Top-notch computer graphics, star voices and a gaggle of gadgets cannot disguise the fact that this family of the future is stuck firmly in 1962.

Dodgy business magnate Cioffi is up to no good in the armaments world, but even he can't ship an extra consignment of charisma to a picture that suffers from able character performer Ward's lack of leading-man presence or physique.

Second Act is an aspirational Pinterest board of a film, too bland to make an impression. If only the world saw street smarts as equal to book smarts, Maya wishes on her birthday. It’s a nice idea, but Second Act doesn’t possess smarts in either category.

There's something of a soft shoe shuffle to avoid treading on national sensibilities. But the climax, in particular, manages to be more than just a shoot-out, with Fleischer's intelligent direction generating a real feeling of chaos and apocalypse.

Codirector Ami Horowitz hogs the screen like a cut-rate Michael Moore, bringing a numbingly simplistic irony and smug self-satisfaction to his faux–rabble-rousing exposé.

Though Reeder's attempts to unnerve sometimes veer close to enfant terrible posturing, The Oregonian knows how to work its unpleasantness to primo psychotronic effect.

"Amadeus" it's not, but as light transitional music, the film-which has Pete Postlethwaite's final performance, as a swishy landlord-is tuneful enough.

Though the dialogue rings too chirpy ("Gee whiz!") and faintly anachronistic ("Get over it, man!"), the acting is wonderfully subtle, especially John Mahoney's turn as Bryce's grimly clear-eyed grandfather.

Ditching the mock-doc aesthetic is a bold formal move, but without its immediacy and realism, [REC] 3: Genesis becomes just another walking-dead movie-and clocking in at a mere 80 minutes, one with no time for character development.

Strong on stunts and special effects but often rambling and ponderously lurching into comedy, it's not the greatest of Christmas treats, but does have enough cherishable moments between the wordy longueurs; and in Lysette Anthony's Princess Lyssa, a heroine for whom many a young Turk would walk through fire and ice.

It would be kind to call this satire; what it comes off as is a pummeling, testosterone-fueled sensory assault that the film then makes minor variations on for two very long hours.

Director Spheeris (Wayne's World) seems to have taken her obsession with youth culture beyond the limit, including a scene of dancing teenies in pink leotards that would make John Waters blush.

This one barely musters a pulse.

If you can get over the moralising, there's a treat from Kristy McNichol as the rough talking, Marlboro-smoking kid who can deliver a kick to the cobblers to rival Paul Newman, while Matt Dillon as her 'gentle giant' initiator and the soundtrack (Blondie, Bonnie Raitt) also provide welcome relief.

At best, the formula works like vintage Bond (explicitly so in the title sequence). But too much time is wasted with stale Star Wars plagiarisms, including the screen's dullest robot.

Mad axeman action yet again, cravenly conformist in every department.

The casting, from lead roles to supporting, is uniformly terrific.

Playwright-turned-fillmaker Florian Zeller continues his one-man war on the world’s tear ducts with another hard-hitting portrait of domestic life in extremis.

Still Life constantly threatens to become a better movie: John’s scrutiny of photos feels vaguely serial-killer–esque, and there’s a late-inning love interest (Downton Abbey’s Joanne Froggatt) that you privately cheer for.

Radnor tries to pin a tail of significance on this donkey, but he seems content with light comedy and mere proficiency. To which we can only reply: Nothankyounomoremilquetoast-please.

Granted, Boyle may be a competent director, but he’s missed the mark by not focusing on anybody with real heart: the father and his son, the cousin and her beau--basically, every person here who isn’t a cretinous, developmentally arrested creep.

Sadly, “Get out of my lab!” is not the new “Get off my plane!”

Uneasily poised between glib irony and earnest melodrama, Patricia Riggen's coming-of-age tale is as scattered as its manic pubescent protagonist.

There still hasn’t been a truly great film based directly on a video game, and the characterisations here are more likely to annoy than delight the hardcore fans, but the jetsetting and sunshine here is a welcome break from more serious action movies, and Holland will just about hold the interest.

The gallery of eccentric ex-lovers provides a few yuks, but the fact that the film's trajectory sees going from sexuality-owning independence to conventional respectability as a quantum leap is remarkably depressing, even if Angela's final resolve complicates such an easy progression.

The burgeoning relationship between both the athletes, bonding over a kindred "otherness," is handled tastefully by director Kaspar Heidelbach, though the lack of new insights on the subject of National Socialism's wickedness ultimately reduces a well-staged film to a historical footnote.

The story of a young woman (Juno Temple) discovering that she is both a lesbian and a werewolf, Bradley Rust Gray's oddball horror parable starts with an irresistibly trashy premise and proceeds to treat it with the po-faced pretentiousness of a film-school thesis.

The story is classic - a pair of childhood friends go their separate ways as adolescence gives way to manhood - the treatment pure Hollywood.