Despite some insipid characterisation and one or two lapses, things move along at a fair pace and there's a surprising plot all about property speculation in San Francisco. Can Grandma Steinmetz save her home from the grasping magnate Alonzo Hawk? The comedy is on the whole inventive, occasionally aspiring to almost surrealist heights.

A skilful blend of the familiar (casting, English locations) and the outrageous (the script's mix of whodunit, disaster movie and telekinetic thriller) produces a beguiling entertainment in which half the fun's to be had from constructing a coherent synopsis out of the loony mess of flashback, foresight, eccentricity and even ecology.

Ford has come up with a nifty way of exploring the enduring allure and troubling underside of the superhero myth. It's just too bad his own all-too-human powers aren't quite up to the task.

It is engagingly played by a cast including Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington and Luke Wilson, and handsomely mounted too, with Costner’s vision of the West’s untamed grandeur fully deserving the big-screen treatment.

There’s a lot of cinema to admire here. And being reminded of the directorial talents of Affleck—undeniably a more accomplished filmmaker than an actor—is no minor event.

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.