Working from his own script, Harris shows no sense of detail; characters barely develop, London becomes a topographical mess, and each time the plot falters, we get long '60s-style interludes with no dialogue, cut to bland pop. The result is without dramatic or moral weight, despite Highway's contrived comeuppance, and it's impossible to care about the characters.

Would that the climax lived up to the tension-filled first two thirds. Let’s just say that Non-Stop reaches for some pointed post-9/11 political commentary that almost entirely exceeds its grasp. Total brainlessness, in this case, would have been a virtue.

One by one, all the Western clichés are turned upside down and reinvented, with William Bowers' fine script proliferating enough invention and wonderful gags to make one forgive the occasional sag.

This is a bleak and bitter movie, but it knows the way forward, if not the quickest way to get there.

So here we have God's views on most things from TV to avocados, all enunciated in Burns' inimitably crisp'n'dry manner. Fun ultimately falters with some routine satire, but when the Devil's having such a time at the box-office, this comes as a welcome comic riposte from the other side.

Apart from one muted action sequence in which the participants try not to wake a sleeping bundle of joy (“Put that baby down,” one of them demands, and the order is obeyed, with a little tucking in), there’s scarce humor here for adults to relish. And Samberg’s characteristic snark has been sanded down to a nub.

The film never entirely overcomes the sense that it's a calling-card vehicle.

When the monsters finally show themselves, this potent theme is lost amid a lot of proficiently staged but insubstantial scare scenes - heavy on musical stingers and weightless CGI.

It makes you laugh in fits and starts, but more often it feels toothless and exhausted, the kind of project that exists to give Ray Liotta work.

While the documentary offers some insights into the pervertion of art for ideological purposes, too much of it simply finds Fry standing in dumbfounded awe of the holy sites that populate his journey.

Executive-produced by Steven Spielberg, the movie's special effects are seamless and far more cleanly cut than any of Michael Bay's hash. But the element that lingers longest is a subtle strand - also woven into last week's "Take Shelter" - of recessionary anxiety.

Filmmaker Victor Nunez pairs evocative locales--beatnik Bay Area, bucolic rural New Mexico--with fleeting asides of poetry (penned by the Santa Fe–based writer Joe Ray Sandoval); these meditative detours both elevate a routine story arc and tap into tangled, twisted familial roots.

Unknown is probably the movie "The Tourist" wanted to be, if it had a pulse. Its sheer momentum makes Neeson and Kruger more attractive than even Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie.

You can't deny the fun of seeing Depp retro-construct a muted version of his Vegas mugging like De Niro riffing on Brando's Don Corleone. (His reaction to swigging homemade rum is worth the price of admission alone.)

A tepid rom-com, replete with a nostalgic Bangles tune.

Ultimately, Rollerball gets by on its sheer monolithic quality - an abundance of quantity. Despite indifferent direction and dire humour, it is well mounted and photographed.

Lee's satire on American TV is an intriguing failure.

Caton-Jones views all the characters with undisguised affection; the whole thing bubbles along nicely in a fresh, witty, unselfconscious manner, making you forget the dated Capra-corn message.

What was Clint thinking? (Or Martin Scorsese, when he made "Shutter Island," for that matter.)

Sporadically very funny indeed, the script features some nicely wicked one-liners, which are well complemented by Zemeckis' sight gags and by performances of great gusto. Far from sophisticated in its satire of narcissism, but enormous fun.

Dressed like a Primark sale rail and flirting with whoever’s nearest, he brings a camp energy that makes little sense for his character (a man who simultaneously cares about nothing and will endure the logistics of arranging a multi-vehicle attack on a dam), but provides a wildly entertaining contrast to the beefy machismo of most of the cast.

If you go into Maleficent expecting Jolie to be the badass of Sleeping Beauty, you’re going to get burned.

There are riveting moments, especially in tastefully shot interviews with former captives, who quietly describe their physical and psychological torture.

From the sun’s surface to the deep earth, Hawaiian volcanoes to Detroit’s decay, Mettler explores the different ways that we experience and define time, using his own documentary as a mind-bending demonstration of its mutability.

A lively black comedy, surprisingly stylishly directed by DeVito (his début), it thankfully soft-pedals on the hysteria front to concentrate on verbal non-sequiturs and quirky characterisation. If it all gets a little soft-centred towards the end, there's more than enough vitality and invention to be going on with.

This talky would-be satire can find neither an appropriate tone nor a realised human drama to communicate the ideas. But there are some sharp lines and good scenes.