl Earring," is out of his depth; this is a movie in desperate need of a no-nonsense Howard Hawks.

Alicia Vikander makes for a scrappy, spunky Lara Croft, even if the overall concept remains less a movie and more of an exercise routine.

Not helping matters is dead-eyed snark source Aubrey Plaza, somehow less expressive than the doll itself (creepily voiced by Mark Hamill).

Gran Turismo may ultimately be a glossy marketing exercise, but there are moments that’ll leave you with the right kind of whiplash.

The current minor boom in American horror films has two notable features: the single-minded concentration on the nuclear family as a point of attack, and the consistent rejection of happy endings. This tale of a family taking a spooky old mansion for the summer would be strictly formula stuff were it not for these elements; but veteran Eugène Lourié's art direction helps.

Noisy, incomprehensible and lumberingly irrelevant, complete with shell-schlock Sensurround.

You can probably skip this one and still sleep soundly at night.

Lockout is the kind of manly nonsense no one wants to make anymore.

It’s a 60-minute documentary that feels like days of watching paint dry.

This is in the 'never trust appearances' mould popularised by Fatal Attraction and Pacific Heights.

It's pure comic-book malarkey, adapted from a graphic novel by French artist Matz. But the skeletal plot affords Hill the opportunity to go atmospherically hog wild.

There is no real social conflict in the film, and it becomes just a period variant on The Last Picture Show, without the vigour of that film or the irony of the original James novel.

You get the "girl," but little else; even as a tribute to one woman's determination, this semibiopic screams botched opportunity

Connery and Fishburne are adversarial along Heat of the Night lines, but director Glimcher makes little of the small-town Deep South locations. Pity.

A film that could have been memorably haunting is, sadly, all too forgettable

Cassavetes adopts a grammar that occasionally slides into parody but mostly comes across as committed style. Kiss of the Damned contributes little new to the genre save a taste for alluringly tactile sex scenes and an avoidance of gore.

Is Joaquin Phoenix putting us on? After watching the terrifying, near-brilliant exposé I'm Still Here, in which the Oscar nominee's public and private unraveling becomes a sick joke, the question doesn't matter.

While confined to the futuristic prison interiors, the film works reasonably well; but once Lambert springs his wife from the women's section and escapes, the limitations of budget and narrative imagination start to show. As it moves away from the ensemble feel of the early scenes, this quickly degenerates into a part explosive, part sentimental star vehicle.

That all sours by the time of the film's "shocking" climax, which is so hilariously telegraphed, it plays like a Benny Hill gag rather than a tear-duct stoker.

Despite the best efforts of its committed young cast, and especially a game (if suspiciously old-looking) Nicholas Hoult as Tolkien in his late teens and early twenties, it’s a plodding and polite portrayal that holds few surprises.

Credit Broderick and the cast for putting across the fey Indiewood bullcrap with committed, nearly convincing effort.

Oddly enough, the film's best pro-tech argument is its look; shot on a consumer-grade digital camera, it's a testament to how elegantly framed low-budget projects can look these days.

Writer-director Nick Tomnay needlessly convolutes what should have been a taut, focused two-hander with flashbacks, alternate realities and too-clever-by-half reversals.

Admission’s comedy has walls built around it; director Paul Weitz (About a Boy), normally a softener of harsh edges, might have been stymied by Fey’s snappy persona.

Green was meant for quick-witted comedy. Unfortunately, she's becoming a mainstay of painfully sincere slogs.

There’s a lot more Majors to come in future Marvel films and he’s really the only thing here that makes a continued story look even vaguely enticing. With this functional sequel Marvel is still on a dud streak. They now have the whole multiverse to explore. But can they settle into a reality where their films are fun again?

Firing on all cylinders for the first time, Araki throws in decapitation, spunk munching, outrageous visual and structural puns, Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss, and a running 666 gag, all in the service of American sexual liberation. Imagine Natural Born Killers with a sense of humour.

It's all stirringly traditional stuff, with a lively supporting cast, and made very easy on the eye by William Clothier's camerawork.

The whodunit element is less gripping than the original's study in soaring megalomania, but Price's urbanely mellifluous voice makes him an admirable successor to Claude Rains, and John P Fulton's special effects are well up to par.

Harrison Ford brings his gruff charisma but this man-and-CG-dog adventure gets a bit lost in uncanine-y valley.

Burdened with an underwritten part, the curiously flavourless Styles struggles to match Pugh for intensity as husband and wife fly at each other – one’s ambition at risk from the other’s intuition – and the couple’s chemistry fizzles out. It’s a crucial flaw in a film that needs to sell us at least one thing that feels real in its world of artifice.

The director/subject uses a confessional tone, showing herself nude in the tub and slathering the movie in emotive voiceover. But her self-regard never matures into self-examination, and the only time she steps outside of her own perspective is to moan about how others have it easier.

Schumer is a talented performer, and her physical comedy here draws some chuckles (as does Michelle Williams’ turn as Schumer’s helium-voiced ditz of a boss), but I Feel Pretty is consumed by an annoying premise that seems practically designed to generate think pieces.

As an exercise in grief, Orser’s drama is affecting, exhausting and something of a shortcut.

Fans of the gritty, era-defining precinct drama will bristle at how the program's realism has been replaced by a generic Tinseltown U.K. slickness. But regardless of whether you’re a longtime devotee or not, you’ll be left saying, “This is The Sweeney? I’ve been rooked.”

This isn't a sequel, it's a remake. Some ingredients have been substituted, but it's the same recipe of R & B and comic overkill. As before, the best thing is the music: Aretha Franklin, Sam Moore, James Brown. The rest is stale, cynical and hamfisted.

Though Lemmons’s parable-like intentions are clear, almost every beat of Langston’s tale, with its absent father figures and heated gun-pointing melodrama, rings false — hardly a fitting contemporary complement to the Greatest Story Ever Told.

Very good on local colour but a bit sugary in its attitude to the central relationship, it would have been better taking a bleaker cue from Tommy Lee Jones' admirably dry performance.

Garris plays it for laughs, and despite dull moments (and the obvious plagiarisation of Gremlins), does a pretty good job.

Farmer, as scripted here and played by Lange, unsurprisingly remains something of a cypher.

There’s ambition here, but little in the way of insight or genuine feeling — just a heavy-handed thesis and some extraneous Southern eccentricity.

Bland, artless and unoriginal, it's a horror sequel as faceless as its mask-wearing killers.

Combining state-of-the-art stylishness with comedy and suspense, Wang turns an otherwise straightforward conspiracy thriller into a pacy, racy fable with distinctly oddball dimensions.

The movie adaptation's version of religion may be more nuanced than the usual Left Behind fire-and-brimstone sermonizing you find in much contemporary pro-Christian cinema, but it still leaves behind a sulfuric stink.

The overall effect is glassy and inert, with Rooney Mara’s Mary an oddly elusive presence in the film that carries her name.

Connoisseurs will thrill to hints of composer Akira Ifukube’s original orchestra motifs or the passing mention of an “oxygen destroyer,” but mourn the lack of political stakes. It’s big dumb fun (a sequel with King Kong is on the horizon), and maybe that’s what these sequels always were.

Somebody give Werner Herzog an IMAX camera already, and let's see what a real filmmaker does with the format.

Mirthless, episodic fantasy saga.

So it's no surprise that what starts out as a beer-soaked cringe comedy about stunted masculinity ends up deep in the woods with noise-loving Japanese tourists and exploding craniums - or that such detours into psychotronic oddity for its own sake can make even a 75-minute running time feel like an eternity.

The film’s final moments mix compassion and vengeance to create something genuinely surprising, and if Cronin ultimately pulls a few punches in his body count, chances are you’ll be too traumatised by all the gore to notice.

Waters raids de Sade in pursuit of extremes, but the difference between him and Warhol (or that other arch-exponent of extreme disgust, Otto Muehl) is that Waters' grotesquerie is decidedly trivial.

Unfortunately, this austere allegory for the difficult process by which kids start to think for themselves only hints at the turbulence of its characters, who are kept at too far a remove for us to feel their growing pains.

This is shoddy hackwork, replaying classic scenarios (the honest new recruit, audits by Pentagon bigwigs and manoeuvres in Nevada) with such disregard for narrative structure the reels might be in the wrong order.

Some ventriloquists win the fame game, while some remain stuck in the D-list dugout. The fact that Dumbstruck doesn't even attempt to differentiate these camps makes the film feel as if it's just talking out of the side of its mouth.

Based on a novel by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer once envisaged as a Cecil B DeMille project back in 1934, George Pal's production is better remembered for its apocalyptic special effects than for the perfunctory dialogue, but the gripping story keeps you watching.